LIGHT YEAR

The new year has arrived, when many of us take stock and make resolutions to change various aspects of our selves.

 

Light Year, by Gail Collins-Ranadive, asks us to participate in the process of being aware of the natural world and, rather than self-centered choices, to make earth-conscious and season-conscious choices.

"The ancient precept, 'Know thyself,' and the modern

                 precept 'Study nature,' become at last one maxim. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson  

In Light Year, which follows the seasons, Gail Collins-Ranadive asks stimulating questions, taking the reader deeper into their own feelings and attitudes in relation to planet Earth, "to pay attention to the seasonally-changing natural world beyond our ego selves." For each of us, especially writers, these questions become writing prompts.

During this era of climate change and climate crises, Light Year takes us away from feeling despair by giving us a map to action, to being present to Earth in mutually-beneficial ways.

Gail Collins-Ranadive's winning style is gentle and thought-provoking. Light Year is a tender and compassionate invitation to a yearlong journey toward an eco-centered and eco-friendly worldview.

Light Year, by Collins-Ranadive (Wayfarer Books, 2022) is available on Amazon and at wayfarerbooks.org.

The Giving Season

The holidays are all about giving. We give gifts and cards, give love and friendship, give laughter and good times.

Albertos Rios, the poet laureate of Arizona, has a wonderful poem about giving:

WHEN GIVING IS ALL WE HAVE

                                    One river gives 

                                    Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.

We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.

We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it.

We have been wounded by it--

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,

Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,

But we read this book, anyway, over and over again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,

Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.

Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have and I gave you

What I had to give--together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

Copyright 2014 Albertos Rios

in A Small Story About the Sky

Wishing you all the gifts of the season: peace, joy and friendship. 

                                                          

                   

 

THE WOMAN WITH NEWSPAPER SHOES by Penny Perry

My friend, Penny Perry, has a new book! 

The Woman with Newspaper Shoes is an exceptional book of poems by Penny Perry, an eight-time Pushcart nominee.  Set in Southern California, her second collection of poems is at once memoir, cultural and period snapshot and a volume of compelling and grace-filled poems. The 104 poems, all previously published, form a chronicle of struggle, desire, loss and acceptance.

ISBN-13: 978-1-7350556-5-7                        Publisher: Garden Oak Press

LCCN: 2022937588

$15

156 pages

paperback

Valerie Hastings, winner of the 2020 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, said this about The Woman with Newspaper Shoes: "These poems are pure gold. They sing of loss and love, of the dead we carry with us and the living we work to keep alive, of survival, memory, family and, most importantly, the joy of being in the here."

Here is one of the poems from Penny Perry's new book;

THE ORDER OF THINGS

Home from college, she climbs

in the car, squints at my hair.

Her father wants me to look

glamorous like his actress friends.

I wound my hair in sponge rollers

and combed it into a stiff helmet.

I wait for her to tell me

I look stupid. She has always

been my critic-in-residence.

Daughters denigrate their mothers

so they will have the courage

to leave. The order of things.

"I love your hair, Mom," she says.

The car reeks of too sweet hair spray.

Airport palms look like movie trees

on this bright December day.

I streak onto the wrong freeway.

Cars in the next lane zip past.

She sits forward. "We're lost."

Her words anxious puffs of air.

"I want to kill myself. Let's do it together."

She smiles in conspiracy.

"You're not that happy."

Like dove-gray kindling, my fear ignites.

I glance at myself in the car mirror,

a timid woman under a foreign helmet.

She leans against me,

the sweet small weight of her

an arrow in my bow.

I will become a warrior.

I don't know it yet.

Sunglasses hide my wet eyes.

I tell my first lie.

"I know the way home."

    by Penny Perry

IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR

 IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR

When the temperatures cool down and the leaves have fallen, there's a mania that grips many people. Pumpkin spice this and pumpkin spice that. Some folks just can't get enough pumpkin spice.

Myself, I prefer it, as most likely it originally was meant to be, as a spice in pumpkin pie.

Here's a poem for this season:

Pumpkin Spice

As the summer heat abates, maturing into Autumn's chill,

Leaves of green change into gold and red and orange and brown.

Groves of apple trees create a crisp aroma that instills

A sense of changing and of cold, of closing, winding down.

