Beth Kephart's Blog, page 89

The GOING OVER poem for Sister Kim and the girls of Little Flower Catholic High School

In just a few hours, I will at long last meet the girls of Little Flower Catholic High School. These girls who are led by the endearing, catalytic, life-changing Sister Kim. These girls who read Undercover and House of Dance with such love in their hearts. These girls with whom I will sit and write a little memoir, sit and talk a little Berlin, sit and then maybe stand and dance.

This summer, the girls will be reading Going Over and writing a poem somehow evoked or provoked by this story about love on either side of the Berlin Wall 1983.

This morning, I give this poem to them:
 <div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">I Wanted </span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">I wanted you near I wanted </span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">you now I wanted you</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">loving like I live</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">loving, which is to say:</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">the quince that crawls along the stone,</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">the glass that shatters sun,</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">the rupture calm of the hymn I found</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">just yesterday, </span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">waiting on you.</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">We play our music like freedom here.</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">We leave our hearts close to our skin.</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">We say that we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i>to whatever color we choose</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">which is to say: neon lavender lime</span></b> </div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">the silver of smoke</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">the yellow of the star in the eye of the scope,</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">the pink of my hair.</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Choose. </span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;"><br />Live what love is.</span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Love the color you are.</span></b></div><br /><br />Good morning, Sister Kim, Kate Walton, my fellow authors, and all the Little Flowers. This poem is for you. And here, thanks to kind Serena Agusto-Cox, is another poem, written on another day, about <a href="http://savvyverseandwit.com/2014/04/g... lit-up glass of others' stories.</a><br /><br />The world, my girls, is your oyster.<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a>
</div>

View more on Beth Kephart's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 26, 2014 03:54

Lore Kephart Honored by Artist Niko Chocheli at Villanova University

Years ago, my mother met a young artist from the Republic of Georgia and soon believed in—and wholly supported—his dream of becoming a U.S. citizen. That painter, muralist, illustrator, iconographer, and etcher—Niko Chocheli—has since become internationally renowned and his work is now on display in the Villanova University Art Gallery, in an exhibit dedicated to my mother.

The words above tell the story. Chocheli's art has been compared to that of DaVinci, Michelangelo, and Rubens.

It was an honor to go to the opening exhibit this evening with my father, where some of my mother's friends had also gathered.

View more on Beth Kephart's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 25, 2014 15:50

The great ballerina and Penn Alum Julie Diana Hench turns the tables on me

Readers of this blog and of the Philadelphia Inquirer know that last year I had the exquisite privilege of meeting the Pennsylvania Ballet's principal ballerina, Julie Diana Hench, and her charismatic husband, Zach. Of watching the two of them rehearse for a performance of "Jewels." Of photographing and writing that story for the Inquirer (here).

I'd met Julie a few weeks earlier, at a Penn event, for Julie, among so many other things, presides over the University of Pennsylvania's Association of Alumnae. She'd invited me to speak with her and others on an evening I'll not forget. She'd introduced herself not as a dancer, but as a fellow writer (and, oh, a writer she most certainly is). I'd stumbled toward understanding, that first night, just who this Julie was.

This May 11th, Mother's Day, Julie, following an immaculate career, will be dancing her final dance with Zach on the Academy stage, her two young children no doubt somewhere near. I will be there, with my father, tears streaming. I have long been looking forward to treating my father to this event, and that feeling of anticipation deepened even more today, as I learned of the publication of a story that Julie had once written about me.

Her story begins like this:

In the back room of the Sweeten Alumni House, Beth Kephart nestled into the couch, holding a copy of her most recent book and pages from an unfinished manuscript. She smiled warmly at the 30 or so women sitting around her and graciously thanked us for inviting her to speak. A few words on why she wrote the book, some humble comments about its success, and she began to read selections from Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir.

It’s not unusual for the Association of Alumnae to host esteemed guest speakers who are Penn alumnae and/or faculty. But this first meeting of 2013-14 was different due to the soft-spoken and intimate language of Kephart’s presentation – and the nature of her expertise. We sat on the edge of our seats, listening to the rhythmic sounds of her prose. We visualized the colorful passages depicting Kephart in class with students and we felt her emotion as she described her honest, sometimes emotional, reasons for writing the book. She graciously answered our questions: “What is the difference between memoir and autobiography?” and “As a perfectionist, do you ever feel satisfied with a final draft or what you see in print?” Her answers were candid yet thoughtful.

It continues here.

Julie Diana Hench, I will always treasure this. Look for me, in May. I will be there, every inch of me, for you, the song, and Zach.

