Category: - Marianne Murphy Zarzana

AARP Driver Safety Program & Travel Writing

3/5/2011

Today my husband Jim and I spent our Saturday morning and afternoon taking an AARP Driver Safety Course at our local Adult Community Center here in Marshall. Why? Probably for the same reason as the other 25 people there: to get a 10% discount on our car insurance. You can take the course online, but we figured we'd go together and get it done in one chunk. Besides saving money, I was surprised to take away another bonus from the day--a trunkload of images and ideas for my travel writing.

Although my favorite genre is poetry, I love writing non-fiction as well. In grad school at Minnesota State University, Mankato, I took a great non-fiction writing workshop from award-winning writer Richard Terrill. Then a couple summers ago I took a wonderful class on literary travel writing from Lon Otto at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. For that class we read Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, billed on the book cover as "a classic tale from one of the world's best-loved travel writers." We also got to pick a book to read for the class, and I chose Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. After focusing on my poetry writing, it's been freeing to have a more expansive canvas such as non-fiction.

Who are some of your favorite travel writers? What are your favorite travel books?

The Chain Letter of the Soul - by Bill Holm

3/4/2011

In addition to receiving daily emails of The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, you can subscribe to Writer's Almanac Extra, a monthly email newsletter. Here's what Keillor wrote in this month's Writer's Almanac Extra about Bill Holm, a former professor at Southwest Minnesota State University:

"Bill Holm was a great man and unlike most great men he really looked like one. Six-foot-eight, big frame, and a big white beard and a shock of white hair, a booming voice, so he loomed over you like a prophet and a preacher, which is what he was. He was an only child, adored by his mother, and she protected him from bullies, and he grew up free to follow his own bent and become the sage of Minneota, a colleague of Whitman though born a hundred years too late, a champion of Mozart and Bach, playing his harpsichord on summer nights, telling stories about the Icelanders, and thundering about how the young have lost their way and abandoned learning and culture in favor of grease and noise.

"He thundered with the best of them though he had a gentle heart. He was an English prof who really loved literature, and he could buttonhole you and tell you he'd just finished reading Dickens again and how wonderful it was. He got himself into print pretty well, and anyone picking up his Windows of Brimnes or The Music of Failure or The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth will get the real Holm." — Garrison Keillor

Christine Stewart-Nunez to Read at SMSU, Thurs., March 3, 7 p.m., CH 201

3/2/2011

Christine Stewart-Nunez will be reading from her new book of poetry, Keeping Them Alive, at Southwest Minnesota State University, tomorrow, Thursday, March 3 at 7 p.m., in CH 201. I love the "voluptous rapture," as poet Lee Ann Roripaugh describes it, that Christine captures in this praise poem about pregnancy.

In Praise of a Pregnant Body

Some women count calories, step on the altar
of weight each week, mourn the loss of waist--
jeans too tight to button, I prefer to blossom.
I surrender to coconut salmon in banana leaves,
miso soup with prawns, paella, lasagna, seafood
risotto, mangu and tostones, salads of blueberries,
blood oranges, and papaya, the bloom of belly,
breasts spilling over seams, petals of areolas darkening.

I’ve abandoned the lunch-break park with its tire swing
and picnic of stale chips for the circus, lion tamers,
dogs with purple tutus, magicians pulling doves
from top hats, trapeze artists somersaulting
through the air. I want the Big Top’s pillows
of cotton candy dissolving in my mouth, mounds
of popcorn shiny with butter, globs of caramel
apples, hot dogs drenched in mustard.

Blood thickening and milk springing from nipples
remind me: be open. Enough of this suburb
with its square meals served in look-alike
houses. Give me Paris with its artists scattered
on sidewalks, painted confetti, dancers
in discotheques stretching onto streets at dawn.
With more body to envelop, I’ll browse boutiques
at the Rue du St.-Honoré, lounge sipping café-au-lait,
nibbling a croissant’s flakey layers. Order coq-au-vin
or pot-au-feu, decorate the board with baguette,
brie. Will mousse aux fraises complete me?

If I’d been born with different genes--
petite, straight-hipped, willowy-tall—would I enjoy
fat bowls of kalamata olives, sliced avocado,
desserts of mangoes in cream, pumpkin pie?
I surrender to possibility, to joy, to feasts
of seven-grain breads, lamb stews, chocolate
soufflés. I thank this baby whose growing bones
demand wheels of provolone, sticks of mozzarella,
cubes of sharp cheddar, cups of vanilla yogurt
at two a.m., whose kicks remind me to taste
roast beef, venison steak, the cream of deviled eggs.

Write Right - Help for Writers

2/28/2011

Check out Will Weaver's blog, Write Right: http://willweaverbooks.blogspot.com/

The Right Place by Dana Yost - Read Excerpts on MN 20/20

2/27/2011

Dana Yost, former editor of the Marshall Independent, has written his second book, The Right Place (available from Ellis Press), which is a combination of essays and poems. Four excerpts of Dana's book are posted on Minnesota 20/20, along with video interviews of him.

Here's what Dana writes about the book, which is focused on life in southwest Minnesota:

"There are heroes and there are casualties in this book, and sometimes it may not be easy to tell them apart. At other times, both labels may fit the same person. Some of the essays and poems in the book may be uplifting or inspiring. Others may not. I write about accomplishments, artists, friends, nature, and faith, but I also write about death, illness, and economic failure.

