Month: September 2016

{poetry friday: a primate’s smile is an act of aggression}

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September 30, 2016

7:53 am

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Poetry Friday

Smile.

Not like that. Not so big, you look like you’re at your grandbaby’s birthday party.

Not like that, like there’s some secret you’ve been told.

No, not like that, not like you’re guilty by association.

No, not like that – not like you’re not grateful to be here.

No, not like you’re resentful to be sitting on the floor, being fed scraps from the table.

No, not like that – don’t bare your teeth.

Like this, not like that. Not like that! NO! Never like that.

Smile. Because we told you to.

Smile. Because you should be smiling. Because the world has changed since the Harlem Renaissance. Because you shouldn’t be any less relieved, any less happy than we’ve told you to be.

SMILE.

Vergessen

We Wear the Mask

by Paul Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
        And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
         We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
         We wear the mask!

Photo “Vergessen” courtesy of Rubina V., Flickr Creative Commons, September 2011.

Poetry Friday today is hosted by Karen Edmisten, a woman with a lovely smile and a plethora of poetry at her disposal. I won’t wish you happy Friday; you don’t have to smile.

{“learn to find ease in risk”}

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September 8, 2016

9:41 am

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Part and Poetry

Sometimes, the right poem comes along at just the right moment, and it’s kind of …eye-opening, to see collusion in the Universe like that. Jules passed along to our blessing by a poet I was unfamiliar with, but it fit another situation, so I passed it on to another friend, who in turn has now passed on a different poem by the same poet back to me – right when it felt necessary and fitting.

I don’t know if it’s just the age or the general uncertainty of the world these days, but I lately note how people I know and love have had trouble moving on from one opportunity to the next – as have I. Newness awaits, but letting go of what’s behind and pressing on to what’s ahead sometimes feels… just too risky. And so, this morning, a little push:

Blessing For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time, it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then, the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out of you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~from To Bless the Space Between Us, John O’Donohue

No longer “willing ourselves on” to this time and place we’ve outgrown, no longer listening to the gray promises of sameness’ safety, it’s time to seek Something Else.

And blessings on us all in this liminal space.

{the incidental unkindnesses of junior high}

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September 5, 2016

6:57 am

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Fantasy Letters I Will Never Send

Soooo, it started with the brilliant National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Gene Luen Yang cartooning about his middle school Glare of Disdain in the NYT, and how it took books to show him that someone else he abused – to make sure he wasn’t the bottom of the social heap – could have worth. And then author Uma Krishnaswami blogged briefly about what she termed “the small, incidental meannesses of childhood.” And now, it’s my turn – with apologies to Joyce Kilmer.

Undeserved

I hope I nevermore shall be
a tool like I was to Ray B. —

A boy whose brown skin and sharp dress,
IMMEDIATELY my class impressed…

(And, junior high became a hell
– Since he was black, like me, as well.)

From that first day we were a pair
– in others’ eyes, I was aware –

To speak to him, I did not deign
– He started acting like a pain…

I was a vicious little pill. The memory, it haunts me still.

Glares of disdain from foolish …me were undeserved by Raymond B.

Ray was a funny, wisecracking annoyance like every other 8th grade boy, and completely innocent of the scheming machinations of the girls who told me if I knew what was good for me, I’d snap him up — and I STILL took my shame and humiliation out on him. It was indefensible, though I know that I was reacting from the position of being one of the only black girl in the class who was deemed “normal” enough to auto-pair with the ONLY black boy in our class. (“Angie” – class valedictorian, was apparently too smart and not cool enough; I, with my more developed person, was often accused of “stealing” boyfriends, so was a threat needing to be neutralized. Gah.) I hated that automatic assumption, the blind, officious hideousness of dropping ‘hints’ that I should Go For It, that it was all Meant To Be, because, obviously, two black kids, we had found our Destiny! UGH. ::shudder:: Still – poor Ray. Sorry, dude. Not your fault.

Do you find the various petty cruelties of childhood still haunt you?

