Rowing my little boat--

At Quail Ridge Books of Raleigh.
Photo by Michael Poteat of Greenville--his wife, Gail McIntosh,
went to high school with me and is just out of this picture,
but on my right is another high school classmate and at left
the big sister of a classmate. Joann Sumner and her husband
put up with me while I was in Raleigh for readings last year.

In answer to some what-are-you-up-to questions: I've been writing lyric poems and very small stories recently. At the moment, I'm just too busy with all sorts of commitments to start the novel I have in mind. I also need to do some final work on some nearly-finished manuscripts.

Small stories are odd, as they often leave out elements of a longer tale. Some are so little they feel more like vignettes or gnomic tales, and what's left out becomes important. Most are under three pages. There's no time to mess around, and that's something I like, having started playing with words as a poet.

I've never been terribly concerned novel-fattening, and think a great many novels are way too long. But maybe that's the thought of a poet more than a reader.

So I'm having fun in my bits of free time. That's most of the story-and-poem news, save that Glimmerglass is coming together at the designer's and looks wondrous, that I'll be teaching at the Antioch workshops in the summer, and that I'll have some online poetry publications to share soon.

Image at right is a little vignette by Clive Hicks-Jenkins from Glimmerglass. This cunning little robin is made of painted papers with a few drawn and painted additions. While the book's visual ingredients looked quite splendid and enough to please anyone, word from Clive is that he's adding some last-minute "printers' flowers"* and a little something for the title page.

*A fleuron is a typographic element, or glyph, used either as a punctuation mark or as an ornament for typographic compositions. Fleurons are stylized forms of flowers or leaves; the term derives from the Old French word floron for flower. Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style calls the forms "horticultural dingbats." It is also known as a printers' flower, or more formally as an aldus leaf (after Italian Renaissance printer Aldus Manutius), hedera leaf, or simply hedera (ivy leaf) symbol. From "Fleuron (typography)" in Wikipedia.

Gold-motes

GOLDEN SEA

I've signed onto Makoto Fujimura's Kickstarter project and hope you will as well. I admire Mako and his nihongan-style painting, as do many people around the globe.

LABYRINTH

Midori Snyder has shared Paul Digby's wonderful video of my poem "In Extremis," and reminded me of her lovely blog, In the Labyrinth: She also has this and more to say about The Throne of Psyche: "First up read Marly Youmans's splendid and mythicaly off the charts collection of poems, The Throne of Psyche. It will get under your skin immediately -- like all myth and fairy tale weaving together darkness and violence, coupled with beauty and transcendence. The taproot of nature anchors the poems in the material world but family and the powerful bonds of maternal love invite the visionary power of grace."
The Throne of Psyche book page here

QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS: QUAIL MAIL #648 (July 18)

Reader review by Mamie: Nancy, I agree 100% with your comments about A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage by Marly Youmans (Mercer $24). This book is to be savored, read over and over, and thought about in between readings! It has, as you said, all the markings of a true classic. -- Mamie
A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage book page here

Quotes x 3

HANDSELLING GRATITUDE

Quoting writer Elaine Neil Orr on facebook with huge thanks to handsellers everywhere and Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh and Nancy in particular for loving and selling A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage: "I was in Nancy Olson's bookstore yesterday, holding your book, and Nancy came by, took the book from my hand and said to all nearby: You need to read this!"

MOST USEFUL ELECTION YEAR QUOTE SO FAR

"Rulers come and go, and we're fools if we put our faith in them." -Fr. Mark Michael

A FAVORITE LINE

When I signed a book this morning, the owner told me that her favorite line in A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage is when Casimiria (the Countess Casimira, please!) waxes poetical, musing on how "dreadfully old" she is:  "We are grass, our lives fleeting, our golden morning lasting no longer than the yellow flower head of the dandelion that runs to seed and which some passing child plucks and blows upon, scattering all its silver threads." Thank you, Miss Daphne!

Y at top

www.ourstate.com

If you are an X, Y, or Z, there's nothing quite like being at the top of a list! Thank you, Nancy Olson, Quail Ridge Books and Music (Raleigh), and North Carolina's Our State Arts and Culture for supporting A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage.