April Is the Cruelest Month

Apr 10, 2008

…especially in Maine, where it is due to SNOW this weekend. But it is also National Poetry Month. I’ve done the usual display in the high school library, and have posters up from Poets.org and books ranging from Shel Silverstein to Edgar Allen Poe.

National Poetry Month gets knocked by some as a superficial attempt to lure people into poetry. That may be so, but one month is probably better than none. Even though I used to write it (badly), poetry is not really my favorite thing. I spent more than my fair share of time in school trying to figure out what the hell poets were trying to say when it seemed to my prosaic self they could have done far more efficiently without such obscure symbolism. I am a Philistine, I guess.

I found this really fun site (Magnetic Poetry Online Poetry Kit—just click onto the link) to tap into your creative side and kill some time at work.
Fool around with it (it’s like refrigerator magnet poetry but you’ll be clicking and dragging the little words onto the screen instead of the fridge), come back here and share your great poem. You have several choices from the the word kits—I picked the romance one, natch. I haven’t had a contest in ages, so it’s time. One poet will win a prize! Enter as many times as you want to bring culture (and amusement) to MRMR. Or you can post a poem you like. New post and winner announced on Friday, April 18.

Now I’ll leave you with my favorite poem, Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold.
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

The Custom of the Country

Apr 7, 2008

Long before hunky Liam Neeson became Ethan Frome, I was forced to read Edith Wharton’s novella in high school. At the time, it seemed waaaay longer than a novella. I can’t say I enjoyed it the first time around.

But Wharton became a very much savored taste by the time I was in college. I devoured almost everything she wrote. There is something so deliciously bleak and thwarted in all of Wharton’s work. I don’t know what it says about me that I like her so much.

The Wharton world of old New York appeals to me. My grandmother and her six sisters (known collectively as ‘the beautiful Miller sisters,’ although I can’t really see why) could have been Wharton heroines—they were all spinsters, divorcees, or those who married late and remained childless— Brooklyn Blue Book society girls who fudged their birthdates in the family Bible in elegant copperplate handwriting and summered in the country. The photos I have of them and their friends in their Victorian/Edwardian finery in front of grand old houses practically scream for Edith.

You may have seen Wharton’s work which was made into popular splashy costume-drama films, The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. I was surprised to find out that movies and plays were made of her stories in her lifetime, but you can’t find many happy endings.

I’ve been on a non-fiction reading kick, finishing Hermione Lee’s 869 page biography, Edith Wharton. Here’s Edith’s take on writing:

What is writing a novel like?

1. The beginning: a ride through the spring wood

2. The middle: the Gobi desert

3. The end: a night with a lover

What “old school” author do you admire? Any good biographies to recommend? What did you hate to read in high school? What gets you through the Gobi desert when you write? I think that’s enough questions.

If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time. ~ Edith Wharton

I think my grandmother, the baby of her family, is second from the left. A cautionary tale: always label your pictures. One hundred years later, nobody knows who’s who.

Shooting Blanks

Apr 2, 2008

I have snatches of ideas throughout the day, most especially the time right before I fall asleep. Scenes and blog post ideas scamper merrily through my fogged brain, only to vanish in the harsh light of morning. I sit at the computer, watching the cursor blink on the blank white screen, taunting me. “So where’s the brilliant dialogue? What about the Vauxhall Vixens post? You know you should have written stuff down, dummy.”

And so I should, if I could read my notes. I carry a little red notebook in my big red handbag. Here are some examples of what I’ve scribbled, with original punctuation, or lack thereof:

Hart teaching girls what?

Conflict body betrays guilt.

Clothes, boys.

Christmas holiday crisp, cold.

“She was killed in a robbery and that’s why you became a sheriff. And celibate. That makes you wounded and brooding. Sound good?”

Uh, no. None of it sounds good. And that’s what I’ve written at school when I’m awake. I mean, Hart and the cat during Eden’s bedrest. Where the f was I going with that?

Some years ago my husband and I argued over who was snoring. I admitted to a snort or three, but John denied he made any noise whatsoever. I hung a voice-activated tape recorder on the bedpost and waited until trees were being felled in the bedroom forest by the trusty chainsaw and whispered, “It’s 2 AM and that’s John cutting wood.” Ah, vindication. I need to find that tape recorder.

How do you corral your thoughts for writing? Do you storyboard, outline or otherwise outshine me in organization? Do you go to the grocery store and forget why you’re there? Do you have a stash of “Happy Belated Birthday” cards? Or, even worse, have you started your Christmas shopping already?

There’s No Place Like Home

Mar 29, 2008

I’ve made a nest in 18 places in my adult life. Whew. Makes me sound like a gypsy or a jetsetter, and I am assuredly neither. But it’s fun to unpack boxes and pull out the talismans that have followed me around the country. Nothing horribly valuable, but meaningful just the same. I have a framed poem from my friend Claudia, two green Wedgwood pitchers, my grandmother’s Tiffany vase set with turquoise. Lots of mismatched china from both sides of the family. A stuffed pig that was presented to me one Christmas from “your four little pigs.” A pastel sketch by daughter #3. My great-aunt’s marble table. A reclaimed sideboard my husband refinished.

When my kids were little I’d drag them to antiques fairs, and they’d go around saying, “Look, we have this at home.” There’s been a distinct Victorian vibe in every house we’ve had, simply because of the objects we inherited. As much as I admire sleek modernity, my eye is trained to vintage.

When I write, I try to picture what the hero and heroine surround themselves with. I make it a point to go on house tours, read up on decorative arts, watch period-set movies. Vanity Fair is a favorite of mine because of its broad scope. I guess I’m just a frustrated decorator at heart.

What makes your house a home? Do your characters have things they can’t live without?

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. ~Jane Austen

I’m blogging 3/30 at Romantic Inks about the stuff on your desk you “need.” Drop by!

Another Book Report (Kind Of)

Mar 24, 2008

Jo Beverley is guest-blogging at Romantic Inks all this week. She doesn’t know it, but she and a handful of writers are pretty much the reason I started reading (and writing) romance again after a twenty-odd-year sabbatical. I missed all the bodice-rippers of the eighties and nineties because I was raising my own little hellions. I still read, of course. What sort of self-respecting English major would I be if I had not? But it was mostly best-sellers (and I could not for the life of me understand why they sold best), magazines, mysteries, the back of cereal boxes, Where the Wild Things Are. I knew where the wild things were—across the table eating Frosted Flakes.

So I have Jo to thank (or blame) for sucking me into romance. My last post (which you may still comment on below to tell me who’s new to you) dealt with new favorites. Here’s a chance for you to praise your old favorites (and by old, I’m not talking about chronological age, just authors you’ve loved for years). Don’t forget to visit RI—Jo is bound to be far more witty and informative than I will ever be. Fangirl gush is over!