Women on Ash Wednesday

I've been listening to (reading) some strong women's voices this morning, so I thought I'd share a few of them with you on this Ash Wednesday, also the Hump of the Week in the blog, as we sometimes need a little push over that hump of the week to make it through, and it's always good to ponder what is meant by "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," and so on.

So here's a mini-review of Karen J. Weyant's new chapbook, Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt, sometimes a dusty place, just posted at Escape Into Life, with art (there and here) by Casey Weldon.

Here are two poems and a brief meditation on Ash Wednesday by Kristin Berkey-Abbott.

Here are a couple of reviews (by women, one of them me) of chapbooks by women, To the Husband I Have Not Met Yet, by Mary Kathryn Jablonski, reviewed by Mary Ellen Geer, and Saint Monica, by Mary Biddinger (short review in right-hand column), over at Fiddler Crab Review. Wait! Isn't that three Marys?!

A Downton Abbey-esque meditation on maids and ladies, lovely things and sturdy things, at synch-ro-ni-zing.

And a silent message, on listening...from Molly Spencer, on her "wordless Wednesday."

I'll be thinking about all this, and reading Marilynne Robinson's Absence of Mind, over at my mom's house, drying the laundry, as, of course, our dryer broke to celebrate the Hump of the Week.