Whimsy-Colored Glasses

Today is a busy Fat Tuesday in the blog: exercise class, ekphrasis class, housecleaning, hosting of book group tonight. So, mainly, I will link you to an interview in Adanna Journal, where I talk about poetry, seriously but through the lenses of my whimsy-colored glasses.

Roughly the rosy, pinky, orange of this morning's sunrise.

By whimsy, I mean you'll find the occasional musical-comedy lyric + my kids rolling their eyes. By "seriously" I mean, I do try to answer the real questions about poetry, poetry process, avoiding sentimentality, and being all that you can be in the army of women writers in the world. And, as the genie reminds Aladdin when he's trying to  talk to Jasmine ("Bee yourself," in the guise of a bee), I try to bee myself.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

--Emily Dickinson

Stoic Kindness

Yesterday my mom brought the new issue of Poetry East to our Sunday afternoon poetry workshop. It's the Fall 2011 issue, Numbers 71, 72, & 73, containing art by Odilon Redon, and writing by George Herbert and Nathaniel Hawthorne, along with a whole bunch of contemporary poets, including my mom!

Her poem, "Tact," by Margaret Kirk, is on page 103. It was inspired by an incident in the McLean Museum of History, but it is the kind of thing any of us might have witnessed somewhere or had to handle ourselves, which, as my mom puts it, takes "stoic kindness."

She is my poetry "student" now, but I first learned about poetry from her, not to mention everything I know about stoic kindness. Thanks, Mom! And congratulations!

An extra delight is that a poem by Patricia McMillen, "Running Wild," is a couple pages away, and there's this poetry friend from Chicago running wild as a child (and a horse) in her front yard and in her imagination, becoming "a whole herd."

Further on, the poignant "Too Late," by Barry Silesky, a poetry friend and mentor. I learned about prose poetry from Barry. Favorites Michael Hettich and Lee Rossi are in there. Oh, and many more. I've only had the issue a few hours! There's a lot in it.

And my mom!

And that's my mom at Heartland Theatre, looking stoically kind in the play Eleemosynary, which means benevolence.

Going to Heaven

Today I was smacked in the head and chest by Emily Dickinson's poem on The Writer's Almanac, titled there as "Going to Heaven." Don't ever think she's sappy. She isn't. Wait till you get to stanza three.

Likewise, smacked by a quotation from Anton Chekhov, who had been praised in a letter that also challenged him to take his writing more seriously. "Your letter struck me like lightning. I became very emotional upon opening it. I nearly cried. I understand now that if I have a gift, I should honor it, which I have not always done in the past." I nearly cried, too, on reading this! Again, not sappy. Serious! Takes courage to do that. And, the Almanac reports, as he became more monetarily successful as a writer, he kept up his doctoring, providing free medical care to the poor. I like that guy.

To make it a Random Coinciday as well as a Poetry Someday in the blog, I was just discussing an excellent production of Three Sisters with an actor last night, in the green room of a Gala event for the McLean County Chamber of Commerce. Yes, a glorious combination of business people and creative people; sometimes the twain shall meet! (And, no doubt, great businesses have plenty of creativity; and great artists, even those without good business sense, figure out how to get the job done!)

RE: Gala. Actors recreated business people from McLean County's past for the business people of McLean County's present, who were receiving the annual Chamber of Commerce Awards. Ruth Steele, who appeared in the wonderful Mitsubishi commercial that made Normal, Illinois famous, was there to speak, and great fun was had by all. I was glad to be a part of it and to join the business community for cordials in the after party.

RE: Three Sisters. A marvelous collaboration of the MFA program at Illinois State University and Heartland Theatre, where the play was performed, directed by Sandi Zielinski. The production itself was both moving and funny, as Chekhov should be, but I was also powerfully moved between acts, as the actors, in character, rolled up rugs and moved furniture to change the scenes. It was part of the change of household going on in the play. Terrific!

Yesterday, I left the house at 11:15 a.m. and returned at 11:15 p.m.--yep, actors work hard. So it was not a Slattern Day. Hence, today is not a church day but a work day: all the laundry, all the dishes, a chicken soup to prepare, plus two poetry class preps. Does this mean I am not going to heaven? (Or that I am!)

Into Adieu

Google this morning has the animated image of a cow lowing at a giant snowflake, and, indeed, we woke up here to more snow.

(This giant micro-snowflake is thanks to Michael/artgeek via Wikipedia.)

And sometime yesterday a loop of Shakespearean punning began to play in my head:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

I've been told that "solid flesh" can be interpreted as a pun on "sullied flesh," since it can be heard as such, and Hamlet's soliloquy was heard by its audiences, not read, at that time, and because it fits his own feelings of being sullied by recent events (his mother's quick re-marriage to his uncle after his father's death in suspicious circumstances that turn out to be murder) and his own despair.

"Sullied flesh" seems an appropriate pun to pursue on Slattern Day in the blog.

Likewise, "a dew" can resonate as "adieu," since Hamlet is contemplating a farewell to the earth.

O, that this too too recent snow would melt
Thaw, and resolve itself into adieu.

Flexible Folk

Happy 20 years of Acousticity to this guy, Bruce Bergethon, whose "flexible folk" program is on WGLT (and has been for 20 years...!)

He's also the producer of Poetry Radio, co-hosted by Kirstin Hotelling Zona, where you can listen to poets read their own poems or favorites by others, accompanied by snippets of music, on the radio or via podcast!

I just spent the morning taping some poems with him, including some from the forthcoming Nocturnes! 

Bruce is the guy who introduced me, via his Sunday night program, to the CD Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns, by playing the thrilling "Jamie, Come Try Me." It's one of my 3 favorites on the survey you take on this Acousticity page (refesh if it doesn't show up on the first try). You could win a guitar pick.