Hi out there! It has been a long time since I have posted in this blog, although I have much enjoyed reading the blogs of others. I opted to leave the blog behind when a series of events occurred.

We made the ninety mile trip to see my husband’s parents weekly or biweekly for many years, as we were managing their care once they needed it. My husband’s mother then passed away, and we were managing the care for his father, who passed away in 2018, the same year that my mother, who lived in Washington state, had a serious fall and was hospitalized and then had to go into assisted living along with my bonus dad. We made trips to Washington to get them settled and eventually to pack up their home and sell it. We sold our home the next year and worked on getting settled in a new place. We put in new flooring and a patio, as the backyard was just dirt at that time. We each had surgery. The results of all that were good, and just recently, we moved my folks down to be in an assisted living facility just a few minutes from us.

About a year after we moved in, there was a fire. It looks closer than it really was, but it was a scare nonetheless.

My “writing custom” during these past few years has been to jot down ideas, images, and thoughts into a journal (or scraps of paper, whatever was handy), and then expand them into poems or stories when I was able to settle down and focus. My friend, Luanne Castle, over at https://writersite.org has nudged my poetry endeavors, kindly sending books and related materials. I can’t say enough about the value of encouragement!

More of my poems have been published than I expected, and I have really appreciated some of the letters from editors who take the time to mention why they liked a certain poem. It’s great if they just say “vivid” or “nice tone.”

A Thin Slice of Anxiety featured five poems. So nice to have all five that I sent accepted.

The Cumberland River Review published “Now I Walk Through Time”

Brief Wilderness published “Man Looking Out to Sea at Dusk”

There have been a few more, and I just got a couple of acceptances this past week.

I hope your writing is going well!

In an earlier post, I mentioned seeing Dana Gioia, editor of many literature anthologies, poet, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and currently the California Poet Laureate. I was inspired by his talk and poetry reading, and later by his book of essays, Can Poetry Matter?         

Gioia talks about the value of poetry readings as part of his larger goal of restoring the place of poetry in American culture, instead of hiding (burying it?) in academic zones. He suggests multiple ways that readings can be enlivened to interest general audiences. Poets should recite the work of others when giving public readings, celebrating poetry in general. They should mix poetry with other arts, such as music, visual art, and theatre arts. (18 – 20).

Cindy Rinne’s recent reading in Sierra Madre, California fulfilled Gioia’s goals. I have written about her before in another post. You can find her books, Spider With Wings, Speaking Through Sediment, Quiet Lantern, and Breathe in Daisy, Breathe Out Stones at Amazon. You can also see my review there of Quiet Lantern and Doll God by Luanne Castle.

Rinne’s setting in Sierra Madre, California, at the home of warm and wonderful people, Krishna and Eva Malhotra, was beautiful. The expansive terraced gardens provided an excellent atmosphere for the reading, attended by a host of poets, photographers, and visual artists.

We chatted around the table before the reading, sampling the appetizers, finger sandwiches, fruit, and pastries. The reading area was on a large landing between two staircases leading up to a large patio, and the grounds were part of the allure of the event, having lush greenery, extensive lawns, and a concrete stage area, prompting us to discuss future theatrical events that could be held there.

The dappled light added to the ambience as Cindy read from her several collections. A visual artist, Cindy also displayed her work with textiles, and you can see more of it at her website.

She used props, including three Vietnamese dresses she found at a thrift store; the find prompted her idea for Quiet Lantern, a novel in verse, about a Vietnamese family.

Rinne encouraged audience participation also, having a Spanish-speaking couple sing lullabies in Spanish at the appropriate junctures in specific poems, and passing out gifts of “ghost money,” her own handmade paper crafts; ghost money, as I discovered, is money offered for a good afterlife of a departed loved one or as burnt offerings in many Asian cultures.

Though I tend to get a little nervous, which Rinne does not, I love giving and attending poetry readings. Recently, Tim Greek and I participated in a reading sponsored by the Collaborative Arts Collective in Redlands, California. Instead of each of us reading our work solo, we decided to read one or two and then switch back and forth. We spent time orchestrating the progression of poems based on theme, imagery, and tone. It seemed to work out well.

Typically, though, my own have been the straightforward read-a-poem types of readings. I need to experiment with new things! If you are a poet, where do you do readings? How do you determine what you will read? The setting? Any props? Please comment on your experiences!

Gioia, Dana. Can Poetry Matter? Graywolf Press, 1992.
Rinne, Cindy. Breathe in Daisy, Breathe Out Stones. Future Cycle Press, 2017.
—. Quiet Lantern. Turning Point Books, 2016.
—. Speaking Through Sediment. (With Michael Cooper) ELJ Editions, 2015.
—. Spider With Wings. Jamii Publishing, 2015.

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So, I have been reading Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, again, probably for the seventh time. Also, Flannery O’Connor’s A Prayer Journal. A daily glance at the Lutheran Book of Prayer. Usually a few poems by somebody. I have also been looking at a lot of photographs. And I am thinking of the elegy, the poetic form that features mourning and remembrance as its subject.

