Writing | Kinds of Honey

In the spring

March 23, 2012 § 1 Comment

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” – Margaret Atwood

Riding the Neighbors’ Horses – Paperback

March 17, 2012 § 2 Comments

The novel is up on Amazon and ready for purchase! Be angels and pass it along to any horse-crazy kids (or grown-ups) you know, won’t you?

You can find it here: Riding the Neighbors’ Horses

I wrote a book about ultrasoft, mass-produced sliced white bread because I wanted to understand America’s fraught relationship to industrial eating in all its contradictory ferment. Over the past 100 years, few foods have been as revered and reviled as industrial white bread. -Aaron Bobrow-Strain

I’m eager to get my hands on this author’s new book, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf. It sounds fascinating! And maybe a little depressing. Golly, the food-writing craze is just getting bigger and bigger, isn’t it? Here’s a link to Bobrow-Strain’s article “What Would Great-Grandma Eat?” which was adapted from his book.

Embracing the Sky

March 13, 2012 § Leave a comment

Reader-friends. I’ve been remiss in not telling you about my older brother and his amazing book. So here’s the story.

My brother Craig is a young man, college graduate, and remarkable poet. His body challenges him with the trappings of autism and mild cerebral palsy, but his mind is just as sharp as yours and mine. In 2000, he took a year off between high school and college to write a book of poems. (I get to claim a little credit here since I was the one to suggest he do so!) And not long into the following year – his first year of college – Jessica Kingsley Publishers in London, England, picked it up. I still remember that phone call from my mother: “Someone’s publishing Craig’s book!”

For a guy like Craig, who struggles to communicate with speech but sails forward in writing poems and papers by typing, with support, on a computer keyboard, having a book get published is a major victory – and a chance for the rest of the world to hear him as he really is. These are poems beyond disability because they allow readers to see not the outside guy but the reflective artist inside.

Having completed his degree in English literature, he’s hard at work on a second collection of poems these days. I’ve been spending time with him during these at-home days and listening to the new ones come forth. Remembering that voice. And realizing how some of you have yet to discover it!

So, let me encourage you to have a look. Here’s a link: Embracing the Sky by Craig Romkema.

Perspective

March 12, 2012 § Leave a comment

But then we did not think of ourselves as poor. We did not accept it. We thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich.
-Ernest Hemingway, “A False Spring,” A Moveable Feast

A little novel excerpt

March 6, 2012 § Leave a comment

My book proof for Riding the Neighbors’ Horses is sitting on a shelf in my (temporary) bedroom. I’m sorry to say that in paging through it I found mistakes noticeable enough that I can’t overlook them, so we’re a few steps back in the editing/reviewing process. I’m hoping the book will be available in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, it is the funniest feeling to have a physical copy of this novel in my hands. I finished the first draft almost seven years ago. Followed up with lots of off-and-on revisions. Ignored it completely. Decided to do something about it. The book looks shiny and professional and it has my name on the front. Wheee!

For now, here is a small excerpt. Our narrator and protagonist, Susan Abbot, is about to get her first riding lesson from her neighbor, and new friend, Nan Whiting.

Horse’s hooves clopped against wood as Nan led a tall bay from its stall. “This is Bet,” she said. “The first time I rode her I was two, or probably even younger. Hold this a second.” Nan dropped a line of rope in my hand and darted around the corner before I could protest. I toyed with the end of the rope, following its white weave up to the halter of the horse. Bet stood near enough that I could feel the heat from her body and smell her scent—a blend of hay and wood, earth and sweat. She studied me with eyes so dark I couldn’t tell where the pupil ended and the iris began, and I wondered what I might read in those eyes if only I knew how.

Home, family, and traveling

February 28, 2012 § 1 Comment

Do you want to hear some good news? I am getting interviews!

Yesterday my mom and I drove to Cedar Rapids to pick up a truck – a red Chevy Silverado! – for my dad. We had our usual fervent discussions about life, faith, art, careers, personality types, travel, and the future. In the midst of this my phone rang and Interview #3 has been scheduled for the week. None of these jobs may pan out, but then, one of them might! I smiled for five minutes. Finally, the resume is doing what it was designed to do.

