Weekend Updates

At the end of my last blog entry, I planned to wipe down the chalkboard. Accomplished! It's ready for tomorrow's short poem. And I actually sent off that submission to The New Yorker. Wish me luck. In the meantime, I got a check in the mail--very rare!--for poems soon to come out in December Magazine, and I proofed a poem soon to come out in Image. From a lot of nothing, to a lot of something!

And tonight I'm coming up on the third book group in the week of three. Two were/are in friends' homes, so lovely, and one was in the wine bar. Excellent. I had two glasses of wine before the others revealed they were, for various reasons, drinking non-alcoholic beer. I believe I remained coherent. The next book up in that group is This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, by Daniel J. Levitin, so that will be my June challenge book, and I am reading Candy House now, because I am humanly obsessed with fiction.

My wild columbine plants are all blooming, and lily of the valley. The iris have begun. My neighbor's lilac makes everything so sweet. I have volunteer honeysuckle in the front where it's hard to get things to grow, so I am leaving it there. The purple smokebush is deep in leaf, and blue bugleweed is marching out into the yard.

Candy House

Looking ahead to the June adult reading theme at the library (music, musicians) and looking back at my candy lament, I have picked the next novel to read, The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan, right after How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig, which I picked up this morning, directly after finishing Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, by Jia Tolentino. Yes, I may get temporarily attached to Jelly Bellies, but I am permanently attached to books. Fortunately, all of these are library books, and I don't have to try to fit them into my house. (Or my jelly belly.)

I got to meet Angela Jackson, Poet Laureate of Illinois, at the library. She mesmerized our audience, and pulled in browsers, including children and their parents. A wonderful afternoon, and big thanks to Candace Summers of the McLean County Museum of History and Illinois Humanities for making the Normal Public Library the venue for this event!

My chalkboard poems alternate now between humor and sad nostalgia with images from the natural world, spring blooming all around, and a subtext of the long goodbye. Last night, a woman asked if I was still writing poems and if I had ever been in the New Yorker, which reminded me of a fairly recent personal rejection from the New Yorker asking to see more, and my inaction upon that. Uh oh. "I want to see you in print," the woman said, and I realized again how few people, even those who love me, know that I am very often in print, or in online magazines, and have several chapbooks out there in the world. But I do feel loved and appreciated, especially for the chalkboard poems, which are short and connect to people's lives. I love those people back.

I was lonely yesterday evening and texted my daughter to see if it was OK to call. It was. She had seen the May 5 poem on Instagram and understood. Everything constant is slipping away, proving it wasn't...and proving nothing at all...or only that change and the now are what we have, which I know from 1) reading and 2) living, but it is still hard to learn each time I learn it. And glorious. And sweet. We went to hear stories last night in the same arts center where my husband is showing recent paintings. Today I will attend a memorial service there for a journalist who had been slipping away for several years, and is now gone. At another event, my dad will be receiving an award for a lifetime of work in academic theatre. It's all 1) life itself 2) wonderful. Why am I sad, in this lingering, blossoms snowing down kind of way?

And next week, starting Sunday, tomorrow, is the week of three book clubs: discussing Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt, the Tolentino book (in a wine bar!), and The Four Winds, by Kristin Hannah, a book about the Dust Bowl, our reading timed perfectly to recent dust storms here in the Midwest, causing car crashes and highway closings just down the road. As in the 1930s, the cause and cure were agricultural practices, which need to better suit the environment and climate realities. A "cover crop" between the agribusiness plantings would help.

I am very busy, ticking things off my to-do list, and still I find time to read, but not to send another submission to the New Yorker. It's not fear of rejection--I am very used to that--but it might be avoidance of a certain kind of expenditure of energy. I am meeting many deadlines, and even cleared off one of my desktops. Today, even though I proclaim it a Slattern Day in the blog, I might even do some dusting. Or wipe down the chalkboard.

