Reading Kate Atkinson

Several years ago, I read and loved her novel  Life After Life. 

Very recently, I finished reading her first book, Behind the Scenes at the Museum.

Now, I am in the early pages of  A God in Ruins.

She's a beautiful writer.  She's also witty and bitingly honest in her portrayal of her characters.

She's very quotable, too.    This, for instance:

 

“Moments left, Teddy thought. A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was. A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat. A breath followed by a breath. One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment. Life was as fragile as a bird’s heartbeat, fleeting as the bluebells in the wood. It didn’t matter, he realized, he didn’t mind, he was going where millions had gone before and where millions would follow after. He shared his fate with the many. And now. This moment. This moment was infinite. He was part of the infinite. The tree and the rock and the water. The rising of the sun and the running of the deer. Now. ”
― Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins

I hope to have more to say about her work.

A Beckoning

Here's a haunting poem by Brian Jones, which I recently stumbled across:

A beckoning
by the circle of the seven,
move closer to us.
They call to me.
They are colored of the raven
but do not shimmer thus.

A beckoning.
The tight hooded figures, changeless,
sit cross-legged, knee to knee,
backs ever so slightly hunched.
Directional stares are bunched
and piled up in a heap,
all eyes the center, though faceless.
They call to me.

I sit on the outside looking in
with a countenance dark, as sin.

The circle bigger 'round
I'm on the inside looking down.

They called to me,
to join the circle of silence.
Now my knees join their knees,
eyes become filled at the touch.
We eight, we do suffer much.
The passersby don't see
that with sorrow steeped in timelessness,
they beckoned me.

You who look at us
steer towards safer havens,
not knowing, we call to thee.
You move swiftly by our crux,
not hearing, by gift of heaven,
the beckoning.

-----------
Copyright 1996

written 20 December 1994
Inspired by untitled work (1987) by Dominique Blain
on display at the L.A. County Museum of Modern Art

Watching "Network" in 2018

I had never seen the film "Network" but someone spoke of it in a recent article ( don't remember where) and it caught my eye. 

So I rented it from iTunes and watched it. 

It was made in 1976, but it still has relevance today . Back in 1976, we could never have imagined the power of social media and reality tv and the computer and the internet.  This film is prophetic.

The acting is great, too.

Monarchs and Hurricanes

Hurricane Florence is lingering over North and South Carolina, dumping destructive flooding rains.

That's what's going on now.

As for me, I am rejoicing that those caterpillars have gone to chrysalis mode and some have emerged:

August 23

 

 

August 27

 

 

 

As for me,  I have been back teaching since August 20 - almost a month!  I am teaching "Introduction to Poetry"  and "Women of Faith"  this semester.  I told them I no longer wanted to teach the Freshman Comp course. After 19 years, I don't have the energy, and this present generation demands much more energy to keep them engaged.  So I feel somewhat liberated in not teaching them this time around.

 

And I have finally written some new poems and revised some old ones.  And tonight I sent out poems to three places.

 

Fennel and Calendula

 

 

 

Caterpillars!

I am very excited to report that the Monarch butterflies have favored the Milkweed plants in my garden with caterpillars!

Within the next ten days, these guys will crawl away to a hidden spot and become chrysalises, and ten days more, and they will be new Monarch Butterflies. 

I planted these Milkweeds for just this purpose, and it's happening!

Pollen

I have assembled a pollinator garden! I have filled  previously bare mulched quadrants with mostly perennial flowers that attract pollinators.

All winter I browse the Internet and learn more about Native Plants,  Plants for Full Sun,  Butterflies,
Hummingbirds, etc.  Then, in the Spring, I buy some new  plants to add to the old ones just coming up,

This is its third year. The perennials have established themselves.  Not only that, it has rained more than anyone wanted, except those plants.

As a result,  here are some of the plants that make the bees very happy:

native phlox and calendula (an annual , from seed!)

 

 

Cherry Bells, Anise Hyssop, Perennial Sage, Crocosima

 

 

Yarrow

 

 

 

Lantana

 

 

 

As a result, the pollinators are happy.  I am now  miserable with early onset hay fever!

The Summer Garden

Taken last week, this photo shows an overview of the courtyard garden.

 

Perennials!  Verbena, Swamp Milkweed, Coreopsis, Russian Sage, Liatris

 

Anise Hyssop, Gladiolas

 

Oriental Lilies, Phlox, Coneflowers

 

 

Cardinal Flower, Phlox, Shasta Daisies, Liatris, Catmint, Asters

 

 

 

Farewell, Donald Hall

Donald Hall died recently -  another one of that wonderful generation of poets who include Richard Wilbur and Anthony Hecht.

Here is one of his poems:


Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

Donald Hall

Back in the USA

I had a marvelous almost four weeks in Paris!

I posted a photo each day on Facebook. Here are some of them:

I did make it to the Musee d'Orsay:

on March 1, I went to the church of Saint Sulpice, to the Sainte Chapelle, and to the Pompidou Center.  I loved this painting in the Pompidou Center:

 

I feel a poem will come from that one.

