Mar 30, 2019
My sister-in-law, Doris, is perhaps the most literate person I know. When someone at her retirement community invited her to join a “Great Books” reading club, she took a look at the list and realized she had read them all, except for Gibbon and War and Peace, so she declined. Recently, dismayed by the state of the nation, she is focusing on non-fiction, the denser the better (though I think she’s still taking a pass on Gibbon).
Perhaps we should read about declining empires image:penguinrandomhouse.com
She may also be the hardest-working person I know. At 81, Doris runs an editorial service, translating from German and French, editing manuscripts and helping authors find publishers. Self-employed, she is a demanding and relentless boss. On a recent visit she told me defiantly that a journal editor would “just have to wait” for her translation of an article on dementia. He had sent it to her with no warning just before she came to Florida for a week’s vacation, and she couldn’t get to it until she returned home. It wouldn’t be back on his desk until ten days after he had sent it.
I love going for walks with Doris. She can name every wildflower and tree. When she is deprived of walks by dreadful weather (they’ve had a very rough winter), she suffers greatly from being cooped up inside. Her only exercise then is yoga, Zumba, and fiercely competitive games of ping pong in the basement of her building. At the New Years Eve party, she choreographed and danced La Bamba with two other women, while her husband (my brother Don, age 91) sang. After a long phone chat with Doris I sometimes have to lie down to recover from vicarious exhaustion.
image: josh sorenson at pexels.com
It was Doris who introduced me last year to the Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day. click It is now my daily treat. Almost all the words are new to me, and whenever I find one that delights me, I add it to a steadily growing list. Unfortunately, I can never use the words in conversation; no one would understand me (except, perhaps, Doris). Therefore, Gentle Readers, I am sharing some of them with you. Though I have shortened the definitions, if you don’t enjoy dictionaries you may want to stop here.
Some words I love for their meaning: Quob [To throb, palpitate] – such a sexy word. Cwtch (rhymes with butch) [a cupboard or cubbyhole, cuddle or hug].
Some I love for their sound: Pisculent [Full of fish]. Puckeroo [Useless, broken]. Quagswagging [The action of shaking to and fro].
pisculent image: alesha loben on pexels.com
I love a few words because I never knew we needed them, and they make me laugh. Demonachize [To remove or drive monks permanently from (a place). Zedonk [The hybrid offspring of a zebra and a donkey]. And my favorite, Hippanthropy [The delusional belief that one is a horse]. Obviously, we need a new word, Zedonkthropy.
Gainesville (GA) Times – baby zedonk at Chestatee Wildlife Preserve
in Dahlonega, GA
One word we clearly need is resistentialism [The theory that inanimate objects are hostile to humans], though I don’t know why they call it a theory. How do you think I got all these bruises?
Many words on my list would help me in Scrabble if I could ever remember them, but alas, I suffer from obliviscence [The state of having forgotten, forgetfulness].
I love the words that are useful in Florida summers. Summerful [Full of summer; summer-like, summery]; oam [Steam, vapor, condensation; warm steamy air, heat haze]; mafted [oppressed or stifled, especially by the heat].
image: Anderson W Rangel on Unsplash
There are many words I could use if I cared to write an essay about the President. When, disheartened and without much knowledge of history, I fear that we are in a time worse than any that has come before, I now have many venerable words that apply to The Rump, and am oddly cheered to think that parlous times are nothing new:
Ampullosity [Swollen or pretentious inanity; turgidity of language, bombast]; Boation [Bellowing, roaring; a loud bellowing noise]; Jactance [Boasting; vainglorious speaking]; Ondful [Malicious; spiteful, envious]; Homophily [The tendency of people to be drawn to or seek out those they perceive to be most like themselves]; Realia [Real things or actual facts, especially as distinct from theories about or reactions to them]; Imaginarian [A person concerned with imaginary things]; Jeel [Trouble; mischief; damage. Frequently in ‘to do jeel.’]; Jabroni [A stupid, objectionable, or ridiculous man; a loser, a knuckle-head]; Badmash [A scoundrel, a rogue; a miscreant; a hooligan, a ruffian]; Wanwit [A fool].
image: History in HD on Unsplash
My only objection to the OED Word of the Day is that it so often turns my thoughts to The Rump. But it has also revealed to me that I am a verbarian [A person who is interested in words]. Writing this was great fun, my version of sport. (I think I am now officially old.) So thank you, dear Doris. You are indeed a walkative [Inclined to walk; characterized by walking] verbarian, and a beloved sister-in-law.
A walk at Paynes Prairie – Joe, Liz, Don, Doris
Jun 10, 2020
Book Briefs Full book reviews are at Big Books from Small Presses on the Blogs page. Here are capsule reviews of other books I’ve liked. Naming Nature (2009) by Carol Kaesuk Yoon. This is a lively, informative account, complete with illustrations, of the...
Aug 13, 2019
Over thirty years ago my late brother Richard and his wife Esther bought a house on Vinalhaven, an island in Maine. They spent every summer there, and as the years went by, four of their seven grown children and a granddaughter bought houses too.
Every summer at the end of July or beginning of August, children and grandchildren and great grandchildren gather in Vinalhaven for a week, filling all the houses, renting a couple more. We celebrated Richard’s eightieth birthday there, as well as three weddings. My oldest brother Don and his wife used to come from Connecticut to join the gathering. Now the drive is too much for them, but Esther hopes next summer they will fly.
I’ve always envied families who have a summer gathering place where they go every year. Joe’s parents always had a cottage at Crescent Beach in Connecticut, where his mother and aunt and their seven children spent a month in the summer, fathers coming out from the city for weekends. My friend Michelle sings with Other Voices; her song Bradley Beach perfectly conveys her childhood annual trip to the New Jersey shore, the kids crowded into the back seat, the summer thrills changing as they grew from toddlers to teens. Here’s the song
I went up to Vinalhaven several times before I married, but never felt quite comfortable there, and the trek from Florida was daunting. But since Joe and I married and Amanda came to live with us, we have usually managed to rent a house in Vinalhaven for family week. Now it is a magical place for me, a place where I have no cellphone service, wifi is scarce, lobsters are plentiful, icy water comforts my old joints, and beautiful views and beloved family are around every blind curve.
This year, because of Amanda’s school schedule, we couldn’t go for family week, but several family members arrived a couple of days before we left. And this year I went up by myself a week early to stay with my oldest niece Maria.
Like any trip to a magical place, the trip to Vinalhaven is a challenge. It’s full of unforeseen troubles and treasures, and the heroine must overcome many obstacles. I flew out of Gainesville at 7:15, scheduled to arrive in Portland about noon. I was going to spend the night at Luke’s house in Portland and drive to Rockland to get the Vinalhaven ferry the next day. (Rental car agencies and ferry schedules determined this plan.)
