Radiant Blues by Joan Howard

My dear friend and fellow poet, Joan M. Howard, has published this beautiful book of poems, Radiant Blues.

Being a woman of a certain age—like me—Joan's subjects are relatable to ageing, and beautifully written. She lost her husband to illness some years ago, and that has also been a bond between us. I admire her for many reasons, one of which is that she kayaks on Lake Chatuge. She walks on the dam almost every day. She keeps moving outdoors. She lives on the lake and has easy access to the water.

Insight

by Joan Howard  

If he could see home now, what would he think?  

Cobwebs in his study, meticulous  

order through the workshop littered—clutter  

on his saws! The deck chair from pressurized wood  

he built her, gray and broken in the yard.  

"You don't like change," he said; she had preserved  

it all—every bowl, table, tray, jigsawed  

masterpiece, and his ashes by her bed.  

But yet, outside had transformed.  

Camellias he'd planted from pots as tall as some trees,  

magnolia, lilies, gardenia blooming,  

sparse brown lawn grass a soft green moss cover.  

If he looks, she sees him everywhere, in  

the weathered trellis, spring daffodils—his?

Three Women on the Dam

We walked for years, three women on the dam—  

divorced or married, widowed. We all knew  

each other well—three miles, four days a week,  

kept secrets of suffering, heroics.  

Once Kathy said that sun and cloud could make  

a living halo in daylight. I scoffed.  

Years later though, in heavy morning mist,  

low eastern sun behind us, it was there:  

our three heads surrounded by green-gold light,  

distinguished each one, bodies a pure black  

in shadowed pantomime, our heads radiant,  

transformed, moments long, an epiphany.  

                                        ----Joan Howard  

Netwest Poet is published in the United Kingdom

One of the best poets I know is MAREN O. MITCHELL who is publishing her poems everywhere. The two below were recently published in the November issue of The Lake a UK publication.

 

  

  

  As They Go, So Go We

 

Being dazzled by June bug iridescence, in June or any other

          month, is beyond my recall, and at least six years have passed

 

since praying mantis youngsters climbed our garden plants

          with their gravity-defying sticky feet. Now wasps only

 

build duplexes, a shadow of their former eave condos

          that extended our roof line; hornets used to hang their mansions

 

in nearby trees, and invade the living room nightly through

          a secret entrance. While outside, they would eye me, hover

 

close, their frequency never mistaken, as I pretended I neither

          saw nor heard them, my only care the poem I was writing. Both

 

threats required diplomacy: move gently, (if at all), don't trust, pray

          quietly. It must be ten years since snakes traveled from the forest

 

to give birth in our shaggy yard, and I barely remember the shadows

          of turtles, their audacious road crossings, their compressed view

 

of life, and the slower snails, now only an occasional dot,

          Buddhas on stems. After my ankles, yellow jackets would chase me

 

down mountains as if they knew I had to stay on the trail to get

          home; fall spiders draped our fall house with softness to shelter egg

 

sacs, their plan for eternity. Yet, gnats still bite me with a dog-like

          clamp down, as though they hold a grudge, and mosquito specters

 

I see too late still inject me with viruses and bacteria. But, most

          upsetting, from bumble to sweat bees, (those little darlings who

 

spelunk into flowers and zap me as I deadhead), drop in less

          and less often. It is getting lonely outside. I don’t take it personally,

 

but eventually, absences will be personal: I like to know

          that unseen ants are aerating earth, I like to fall asleep, windows

 

open to the strum of insect bodies, wake to diamonded webs,

          and be illuminated by bee flight pointing out that I am alive.

 

 

The Theory of Everything

 

Every thing is always busy

becoming elemental elements:

 

red supergiant Betelgeuse of Orion,

is busy living while dying,

 

with irregular contractions

and expansions that were noted

 

by Aborigines and ancient Greeks;

my heart is busy with contractions and expansions,

 

finite beats

that began before I was aware;

 

unanswered phone calls

are busy being unanswered, synchronize

 

with activities of the callees;

insect oscillations fan out through air and earth,

 

and who notes them is a personal matter¾bacteria,

insect neighbors, redwoods, sand;

 

my fears, thoughts and complaints,

always busy¾

 

despite my occasional claim, I am not busy¾

beam out, intertwine

 

with all other busyness, expressions

that slam into paper,

 

but what the messages and what received?

