“This world is just a little place, just the red in the sky, before the sun rises, so let us keep fast hold of hands, that when the birds begin, none of us be missing.”
from a letter of Emily Dickinson to her cousins
(begged borrowed and stolen from Kathleen)
who could resist?
Happy Friday, Reader. Here we are again. I have done my bare minimum of housework and the kids are off at school. I’m looking forward to spending the next several hours as a working mother.
wide open spaces Yesterday I spent the morning at the wee, small house. She’s looking much more herself these days — she lost the tent dress and is all deloused. I brought my writing stuff over and waited for the PG&E guy to come and turn the gas back on (wisely, they turn it off during fumigation). I looked around the empty family/dining/living room (it’s all one room actually) thought of all the boxes I need to pack, etc., etc., etc., when it hit me that I was staring at a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So, I sez to myself I sez, “Self, do you see what I see? I see a wide open space. I see the perfect place to lay all your poems out and start putting them into stout little piles that belong together, without having to yell, STOP! DON’T TOUCH THOSE PAPERS! at anyone. I see a chance to physically move through your work, to find new connections, to gain perspective.” Boxes, shmoxes! After I post this, I’m going over there with a huge stack of poems and I’m going to lay ‘em all out there and see what happens. Which reminds me of this post that Sandra Beasley (of I Was the Jukebox fame) wrote recently on the visual and physical aspect of ordering poems. Good stuff for anyone who’s putting together a manuscript, or even a grant proposal or a submission strategy — things to think about when you’re ordering poems.
(is it just me or do we now all have the Dixie Chicks going through our heads?
)
the age of the brain Last night at my writing group, we talked a bit about all the fascinating research on the brain that has been published lately. One member of the group declared that we’re now entering “the age of the brain,” and what we’ll learn about how our brains operate will change everything we thought we knew. People made several recommendations for learning more, and I’ll share them now with you. The first is Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer. The second is The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. The last is a series on the brain by Charlie Rose of PBS. Personally, I’m both curious about what we’ve learned, and hesitant to know too much. Part of what I love about my creative life is the element of mystery at play in how a poem happens. I don’t want my tendency toward over-analysis to devour that mystery. Still this is a fascinating topic, and one that we’re just beginning to crack open.
every blade of grass Here is one of my all-time favorite poems by Laura Fargas (more about this poet here). I first came across this poem in the anthology Poet’s Choice by Robert Hass, a book compiled from Hass’s syndicated column on poetry during his tenure as Poet Laureate. The title, Kuan Yin, is the name of the Chinese goddess of mercy. We could all use a little mercy every now and then, no?
Kuan Yin
Of the many buddhas I love best the girl
who will not leave the cycle of pain before anyone else.
It is not the captain declining to be saved
on the sinking ship, who may just want to ride his shame
out of sight. She is at the brink of never being hurt again
but pauses to say, All of us. Every blade of grass.
She chooses to live in the tumble of souls through time.
Perhaps she sees spring in every country,
talks quietly with farm women while helping to lay seed.
Our hearts are a storm she trebles at. I picture her
leaning on a tree or humming or joining a volleyball game
on Santa Monica beach. Her skin shines with sweat.
The others may not know how to notice what she does to them.
She is not a fish or a bee; it is not pity or thirst;
she could go, but here she is.
–Laura Fargas
Well, Reader, that’s it for this week. May mercy be upon you all weekend. Thanks for reading.
danger! peligroso! fumigation!
31 revisions
Reader, National Poetry Month has passed us by. I’m excited to announce the winners of free poetry Margo Roby and Tara Rae Mulroy. Thanks to everyone who threw their name in the hat.
I know many poets who are heaving a sigh of relief this morning — no mandate to write a poem today. As for me, I counted up my revisions for the month of April and ended up with 31 (sometimes the Muse strikes in revision mode, you know; I never pass up a date with the Muse, so I did one extra). The thing I love about a poem-a-day (or, in my case, a revision-a-day) challenge is that it reminds us that having a focus can lead to real results. For April, my first priority after my morning reading and writing was revision. With the exception of one or two poems that are still knocked out on the operating table, I now have a stack of poems that are ready for the spit and polish. The one-a-day rate, whether drafting or revising, isn’t sustainable over a long period of time, but it’s good to make a push every now and then, isn’t it?
In other news, I’m very happy to have learned that my poem “Aubade For Peter Pan” received an honorable mention in the Tupelo Press Winter 2012 Poetry Project. You can read my poem and many other wonderful poems at this website.