But at the gate in Atlanta they were calling for volunteers to take a later flight. They were desperate: the first volunteers got $300, but by the time I arrived it was a $700 American Express gift card good for six months. I thought a moment. I would get to Portand by five thirty instead of noon. Since neither Luke nor his daughter Frances was free my plan in Portland was simply to goof around. So I raised my hand to volunteer, headed to the desk, tripped and landed on my face. The only damage was the rug-burn on my cheek, and the mortification as four people gathered around the 72-year-old woman on the ground asking, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
After my scheduled flight took off with my checked bag, I sat at the empty gate and worked on an application for a 2020 writing residency in Washington – lots of 1200-word essays about me and my aspirations. Then a big thunderstorm rolled in, and all incoming flights were diverted from Atlanta, along with all the flight crews. Our copilot was in Birmingham; the rest God and Delta knew where. Every half hour or so we got a progress report. I went to a restaurant a few gates away and, because of the crowd, shared a table, sushi, and Scotch with a delightful university librarian from Cleveland. (Now that I think of it, I bet I could have scored a dinner voucher).
image: pixabay pexels.com
Back at the gate they were boarding. We were all settled in our seats when they announced an equipment issue, and we all unsettled and returned to the airport. An hour later we were back on the plane and in the air with that uneasy feeling one always has when flying on a plane with a recent equipment issue.
We arrived in Portland at 8:30. I retrieved my suitcase from the baggage office and rolled it up and down ramps to the rental car desk. I was exhausted, and a little worried to be driving in a strange city in the dark, but so glad to finally reach Portland. Then the nice young man behind the desk said, “Ma’am, this driver’s license expired last week.” Sure enough, it had. I had ordered another but it never arrived, and I’d forgotten about it. So I would have to take the bus from Portland to Rockland.
I rolled up and down more ramps and found a taxi with a friendly driver and a GPS to navigate through funky old Portland neighborhoods. When the GPS said we’d arrived, we couldn’t find the house number. The driver waited; “I’m not going to leave you here alone.” I called my nephew and his daughter with no success. A neighbor pulled into a driveway but didn’t know Luke. I climbed up to front porches looking at all the mailboxes, and finally found it. Climbed the long stairs to the second floor, took a welcome hot shower, and fell asleep.
Portland street
The bus ride from Portland to Rockland was uneventful. I didn’t worry about whether we would miss the last Vinalhaven ferry, because in my experience the bus always misses the ferry, and I know what to do. You take the North Haven ferry, find a boy with a boat, and pay him $5 to shuttle you across the water to the wrong end of Vinalhaven, where, if you can make proper phone connections with family, someone will meet you.
Maria did meet me – Luke, the only one with cell service, had left her a note. We went to Esther’s house for dinner and a very welcome glass of wine., and then home for bed.
Maria and I are only ten years apart; she is also a writer. We are kindred spirits and we bump along well together; Maria’s apartment in Washington Heights and house in Vinalhaven are two of my favorite writing retreats. The house is an old farmhouse about a mile out of town.
Maria’s house
My attic bedroom was up a narrow staircase with high risers and shallow treads. The one bathroom is downstairs, so a couple of times a night I was hauling myself back up the stairs with the help of a rope banister. But the bedroom was bliss and I slept soundly every night, after indulging myself in Wodehouse. (Maria has the complete collection, and it’s like a box of See’s chocolates.I read two of his novels in a row, and discovered that’s too much Wodehouse.)
Whenever I’m away from home, especially by myself, I sleep really well; perhaps because no home or family concerns call for my attention. I also work prodigiously. In two weeks in Maine I wrote a 15-page talk for a presentation in November, a short article about longleaf pine restoration, and a chapter of my fourth novel, as well as five 1200-word essays for the residency application, which I had to reduce to 1200 characters each when I realized I had misread the application form. It was flowing, and I was extremely happy.
At Maria’s I rose each morning about five and worked a few hours until she emerged. Her summer was very busy. She and her sister Ani had just finished revisions on a screenplay, a comic family thriller set in Eastern Europe. Luke, who is a cinematographer, was checking it over and correcting formatting before they sent it back to the producer. Difficult discussions were underway about casting. I loved being privy to all this glamorous drama.
Maria’s daughter Adriana has a thriving yoga studio. Maria went to yoga every morning and took care of the eight-year-old twins every afternoon after their summer camp. A Monopoly game was in progress on the living room floor. Dylan had Park Place and Mia had Boardwalk; somebody had hotels on Mediterranean and Baltic. When they took a break from climbing trees, swimming in the quarry, exploring outside and writing in their nature journals, they sat on the floor fiercely disputing trades and deals.
Every night Maria and I had dinner with Esther. The three of us took turns cooking. After dinner we played Scrabble. Maria won once, I won once, and Esther won five times. She is gleeful when she wins, her gloating barely concealed by sympathetic comments about our crummy letters.
One night Gabe joined us; I had barely seen him since his wedding to Adri. That night I learned how funny and interesting he is. He told hilarious stories of the Rockland to Vinalhaven plane – he commuted to his editing job in Boston when they lived on the island year-round.
We had tea with Maria’s friend Lorraine, joined by another friend, Alex. Lorraine’s house is modern and dramatic, with a fireplace of huge granite rocks fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. It overlooks a cove, and we briefly sat on the deck before the mosquitoes drove us inside. Lorraine served tea, cookies and sweet raw scallops dressed with lemon and olive oil. I couldn’t get enough of them.
We had gratifying conversation about my book, and lots of talk about the New York arts scene. Maria and Esther both have friends among leaders of major arts institutions. The cultural elitist in me is awed. I’m also amused. Like many creative people, my family tends towards shabby and broke, yet they hobnob with people who attend museum galas.
Without a car and with family so busy, I made frequent use of Vinalhaven’s lone taxi. Jeanne would pick me up at the library on a moment’s notice. Better than that, we instantly discovered we are kindred spirits. For many years she taught art and English at the Vinalhaven school; she has writing aspirations and a strong lefty-feminist streak. I was foolishly proud to have made my own friend on Vinalhaven, instead of just tagging along to meet my family’s friends.
Maria’s husband Chuck and their son Cristian were arriving Saturday, so I moved into our rental house. It was very sleek and new, and quite cheap because it was several miles out of town and not on the water, but on a steep rise above the road, looking out into fir trees. It didn’t have the charm of my family’s old farmhouses and cottages, but it was set up perfectly for everyone’s privacy. I had a happy night and morning all by myself, and then Jean took me to the last ferry to meet Joe, Amanda, and my son Eric.
