The Village Library reading: 6 p.m., Tuesday April 25th
From The Hollins Critic review
Seren of the Wildwood is a magical book, a visionary journey through motherhood and the rebellious, unwieldy life-force of the universe. It includes equally magical cover art and interior illustrations by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, who frequently illustrates Youmans's books. The publisher's web page says that "Wiseblood Books fosters works of fiction, poetry, and philosophy that find redemption in uncanny places and people." Indeed they do.
--Amanda Cockrell, The Hollins Critic, Vol. LX, no. 2, April 2023.
Marly in a hat, 2023
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Boy, I have to be ultra-careful commenting on this one. Not so much the hat with its neo-Afghan roots, it's the hair - and its length - which has me speculating. When do you suppose those fine hair-ends first saw the light of day? Pre-Millennium? Pre- or post-Watergate? I'd ask who was then president but I'm aware of your antipathy towards politics. And yet the face says: so young! Also, so healthy,. so cheerful, so optimistic. All the things I'm not.
ReplyDeleteTell you what: if you don't write an ode to that splendidly hirsute cascade I will. It's in your hands.
Go right ahead, haha! I actually chopped off six inches of my pandemic hair about that time.... my hair has always grown fast, though it's not as thick as it once was...
DeleteI am not always cheerful and optimistic (or healthy, for that matter.) But my mantra is: "Good cheer despite all." So I try to live up to it. Don't always, though.
As for young, well, I'm far past that! But I'll take it as a compliment.
P. S. I think the hat is Peruvian...
DeleteAfghanistan - Peru. As my last boss in the USA used to say: "Close enough for government work."
DeleteHah!
DeleteIt's long, it's leonine, it is, no doubt,
ReplyDeleteAn auburn tribute to fecundity.
It frames, it cossets, at its owner's waist,
Proclaiming proof of earthly gravity.
I said it would so here's the first verse. The second will be composed as I rise and fall on our newly installed Stannah stairlift. Or not, as the fancy takes me.
Wild! I've never had a poem to my hair! (Is it auburn? It has changed color, and I always think it a very strange color....)
ReplyDeleteHonored that you would write me a poem, RR!
Just back from a fortnight on the edge of la France Sauvage. A good example of what the French call "mes faux amis". French words that Brits, seeing a resemblance with a word in English, react accordingly. Often to their great humiliation. I see we were talking about hair. The word for hair is plural in French. Try a direct translation and note what a curious effect the addition of an s makes on the sentence. Hours of harmless fun.
ReplyDeleteI will write you a private note about recent events... meant to do so already but I have been over-busy and stretched.
DeleteAm "sensible" to your meaning! False friends are there in many languages, but I expect there's still a mild, amusing war on between the Brits and the French, long after battles have ceased.
p. s. Thinking of your poem to my hair, and am about to take scissors to it after watching a video on how to cut your own long hair. Eep!
DeleteA decade ago, while touring France, we called at Crecy. There were fresh flowers on the war memorial. Not relating to WW2 or even WW1 but the eponymous skirmish between The Two Old Enemies. In 1342! Now that's a nourishing form of hatred.
ReplyDeleteHah, lovely! Glad for those flowers... Calls for a bit of Faulkner, as in "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
DeleteObviously sometimes is a non-nourishing way... but at the moment we are starved for the nourishing sort, as ignorance of history abounds...
DeleteAm I too late? Have you saved some of the clippings? To be mewed up in a violet coloured envelope scented with lavender. And opened in 2072 by a middle-aged man not yet born, as prelude to a rather predictable novel about nostalgia.
ReplyDeleteI think my mother saved a braid when I cut my hair for the first time (fifth grade, as I had a scissors phobia!) Would take a mighty big envelope...
Delete