The Phoenix Requires Ashes

/7 Comments/in , /by

Given my teaching schedule and other commitments, I may not blog every week in 2025, but I am continuing with my project of reading a book of poetry each week. This week I read a collection of poems by Bellingham poet Maureen Sandra Kane, The Phoenix Requires Ashes: Poems for the Journey (Gray Matter Press, Seattle, 2022).

According to her bio, Kane is a former winner of the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Award, and a mental health therapist, interested in and for literacy, homeless youth, health care access, and disability awareness. Judging by her poems, I would like to add to her list of passions: bodies, all things Zen, and madrona trees. Consider these lines:

I believe I would like to be a Madrona in my remaining years:
Comfortable on the edge,
holding fast to the earth without concern for falling.
Knowing how to shed my skin for growth.
Welcoming wind and storms because I need them to become strong.
Embracing soft, exposed flesh,
trusting that new bark always comes.
Growing toward the light wherever it is.

—from “Madrona”

Although many of these poems look back to Covid, others look forward, offering strength to the reader for the fight ahead: “I speak for the sinew that pulls at my bones. / Red and raw—gaping and mawing. / Holding all together, the strength required astounds” (from “Her Body Speaks”). The poems cycle down through isolation, sleepless nights, despair, then up into love, compassion, and an invitation to join life’s dance. Ultimately the message here is one of optimism and hope. In an epigraph borrowed from Neil Allen: “Life is rigged for the good.”

Kitchen Floor

What if I could sweep with delight?
Peer deeply into detritus
to see a microcosm of visitors.
Like how sand under a microscope becomes shells again.
To gather and honor, not just discard.
How many venerated guests have I thrown away?
Remnants of dinners shared together,
cat litter from the old kitty who pains to use the box,
maple leaves from the peaceful refuge of backyard sanctuary.
All here to bring awareness to the macro in the micro
in their quiet, unassuming way.
What if everything could be this delightful
in its own being
as it does nothing but lie silently on the ground?

—Maureen Sandra Kane

“Scan the body, / watch the breath, / notice thinking. // Watch the fear,” Kane advises in “Yes.” Which strikes me as all that is necessary.

You can read more about The Phoenix Requires Ashes, by visiting this page at Kane’s counseling  website: https://www.maureenkanecounseling.com/poetry-book/.

Makes me think of Yeats: "Now that my ladder's gone / I must lie down where all the ladders start / In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."

Taking Leave, poems by Mary Ellen Talley

/0 Comments/in /by

I was playing around with the idea of titling a post, “What Will You Inaugurate this Year?” The idea came via my brilliant friend and piano teacher, Susan, who recently told me, Your year—your next 4 years—do not belong to any politician, they belong to you. Following this advice, however, is one of those “easier said than done” things (as a lot seems, lately).

And, as for the lofty title. I find I haven’t the heart to give anyone inspiring advice, not today. To keep it simple, a better title—maybe for my intentions this whole year—is simply, “What Bethany Is Reading Now.”

Of course I have been reading (reading has been my life-line!), but I’ve been too distracted to share on the blog. The main distraction: my 84-year-old husband fell off a ladder and down our front steps. (Throughout a hospital stay, follow up appointments, etc., he has insisted he is fine. No, he has not gotten rid of the ladders.)

Meanwhile…I had earlier committed to several local poets to review their books. Leaving aside large concepts (suggested by Latinate words such as inaugurate), spending some time on poetry sounds good. Spending a little time on the blog sounds good. So.

 

First up is a friend’s book, Taking Leave, by Seattle poet Mary Ellen Talley (Kelsay Books, 2024). Taking Leave is dedicated to Talley’s sister, Katherine, and to her niece, Erin, and can best be described as a series of elegies for them, but in the best tradition of the elegiac tradition, the poems do much more, bringing to life the poet’s busy mother and troubled father, family events, conversations, voices, personalities, weaving “serendipity” and “levity” through the sad times. The poet’s sister is the main character, and of course a sister twelve-years-older is—no surprise—sister, role model, cautionary tale, and other-mother.  The complexity of their relationship crescendos. “Your plumage and that glamorous smile on your face” (“Villanelle to De-Escalate”), and:

                    The last breath
doesn’t seem concrete,
but is, the leaden weight of hearts
hanging by a slender thread.

(from “Lunar Maria”)

The book is a how-to on marrying forms (palindrome, villanelle, golden shovel), playing with white space, dancing between poetry and diary-like entries. To quote Susan Rich from the back cover, Taking Leave is about “sisterhood, birds, and the cosmos.”

In this poem, about the poet’s niece, I notice how the dog and the moth anchor the opening and closing, animal-spirit guardians of a sacred space.

Messenger Under Arizona Moon

The black ‘n white mongrel, Winston,
didn’t bark or budge from his place
on the comforter as I lay next to you

watching your and my painted toes point
at the ceiling sky on a day that turned
out to be just two days before you entered

hospice. We talked of when I babysat younger you,
no mention of cancer cells or prayer. I flew home
before the gauzy moon’s final morning

crescent exit. I heard that a black moth
circled your space that day,
and touched each corner of the goodbye room

while your mother moistened your lips.
Your world slowed to a stop
as the sprite flew out your barely open window.

—Mary Ellen Talley

You can learn more about the poet at her website: https://maryellentalley.com/.

Read and write more poetry. Pay attention to what matters most to you. That’s what Mary Ellen’s poems inspire me to do.

 

Year’s End

/2 Comments/in , , /by

It is New Year’s Eve — though this will post as January 1. Anyway, just a few thoughts to wrap up 2024 here at A Habit of Writing.

BUYING BOOKS?