All of you, give yourself these 55 seconds. Watch Julie and her Zach dance.

View more on Beth Kephart's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 23, 2014 13:59

Vaclav and Lena/Haley Tanner: The best longest first sentence ever

Last evening, following a full afternoon of extraordinary conversations with my students, I missed the 5:38 PM train by, well—let's just say I got there right as the doors were closing.

All, however, was not lost, for there's always Faber books at 30th Street Station—always the chance to acquire something new.

I had thirty minutes. I bought, at last, Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds. It's the book of the year here in Philadelphia, and it's about time that I get with the program. I'll read it. Soon.

But I also bought a copy of Vaclav and Lena, a debut novel by Haley Tanner. It is one of those books I'd always been meaning to buy, then forgot I'd wanted to buy, then had forgotten altogether as I pursued the next new many things. If I hadn't missed the train, I'd have not met these two immigrant Brooklyn children who want, when we first meet them, to be the best magicians alive.

I'm not finished reading yet, so I can't deliver a full report. I can, however, give you this fragment of the first single wow opening sentence, which I share in honor of one of my students who has captivated us with her voice this year, and who could, I have not a single doubt, cast an instant spell like this one:

"Here I practice, and you practice. Ahem. AH-em. I am Vaclav the Magnificent, with birthday on the sixth of May, the famous day for the generations to celebrate and rejoice, a day in the future years eclipsing Christmas and Hanukkah and Ramadan and all pagan festivals, born in a land far, far, far, far, far, far, far distance from here, a land of ancient and magnificent secrets, a land of enchanted knowledge passed down from the ages and from the ancients, a land of illusion (Russia!), born there in Russia and reappearing here, in America, in New York, in Brooklyn (which is a borough), near Coney Island, which is a famous place of magic in the great land of opportunity (which is, of course, America!), where anyone can become anything, where a hobo today is tomorrow a businessman in a three-piece-suit, and a businessman yesterday is later this afternoon a hobo, Vaclav the Magnificent, who shall, without a doubt, be ask to perform his mighty feats of enchantment for dukes and presidents and czars and ayatollahs, uniting them all in awestruck and dumbstruck, and.....

You get the point? The books we pay attention to are the ones that leap from the page. Vaclav and Lena leaps from mile-long sentence number one.

Voice. Some people have it.

You know who I'm talking about.

View more on Beth Kephart's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 23, 2014 05:24

Berlin, through the eyes of others

Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of publishing Going Over, my book about Berlin 1983, is hearing from so many readers who have Berlin stories of their own to tell. My friend E., from the pottery studio, who was living there when the wall came down. A certain writers' mother-in-law, who had more than one intriguing experience not just with the wall, but with the guards. A reader who would, she says, retire to Berlin if she could.

This morning, Joanne, a writer and book lover, shared with me this post about her trip to Berlin in the 1970s—photos and all. It's a fascinating excursion. I'm grateful, too, for Joanne's extremely generous words about Going Over.

All of that is here.

View more on Beth Kephart's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 22, 2014 03:59

Queen Sugar/Natalie Baszile: Reflections

I meet this beautiful woman named Natalie Baszile. She's just published her first book—Queen Sugar—with Pamela Dorman of Viking. Its cover is almost as pretty as she is. I buy into Natalie's allure (now that was easy) and I happily buy her book (simple as snap).

Then, in bits and pieces (because that's my life right there, all bits and pieces), I read this book about a widow named Charley Bordelon and her daughter named Micah, who leave California for Louisiana to take on a late father's gift—eight hundred acres of sugarcane.

Eight hundred acres of sugarcane. No how-to book. No extra funds. Hardly any working machines. And nobody but Charley and Micah and some Louisiana family to turn to when the going gets tough.

The going will get tough.

Well-researched, lovingly imagined, Queen Sugar is a sweep-you-in story. Charley is a woman we understand, but also a woman we admire—for taking the unknown on, for being honest with herself, for staring out across an endless field and daring to believe not just in the land but (eventually) in herself. Baszile is a seamless storyteller. She takes her readers not just to the land, but into its depths. Her earth is not just topography, but taste:

Charley raised the dirt to her mouth again. She sniffed: wood smoke, grass, damp like a sidewalk after it rained. She tasted: grit, fine as ground glass, chocolate, and what? Maybe ash? She closed her eyes as the soil dissolved over her tongue, and slowly, slowly, almost like a good wine, the soil began to tell its story. She tasted the muck, and the peat, and the years of composted leaves, the branches and vines that had been recently plowed under, and the faint sweetness the cane left behind. She swallowed: a moldy aftertaste she knew would stay on her tongue for the rest of the afternoon.