We amused ourselves together and separately. Joe and I swam in the quarry and the icy Basin. I swam in the Bathing Hole, muddy at low tide but cold and salty. We went for a short hike together, and he went kayaking twice – eagles and ospreys and seals.
image daniel lee at pexels.com
Eric was sick and couldn’t do all the vigorous Maine things he loves. Though he’s very self-sufficient, I’m sure my fretting was curative. Amanda slept a lot and immersed herself in wifi, as she does at home. But at night she went off with the older, college-age cousins.
Long ago, when Amanda was nine, the older cousins went rock-climbing. They told the young ones they were going to talk about adult things; if they didn’t know what puberty was, they couldn’t come. Amanda knew all about puberty, but poor 7-year-old Gus and his little brother were excluded. From then on, Amanda was part of the big kids. Now it’s not rock-climbing, but hanging out at somebody’s house until early morning. I’m glad she’s included.
2012 – children flow downhill
As family members arrived, we shared dinner or desserts, and then played games. The Minister’s Cat – everybody claps in rhythm, and we go around the room, “The Minister’s Cat is atrocious, The Minister’s Cat is beautiful, The Minister’s Cat is cadaverous….” If you can’t think of a word or keep up with the rhythm, you’re out. The adverb game: one person leaves the room, and the group decides on an adverb. Ze returns and tells people to perform actions – Ben, write a letter – Luke, wash your hair – in the manner of the adverb. Then ze has to guess the adverb. Don polishing Joe’s shoes amorously is a sight I’ll never forget.
On our last night I prepared the family dinner – there were 15. I made a salad and my much-praised beef stew in a newfangled oven that had me cursing. For some reason the potatoes and carrots weren’t thoroughly cooked, but no one complained. People brought ice cream bars, popsicles and cookies. Afterwards some played a wild card game called spoons – I don’t know how it worked, but every once in a while there was a mad scramble to grab a spoon from the table. In another corner was a more sedate game of Uno.
I love that there are no televisions in my family’s houses; that people don’t hide their faces behind their phones. I love that people from 7 to 87 play nerdy games with enthusiasm and hilarity. I love the harmonizing singing sessions, with songs old and new. I love that writing and art are seen as essential endeavors. This is my family’s culture, and I feel at home in it, though I have moved into a different world.
To take your car on the ferry from Vinalhaven, you must call at 5:30 AM the day before. You must arrive half an hour before departure; one minute late, you’ll go to the back of the line, and your car won’t make it on to the ferry. We took the 8:45 ferry, which left at 8:15 because Main Street in Rockland was going to close for the Lobster Fest parade, and we were in line five minutes early. Maria, Luke, and Michael showed up to welcome Paul and his new wife and stepdaughter coming in at 7:45 and.say goodbye to us.
I always get tearful riding away on the ferry through the cool morning, looking back at the harbor with its lobster boats. So many memories of so many summers: Richard and Esther sitting on the porch in the morning, everyone dropping by for coffee and conversation. Children, and all of us, swimming in the quarry. Long talks with Esther over coffee, and her annual Summer Open Studio, where Joe and I always fall in love with at least one painting. Luli at the lobster roast the night before Luke and Lisa’s wedding, sitting on the ground and eating five lobsters plus two tails. Lobster rolls at Greet’s Eats, where the boats pull in and dump their lobsters into the tanks. My nieces and nephews grown into middle age, their children going to college, having children of their own.
Amanda and Frances – sunset swim in the quarry
Lobster rolls with Don
They are sweet tears of memory and sad tears of loss. Richard died around Thanksgiving five years ago; Luli died two years ago on his birthday, August 16. Only Don and I are left. Every death leaves a hole with a particular shape that no one else can fill. But I’m so grateful to have my two sisters-in-law, Esther and Doris, and that my nieces and nephews have taken me in as a kind of sister. Now we have more family, as Verushka and Leilani join my great-nephew Paul. I hope I will get to know them, and I plan to travel to my magical place for many years to come.
A magical place
Mar 25, 2019
Conversations and Candy (what more do we need?!) I understand a website is supposed to be about Me, Me Me, but I would really like it to be about You, You You, too. If you have thoughts about writing, art, music, life, and can say them in fewer than 200 words, please...
Dec 11, 2015
Last spring I discovered MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), when my friend Sandra posted a notice on Facebook of a Stanford course, Ten Pre-Modern Poems by Women. My sister Luli and I both signed up.
The professor, Eavan Boland, is an Irish poet and professor of humanities and creative writing at Stanford.click She was aided and abetted by young poets in the creative writing program. After Boland talked a bit about the poet and her time, and described the poem, we read it and gave our first impressions. An illustrated lecture went more deeply into the poet’s life and times, and analyzed the poem. A contemporary poet commented on the poem, and then we had homework assignment. Faculty and students responded to each other in the discussion forum.
Some of the poems – Browning’s “How do I love thee?” and Rossetti’s “When I am dead, my dearest” were very familiar. I’d seen them so often that the words had lost their meaning. But doing the homework, and reading the faculty and students’ remarks, I saw them fresh.
“I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach” Image: The Grand Canyon. National Park Service
“When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head…” image: Flickriver.com
I’d never heard of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, but I loved her poem, “Washing Day,” a picture of the weekly disruption in an 18th century English middle class family when the washer woman comes to do the laundry. It’s full of vivid scenes and pictures: the clotheslines break, the dog knocks over the drying rack. a little boy loses his shoe in the mud. We see the whole population of the household: the wife, husband, maids, children, grandmother, visitors. There are enough characters and action in Washing Day to make an amusing play, or if you are novelistically inclined there are plenty of scenes to get you started.
Laundry Day c.1765. Image: British Museum
For each week and poem there was a choice of three homework assignments, always including the opportunity to write a poem of your own. For me this was the easy way out. Rhyme and meter are in my blood – doggerel runs in my family. I can write a bad sonnet with the best (or worst) of them, but I soon found I focused more on the poem under discussion if I wrote one of the essays instead.
Rosetti’s poem came alive for me again when I went to YouTube and heard it set to music. I listened to three versions with different melodies and performers. The different songs transformed the poem into something new, and led me to examine the original more closely. click
I was enjoying this course so much that I signed up for another one, Harvard’s Poetry in America: the Civil War and its Aftermath. It had a great deal more material than the Stanford course, all of it tempting. It included a baritone singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot under a slide show of engravings and photos, a discussion of The Gettysburg Address, a Confederate nurse’s diary, and John McCain reciting The Cremation of Sam McGee, which he learned in Vietnam when the prisoner in the next cell tapped it out in code. I soon realized that if I added that course while continuing the Women Poets course I would be a full-time student. I don’t have time for that, so I stopped after a couple of weeks.
