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Monday, June 09, 2008

8 Days of Poems


NEW POEMS ON LINE AT MEZZO CAMMIN
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While I also have some new poems out in print mags, I have a few in the new issue of Mezzo Cammin: In All Her Gleaming Youth, She Said; Puck in Spring; Snow White in Wildwood; Stones in the Wilderness; Mirror Tree, Tree Mirror; Blurbs of the Poets, no. 1.
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The first, second, and fifth are from my spring spate of new poems. All can be read at: http://www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2008&iss=1&cat=poetry&page=youmans.
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8 DAYS OF CAKE
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It has been a month for Diana Wynne Jones book reports. My fifth-grader, N, did a seven-layer cake book report (who dreams up these things?) about Eight Days of Luke. The cake made a cute little book by the end, although there were points when I felt that it might just kill me.
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And now R has done a Howl's Moving Castle report mounted on poster board with much embellishment of amusing and pretty drawings in gold... I remember my childhood in school as being much more straightforward and involving pencils.
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While she was fooling around on my computer and printing out a few photographs, I noticed this rendition of Miyazaki's version of Howl's castle. The video shows the making of the paper castle over 72 hours by Ben Millett, an attractively-obsessed (at least to other obsessed people like me) geek with cat. And most things do go better with a cat.
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And that is a thing well known to Diana Wynne Jones.
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AND NOW, ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE; OR, WHAT A BIG IDIOT
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I ordered my mother's non-refundable airline ticket for baccalaureate Sunday instead of graduation Sunday. I borrowed two houses, also for the wrong weekend. All relatives have been invited for the wrong weekend.
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The word FOOL is glowing on my forehead. Must go wash. Send news of your own foolishness...

24 comments:

  1. Good excuse for another party Marley!

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  2. Hah! Two will have to be enough...

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  3. oh goodness, that sounds like something
    I would do, or rather did do! I am baby sitting a kid of my friends for a whole weekend and marked it wrong on my calendar.

    congrats on all your litterary doings. THat is awsome that you have made all that happen. All I do is sit around and dream up great titles and think of the aspects that all my hearos would have.

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  4. oh am at work and forgot my password. Its susanna

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  5. Trala, I'm glad somebody else wants to join the Idiots Club! Although it turns out that I only messed up my mother--figures, since that's the expensive one.

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  6. ...and you have a lovely new poem due out at q. sometime soon, pending our receipt of the audio...

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  7. Huzzah for Marly, who does it all with such aplomb!

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  8. Hah.

    Lucy, Lucy, I shall try to live up to that nice round ruby of a word, "aplomb." Shall go visit you when the time opens its little window.

    And Dave, I could never forget q-looniness but shall give it a mention when it's out. I am an utterly loyal ex-guest-editor of qarrtsiluni! The good news is that while cleaning the house for a former student who is coming to visit and spend the night, I found the missing and desired POKEMON MICROPHONE! Really odd to think that a flimsy little thing like that can produce a recording...

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  9. Marly...i drank up those new poems...lovely, so lovely. i will go back and read again and again.

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  10. Halloo, zephyr--

    Coming up for air--some company has left and more to come over the next two weeks. Prom, graduation, etc. to come.

    I'm glad you liked those poems!

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  11. Great hearing this Marly.
    Join the club!!
    Glad to hear your writing news!

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  12. And there we were on at the very same time, Jan--

    and I wonder if you mean the Idiot Club or the Graduated-a-Kid club (actually I have one who is graduating high school, one who is graduating elementary and going on to fifth grade, and one who is in the middle of things) or the Poem Mania Club... or what!

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  13. I belong to all of those clubs, Marly--the graduating kid club and the idiot one; I prove it all the time!
    RE: poems... I can't wait to look at them, but I'll have to. I'm leaving for yoga class soon, and must eat something small before I go.

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  14. Hi Marly. I went to yoga, took dad to buy plants for his garden, and finally got to read your poems! They are wonderful. A couple of them seem as though they ought to be part of a fantasy novel in which a sorcerer is saying spells, or perhaps there would be a character who is a poet... sort of a neo-Pale Fire of another stripe.

