Birthdays, Snakes, and Bleeding Hearts

Tuesday July 16, 6:08 a.m.

As if three score and ten were not enough, along comes another. I’m not too good with math, but even I can figure out the cap on how many are potentially left to go. Ah, but they are as inevitable as the Bleeding Hearts just outside my office window, just starting to blossom out, and as certain as the hummingbirds that will soon follow to thrust their long bills into the tiny red folds, sipping nectar, wings aflutter.

Birthdays.

This one will be one of the most unusual I’ve ever had. In about an hour I’ll leave to drive to Tuscaloosa to visit my oldest sister, Ann, 88, in the hospital. Now just by my saying 88 you will presume she has difficulty walking around (and she has slowed) and that someone is usually pretty close by in case she needs help. Not if she can help it! Yesterday she decided she would go out to her flower garden and loosen up the soil with a hoe and then push some of the dirt around the base of the hostas she started from one rooted from my house in Prattville in the 80s. I’ve seen her do it a hundred times, so I can see the scene. This part was new: she felt the bite before she saw the head of the Copperhead dart back after his strike.

We only have two other poisonous snakes in Alabama—the rattlesnake and the cottonmouth, if you don’t count the more southern coral snake. Frankly, I’ve never seen a coral snake and I’m not certain I could remember the jingle in time if I did. Red on black, friend of Jack; red on yellow, kill a fellow.

Ellie Bryant inspired the first line of my snaky story “Envenomation” in the Lectorium at Spalding with her comment: “I’m an e-mail slut.” So my first line of this story became “My daddy handles snakes, and my mama is an e-mail slut.” But, you know, now that I’ve remembered this incident, my story begins in humor and ends in tragedy. I remember Lovie and the demise of her Radio. I don’t like the ending of that story this morning. Lovie fares somewhat better because she still has Silas—named after Silas House, the good preacher from the snake-handling church. Still...

My brother-in-law, a doctor, and my consultant on snakebites for the story, assured me last night that a copperhead bite is less dangerous than a rattlesnake bite. He also said that the antivenin has improved some and is not so apt to trigger an allergic reaction now that they use sheep instead of horses—oh, but not to get into that process. It was good, he said, that they were observing her overnight at the hospital.

As unlikely as this snakebite strike was the gift I found on my kitchen counter this morning, a typed sheet of paper. You read that correctly, typed as in typed on the Smith Corona typewriter, borrowed from this same brother-in-law whose dad gave it him to use in college. This typewriter has been sitting at the end of my kitchen table for a week as my grandson Nicholas has typed on thick paper for an art installation.  This is his “creative summer” following his freshman year at Syracuse University in architecture. He hopes to have a complete art show before his return to Syracuse in late August. That familiar sound of striking keys against paper has lulled us to sleep nightly. It calls up my eleventh grade typing class at Montgomery High, and a more recent memory, Jessica pounding out stories on “Murder She Wrote” when our children were young.

My birthday poem.

I read it three times through before crying. Nicholas has been the inspiration for many of my poems, and is the subject of the title poem of my full-length collection. The realization hit home that in poems it is okay to just lay bare our hearts. It is the only place we can do that without seeing our words grow fuzzy and too precious.

He has given me a sweeping overview of the installation-in-progress. It is filled with all the darkness teenagers experience in relationships in a divorce situation, situations that even the adults involved can’t fully understand. He has typed nearly a hundred pages of words this week spilled from the gut and recorded in his notebook over the past year. He is still toying with an arrangement of these words. Always eager to help with ideas, I’ve pointed out to him the light and dark in Bruegel’s print that hangs in my powder room, “The Fight between Carnival and Lent.”

This newest poem, a glorious song beaming from my refrigerator, may be the start of balance for arranging his installation, adding that warm, sunny side of healing.

On Writing a Novel

Don’t talk to me, Edward Albee, about writing a novel. Don’t tell me that each writer has one genre in which he writes best. Don’t tell me that you “committed a novel once.” I won’t hear it. It’s too late. Instead I’m guilty of turning my ear the other way, listening to the provocative lies of those who have PUBLISHED a novel, those who have forgotten all the stinking years it took in a lifetime to concoct that first one, those who have found their voice, those whose characters speak to them with regularity and guide them down the primrose path to the Best Sellers List, or to becoming a faculty member in a brief residency MFA program, or to be introduced as a writer by their unsuspecting-up-to-this-point friends. Those writers are the ones responsible for hiding the truth of the matter from me, but like the dogged stubborn bluebottle fly I am, I’ve learned it on my own: writing a novel is a disease.