Union nurses in the Civil War. Image:civilwarsaga.com
I finished Ten Pre-Modern poems in June, and early in September I started taking Modern and Contemporary American Poetry from the University of Pennsylvania. Each poem was accompanied by a video discussion between the exceptionally good professor and his grad students, conducting close readings of all the poems – word by word and line by line, not neglecting punctuation and line breaks. There was a lot of additional material available, as well as very intelligent discussion on the forums. This was the best and most challenging of the three courses. I stuck with it for eight weeks, through the Beats, but with my Voices Rising concert and a trip to the Grand Canyon looming, and from sheer intellectual exhaustion, I stopped.
UPenn Prof. Al Filreis and grad student Anna Strong.. I loved watching these video discussions partly because Al reminded me so powerfully of my late friend Jim Hardy, down to his voice and the twinkle in his eye.
All the courses have participant discussion forums, and participants come from all over the world. I love hearing furriners talk about us, because it reminds me once again how very parochial we are. People from Peru or Pakistan aren’t necessarily affected by the American orthodoxy-of-the-week. In the Harvard course, several recommended Gone with the Wind as an excellent portrayal of the horrors of the Civil War.
image: ew.com
Most forum posts drew no response – I suppose we’re more interested in our own thoughts than in anyone else’s. In the Civil War poetry course, the longest thread by far was started by someone who asked people to share their creative work. The poetry poured in. None of it had anything to do with the Civil War.
Like any college student, I like to gripe. Judging by the professors in these courses, the current fashion in academia, perhaps stolen from literary fiction, is to discuss everything in the present tense. I hear journalists on NPR do this too.
I suppose somebody has decided that it brings history to life, but it annoys the hell out of me. Aside from impoverishing the language, it flattens our sense of history, and creates a false intimacy, a pretense that barriers of different world-views and culture don’t exist or don’t matter. It leads directly to our presuming to judge the outrages of other eras as though we sensitive souls of the 21st century occupy some moral high ground. I’m convinced that wickedness and cruelty, intolerance and exploitation, selfishness and greed continue in humankind at pretty much the same level through the ages. Only the victims and methods change.
image: thinglink.com
image: linkedin.com
The discussion in the women poets course frequently raised issues of class, race and gender. While I’ve been obsessed with these most of my life, I found myself impatient with what seemed to be requisite and rote comments. I finally wrote a waspish response in my essay about “Washing-Day,” which I generously share with you:
Yes, they hired laundresses, who doubtless had rough lives. Maids worked very hard and had little power or independence. The poet could have written about The Washer Woman, but on this occasion she chose to write about what it was like in the household on wash day. I see no need for 21st century readers to tut-tut about the evils of other historical periods – we have plenty of our own. If I read a contemporary poem about a young girl who is a gifted gymnast, I don’t feel impelled to discuss the sweatshops in which the beads were sewn onto her costume, unless the poet is implicitly leading me there.
Gabby Douglas. Image:usa.com
Aside from my quibbles with substance, I found the technology cumbersome. It took four tries to create a damn password for the Stanford course – with each try, they came up with a new rule: must have numbers, can’t use symbols, must be gluten-free.
image:passwordmeter.com
All my passwords are gluten free. image:fixyourdigestion.com
The Harvard course was worse. It ate my three paragraphs of delicious analysis TWICE. It buried all kinds of critical information several layers down in various links: there were eleven pages of FAQ, and then a separate FAQ thread in the discussion section. It took a lot of digging to discover that the course was designed for Chrome, and Firefox users (me) were particularly likely to have problems.
I recommended the course to Luli, but suggested she just read and view the materials rather than try to respond. She claims she once took a hammer to a recalcitrant computer, and the obstacles in this course were so frustrating that I was afraid she would blow up her whole office.
If I had a hammer… image:hongkiat.com
The Modern Poetry course, which Luli was very engaged with, refused to recognize her after a couple of weeks, and though she and I spent hours on the phone trying to fix the problem, she finally had to give up.
It was their loss. Luli’s participation in the Women Poets course had enriched it for me and many others. Thanks to a wild and crazy adolescence, she barely finished high school and never went to college. She’s as widely read and knowledgeable as anyone I know except our sister-in-law Doris, but she hangs out with a number of highly educated writers and librarians, and she thought it would be cool to have a certificate saying she completed a course at Stanford.
Luli got a certificate. Image:stolinsky.com
We enjoyed the course together by phone and email. Luli in academia is a little like Alice in Wonderland – she sees things for what they are, rather than accepting the strange transformations of truth that blossom in the groves of academe. For example, here was her response to my discussion of the You Tube performances of Rosetti’s poem:
cor blooming blimey! what a load! i listened to the ones you mention, plus a passel of others…not all the way through any of ’em, because i thought them all total rubbish. as maudlin as a bunch of drunks. which the poem isn’t. and so many overblown orchestral arrangements for this simple, tongue in cheek song. my god. but, i liked your essay.
A bunch of drunks. image:crujonessociety.com
For all my carping, I think MOOCs are great. However, be warned. Though all of the courses emphasize that you can participate as much or as little as you want, it’s hard to resist doing more than you have time for. It’s like spreading a buffet in front of a hungry person. The Ten Pre-Modern Poems course is the least demanding (after all, it’s only ten poems) and its approach, including the assignments, the least rigorous. But I enjoyed it, I learned a lot, and it didn’t eat up my life. The Civil War poetry course was rich with material, and I will probably return to it. Though I didn’t stick with it long, my impression is that their poetry analysis is more historical than literary. The Modern Poetry course felt like a graduate seminar in poetry – very intense, and very focused on the poetry. I gained new appreciation for Dickinson, Whitman, William Carlos Williams and Ginsberg, and met others I’d never heard of. I do intend to go back to it, though I’m a little daunted by the time required to do it well, and I may tire of the close reading approach.
Here’s a link to find MOOCs. click. Courses in subjects like engineering, computer science, and business far outnumber the arts and humanities. But their search engine is good, and if you’re so inclined you should be able to find the courses I’ve mentioned, as well as other humanities courses.
In the quest for eternal life and vigor, boomers are advised to keep exercising their brains along with their bodies. Eternal life doesn’t appeal to me, though vigor sounds nice, but I love reading poetry, and learning new stuff is fun.
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May 7, 2015
Neophilia. The word was coined by my sister Luli. With two more letters it could be something rather ghastly, but as it stands it simply means loving novelty.
