All the 2021 POPO cards to me, hurrah!
Tag: Laura Gamache
My Heart Is
Alan Gurganis story title snipped from The New Yorker. Yeah, I’m pretty proud of this one. Here’s the accompanying poem:
My Heart is a Snake Farm
for Alan K.
Oh Alan, I’m lying,
and neither is it a lonely hunter,
pit of vipers, thrush,
nor is it buried in Venice.
Maybe it’s a safety friend
like my son-in-law
at the Children’s Museum
in Santa Monica, protecting
those coming close, circling,
and skipping out the door.
Collage for Collage’s Sake
Quinn, 12, my grandchild, and I were walking through the neighborhood. Quinn picked up the “I’m a musical Neanderthal…” scrap off the sidewalk. “Do you want it?” I asked. Quinn is an artist and had dibbsies. ” “You take it,” Quinn replied, handing it to me. I pasted it to this card, and off it went, layers of gel medium protecting it, to another poet in another town. I parted with the rabbit off the front of a card I sent Jim’s mom years before she died. The rabbit is famous, from the Lady and the Unicorn series of tapestries we saw together at the Musee de Cluny in Paris even more years ago.
News From the Noosphere
Morning After Mary Ruefle at SAL
I dig out my Golden Treasury of Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer…
And the dedication in my mother’s handwriting
from my parents to me. I was ten. Just.
At Tin Table before her reading, Mary and I talked
about our shared childhood favorite author,
Laura Ingalls Wilder, of the Little House books.
Mary had visited her late life house
in Nebraska?
in the Ozarks we both nodded,
having seen a sign driving past
traveling with a group of writers
who didn’t understand when Mary cried,
“Stop the car! Stop the car!”
I was awed and excited and said so.
Told Mary about reading Laura’s books
to my young daughters, who had no taste
for Pa and his fiddle, the rope in the snowstorm,
and how I’d forgotten, but the girls reminded me
I had tortured them further by recording myself
reading the books so they could listen
when I wasn’t there.
Mary clasped my hand the whole time
as I clasped hers.
So, Dear Writer… book launch at Elliott Bay Books 3pm, November 24
I am excited to announce that my essay, “Holding Open the Open of the World” is one of 17 in the new collection of “Craft Talks” from the It’s About Time Reading Series, begun by Esther Altshul Helfgott more than 29 years ago. The book, from Cave Moon Press, was co-edited by Esther, current series curator, Peggy Sturdivant, and Katie Tynan. Hope to see you there!