From the Keeping It Real desk, we have news of a rejection or two and a grant proposal passed over. I’ve found that, over time, my skin is thickening. For one thing, I don’t expect to win anything the first time I try. For another, I’ve learned that submissions are, to a certain extent, a numbers game — the more you submit the more publications you’ll have. Sadly, I’ve submitted very little since January (must remedy! must remedy!). It helps, too, when the rejections are the good kind of rejection wherein one is asked to submit more work. Little nudges from the universe that say: Poet, persevere! And I shall.
Lastly a big thank you to Diane Lockward, who included links to my revision tips in the May edition of her poetry newsletter. If you aren’t receiving this newsletter, may I recommend that you sign up here (scroll down — the sign-up field is in the right hand margin). Every month Diane provides a book recommendation, a craft tip, and many useful poetry links. It’s a great resource for the working poet. Thanks again, Diane!
And now, Reader, May is Moving Month. It’s true. Currently the wee, small house is shrouded in a red tent and lethal gas — termites are a fact of life in this subtropical climate, and most houses are fumigated when they change hands. Husband asked me if I took a picture. Um, no. No, I don’t want a reminder that my house was filled with lethal gas and the entry sealed for three days. I suppose I’d better issue unto myself a box-a-day challenge. Yeah. We’ll see how that goes.
Happy end of poetry month, happy May Day, and happy Tuesday to all of you. Thanks, as always, for reading.
Happy Monday everyone! Today is the last day you can enter to win free poetry through the Big Poetry Giveaway. To throw your name in the hat, go to this post and leave a comment.
And now there’s an added bonus: My excellent friend, known on this blog as The Poet AOD, has just had her first chapbook published. The two winners will also receive a copy of Alice O. Duggan’s wonderful collection, A Brittle Thing.
I’ll announce winners tomorrow. Happy last day of National Poetry Month!
I cannot tell you what I saw.
My catastrophe was sweetAnd nothing like yours
Although we may sipFrom the same
Broken cup all afternoon.
–excerpt from Suzanne Buffam‘s poem “If You See It What Is It You See” in her recent collection The Irrationalist
photo from Spirit Rover; public domain from NASA via wikimedia
Happy Friday, all. I “slept in” — it’s already 5:30 — so let’s begin the roundup without further adieu:
more on working parents We had quite a discussion on parenthood and work earlier this week. I enjoyed hearing from everyone who commented — thanks. My sister-in-law and I were talking about it more and we agreed that no matter how you choose to be family, there is always some ambivalence and uncertainty — are we doing this right? And it’s always hard and exhausting (though not without a joyful element). Also, parenting brings one into daily confrontation with one’s flaws and imperfections. When one is feeling ambivalent, flawed and exhausted, it’s all too easy to try to justify one’s own choice by denigrating those who’ve made a different choice. Perhaps I should’ve added one more article to the treaty: let us all attempt to live peacefully in the mess of it.
I also heard from people who have chosen not to have children, who receive their fair share of comments and insults because of that choice. Corollary to Article 4: we will honor the life choices of all people, parents or not.
naporevmo update Those who have been reading along know that I set a goal for myself to accomplish one revision a day during national poetry month. I’m happy to say I’ve kept up so far. The hardest part has been leaving one poem for the next — revision could be an infinite process, no? The thing I haven’t kept up on is submissions. I’ve sent out only a handful of packets since the first of the year. Perhaps that can be my next pledge to myself — a submission a day for May?
Night-Pieces And speaking of putting children to bed, and feeling our flaws and imperfections, and ambivalence about our choices, here is a poem by Adrienne Rich from Necessities of Life. In my reading of this poem, mother and child become actors in the bad dreams of the other — not much of a stretch for any parent “swaddled in a dumb dark”:
Night-pieces: For a Child
1. The Crib
You sleeping I bend to cover.
Your eyelids work. I see
your dream, cloudy as a negative,
swimming underneath.
You blurt a cry. Your eyes
spring open, still filmed in a dream.
Wider, they fix me –
–death’s head, sphinx, medusa?
You scream.
Tears lick my cheeks, my knees
droop at your fear.
Mother I no more am,
but woman, and nightmare.
2. Her Waking
Tonight I jerk astart in a dark
hourless as Hiroshima,
almost hearing you breathe
in a cot three doors away.
You still breathe, yes –
and my dream with its gift of knives,
its murderous hider and seeker,
ebbs away, recoils
back into the egg of dreams,
the vanishing point of mind.
All gone.
But you and I –
swaddled in a dumb dark
old as sickheartedness,
modern as pure annihilation –
we drift in ignorance.
If I could hear you now
mutter some gentle animal sound!
If milk flowed from my breast again…
Reader, that’s it for today’s roundup. Happy Friday, happy weekend, and may all your dreams be happy ones. Thanks for reading!
My great-grandmother, Olive Mastin Spencer, who, when her husband lost his farms in the Great Depression, started a newspaper as a means for earning money to feed the family. The newspaper is still published today.