Every few years I discover a new creative passion. I pursue it with fervor, but never develop any great skill. I love learning something new, and I love producing a physical object. My work, whether lawyer or teacher or mother, always consisted primarily of ideas and people.
I like to create something concrete (or butter) source:iowastatefair.org
It began with crochet. When I was 28, my friend Saralu and I drove from Jacksonville to Lakeland for a cram course before the two-day nightmare that was the Florida bar exam. We had packed frozen soups,stews, and a crockpot, cheese and fruit, cookies and wine.
The cram course consisted of long lectures and written summaries of the entire body of common and Florida law, each subject – torts, contracts, trusts and estates, etc, crammed in a tiny font on both sides of laminated pages. They were dense as a Claxton fruit cake, though less digestible. Every evening we returned to our motel room with heads buzzing – fee simple with remainder, statute of frauds, the mailbox rule, equitable estoppel.
After supper we poured wine, opened the cookies and sat on our beds, diligently memorizing the incomprehensible for about fifteen minutes.Then Sara unpacked her yarn and taught me to crochet. In three nights I had made half a shawl. In the next few months I had made shawls for my friend Sue, my sister Luli, and both my sisters-in law. That took care of Christmas.
For several years I entertained myself with yarn. I made a sweater for my son in brown, black and rust. He was five, young enough that he didn’t mind wearing it. I made a couple of lace shawls in a fan pattern. I invented my own granny square, a sunburst in brown, beige and yellow, and made an afghan for my boyfriend. Unfortunately I joined colors by simply weaving them in, as recommended by the crochet book, rather than knotting them. In a few years, the whole huge thing was beginning to unravel. Then I tried my hand at knitting. I bought expensive wool in lavender, pale pink, and deep cherry red, and made the front and back of a gorgeous sweater. Alas, I lost interest before I got to the sleeves, and I never finished it.
I took drawing classes. I learned to stare and stare, looking for lines and shapes and shifting shades of color. I drew a pair of shoes, a paper bag, and my masterpiece, a pair of hands holding a baby’s tiny feet, drawn from a photograph. I spent hours on Sunday afternoons, totally absorbed, leaning over the table, focusing so intently the sweat rolled down my face. I did lightning sketches at a Saturday morning drawing group, where $5 bought a couple of hours with a model. I carried a small sketchbook everywhere. I drew people in airports and animals in Africa. I realized that drawing from photos was easiest – the image already reduced to two dimensions – so I drew many earnest talking heads on McNeil-Lehrer.
I enjoyed the sketches, but it took hours to draw a full picture. I searched my craft closet while I wrote this post, and found the big brown portfolio from my drawing class. The pictures were dated March and April, 2002, before Amanda was born. Even though she usually lived with her mother in the early years, big blocks of empty time became less available after Amanda.
I gave up copying the world and began doodling my inner visions with colored markers. This was great fun, frequently fueled by marijuana. It resulted in many strange images on greeting card stock, often phallic or uterine or both. My all-time favorite is an anxious-looking multicolored bird pursued by little turd-y haystacks, a perfect depiction of aspects of my life.
I took another class, and discovered the joy of collage. For eight weeks I worked on a huge naked goddess, with flames for hair and a rainbow of flowers above her head. The crowning touch was interchangeable merkins* in different colors – thread tangled up and stiffened with glue, attached to her mons veneris with velcro.
She has been in the closet for many years, and when I took her out I still loved the suggestion of musculature in her disproportionate limbs. I could only find one merkin, a purple one that has faded to a boring brown. I don’t want her anymore, and I was planning to throw her away if I could figure out how to put her out by the curb without horrifying the neighbors. But Luli begged me to send her to North Carolina. So I shall veil her in newspaper and take her to Fed Ex. It will be Luli’s last 70th birthday gift.
Goddess of Flowers and Fire
After this tremendous project my ambition shrank to a more manageable size and I began making greeting cards. Collage is very slow, or maybe I am very slow, and a single greeting card takes me several hours.
I love my collaged cards so much that I can’t bear to send them away; I have several waiting for an occasion worthy of their splendor. However, I did send one to Michelle Obama. It was a strange-looking woman, rather fat, resplendently attired with a belt and brooch, wielding a peppermint-striped cane. I wrote a gushing message expressing my great admiration, told her the card was inspired by her fashion sense (belt and brooch), suggested that Malia and Sasha might enjoy guessing the source of each scrap in the picture, and enclosed an answer key. I received no reply, nor did the Secret Service pay a call.
I made the card for Mrs. Obama when I was recuperating from my second knee replacement, shortly after Obama’s first inauguration. Recuperation entails a lot of time on the sofa, painful physical therapy, and frequent hydrocodone. Most of my creative work is not inspired by drugs, but when it is, it is truly…inspired.
I
Painting T-shirts was my passion for a while. I made one with hippos for my brother-in-law’s fortieth birthday. I made two with large birds, one nibbling strawberries from the crew neck, the other with baby birds peeping from the pocket. These were for my older brother Don and his wife Doris, who wore them all over China, looking very pleased and completely ridiculous. I drew a strange grinning face in black marker on a gray shirt for Luli. I liked it so much that I made one for myself in color labeled, “Grandma.” I used the same design on a dress for 3-year-old Amanda, with the caption: “I’m with Grandma.” It helped people match black toddler and white guardian, prevented them from saying, “Where’s your mother,” at playgrounds.
I have recently returned to crochet, and made about nine hats for homeless people. Several groups of women in Gainesville make hats for the homeless, and the HOME Van used to display them on a clothesline in the trunk of Nancy’s car – a wonderful assortment of styles and colors, all hand-crafted. It was a treat to see people shopping for their favorite, and an even bigger treat when somebody chose one of mine. Now that HOME Van driveouts are, alas, no more, I can donate my hats to the clothes closet at Grace Marketplace, which Nancy and her pals have set up as an elegant boutique.
Hats and stole (to keep the Feminist Grandma warm as she works)
To my surprise, digging into my craft closet to find my old work depressed me. I had been celebrating creative play. Now I was surrounded by abandoned pursuits, and suddenly Oughts and Shoulds and You Never Stick to Anything echoed around me. Apparently I’m not good enough unless I’m a great writer, drawer, singer, crocheter, and shoe and fabric painter. Perhaps I wouldn’t mind this nagging work ethic so much if it resulted in great achievement.
Every dabbler needs a craft closet
I am not worthy of the name of amateur. An amateur is one who loves passionately, who devotes herself to her art or craft. I am a dilletante, a dabbler. I have many brief, passionate romances, like a bee going from flower to flower, producing mongrel honey.