 

Our church, St. Mark’s Episcopal Parish, has a Blue Christmas service, designed to bless those who have lost a loved one, a home, a pet, or anything significant in their lives. Essentially, it is a liturgical elegaic event. I first attended the service after my father died in 2009, and it is what helped us to decide upon St. Mark’s as a home church.

The ambivalent feelings we have during the holidays when we are grieving are addressed in the service, which also points us to God’s grace and love. Before we had to undertake new responsibilities due to my husband’s aging parents, I was also enjoying being on the Altar Guild and loved setting up the items for the service.

Though it was not a major loss to have to cease working with the Altar Guild, I did feel great sadness at leaving it. I am pondering these and other kinds of losses.

Underneath our experience of the “daily,” the routines and habits that create the collage of our personal identity, beyond our social personas, and even in our solitary internal musings, we are performing a kind of work, an exertion of unconscious energy related to the losses that are embedded in our existence. We are enjoying things, yes, interacting with people, working, imagining, resting, and planning. We are also grieving, often subliminally. The more solemn losses serve to draw out the lesser known ones, blending them with our experience of mourning. Latent grief emerges uninvited sometimes.

I recently atttended a memorial for my dear cousin, Tina Jane Moad, who passed away on October 2 of this year. We were given, as parting gifts, small packets of seeds to plant in her memory. A lovely gift. The symbolism is inherent in our knowledge of seeds. Death, then a kind of rebirth. But looking at the photos of her as a child, a young woman, a mother, then a grandmother, I felt the reality of her absence. Her family is in the deep grief now, and it is painful. We long for our absent loved ones. We cannot have them back.

I also gave the eulogy at the service for my beloved English teacher, Bobby George Rowell. I have written about him before in another blog post. Thankfully, his wife requested a eulogy in the form of an elegaic poem, and although I didn’t make it through without tears, I was honored to offer it for the man who introduced me to so much poetry when I was just sixteen years old. More about that in a future post.

Back to Barthes. His philosophical treatise about photography brings out what we all know without articulation: every photograph brings about “the return of the dead.” That is to say, what was happening at the time of the photograph, is not happening in the present moment. It calls to mind the fact of death: the death of the person in the photograph, perhaps, but always the death of that moment in which the photograph was taken.

I do not see an escape from this element of mourning that occurs each time I look at photographs. As Barthes points out, it is “Sisyphean labor”: we try to capture the essence of the person, the day, the memory, “straining toward the essence,” and we inevitably confront its absence, so we begin again with the same effort. Because the photo is not the real thing, the real moment or person, we cannot ever capture the essence we seek. The photograph “carries its referent with itself,” giving it a kind of “funereal immobility.”

Enough for today. I end with two things. From Martin Luther’s expositon of John 16:23, written in 1537: “By our prayer we seek and find what we are to receive.” And O’Connor’s prayer: Oh Lord . . . make me a mystic, immediately.”

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (Hill and Wang), 1980. O’Connor, Flannery, A Prayer Journal. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013.
Lutheran Book of Prayer. Concordia Publishing House, Revised Edition, 2005.

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My friend, Luanne, over at WriterSite has inspired me by writing what she calls a “catchall” post. That’s what this one is. Thanks Luanne!

I’m recovering from what felt like an unusually long sickness, so I’ve had lots of time to think about this and that. Since it is Memorial Day weekend, I am recalling so many of my uncles who fought in WWII, as well as my father, who was in the Coast Guard. My uncle Reuben Peterson was a corporal in the paratroops. Uncle Carlo Peterson, an army veteran, had been on the front lines in Germany. Uncle Art Peterson was a Marine, and Uncle Arvo Peterson was in the Navy. My Uncle Dwight Henderson also served in the Marines. They are all gone now, and their stories with them, aside from the ones we have heard and remembered. My mom is writing a memoir about her life as the youngest of a large family who had all four oldest brothers in the war at the same time. My dad has been gone for almost seven years. I miss him and my uncles and aunts, now gone.

My doctor’s office has a nice view, one I have seen three times in recent weeks while trying to kick a persistent sickness as well as my first ever case of conjunctivitis, which he tells me was provoked by the sickness. After two rounds of antibiotics, some eye drops, and a few other home remedies, I am finally emerging from what has felt like a dark and lonely place. Thankfully, my husband has completed his academic year and has been home to keep things going. I feel as if I have been in a strong current, I told him, and your hand gripping mine has been keeping me from being swept away.  Before I got sick, I was having a great time. We went to Disneyland for the launch of a project that my brother has been working on, an android creation named Jake.

Joel, my creative electrical-engineer brother, is an Imagineer in the Research and Development Department at Disney, and it was a thrill to see what he has been working on during his first year there. Jake emerged for view in the Star Wars Cantina area in Tomorrowland. He is quite adorable. Joel was there to observe the crowd and their reaction. The children followed Jake from place to place and seemed to understand that he was “scanning” things when his lights and the lights in the wall would blink.We spent the entire day there, seeing both parks and then having dinner followed by the World of Color fountain show in the California Adventure area. That was all before the fall. I also got to see my dear Aunt Betty, my late father’s only remaining sibling. It may have been a bad or a good thing that I watched so many murder mysteries on Acorn TV while I was recovering. Saw every episode of Poirot, Miss Marple, and Midsomer Murders. Also Vera, Blue Murder, and a few more. How many accents are there in the UK anyway? Love the countryside vistas and the quaint looking pubs. Have been to a few while in London and Oxford and look forward to going again.

