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When my old friend Zarod sent me her beautiful salmon, made of used tea bags, I was inspired to write this ekphrasis:
Tea-Bag Salmon Prayer
Here is an ancient one--
tender-tea-bag-tethered scale by scale--
curved and floating, resting now--
one dorsal fin frayed--
the eye, the mouth, the caudal fin--
the careful hand behind the delicate creation--
I would be assembled of such fragile finishings--
calm--
like tea bags gathered over time--
cherished, known, put to new use.
(published at The Ekphrastic Review January 2018)
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Tea-Bag Salmon Prayer
Here is an ancient one--
tender-tea-bag-tethered scale by scale--
curved and floating, resting now--
one dorsal fin frayed--
the eye, the mouth, the caudal fin--
the careful hand behind the delicate creation--
I would be assembled of such fragile finishings--
calm--
like tea bags gathered over time--
cherished, known, put to new use.
(published at The Ekphrastic Review January 2018)
___________________________
Latest mixed genre collection:
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Latest novel:
Review of The Bright Logic of Wilma Schuh: "Complex, deepening, a mature writer comfortable with her genre and style." --F. Zarod Rominski: Rain Falls Clear; Seven Windows: Stories of Women Reader responses: "I love that you are writing the internal world of a nearly 70 lesbian woman." "You have managed a blend of simplicity and complexity which I love." "I find your language to be superb." "Wilma is totally captivating." "I love Alma." "I love Gracie." "I love Lyle. He totally works for me." "I love the section with Wilma's childhood vision." "Wilma's meditations all work beautifully." "When you started getting into Spinoza I felt a charge of excitement…I might actually be able to understand something vitally important." "Bob Smith, and the whole section on multiple personality: fascinating." "The voices of the dead work beautifully for me every time." "I want to emphasize how much I liked Michael's poetry." "I have finished and I am SATISFIED!" –––––––––––––––––––– –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Here's what I wrote in late summer, 2014, as the website was launched:
How This Website Came To Be It's all the fault of End into Opening: six sestinas and their humble companion poems. "You want a website," declared the otherwise modest little thing as it was about to be published. Apparently it had pretensions. "I want a website?" "You do, Shirley." End of discussion. And, after all, why not? Energy began to trickle, then flow, then surge. Ideas, decisions, technical details. I confess I lost some sleep as my mind was taken over. I confess I loved it: a wonderfully obsessive project, a new sort of creativity, a different kind of publishing. In the process I found myself contemplating my entire writing life: those somewhat ridiculously long sentences I wrote to demonstrate my grasp of "vocabulary words" in sixth grade; the women's writing groups through the decades; the masters degree in English & Creative Writing at age 56; the resulting first book; the long slow persistent action of putting words on a page, on a screen. Then, as I was about to turn 70, the unexpected need (now-or-never) to publish more of my writing. Suddenly, at 72, I have five books. And apparently I need a website, the building of which has given a strange satisfaction, as if I could hold the whole in my hand. I recommend it to you older writers out there. |
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A Few Words about Reading
I don't think anything gives more insight into the mind of an author than her reading life. When I was younger (and when not in school, with lists of required reading) I tended to stay with one book at a time—mostly novels, mostly contemporary. At the moment I'm in a period of proliferation. Believe it or not, this is a partial list of what I'm reading right now: Nuns and Soldiers — Iris Murdoch Middlemarch — George Eliot Nietzsche & Philosophy — Gilles Deleuze The Shewings of Julian of Norwich The Four Zoas — William Blake Heavenly Questions — Gjertrud Schnackenberg No Henry James at the moment, but he's my touchstone for fiction and I did recently finish my third reading of The Portrait of a Lady. For poetry in recent years: George Oppen, his New Collected Poems and Selected Prose, Daybooks and Papers. For philosophy: Spinoza, his Ethics. Ah, how I could go on... But won't. (Oh, dear. I forgot Rilke, Anne Carson...) |
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What you will find at this website Books book descriptions sample poems & prose Bio a bit more about me Et Cetera Epigraphs On Self-Publishing Claiming: thoughts of an unconventional older mother Links to Elsewhere Art & Photography Credits Contact form snail mail Special notes: 1) For free PDF with links to art referred to in paperback of "Enter Shadow, Enter Light") click here. 2) For free PDF of the entire text of End into Opening: six sestinas and their humble companion poems: click here. (Best viewed on large screen.) Or, of course, you can order the paperback version. 3) For free PDF of the essay "Claiming: thoughts of an unconventional older mother" click here. 4) To listen to an hour-long interview with Kristin Frangoulis focused on my work as a poet click here. |
