Trick or TrEATING

Trick or treating started early around here today. It's been getting harder and harder to keep Amelia still while changing her diaper, so this morning while I changed her I handed her a fun-size Twix out of the Halloween candy bowl that happened to be within reach. I thought she wouldn't be able to break through the shiny wrapper, but when I took it away from her, I notice that she was chewing thoughtfully.



I had to switch her to Cheerios and milk.



She's going to be a skeleton for Halloween. We are going to the park for a neighborhood costume playdate at 4:00 this afternoon. Then we are invited to a party at 5:00, but we will have to see how fussy Amelia is by then. We might just come home and give out candy, and let Amelia see the older kids in costume before dinner and bed.

Speaking of dinner, here she is in her costume the other night. She has been getting more independent about eating, and as you can see, she was eating her prunes from the jar by herself: first with a spoon (sort of), and then, when the spoon got too bothersome, with her bare hands.



Just for the record, here's Amelia last Halloween, when she was 4 weeks old.

The Poems of Phillis Wheatley

This is the first book in the Academy of American Poetry's list of groundbreaking books, all of which I have decided to read (or reread). I couldn't find the title they actually list, but I found a thin paperback called The Poems of Phillis Wheatley With Letters and a Memoir that contains a reproduction of the book Wheatley published in 1773.

To be honest, these poems didn't do that much for me at first. They gallop along in almost unvarying iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets--but that sort of extremely formal poetry was more typical in 1773 than it is now. Wheatley wrote a lot of poems about death, particularly the death of children, which was creppily interesting. But in my notes I scribbled that I had "more questions than answers." Because Phillis Wheatley was a slave. And her poetry mostly seems rather--or very--oblivious to that fact.

You can read about Wheatley's life here, but basically she was sold into slavery at the age of 7. It became apparent to her mistress that she was very smart, and she was taught to read and allowed, even encouraged, to write. (The memoir notes that she was sometimes "allow[ed] to polish a table or dust an apartment" but she kept writing material nearby in case a line came to her.)

As I read more about Wheatley's life and read her poems, I kept wondering, would any of the poems reveal a slant? As in, would they ever comment on her situation at all? I was also wondering, as I read what the back cover of my book describes as "mostly elegies for the departed and odes to Christian salvation," is this really a groundbreaking book or is it more accurate to say that Phillis Wheatley was a groundbreaking poet? I guess that, being a poet so steeped in the contemporary confessional/lyric tradition, I was hoping for Wheatley's poems to criticize slavery or mourn her kidnapping or somehow otherwise acknowledge her astounding and rather atrocious personal situation. But that kind of personal focus was not particularly common for poems in 1773, and even if it had been, Wheatley's poems wouldn't have been published if she had done those things.

Browsing the Internet, I came across this June Jordan essay that somewhat takes on my questions and concerns. In it, she reimagines Wheatley's life, lingering on the extraordinary set of circumstances that led Wheatley to write at all, and to write the kinds of poems she did. She draws connections between Wheatley and the state of African American poetry (in the 80's, which I think is when she wrote the essay). Although I don't agree with every part of the essay, I love the poem at its end, which to me best states why Wheatley's book was likely chosen by AAP as the first groundbreaking book of American poetry. Here are its closing lines (you can read the whole thing if you follow the link to the essay above):

"They taught you to read but you learned how to write
Begging the universe into your eyes:
They dressed you in light but you dreamed
with the night.
From Africa singing of justice and grace,
Your early verse sweetens the fame of our Race."

In conclusion, I enjoyed learning about this poet. Wheatley's life, which was fascinating enough for its first 19 years, gets even more fascinating (and tragic) after her book was published, and her poems are the kind that you have to take one at a time, line by line. They are, for me, anyway, relatively difficult but satisfying to puzzle out. As I have gone back to them every now and then over the past week or so, I have found more and more lines that surprise me and draw me in. I hope to keep reading more of Wheatley even as I move on down my list.

Practice What You Preach

The counters are crowded with dirty dishes. The beds are unmade; there is laundry to be done. There is a poopy diaper on the stairs, waiting to be taken up and rinsed. But I am sitting at the computer, writing.

