Monthly Archives: January 2022
The Origin of Poetry, According to Me
Where did the poems come from? What I mean is, how did I come to be a poet? The beginning goes back to infancy.
It all started in my little bedroom on Trimble Street. We moved there before my first birthday, and we didn’t move away until I was 8 1/2, mid-way through 3rd grade. Some of my earliest memories are in that bedroom–in fact, in my crib in that bedroom. I would have been younger than two.
I had a little blue music box that my mother would wind up and play before she put me down for a nap or bedtime. When it wound down, sometimes I would fall asleep. More often, though, I would call to her and beg her to rewind it. The music was haunting and dare I say addictive! Two years ago I wrote about the music box, which I still have, and asked if anyone could identify the song it plays. Nobody could at that time, but the other day a reader found the post and told me that the music is “La Paloma,” composed in 1863 by a Spanish Basque man named Sebastian Yradier. It might be the most well-known tune in Spanish-language countries, especially Mexico!
Here is “La Paloma” (the Dove) as played by a fancier antique music box.
And here it is played as a guitar solo:
Here is my little music box:
Hearing that music over and over again was the foundation for poetry. The next layer, added over the few years before I began school, was nursery rhymes, folk songs, and picture books that used poetic devices such as rhyme and repetition. These were all found in my room. The books were not expensive–merely Little Golden Books from the grocery store. The records were little 45s played on my plastic children’s record player. Probably the biggest influence after that music box tune was the lullaby lyrics in a picture book my mother read to me: “All The Pretty Little Horses.”
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby.
When you wake, you shall have,
All the pretty little horses.Blacks and bays, dapples and greys,
Go to sleepy you little baby,Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby.
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby,
When you wake, you shall have,
All the pretty little horses.
There were layers after this that included a children’s poetry anthology my mother gave me, teachers who let us recite poems without analyzing them, and eventually I discovered Edna St. Vincent Millay reading her poetry on a record which I found as a teen at the public library. I was mesmerized by the poem “Renascence.” Here is a recording of the poem she wrote at age 19!!!! although, alas, not recorded by Millay. I sure wish I had that library record as Millay reading it herself was phenomenal.
I know that poet XJ Kennedy wrote the following:
Ars Poetica
The goose that laid the golden egg
Died looking up its crotch
To find out how its sphincter worked.
Would you lay well? Don’t watch.
Nevertheless, now that it’s come to me what the greatest influences were in making me a poet, I can’t “unknow” them.
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I’ve put my memoir on the back burner again, but feel I am so much closer with it. Now I am writing a poetry chapbook that explores the “Red Riding Hood” stories.
Did you hear or read fairy tales when you were a child (besides Disney)? If so, which ones influenced you the most?
Filed under #amreading, #AmWriting, #poetrycommunity, #writerlife, #writerslife, Inspiration, Poetry, Poetry book, Poetry Collection
The Case of Alice Sebold
I’ve been dwelling on the case of Alice Sebold (author of the beautiful novel The Lovely Bones) and the trial of her accused rapist. I wrote about her memoir Lucky here: [P]lucky to Survive The book was structured in essentially two parts. Part one is about Sebold’s rape as a college sophomore and her resulting trauma. Part two is about the rape trial. When I wrote my earlier post I latched onto the opening rape scene because I was reading memoirs with the eye of a writer who wanted to write a memoir. I ignored the rest of the book. A reason, though, was that I felt confused by the book and also found the trial section icky, but I failed to analyze it enough.
Now, it turns out, the man she had identified as her rapist is innocent. Talk about gobsmacked. Anthony Broadwater, the man who went to prison and has now been exonerated, seems to have suffered because he was a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can read about Sebold’s apology here: Alice Sebold Apologizes
I have some thoughts about this matter. My heart goes out to Anthony Broadwater for the ruination of his life and his reputation. I can’t even imagine what his life has been like or how it felt every day knowing he didn’t deserve what was happening. In articles, he sounds like a very balanced, kind man. Can you even imagine what he went through all this time? It seems just BEYOND.
Another aspect is that a lot of writers and others have been quick to condemn Sebold. But remember she went through a horrific and terrorizing experience where she thought she would die and was never given proper support afterward. She was young and the rape must have damaged her emotionally. Then she had only the police and prosecutor to rely on. They were hell-bent on getting a conviction and manipulated the situation. She must have been like putty for their purposes.