Thank goodness, in most cases it’s not terminal. At least not yet. Nor does it seem to be congenital, so maybe my grandchildren will never try it. It is, however, viral. You write a short story. You submit it to workshop. It’s so bad the participants don’t know what to say. So they say, oh, this would make a great novel. You need to write more about this. Or the workshop mentor will say of what you perceive is clearly a literary novel, oh, now this would be a great travel book—a Laverne and Shirley kind of top-down driving into the sunset. Duh. Once you’ve finished extending that short story into a blasted first novel-length thing; and every agent and editor of promise whose name you can choke out of every writer you know tells you what a talented writer you are but; or tells you the plot would be fabu except that; or tells you how sorry they are, duh, that what you’re writing doesn’t fit their list, those lists, those precious, highly sought for lists...

...well let me just say, thanks a lot to the whole lot of you. 

I’m working on the umpteenth revision of the second unpublished novel that has taken so long to compile that people I’ve mentioned have published and died. Or maybe not. I read Germaine Greer’s name in my ms. this week and tried to remember why in the world I included that allusion. Two days later I was eating lunch with my grandchildren who’d been to art camp at Space One Eleven and they wanted to go into What’s on Second, a store of things looking to be re-purposed. Call a spade, a spade: a second-hand store, for heaven’s sake. Each of us found an old book we wanted. The oldest with a year of architecture under his belt from Syracuse chose an old encyclopedia held together by a metal clamp. It was not the intrigue of the clamp but the paper itself that was of interest. He is going to paint over some pages for a collage. The ten-year-old chose a song book, The People’s Choir by E.S. Lorenz, to emulate the older cousin. That one cost me $2. In 1918, the year of its publication, it was a mere $1.25, postage extra. I discovered a paperback by—guess who—yes, some of this process is scary: Germaine Greer. Not that I need any help now getting through menopause. That’s a done deal. But maybe if I read it, just maybe, I thought I might remember the smashing idea I must have had for the plot of the novel when I included her name.

While I’ve been writing this novel, plants have been planted, bloomed, and disappeared entirely—so long ago that I didn’t even remember the name of the milk and wine lilies given to me by my sister until I ran across them in my novel.  The name alone though prompted more: they were lush with blossoms too heavy and sweet to stay upright, but threatened to drip right off the plant. Where were you Edward Albee when I started this novel? Why didn’t you stop me from gushing with your little provocative lines, so clean, so precise in their little jaggling, jarring conversations? Strike out all descriptions. Get rid of adjectives. Absolutely no adverbs. Better to be barren altogether like the spot where the lilies used to grow. Better to forget writing a novel.

I’m feeling a smidge better this morning. Sleep doth indeed knit up the raveled sleeve of care, thank you, William. My daughter reads O. She read me a quote from her latest copy, July 2013. The Best Books of Summer. “By the time I was 14, the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled on it. I replaced the nail with a spike and kept on writing.”

Ah, misery, how you do love company. Thank you, Stephen King. Now, where did I leave off in that revision...?

A Mother's Day Prayer by Reverend Emily Freeman Penfield, Pastor, Woodlawn United Methodist Church

When Associate Pastor Emily Freeman Penfield was leaving Highlands United Methodist Church for her new post as Pastor of Church of the Reconciler, she presented the congregation with a gift--a small booklet of her prayers, Praying Through the Year.  I interviewed Emily last week for  my article about her and her work, "All in a Day's Work," posted now at www.weldbham.com. Her comments to me during that interview about what she always prays for on Mother's Day reminded me of this very poetic and sensitive prayer she had used at HUMC:

May 11, 2008
Mother's Day

Gracious God who dances in our lives and hearts
as Holy Spirit--you are always present, always abundant
and always calling us to yourself. Awaken us this hour to
what can be--encourage us in the vision you have created
for Highlands. We long to be faithful, even in our 
disobedience. We long to be pleasing, even in our 
shallow and selfish moments. We long to give back to 
you, even in our desert and dry seasons. Rain down upon
us, God, like the heavy rains last night. Drench us in your 
dreams and your breath that is life, that is purpose, that
is the very essence of what we are made for.

