Dear word-pals!

An uneventful writing week. I haven’t written anything new this week, although I did revise a poem for the “benefit” of one reader/poet/virtual friend of mine. A poet who I will get to meet this summer because I have arranged for her and another poet-friend to be the featured readers at a lovely monthly series.

I’m thinking to organize a Sunday poetry picnic at a Portland park around the time she is here, but need to commit to the idea — reservations are due very soon. Not sure I have my winter ambitions fanned to action!

I have been reading a fair amount. Several poets have caught my attention. One is Tracy K Smith with her latest collection, Life on Mars. She writes so well of her father’s death, her grief. I borrowed the book from the library, but think I need to have it as a friend and support.

I’m also about halfway through Ramona Ausubel’s debut novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us. I ordered up several books from the library that was on someone’s notable or anticipated list (I can’t recall whose, now) and had to wait a bit on this book. She’s also been touring lately, and was in Portland just last Wednesday, but I missed her. This may be her first novel but she has quite a number of short stories out and about. I must have read her in the annual Nonrequired Reading, because I so enjoy that anthology. Here’s a list of her writing: ramonaausubel.com/published-works/.  And I highly recommend this read. I am pretty sure I will finish it today and will be sad to see it end.

I also am reading a short memoir piece, “The Love Of My Life” by Cheryl Strayed. It’s linked to from a very interesting essay on Brevity called “The World Is Not Tidy: Liz Stephens on the D’Agata Dust-Up”. It’s about facts and fiction in writing non-fiction, and I think you would all like to read it, too. (I have David Shields book if anyone wants to borrow it. I have not read John D’Agata’s book or his public response to the question of facts. Yet.) Here’s the link to the essay: brevity.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/the-world-is-not-tidy/.

About my mother, and dad. I head out to Arizona again on Wednesday and return Sunday. Mom is in a great deal of pain, and is fairly debilitated by it. She is on pain medications, and takes them on schedule, but it is not doing much for her and she is starting to stay in bed all day again. Mom says she doesn’t care that she doesn’t want to get up and about. I don’t know what to say to that, not being a naturally optimistic or sunny person.

I hope you are writing and or reading and feeding your creative side.

Much love~

I finished up a library-borrow on tonight’s bus ride home: Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars. I am pretty sure I put a hold on it after seeing it on someone’s best list. And I have to agree with that someone. It’s a wonderful collection.

It appeals to me on lots of levels, not the least is the sci-fi, the sci-fact, the thinking about the universe ebbing and flowing through us all, some of it seeking/talking to/debating an Other, or simply considering what wonderful is out there in the infinite making us so big, so small. I do the first section no justice. You’ll just have to read it for yourself. And be surprised by the depth.

I don’t personally believe in a creator-type, but there is room in this collection for those who do, but in a way that leaves room for me, too. I like that.

Here’s an excerpt from Life on Mars from the publisher (Graywolf Press):  “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?” And here’s “Sci-Fi” from Poets.org. AND here’s “My God, It’s Full of Stars,” thanks to The Awl.

Here’s a snippet from something in a different section, written “for Levon Helm” who is a musician I adore.

Alternate Take

for Levon Helm

I’ve been beating my head all day long on the same six lines,
Snapped off and whittled to nothing like the nub on a pencil
Chewed up and smoothed over, yellow paint flecking my teeth.

And this whole time a hot wind’s been swatting at my door,
Spat from his mouth and landing smack against my ear.
All day pounding the devil out of six lines and coming up dry,

While he drives donuts through my mind’s back woods with that
Dirt-road voice of his, kicking up gravel like a runaway Buick.
…

You’ll just have to go get it for yourself. Get you some music, a night sky, and a little grief (she writes wonderfully of her deceased father). Some love, politics, shame and hope.

And a little Levon, too: Poor Dirt Farmer. Get you some of that, too.

A Biomechanical Kite Casts for Uplift

He launched and the 1968 San Antonio’s world’s fair Los Voladores flashed
across my eyes. How do I know he’s a he? I don’t, but he dropped
just the same, just like those flying First Indians diving off a seventy-five foot spindle,
tethered by viney ropes festooned with feathers, dancing to rain gods.

