Catching My Breath

It has been so long since I wrote or posted anything in my precious little blog.

This year has been packed and my fatigue has been quite challenging. The year was packed because I didn’t want to have all of my activity be the necessary and neutral-to-unpleasant stuff, but there has been lots of that, so when I crammed in all sorts of things I also wanted to do, time got a bit stretched.

I’m not sorry for that decision: it pulled me up out of a year of illness and sorrow that had knocked me for six. So I am grateful to myself for insisting on all of those wonderful things: meditation, yoga, singing classes, poetry writing meetups, Irish language classes (two different ones, concurrent), dance, improv for seniors, plus a number of classes meant to help with health, stress, insomnia, and so on. And on top of that, visiting friends, helping family with various things — and hanging out with them, too.

A very full year.

I am still busier than I like to be, what with the ongoing medical (nothing life-threatening, just chronic bits needing attention) and other annoyances. The decision to offer a couple of workshops, as I did last year, and contribute some writing to an anthology have added the pressure of more deadlines, which I really don’t like. But I am happy to be doing those thing. (And planning a trip, for heaven’s sake, just when I had decided I don’t want to travel for the next fifty years…)

But there is still time for sitting in my garden every few days with a pile of books and a cup of tea, for taking a walk or sitting in the courtyard in the still of the night, watching one big raccoon make its way into the vegetable gardens there, for spray-painting my wonderful old St. Francis statue, who was losing his paint and I feared he would wear down in the elements. There is time for reading YA novels and Buddhist texts and sorting through the odd drawer — a pastime that always pleases me. I'm not doing much in the way of “creative” writing, though I am a little (mostly revising poems I had written a single draft of, and sketching out the odd one, fresh). It’s good to have a break from the structure of all those classes, and to have the gentle weather that allows the enjoyment of so many outdoor moments.

I read a poem by Rumi this morning. It isn’t as inspiring as most of them, and looks a little critical, but I like it. It speaks to the grumpy side of me, or to the peaceful side who gets buried under the grump.

People Want You To Be Happy

People want you to be happy.

Don't keep serving them your pain.

If you could untie your wings

and free your soul of jealousy,

you and everyone around you

would fly up like doves.

Rumi

 

from A Year with Rumi - Daily Readings by Coleman Barks

Images: Two photos of my Saint Francis statue, the first showing his head and shoulders and the second showing the full statue of a man standing with face uplifted, one hand on the head of a crane, one on a wolf. There is great affection displayed in his gestures and their closeness to him. He is in a garden with two more sculptures showing, a cement cat and kitten and a metal crescent on a circle. Ferns and other plants are growing around them.

“Sky-Circles” by Rumi

 

The way of love is not

a subtle argument.

The door there

is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles

of their freedom

How do they learn that?

They fall, and falling,

they are given wings.

Image: "Birds flying at sun set” by Chukwu Chibueze Pascal (Kingaustin07), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Note: Translated by Coleman Banks. Collected in A Year with Rumi - Daily Readings (2006).

Lava Cameo by Eavan Boland

 

Lava Cameo

by Eavan Boland

I like this story -

My grandfather was a sea captain.
My grandmother always met him when his ship docked.
She feared the women at the ports -

except that it is not a true story,
more a rumour or a folk memory,
something thrown out once in a random conversation,
a hint merely.

If I say wool and lace for her skirt and
crepe for her blouse
in the neck of which is pinned a cameo,
carved out of black, volcanic rock;

if I make her pace the Cork docks, stopping
to take down her parasol as a gust catches
the silk tassels of it -

then consider this:

there is a way of making free with the past,
a pastiche of what is
real and what is
not, which can only be
justified if you think of it

not as sculpture or syntax:

a structure extrinsic to meaning which uncovers
the inner secret of it.

She will die at thirty-one in a fever ward.
He will drown nine years later in the Bay of Biscay.
They will never even be
sepia, and so I put down
the gangplank now between the ship and the ground.
In the story, late afternoon has become evening.
They kiss once, their hands touching briefly.
Please.

Look at me, I want to say to her: show me
the obduracy of an art which can
arrest a profile in the flux of hell.

Inscribe catastrophe

Image: Italian Bracelet 41269, Walters Art Museum, LA. Public domain. Diana, Pompeii.

"You must set out now” by Anne Kathleen McLaughlin

 

You must set out now.

