Scattershots

Winter is when I dig deep, get the most and best writing done. There's something about the cold and dark that narrows the focus, reduces distraction, makes me turn inward. But already I yearn for a warmer sun, some green to push through the snow.


I have so many different projects in various phases of undress, yet when I come home from work, eat dinner, hang with the kids, I'm so exhausted I can only write in my head.


Just charted out this year's travel:
--February: Washington DC (AWP)
--April: Washington DC (Disparities in Behavioral Health conference)
--April: Boston (Muse and the Marketplace)
--April: North Carolina (see my mama!)
--June: Seattle (AcademyHealth)
--June: Charlotte, NC (General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association)
--June: West Virginia (cabin in the mountains for a week -- yee-haw!)
--July: Redwood, California (my BIL's tying the knot in a winery!)
--August: ????
--November: Boston (Gerontological Society of America and Thanksgiving with family)
--December: North Carolina (see my mama again!)

Travel exhausts and exhilarates, clears the clutter from my head.


The Writing... I love working on this latest revision of novel #1. Some heavy-lifting -- rewriting one voice from present to past tense -- but mostly it's all about the writing, the style, the right word. The best word. The last few weekly flashes have spilled on the page, almost effortless. Nice for a change. I'm getting itchy for a new novel, though. But then there is PURE to revise... sigh...

Still working on a chapbook of prose and poetry, a few contests to enter and conferences to apply to, and yes, pulling together a writing portfolio for graduate writing programs. Shoot me, please -- am I really contemplating going back to school at my age?

The Reading... Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout) left me homesick for New England, and with a twisty unease in my gut. Beautiful, lush book of connected stories. The underbelly of a quaint Maine town. Nineteen Minutes (Jodi Picoult) kept me on edge for the two days it took to me read. I keep dreaming of the characters, they've stuck with me. Next up? A few anthos...


A tired post. But a happy one. Peace...

Winter and All

Across the river from the asylum
under the gush of grey
sodden sky flirting with the
sun – a fickle breath tumbles
autumnal leaves through the last gasp
of meadows, golden-rusted

larkspur and rusted ragweed
the glimmering of winter berries

dead in appearance, lively
chilling winter approaches –
They leave the old world clothed,
warm, unsure of all
save that they leave. All about them
the cooling, southern wind –

Yesterday the grass, now
the lace of frost traces maple veins
As one nature reduces –
It lessens: obscurity, shadows of leaf

Tomorrow the stark solemnity of
leave-taking – the end
creeps upon them: surprised, they
burrow into the whitening earth.

***

A note of explanation. While reading William Carlos Williams' poem SPRING and ALL, I immediately imaged an old psychiatric hosptal in Massachusetts. The picture is a postcard of the Worcester State Hospital, now empty but beautiful in its derelict. I've walked the grounds often; the main building sits on the hill above UMass Worcester Medical Center, where I still maintain an adjunct position, and the place where I was born... so following the mood and style of Williams, I created a poem hoping to elucidate feelings of winter's melancholy...

PLEASE DIP DOWN TO THE POST BELOW and leave a comment -- wampum for your words, all to benefit Doctors Without Borders, to benefit the Haitian relief effort.

Peace, Linda