I love the fragrances of Fall, the colors of this time of year,

The flavors and the way it feels, the quiet fading ebb.

The world decreases, woes grow small, the air itself becomes more clear,

And everything appears more real, from stars to spiderwebs.

A whiff of cinnamon and cloves, a breath of ginger and nutmeg:

The taste of Fall is in this spice, warm and rich and sweet,

Mulling wine upon the stove, in the oven baking bread;

Pile whipped cream upon a slice of pumpkin pie and eat.

    by Ester Spurrill-Jones

Ester Spurill-Jones is the author of several books of poems and a manual on how to write poems (available on Amazon). She describes herself as Poet, lover, thinker, human and says of herself: 

"I am not an open book although I wish I could be. A part of me is all you see--the rest is hidden deep inside. 

Words have always been my art. They dance for me and sing for me. They laugh for me and cry for me. That are my paint and brushes. They are my clay."

To see more of Ester's work go to:

https://sites.google.com/view/thewordartist/home

November and the waning of the year

November Night

   by Adelaide Crapsey (1878 - 1914)

Listen...
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

The poem's central image is formed by two elements: the falling leaves and the steps of the ghosts. As in many of Crapsey's poems, she juxtaposes something small and ordinary (such as the leaves) with something large and timeless (here, death). The leaves become a momento mori and the simile that connects them to ghostly footsteps intensifies this.

November Night is in the chinquapin form invented by Adelaide Crapsey.  A cinquain is a five-line poem in which the first line has two syllables; the second, four syllables; the third, six syllables; the fourth, eight syllables and the fifth, and final, line goes back to two syllables.

Adelaide Crapsey's poems (her entire poetic output, less than one hundred poem) often speak of death and dying. Diagnosed with fatal tuberculosis of the lining of the brain in 1911, she began writing cinquains in the same year. These poems reflect her knowledge of her own impending death. The form itself (the gradual increase of syllables from lines one to four, followed by the short final line) is a metaphor for the life of this young woman -- a brief life, cut short.

Crapsey was born and raised in New York. A graduate of Vassar,  she taught briefly until tuberculosis left her bedridden. In addition to her poems, she produced a study of metrics, praised for its clarity. She was 36 when she died.

Here's one more poem by Crapsey:

Release

     by Adelaide Crapsey

With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life.

And lastly, another November cinquain by Adelaide Craipsey:

Niagara

     Seen on a Night in November

How frail, 
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
The moon.

HALLOWEEN

Halloween is my favorite holiday.  

As a little kid, I loved to dress up and pretend I was a different person.

Here I was a princess

and, here, a ballerina. 

(Both costumes were

sown by my grandmother.)

Even as an adult, I love taking on a different persona.

I'm dressed as Snow White

and holding my book,

The Gospel According to 

the Seven Dwarfs.

Here are two Halloween poems:

HALLOWEEN PARTY

We're having a Halloween party at school.

I'm dressed up like Dracula. Man, I look cool!

I dyed my hair black, and cut off my bangs.

I'm wearing a cape and some fake plastic fangs.

I put on some makeup to paint my face white,

like creatures that only come out in the night.

My fingernails, too, are all pointed and red.

I look like I'm recently back from the dead.

Mom drops me off, and I run into school

and suddenly feel like the world's biggest fool.

The other kids stare like I'm some kind of freak-

the Halloween party is not till next week.

       by Kenn Nesbitt

        from his book, 

       When The Teacher Isn't Looking (2005)

 Fie fean I svarte helvete

    by Marsha Segerberg

The clutch on my broom

    is acting up

or maybe it's the carburetor.

    I'm not an expert

but the ride has become

    twitchy and

the backfires are giving me

    a headache.

When I'm crossing the moon

    it's the silhouette

that counts. I can't be looking

    like a drone

from Disneyland. It's dangerous

    out there.

The other night a missile

    went flying by.

I barely snagged it on re-entry but

    my hat blew off.

I had to drop down to pick it up

    and was late

for the gathering and they stirred

    the kettle without me!

Fie faen I svarte helvete!

(I'm told by the author that the title and last line are the worst thing one can say in Norwegian.)

 I want to share an amazing video with you.

It's the late Tony Hoagland speaking about poetic voice.