Seashore serendipity

You've heard me chatter about my work with Seashore Family Literacy, the nonprofit organization for which I volunteer, lead writing groups, create marketing materials . . .

Well, if you'll indulge me once more, I'm giddy with a wave of serendipity and want to share it with you. Just this week:

• Senitila McKinley, Seashore's founder/director, was featured in the Portland Oregonian.

Go here to read the story about our very own 'Mother Teresa.' (With thanks to writer Lori Tobias and photographer Faith Cathcart).

• We launched the Seashore website, packed with photos, news and events. (With thanks to my longtime friend and colleague Tracy Weil, of Weilworks, for another great word-art-design collaboration) Go here.

• We joined Facebook. Be our 'friend', 'fan' or just take a gander for grins. Go here.

What is a good poem?

Too many writers? Feeling overwhelmed and small?

Tim Green, editor of Rattle, offers encouragement for those dark days of despair:

"The definition of a great poem is really simple: Poems that have the power to effect the lives of some of the people who read them. Every poem we publish doesn’t have to be memorable and moving for everyone — but it has to be memorable or moving for someone, some kind of person who represents a subset of our readership . . . "

Read more here.

Books devoured & delighted

A bounty of books has left me, once again, scattered and satisifed. Rain, shine, winter, spring, I've always an excuse to curl up and read. This week I've devoured an unusual mix:

• Killshot, by Elmore Leonard

Murder with a side of wry (a shout-out to Fred for suggesting this book)

• A Changed Man, by Francine Prose

A clever novel about a white supremacist turnabout.

I've recently discovered Prose (author of Golden Grove, Blue Angel) and am steadily making my way through all her fiction.

• Night of a Thousand Blossoms by Frank Gaspar

Lush, smart, prose-like poetry.

He's got great titles and beautifully orchestrated searches for truth. I love the opening line of this poem:

There Were Footsteps in the Garden

I can’t figure out the earth, everything saying yes and no

at the same time, everything shedding its hair and licking

its teeth and waiting to be eaten. And then there are the

great wings of the galaxies I’m looking at as they shudder

through the wilderness like spirits until they stoop through

my garden of lenses and mirrors. What is the loneliness

of all those shattered islands, what is so lofty, so hungry,

so intelligent, so needy about them? I’m reading in a holy

book about how the color red shifts and retreats in this

sidereal world, as though the stars are trying to hide

their forms from one another, as though they are afraid

of their nakedness─they all race away, and only the distance

grows, only the distraction, as if that were the point. Now

the yard is so quiet I can hear the snails being pulled

through the long grass by some reckless force beyond their

snail imagination. There are sayings now that would help me.

They would be nothing by daylight. The words try to avoid

embarrassment too. How can you blame them? But in

these pure hungers of the night it is another story. Precisely

another story, and then another and another. Oh, there were

footsteps in the Garden, all right. There was a firmament

hung with lights. But that was then. This is now. That’s what

makes me ask for the next story. That’s what makes me curl

in the blanket on the shivering grass and stare outward. That’s

what makes tonight so safe for this one thing I’m trying to say.

— Frank Gaspar, from Night of a Thousand Blossoms

Out of the book, into the world

From funerals to sports to valentines, it's been a good week for poetry.

Get poetry out of the books and into the world, is my frequent refrain. Poetry for the people, for the masses, for the everyday. This week, I was happy to see it happen:

• The Opening Ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games featured slam poet Shane Koyczan, who performed We Are More.

• Also at the Ceremonies, singer k.d. lang performed Hallelujah, a song by acclaimed poet-musician Leonard Cohen.

• I attended two funerals this week, and both included touching amounts of poetry. Though the services were full of sorrow, I was heartened by the healing power of words. Shared at our most tender and touching times — from weddings to wakes — poems awaken and soothe as we struggle to make sense of life's turns.

• For Valentine's Day I received several lovely cards filled with poetry. From Hallmark to handmade, I treasure them all.

Is poetry part of your every day? Tell me about it!

Toss the plans

You will be a starlight when you grow up.

When I'm not a writer-for-hire, I'm a writer-for-fun. I lead writing groups for students ages 9 to 19.

Life takes odd turns. Five years ago when I stumbled into "teaching" (not teaching as much as encouraging), I wasn't crazy about children. Teenagers were daunting. Youngsters were alien, and I had no maternal instinct. Today I am as surprised as anyone to realize I have become attached to these energetic, impressionable, loving children. This is the most fulfilling, and emotionally challenging work, I've ever done.