{poetry friday: p7 do the clogyrnach}

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September 2, 2016

4:53 am

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Musings on Extemporanea

the poetry seven

Behold, the clogyrnach [clog-ir-nach], a Welsh measured syllabic verse form containing 32 syllables generally in a 6-line stanza, though often it’s tidier to round up the last syllable to a single, six-syllable line. The first couplet contains eight syllables in each line, with an end rhyme of aa; the second, five, ending with bb; the third, three syllables, one with b, the other goes back to a, to give you aabbba. Apparently, this falls under the Welsh poetic form of awdl (odes), and some have posited that these poems are used mostly for weddings and funerals. Hm. Unfortunately, most of what is said at either is often doggerel, but the Poetry Seven has gracefully wrestled this form out of limerick. Tricia, having already sparred with the syllables last March, carries on with her usual verve. Kelly stylishly ushers us into autumn, while Sara introduces us to the longform. Andi’s been beguiled by the weather, Laura prepared her poem on an airplane (REALLY good use of time which I’ll be borrowing shortly), and Liz has presented pain with the most poignant beauty. Each of these has managed to pull beauty out of a thing which we thought we could not. Sometimes we are really good.

Because these poems are short-ish, I dashed off a good handful before I felt like I could stick the landing, as it were. I find that a clogyrnach really has to be topical, or it wanders, then sputters. Like in haiku, words must be used to their best, incisive advantage. I usually like to use quite descriptive adjectives, but those tend to be multisyllabic, and not a good fit here. So, let’s start with a single syllable – and a poem about a cat. Two friends had to put their seventee-year-old cats to sleep in the last week, the most recent was called upon to do so during inservice at her new school. New town, new job, new apartment- and the loss of the only familiar. It sucks, obviously. Though I’m not a cat person – and this particular smart beast savored this fact by coming directly for me EVERY TIME I SAW HIM – he was quite a decent old chap, and thus should be remembered:

Bogart

He ruled with a black velvet paw
By fiat, enforced tooth and claw.
Imperious eyes!
(Diminutive size…)
Cat, comprised of chutzpah.

Kelvingrove Park Flower 065

All good cats go to Kelvingrove’s garden, and chase voles they never quite catch.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Sometimes working separately on a single document (thanks, Google) has the positive effect of collaboratively growing another person’s poem. We don’t all indulge; some of us work better without seeing the intimidation (or discouragement) of seeing others’ efforts. For me, it was inspiring. I saw Sara’s longform and thought, “Oh, YES. This.” Saving the clogyrnarch from limerick-y sing-songy rhyme is the repetition of stanzas, enjambment, and all the other delicious little tricks which drag meaning deeper into brief lines. As I said before, ideally, a clogyrnach well-written is really topical, and since we’ve been rereading the Iliad and the Odyssey and these wackadoodle Nordic sagas before bed in the past few weeks, they worked themselves right on out of my head (nightmares) and into these lines.

Saga

Unique in lands of ice and fire
Are tales of mortals who aspire
Near to godhood’s heights,
Friend – not acolyte
(In hindsight? This backfires.)

Odin’s single-minded gazing
Leaves to Thor the hammer-raising.
Freyja, feathered thief
Robs a death of grief –
Skilled! In brief — amazing.

While Loki’s larking leads to loss
His Hel’s a tough broad you don’t cross.
(Wolves and snakes!? Just fine,
In a god’s bloodline!)
Heroes, shined to high gloss.

Fate and love twist gods and mortals.
Every tale’s a liar’s portal
Telling each truth slant.
Thus, the gods recant.
Time supplants immortals.

I thought I’d end with the very first clogyrnach I wrote – covering that The Usual Suspects answer to the question of “what’s the worst that could happen?” This is for my Everlasting Worst Case Scenario brain:

Woodlands 4

Imposter Syndrome


“Aw, what’s the worst that could occur?”
Well… they could laugh. Sniff, “Amateur!”
Sneer, “It’s lost the plot…”
“Prose is overwrought!”
Brains: self-taught saboteurs.

Well, if you’re up for more, don’t miss the Poetry Friday roundup at Penny Parker Klostermann’s blog. In the meantime, don’t let your brains get you down, kids. Happy weekend.