Five men twirled in the air. This one mechanical kite hid from my naked eyes,
glasses grasped in hands squinting for a closer view of his gray fragment
sitting on a Serenity rose, tender pink petals fading to white and there he is.
Not a plump ghostly garden spider even if small, shy. He edged to one parted
lip, his middle two sets of legs gently arched, cape gesture of a mid-century hero,
pausing, regarding. Mid-drop when I moved in too close, he plummeted
when his legs splayed, not tight against his body like a rocket or a Caspian term
or a folded osprey, but sublimely straight as if he were crucified and cut loose, plunging
out of the sky. Does he think he’s less a morsel for chickadees when shaped sharp?

I caught his tether and thought to raise him back to his perch.
He cast off in a breeze so slight my hair wouldn’t rustle. He let out more
line and I couldn’t manage this creature smaller than half my pinky’s nail
while uplift set a ballooning spider on a June apple hard and green, twenty feet away. I lost sight.

* * *
Joyce Ellen Davis wrote a spider poem the other day, and I, being greedy for spider poems, asked her to share it. She did: Behold the Jumping Spider.

I dusted one of mine off when she said “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” This was originally written for a call to Qarrtsiluni’s Insect Issue. (A tomato worm poem was taken.)

You can find more of Joyce’s work in her latest collection, Pepek the Assassin, published by my favorite Pindrop Press.

Joyce is reading in Portland this summer, along with Dale Favier (another wonderful poet with a Pindrop Press book, Opening the World): July 17, 2012 at the Figures of Speech series! Joyce will then no longer be an “invisible friend!”

Dear Friends and Advocates of Urban Natural Areas,

This coming Tuesday February 14 at 1pm the Oregon Senate Environment and
Natural Resources Committee will have a public work hearing on SB 1582.
The hearing will be held in room: HR C in the Capital Building.

SB 1582 is one of a handful of dangerous wetland related bills in the 2012
Legislature that would undermine or eliminate key regulatory safeguards
protecting wetlands in Oregon. In short, SB 1582 weakens the Division of
State Land’s authority to require development to avoid wetlands
destruction and/or compensate for development impacts to wetlands. See
details on SB 1582 and Oregon’s imperiled wetlands below.

We need to you contact the Committee members ASAP and urge them to oppose
SB 1582. It will also be critical to cc: your comments to your senator and
house representative (see how to find them below).

***Senate Environment & Natural Resouces Committee Members**

Jackie Dingfelder, Chair
sen.jackiedingfelder@state.or.us
503-986-1723

Alan Olsen, Vice-Chair
sen.alanolsen@state.or.us
503-986-1720

Mark Hass
sen.markhass@state.or.us
503-986-1714

Floyd Prozanski
sen.floydprozanski@state.or.us
503-986-1704

Chuck Thomsen
sen.chuckthomsen@state.or.us
503-986-1726

Find your legislators and call or email them too:

www.leg.state.or.us/findlegsltr/

***Background on SB 1582 and Oregon Wetlands***

SB 1582 would undermine Department of State Land’s ability to protect
wetlands and waters of the state. It sets up an arbitration process when
permits are denied and when there is a disagreement on a wetland
delineation. This extended process does not ensure that qualify wetland
scientists would review decisions and arbitrators which would partially
be appointed by
the applicant and would have the power to overturn DSL final order.

SB 1582 has many problems. First, it sets up fox-guard-the-henhouse
approach to regulation that will lead to weaker protections of Oregon’s
because it dramatically tips the balance in favor of those seeking to fill
and remove wetlands. Even if the new arbitration system is not evoked,
state regulators will be more inclined to settle for less wetland
protection in order to avoid it. The bill would also add time and cost to
permitting. Other provisions in the bill limit additional information that
the Department might need in delineating wetlands and extends the period a
wetland delineation is valid from the current five years to 10 years.

To read the bill see:

www.leg.state.or.us/12reg/measpdf/sb1500.dir/sb1582.intro.pdf

(Changes to existing law are in bold)

We Need to Expand not Rollback Wetland Protections in Oregon

Wetlands provide some of our most valuable bird habitats in the Oregon,
especially in cities where native birds make up about 2/3rds of native
vertebrate species. Wetlands also play an essential role in maintaining
clean cool water in Oregon.s rivers during our hot summers. Hence, they
support a wide diversity of aquatic life as well as water-based recreation
from swimming to sport fishing. The absorptive capacity of wetlands also
helps reduce the losses of life and property by helping contain raging
winter flood waters, like those that struck the Willamette Valley this
past January. When these functions provided by wetlands are lost, they are
very difficult and expensive to replace. One study valued wetlands in a
local watershed in Washington State at $36,000-$51,000 per acre just for
flood control.

