Blog Archives

Tolstoy on Love and a Shameless Plug for "Happy Hour" Yoga

2/18/2011

"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love." - Leo Tolstoy

This "quote of the day" from my planner says it all. And simply.

Need a lift at the end of your week? Every Friday from 5:30-6:30 p.m., Kristin Knight, owner of Prairie Yoga in Marshall, hosts "Happy Hour" Yoga--60 minutes of relaxing anusara yoga poses to help you wind down from your week, laugh a little, be silly, and let go of stress. A delicious way to start your weekend.

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Judy Blume Meets Stieg Larsson

2/18/2011

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Rebecca Fjelland Davis will be the keynote speaker at the 7th Annual Creative Writing Contest Awards Ceremony for 3rd - 12th grade winners. The contest is a partnership sponsored by Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative and Southwest Minnesota State University.

Davis is a novelist and Young Adult and children's book author who lives in Good Thunder, Minnesota. She is a serious cyclist and loves to write about her passions: bicycling, dogs, farms, family and friendship.

Her new novel, Chasing AllieCat, came out this February. One reader wrote: "A good read for any age. Judy Blume meets Stieg Larsson." High praise. Click on the book title to view a YouTube video about the book. Then buy your copy.

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Young Writers as Rock Stars

2/16/2011

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How old were you when you started to write poems and stories? Did you ever enter a writing contest? Did you win? Did you get published? How did publication of your writing make you feel?

For the past six years, students in southwest Minnesota from 3rd to 12th grade have submitted their best poems, stories and essays to the Creating Spaces Writing Contest coordinated by the Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative and the English Department at Southwest Minnesota State University.

Tonight I'm part of this year's marathon judging session with a group of SMSU creative writing majors. Fueled by free pizza, the SMSU students pore through thick stacks of writing critiquing the originality, creativity, and quality of this year's entries. Once the folders are narrowed down in this first-tier judging, they'll be passed on to the SMSU creative writing faculty judges.

Each April we host an awards ceremony and reception at SMSU, one of my favorite annual events. A day when young writers become rock stars to their siblings, extended family and friends. They receive medals, shake hands with the published writer who is our keynote speaker. And they go home with a Creating Spaces anthology--their poem, story or essay now in print, their words, their voice moving out into the world.

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Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry

2/15/2011

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Every Saturday morning I read Ted Kooser's poetry column, American Life in Poetry, in our local newspaper, the Marshall Independent. According to their website, "American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture."

Ted Kooser initiated this weekly column when he served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2004-2006, and he has kept it going ever since. It is available free to online websites and blog if you register on their website, so I'll be posting it from time to time. This week's column features Connie Wanek, one of Kooser's favorite poems, and one of mine too.

American Life in Poetry: Column 308
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Connie Wanek is one of my favorite poets. She lives in Duluth and has a keen eye for what goes on around her. Here’s a locked and loaded scene from rural America.

Mysterious Neighbors
Country people rise early
as their distant lights testify.
They don’t hold water in common. Each house
has a personal source, like a bank account,
a stone vault. Some share eggs,
some share expertise,
and some won’t even wave.
A walk for the mail elevates the heart rate.
Last November I saw a woman down the road
walk out to her mailbox dressed in blaze orange
cap to boot, a cautious soul.
Bullets can’t read her No Trespassing sign.
Strange to think they’re in the air
like lead bees with a fatal sting.
Our neighbor across the road sits in his kitchen
with his rifle handy and the window open.
You never know when. Once
he shot a trophy with his barrel resting on the sill.
He’s in his seventies, born here, joined the Navy,
came back. Hard work never hurt a man
until suddenly he was another broken tool.
His silhouette against the dawn
droops as though drought-stricken, each step
deliberate, down the driveway to his black mailbox,
prying it open. Checking a trap.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org),
publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Connie Wanek whose most recent book of poetry is “On
Speaking Terms,” Copper Canyon Press, 2010. Reprinted from New Ohio Review, No. 7, Spring 2010, by
permission of Connie Wanek and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2011 by The Poetry Foundation.
The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the
Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