Iowa is brown, flat, hilly, barn-speckled. We drove through many tired-looking small towns. They fascinate me with their combination of rustic-ness and run-down-ness. Sometimes I like them in their familiarity. Other times I want to give them a good New-England-style overhaul. I like small towns, but I’m more of a quaint village kind of girl. Things can be small AND pretty.

(European countryside. Yes.)

One day when I settle down in my semi-remote (or maybe not remote?) wherever, it’s going to be lots of fun to consider how I can help make my nearby town (or neighborhood) veer towards quaintness. If they let me. Once they learn to like me. I’ll give it the good ol’ stubborn Dutch girl try.

So, anyway, I will be rambling around for the rest of the week. I aim to take a few photographs to show you some of these places. The fun thing about getting into photography is how you take on this mission to find things that are beautiful and interesting wherever you go. In unexpected places. From otherwise unconsidered vantage points. It gives one a new sense of purpose.

Around here, in the log-house-that’s-for-sale, we have been taking walks with the dogs, planning future books, planning future Etsy shops, baking, cooking, sweating in the sauna, trying out new hairstyles, and writing down to-do lists both ordinary and ambitious. I have ordered a proof of my novel, which will soon be available in paperback! Today is one of those days when opportunity seems within reach. Despite the gray skies and the ice that fell all night long. Despite getting home in the wee small hours of the morning and waking up later than industrious girls ought to do. Despite this tangle of hair on my head and the laundry waiting to be folded.

I have a Pinterest board full of dreams, and seed catalogs in the cupboard.

What is happening in your world?

Paradelle

February 22, 2012 § 2 Comments

Have you heard of this form? Poet Billy Collins made it up, to parody strict structured forms of poetry, with a footnote following his “Paradelle for Susan” that explains the rules for this (hardy-har-har) “French fixed form . . . of the eleventh century.”

I read the poem without at first realizing that he had made it intentionally awkward, though I did wonder about those dangling prepositions – because even while poetry lets you bend most grammatical rules, this was a bit much. I pointed these out to my mother (also a writer) and said, “Only Billy Collins could get away with that!”

I read the poem again and thought, How unnecessarily difficult!

And then I thought, I need to try it. I have liked writing sestinas, after all.

It turns out that while Collins proposed this form as a joke, subsequent poets have (a) not realized it and/or (b) decided to work with it, anyway. Red Hen Press has even published an anthology of paradelles that I’m curious to page through. So even if the revered Mr. Collins thinks this sort of thing is silly, the word nerd in me enjoys the puzzle, the playing with language.

Here’s some more info about the paradelle story and structure, and some examples: Paradelle, POA.

And here is my first attempt (feel free to give it the good ol’ workshop critique!):

—–

A Paradelle for Change

Where the bluebells end
Where the bluebells end
We come to the edge, laughing.
We come to the edge, laughing.
The end edge where we come
To the laughing bluebells

Is jagged, steep, a mile above
Is jagged, steep, a mile above
The river’s bending path.
The river’s bending path.
Above the jagged path,
Bending river, is a steep mile.

We fear not the gap. Hands hold
We fear not the gap. Hands hold
Together. We unfold our wings.
Together. We unfold our wings.
Our wings unfold, not fear. We, together.
The gap. We hold hands.

Where is the edge? The laughing
River’s mile gap above fear? We come,
We to the blubells, together.
A jagged,steep path. Not the end.
Hands bending, we unfold.
Our wings hold.

—–

Anyone else want to have a go? Send or link me to yours!

Poem for a Monday of wind and sleet

February 20, 2012 § 1 Comment

Blow, blow, thou winter wind

Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky,
That does not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As a friend remembered not.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

-William Shakespeare, As You Like It

In all things

February 13, 2012 § Leave a comment

Photo Credit:US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. – Aristotle, Parts of Animals

Where Am I?