Lovely, right? But look, too, at Baszile's ability to write of water, towboats, a wheelhouse. I respect the specificity here.

Amazing how quickly the barge moved. It was closer now. The engine rumble sent larger ripples, and across the water, Ralph Angel could see the captain high up in the towboat's wheelhouse, his small white face like a speck of white sugar behind the big glass window. As it approached, the barge sucked water into its enormous hull so that the current up where Ralph Angel sat seemed to flow in reverse and the water level actually dropped. Water hyacinths and lilies clumped together in the backwards flow and even up ahead, in the barge slip, the water seemed to be draining away.

What's hard about writing? Everything. What takes time? Getting the details and every single sentence right. Though Queen Sugar is a debut novel, it is also a most-self-assured novel. The work of a writer who knows precisely what she's doing.

View more on Beth Kephart's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 21, 2014 15:51

Introducing Wattpad, where stories get told (read GOING OVER excerpts free)

It's amazing, all the things I do not know.

How to get rid of the embarrassing yellow-flower weed in my front lawn. How to stop breaking my fingernails just when they've reached their prettiest. How to make my new-fangled pottery vases stand up straight. How to remain focused on what actually matters in life, even as I stare down petty worries and ricocheting fears of the unjust.

Etc.

I also didn't know a thing about Wattpad—a free community in which readers can chat with writers—until my friends Sally Kim and Ali Presley of Chronicle Books whispered the news in my ear. There are all kinds of authors here, all kinds of books, all kinds of reading opportunities. And, like I said, it's free.

I am now, officially, a Wattpad-er, and here is my I don't even have a single follower yet Wattpad page. I'll be posting chapters of GOING OVER here over the next several weeks and interacting with any reader who sends a note or asks a question.

Take a look.

But also, while I have your attention, here is something wild: While exploring Wattpad on my own yesterday, I discovered this—a Wattpad story called Unrequited Love whose second chapter begins with words that this writer named Beth Kephart wrote.

That's here.

View more on Beth Kephart's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 21, 2014 05:53

wishing you the bright joy and hope of Easter

(at Chanticleer Garden, with the men in my life)

View more on Beth Kephart's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 20, 2014 02:54

Badlands/Cynthia Reeves: brief reflections on a stunning novella

I have known Cynthia Reeves for what feels like a long time now. She is a friend, she is a cook, she is the mother of two talented children, she teaches, she writes. She is there, often, telling stories—standing at the counter in Libby Mosier's house, ruling over a platter of fine cheeses in her own home, walking a windy Philadelphia with me not long ago, as we searched (unsuccessfully) for a hostess-gift bottle of wine. We bought Di Bruno Bros. chocolate-covered pretzels instead. We found the party. We talked some more.

But perhaps we don't really know someone until we dwell, quietly, with their work, and over the past several days, when I could tear away for an hour, I have been reading Cyndi's award-winning novella, Badlands, published in 2007 by Miami University Press.

The story—about a dying woman's final hours and the blend of time, about the topography of regret and the last light of clarity, about secret dreams and the collective dream, about the bones we bury or seek to bury or can never bury—is one of the most beautifully rendered stories I've ever read. Devastating. Intelligent. Knowing. True. Locked in tight. Held so close. Never once losing its purpose, nor its rhythm.

Think of Carole Maso channeling Colum McCann. Think of Jack Gilbert stretching out the lines of his poems. This is Cynthia Reeves.

This is how she sounds:

If hearing is the last sense to leave the body, then snowfall whispering over their faces, over itself, is the last thing they hear. Blankets laid gently one on top of another, nothing else. No weeping, no iron nail driving into pine board, no lamentation but snow sweeping over them, whispering its final prayer: Come, Grandmother, Great Spirit, hold them gently in your arms. Caro hears this whispering soft, softer now, and finally the quiet rustling of sheets.

Find Badlands. Read it.

View more on Beth Kephart's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 19, 2014 14:23

from my garden to my table, on Tamra's birthday

This isn't just Easter weekend. There isn't just sun out there, and my radiant son upstairs, asleep. This is the birthday of editor supreme and dear friend, Tamra Tuller.

How can a girl like me, so full of gladness for a friendship like ours, say, You are really special?

I went outside. Tiptoed through dew. Brought the brightest daffodils in.

Happy birthday, Tamra!

View more on Beth Kephart's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 19, 2014 06:09