 

On March 2, I slept quite a long time, recovering from the intense touring/walking of the previous two days.   But I did visit the Bon Marche, which is literally next door to the Motherhouse. Outrageously expensive, but a gorgeous department store.

 

 

and the bread department!

 

too much to put in one post.  More tomorrow, I hope.

 

 

Catching Up #4

I am not sure if I will be able to post on this blog while I'm in Paris; all I will have is my iPhone.

During the days when I am not in the silent retreat ( March 7-15), I will be touring.

I have been pouring over Rick Steve's Paris:

and among other places, these are some I am aiming to visit:

Musee d'Orsay, the Impressionists museum

L'Orangerie,  home of Monet's waterlilies

The Pompidou Center, the contemporary art museum

La Sainte-Chapelle, for the stained glass

the church of Saint Sulpice, hopefully, for an organ concert

and then, just for fun,

the flower and bird market. Maybe I'll be able to bring home a birdhouse.

Catching up #3

Here is where I will be in Paris, this time tomorrow!   It's the street entrance to the Motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity, at 140 rue du bac.

The chapel is open to the public: it's the place where the Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Catherine Laboure in 1830, and where Catherine received the design for the Miraculous Medal:

I'll be praying here .

Here's a view of the Motherhouse, behind the chapel - not open to the public:

Catching Up #2

I am using this neat "app" called Duo Lingo to brush up on my French!   I studied French for five years, but that was fifty years ago!   This very interactive app is game-like and fun, and I am stumbling and occasionally sailing through it. Why am I doing this?

I am not teaching this semester; my one class was cancelled due to no enrollment! It was a section of Modernity, and it was scheduled from 2-3:15 T-Th. Other years I have taught it from 11-12:15, and it was always full to overflowing. The other afternoon session was cancelled too. Apparently the seniors who needed to take it got there first to register, and the juniors decided to wait until the fall. Athletes can’t do those afternoon sections… who knows? ( I will be back in the Fall, teaching two courses) Adjuncts don’t get sabbaticals, even though I’ve been teaching at the Mount for 18 years.

 But I am glad for this one. The cancelled class has turned out to be providential for me. For several years the community has invited me to make the annual International Retreat, but they ask so late that I had always already committed myself to teaching. Not so this time around! I’m taking extra time there, too, before and after the eight day silent retreat, which runs from March 7-15. The Motherhouse in Paris is at 140 Rue du Bac, around the corner from le Bonne Marche. It’s a huge old complex; once the chateau sized mansion of some aristocrat, after the Revolution, the Daughters moved in in 1810. So I plan to see the museums and neighborhoods of Paris, and do some writing as well. I hope to post some notes about this trip on either my blog or here.

So I have been working on DuoLingo pretty religiously.  I'll be staying at our Motherhouse.  People have told me "Don't worry: everybody over there speaks English!"  I reply:  "Not the French Daughters of Charity who live at our Motherhouse!"

Catching Up #1

On January 6 and January 13, I spent 8 hours each time in training to be a tutor with the Literacy Council of Frederick County, Maryland. Here is the photo of all the new tutors.  Now I am certified to teach someone how to read, and also to work with someone who is learning English as a second language.  The training and trainers were excellent; however, I know I need a good deal more practice before I am any good at it.  

I won't be able to start tutoring until April, though.  Other things have happened!

New Year's Eve

This poem doesn't have anything to do with New Year's Eve, but it is a poem I love:

The poet is Robert Morgan:



Living Tree

It’s said they planted trees by graves
to soak up spirits of the dead
through roots into the growing wood.
The favorite in the burial yards
I knew was common juniper.
One could do worse than pass into
such a species. I like to think
that when I’m gone the chemicals
and yes the spirit that was me
might be searched out by subtle roots
and raised with sap through capillaries
into an upright, fragrant trunk,
and aromatic twigs and bark,
through needles bright as hoarfrost to
the sunlight for a century
or more, in wood repelling rot
and standing tall with monuments
and statues there on the far hill,
erect as truth, a testimony,
in ground that’s dignified by loss,
around a melancholy tree
that’s pointing toward infinity.

 

 

I am hoping that 2018 will be better than 2017.   2017 wasn't bad for me, but for the United States, my country, it was really bad.  We now have a president who doesn't care about anyone but himself, and who I think is running a criminal enterprise from the White House.

God protect us from this man.

 

 

What Books Have I Read This Year?

Snowy Day   by Lorraine Rimmelin



It's colder than normal, and we had an inch or two of snow today.  That's not much, considering what people are experiencing in Erie Pennsylvania right now:  five feet and more coming.

I've stayed in and slept.  I've also tried to remember the books I have read this year. So many of them were audiobooks, since I have some eye problems and save my "serious reading" for school.