There are three groups and we meet weekly: Happy Hour (for 9 - 11 years), Writing Club (for 12-13 years) and Writer's Group (for 14-19 years). The programs are part of Seashore Family Literacy (a nonprofit organization) and we meet at the Waldport Community Learning Center.

I am a planner by nature. Organized and structured. I make detailed plans for each week — writing prompts, discussions, books to share, poems to read. But this week I was reminded that the best writing sessions are often the ones in which plans are tossed aside.

The other day, the Happy Hour kids rushed into the Writing Studio in a whirl of giddy excitement. As a reward for good behavior, they had been given fortune cookies. They couldn't wait to share their fortunes with the group.

You will find happiness in unexpected places.

Good luck is just around the bend.

Gathered in a circle, we listened intently and dissected each message: What could it mean? What is happiness? What would luck bring?

We were animated with possibility, and wanted more. So we wrote our own fortunes! Pencils flew across pages. Papers were torn and creased into complicated folds. We traded our palm-sized scribbles with enthusiasm and rushed to share them aloud.

It was 10-year-old K. who saw starlight in my future. I can't wait to grow up.

A meal of books

There are worse things than a book binge.

Chocolate, say, with its after-guilt. Or gambling with its high price.

Books are relatively affordable, and it's a good thing because I'm gobbling books to no end.

It started last month with a journey to Powell's Bookstore in Portland. Thanks to a gift card Christmas, I filled two bags in less than an hour.

This week, at Mari's Books in Yachats, I celebrated their newly expanded shop with an armload of purchases.

And then I hit the blogs. One site led to another and . . . Quick as a box of donuts, I gathered poet discoveries —Susan Rich, Alison Stine, Adrian Blevins — and rushed to buy their books. Like a sugar high, I felt giddy with new material. Each phrase engaged, every tangle of words offered layers of meaning and meat. New worlds! New words! I examined, analyzed and gorged.

I align myself with Jeff Gordinier, who confesses to being a poetry shopaholic, declaring that in a world of mass market, big-name publishing, "buying a book of poetry constitutes a gesture of resistance."

"It's a tiny push in the opposite direction," he says, "a pipsqueak of peaceful defiance."

I have no guilt in my reading investments; I'm supporting the underdogs of publishing, writers who toil away with no substantial reward beyond the act of expression.

Still, I'm a realist. Next week, I'll give my wallet a break and hit the library. When I do return to buying, rather than collect books on a shelf I will read and regift, passing along my latest finds to family and friends. Or donate the books to the local library. Good books, like good meals, are best when shared.

How to write a good poem

"I think the most important thing any poet or writer can do to improve his or her odds of writing a good poem of any type is to learn continuously how to pay attention.

Poetry is not about how we feel, of course. It's about how we feel about how we feel. Knowing how we feel about how we feel requires an almost ungodly attentiveness or consciousness— an otherworldly watchfulness and vigilance."

— Adrian Blevins
from How to Write Love Poems

Tenderness and Rot

Tenderness and rot

share a border.

And rot is an

aggressive neighbor

whose iridescence

keeps creeping over.

No lessons

can be drawn

from this however.

One is not

two countries.

One is not meat

corrupting.

It is important

to stay sweet

and loving.

— Kay Ryan

Writing Wanted for the Switcheroo

I love artful collaboration. Broadsided — one of my favorite get-poetry-to-the-people efforts — does, too.

Founded in 2005, Broadsided is "putting literature and art on the streets" by publishing an original literary/artistic collaboration on their website each month. Visitors can download, mull, print and share.

This month Broadsided is asking writers to take part in the Switcheroo.

Here's how: Respond to the image above in poetry, fiction, or prose. Responses need not be literal. However, the art and writing must, together, work to create a greater piece. In essence: something strong, unique, interesting, and that intersects with the art in a way that is at once surprising and fitting. Submissions are due by March 5.

More details here.

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Laura Rodley, winner of The Real Warnings, a book of poems by Rhett Iseman Trull.

And thanks to all who entered the drawing. Your comments, emails and participation are greatly appreciated.

Powerless and poor

I'm not sure which is worse: That a political leader compared the poor to stray dogs, or that so few of us roared back at the cruel comparison.

As so often happens, while many of us reeled in disbelief, a writer formed the words we could not. In his column today, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Leonard Pitts Jr. stood against injustice:

"If he'd said it of Jews, he would still be apologizing.

If he'd said it of blacks, he'd be on BET, begging absolution.

If he'd said it of women, the National Organization for Women

would have his carcass turning slowly on a spit over an open flame.

But he said it of the poor, so he got away with it. . . . read more