But damn it, I’m retired. Why can’t I just have fun? Consider the lilies of the field. Why should I have to toil and spin all my waking hours? I don’t suppose my goofy painted shoes click and t-shirts are quite as splendid as good old Solomon’s array, but they please me. Someday I may be sufficiently sane to acknowledge that is enough.
* Merkin: artificial pubic hair. “According to “The Oxford Companion to the Body,” the custom of wearing merkins dates from mid-15c., was associated with prostitutes, and was to disguise a want of pubic hair, shaved off either to exterminate body lice or evidence of venereal disease.” source: Dictionary.com
Jan 18, 2013
For over thirty years, we have celebrated Christmas at my house with visiting family and friends. I love it, but at Christmas my control freak – a bit over-developed from parenting – goes manic. I have to be in charge of everything, and everything has to be right. Like many cooks, I want control of my own kitchen. But my need for control extends beyond that, and I can fuss and worry through the weeks leading up to Christmas, and the few days of house-guests, as if comfort, joy and world peace were all up to me.
worldpeacebefore2021.com
The schedule might change from year to year depending on everybody’s arrival time, but generally we decorate the tree on Christmas Eve. Christmas dinner is either Christmas Eve, or the day after Christmas. With Doris and Luli’s help I prepare a big feast, and gather family and friends around the table. Late breakfast on Christmas morning is followed by a morning of oohing and aahing over opening presents, with single malt, aquavit, Calvados or other delicious sipping drink, Luli’s dundee cake, Don’s famous cookies, and whatever chocolates turn up in the gifting. The afternoon is for lying around, playing with new toys, reading new books, and a long walk. No need to prepare a feast after the morning orgy – we go to our beloved Chinese restaurant for Christmas supper.
Christmas dinner: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, a green veg and salad, and three pies topped with whipped cream. Don and Doris contribute plenty of wine.
tasteofhome.com
Breakfast? When I think of Christmas breakfast I drift into Italian, though I don’t speak the language – abondanza, mangiare, que piacere – and gesture con brio like an orchestra conductor. A feast of scrambled eggs and sausage, fresh grapefruit, home-squeezed orange juice, herbed mushrooms, bagels and lox, homemade muffins or coffee cake, a plate of fresh pineapple and strawberries, tomato salad, accompanied by coffee and of course, sipping liquor.
This year everything changed. Luli, my kitchen co-conspirator and conciliatrix, visited in October instead of making her annual Christmas trek. And at the last minute Joe had a essential meeting scheduled in South Africa. He would be gone for two weeks, returning December 22nd. All of a sudden I was on my own for Christmas preparations and Amanda’s Christmas break. I was NOT a happy camper. I’ve done children and Christmas alone and with a partner, and the latter is way better.
The first challenge was to gussy up Amanda’s Christmas break. Girls Place does wonderful programs for the school holidays, with lots of expeditions. link My friend Mary Anne and her daughter Ariel took her to the Little Match Girl ballet. But I wanted us to have special treats together. We went to the Hippodrome’s annual production of The Christmas Carol – I’d waited till she was ten because it’s scary – and went clothes-shopping. Alas, Amanda redirected her anger with absent Grandpa to available Grandma, so she was kind of a Scrooge-ette during these treats.
Hippodrome's Christmas Carol. Aaron E. Daye/The Gainesville Sun
I had other cool ideas for fun, but she got the horrible bronchial thing that’s been going around Gainesville. Meanwhile my own rage simmered and became the blues, accompanied by shame that I was struggling so without Joe.
I had planned to buy the Christmas tree with Amanda, but she was so sick we had to postpone it. Six days before Christmas there were no trees anywhere. At Lowe’s they were taking down their big white tent and said they had no trees left. But I saw five in the corner, and bought the least miserable one. Many bare branches, many brown needles. After a few days in the living room, poisoned by Amanda’s scorn and disappointment, it looked even worse. I put it out on the deck, and bought a fake tree. Apparently you have to spend an awful lot to get a nice one; at $70, this one was very straggly. I threw up my hands and decided Joe would have to deal with it when he got home.
The Tree of Despair
My son wasn’t coming. Leah couldn’t make it from New Orleans because her car was iffy. No friends were available for Christmas dinner. With the group so small, no Luli to help, and Joe only here at the last minute, I decided that I would simplify. We’d lighten up the food and add more walks. Don and Doris come from Connecticut and crave walks in our lovely winter weather.
The first change was to lighten up the food. Five Cornish game hens marinated in olive oil, lemon, and rosemary as they thawed. I sauteed beautiful green chard with bright red stems in olive oil and garlic, while Doris was happily in charge of cooking up the brown rice with red peppers and onions. I’d planned a plate of tomato salad – Don and Doris annually rave over our Florida tomatoes – but to my dismay my tomato grower stayed home from the Saturday Farmers’ Market. So in the end the main course was reduced from eight dishes to three.
No wrestling still frozen giblets out of a turkey. No guess work on timing – four, four and a half, five hours till the turkey is done? – and last minute gravy-making. Game hens take barely an hour, pan juices are no trouble at all, and the gluttonous girl in me is as thrilled as Amanda at having a whole bird to myself. Dessert remained excessive, but preparation was easy. Not my two pies – pumpkin seasoned with tangerine zest, pecan with dark rum or maple – and Luli’s winter fruit and berry pie. But Mrs. Smith’s frozen apple pie, though a bit heavy on the cinnamon, was perfectly fine, and her cherry pie was bliss.
Breakfast would be grapefruit, eggs and sausages. Though for days I waffled (waffles? no, too much) over whether I shouldn’t at least make my low-fat blueberry coffee cake, I held fast to simplicity, and asked Joe to buy a pecan coffee ring at Publix. We had coffee and Amarula – a cream liqueur made from the berries of the marula tree, which grows in the miombo woodlands of Southern Africa. Every one loved it but me, and Amanda loved the label about the majestic elephants who feast on the marula fruit. I stuck to Calvados.
Next, I let go of gift-control. When Joe was a child, he and his four brothers each found a laundry basket of presents under the tree, and tore into them all at once. When I was a child, we distributed all the gifts and then, starting with the youngest (always me), we opened them. Over the years I experimented with various approaches to accommodate Doris’ desire for the oohing and aahing and sharing and thanks, and Joe’s increasingly itchy need to be done with the interminable ritual, which went on for hours. This year I asked him to consult with Doris and devise a plan. They did. Amanda distributed the gifts and we opened them one by one, Joe too generous and kind and fond of Doris to deprive her, and probably pleased that I’d let go of one more thing. It didn’t hurt that with fewer people, there were fewer gifts, and of course he had the Amarula.
Don got pajamas
Joe got super-soakers
Doris got a hat and scarf
I couldn’t entirely squelch my Mom-in-Charge, so I turned her attention from food and ritual to planning great walks.