In the Willamette Valley, approximately 57% of wetlands have been lost to
land development. While state and local wetland protections adopted over
the last 30 years have slowed the pace of wetland loss, one study found
that the Willamette Valley continues to lose more than 500 acres per year.
Rate of loss may be even higher in and around cities, since urban or
exurban development is the leading cause of wetlands loss.

Given these trends you would think our elected officials would be
safeguarding our wetlands by proposing legislation to increase protections
for these vital natural ecosystems. Remarkably and unfortunately the
opposite is the case in the current legislative session. So far the 2012
Legislature has produced a handful of bills that would undermine or gut
many wetlands safeguards, especially in cities.

The Albany legislator who introduced SB1582 made the outlandish claim that
wetland protection laws are “one of the greatest obstacles to economic
development.” These wetlands bills are illustrative of the
anti-environmental legislation and divisive rhetoric being pushed in Salem
under the false-pretention of creating “jobs” and “economic development.”

We need you to push back! These and other anti-environmental bills in the
2012 Legislature can be stopped if enough Oregonians make their voices
heard.

Please become a member of Friends and Advocates of Urban Natural Areas
(FAUNA) or Audubon Conservation Team (ACT) to receive email action alerts
and legislative updates. There can be a narrow window of opportunity to
influence legislation and this will allow us to rapidly alert you to the
need to contact lawmakers.

You can join FAUNA or ACT at
audubonportland.org/issues/get-involved.

Also please check our website (www.audubonportland.org) or facebook page
(www.facebook.com/PortlandAudubon) for legislative updates.

Thanks for your support!

Jim

Dear, dear pals.

I’ve missed these check-ins.

A., can you meet 3/6? I don’t think we have heard from you, unless your note went AWAL (sic) . :)

Family: Deferred my next trip to AZ by two weeks (Pop had a cold, wanted me to wait a week, and it was cheaper penalty to go with two). Regretted it immediately as Mom sounded awful on Wednesday. I made a call to her in-home nurse, and she sounded a little better Thursday & Friday. Will go to her doctor again on Monday to renew/get better pain meds. (She fell again, so has new rib pain on other side. She already has three cracked ribs.) I always expected a broken hip would get her, but it may be the ribs. Oy. Thank you for your continued support & affection as I traverse these hard times.

Submissions: Got a lovely rejection today from something I sent out ages ago and had forgotten about. I take heart that it was a big field (1000 submissions from 600 writers for an anthology). It’s time to revise my submission log.

Poetry: Excited that I have a new email prompt small group — two other poets whose work I like a lot. We’ll offer each other light critique, too. Also renewed a crit group that had lost members recently. I am thrilled with responses I got to calls for interest. Quality poets whose work I admire greatly. Makes me realize my poetry connections have gotten fairly strong. It feels super wonderful. I even wrote two decent poems in the last two weeks.

Prose: Not so much there, although I have organized my paper-draft pile at long last. And realize there are some old things that have had time for settling.  But I am also thinking about PASSION (and not just for Hallmark holidays). I am thinking about TC Detroit(1) and what she/he might have to say about something. Just not sure what something is. Yet.

Reading: More poetry. The reading is a great influence on my work. Matthew Rohrer’s  Destroyer and Preserver. LOVED it. Troy Jollimore’s  At Lake Scugog. (2) ADORED it. One of the best collections I have read in a while. Had been trying to read mostly female poets, but. These were on “best” lists and I love to check out bests.

Readings: Went to a Loggernaut reading Wednesday. Really good (I think all were reading from NY Times “notables”), but so different from the poetry readings I usually go to. Very hip. (3)  Lots of cool/pretty 20-30-somethings and a few of us old-folks. www.loggernaut.org/readings/  if you want to venture to the cool side. The upcoming Burnside Review 8.1 release at Crow Arts Manor at Milepost 5 is probably in that category, too. I will be in AZ, but here’s the information: www.crowmanor.org/events. Crow Arts also offers affordable classes. Check it out if you haven’t already.

So I am not writing much, but I am flirting with and pimping all the poetry & prose I can!

xoxo

* * *

1) A silly pen name meant to be an inroad to writing persona with passion. It’s my “stripper” name (name of first pet, a cat named “Tom Jones”, paired with the name of my childhood home’s street. Although my first cat’s name was actually Quick Draw McDraw. Already I take licence.)

2) Here is the marvelous title poem, “At Lake Scugog.”

3) Dear friends. You are hip, too. And wonderfully comfortable and welcoming.