"Why can't I pick one or the other -- happy or downbeat? The reason is simple enough; life itself isn't about one or the other...A wholly engaged life is going to bring us all sorts of emotions, experiences, and lessons. What we make of them, and what they make of us, is what our lives end up being about."

Dana will be featured at SMSU's Visiting Writers Series on Wed., April 6, 7 p.m., CH 201. His books will be available at the reading. I hope you can join us. Get there early if you want a seat. When Dana reads, it's usually standing room only.

Christine Stewart-Nunez to Read at SMSU on Feb. 3

2/20/2011

Christine Stewart-Nunez will read from her new book of poems, Keeping Them Alive, (WordTech Editions, 2010), on Thursday, March 3, at 7 p.m., in CH 201, Southwest Minnesota State University, as part of our Visiting Writers Series.

Her first book of poems, Postcard on Parchment (winner of the 2007 ABZ Poetry Contest, ABZ Press, 2008), explores her travels in Turkey. Her chapbook, The Love of Unreal Things (ABZ Press, 2005), focuses on Catherine of Siena, an Italian mystic and saint. Writer Jesse Lee Kercheval called the poems "stunning, brave and original, taking one of religion and history's most loved yet. . . least understood figures, bringing her to life on the page, giving her voice and making her human."

Christine's second chapbook, Unbounded and Branded, (Finishing Line Press, 2006) focuses on supermodel Kate Moss as a fashion icon.

Here's one of my favorite poems of Christine's, which was published in newspapers nationwide in Ted Kooser's weekly column.

American Life in Poetry: Column 249
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

One of the wonderful things about small children is the way in which they cause us to explain the world. “What’s that?” they ask, and we have to come up with an answer. Here Christine Stewart-Nunez, who lives and teaches in South Dakota, tries to teach her son a new word only to hear it come back transformed.

Convergence

Through the bedroom window
a February sunrise, fog suspended
between pines. Intricate crystals--
hoarfrost lace on a cherry tree.
My son calls out, awake. We sway,
blanket-wrapped, his head nuzzling
my neck. Hoarfrost, tree—I point,
shaping each word. Favorable
conditions: a toddler’s brain, hard
data-mining, a system’s approach.
Hoar, he hears. His hand reaches
to the wallpaper lion. Phenomena
converge: warmth, humidity,
temperature’s sudden plunge;
a child’s brain, objects, sound.
Eyes widening, he opens his mouth
and roars.

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 ©2009 by Christine Stewart-Nunez, whose most recent book of poems is Postcard on Parchment, ABZ Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from the Briar Cliff Review, 2009, by permission of Christine Stewart-Nunez and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 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.

Judy Blume Meets Stieg Larsson

2/18/2011

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.

Horace Greeley and Common Sense

2/3/2011

I grew up listening to my mother talk about Horace Greeley High School, which she had attended in Chappaqua, New York. Greeley's birthday is Feb. 3, and I learned more about this journalist, editor, publisher and politician on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Here's a good quote they included by Greeley: "Common sense is very uncommon." So true, Horace.

"Blizzard" by Bill Holm

1/31/2011

Yesterday's poem of the day on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor was "Blizzard" by Bill Holm, a former colleague at Southwest Minnesota State University. I especially like this image: "dancing through the house / like a polar bear who thinks / it has joined the ballet."

As the snow keeps piling up around us in higher and higher mounds, as the snowplows rumble and scrape down our streets, what are you reading? What are you writing? What helps relieve your cabin fever?

Whitman: "To have great poets, there must be great audiences."

1/29/2011

Derek Walcott's White Egrets was named the winner of the 2011 T.S. Eliot Prize at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on Jan. 23. A recent article in the online UK journal The Literateur titled "Report: 2011 T.S. Eliot Prize" described the event as if it was a rock concert for poets:

"Walt Whitman understood that in order 'to have great poets, there must be great audiences.' There is a sense, then, that when two thousand people fill the Royal Festival Hall for a poetry reading on a Sunday evening in late January, a sort of reverse could also be said to be true: great audiences require great poets. . . . Poetry books may not sell particularly well today, but it would seem from the swelling crowds clutching tickets, that the way back is in performance."

Have you been to an exceptional poetry reading or performance recently? Looking back, do you remember the first reading you attended or the best poetry reading you ever attended?

I love to hear stories about students who are learning to perform poetry. Today at Southwest Minnesota State University, we had a visit day for prospective students, and I met a high school senior interested in creative writing. She had performed several poems by Billy Collins ("Forgetfulness," "Winter Syntax") as part of her speech team last fall and made it to Iowa's state competition.

Another opportunity for high school students interested in performing poetry is the Poetry Out Loud contest sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts, in which students compete by performing poems by the finest poets on a local, regional and national stage.

These are signs of hope to me, hope that poetry lives, even today, even in our media-saturated American culture. Poetry is a force that brings us together, helps to dissolve the illusion that we are separate. Voices quaking, my students send their words out into the world, read their poems in class, in the Whitman Room, at open mics, at senior portfolio readings. Here in southwest Minnesota at SMSU, lecture halls fill to capacity with audiences hungry for the spoken word, poems that sing with precision, truth, humor and humanity.