This morning I had the luck of a longish phone conversation with a dear friend, one I don't get to talk to nearly as much as I would like. She, also a writer, was frustrated with the business of life, the constant demands of home and job and children and family. She is called to the page but can't find a moment to answer. "Take an hour," I urged her. "Take an hour this week and go somewhere, and write. Even if it's just in your journal about how you are feeling. Even if it's crap. Just write."

Lexicon, 12 and a half months

Ball: a ball; a ball-shaped item such as a pumpkin or a light fixture; a dog; if you are at the zoo, an elephant!

Bye: good-bye; while poking your finger in someone's eye, an eye

Gee (pronounced with a hard g as in ago): Suki; another small animal not established as a ball

Hi: Hello!

Read with me!

A few months ago I started a new blog for reading poetry. I invited some friends I knew from my various poetry programs to read and write about our reading. Long story short--or short story short, really--I just deleted the blog. Despite what I think was true enthusiasm for the project, both from me and my recruits, it never got off the ground.

Why is it so hard, even for poets, to make time to read poetry? Is it just me or do others have this problem too? When I manage to stop myself from using Amelia's naptimes to clean the house, I am much more likely to write than to read, and when I read, it is much more likely to be fiction than poetry...

I want to change this. One of my goals for the fall is to read more poetry. Ideally, I would like to read a book a week. By "read," I don't necessarily mean sit down and read every page from beginning to end, the way one reads a book of fiction, but instead to spend time with the book, a good chunk of time, and read as much of it as I can depending on what else is going on that week and my interest in the volume. And then I would like to write a brief review or comment on the book, here on this blog.

Since I will be using this space to comment on the books I read, I thought I would invite all of you lovely blog readers to join me in the reading. Then you can comment too, if you want.

I found a guiding hand to help me get started, too. Poets.org, a website I really enjoy, has this list of groundbreaking books of poetry. I am going to go down the list. I have read some of these books, not every one, but I am going to reread the ones I have read, and comment on all of them.

So the first one is Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phyllis Wheatley. I have never read this one, and she looks like a very interesting author. Realistically, a book a week might be a lot for me, but to get started, I am going to make a trip to the library to get this book by Monday, and I will write a comment on it sometime the week of October 25. Yikes! Now I am committed. I hope some of you will go find this book in your library or local bookstore too!

P.S. You should explore poets.org. They have great stuff, including a list of poet Halloween costumes.

Mount Bancroft

As you can see, I am still trying to catch up on documenting all of our summer hikes and such. Toward the end of August, we hiked up Mount Bancroft with Jim, Luli, and Opal. After a bumpy ride to the trailhead--oh, wait, there was no actual trailhead. This was a trail-less hike. So we basically walked straight up the side of the mountain. As we got started, Dean's description of this hike changed subtly from "It won't be hard!" to"It won't be that hard!"

As we climbed to the first ridge, we passed all these different parts of an old car: the engine, doors, wires and other assorted weather-beaten plastic and metal pieces. I thought that would make an interesting poem somehow.

After awhile, Dean, Amelia, Luli and Opal left Jim and I behind. Therefore, because the sleeping Amelia was being held hostage from me, Mount Bancroft's summit is the only Rocky Mountain summit I have actually reached so far. Jim could attest that I did it after a fair amount of complaining. But when I got to the top it was definitely worth it. There is a reason people go all the way to the top of tall mountains: it's beautiful up there!

Here are some pictures of my ascent, our rest at the summit, and Amelia sleeping in her backpack.






A note to other parents who might backpack with a baby: Amelia slept for much of her trip up the mountain and the entire descent, probably close to 3 hours, and we found out at the bottom that that was probably too long for her to be still in her backpack. She was cold, and it seemed like her hands and feet were asleep.

The trip down, without a trail with switchbacks, was challenging. But we made it! It was a fun hike with family, certainly one I will remember for awhile.

House Tour: the Long-Awaited Conclusion

This is my and Dean's bedroom:




It's hard to take a picture of the bedroom that's not all bed but the room has lots of slanted walls like Amelia's room.

Here is a shot of the stairway:



Not pictured are the two bathrooms. They look funny in the pictures. But they are nice bathrooms. We like them.

Finally, here is a more recent picture of the stone pathway Dean built this weekend!



It is the first step in the reconstruction of the backyard (thanks to Jim for pulling up the stones and tilling all the grass!). We are planning another backyard garden, featuring an asparagus bed and a sandbox for Amelia. So far we are enjoying the lovely pathway.