In Situ, Ex Situ

Before I fall asleep I open
closed windows and dust
moonlight from tree’s leaves.
They sing low, rustling songs.

Before I unpack groceries
I inventory every brown bag,
each packet named for stars.
The crumbs feed a mountain.

Before I cross a gravel road
I name all the birds I can
see, east to west, low to high.
Sparrows chase rival gangs.

Before I call my dear old mom
I wash my face and comb
cobwebs from my ears. Her
voice crackles. We both sigh.

After I dream a new story I
cast off clothes that bind
twisted sheets to your shadow.
The empty space grows warm.

* * *

A new poem from a new prompt from a new in-real-life-but-emailing-because-life’s-schedule-is-difficult-even-when-it-is-only-three-of-us-poet-pals prompt group.

But there is no reason not to share it with my occasional but beloved virtual and real-life readers. <waves> <air kisses>

I also wrote a new poem over a week ago that turned out well enough that I thought I’d send it to a journal looking for writing from or about the Southwest. Fit me to a tee, being born and raised in Arid-zona and writing about the Mojave desert, but damn. I got sick and missed the deadline. By two days. Hate that. There are other places that might, just might, take it. But still. I wanted to send this journal something and finally thought I had something that might work.

At least I am writing a bit, especially after the aborted stones of January.

One of the country aphorisms I grew up with is “He/She’s off her feed.” It was usually said about a cow or a horse or cat or dog who turned down the food/dish and caused concern for the owner (in older days that concern would call in a vet only for the large animals; companion pets — a recent description — didn’t warrant the expense).

I’ve been off my feed.

Literally off my feed with a stomach upset I thought could be an ulcer, or perhaps diabetes. I put myself on a small and bland diet, cut out the alcohol and vastly limited caffeine. It wasn’t hard because it was what I wanted. My doctor ordered a series of blood tests to rule out pancreatitis, and an abdominal/pelvic CT scan. My version of a Saturday night special, a trip to the clinic to get an urgent but not emergency scan. Hot night in the city.

The bloodwork is clean, I am normal across the board. The CT was inconclusive, I found out yesterday, with some lymph nodes swollen as well as a portion of my appendix, but no inflammation. If the pain returns, I’ll be referred to a GI doctor, but this just might be one of those flukes that self-regulates with a little TLC of the bland sort. No eating grass for me, like a dog or a cat. Only moderation. I am guessing.

That bites. But the glass of wine I had last night to soothe myself over a tough day (work and mother) was lovely. Until 2:15am when I missed the long sleeps I had been getting no-wine after the worst-of-the-stomach-pain of the last week had abated.

So is it a matter of a choice? Take the edge off of the day or sleep (mostly) through the night?

It’s hell getting old. Just ask my mother. But that’s another story.

I’ve been remiss about a lot of things lately, but one of them is not writing about James Brush’s latest collection, Birds Nobody Loves: A Book of Vultures & Grackles.

I am a fan of James, his poetry and his photography, and we share a love of birds — in particular vultures. (Grackles are fine, too, but I see them only now as a tourist, when traveling to Arizona or Texas.) I’ve read many of the poems in this collection as first drafts at his blog, Coyote Mercury, and at his small-works site, a gnarled oak, and was lucky to see them in manuscript form, too. I’ve riffed on one of his short poems in a work of my own (a love poem to vultures, though it doesn’t do James’ lines credit, even if it was great fun to write).

So this isn’t a review, it’s a recommendation: Go get yourself a copy.

Which format to obtain is your only real option (if you have that luxury).

I was fortunate to get both a printed book and a digital copy. Boon to me! I recently bought my folks a Kindle and have been loading it up with books and figuring it out (easy) so I can teach my non-electronic-gadget parents how it operates. (Thankfully Pop is pretty good with his cell phone and can navigate a GPS quite easily, so he will take the lead. I hope Mom doesn’t give up on it too quick and say she wants her old paper copies back — it is she who clammered after one, seeing a nephew’s Kindle.) I set up the Amazon* account for three shared devices: My folks “Scott Kindle”, my first edition iPad re-synced to be my husband’s “Mark’s iPad” and my new one (a holiday bonus from work), “Deb’s iPad.” Depending on the book and the publisher, some books can be shared among many devices.

So I get to read James’ book in two electric formats (at least until I finally turn over the Kindle to my folks when I travel there next) and still enjoy a real life book.

It’s lovely. Full of marvelous poetry covering a range of styles and ideas and beautiful artwork. James has taken his photographs and made terrific black & white art to accompany the words.