Today we give thanks for mothers--for our
mothers and for those who have given life and birth to us, 
for those who have cared and nurtured us, for those who
stand by our side and raise us up when we are low--
whether they bore the title MOTHER or not. We ask your
blessed embrace on those who are missing their mothers
today, for those who long to be mothers, and for those
who have no women role models in their lives. The
scriptures say you care for us as a mother hen does her
chicks. We need you, God, and your wings of grace--
sometimes for protection and sometimes to ride high, but
in all things, may what we do, be for you. In the name of 
Christ Jesus we pray. Amen

For more information on Emily's work at Woodlawn UMC and the upcoming fundraiser dinner theatre that will be produced at the church this summer, follow their Facebook page, Woodlawn UMC.
Here are a few shots I snapped around the church:

Stained glass from the original WUMC

Tree of Life in Emily's office

The Reverend Emily Freeman Penfield
Woodlawn United Methodist Church

Martin Luther King, Little Rock High School, diplomas

Apt verse for the desk of a listener

Wall in Cornerstone School cafeteria

Terrolyn, proud of her work--and rightly so!

School garden



To Write (or Not) in Paris

Nine months ago I took a trip and I’m still talking about it. Which is worse--this incessant chatter about my summer semester abroad with Spalding University, or bragging about my grandchildren?  When Mahala Church asked me to be a guest blogger at Lyrical Pens , a blog she shares with Marilyn Johnston, I was flattered, but what would I write about? Easy, peasy: I would write about Paris. Again.

The piece is divided into three parts, and if you’ve already heard more than you can stand about Paris, just skip this one and catch the second part this Friday that is a snapshot of how the Spalding University brief residency workshop actually works—the one I had in Paris in creative nonfiction with Ellie Bryant. (Sorry. Like grandchildren, this experience won’t go away, nor do I wish it to.)

I met both Mahala and Marilyn when we had short stories published in Christmas is a Season! 2008, and Christmas is a Season! 2009, twin anthologies edited by Linda Busby Parker, Excalibur Press.

Check out their archives at Lyrical Pens.

Mahala Church and Marilyn A. Johnston have co-authored the blog Lyrical Pens for five years. Mahala Church, R.N., B.F.A. teaches creative writing for teens and adults through her Barefoot Writing Academy. An award-winning, freelance editor and writer, she is the published author of short stories, personal essays, chapter in writing textbook, online and hard copy articles, ad copy, encyclopedic pieces, book reviews, newsletters, and press releases. She is the published editor of four anthologies, online and hard copy articles, blogs, websites, business documents, and marketing copy.

cj petterson (the pen name for Marilyn Johnston) is the author of DEADLY STAR, a suspense romance released in 2013. cj is an award-winning writer and poet whose work has been published in numerous anthologies and on-line.

            http://www.lyricalpens.com

No experience is wasted for the writer who puts on her readers and fixates on Nabokov’s “divine details.”  This summer I’ll be spending two weeks on the road in the wild, wild west. While Tommy tries to spot a grizzly that can outrun a buffalo (he saw that once already,) and re-lives all gunfights and  shootemup tourist spots, I’m going to put Paris behind me as we ride off under wide skies on an endless yardstick of a road headed into the sunset. YOLO. Hi-yo, Silver.

Poets, please sign in and receive a standing ovation...

Since April is National Poetry Month, tell me, dear readers, who is the Poet Laureate of the United States? M-m-m-mmmmm. Thought so. Don’t be abashed.  Here’s another one: who is the Poet Laureate of Alabama? If you mentioned the names of Natasha Trethewey and Andrew Glaze, then I O U a cinquain on the subject of your choice by the end of the month. And if you can name Phillip Levine and Sue Brannon Walker as their successors, I will simply faint in surprise with a case of the “vapors.”

Confession: most everything I know about poets laureate I learned after my first college degree. It’s the kind of thing you know about as a teacher of English. But I’ve also been privileged to get to know several individuals rather well. Our tradition in the United States hinges on the pleasure of the Librarian of the Library of Congress. From 1937-1986, a slew of poets served either one or two-year terms as Consultants in Poetry. In 1985 the name was changed to Poet Laureate Consultants in Poetry. The term runs from October to May and a poet may be asked to serve more than one term. Newly appointed Natasha Trethewey is initiating a first: she will make herself available to visitors at the Library of Congress.

The method of selection for states varies. Greg Pape was the Poet Laureate of Montana 2007-2009. I studied with him in the first workshop for poetry in the MFA in Writing program at Spalding. Since then I have been reading and learning from his poetry, those keen observations reflecting the landscape of wherever he happens to be, particularly the wildlife and birds. My landscapes in Alabama were quite different from Greg’s in Fresno and Bitteroot, but he also wrote a poem “Trains: Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Spring, 1983” in which he remembers his first train ride from Fresno to L.A. I learned from his various examples that I could write about what affected me, my own deck and screened porch as well as that of my own backyard birds coupled with a brilliant Indigo Bunting just passing through Birmingham in the spring after his long flight from South America.

