I had fun reading my poetry via zoom through the Well-Versed Words program, hosted by poet Alison Hurwitz. There was time to read quite a few poems from Rooted and Winged, as well as two from Our Wolves and to yak a bit about the poetry. Having to talk about my poetry taught me things about my poetry and my life. Alison is an excellent moderator and offers a reading every month. Check out her website at https://www.alisonhurwitz.com/events.
The video is 48 minutes long (eeks). It has the name of the wonderful moderator, Alison Hurwitz at the beginning, but you are in the correct video. And of course you can skip around if you want to check it out! As for me, no way can I watch it and see myself and listen to my voice hahaha.
My leg has been diagnosed as an inside meniscus tear and arthritis of the kneecap exacerbated by my primary lymphedema. Surgery is a very very last resort because of the lymphedema. Going to see a PA in sports medicine this week. Long waits for actual doctors. I hope to be able to travel because I have plans to see my mother in Michigan this month. I will be traveling with my daughter while the gardener stays home with the kitties. Yes, I’ve booked a wheelchair at the airport! If you’ve read my blog very long you know there is always a new physical problem ;).
A spot of good news. My son got my sewing machine fixed. It’s been broken for about 15 years. I want to use it for journaling, and now I just have to remember how it works. You would think that the granddaughter of the Head Fitter at The 28 Shop (couture at Marshall Field) would be a natural at sewing. But it was my cousin Leah who inherited some of that talent. Sadly, Leah has now been gone for twenty years.
Colleen at Wordcraft poetry suggested this prompt today: to write a shadorma using 3-5 selected words. Syllable count is 3-5-3-3-7-5. I think I used 8 of the words, but I am writing the poem on my iPad in this post so I can’t go over the word list again.
Spring Walk
This spring month,
not yet hot, cloudy
over rocks
and bushes,
I walk with a book and grapes
and wish spring to last.
I hope you enjoyed that, especially knowing how hot it will get here in Arizona by mid-May. I am lying on my back with this iPad because I am resting my legs. For over ten weeks my right leg has been a monster. Saturday I had an MRI, but I’ve had other tests with no diagnosis or idea of what’s wrong. So why did I write about walking? For one thing, it’s a word on the list. But I can and do like to do light walking with the leg issue. But then I have to rest it. And the leg prefers very limited sitting (at the computer).
Serena Agusto-Cox on Savvy Verse & Wit has written a great review for my Red Riding Hood chapbook Our Wolves: https://savvyverseandwit.com/2023/04/our-wolves-by-luanne-castle.html She argues that the poems are not retellings of Red Riding Hood. Read her review to see what she says they are.
Colleen at Wordcraft poetry suggested this prompt today: to write a syllabic poem about what you see out of your window.
The gardener and I were driving on the freeway in western Arizona yesterday, and I saw something unusual: two sheep were picking their way down the mountainside out in the “middle of nowhere.” So I wrote a tanka in the car.
This image at Pexels looks very similar to where I saw the sheep except that they were walking down a fairly steep mountain. And right now the brittlebush is in full bright yellow bloom. At first I thought they were goats because they were so graceful and agile amidst the shrub and rocks. But their large curved horns seem to indicate that they were bighorn sheep (although slender for bighorns).
Colleen at Wordcraft poetry suggested this prompt today: to write in response to this Monet painting of his garden in Giverny. I decided to write a haibun as I had a story to tell.
Not Meant for Humans
The walkway seems to have no beginning, and so I tiptoe through the purple and blue blossoms to reach the rough path, feeling naughty and bold but safe for its proximity to a well-painted building. I circle the garden of Iris, the rainbow herself. Round I go three times and then spy a spot of bone under the willow. The sun ray has moved, so now I can see what I have missed. Or did it just appear? I step closer, into the flowers, careful not to crush the blossoms themselves, aware I might be harming stems. My curiosity draws me in. As I bend toward the ground, I part the plants and see a very small skeleton, as of an excruciatingly tiny human. Her shredded wings are faded with age, but once must have been the blue of Iris with yellow dots like bright and miniature suns. Perhaps she fell from the branch above when she was asleep. I understand now why the path repeats itself, an endless spinning trail, meant as it is for those with wings to fly above the garden and to rest in the shade of the well-nourished trees. Still, being human, I invite you to share in my experience.
Watch for tiny wings
hidden by goddess Iris
and her endless path.
###
I’ve been intrigued by fairies lately. And by the notion of fairy skeletons because, after all, what is left of them after they die?
As you can see from the poem, I also constantly worry over our human enjoyment of and curiosity about nature because we are such destructive creatures, even when we don’t mean to be.
When I first started this blog, near the end of 2012, I posted this blog post. Something Colleen Chesebro wrote reminded me of it, and I thought I would share it again. It’s about memory and how the line can be blurred between fact and fiction in memory.
I have a box of old photographs my grandfather gave me before he died. They are family portraits and snapshots dating from about 1890 to 1920. We sat in his living room and wrote names on the ones he could identify. Dozens of other photographs bear family resemblances, but they remain nameless and can’t assume their positions on the family tree.