{the new year’s resolutions…}

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September 1, 2016

11:01 am

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Author News

*dusts off blog*

Autumn, incoming. Been foggy and chilly in the mornings for most of August, and this morning I opened the first jar of applesauce we canned two weeks ago. Today’s chill and fog, in honor of the battering poor Hawaii is taking, is hardly noticeable, and yet: September. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, the breezes smell of apple peels, etc. September is always the beginning of the year, after sooooo many years of school and teaching. So, happy new year, friends. It’s time to start over, and make new resolutions.

Strawberries on Cake

Summer’s goal was to finish the WIP by today, the official, can’t-really-excuse-it-anymore month when summer ends. Guess what? It’s …kinda finished! But, I’m not in the Cake-With-Rejoicing phase. *checks mood* Nope. Definitely still The Whining Phase, so it’s not time for cake. (Banana bread with whipped cream and a few shavings of chocolate, maybe. Technically, despite my Scottish friends’ snorts to the contrary: banana bread IS NOT CAKE. {LIE: it is BANANA CAKE. Maybe it’s just not time for chocolate cake yet??}) I’m not yet sure the novel says what I want it to say. Secret Agent Man will look it over on the 15th, Tech Boy is reading it now, so I’m holding off saying I totally hate it until then, but…

I might hate it. As usual. The thing is this: I keep trying to write to the well of deeper ideas that I have within me, the well which doesn’t come with a winch and a bucket but just… a cover? A nice little decorative bench seat around it? Some wild flowers? No way to get the water out, in other words. This inarticulateness really bugs me, but the cure for being unable to speak is to keep talking, and talk… louder. And, so I continue.

To that end, I’ve also listened – equally, doubly important. This morning I listened to a round-table discussion on Writing The Other with three writers of color, discussing the importance of practice, of failing, and of not holding minority communities responsible for your wanting to tell their stories. This is important to me – still and always – as a person of color, because my current Kinda Finished Work features a person who is part of the albinism community, and a Latino character. I don’t feel like I necessarily need an empathy-check on writing these characters as human beings, but it’s been empirically shown this year that people of color can still mess up – COLOSSALLY FAIL, even – if they don’t check in with the people whose voices they’re borrowing, so to speak. And so, the plan is to check in… once I get past this mushy, “I think I hate this” spot. Eventually.

(What’s really niggling with me right now is less writing minority experiences ignorantly, but writing, I guess, feminism coherently. There is a metaphor about teen girls as blank canvases that makes my main character kind of an extended metaphor – and she kind of is, but she’s also a character, so she’s kind of is not. Her albinism is being used to underscore that metaphor, but I’m still not sure it works. ANYWAY. Book mechanics!)

Part of my intentional resolutions for this new year is participation – I’d like to go to another writing conference, somewhere, and listen and talk about ideas and writing. Last week, I let out into the light of …social media, if not “day,” the idea I’ve had and written and rewritten for a science fiction novel. I’ve kind of been discouraged by my agent about speculative fiction — on his website, Secret Agent Man flatly states he doesn’t read it and has let me know that the editor with whom I work at Knopf has no experience in it, either. Since “Contemporary YA sells” (Thanks, John Green), the interest in it from my people has been less than faint, and so I’m kind of at sea… but on the other hand, thinking positively, I now have the opportunity to work with new people. I may even use a different configuration of my name, just to keep things straight. I’m determined, especially after listening to people writing under the hashtag #YAWithSoul, that there really does need to be more representation of marginalized groups in science fiction and fantasy. I’ve been fiddling with this novel FOR YEARS and — I’ve decided it’s going to be the next one I work on. I’m hoping it feels riskier than it is.

Vships 19

Finally, there’s a potential move on the horizon – another international relocation. I tend to lose my ability to write in the panic of packing and unpacking. This time, I’m a.) going for less panic (“Well… good luck with that,” Anxiety says, examining her nails), and also intentionally going to carve out some time for my brain — and at least write some poetry or SOMETHING to start processing things sooner. More information on that as it happens.

(And, hopefully, cake. Soon.)

So, those are my new writing thoughts for the new year. What are new year thoughts?