Linda Pastan’s Insomnia

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Just the title alone would be enough to make this book resonate with me. But it’s also by Linda Pastan, who wrote “An Early Afterlife,” and — so far as I’m concerned — could have retired after that and still stayed at the top of my list.

Instead, we have Insomnia (Norton, 2015). As Pastan grows older — she is 83  (“Why are these old, gnarled trees / so beautiful, while I am merely / old and gnarled?”) — her themes turn toward long marriage, illness, sleepness nights. She has always handled domestic subjects — like death — deftly, with grace and accuracy. Her eye is as sharp as ever.

Consider the Space Between Stars

Consider the white space
between words on a page, not just
the margins around them.

Or the space between thoughts:
instants when the mind is inventing
exactly what it thinks

and the mouth waits
to be filled with language.
Consider the space

between lovers after a quarrel,
the white sheet a cold metaphor
between them.

Now picture the brief space
before death enters, hat in hand:
these vanishing years, filled with light.

-Linda Pastan

Danusha Laméris: The Moons of August

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It is National Poetry Month, and having gone through all of my books in March (and letting go of a great number of them), I thought I would read an entire poetry book each day in April, and then tell you about it.

A few years ago, when AWP was in Seattle, I attended a presentation featuring readers from The Sun, and that is how Danusha Laméris hit my radar. As soon as I got home, I looked her up and ordered her book. The Moons of August, I learned, once it was in my hands, was selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the 2013 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. When I read the list of acknowledgments in the back (Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar), I knew that I was surely destined to find her.

Laméris writes poems that so delight me, poems I have read over and over again. A few of her poems overlap with my own themes (for instance, “Fictional Characters,” which begins, “Do they ever want to escape? / Climb out of the white pages / and enter our world?”), but more often poems that I simply wish to goodness I had written. I write her poems into my own notebook, and see if I can imitate them, determined to write something that will please me half as much.

The Moons of August is like a series of hallways and stairwells that take you deeper and deeper into a house. You turn a corner and find a picture of her late brother, or her lost infant. Sometimes, you find hieroglyphics or cave drawings on the walls. There’s the funny story about her mother measuring penises, that turns into a reflection about God counting the hairs on our heads. We see people walking ahead of us, catch only a glimpse of Jack Gilbert or Temple Grandin as they disappear into a basement or climb out a window. Humor and heartbreak and a wry, forgiving and encompassing compassion are threaded all the way through.

I was thinking of the difficulty of picking just one poem to share with you, and then, I reread this poem. In it, Laméris displays that wonderful Ted-Kooser-like ability to take an ordinary moment in a woman’s life and turn it into something extraordinary.

Cherries

The woman standing in the Whole Foods aisle
over the pyramid of fruit, neatly arranged
under glossy lights, watched me drop
a handful into a paper bag, said how do you do it?
I always have to check each one.
I looked down at the dark red fruit, each cherry
good in its own, particular way
the way breasts are good or birds or stars.
Doesn’t everything that shines carry its own shadow?
A scar across the surface, a worm buried in the sweet flesh.
Why not reach in, take whatever falls into your hand.

Danusha Laméris: The Moons of August (Autumn House Press 2014)

What’s Your Morning Routine?

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My mother used to say, “I have no secrets.” In other words, if she thought it, she shared it.

So I want to share with you the secret of my morning routine.

As soon as I get up–well, pretty much as soon as I get up–I go out to the kitchen, flip on the Keurig, and then I go to the sink and pour myself 16 oz. of water.

While my coffee is making, I do some kind of exercise, maybe bending to touch my toes ten times.

I take my coffee to whatever spot I’m writing in these days and I pick up my journal. Now that we are almost empty-nesters, I write in a favorite chair inside the house; my dog appreciates it; besides, the cabin is really cold this time of year.

I write 2-3 pages in my big Everyman’s Journal, which I like to think of as my Everywoman’s Journal.

I have a couple of small assignments right now that I’m wrapping into my journal. I’ve written a very short entry every day since my mother has been on Hospice (today is day #52). It’s either a description of a visit with her, or a memory, or a reflection of some sort.

The other assignment began January 1. I came across a One-Bad-Poem notebook from 2007-2008, and it occurred to me that I could spend a few minutes each day revisiting a poem written 10 years ago. Here’s a sample:

Like Chalkboard Erasers

When I clump the old poems together
letters and phrases and whole lines shake loose
and drift over me in a chalky cloud.

Having this particular morning routine works for me, and it usually launches me into a day of getting writing done. Even if I have a day of driving ahead of me, appointments, or whatever, I move into my day knowing that I’ve accomplished something that matters to me, something that makes me feel alive. Writing.

So here’s my secret, that is not a secret at all if you’ve followed my blog for very long.

I don’t have to drink 16 oz. of water. I don’t have to write 3 pages in my journal. I don’t have to be brilliant in my mom diary. I don’t have to revise the poem, and it (still) doesn’t have to be good.

All I have to do is offer myself the opportunity. I pour the water. I pick up my pen. I think about my mom. I recopy the poem. Sometimes it’s a bit lame. But I’m not here to be wildly successful. It’s more like an experiment. I see what happens.

What It Looked Like

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I stayed up late New Year’s Eve — making a last-ditch, under-the-wire effort to meet my submission goals for 2017. “Getting my ducks in a row.” Or attempting to.

I believe my husband said goodnight and went to bed at 8:30. Daughter #3 (the only duckling still at home) disappeared into the night around the same time.  I am of two minds about this: 1) that this was a little pathetic of me; and 2) that hanging out with my poems and stories and various journal web-sites and submittable pages was a perfectly healthy way to spend the holiday.

Anywho, that’s what I did. And here’s a quick recap of the year’s send-out.

I submitted poems to 55 venues in 2017.

This was only 5 short of my goal of 60, and if I were better at counting, I would have had 60, so…I’m okay with that. Of the 212 (approximate) poems I submitted, 17 were accepted and one was a contest winner. The 12 submissions between 12/24 and 12/31 of course have not yet enjoyed a response, and 4 others from earlier in the year are still hanging fire.

In 2017, I submitted 12 short stories —

This met my goal – which was no small potatoes when you look back at my (abysmal) history of short story send outs. Moreover, one story was a runner-up in Calyx’s Margarita Donnelly contest and is published on-line (hurrah!). A BIG first for Bethany! I can’t report on the ratio of send-out to acceptances yet, as five just went out, but I’ll keep you posted.

On the south coast of Ireland, Sept. 30, 2017

What I learned from submission efforts is a topic that I need to revisit, and will revisit in future posts. I LEARNED SO MUCH, even (especially) from the missteps.

A recap of 2017 could include so many other important details — the blog overhaul (which is still on-going), the novel which is still not 100% finished with me but somehow made it to 4 contests (1: no; 3: awaiting response), plus into the hands of my film-school graduate friend. The new (“new”?) novel that is happily underway…

Oh, and family life (that!), trips (Ireland!), not to mention writing conferences (2!) poetry readings, new poems drafted, and books read…and so forth.

So what do I write about next?

Thanks to a challenge at Donna Vorreyer’s blog I have made a commitment to write a blogpost at least once each week in 2018, which will give me lots of wiggle room to get you caught up on well, moi, and the writing life.

If you have any goals (even baby step goals) in 2018, please share in the comments. If you think I can help, email me at bethany.alchemy@gmail.com — you can also leave your email on the sign-up form (whether or not you’d like to open the PDF of my 7-days-of writing encouragement) to receive my sporadic newsletter updates.

No matter what else 2018 holds for you, I hope you write.