On Christmas Eve, we took a picnic to Kanapaha Botanical Gardens. The weather was lovely, warm and overcast. We walked the labyrinth, Amanda leaping over the low hedges and startling the lizards. Then we took the long walk to the herb garden, sink holes, bamboo grove, lake, hummingbird garden, cactus garden and finally to the broad porch of Summer House, where we rocked and ate our picnic.
Kanapaha's Victoria waterlilies. thegreentree.net
Joe had stayed behind to rest after his trip from Capetown. While resting, he solved the Christmas tree problem. He returned the costly, scraggly tree to Lowe’s, shook down and brought inside the brown and balding fir, found its best angle, and wrapped the lights inside, close to the trunk, where they illuminated rather than hid the ornaments. Like every Christmas tree, it was our loveliest ever.
On Christmas day, after opening presents, I wanted a chance for Amanda try out her new skateboard, the gift she’d been yearning for. The Gainesville-Hawthorne Rails to Trails was just the ticket – paved, and perfect for walkers, bikers, scooters. The trail to Hawthorne is hilly and curvy, so we took the route past Evergreen Cemetery and she began to master balancing, turning, and stopping.
Finally, there was the obligatory trip to the Alachua Sink on Paynes Prairie. Everyone was out in force for the post-Christmas walk: Gainesville natives, visiting families, turkey vultures, limpkins, moorhens, herons of all types, egrets and of course, the alligators, seeking the afternoon sun after a chilly morning. They were huge and numerous. Amanda bet we’d see 25, Joe bet more than. Joe won.
This was such a happy, non-frenzied Christmas. I missed some of the abondanza. But the only missing elements I’d restore are Luli, Joe's daughter Leah, and my son Eric. Maybe I am finally learning to let go.
My new motto: Put it down; someone else will pick it up.
Or not.
Aug 31, 2012
It’s been just over a year since the first post on The Feminist Grandma. Please give me an anniversary gift: urge three friends to take a look.
In August we went to Maine to celebrate my brother’s 80th and my nephew’s 50th birthday. Twenty-five years ago my brother Richard, a writer, and his wife Esther, a painter, bought a house on an island fifteen miles off the coast of Maine. Over the years four of their children have bought houses on the same island. It is an island of about 1300 year-round residents, mostly lobstering families. In the summer the population swells with artists and a few tourists. Richard and Esther spend the whole summer there, and their children coordinate so they have at least a week when they are all there, and the young cousins can hang out together.
The trip from Florida is long and complex. We spent the night in Jacksonville to catch an early flight to Boston, then drove five hours to Rockland, Maine, where we took an hour-long ferry ride to the island.
We arrived on Monday afternoon on the 4:30 ferry. The weather was hot, with bright blue skies. We left on Sunday morning on the 10:30 ferry. The island was fog-bound. Above our heads, the foghorn blasted every two minutes. We weren’t five minutes out when the island had completely disappeared, as though our week there were a magical time removed from our lives.
LOBSTER BOATS DISAPPEARING IN THE FOG
With no cell phone service or email, no TV or electronic devices for the kids, it was magic. We swam in the quarries, cold clear water that tasted clean enough to drink. We explored rocky tide pools. We kayaked in coves with fog hiding the open ocean, staying close to the shore to ensure we would find the way back. An osprey flew toward us, calling to distract us from its mate in a high nest.
SUNSET SWIMMING IN THE QUARRY
There are seven cousins including Amanda, ranging in age from three to fourteen. (The eighth cousin is married with twin babies of her own; they’ll undoubtedly join the gang when they’re older.) The five older cousins run in a pack, moving from house to house, supervised by one couple or another. Amanda had three sleep-overs with the only other girl. On our final night Joe and I took them all out to dinner. The children sat by themselves at a table by the window. Amanda had her first whole lobster, which she demolished with glee; Joe and I sat with Don and Doris, my oldest brother and his wife, and our own lobsters.
We celebrated the birthdays with two family parties. Friday evening Ben and his husband Scott had a cocktail party at their rented A-frame on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The children disappeared up the cliff, and soon seven-year-old Gus returned crying. The big kids had run off and left him. There was a rumor that the test for inclusion was to define “puberty.” Amanda certainly knows what puberty is.
THE BIG KIDS RETURN FROM THE CLIFF
The next night there was a big party at the house that Michael and Fleeka and their two boys share with Luke and his daughter. Richard and Michael had crowns decked with ribbons and wildflowers. We sat in a row to watch the 2012 Family Olympic Games.
Amanda won the sack race. Then she and my niece Claire tied their ankles together and doggedly practiced running with three legs. But at Ready, Set, Go they hopped a few yards and fell laughing on top of each other. The suitcase relay was chaotic as teams kept mixing up their vests and hats. I took part in the rolling-down-the-hill race, and spun so fast I was sure I must be winning. But I arrived last at the finish line, and lay for a moment until the world stopped spinning.
NOT DEAD, MERELY RESTING
I was very proud of myself to have participated and survived, but the real star of the hill roll was three-year-old Gabe, who rolled in circles like a little grub, and kept on rolling long after his rivals had crossed the finish line.
After the games, the ribs were just beginning to cook, so we saved them for dessert after the cake, and made do with burgers and dogs, salads and chips. When the mosquitos arrived, we went inside.
The children and several adults crowded into the playroom to rehearse the play, adapted by Maria, the oldest daughter, from The Wind in the Willows. Most of us were ducks, with cardboard beaks and tails, waddling and waggling in a line through the living room, down the hall, back through the playroom to the living room again. Mole and Toad and Ratty had recitations, and as each said, “Heads down, tails up,” we ducks all complied. Gabe was the star again, with a particularly fetching tail waggle.
THIS IS HOW WE FELT IN MAINE. E.H. SHEPHERD’S ILLUSTRATION FOR THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
After the play it was time for cake and presents. A spice cake, a chocolate layer cake with whipped cream frosting, and then gifts and homemade cards. A huge bag of potato chips and a leather-bound Bible for Richard. Smelly cheese for Michael, and a print from one of the local artists, to be selected by him. Don and Doris brought books for all the children – a beautiful book about horses for Amanda.
The guitar came out, and we sang while Amanda played tom-tom. Then we danced to a mix tape put together by my nephew Jamie, and Amanda was able to strut her quite astounding stuff. No sleepover that night; we bundled her back to the motel to get some rest.
Last spring we took Amanda to her friend’s birthday party. When we arrived a couple of hours later to pick her up, the mother urged us to stay: “We haven’t done the pinata yet, or opened the presents.” The children played in an inflatable pool with a hose and water balloons, smashed the pinata, and squabbled over the candy. We sat under the portable canopy, shelter from the fierce sun, with the other grown-ups, eating hamburgers and watermelon, drinking tea and beer.