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Words as Aphrodisiacs -- Love at First Poem

2/14/2011

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When I first met my husband, Jim, he was hard at work on his dream--earning a PhD in English at the University at Notre Dame so he could teach literature. To make ends meet, he also taught legal writing in the ND Law School. I worked as an editor in the ND Publications Office. We crossed paths a couple times on campus, but for me it was not love at first sight. Then one day while we were talking, he found out I loved poetry. A couple days later, he gave me a copy of the poem below, which he eventually published. How could I resist "soothing daily language, / spleenic and fleshy, that sweats and breathes. / . . . giggles like children feigning sleep"?
It was love at first poem. Jim has written many poems since, but this is still one of my favorites.

Do you have favorite stories or poems where words act as aphrodisiacs?

The Retreat
(after teaching legal writing)

I retreat to verse, verses without any
smack of plaintiff, client, or defendant.
I’ve spoken my fill of memos, issues, briefs,
complaints, jurisprudent circumlocutions.
“. . . aforementioned decedent, that Pother
woman, found by defendant deceased beneath
said truck on or about that point in time,
in invitium, without consent or contract. . . .”

So I to verse, soothing daily language,
spleenic and fleshy, that sweats and breathes.
It touches, tints, babbles like common folk,
whispers, giggles like children feigning sleep.

Juridic jargon tries the tongue which forms it
as it meanders along obfuscating.
“. . . supply and furnish us this day and forward,
baked grain foodstuffs, hereinafter called ‘bread’ . . . .”

Caveat emptor; caveat lector.
I retreat to my verse, bland words, blank verse,
and hew of coarser, meaner stuff, some lines.

James A. Zarzana

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Favorite Love Stories

2/13/2011

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In an earlier post, I mentioned that my husband and I are reading aloud together Julia Child's book My Life in France. Last summer we saw the movie Julie & Julia where we learned about Julia's marriage to Paul Child. Reading the book has shed more light on their fascinating and beautiful love story:

"I was lucky to marry Paul. He was a great inspiration, his enthusiasm about wine and food helped to shape my tastes, and his encouragement saw me through discouraging moments. I would never have had my career without Paul Child."

Paul was ten years older than Julia, well traveled, cultured, and an excellent cook. They met in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) during World War II and married in 1946. Julia didn't know how to cook, so she took a bride-to-be cooking course. The first meal she cooked for Paul--brains simmered in red wine--turned out to be a disaster: "Paul laughed it off, and we scrounged up something else that night. But deep down I was annoyed with myself, and I grew more determined than ever to learn how to cook well."

And cook well Julia did. Paul's work took them to France where Julia "fell in love with French cooking and found her 'true calling'." You probably know the rest of the story.

What are your favorite poems, short stories, books (fiction or non-fiction) that deal with love or romance? Your favorite authors?

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Happy Birthday, Honest Abe

2/12/2011

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I've always been proud to be from "The Land of Lincoln," home state of one of the most beloved US presidents. When I was 10, my father and mother packed us six kids into our station wagon, and we tooled down from the Chicago suburbs to Springfield on an Abraham Lincoln pilgrimage. At Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site, we toured the reconstructed village where Lincoln spent his early adulthood. When my husband and I lived in Pennsylvania, we drove through the battlegrounds at Gettysburg, site of Lincoln's famous address. It's fitting that Barack Obama, our first African-American President, spent so much of his professional life in Illinois and considers it his adopted state.

Though he's well-known for his honesty and integrity, Lincoln was a gifted writer and wordsmith. The book, The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: An A-Z Compendium of Quotes from the Most Eloquent of American Presidents, contains many gems, some profound, some funny. Abe on elections: "The ballot is stronger than the bullet." On slavery: "Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." On hypocrisy: "During a debate, Stephen Douglas accused Lincoln of being two faced. 'I leave it to you, my friends,' Lincoln retorted, turning toward his audience, 'if I had two faces, would I be wearing this one?'"