Reader, don’t think I missed the kerfuffle about Ann Romney having “never worked a day in her life” and the subsequent fanning of the flames over the tired old working mom vs. stay at home mom debate. I’ve been mulling, and I’m almost afraid to write about this because it’s an issue near and dear to my heart.
Let me begin by saying that I consider myself to be a working mom. This shift happened for me last fall when my youngest started school. It happened slowly, so slowly that it was subconscious. Instead of saying, “I’m at home with my kids,” I started saying, “I’m a writer.” Instead of being available for any and all volunteer opportunities, I started saying, “I work that day, so I can’t do it.” And when someone in my writing class asked me last week, “Do you work?” I didn’t immediately understand his question. I was thinking to myself, “He knows I’m a writer. Isn’t it obvious that I work? What does he mean?” Of course, I regained my social bearings and understood what he meant after a brief pause. It’s true that I don’t have a traditional job for which I leave the house each day. It’s true that I don’t make money with which to support a family. But every day while the kids are at school, I am at my desk working.
Which is not to say that I wasn’t working before. Anyone who has cared for one or more babies, toddlers, preschoolers for any period of time knows it’s hard work. Often, full-time parents are doing work that can be “outsourced” in families with two incomes: after school care, meal preparation, cleaning and laundry, etc. Personally, I don’t know too many parents who aren’t working hard one way or another. I suppose there are some exceptions to the rule. For example, I know of a family that not only has a nanny, but has one nanny per child. I’m pretty sure their reality is a little different from most of ours. So for argument’s sake, let’s exempt the 1% from this discussion. But if we start with the 99%, I think it’s fair to say that ALL MOTHERS ARE WORKING MOTHERS. And really that ALL PARENTS ARE WORKING PARENTS. And that’s where I’d like to begin my proposed treaty: The Be All End All Treaty For All Parents Everywhere Amen.
Article 1: ALL PARENTS ARE WORKING PARENTS (see above)
Article 2: WE WILL BE POLITE TO EACH OTHER I, for one, have been shocked at the things people have said to me when I’ve told them, “I’m at home with my three kids right now.” These are all real and true responses: “Oh my god, just shoot me.” “I’d commit suicide if I had to stay home with my kids.” “Some women stay home because they can’t hack being a working mom.” I cringe to imagine the response if I had said something similar to a mother who worked outside the home. Can you imagine –?? “I”d commit suicide if I had to put my kids in daycare.” ?? But for some reason, it’s socially acceptable, even funny, to say such things to parents who are at home (these comments got laughter from the group in each case). It’s not nice, and it’s not funny, and it should stop (whoa — on the re-read I’m adding: that’s my grouchy-mommy voice coming through:)). I’m sure some at-home parents have made their share of nasty remarks, too, although I can honestly say that I never have. I come from a long line of parents who worked hard inside and outside the home, and I admire them for it.
Article 3: WE WILL NOT MAKE JUDGEMENTS ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE’S FINANCIAL SITUATIONS Another not-so-favorite response I’ve had when answering the “what do you do?” question is, “Oh, it must be nice. What does your husband do?” This seems to imply that we are rollin-in-the-dough. On the one hand, I feel very lucky not to have to worry about how I’m going to pay for groceries most weeks (although there is the occasional tight pay period even now). On the other hand, Husband and I live frugally. We saved like crazy before we had kids so that staying at home might be an option for one of us. We’ve been on exactly three vacations since we married 13 years ago, and all of them were camping vacations, not beach resort vacations. We often forego gifts for one another at holidays and birthdays to save money. We don’t go out much. We both drive old cars; Husband’s is literally held together by duct tape. We are not living high on the hog here. And again, to put this to the reversal test, how would this remark sit at a dinner party: “Oh, that’s too bad that you have to work. What does your husband do?” Let us all agree that all parents make sacrifices for their children. Most families with an at-home parent are not independently wealthy, but have planned ahead and lived on a budget to make it happen. Many families with two parents working outside the home have two parents who really want to work outside the home, who enjoy their jobs and want to keep them. Both are valid ways of being family.
Article 3: WE WILL NOT ACCUSE ONE ANOTHER OF DAMAGING OUR CHILDREN I’ve read many articles, comments on blog posts, overheard conversations, etc., about how at-home mothers are damaging their children by hovering, by always being there for them thus depriving them of a chance to learn in the school of hard knocks, by failing to give an example of a working woman to their children, etc. etc., etc. I would like to propose this: Any obstacle to good parenting — by this I mean intentional parenting wherein the children’s needs are generally met, proper limits are set for behavior, and parents are focused on the long-term goal of raising kind, responsible, independent adults — can damage a child, but the issue of working outside the home or not working outside the home per se is not one of these obstacles. Obstacles to good parenting can come in the form of addiction, untreated mental illness, an obsession with body image, a chronic failure to pay attention to a child’s needs, an inability to deal with anger healthily, an obsession with money, and yes, a 90-hour a week job that never allows you to see your children, and yes, over-protectiveness, spoiling, hovering, and living vicariously through your children. Children get damaged for all kinds of reasons but it’s not usually the case that they are damaged by healthy, mindful, happy adults who are doing their best to balance a full life.
