Snuggle

Was at Barnes and Nobles tonight and picked up A Poet's Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinzie. Wished I had picked it up on Amazon first though. Cheaper.

I am only about 15 pages in and so far I am quite impressed. I think she has been reading PFFA. Seriously ... despite of course the time line issue. The same outlook on craft and commitment to the work of poetry. Read read read is her motto it seems too. I am looking forward to the rest. I think it will be slow going, but that is just how it will be.

Between this and my new housecoat, red, and quite fluffy, I am quite the snug little not-bug.

Have a good one.

It is good April is in the spring

My orchid is blooming unexpectedly.

Two fat mourning doves sat on our deck rail while we ate dinner. I peeked between the curtains at them, my head tilted just so to take them both in. They were pecking at each other. She pregnant and full of eggs I think. I don't know enough about birds to know for sure. I can't imagine being filled with shells.

I think I love Li Young Lee a little. A new way of viewing things for me.

I was going to post how Asian poets have surprised me lately, but that is just because I have read so little of Asian poets. I know I am clumping, but still, and it is a start.

April is coming soon, and the feeling I need to do that April thing came along today with Rose, and with orchids and doves. It is good April is in the spring.

I am doing this through bifocals, preferably called Bionicles (by me alone), because that is funnier, but I don't think it is making a difference. I can only hope seeing in focus makes a mark, but I don't know. Not sure I like the fuzzy edges. Like something unhemmed.

Have a nice evening.

Next up or marking ambition

How to Live in the Heartland by Twyla Hansen (damn, she did a 9 Mile Prairie poem, that is what I had planned on writing about one day, not that I won't, but still ;-)
School of the Arts by Mark Doty

The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
The Jane Austen Book Club

Last two for book club. Question, are all book clubs becoming clubs that read books about book groups? I have a feeling tis so.

I was going to get another book of poetry, by Asian poets, but I knew this bunch would be enough for a while. That one is next up, next up! Given my absolutely microscopically slow reading pace lately, that might be a while.

Have a good one!

Into the black

I am contemplating doing early morning Black Friday shopping. I have only done it once before and considered it a compete waste of my time. The savings wasn't great enough to get out of bed that early. But some of the things that are rumoured to be on sale this year make me consider it. Desktop computers for $199. Perhaps for my daughter, I don't know. Anyway, I will wait and see, and then see how tired I am after Thanksgiving. I betcha I won't.

I bought Bill Bryson's book, Shakespeare: The World as Stage. So far, just in one chapter, very typical of him, readable, and quite enjoyable. I am not sure how much new there will be, but what the hey. I didn't know about the Nebraska scholar who went to England back in the day, and discovered yet unknown facts about the Bard. That is kind of neat. Yay us! But then he went mad, made a fortune and died rich but unhappy. He should have stuck with the Shakespeare scholarship. Oh well.

Have a great day. I am going to consider Christmas, and how that shall be.

What's my name naaaame...naaaame....naaaame....

Reading Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson (which is totally intriguing) has reminded me of a debate I am having with myself about revealing my main character's real name. I have only used Trapper as his name, because that is what people call him, and how he refers to himself. In Wittgenstein's Mistress, the main character is telling 1st person POV her adventures. On pg 33 we learn her name (probably). Much is suspect in this novel, so who knows so far. Anyway, because I had assumed the reader wouldn't learn her name, it brought back my own internal debate about my character names.

I wonder if the writer is short changing the reader if we learn their name, or if we don't? Depending on what indicates such. I am especially sensitive this week to short changing readers (looking at you last paragraph in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency).

Another example for me of how reading influences and directs writing.

Quick review

When I was Canada a few weeks ago, I picked up Prism International: Contemporary Writing from Canada and Around the World. From the creative writing program at UBC. I had never heard of any of the writers but two short stories in particular were fabulous. Mavis Brown by Gord Grisenthwaite. Excellent. Sharp and painful for Mavis, seen in the eyes and pants of the narrator. This is how a character can be captured. Also, Entropy by J.R. Myers. Again, excellent characterization, not that you would want to know this fellow, but an interesting take on the concept of going home again. And an even more excellent closure to the story. OMG!

As to the poetry, the one that stuck me most was a poem entitled Dry by Rhonda Batchelor. Never heard of her either but her "A stiff wind off the water / carries autumn in its teeth." is really beautiful I think. Talk about grabbing the reader by the literal teeth. Liz Dolan's The Fall reminded me very much of Judith's Wright's Request to a Year. Again excellent stuff and I am very happy to have found it. Off to google.