We were the only non-family and the only non-blacks, and everyone tried to make us welcome. I talked knee replacements with the grandmas and aunts, and Connecticut winters with a boy who was heading to college up north. The birthday cake was a work of art, made by a 16-year-old cousin who has mastered fondant – a beach scene with umbrellas and clown-fish and bright blue fondant ocean. When we left, I told the mother and grandmother that it was the nicest children’s birthday party I had ever been to: “You can’t rent family at the Party Store.” I went home grieving for Amanda, who yearns for black family gatherings.
PARTY FAVORS, GAMES, AND MORE…BUT YOU CAN’T RENT FAMILY AT THE PARTY STORE
Amanda is in an odd and challenging situation, a black girl who began her life in tough poverty, raised now by old white people who have more than enough. Who knows how long Joe and I will last? I want her to have plenty of family when we’re gone
Now she has three families. There is her mother’s family. She rarely sees her mother, but I keep her in touch with Grandma Cookie and her maternal aunt and cousins. There is Joe’s family – grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. She sees them often, and the love is mutual. And there is my family, who welcomed her into the pack of cousins as though she had always been there.
A wise woman I know says “All families are multi-cultural.” I want Amanda to see many places and many ways of living. Exposed to so many different worlds, maybe she will never feel she belongs anywhere. But if all goes well, she will understand that she belongs everywhere.
THANKS TO JOSEPH S. JACKSON FOR THE PHOTOS FROM MAINE (and for making all the travel arrangements!)
Dec 23, 2011
(I urge you to sing this to that fine old tune we all know and love)
On the first day of houseguests my true love said to me, “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
On the second day of houseguests my true love said to me, “Where’s my list?” and “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
On the third day of houseguests my true love said to me, “Fetch Don and Doris,” “Where’s my list?” and “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
On the fourth day of houseguests my true love said to me, “Eric comes tonight,” “Fetch Don and Doris,” “Where’s my list?” and “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
On the fifth day of houseguests my true love said to me, “TOO MANY GIFTS!” “Eric comes tonight,” “Fetch Don and Doris,” “Where’s my list?” and “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
On the sixth day of houseguests my true love said to me, “I’ll never eat again,” “TOO MANY GIFTS!” “Eric comes tonight,” “Fetch Don and Doris,” “Where’s my list?” and “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
On the seventh day of houseguests my true love said to me, “Let’s go get Leah,” “I thought you said you’d do it,” “TOO MANY GIFTS!” “Eric comes tonight,” “Fetch Don and Doris,” “Where’s my list?” and “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
On the eighth day of houseguests my true love said to me, “Who’s coming next?” “Let’s go get Leah,” “I’ll never eat again,” “TOO MANY GIFTS!” “Get it yourself,” “Fetch Don and Doris,” “Where’s my list?” and “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
On the ninth day of houseguests my true love said to me, “We should change the sheets,” “Who’s coming next?” “Let’s go get Leah,” “I’ll never eat again,” “TOO MANY GIFTS!” “Eric comes tonight,” “It’s not my family,” “Where’s my list?” and “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
On the tenth day of houseguests my true love said to me, “We should change the sheets,” “Whatta ya mean ‘we’?” “Who’s coming next?”“Let’s go get Leah,” “I told you I’d do it,” “TOO MANY GIFTS!” “Eric comes tonight,” “Fetch Don and Doris,” “Leave me alone,” and “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
On the eleventh day of houseguests my true love said to me, “Here comes Matt and Amber,” “We should change the sheets,” “Whatta ya mean ‘we’?” “Who’s coming next?”“Let’s go get Leah,” “Where’d you put my wallet,” “TOO MANY GIFTS!” “You forgot the onions,” “Fetch Don and Doris,” “Where’s my list?” and “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
On the twelfth day of houseguests my true love said to me, “I’ll see you later,” “You forgot the onions,” “Leave me alone,” “Whatta ya mean ‘we’?” “I told you I’d do it,” “It’s not my family,” “You said you’d do it,” “GET IT YOURSELF,” “Where’d you put my wallet?” “Where’s my list?” “I’ll never eat again,”and “I can’t wait to see Lu-lee.”
The Feminist Grandma is taking a vacation - I'll be back January 6
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Sep 30, 2011
My favorite place on the Web is Poetry Daily. Every day it gives me a new poem, from one of hundreds of literary journals and books. When I find a poem I like, I put it in a fat, three-ring binder, my own anthology. click
Louis Untermeyer’s A Treasury of Great Poems, English and American, introduced me to poetry in ninth grade. All the scattered bits that remain in my memory come from that year and that book. “Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind…” “I like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart…” “Love at the lips was touch as sweet as I could bear…” I loved that book, but I left all my books (and my first husband) behind when I was twenty-three.
LEFT BEHIND
I found the Treasury again at our library’s semi-annual used book sale. I paid two dollars and was reunited with hundreds of old friends. click
At 94 my father astonished a dinner party by reciting Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, all fifty lines. He glowed with pride, and deserved to. Doris, my sister-in-law, once recited the preamble to Intimations of Immortality. She seemed to do it for the sheer pleasure of hearing the words. My sister followed with Jabberwocky.
I have always wished I had a big collection of poetry in my head. It would entertain me when I have to wait in line, or when I am imprisoned in a small cell for my courageous political actions, or, perhaps more likely, in a hospital bed for one or another ailment of age.
When I retired I decided to memorize poetry. I started with Elinor Wylie, “Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones, there’s something in this richness that I hate.” I struggled to remember the poet’s exact words, as she no doubt struggled to choose them, though some, I hope, came as a gift. Over and over I repeated the whole sonnet, until it seemed to be firmly planted. An hour later it was gone.
In my computer I have a file of the ten poems I managed to memorize. I wish I had such a file in my brain. Each poem I added drove out the previous one.
download my ten poems
Years ago, I paid my two foster children to memorize short poems. I believe I paid them a quarter. The first poem was
I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow
I’d rather see than be one.
PHOTOBUCKET.COM BY RESPHINA
Like many other plans from our early days together, when I thought I could achieve perfection, this one soon fell by the wayside and our path descended into the mucky quotidian.
I would like to try the same thing with Amanda. She already knows the pleasure of rhyme and rhythm. But Joe believes it is wrong to pay for learning, which should be its own reward. He is adamant, so I concede, though I still believe it’s a good idea.
I read poetry for months at a time, and then I let it go. Every time I come back to it I am renewed. Thank you, Poetry Daily, for the daily gift.