Also before the fall, I went to a meeting to plan our upcoming 2017 high school reunion with some friends. Such a fun group, some of them friends since middle school, or what we then called junior high school.Then came the maelstrom. Sore throat, cough, congestion, doctor visits, Kleenex, eye drops, aspirin, Theraflu, antibiotics. I did enjoy the hot tea, hot soup, and murder mysteries. After getting well, we ordered my father-in-law a new chair to help him get up and down (he is ninety and has a sore back). So far, I think he likes it.Also got to see my pal and sister-in-law, Kitty, which always cheers me up.No writing to speak of during the sickness, but I did manage to get some poems sent out. Got about a dozen rejections this month, but I’m still smiling from the recently published poem by Caveat Lector, and you can listen to me reading it by clicking on the link. Two new poems, also with audio, also appear in the new issue of Vending Machine Press.

So things are looking up. Hope to hear news of your “catchall” experiences. Feel free to post them here!

After seeing Dana Gioia last Monday evening at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, I was pleased that I had not decided to stay home and clean the surfaces (see earlier post, Poetry and a Clean Surface).

Now that I think of it, the week presented several enriching moments, both trivial and significant. We had been at the Bonaventure in Los Angeles during the rain, which provided some wonderful moments, if you are someone who loves watching the weather change. It is always an uplift to be with the impressive and active teachers in the CTA organization (I am just a tag-along with my husband, but I get inspired when I hear some of them talk about their approaches to education — yay, teachers!).

The next day, after making no progress with my filing and paperwork at home, we headed for Pasadena. We had parked the car in a structure near the auditorium and then went in search of a restaurant. Because it was the first one we saw, we went into the Le Cordon Blue College of Culinary Arts restaurant, Technique, on Colorado Boulevard. It was one of those magical nights when delightful surprises appear, unsolicited. We loved the minimalism of the decor, our warm-hearted waitress, a Brazilian student at the school, and the incredible and reasonably priced meal (I had the coq au vin, my husband had steak). We were a few minutes late to the event, and I blame the waitress who gave us a little extra wine, since it was so near the end of the bottle. We got our seats at the back of the auditorium, and though we didn’t have the best view as you can tell from the photo I took, Dana Gioia was a most engaging and spirited speaker.

I had seen his name for years on many of the anthologies I used while teaching American literature and Introduction to Literature courses, and even then I was amazed at how many he had edited (for just a few of them, see anthologies). He has also written books of poetry, was the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts for several years, and now he is the California Poet Laureate, appointed by Governor Brown in December.

The term “laureate” comes from the use of the bay laurel leaf, which was used to make a wreath or a crown for the winner of a competition, and though the tradition of having a national poet laureate dates back to the 14th century when Chaucer was given the designation along with (and you can apprehend my secondary theme here) an annual wine allowance (see citation below for Poets Laureate: A Brief History).

The responsibilities of the office include public readings in various state locations as well as a major cultural project. Gioia had already instituted a major poetry program as the NEA Chairman called Poetry Out Loud. In that program, managed by the California Arts Council, students learn poetry, recite it, and compete for prizes.

Gioia’s comments about art and poetry were impassioned and persuasive. He believes that we can change culture by using our gifts, especially our gift of language. You can “help create the society you want to live in,” he said; “Our gifts can change the world.” Art has the “power to awaken us to our own humanity,” he said. Poetry, he pointed out, plays an important role in education as it “educates our emotions.” He wants the vocabularies of students to grow, not diminish into being mainly comprised of trademarks and brand names. Poets show us more about the “subtleties of our existence.” Speaking to a Christian audience at Fuller Seminary, he mentioned sermon literature, the parables and poetry of the Bible, and the importance of having language skills with which to express one’s beliefs, joys, suffering, and experiences.

In 1991, his article, “Can Poetry Matter?” in the Atlantic Monthly became the locus of ongoing discussions about the value of poetry in culture. A lot has happened since then, including success with his other program, “Operation Homecoming,” a series of workshops in writing for returning soldiers. He certainly lives what he believes, and we are so fortunate that he is our state’s poet laureate.A man of many accomplishments, he is worthy of a book just about his own efforts to brighten up our world with his insights, writing, and influence. He mentioned the famous lines from the Keats poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty . . . .” We should work in the cause of truth, he said, and then followed it up with “I believe in beauty.” So here’s to truth, beauty, and also wine, the poet’s nectar. Speaking of wine, here is a photo my brother sent me of the winery known for making the best wine in the world, the Domaine Romanée-Conti in France.

Holman, Bob, and Snyder, Marjorie. “Poets Laureate: A Brief History” retrieved from http://poetry.about.com/od/poets/a/poetslaureate.htm.