Sena Jeter Naslund was the 2005-2006 Poet Laureate of Kentucky. She says she is known in Kentucky as “the fiction-writing Poet Laureate.” The guidelines for that position state the “the word poet in the position title is interpreted in it broadest sense to include person where accomplishments are in any of the recognized literary forms.” Naslund has published four major novels and when I caught up with her for this article was about to make a quick trip to Paris. Her novel-in-progress, THE FOUNTAIN OF ST. JAMES COURT, is set partly in Louisville and partly in Paris in the house where she lived and wrote the first national bestseller, AHAB’S WIFE, THE STARGAZER, on St. James Court.

“There’s nothing I didn’t love about being Poet Laureate. I’ve traveled from one end of Kentucky to the other, from Paducah on the Missississippi River to Pine Mountain in the Appalachian Mountains. Many people have a book or poems inside them. I was honored to be able to encourage them to try their own hand at writing and to talk about how reading enriches our entire lives.”

Robert Penn Warren was Naslund’s favorite Poet Laureate of the United States. “His college textbooks with Cleanth Brooks, about how to read literature—that is with an understanding of how its artistry works—influenced my education and my life. When I learned how to analyze a poem in freshman composition at Birmingham-Southern College, taught by the dean, Dr. Cecil Abernethy, I learned how to use my mind in an entirely new way. Now I could think for myself, not just understand what others explained.”

A native of Birmingham, Naslund teaches and writes in Louisville, but she never forgets where home is. “I do want to say how grateful I am to have received one of the Alabama Governor’s Awards in the Arts, for 2011, and for having been honored with the Harper Lee Award. Born and bred in Alabama, it’s always a joy to come home.”

 Of the ten Poets Laureate Alabama has had since the State Legislature passed a bill initiating the process, four have been female. Of those I’m pleased to say that three have been personal friends. Helen Norris and I became fast friends in the 80s when I lived in Prattville and she lived in Montgomery. Even her prose is poetic. In fact, I would say it is equally as poetic as her poetry and there’s a reason for that. Many of the poems published by John Curbow in her two books of poetry were “outtakes” from her short stories, edited out to hone the stories into what I consider her finest genre, the short story. Her work and her life have influenced me so much that I chose her writing as the topic for my critical thesis for the MFA.

Helen Blackshear who preceded Helen Norris as Poet Laureate was the other half of the two Helen’s. If Helen Norris is known for her short stories, Helen Blackshear is known for the sonnet form, and her stories of the early history of Alabama. That and, in loving laughter, her legendary bad driving.  Everybody was afraid to ride with her and after a car trip with her from Prattville to Tuscaloosa once, I understood why. I was a ready audience for her stories although I breathed a sigh of relief on our safe arrival because the steering wheel often went the way of her head as she looked at me and talked. 

I can’t remember my first meeting with Sue Brannan Walker, Alabama’s Poet Laureate, 2004-2012, but I knew her before I met her. Every writer in Alabama was aware of her literary magazine Negative Capability, and we all wanted her to choose our poems for publication. As recently as last summer I participated in a workshop where she handed us a sheet of a dozen or more ideas of ways to start a poem. This is one person who won’t let Writer’s Block even get a little toe through the door, much less a foot.

Two projects she initiated as Poet Laureate are memorable: an anthology and a web site for poets. J. William Chambers joined her for the first one as Co-editor. Another generous-spirited woman, Walker beat the proverbial bushes for poets and their best work. I think it would be safe to say that Walker and Chambers have published poems that may be the only poem ever written by that individual. Somehow to me that is important, historic, even. For after all, isn’t poetry first and foremost an attempt to express the deepest emotions, to voice the unvoiceable? Some are not poems that would gain critical superlatives. But, so what? As Poet Laureate of the people of Alabama, Sue Brannan Walker made a valiant effort to record Alabama’s poetry, if sometimes warts and all.

The second thing Walker did is to provide an online literary salon of sorts where poets can converse on things poetic, can post poems and ask for critiques, or, if needed, can just rant about one subject or another. Participants are grateful to Walker for this rare opportunity.

I salute all poets this month, especially Andrew Glaze, our newest poet laureate. I enjoyed a visit with him and his wife, Adriana, a few weeks ago. View the resulting profile of Glaze in the current hard copy edition of WELD and at www.weldbham.com.