And, as Jack A. Howard said, You're more

 

important to yourself

than to anyone else.

 

     

Maren O. Mitchell’s poems appear in Poetry East, Tar River Poetry , and The Antigonish Review. Three poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

Her chapbook is In my next life I plan... http://www.dancinggirlpress.com/.

She lives with her husband in the mountains of Georgia, US. 

Read a review of Maren's nonfiction book, Beat Chronic Pain

https://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/2013/04/book-review-of-beat-chronic-pain-by.html

 

Writers Circle Around the Table again

I am excited because I have decided to start my writing classes again. I am looking at September and trying to decide whether to go virtual or teach in a classroom. 

I have heard from several writers who would like to teach for Writers Circle Around the Table again. Although I have only taught memoir writing for the past few years, I might think about doing a poetry workshop. 

I began learning to write poetry with a terrific teacher, the late poet, Nancy Simpson, and all of us who took her classes learned so very much from her. You can hear us talk about that in this video made when we honored her after her death. 

She taught us what makes a poem. She taught us how sound is so important in a poem, and that is something that you will find in my poetry. Also, metaphors are a part of poetry that many don't use enough. I have every handout she gave us and the lesson that went with it. 

I always loved poetry, but it was Nancy who taught me why.

Thanks to Raven Chiong, we have this photo of the poetry critique group she leads each month at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC.

Netwest Bee City Poets facilitated by Raven Chiong - standing, far right first row

This group meets at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC on the first Thursday. All who write poetry are welcome.  

If you are just beginning to write poetry and want some good feedback on your work, this group has many experienced poets, published and knowledgeable. The first row in this photo includes Brenda Kay Ledford, Glenda Barrett, Mary Ricketson and Joan Howard who all have published poetry books and their poems have graced the pages of many journals and reviews. 

I am proud and I know Nancy would be proud of so many of her students who became outstanding members of NCWN-West and whose books now live in homes not only in the mountains but all over the country. 

Yes, I am getting the itch to work with writers, especially those who are just putting their toes in the water and who need to know more about their opportunities. 

I will be getting out the word when I schedule my class in September. Meanwhile, if you live in Hayesville, Murphy, or Hiawassee, GA let me know if you prefer to meet in a room or online.  gcbmountaingirl@gmail.com 

Here is a prompt if you need something to get you writing:  Begin by writing, I will never forget the time when ...

Scott Owens read and taught a workshop in Hayesville, NC

I am tired but I have had a good week. The poet, Scott Owens, was here and stayed overnight at my house. It was so good to see him again and talk with him. He has published 19 poetry books and I have most of them. He always writes something sweet when he signs my books. He is a kind and gentle man. Almost young enough to be my son, Scott has been a good friend for the past 15 years.

He and I were on the schedule to read Thursday evening at the John C. Campbell Folk School. NC Writers' Network-West sponsors several writing events in our region and once a month The Literary Hour is sponsored by NCWN-West. We feature two writers, a poet, and a fiction or nonfiction writer. For this event, I was the prose writer. 

Scott decided he wanted to go first and I was glad. I wanted him to have plenty of time, and I would take what was left. We had a good size audience and almost ran out of chairs. Scott is well-loved by writers in this area. He has come over from Hickory, NC where he lives and owns a coffee shop Taste Full Beans tmany times to read his poetry and to teach poetry. Some years ago, he read at Writers Night Out on Thursday evening and spent the night so he could teach a workshop on Friday morning in my studio.

I wish everyone could have come to his workshop. He is an excellent teacher, so down to earth and casual, that we all felt we could ask questions. 

I hope we can have him back this fall. His workshop was on the subjects you have at your disposal and you should never run out of topics. He showed us how to discover the many people living and dead in our families that make good subjects. We can write about places. I find myself writing about the farm I grew up on. We can write about memories that are interesting. As Scott says, writing must be interesting. That is true for poetry as well as prose.

When I teach memoir classes, I urge my students to not only write the facts or truths but make it entertaining. No matter what you write, if it is not interesting or entertaining, you will lose your reader. 

I always pay for having a good time with friends. On Friday night, my allergies or sensitivities to fragrance, got the best of me. I felt like I had a bad sinus infection on the right side of my face. I am still dealing with it today. But I would do it again.

