Combining Vermont, Love, Loss, and Literary -- It's Been a Big Poetry Month

My short haircut from Dec. 2017, when I didn't know whether breast cancer surgery and treatment might make it too hard to wash and brush my longer (and increasingly silvered) curls.

 

As a person with decades in recovery from alcohol abuse (it's a long time ago now, but I have no intention of picking up a "first drink" even though time has passed), I'm especially impressed with the online literary magazine Anti-Heroin Chic. It's an "anti-drug addiction safe space" where writers can express pain ... and of course, relief. So I'm touched and honored that the winter issue features two of my poems: "From Nails to Screws" reflects part of the journey I've made to set aside my Dad's well-meant but very dangerous instructions for life as a woman. And "In the Very Air" brings you first to Harvey's Lake in Barnet, Vermont, where I finished raising my sons, and then to my front porch "now" -- the place where I can see both the land's beauty and the tragedy of climate change. 

Here's the link to those two poems.

Another online magazine that's become a favorite of mine is Persimmon Tree, which offers space especially to older women writers. You can find my poem "Breast Cancer, 5 Years After," which is pretty fierce -- click here and scroll down quite a ways, browsing other intriguing work along the way.

The winter issue of Persimmon Tree also includes a "likes/dislikes" list of mine, in the fashion launched by Susan Sontag. Because there are a lot of those, they are being rotated day by day, so if you don't see my list when you first click here, take a look at some other time. Or, if you don't have time to visit twice ... here you go, without the attractive graphics of the magazine:

Things I like: hard rain on the roof, new snow, bonfires, fresh cinnamon, pillowcases, signed books, watercolors, chipmunks, Star Wars music, double rainbows, nickels, dark chocolate, globes, rowboats, comb honey, toast.
 
Things I dislike: an empty mailbox, stale mushrooms, herbicides, crumbs in bed, pigs, cheap cheesecake, splinters, garlic before breakfast, collapsed barns, diesel fumes, hammers, nylon petticoats, socks that slide down, malice.

 

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This month also includes publication of "Crossing Over the Moose," as an honorable mention by Raw Earth Ink and therefore included in The 2023 Northwind Treasury, an anthology coming from Alaska. I'll post a photo when my copy arrives!

 

I've also settled into writing about one segment per week for my "story of my life" (aka memoir), on the platform Medium. You should be able to see a few of these chapters when you first visit; after a bit, Medium will ask you to subscribe to the platform. That will give you access to thousands of authors, and you'll recognize many of their names right away -- as well as getting acquainted with rising stars of the literary world.

 

Now I've got to get back to some holiday baking. May your browsing give you a break from your own stresses, and maybe some hope and pleasure as you go. 

 

Acceptance Can Take Time

Dad, around 1965.

One of the gifts of history is understanding.

I say this today with a lot of gratitude. It's an intense writing time for me, working on several books at once, with each one approaching Life from a different angle. The most directly personal is a memoir that I'm gradually building, each chapter created when I have time for it, in an online publication called Medium. It has a "pay wall" but you can access quite a few items before it will ask you to ante up. (So far, my biggest paycheck from writing there was $1.09, for a month of labor. I guess I'm not one of those wealthy writer types. But I love being able to share the material.)

You already know that writing changes with time -- the hope of any writer is that it gets better, gets more "worth reading." Maybe we forget that it also has to be worth writing. And that's where yesterday's writing surprised me with an enormous gift:

I adored, and still deeply love, my dad. As a kid, I never questioned his opinion; as a teen, I wrangled with him about the Viet Nam War, but his knowledge always overswept mine (though my sense of what was wrong and right grew in power).

When, at midlife, I found myself in recovery from alcohol abuse and trying to clean up some major messes, I tried to hold my dad to account for some things he'd taught me about being a woman, that had resulted in, to put it kindly, an Epic Fail. He laughed at me and made a rude joke. It was one of those unforgivable moments that life hands out sometimes: someone I idolized, making me smaller.

Yesterday's memoir piece, which dealt with my college escapades, also framed some "life instructions" my dad provided. How amazing it was to discover that I'm no longer enraged at what he taught and said! Learning more about his life, especially his childhood as the Nazis overtook his birth country and turned him into a refugee (an identity that I never associated with him when I was a kid, honestly; he was just smart, educated, funny, and all-powerful of course) ... well, I have learned what History does to people's thinking and to the soul. And somehow, in all that learning:

I learned to accept and forgive my father.

Looking back, I don't think that was on the goals list for Advanced Placement History class. Guess I learned something more this week. Glad to be paying attention.