!!!

I just submitted my manuscript to the first book contest! I spent most of my writing time in July finishing a set of poems (the "4 and 40 Blackbirds that were inspired by Carline's 40 Forts), revising older poems, and arranging the whole mess into a collection. Now the waiting. I have big plans for relaxing all through August.

4 and 40 Blackbirds

I won't get to 40 poems by Lent, but Caroline's fort project is charmed. It continues to inspire me. It makes sense that you can't really take someone else's creativity train, not to the same place anyway; still, maybe these little poems will go somewhere, sometime. Following a poem by Robinson Jeffers, here's a new one:

Vulture

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling high up in heaven.
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit narrowing. I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, “My dear bird, we are wasting time here.
These old bones will still work, they are not for you.” But how beautiful he looked,
gliding down,
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the sea-light over the
precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak and become part of
him, to share those wings and those eyes—
What a sublime end of one’s body, what an enskyment; what a life after death.

--Robinson Jeffers



Dawn and Lay Down

Dream and not dream,
the nectarines are doing something
funny, big as my
belly, as the 3D
sun in the Air
and Space Museum movie.
The morning glory’s leaves
are perfect hearts. Vines
thick as grown-up thumbs.
Their skin is splitting.

Two Blackbirds

I don't know how I think "blackbirds" connects to this project but I like the idea and sound of it as a title. Anyway I have written two of my forty poems. I am okay with the fact--and I think it's a fact--that I am not going to reach forty by Easter. It's amazing that I am writing at all.

This is a hard form. It's actually really difficult to say anything in forty words. It involves a lot of cutting and the finding of just the right word. These two poems took longer than I thought they would. I am not totally happy with them yet, but I thought I'd share them to keep myself going on this project.

Below are the poems I read and then the poems I wrote in response--the titles, if you recall, are four words from the poems I read. You might notice a theme in the poems I wrote.


Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

Not less because in purple I descended
the western day through what you called
the loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
and my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
or heard or felt came not but from myself;
and there I found myself more truly and more strange.

--Wallace Stevens



Sea whose tide swept

What was it like?
you asked before it
happened. Can’t be answered.
If when little you
ventured, wave through wave,
until one towered,
crashed into your body,
your self not self,
all water and push—
it was like that.


Variation on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.
--Margaret Atwood


sun & three moons

--nine full moons before
the baby comes, said
my great-grandmother: one
moon, questions, two moons,
queasy, three, four and
the rest, the ninth
the night before you
come, that afternoon, the sunshine
on the yellow, dancing
leaves, the waiting underneath--

4 and 40 Blackbirds

I have been meaning to write for a while now how thankful I am for my blog friends. If you don't explore the links to the blogs my friends write, you should. Actually not all of them are technically my friends. I only really know three or four of the authors, but I found the other blogs through their sites, and I think of all of them as my friends because their writing inspires and encourages me.

I have a plan to write a bit about each of my blog friends in the coming weeks. Today I want to write about Caroline at Beyond Friendship Gate. Caroline and I met because our husbands went to law school together. The first time they came over to our house she saw a book by Julia Cameron on my table, and she told me about The Artist's Way. Commitment to art + lovely southern accent = someone I immediately like a whole lot.

Caroline has a beautiful new website. And I am terribly inspired by her Forty Forts project. I am not going to try to paraphrase her project. To understand the rest of this post, you will really need to follow the link and read Caroline's explanation of her project. So go do that now.

Okay--you're back. So, I am pretty private about my spiritual life as well. This is partly because I too think that spirituality is extremely personal and partly because my spiritual life involves way more questions than answers. But like Caroline, I grew up around Baptist influences. One of my best friends from middle and high school was Catholic, though, and I was somewhat enchanted with her religion. I liked the rituals I witnessed and what I perceived as the formality of it all. I guess a better word is ceremony. For the past 3 or 4 Christmases, I really wanted to have an Advent calendar. Last year I finally found one. And I have always liked the idea behind Lent.

Last night I was reading Caroline's blog, and everything she said hit home. I feel that I have already given up plenty up this year. And for way longer than Lent. But I love the idea of adding something to my life for the Lenten season.

So I am blatantly copying Caroline. I have the idea of 40 poems in 40 days. Less than 40 days, since Lent started last Wednesday I think. It's 40 days from Easter, not counting Sundays. (Easter, I learned, is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring.)

There are rules. Each of my poems will have 40 words. Probably 10 lines, 4 words each. And each will be "inspired" by another poem--I'll find a poem to read and take 4 words from it. Those 4 words will be the title.

I've been struggling with a series of poems called "40 Weeks." And A is 4 months old. So all of this 4 and 40 business is quite fitting. Thank you Caroline--your project came along just when I was throwing in the towel on writing forever.