To me, this is one of those horrific tragedies that happen in life where so many issues converge. There are innocents, like Broadwater, and bad actors, like the prosecution. Then there is Sebold, a victim of a horrible tragedy herself. Is she guilty of a travesty against Broadwater? Or is she being victimized all over again by people who were quick to denounce her?
When Sebold saw Broadwater on the street and thought he was the rapist, she was operating under a problem that everyone in the world operates under. Cross-racial identification is known to be very problematic. At least, we know that today. That wasn’t the case in 1982. I’m not sure how to solve this, but it needs solving so that we can trust identification of criminals. I do understand the phenomenon, though. We see the details that identify individuals more clearly in people we are most used to seeing. So if we come from a white family, we are best at identifying white individuals, etc. I think we can all get better at this, but it takes being around people of all races! So is Sebold responsible for pointing out the wrong man or a victim of a natural phenomenon? Both?
Ugh, I hate situations like this. It’s so much easier when there are clear bad guys and good guys. Please help me organize my thoughts on this matter. What do you think?
What is clear to me is that a grave injustice was done to Anthony Broadwater. And all of us who read Sebold’s memoir were made complicit in it.
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I made my first mini junk journal last week. The video is a minute and a half and shows all the pages inside the journal, if you’re interested. The project was to put my “stamp” of authenticity on it. I feel like I did that.
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I will leave you with Perry to start your week. By the way, you know what my mother said the other day? That Perry looks like a rat!!! What kind of Grandma says that?! Sigh. More like a ferret or possum? In the following 6 second video, Perry learns that in the “Mouse for Cats” video game when he catches a mouse it squeaks.
NOW you will have a good week!
Filed under #amreading, #writerlife, #writerslife, #writingcommunity, Book Review, Memoir, Writing
70s Fashion Skirt
I’ve been remembering wrap-around skirts. If you’re from my era, you probably remember them. They were large circles of cloth, open on one side. You wrapped the cloth around yourself and tied, buttoned, or buckled it at the waist. The overlap was in the back, so you had to keep smoothing the back of the skirt to make sure part of it wasn’t stuck up on the cloth underneath. If you don’t know what I mean and do a google search you will find a lot of skirts that end in the front, but I remember around 1970 ours were always ending in the back, like in this image.
These skirts were very easy to sew because you didn’t have to worry about fit. But they did tend to accentuate what we called a stick-out butt, which I had. I sure hated that feature, never knowing it would come into fashion when I no longer had it hahaha.
I am planning to make my daughter a junk journal for her wedding. I haven’t made a bound journal before, so I experimented by making a bound version to use for my regular arty junk journaling. I took an old adolescent lit textbook (I used to teach it to college students who were in the secondary ed program) and took out the “signatures” inside. Signatures are groups of sheets folded in half that are put into the binding as a unit. Each book is comprised of several signatures. Then I decorated the cover with old fabrics from my teen years, buttons from Grandma’s collection, and some doodads I found. I created three signatures of about 7 folded pages and bound these signatures into the cover.
For the wedding journal I got the idea of knitting a cover for it, and Marie Bailey at 1WriteWay gave me a lot of help. I haven’t knitted since I made a basketweave baby blanket for my son ahemahem years ago!
Make it a good, safe, productive, and peaceful week!
Filed under art journaling, History, Vintage American culture
“The Gamemaster and the Reluctant Daughter” Published by Rind Literary Magazine
The editors at Rind Literary Magazine have published my creative nonfiction piece, “The Gamemaster and the Reluctant Daughter,” in the new issue, #15. You can find it, beginning on page 33, here:
RIND: AN ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE, ISSUE 15
I hope you enjoy the story. Again, it relates very closely to the memoir I am working on.
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Our bobcat, as seen through the window.
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My positive hopeful plans for 2022 include making my daughter a wedding junk journal, which she’s excited about. I am collecting pretty little scraps and ephemera for that. Then I joined the Ugly Art Club, and I’ll see how that goes. Also, I want to study drawing faces a bit. And I need to get the publisher all the pieces for the poetry book. I really need my headshots retaken. I don’t like the last ones, except the accidental one of me holding Perry. (Should I just use that?) And, finally, I will be attending a special workshop at the Tucson Festival of Books for my memoir. I’m working on a collection of Red Riding Hood poems. So we’ll see how the year goes. Lots of plans. We’ll see what God has in store for me heh.
What are you planning for yourself this new year? Go get 2022!!!!