My own mind houses memories in the same way. Many of my memories bear a resemblance to my life and my relationships, and while minute details might be clear, the facts are hazy or forgotten, perhaps unrecoverable. A memory illustrated by vivid details and accompanied by still-present emotion began on Trimble Street, in front of the next door neighbor’s house. I was two, almost three.
Mrs. Becker babysat me for my parents that day; she let her girls watch me outside. The day felt sun-warmed, with a slight cooling breeze rustling through my play clothes. The oldest girl, Donna, and a teenage boy were the ringleaders of the group. She wasn’t yet in high school and didn’t have her later characteristic beehive hairdo.
Her younger sisters, Susie and Denise were with us. All the children ringed a brown horse standing in the street looking very out-of-place. From my perspective down near the sidewalk, the horse looked like a city square equestrian statue—massive, gigantic, forbidding. Perhaps the boy had ridden the horse to our street. Donna turned to me, kneeled down to my level, and said, “How would you like to go for a ride?”
I shivered, though the sun shone down on my honey-colored hair. “No,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” said Susie.
“No!” I backed away.
“Honey, there’s no need to be afraid,” Donna said. She scooped me up and plunked me down on the saddle positioned across the back of the horse. From this height I looked down at the tall teenagers, feeling dizzyingly and irrevocably beyond their reach.
“Put me down,” I said.
The teens giggled and chattered. Suddenly I heard a loud SMACK, and the horse bolted forward. I swayed backwards for a moment and then righted myself by grabbing hold of the saddle horn sitting in front of me. The horse trotted up Trimble Street. We left the teens behind, just the determined horse and me. The breeze flew through my flimsy hair. I held onto the horn with every muscle I could harness to the aid of my hands. Both my hands and feet tingled and turned numb. My thoughts condensed into one little pinhole: stop stop stop! I couldn’t tell the horse to stop because the pinhole only allowed that one thought; I was beyond the power of speech.
The horse trotted up to busy Gull Road, a main artery without sidewalks, where he turned right. I expected to fall off his back into the path of an uncaring automobile. I clung on. He carried me swiftly to Henson Street where he took another right, and then onto Junction and back to Trimble Street. My powerful hands, drained of blood, were my only compensation for the utter loss of control I felt.
When he trotted to the front of the Becker house, the horse stopped short. I rocked again and almost tumbled. The teens laughed, and Donna’s friend tried to lift me off the horse, but my hands would not unclamp from the saddle horn. I realized then I had been crying; my cheeks, soaked with tears, seem to burn as if the saltwater seared the tender skin.
I couldn’t speak, not even that night when I saw my parents. All these years later, the details vibrate within me, but I’m missing one fact: I can’t be certain if the horse existed or came to me in a dream.
With my mother and the two younger sisters from next door
The names have been changed to protect people who may or may not have participated in this act of baby abuse.
Are you sure of your memories? Do you have any like this one, where you aren’t sure if it really happened or if you dreamed it? How do you handle a hitch like that in writing creative nonfiction?
Colleen at Wordcraft poetry suggested this prompt today: write a syllabic poem using synonyms for the words green and spring, but do not use those words themselves. I decided to use the form tanka because I am starting to really appreciate that structure.
Rather than a title, a tanka might have a topic. My topic is Arizona seasons.
March in the desert
is verdant, a vernal gem,
budtime under blue
and blossomy without freeze,
Phoenix repeats in the fall.
Vernal and budtime are both synonyms for spring. Verdant is a synonym for green.
In Arizona we tend to have two springs, meaning that some blossoming trees bloom twice a year and that we plant new annuals in both fall and spring. For this reason March and April—and October—are my favorite months in Arizona.
I’ve been wanting to try a cherita, which is 3 stanzas–one line, two lines, three lines. So this is what I came up with.
I can hear the thunder and spray before I see it.
Then it appears before me in its many textures
of wood and stone and the glorious movement of water.
As I stand on the viewing platform overlooking all,
the mist parts from the water, rising up toward
the blue sky, hugging me in its wet embrace.
Then I started to question if a cherita was really syllabic poetry because you don’t count the syllables, so I quickly came up with a haiku to make sure I’m covered!
powerful water
sheeting down to be as one
with its still-wild self
The publisher, Alien Buddha Press, of Our Wolves has created a YouTube playlist of authors reading from their new books. I read four poems from the chapbook. Oh, and if you do check it out, watch for when I say the most UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNIEST thing. Hint: it has to do with whether Antarctica has folk and fairy tales.
On this day 2 of the 2-day release of Our Wolves, I would like to share an interview by journalist Deborah Kalb on her book blog. In this interview, she asks questions that probe the origins of the project, including why I chose Red Riding Hood as my “fractured fairy tale.”
Here’s a photo of the champagne I shared with the gardener yesterday for the launch. Note that he tried to order me yellow gerbera daisies which would have been in the photo, but he called Saturday and the florist had already left for the day. So he owes me flowers.