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  15. Robinka, my server is down. Shall be back later--I'm sitting on a bench in front of the public libary, doing a little borrowing, though my battery is about to go...

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  16. Hi Marly,

    I just linked to your wonderful poems, published in Mezzo Camnin, and love the imagery and lyrical quality in all of them--especially Snow White in Wildwood. I have always loved fairy tales, and this poignant poem really spoke to me, You gave Snow White depth and character--a real person we can relate to, trapped in her beauty and kindness. If I teach a poetry workshop again, I would like to use this poem--it would really speak to students, too!

    I found your work through a link on Robbi's blog, and I'm glad I did! Robbi also said that you may have cat poems as well. I have a new website, Sitting With Kitty, and I am looking for talented writers with stories, poems, and artwork featuring cats. If you have any cat poems or stories you would like to share, please see http://sittingwithkitty.com. We would be honored if you would consider submitting your work.

    Thank you again for sharing your beautiful poems. You are a wonderful writer, and one of the best poets I've read in a long time. I look forward to reading more of your amazing work.

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  17. No one graduates from school in the UK - that term is reserved for university - but I do have one leaving school, so I can join in that club, and once long a go, I got on the train for London from Liverpool thinking it was the train from London to Liverpool. I shall never forget the ticket collector's face when he looked at my ticket. Unfortunately it was non-stop. So I can join the fool club too. There are many more such incidences but I reckon I've blanked them out.

    Congrats on all the poetry publications Marly! Hope you have/had? a great graduation day.

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  18. Marly,
    Gotta send you some of those stories I have begun writing. Let me know if you ever have time to read em.

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  19. Robin,

    Thanks so much for the lovely note! I am so glad that you liked the poems... A good healthy pat on the head is always appreciated.

    And the little matter of cats: I shall have a look around the litter-of-poems in my office. Lately it has been trees and forests on my brain. I'll take a look at your site when graduating (agh!) is over.

    Ah, Clare--

    I am so glad to be in such good company in my cap and bells!

    I'll have to write you after graduation--it's baccalaureate tomorrow and graduation a week from tomorrow.

    I'll stick up some more poem-links some time soon.

    Robbi,

    I have zero time for the next nine days. But after that things will be the normal kind of business.

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  20. just dropping in to tell you I love, of course, your wonderful ear for the music of words.

    As for foolishness--I am certain I have had my share. My father said that God loves fools best of all, and takes care of them.

    He would say it with meaningful glances at me, and much sighing.

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  21. Thank you, Jarvenpa--for the encouragement and for the fellowship of foolishness!

    Life will return to a semblance of normal on July 1st...

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  22. Marly,
    I'm in Atlanta GA. I am thinking of you and your southern yearnings. Wish you were here. Really I do because this trip promises nothing but smelly underwear and baseball. Jeremy is playing in a tournament here.

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  23. I can assure you that all the Baseball-Hall-of-Fame juveniles who are playing games in Cooperstown have provided us with more than enough smelly underwear to keep us! Main Street Cooperstown is positively drenched in the sweat of little and big boys...

    Actually the weather here is glorious right now. It was supposed to be horrid yesterday for graduation, but it was magnificent for the ceremony--down the grand double staircase from the Fenimore Museum and onto the lawn before the lake, which was true to Cooper, all glimmerglass. One Regents diploma in the bag...

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  24. As for foolishness...once I showed up at the airport a week before my trip...and had to arrange everything all over again to go at the right time the following week. My husband, fortunately, is quite the opposite, and so someone in the house knows when the mortgage is due.
    -Deb

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Alas, I must once again remind large numbers of Chinese salesmen and other worldwide peddlers that if they fall into the Gulf of Spam, they will be eaten by roaming Balrogs. The rest of you, lovers of grace, poetry, and horses (nod to Yeats--you do not have to be fond of horses), feel free to leave fascinating missives and curious arguments.