Earlier this year, a reader asked me, Where do you find your books? The library, I think I said, or friends give them to me, or people send me a book with a request for a review. Thriftbooks.com is a good source when I need to purchase a book.

Well, forget that. This year I lost my mind and spent a ton of money on poetry books.

I’ve read a couple of these (see pic) — I have reviewed none.

My best excuse is that it was self-soothing behavior. Remember my spring CRI course, “Good Poetry for Hard Times”? Months ago I was already freaked out about the election, about Ukraine and Gaza, about climate change, and so on (and on).

Unsubscribing from a number of news feeds has helped. And poetry has helped. As a nutritionist once said to me, Why do we crave comfort food? Because we need comfort. At least there are no calories involved in reading poetry.

POETRY SUBMISSIONS

Not much to report this year. I began in September to send work out, but it was a half-hearted attempt and has not, so far, resulted in one single acceptance. I can report that I was invited to submit to several venues, and those poems found homes. More in 2025 when they are published.

THE POOR NEGLECTED BLOG

We will not feel too sorry for the blog — I came close to posting every week this year, and wrote a number of book reviews that appeared here, and elsewhere.

I did NOT do a good job keeping up the list of publications (see my CV tab). In March I contacted my webmaster and we made plans for new pictures, some new formatting, etc. — I had high hopes! — and then that fell flat, too. Somehow, the energy never appeared.

Voracious Reading and Writing, in General

I mean, I do after all have a Ph.D. in literature, and — from girlhood on — “reader” has always been the main listing on my calling card. So if this is my year-end brag post I should let you know I read more than poetry. I read mystery novels, of course (research!).

I also read some literary novels: Haven by Emma Donoghue, Hard by a Great Forest by Leo Vardviashvilli, Pearl by Siân Hughes (a debut novel by a poet! it took her 20 or 30 years to write! I think we might be twins separated at birth!), and Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor. I reread Bring Up the Bodies by the late great Hilary Mantel. I’m happy to recommend any of these.

As for writing — that continues, every day. I am within a week or so (maybe a month) of having my second mystery novel ready for beta readers. I’ve also kept up with my poem-a-week practice. (Not that all the poems are “good” poems.) I think I’m on the verge of cobbling together the next poetry book. We will see.

TEACHING / COACHING

Now, this category, I can brag on. I worked with two poets in 2023 and 2024, and each of them has a book coming out, early in 2025. I reviewed John Egbert’s book here. I’ll review the other when I have the final ms. in my hands.

I already mentioned my first Creative Retirement Institute (CRI) class, and I am happy to report that my two proposals for 2025 courses have been accepted.

Winter quarter: “Emily Dickinson in the 21st Century”

Spring Quarter: “May Swenson and Friends”

CRI courses are inexpensive, and the whole catalog is worth a look. I highly recommend them.

My CRI offerings are sort of low-key lit courses, but I’m thinking about running my own zoom writing workshop alongside. I’ll keep the cost very low (in keeping with the doable cost of CRI courses). Contact me soon if you have a specific request about days and times.

Labyrinth at St. Hilda’s / St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church

So that’s it — soon I WILL update the blog, including my list of publications. And you can expect me to be back in 2025 with more reviews of good poetry. For hard times, and for joyful times, too.

my daughter's cat, Phillie

What Remains

/0 Comments/in /by

Over the last few days, I’ve taken some very long walks, several naps, and I’ve read What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt, trans. and edited by Samantha Rose Hill with Genese Grill (LiverightPubl, 2025). It is being hailed as “a landmark literary event.” The poems, presented in the original German and in English, were never intended by Arendt for publication, and they don’t strike me as being poems one memorizes or writes out in a commonplace book. They compel, however, if taken as a diary of Arendt’s life:

The thoughts come to me,
I’m no longer a stranger to them.
I grow into their dwelling
like a plowed field.

(from Part II, 1942-1961)

If you aren’t already steeped in Hannah Arendt’s work, the footnotes and the introduction of What Remains are a necessary guide. Additionally, they offer the editors’ obsession with the poetry, and a direct look into one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.

In the introduction, Hill (a biographer of Arendt) explains that “Arendt wrote poems to record events, reflect on experiences,” but also to “engage in what she called ‘the free play of thinking.’” And it is this play of thinking that stood out to me. She was as a young woman a star student (and lover) of Martin Heidegger, but when other intellectuals embraced Naziism and Totalitarianism, she turned away in despair. I wonder to what extent her poetry kept alive her desire to be the thinker she became. Whatever the case, the paragraph describing how she carried her poems with her as she fled France, and then Europe, and came to the U. S. is worth highlighting.

As a young woman, Arendt was steeped in the German poets, and found in English writers, including W. H. Auden, Robert Lowell, Mary McCarthy, and Randall Jarrell, “her tribe.” Hill writes:

“It wasn’t that Arendt wrote poems because she was a student of poetry who was taught to write poems, or because she fancied herself a secret poet, or because she felt the muse speaking through her. Though, who is to say. Arendt wrote poems because she had found in them a language that allowed her to weave together thinking and experience.”

—Samantha Rose Hill

I am giving this book to a friend for Christmas, so in order not to mark it up I wrote many paragraphs into my morning notebook. And some of the poems found their way in, too. This line, for instance:

“We need only ignite our grief,”

If you’d like to retrace my steps, I stumbled onto this book at LitHub: https://lithub.com/snapshots-in-verse-on-hannah-arendts-long-lost-poems/

While you’re at it, look up the 2012 film, Hannah Arendt, depicting the writing of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt_(film). I have an old blog post about seeing the film, and about writing and thinking more generally,

image from Pexels

By the way, I consider poets my tribe, too.

Whatever you celebrate at this darkest time of year, you are in my thoughts. Thank you for being here.