Thanks so much to Scott Owens. If you have a chance to hear him read and talk about his writing be sure you take it. And I highly recommend him for workshops on poetry. He is very knowledgeable about anything that relates to writing poems. 

I am motivated now to write poetry again. The Pandemic shut down my poetry writing for the past two years. But I got some ideas at Scott's workshop. I look forward to getting something written soon.

 

LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO DANA WILDSMITH

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN?

Do you want to hear both sides of the border issue? Dana Wildsmith teaches English as a second language to immigrants to this country. She takes us inside the hearts and minds of those who struggle to make it to the United States and safety from the dangers in their homelands.

We hear so much talk of building walls along our borders to keep people out but seldom do we hear the migrants' stories that accompany such dangerous journeys--like the vulnerability of giving up your child to a stranger, the tragedy of dying in the desert, or the constant fear of getting caught. Dana Wildsmith's Jumping captures the experiences of what happens when "illegals" try to cross into the United States, "jumping" the border. 

Cesar, the main character, is especially powerfully portrayed with his humor, intelligence, and desire to provide a better life for his family. Read this novel for a good story, for a better understanding of our neighbors, and to know what it means to be human.

Dana Wildsmith’s writing has its roots in literal soil: the earth of the old farm she works to keep alive, as documented in her collection of poems, One Good Hand, and through her environmental memoir, Back to Abnormal, or along the desert sands of our southern border, as told in her novel, Jumping, a story which grew from Wildsmith’s work as a teacher of English Literacy to non-native speakers. 

Her most recent collection, One Light, follows the journey of her mother, Grace, down dementia’s rocky road. Wildsmith has a new book forthcoming from Madville Publishing which took root as the pandemic flourished and we all searched for tools to help us cope with this unprecedented epic. With Access to Tools explores the role of tools in our lives: traditional farm tools, tools of the digital age, and cerebral tools such as patience and memory. 

Wildsmith is a highly sought-after teacher of creative writing and has garnered residencies at the Hambidge Center, the Lillian E Smith Center, Grand Canyon National Park and Everglades National Park. Her website, www.danawildsmith.com, is the home of a widely read blog mostly centered on teaching and writing.

Wildsmith's books are available on Amazon.com 

A Poet I cannot stop reading - Scott Owens

Scott sent me an email telling me his newest book is out. 

I promptly ordered it. Strange, maybe, because the book is for children. Scott wrote a book of poems with illustrations for children.   Worlds Enough: Poems for and about children (and a few grown-ups)

I am intrigued and must read this book. Maybe I will then pass it on to a child, but because I think Scott is one of the best poets of today, I look forward to reading this book. Take a peek at the cover here.

 

He is a very busy man with so much on his plate, that he had to give up one of my very favorite blogs. Musings - https://scottowensmusings.blogspot.com/ some years ago.

But I spent much time tonight going back to Musings and reading his words about poetry.

Scott says the art of poetry

“is what won’t sit still inside your head 

what wakes you up at night 

what calls memory back from darkness 

what gives words the shape they take  

what makes you wonder how much more you could do  

and just why you haven’t been doing it.”

Scott Owens will be the featured guest for Mountain Wordsmiths July 28, at 10:30 AM on Zoom. We will enjoy his time with us and hope you will join us. Contact me or Carroll Taylor for a link.

I wish we felt safe to have him here in person, but COVID is back in all its vengeance in Clay County NC. 

I was told back in January when I got COVID in spite of wearing a mask all the time, "You need a better mask." I agree. I try to wear a much better mask now, but at this time, I am not going out to indoor meetings. I can't afford to take the risk.

But you can enjoy Scott Owen's books now. I enjoyed this one so much:

Sky Full of Stars and Dreaming poems by Scott Owens. This was published by Red Hawk Publications.  copyright 2021. Click here to see what others are saying about this outstanding poet and his poetry in this book.

He wrote a poem about teaching during a pandemic. He observes how quiet people are, hardly talking as if that will keep the virus from spreading.

To me, this book is about life, how we live, how we want to die, how to survive during a pandemic, what is really important in life, who are our heroes, and what he notices in his daily life. It is also about Hope.

Only One

My wife won't let me speak

of being old, but I don't mind age

or dying. In all my favorite movies

the good guys always die, heroically, 

of course, fighting to the very end,

seizing every moment, making

whatever has come before, worthwhile.