But I did read a few books on Jessica Powers for my panel in New York last April, and many articles and chapters on the poetry of Stevie Smith, as well as the large book of her poems, for the seminar in West Chester in June.

Just recently, I read three of the five books I planned to read - the ones we were assigned when we went away to college fifty years ago:

Erich Fromm     The Art of Loving

Carl Jung         The Undiscovered Self

Mortimer Adler   How to Read a Book   ( I am on page 30 of 200 pages right now!)

I hope to talk about them at length in another entry.

The audiobooks were generally murder mysteries and thrillers: my escape reading:

I tend to get on one author and read everything I can of that person.

Lee Child     Night School

Louise Penny   - Glass Houses

 

Val MacDermid:

The Mermaids Singing

The Wire in the Blood

The Last Temptation

The Torment of Others

Beneath the Bleeding

Fever of the Bone

The Retribution

Splinter The Silence

 

Ruth Rendell: 

From Doon with Death ·

 A New Lease of Death ·

 Wolf to the Slaughter ·

 The Best Man to Die ·

 A Guilty Thing Surprised ·

 

 

Michael Connolly

The Burning Room

The Wrong Side of Goodbye

Two Kinds of Truth

 

Deborah Crombie     The Sound of Broken Glass

 

Jonathan Kellerman:

Victims

Guilt

Killer

Motive

Breakdown

Heartbreak Hotel

 

In a category all by itself is  Lincoln in the Bardo,  by George Saunders,  to which I am currently listening.  It may be the most weird book I have ever encountered.

 

On Christmas Day in the morning

Here's a wonderful poem by James Merrill:

Christmas Tree by James Merrill

          To be

     Brought down at last

From the cold sighing mountain

Where I and the others

Had been fed, looked after, kept still,

Meant, I knew--of course I knew--

That it would be only a matter of weeks,

That there was nothing more to do.

Warmly they took me in, made much of me,

The point from the start was to keep  my spirits up.

I could assent to that. For honestly,

It did help to be wound in jewels, to send

Their colors flashing forth from vents in the deep

Fragrant sable that cloaked me head to foot.

Over me then they wove a spell of shining--

Purple and silver chains, eavesdripping tinsel,

Amulets, milagros: software of silver,

A heart, a little girl, a Model T,

Two staring eyes. The angels, trumpets, BUD and BEA

(The children's names) in clownlike capitals,

Somewhere a music box whose tiny song

Played and replayed I ended before long

By loving. And in shadow behind me, a primitive IV

To keep the show going. Yes, yes, what lay ahead

Was clear: the stripping, the cold street, my chemicals

Plowed back into Earth for lives to come--

No doubt a blessing, a harvest, but one that doesn't bear,

Now or ever, dwelling upon. To have grown so thin.

Needles and bone. The little boy's hands meeting 

About my spine. The mother's voice: Holding up wonderfully!

No dread. No bitterness. The end beginning. Today's

    Dusk room aglow

    For the last time

    With candlelight.

    Faces love lit,

    Gifts underfoot.

Still to be so poised, so

Receptive. Still to recall, to praise.

 

 

 

To Drive the Dark Away

I love this poem by Susan Cooper:

The Shortest Day

 

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died

 And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

 Came people singing, dancing,

 To drive the dark away.

 They lighted candles in the winter trees;

 They hung their homes with evergreen;

 They burned beseeching fires all night long

 To keep the year alive.

 And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

 They shouted, reveling.

 Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

 Echoing behind us – listen!

 All the long echoes, sing the same delight,

 This Shortest Day,

 As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

 They carol, feast, give thanks,

 And dearly love their friends,

 And hope for peace.

 And now so do we, here, now,

 This year and every year.

 Welcome Yule!

 

 

Christmas poems and pictures

I love some of these photos of Cape May houses at Christmas.  They were posted on the "Cool Cape May"  Facebook page:

 

 

 

 

 

and here's a Christmas poem by Louisa May Alcott:


Cold and wintry is the sky,
   Bitter winds go whistling by,
   Orchard boughs are bare and dry,
Yet here stands a faithful tree.
   Household fairies kind and dear,
   With loving magic none need fear,
   Bade it rise and blossom here,
Little friends, for you and me.

   Come and gather as they fall,
   Shining gifts for great and small;
   Santa Claus remembers all
When he comes with goodies piled.
   Corn and candy, apples red,
   Sugar horses, gingerbread,
   Babies who are never fed,
Are handing here for every child.

   Shake the boughs and down they come,
   Better fruit than peach or plum,
   'T is our little harvest home;
For though frosts the flowers kill,
   Though birds depart and squirrels sleep,
   Though snows may gather cold and deep,
   Little folks their sunshine keep,
And mother-love makes summer still.

   Gathered in a smiling ring,
   Lightly dance and gayly sing,
   Still at heart remembering
The sweet story all should know,
   Of the little Child whose birth
   Has made this day throughout the earth
   A festival for childish mirth,
Since the first Christmas long ago.