Gather your belongings.

Take only what you need:

A journal, a pen, water colours,

A change of clothing, warm socks,

Woollen cloak with hood.

The currach awaits you.

Show your bundle.

Climb in.

Here are the oars.

Push away from shore.

Leave what holds you.

Seek no promise of safety.

Set your face to the boundless sea,

The wind in your left eye. Go.

In the pre-dawn darkness

One light shines:

Seven pointed star.

You do not know the way.

There is no way to where you must go.

Trust your life to this star.

Here is a journey prayer:

Star of the Sea

Seven arms encircle my soul.

A body to dance

A heart to know

Inner light to guide

Inner fire to impassion

Earth to birth me

Sea to hold me

Wind to carry me Home.

From Singing the Dawn – Rebirth of the Sacred Feminine

by Anne Kathleen McLaughlin 

Image: "Sea at night” by Władysław Ślewiński.

My Altar Ego Creeps Toward Her Book Release

 

Things are moving along toward the launch of my book (as Mael Brigde), A Brigit of Ireland Devotional - Sun Among Stars. (Take note: If I ever write another book, it is going to have a way shorter name!) Using my devotional name, I have done a few online events -- a panel, guest blog posts, some interviews -- and will be having a launch in just over two months (28 August, in between the European and North American releases).

In the meanwhile, the book is now available for pre-order in a number of places, and the e-book will be available closer to the release date.

Almost all of these events have been aimed at people who are already comfortable with the idea of goddesses and saints, mostly members of the larger Neo-Pagan community. At the suggestion of two friends from my speculative fiction and writers communities, I'm going to be doing a couple of online events that are aimed more specifically at family, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues who are more familiar with me from daily life, fandom, and writing.

There will be a little introduction to what I am doing, writing about this Brigit, and who she is, along with a short reading and time for Q & A. Fear not, there is absolutely nothing in the way of proselytising. I just want to thank you for your support over the years, and to let you know about something I have spent much of my life immersed in, but spoken of very little outside of the Neo-Pagan community.

The first event will be hosted by local writer, publisher, and events organiser, Erik D'Souza of Writers in our Midst on 26 June at 1 PM. 

There will be two ways to view. On Facebook at Writers in our Midst you can watch the show live, which will enable you to communicate with us via the comments column, or you may come along anytime afterward to watch it. (Of course, you can leave comments later, too.) It will also be recorded live via Zoom, with a limited audience of attendees. If you’d like to be a member of the audience, please get in touch and I can send you a Zoom link. If you are in the Zoom audience you can also interact via chat, or make comments (no heckling, you!) and ask questions aloud. In this case you will be part of the recorded event. We do ask that you stay muted and keep your camera on during the presentation.

 The second event is at a more infantile planning stage. Hosted by R. Graeme Cameron, a local speculative fiction fan, reviewer, and publisher of short fiction and poetry, and past VCon chairperson. It will be on 12 July at 6 PM PDT, 11 AM Melbourne time, so perhaps some of you Australian friends and family will be tempted to watch. 

It will be interesting to see how this side of my writing is received by folk who are only familiar with my speculative fiction and goofy plays and Turkey Readings at VCon, and others who don't know the writing side of me at all. I confess to being a little nervous, but I'm glad to take the leap.

See you on the flip side.

Poems Scribbled in a Well-Graffitied Booth at Bon's

At our very cheap brunch at Bon's Restaurant today, niece Flora Jo Zenthoefer and I wrote four short poems together, taking turns line by line. Here they are, fresh and unedited, for the joy of writing (and for the joy of playing):

i/

a shadowed pen and darkling sink                               (C)

a dip and then a pause to think                                   (F)

what words convey the thing I glimpse                        (C)

beyond the hayfields it limps                                      (F)

                 ***

ii/

grinning moon disappears                                           (F)

sleight of face                                                            (C)

a starless spot, no other trace                                     (F)

but here on earth its absence slowly whelms               (C)

a holesome spot in my heart realm                              (F)

                 ***

iii/

look! the spindle spins and thread unravels so              (C)

that a garment fine can be made                                 (F)

of anti-thread in anti-time with aunties all around       (C)

the weaver stops for a sip of Antarctica                       (F)

and there along its rim: an ant                                    (C)