Like them, I think that must be

what matters most. And like them I think

if I'm busy enough, distracted by what

I am doing, doing for what I believe in,

for living, then it will be worthwhile

to the very end, and the end itself

might pass without me noticing at all.

Thanks, Scott. I feel the same about this living and dying business. Having watched loved ones die, I am not afraid of dying, just the process that can take a long time. I am a member of Compassion and Choices which I hope will help me go without "noticing at all."

Poetry Month and my poetry here

I have decided to share more of my poetry on my blog. We always feel we must not share a poem online because then the poetry journals won't accept it. But, I have many that have already been published and I am happy for other eyes to see them.

So many of you emailed me about the poem, Stop the Trees from Growing, and how you related to it.

You might like this one, too. I wrote it about six years after Barry died.  Forgive the spacing. I know better but my computer is acting up tonight.

Shot into the Future, Clutching the Past

 Sometimes I forget the years before spiraling

darkness took its toll. Now aging wraps me in

silken threads, squeezes me into a box.


I forget until a whirlwind, half my age,

delves into my life. Her purpose, unclutter

my house, my life, set me free of the past.


I forget until she tells me 2005 was long ago.

It’s yesterday to me. She brands my computer

an antique, like me, I suppose.


Floppy disks? Does anybody still use them?

She tosses them in the trash. What can she know

of such things? I saved precious words on those disks.


I am saddened by the pain she has yet to face.

Her biggest loss so far – a breakup with her boyfriend.

Six years gone now, I kept his voice on the answering machine.

                        By Glenda Council Beall

Published:  - Main Street Rag,  Volume 21, Summer 2016 issue

Stop The Trees From Growing published by Your Daily Poem

Stop the Trees from Growing

by

Glenda Council Beall 

Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again,
But I came here today, to where Mother nurtured
my spirit and where Daddy kept the roof over my head;
where the fire warmed my bed at night when winter winds
howled ‘round the corners of the old frame house –
when this flat farm with ponds and pines was home.

The road that once the school bus traveled
taking me to spend the day
with someone who was not my mother,
looks like a highway to a place I’ve never been.

It’s not the buildings all torn down, the homes of friends
that now hold dreams of families I don’t know –
It is the trees.
Nothing stopped the trees from growing, growing ever taller,
till they dwarfed the house, the barn, the backyard –
now a tiny garden towered over by a lilac tree,
an oak, and one longleaf pine.

I traveled from what is and has been home for fifteen years,
to visit that which was but is not my home anymore.
Like you, Thomas Wolfe, I can’t go home again.
I can’t go home because that place I once called home is gone.

Forever gone, except in memories that linger like lazy chimney smoke
spiraling through my mind, thoughts that surge a yearning deep within
to hear the laughing voices, see the kindly eyes – stilled voices, loving eyes,
closed under sod upon a quiet hill.


This poem was published in 2019 by Jayne Jaudon Ferrer who is the owner of Your Daily Poem. 

She has published six of my poems and if you want to read the others, go to her website and look for my name.

You can subscribe and she will send you a poem every day in your Inbox.  Some poems are new and some are old. Her goal is to prove that all poetry is NOT dull or boring. She wants to bring poetry to the folks who don't think they like poetry.
Jayne does a great job, too. 

What can your kitchen tables tell if asked?

Poet Laureate Joy Harjo writes this poem about the kitchen table.

We didn't have a kitchen table when I was growing up because we had a very large family with my parents and seven children, but the table where we met three times a day fits this poem by Joy Harjo. 

Did you have a kitchen table where the family met for casual meals? 
I like round tables and so does my brother, Max. When he goes out to eat, he asks for a round table. What does that circle mean to us? 

When Barry and I set up housekeeping at our mountain house in 1995, I insisted we purchase a round table. I like that anyone seated there can see everyone else at the table. On a square or rectangle, it is hard to see the people at the far end on the same side where you sit. I think round tables make for better conversation. 

In the poetry classes I sometimes teach, I offer a prompt for my students. I ask them to list and describe all the tables they sat at in their lives. Of course, they only list the ones they remember and they have a good reason to remember those particular tables. 

If you are a writer or even if you are not, try doing this exercise: beginning at the earliest age you can remember, describe the tables where you usually ate at your house with your family. 