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An Intimate Letter to a Stranger

2/11/2011

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Today is the birthday of novelist and travel writer Pico Iyer, according to The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Here's one of his quotes included on Keillor's website:

"Writing should ... be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent ... and writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger."

Writing a blog really is like writing an intimate letter to a stranger. Some of you reading these postings I already know. Many of you I'll never meet in person. But through technology and the bridge of language we can connect, spark each other's creativity, and support each other on the writing path. Knowing that friends, family and strangers are reading these words has given my writing life a new energy and focus. So thanks for stopping by, for reading, for offering comments on the blog. I need you as readers, and I hope something I offer feeds you as a writer.

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Freedom Tweet

2/10/2011

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"Freedom is a bless that deserves fighting for it." -Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google marketing executive and Egyptian, sent this tweet when he was released by Egyptian authorities after being incarcerated for over a week. Ghonim's heroes include Ghandi and Mark Zuckerberg, 26-year-old founder of Facebook (cnn.com). A New York Times article, "Wired and Shrewd, Young Egyptians Guide Revolt," tells the story of how Ghonim and other young Egyptians harnessed Facebook to spark a revolution that has long been ripening among their people. In an interview with CNN, Ghonim, husband and father of two, with tears streaming down his face, said he was willing to die for freedom. Amazing heart and courage.

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Brian Jacques, Writer of the Redwall Series (1939-2011)

2/9/2011

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When our daughter was in 6th grade, two of her bookworm cousins introduced her to the Redwall series. In one of my favorite childhood pictures of her, she's sitting on a lawn chair under the mountain ash tree in our backyard clutching a Redwall book in her left hand, clearly engrossed in its pages. On the index finger of her other hand perches a sparrow she was nursing back to health at the time. I don't recall how many Redwall books she devoured, but she made a good dent in the series.

The writer of the Redwall series, Brian Jacques, died this past week. One of my creative writing students at Southwest Minnesota State University who told me the sad news said he had the good fortune to meet Jacques at a reading.

Amazon.com offered this tribute on their web site: "We mourn the passing of Brian Jacques, the British author of the popular Redwall series, who died on February 5 at the age of 71. Jacques created his world of woodland creatures for a school for blind, and because of the nature of his audience he made his writing as descriptive as possible. His books, like The Sable Quean, won the hearts of millions of young readers."

The New York Times article about Jacques notes, "Published in more than 20 countries, the Redwall books have sold more than 20 million copies and inspired an animated series, broadcast on PBS in 2001."

Today, as Interim Director of Creative Writing at SMSU, I received a heavy file box of entries for the Creating Spaces Writing Contest for 3rd through 12th grade students in our region, sponsored by the Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative and the Southwest Minnesota State University English Department. Writers like Brian Jacques fire young imaginations and help to create lifelong readers. Among the young writers of poems, stories and essays that our SMSU creative writing students and faculty will be judging, I imagine there are more than a few avid Brian Jacques' fans. And who knows? One of the students entering this contest may be the next Brian Jacques.

Personally, I'm grateful Jacques picked up his pen midlife and that his words hooked a girl who loves all creatures and a tale well told.

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<<Previous

Forward>>

Tolstoy on Love and a Shameless Plug for "Happy Hour" Yoga

Judy Blume Meets Stieg Larsson

Young Writers as Rock Stars

Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry

Words as Aphrodisiacs -- Love at First Poem

Favorite Love Stories

Happy Birthday, Honest Abe

An Intimate Letter to a Stranger

Freedom Tweet

Brian Jacques, Writer of the Redwall Series (1939-2011)

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Categories

Blogroll
Arts Beat
A Year of Being Here
Bearded Vegan
Becky's Blog
Better World Books
Birth Breasts and Beyond
Carrie Etter
Christine Stewart-Nunez
Dana Yost
Heroic Yes! Productions
James A. Zarzana
Landing on Cloudy Water
Nicole Helget
No Ideas But in Things
Story Guru
The Marsco Saga
Write Right