Article 4 — WE WILL TEACH OUR CHILDREN TO BE OPEN MINDED BY BEING OPEN MINDED I confess, in the case of our family I truly believe that having me at home while the children were not yet in school was the very best thing for our family. The truth is, our quality of life would’ve gone down if I had worked. And it would go down now if I took a full-time job outside the home. But I tell my kids that every family figures that out for themselves. I give them the example of their Aunt Katie and Uncle Andy, two brilliant scientists who have found a way to balance rewarding careers with two wonderful little boys. I give them the example of their Uncle Matt and Aunt Elaine, who at first both worked; who then cut spending and saved like crazy so that they could live on my brother’s teaching salary for a few years while their babies were little; and who now are putting Elaine through nursing school. My kids have friends whose parents do all kinds of things and have all kinds of arrangements for making sure the kids’ needs are met. They know that there are a million different wonderful ways to be a family. As the grown ups of the world, we should make sure to remember that as well.
Article 5 WE WILL PUT THIS TIRED OLD DEBATE TO REST ONCE AND FOR ALL This is a boring topic. Some parents have jobs outside the home. Some parents don’t. Some parents don’t want to stay at home. Some do. Some want to but can’t. Some don’t really want to, but they do it anyway for a while. All parents sacrifice. All parents work hard. End of story. Let’s be friends. Amen.
And, ahem, end of rant.
a Titanic deck chair, public domain from the canadian encyclopedia
April 14th was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, so I’ve had the Titanic on the brain. The New Yorker published a great article on why the Titanic story continues to hold us in thrall (and p.s. it’s by one of my favorite critics/non-fiction writers/translators of C.P. Cavafy, Daniel Mendelsohn). There are 1,001 or more interesting stories, ideas, and social issues to ponder vis-a-vis the Titanic. But mostly I’ve been thinking about the old adage describing futility: It’s like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
No to make light of that horrible event, but rearranging deck chairs is what I did all weekend. If you’ve been reading along, you know we’re moving house in a few weeks. While Husband packed up my bookshelves (this, Reader, is an act of compassion on his part; I hate not having my books around and he knew I was procrastinating on this task), I went through my recipe file and reorganized it. That’s right, I spent most of the day on Saturday on a low-priority task that, in the face of the monumental task of packing up an entire house, was completely unnecessary. But look:
from this
(every poet needs a few poems in her recipe binder)
to this. And, uh, yes, I have a bit of a tortured relationship with The Joy of Cooking, and with the joy of cooking.
During the process, I took many trips down memory lane remembering the person I got a recipe from, reading little notes from my mom jotted in the margin of a recipe for this or that. I enjoyed a happy flush of familiarity at seeing both of my grandmothers’ handwriting again, and now with enough distance, from remembering kitchen disasters like the time my boys “made daddy a birthday cake” when I was busy doing something else, probably laundry or changing the baby. Making daddy a birthday cake involved shaking a full bag of powdered sugar all over the kitchen. Fun times, Reader, fun times… .
I also discovered a silver lining in the cloud of to-do lists (with which I also have a tortured relationship). I came across a list from 2004 when I had just two little boys and lived in “our old house before our last old house” (as the kids call it). It was so fun to remember those times, friends from the neighborhood, and events on the horizon at the time, like a dear friend’s wedding. So, in the end, maybe I come down on the side of to-do lists for nostalgia’s sake, if nothing else.
I found notes and photos of dear friends, and a little book my awesome friend and talented book-artist, Sarah, made for me with the text of the Desiderata. My favorite part: “And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.”
I also found a little wooden box full of small slips of paper that I had written prayers on and slipped inside. I had to laugh when I dumped the slips out to read them. They all said the exact same thing: Please help me find time to write. Sometimes with the PLEASE in all caps and double underlined. Over and over again, the same prayer/request/plea. Then, the only variant: one small slip that read “thanks.”
So, I think this post is a long winded praise song, a Monday installation of Thankful Thursday. This is the bright side of moving: having a chance to remember and cherish and laugh and, okay, I admit it, to cry, too. Last spring when we were preparing to move here, I was way too overwhelmed to enjoy it. I’m glad to be able to enjoy it this time.
Whatever you’re sorting through, digging through, or rearranging this week, I hope you can enjoy it, too.
