Bright story, new year

The year past was a long and complicated journey, a tempering one--an interesting Bilbo sort of journey, where one grows older and means not to come back. And somehow I feel unready for New Year's resolutions. Perhaps I will make mine around St. Valentine's day, when it used to be said that the birds would fly back to summer homes... By that date, I start to believe that spring will come to the North.

Here is a story like a wish in exchange for resolutions.

One day some years ago, the poet (and rancher, elsewhere) Drum Hadley invited the five of us to walk around the lake and pools and waterfalls he had designed for his mother's property above Otsego Lake. We wandered around, picking up leaves and improving the time, as Thoreau would say. The scene was a pleasant mix of nature and artifice, with rustic lampposts sheathed in bark set up around the edge of the lake.

When my daughter fell behind on the path (how long ago was it? was she thirteen or thereabouts?) I turned to look back. Her hand was stretched out in a formal gesture, the palm and fingers not quite touching the bole of the lamppost. Out of memory, she glances at me, her eyes shining--or is it her face, or her whole body in the faint first shimmer from the lamp?

Narnia, she says.

In the eye of the beholder

Thanks, Alisa Alering. It's always interesting to find out what appeals to a young writer who has been digging around in one's word-hoard, and how one appears--what the strengths are, according to another mind. And I always wanted to be silver-tongued and maybe a bit strange around the edges! Nicely deckled, shall we say...

Huswifery

"My conversation make to be thy Reele..."
           --Edward Taylor

Sent my husband to the wrestling tournament in Cobleskill and spent the day in "huswifery" and the occasional shoveling of snow--four more loads of laundry and I shall put my feet up and be devil-may-care for the evening. Took a whirl by facebook and noticed people arguing that blogs are no longer the "done" thing, so what are you doing here? And now I whirl off to the Laundry Doom Room. If you have a question or a subject you'd like to see a post on, here at the end of things--past the Mayan calendar, past solstice, past Christmas and on the way to Epiphany--leave word in the comments.

Higher

Here are a few Robert Duncan quotes, plucked from an Angle Mlinko article on poet Robert Duncan and good for the third day of Christmas. Capes and hats and amber necklaces...

I love the way Duncan raises his vocation to the highest levels. He aims at the stars; he aims at God.

As portrayed in Mlinko's description, Duncan the fluent and ecstatic lecturer reminds me of descriptions of Emerson the lecturer. For the whole article, click here.

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Duncan rejecting "workshopping": “We will be detectives not judges…. Week by week we will study . . . vowels, consonants, the structure of rime.”

Duncan on the stakes of art: “Poetry is not my stock in trade, it is my life.”

How high are those stakes? Duncan takes them higher: “In language I encounter God.”

Duncan on the poet's transformation: “To become a poet, means to be aware of creation….”

Duncan mid-lecture: "I write poetry for the fucking stars!"

Duncan on language: “Vowels the spirit, Consonants the body.”

Duncan on confessional poetry: “I loathe these personal problems that have no deep root but are all social currency—case history of a social worker. Wld. as soon attend divorce court.”