Food at Work

I am not going to blame the food at work for the extra pounds I have acquired this particular winter. Nor the prolonged winter, the coldish winterlike spring, relieved by a week of summer in the middle of April. I am only going to blame ME, for eating all the Jelly Bellies, plus some chocolate, around Easter, and lots of yummy food at work during National Library Week and at the library in general, where we are loved and receive many treats. And wine drinking on my own, when family visited recently for the opening of an art exhibit by my hubby!! It's been a good and busy and hectic month. And it's no longer that month. April. Now, somehow, it is May!! The sun was shining today, the sky was blue, but the chill was still in the air. Tomorrow, perhaps, I can resume walking to work, that is, walking off the jelly beans.

I did write a poem a day in April, plus a tiny poem a day on my black chalkboard. Plus some Lenten writing, that was often a poem, during Lent. I guess I am still writing the chalkboard poems on into May, thanks to people wanting them! And a poem, "Slippage," came out in Quartet, an online journal I have been admiring for a long time! Click here to see the fabulous cover art and here to see the current issue, with poems, interview, book review, etc.! April also held Poetry Sunday at my church, where people get up and read favorite poems aloud and say why they love them!And now it's May, it's May, the lusty month of May!

Books & Bookmarks

Sometimes, just to give a little order to the ongoing chaos, I like to align the colors of my books-in-progress and their bookmarks. I just finished Dear Ann, by Bobbie Ann Mason, a sort of rewriting one's personal history through the imagination kind of novel. When I took a picture of it with my phone next to the Reveal the Teal bookmark, I learned how to use QR codes. 

Now I'm reading Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan, with a hand-made bookmark from a friend who understands my relentless book-acquisition habits. Her clever bookmarks for members of our book club show what would be on our t-shirts! Mine says, "One does not stop buying books beause there is no more shelf space." So true. But at least my book buying is affordable (ongoing library used book sale) and often includes book donating at the end! 

My kids were just here, doing another round of getting rid of stuff (recycling, donating, or tossing games, puzzles, clothes, shoes, memorabilia, past school/art work), and they almost sold a loft bed contraption with bookshelves in it that would have disrupted my world! Fortunately, I have a little time...

During their stay, I stopped writing & posting my chalkboard poems. But (by getting up earlier than my kids) I kept writing a poem a day for National Poetry Month. As the poems continue to roll out, the rejections continue to dribble in. Likewise, the weather--a glorious week of warmth and sunshine while they were here, and now a return to chilly, wet weather with dribbling rain. Up so early to take our son to the airport, and now sadness will descend.

My nonfiction reading, slow going due to its devastating topic, is Still Life With Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains, by Alexa Hagerty, automatically renewed via interlibrary loan. Its bookmark is wisdom by Confucious: "Respect others and others will respect you." Hope that's true!

Being Human

Being human, I am still doing plenty of escape reading and eating lots of jelly beans. It's Good Friday. I worked, attended a medical appointment with my mom, and then our church Green Team in our new Green Team t-shirts helped the Ecology Action Center prep about 700 trees for planting. I got to tie a yellow ribbon round a lot of black walnut tree starts, orange ribbons around many hickory starts, and pink ribbons around another variety. Our little ribbons were as colorful as jelly beans! There was also mud and moss.

I loved The Humans, by Matt Haig. I read the nose cover and also enjoy the dog cover! An alien from outer space visits the icky humans on earth to thwart their mathematical advancement because of their general greed and aggression...but learns a few things. The dog helps.

Poetry keeps pouring out of me, onto a chalkboard and a computer screen and into a composition notebook. (Meanwhile, rejections.) I've been doing both poetry and prose in a Lenten workshop online that's about to end, and I provide prompts and poems for another online workshop every April. There's a great sense of camaraderie in both these workshops, for which I am grateful. Now my kids are coming home for Easter, so 1) some of the poetry may pause 2) I must not eat all the jelly beans!!