Tag: reading-is-hot

Button Sunday

April is National Poetry Month, and it’s no secret I love poetry.

Two favorites: one written for and read at the 1993 Presidential Inauguration by poet Maya Angelou; the other at the 2021 Presidential Inauguration by poet Amanda Gorman. Both are stunning in their range and language. They are connected through the decades with their messages of hope and promise; that we are better, greater than our past.

Our struggles are always with us, and our questions. Humanity moves forward sometimes too slowly, and all we see and hear and know can break our hearts. Poetry can heal us, nourish us, and also inspire us to keep moving, to keep doing better.

Language is one of the gifts humanity has given itself. We should use it passionately and thoughtfully.

Complete the story.

I don’t how or when I’ll complete the story, and I’m fine with that.


Just found a new book, though, that has writing prompts. Some of them look like a lot of fun. However, I won’t be playing for now, as it might provoke a couple of people to demand I send a new chapter from my work in progress.

Still, this is an enticing beginning, and I encourage all you writers or aspiring writers or just humans with some time and creative energy to have fun with it. (If you have trouble reading, I can put the text in comments.)

In my own personal continuing story, today I received my second COVID-19 vaccination. The hope is that based on the timeline of other Houndstooth residents and friends, there may be actual socializing in our small group by the end of April.


Arriving and being checked in. Hi, Luke from Nebraska–thank you!


Just after shot. My other National Guard were from Idaho, Georgia, Washington State, and Germany. They said they are meeting so many new Guard and appreciate the opportunity to help. They also said Houston has been really good to them. =)


Vaccination tents in my rearview mirror as I stop for the 15-minute post-shot waiting period. They do that in case of reactions. If you blow your horn, a healthcare worker will come to assist you, and they have portable rooms set up on the spot for that.

I remain in awe of their organization, efficiency, and upbeat attitudes.

Birthdays


Mother standing behind Timmy, Jim, and Timothy

Timmy and my mother share this birthday, March 4, and it’s pretty cool that I have a photo with both of them in it. Considering how infrequently any of us were in the same place at the same time, this was a miraculous event. I THINK (can’t be sure) it’s from January 2005. That was a magical night with the most amazing convergence of people at Borders for a Timothy James Beck booksigning.

I miss my mother, and I’m glad her day is shared by someone special. Happy birthday, Timmy!

The stars go waltzing out

Mad Girl’s Love Song

Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The Poet Muse

This week I’m having an uncommonly productive period of writing, and the process is always gratifying even if there is no “goal.” I’m not sure I have goals, except to let story unfold as it will.

My character holds two books. These are the lines that resonate with her.

From Emily Dickinson:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant–
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind–

******

From Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Who, now, when evening darkens the water and the stream is dull,
Slowly, in a delicate frock, with her leghorn hat in her hand,
At your side from under the golden osiers moves,
Faintly smiling, shattered by the charm of your voice?

There, today, as in days when I knew you well,
The willow sheds upon the stream its narrow leaves,
And the quiet flowing of the water and its faint smell
Are balm to the heart that grieves.

Together with the sharp discomfort of loving you,
Ineffable you, so lovely and so aloof,
There is laid upon the spirit the calmness of the river view:
Together they fall, the pain and its reproof.

Who, now, under the yellow willows at the water’s edge
Closes defeated lips upon the trivial word unspoken,
And lifts her soft eyes frightened with a heavy pledge
To your eyes empty of pledges, even of pledges broken?

To a Musician

Tiny Tuesday!

A lovely page to color from Jenny Lawson’s* book You Are Here:

“It’s a magic lamp. It’s a sorcerer’s hat. It’s a time machine and a songbird and a treasure chest. It’s a weapon and a weight. And also you can type with it.”

Such a small machine to hold infinite thought and imagination.

*I can not recommend her blog enough, especially if you deal with depression and social anxiety and like humor.

When I Read…

No, still not reading, the one must-do habit I practice with passion in normal times. I have been unable to read during the pandemic. Weirdest thing ever.

I’ve shared on here before that when I was still in elementary school and we’d moved to South Carolina, the minister at our church began Becky’s Official (post-Little Golden Books and the book of poetry my mother had given me) Library. My books had been either hand-me-downs from or still belonged to my older siblings. Or they were library books that had to be returned.

To begin my own library was an amazing thing, and the books he bought me were from the Whitman Classics Library series, among them this one.

I loved Heidi. I re-read it often, each time with as much pleasure as the first. This is actually a rather lovely book.

Endpapers: Grandfather carrying Heidi in the snow.

Some illustrations are enhanced by a single color ink (GOATS!):

But others are in full color.

Heidi reunites with Grandmother:

Heidi watches Grandfather with Clara:

I took this book off the shelf today to show Tom, and though it’s been decades since I read it, I could remember everyone’s names as I flipped through it to look at the illustrations. That’s how much I must have loved and internalized this book.

The reason I pulled it down is because today, Tom discovered the secret to getting me up, showered, dressed, and out the door in record time. “There’s an estate sale at the two-story white house around the corner and they have BARBIES.”

I honestly thought a six-feet-plus-tall guy and I might come to blows over a few of those dolls (and OH THERE WERE DOZENS). I couldn’t possibly have bought all the ones I wanted because I’m not rich. But among the ones I got–an absolutely sentimental buy–is this one.

I was unfamiliar with Mattel’s “When I Read, I Dream” series from 2001. But now I have Heidi, and there are MORE GOATS to look at.

Nice find. Tall Guy and I even managed to make a few trades peacefully.

Inauguration Day

I took something like 50 photos with my phone of so many moments that struck me as I watched the inauguration this morning. But as a writer, I am awestruck by this young woman, Amanda Gorman, and her poem “The Hill We Climb.” It put me in mind of another inauguration, Clinton’s first, when Maya Angelou read “On the Pulse of Morning.” I feel like a brilliant torch has been passed, and Ms. Angelou would approve.


We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice. And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one.

…..

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves so while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

I encourage you to find a video or the poem on line and listen to or read it in its entirety.

ETA: Here’s a great inverview with Ms. Gorman and Anderson Cooper.