List other tables you remember and write your memories of eating at that table. You can go on and on if you have had many tables. You will be surprised how the memories will pop up in your mind. 

In Joy Harjo's poem, she writes:

"At this table, we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory."

What was done or said or felt around your kitchen table? What was the purpose or role played by that table?

If you are motivated to write a poem or a short prose piece, send it to me. I would really enjoy reading your work.

Hope you are enjoying this weekend. I had lunch with my sister and one of my nieces today. I also had dinner with Paige, another delightful niece. I am so blessed to have them in my life and to be able to visit with them now. 

Let me hear from you, my readers. Stay safe and healthy.

Now Might as Well be Then

My poetry book Now Might as Well be Then, was published by Finishing Line Press. 

I was honored when poet, Scott Owens, wrote a review of my book. I was thrilled because Scott is a poet whose work I greatly admire. I have almost all of his books and a CD with his poems. 

I am publishing his review here because Amazon is not selling my book anymore and many folks think the book is out of print.

Read the review, please, and if you would like this book, you can order it from me or from Finishing Line Press for $12.00. If you order from the publisher, I do not receive any payment. 

If you order from me, I make a small profit.  The book makes a lovely gift and I will be glad to sign it for you.  I will also send you a free copy of another poetry book. Please share this post with others. 

Posted By Scott Owens to Musings at 3/10/2010 02:31:00 PM

There are no surprises in Glenda Beall’s new book of poems Now Might As Well Be Then. The title gives it all away. These are poems about timelessness, specifically about the timelessness of human experience. There are no surprises, but there is great joy. Not that every poem tells a joyful story. Quite the contrary, some of the best poems here are the most tragic. But even in these poems, there is great poignancy, and in that poignancy the joy of recollecting, of being reminded of how it feels to be human, of having, in fact, those feelings cathartically intensified through the poems.

Beall begins the collection with a love poem that celebrates the timelessness of a relationship. The speaker in the title poems says, “You brought me spring in winter // youth when I was old, / you found my childhood self.” If not for the dedication of the poem which announces who is intended by the indefinite second person pronoun, one could easily read this as a celebration of many things--god, nature, the mountains of North Carolina—and interestingly, any of these meanings would fit for the poems that follow as these poems celebrate the presence and influence of all of these elements.

One suspects, in fact, that the relationship between speaker and mate in “Now Might As Well Be Then” is inseparable from that between speaker and place. That suspicion is supported by the next poem, “Mountain Seagull,” in which “Lake Chatuge wraps the mountains, / lapping love,” and the speaker says “My spirit soars above the scene / a seagull far from home, / But yearning to embrace / and build a nest.” Four poems later in “In the Dark,” the theme of timelessness in this relationship appears again, as does the title of the collection and the first poem: “Here I am years later, listening to your soft breath / and feeling your warm smooth skin. / In the dark, now might as well be then.”

The timelessness Beall reveals to the reader is not the magical, mysterious, miraculous sort of timelessness that remains inexplicable and unearned. 

Beall, instead, makes clear in poems like “Woman in the Mirror” that the timelessness she speaks of is fostered through the vital effort of memory: “What happened to those days / I ask the woman in the mirror. / Gone, she says, all gone, unless / you can remember.” The final line break of that poem becomes an impressively empowering device, creating both an imperative and a confirmation for the reader to carry into his or her own life.

To show us how this creation of timelessness is to be done, Beall practices her own imperative throughout the poems in this book. She remembers the sound of rain in “Listening for the Rain” and is reminded of her father:
Too late for the corn, my father says,
across the bridge of time.
Maybe it will save the pasture,
give us one more haying
before summer ends.

She goes on, then, to recall other events from her childhood, the tragic story of “Roosevelt” (perhaps my favorite poem in the book), the story of her “Father’s Horse,” another story of tragic loss in “Clearing New Ground,” and finally, the beautiful and touching concluding poem “Blue Moon Every Twenty Years,” which successfully reminds the reader of all of Beall’s themes by tracing the singing of a particular song every twenty years, the last time when the singer was somewhere around 70 years old and still proclaiming, “I’ll sing your song for you again / in twenty years.” Just so, these poems will sing to the reader, again and again, reminding us to embrace life through our relationships with people and places and to make those relationships timeless through the vital habit of memory.

--Please leave a comment. It will not appear immediately, but I will read it and respond to it. Thank you.