                 ***

iv/

a red plague dances                                                     (F)

on these shattered bones                                             (C)

a soft smile above blood-stained teeth                         (F)

but we—we who remain—determine not to fall             (C)

keep time and manage to keep step

            ignoring cuts from the jagged dance floor         (F)

and dance we past all plague and precipice                  (C)

Image Credits:

The Walls at Bon’s, http://www.insidevancouver.ca/2014/11/25/hidden-gems-bons-off-broadway/
Bon's Off Broadway, https://chowtimes.com/2009/10/11/2-95-breakfast-at-bons-off-broadway-in-vancouver/

Your Death Full of Flowers

by Wild Grace

A very special collection of poems is being released into the world, like sun-bright bees zigging off to their meadows—Your Death Full of Flowers.

Slippery Elm is editor, and he has done loving translations of each poem between English and Spanish. He and his compadres have seen the project through from idea to fruition, in each detail choosing not what is easiest, or least expensive, or quickest, but what they determined to be best, and I am eagerly awaiting my package of books. For I am one of twenty-one writers whose work is contained (oh, lucky me) in these artisanal works, each "[p]rinted and bound by a family of artesanal leather workers from Ubrique, Andalusia, Spain."

Here is what Slippery Elm says about the book on the website:

Your Death Full of Flowers

A bouquet of poems arranged and translated by Slippery Elm

The thread that ties this bouquet together is that of the story of Blodeuwedd from the Mabinogion. A woman composed of flowers, who sought to kill her husband, and was thereby transformed into an owl. Blodeuwedd meaning flower-face, and the owl said to have been called blodeuwedd in the Welsh of yore. 

Just as the wizard Gwydion gathered blossoms of broom, meadowsweet, and trefoil, the editor gathers the poems to conjure something greater, a something that then goes on to wing the poetry out into the world. A deadly and nefarious agenda in the eyes of the princes of our age, or of those who are their followers and find no love or meaning but in their expendable busts. 

In the garden of these pages we encounter the whimsy and abandon of the eccentric who goes through life, toothless and in colourful rags, giving out flowers just because. Who heard the patter of Death’s slippers by their nightstand and received him with a bouquet. Who throws flowers at grooms and graves, and awoke suddenly as the rose’s final petal fell. We encounter the lyric and litany, the poison, the perfume, the lament, the laughter, and the eschatological love poem. The flowers that open above us. 

Flowers have been plucked from a well pick’d troop of poets, poets of the other breath, of the diverse brushstroke and the obscure melody. Major figures in English, Spanish, Arabic, American, and Welsh literatures, as well as newly emerging voices. Poets both young and old, and poets dead as much as living. Poets who have proven themselves worthy of the appellation, not just through prizes, accolades or infamy but through a certain generosity of the spirit and a marked commitment to the Poetry. This almost spiritual pedigree, of wise innocence, of beatific inspiration, might be boiled down into two words, which in some ways, are each a reflection of the other. For the old: trust. For the young: bravery. 

All poems appear in English and Spanish, and one in Arabic. The two languages form a dialectic in which meaning is generated in the space between them. It is in this hermeneutic tension between the Yes and the No, at the interstice between the two different tongues, between the dead nettle and white archangel, right in the centre of the book, that the beginning of an answer is given to the riddle of all riddles. 

_________________________________________

This book is a fairy dart tipped with a draught to re-enchant a chantless world. That the lector remember his or her mortality and live all the more fully for it. Our aim is true. We swear by all flowers.

300 exemplars

Pocket hardback bound in three shades of green leather: holm oak, mugwort, and wild ivy; and in two shades of blue leather: bavarian gentian, and belladonna berry. Stamped in gold. Magenta and cerulean endpapers. Printed and bound by a family of artisanal leather workers from Ubrique, Andalusia, Spain. As the leather work is done by hand, no two copies are exactly alike. 

440 pages. 65 poems by 21 poets.