Patrick Leigh Fermor

I think it is sad that google mostly only references Patrick Leigh Fermor as a travel writer. Granted it does note "literary" in several places, but I think that diminishes what would be his writing. It rivals Joyce, Proust, and Nabokov easily. The languor of Proust, the building of character like Nabokov, and the die hard spirit of Joyce. I just finished A Time of Gifts yesterday and then just dipped into Between the Woods and the Water. It makes me very happy that he is rumoured to be working on the third, to bring him the rest of the way to Constantinople. I am glad he was knighted and all, and that he is revered as a travel writer, but I don't think it should be through the lens of travel, it should be through the lens of the greatest writing of all time. Really and truly beautiful stuff. Europe pales (but is brought alive by the same) when compared to his words. A magnificent feat. I never really have wanted to travel to Germany before, would have been down on the list of places I would visit, but he really makes it and its people, especially during such a dark time, be a place I would want to visit. One of the harrowing aspects of this book, The Time of Gifts, is that the backdrop of the reality of that world clashed with his view of the beauty of it. It really sharpens what was going on and alluded to by him, when he could write of it with such sensitivity. It also brings to light the reality of the real people he met, rather than the big picture of history. It made me think more than once in the last few days, about the daily goings on of the people here, me too, when a horrid war is raging out of our range. Maybe out of the current war, will be a book of the Iraq or Afghan people, written in the same sort of way. How life does go on, while reality rages, and the the stories of history are written. I prefer the writings of the man on the ground, meeting the people, and seeing how they lived. Fermor did this well.

Because I have found him, I will have to read it all. Cuz that is what I do. Highest recommendation for his amazing, beautiful writing.

::sits in my chair::

I am back. More later. It has been quite a fruitful couple of weeks writing (and reading) wise for me. A poem written, several ideas for poems and a couple of thousand words of the story.

This makes me happy. See you soon!!

Availability

You know how you know a poetry mag is good? If you are just thumbing through it, and are already blown away. Poetry East is that for me. I can't find a huge number of poetry journals around here but this one is usually available at B&N. I have to say, that every issue I have read has really excellent poetry. There is a certain gentleness that this one has. It doesn't seem to have pretensions and if it does, it doesn't worry about it, or feel the need to argue, but is just comfortable with who it is. Yes, I do anthromorphise everything. And again, superb poetry.

::pads off to read::

Also I realized the other day reading Poetry, that poets and poetry are like Canadians, always trying to figure out who and what they are. Canadians always feel the need to find who they are (in the shadow of the US), and reading the discussions about the need for poetry, its justifications, worth of the poet, those two things linked for me. Poetry, the Canadian to the Prose that is the looming and more financially successful American.

But then again, what do I know.

Time portals

In addition to all of its other attributes, Google is a time portal. I was googling a writer whose name I was trying to remember, who read at the University of Windsor one time, and I found the link to Generations, its undergrad poetry publication. I was published in that in 1982ish. I hoped some kind soul had not put them all online, but hadn't. It is probably better that way.

I think it was Czeslaw Milosz or another eastern European writer. I remember only that the book that writer had out that year he read, won all sorts of awards (which his did). None of his title's ring a bell though, so I am not sure. I didn't have the money to actually purchase the book from which he read, although my roommate did. The holes in the library.

I wish I had kept a list of all of the books I couldn't afford at the time. The list would have been long. Therefore, grateful for the googling.

Have a good one!

News, but not really

Just bits today. I am extremely amused by the searches that bring people to this blog. Most recent, "moms and cocktails". That would be right. Having children teaches you what it means to want a drink sometimes. But not always.

Also, when you upgrade your blogger account to the new Beta style, it doesn't bring along all of your links and other html you have on the blog. I realized this place looked a little spartan, and then I realized what had happened. Only slightly annoying.

I am reading Inda by Sherwood Smith and enjoying it very much. Neat world she has set up, and the characters are extremely engaging. Just a few chapters in, but it has captured me.

I have added a little to my story about one character. I haven't quite decided how he will work, other than some amount of exposition, and as a parallel character gone evil. Well not so much evil, as just really icky. It is amazing how much ick I can draw out of this guy. Scary that. And the parallels arising with the main character surprise me, but it works I think.

Have a lovely evening. I will be eating ginger cookies and cake for the duration of the evening, so I am quite happy with that.