Contents

*

Elf Shot

Blooms Cast Upon a Tomb

Flowers of Flight

Flowers of God Making

‘Where the Bee Sucks there Suck I’

Women of Gardens and Gore

Your Final Roses

*

The poets:

Adler Frischauer

Antler

Casey June Wolf 

David ap Gwilym

Elena Botica

Emilio Montaño

Erynn Rowan Laurie

Giles Watson

Ian Kappos

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

MAAM (Maria de los Angeles Argote Molina)

Mahmoud Darwish

Mike Mahoney

Nicolas Ramajo Chiacchio

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

Robert Graves

Ruby Sara

Scott Ramsay

Slippery Elm

Steven Posch

Tanya Fader

Victor Anderson

Your Death Full of Flowers can be ordered here: 

http://www.swamplanternbooks.com/books/your-death-full-of-flowers

“What He Thought" by Heather McHugh

What He Thought

by Heather McHugh

for Fabbio Doplicher

We were supposed to do a job in Italy

and, full of our feeling for

ourselves (our sense of being

Poets from America) we went

from Rome to Fano, met

the mayor, mulled

a couple matters over (what's

a cheap date, they asked us; what's

flat drink). Among Italian literati

we could recognize our counterparts:

the academic, the apologist,

the arrogant, the amorous,

the brazen and the glib—and there was one

administrator (the conservative), in suit

of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide

with measured pace and uninflected tone narrated

sights and histories the hired van hauled us past.

Of all, he was the most politic and least poetic,

so it seemed. Our last few days in Rome

(when all but three of the New World Bards had flown)

I found a book of poems this

unprepossessing one had written: it was there

in the pensione room (a room he'd recommended)

where it must have been abandoned by

the German visitor (was there a bus of them?)

to whom he had inscribed and dated it a month before.

I couldn't read Italian, either, so I put the book

back into the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans

were due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then

our host chose something in a family restaurant, and there

we sat and chatted, sat and chewed,

till, sensible it was our last

big chance to be poetic, make

our mark, one of us asked

                                             "What's poetry?"

Is it the fruits and vegetables and

marketplace of Campo dei Fiori, or

the statue there?" Because I was

the glib one, I identified the answer

instantly, I didn't have to think—"The truth

is both, it's both," I blurted out. But that

was easy. That was easiest to say. What followed

taught me something about difficulty,

for our underestimated host spoke out,

all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents Giordano Bruno,

brought to be burned in the public square

because of his offense against

authority, which is to say

the Church. His crime was his belief

the universe does not revolve around

the human being: God is no

fixed point or central government, but rather is

poured in waves through all things. All things

move. "If God is not the soul itself, He is

the soul of the soul of the world." Such was

his heresy. The day they brought him

forth to die, they feared he might

incite the crowd (the man was famous

for his eloquence). And so his captors

placed upon his face

an iron mask, in which

he could not speak. That's

how they burned him. That is how

he died: without a word, in front

of everyone.

                     And poetry—

                                        (we'd all

put down our forks by now, to listen to

the man in gray; he went on

softly)—

                  poetry is what

he thought, but did not say.

Heather McHugh, "What He Thought", from Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 © 1994 by Heather McHugh. www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

Image: Photo by David Oliver (2006). Close-up of the statue of Giordano Bruno at the Campo de' Fiori, Rome. Photo heavily over-exposed. (The statue is dark.) Public domain through Wikimedia Commons. 

“Storm Proof” by Casey June Wolf

I have been neglecting my blogs. No essay this time, and no poem by some great poet, though I have one in mind I'd like to beg access to. Instead, a poem from me, written yesterday as the warned of storm hit land near where I live, but by the time it got to me, was gentle as a very angry lamb.

Diana in the Autumn Wind — Paul Klee, 1921.

Storm Proof

the winds are fresh today

fierce   some might say

each branch   each leaf strains

toward my open window

wide   welcoming

cool invisible arms

wander round me

we are both thrashing here

you in jerk and thrust of changing air

me with words on screen and all the

churning heart that goes into them

there

you are quiet now

a pause in your suffering

in your frantic throwing off

of leaves stitched cell by cell across the months

they are going   gone

as sure as what I cling to rips away

in my mere internal tempests

I looked up   though

not for metaphor

but for companionship

and as I drank the dregs of your wild traverse

thought

and what of those at sea

how welcoming

do your arms appear to them

Casey June Wolf

copyright 15 October 2016

Image: "Diana in the Autumn Wind", Paul Klee [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Grief: A Poem

I have been faced recently with grief and all the tangled emotions and thoughts that come with it. The poem below narrows in on one small aspect of the symphony.

Grief

pathetic in my grief

I find your hairs

linted up in hidden corners

rinse them off

set them awkwardly aside

there will never be another

I cannot throw them out

Photo and poem copyright Casey June Wolf 2016