Mary Carroll-Hackett's Blog, page 92

Daily Prompt :-) Oh Those Eyes

Happy National Poetry Month! My daughter and I agree that her beautiful baby boy has my mother’s eyes. Oh those eyes❤

Eyes:

by William Matthews

the only parts of the body the same   

size at birth as they’ll always be.   

“That’s why all babies are beautiful,”   

Thurber used to say as he grew   

blind—not dark, he’d go on   

to explain, but floating in a pale   

light always, a kind of candlelit   

murk from a sourceless light.   

He needed dark to see: 

for a while he drew on black   

paper with white pastel chalk   

but it grew worse. Light bored   

into his eyes but where did it go?   

Into a sea of phosphenes, 

along the wet fuse of some dead   

nerve, it hid everywhere and couldn’t   

be found. I’ve used up 

three guesses, all of them 

right. It’s like scuba diving, going down   

into the black cone-tip that dives   

farther than I can, though I dive   

closer all the time.

 

Make art about eyes, about what eyes might see, or who we see in a loved one’s eyes.

Daily Prompt :-) Sing the Moment

Happy National Poetry Month! Thinking on how precious each moment is.[image error]

(“Sing the song of the moment…”)
RABINDRANATH TAGORE

 

VII

 

Sing the song of the moment in careless carols, in the transient light of the day;
Sing of the fleeting smiles that vanish and never look back;
Sing of the flowers that bloom and fade without regret.
Weave not in memory’s thread the days that would glide into nights.
To the guests that must go bid God-speed, and wipe away all traces of their steps.
Let the moments end in moments with their cargo of fugitive songs.

 

With both hands snap the fetters you made with your own heart chords;
Take to your breast with a smile what is easy and simple and near.
Today is the festival of phantoms that know not when they die.
Let your laughter flush in meaningless mirth like twinkles of light on the ripples;
Let your life lightly dance on the verge of Time like a dew on the tip of a leaf.
Strike in the chords of your harp the fitful murmurs of moments.

 

Make art about the wonder of a single moment. 

 

Daily Prompt Catch-Up! Grandchildren, and Nieces, and Signs on the Road

Happy National Poetry Month! I got a little side-tracked by a visit with my beautiful daughter and her precious new son[image error] So enjoy a cluster of prompts for catch-up! :-) 

4/16/2016

I’m over the moon in love[image error] His name is Max and he is beyond magical[image error] So’s his Mama[image error]

Grandchild

Maxine Kumin

All night the douanier in his sentry box

at the end of the lane where France begins plays fox

and hounds with little spurts of cars

that sniff to a stop at the barrier

and declare themselves. I stand at the window

watching the ancient boundaries that flow

between my daughter’s life and mine dissolve

like taffy pulled until it melts in half

without announcing any point of strain

and I am a young unsure mother again

stiffly clutching the twelve-limbed raw

creature that broke from between my legs, that stew

of bone and membrane loosely sewn up in

a fierce scared flailing other being.

We blink, two strangers in a foreign kitchen.

Now that you’ve drained your mother dry and will

not sleep, I take you in my arms, brimful

six days old, little feared-for mouse.

Last week when you were still a fish

in the interior, I dreamed you thus:

The douanier brought you curled up in his cap

buttoned and suited like him, authority’s prop

–a good Victorian child’s myth–

and in his other hand a large round cheese

ready to the point of runniness.

At least there, says the dream, no mysteries.

Toward dawn I open my daughter’s cupboard on

a choice of calming teas–infusions—

verbena, fennel, linden, camomile,

shift you on my shoulder and fill the kettle.

Age has conferred on me a certain grace.

You’re a package I can rock and ease

from wakefulness to sleep. This skill comes back

like learning how to swim. Comes warm and quick

as first milk in the breasts. I comfort you.

Body to body my monkey-wit soaks through.

Later, I wind the outside shutters up.

You sleep mouse-mild, topped with camomile.

Daylight slips past the douane. I rinse my cup.

My daughter troubles sleep a little while

longer. The just-milked cows across the way

come down their hillside single file

and the dream, the lefthand gift of ripened brie

recurs, smelly, natural, and good

wanting only to be brought true

in your own time: your childhood.

Make art about babies, the miraculous beginning of life.

_____________________________________________________

4/17/2016

One of my favorite things about traveling are the signs on the road[image error] And one of my favorite poets❤

Signs

by Larry Levis

1.

All night I dreamed of my home

of the roads that are so long

and straight they die in the middle—

among the spines of elderly weeds

on either side, among the dead cats,

the ants who are all eyes, the suitcase

thrown open, sprouting failures.

2.

And this evening in the garden

I find the winter

inside a snail shell, rigid and

cool, a little stubborn temple,

its one visitor gone.

3.

If there were messages or signs,

I might hear now a voice tell me

to walk forever, to ask

the mold for pardon, and one

by one I would hear out my sins,

hear they are not important—that I am

part of this rain

drumming its long fingers, and

of the roadside stone refusing

to blink, and of the coyote

nailed to the fence with its

long grin.

And when there are no messages

the dead lie still—

their hands crossed so strangely

like knives and forks after supper.

4.

I stay up late listening.

My feet tap the floor,

they begin a tiny dance

which will outlive me.

They turn away from this poem.

It is almost Spring.

Make art about seeing signs.

________________________________________________

4/18/2106

Today is my niece Jennifer’s birthday. I was fourteen when she was born, and I was absolutely certain that my sister Andrea had this miraculous fairy child just for my enjoyment. From scrambling through woods to the tune of Little Rabbit Foo Foo to watching her become a loving accomplished incredible woman, and one of the best mothers I’ve ever seen, that fairy child grown to woman has consistently been one of the greatest gifts of my life. No other poem would do[image error]❤

Phenomenal Woman

by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. 

I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size   

But when I start to tell them, 

They think I’m telling lies. 

I say, 

It’s in the reach of my arms, 

The span of my hips,   

The stride of my step,   

The curl of my lips.   

I’m a woman 

Phenomenally. 

Phenomenal woman,   

That’s me. 

I walk into a room 

Just as cool as you please,   

And to a man, 

The fellows stand or 

Fall down on their knees.   

Then they swarm around me, 

A hive of honey bees.   

I say, 

It’s the fire in my eyes,   

And the flash of my teeth,   

The swing in my waist,   

And the joy in my feet.   

I’m a woman 

Phenomenally. 

Phenomenal woman, 

That’s me. 

Men themselves have wondered   

What they see in me. 

They try so much 

But they can’t touch 

My inner mystery. 

When I try to show them,   

They say they still can’t see.   

I say, 

It’s in the arch of my back,   

The sun of my smile, 

The ride of my breasts, 

The grace of my style. 

I’m a woman 

Phenomenally. 

Phenomenal woman, 

That’s me. 

Now you understand 

Just why my head’s not bowed.   

I don’t shout or jump about 

Or have to talk real loud.   

When you see me passing, 

It ought to make you proud. 

I say, 

It’s in the click of my heels,   

The bend of my hair,   

the palm of my hand,   

The need for my care.   

’Cause I’m a woman 

Phenomenally. 

Phenomenal woman, 

That’s me.

 

Make art about a phenomenal woman in your life. 

 

 

Monday Must Read! Sonja Livingston, Ladies Night at the Dreamland

 

This week, meet Sonja Livingston, whose first book, the memoir Ghostbread, won an AWP Book Prize for Nonfiction and has been adopted for use by classrooms around the nation. She is also the author of Queen of the Fall: A Memoir of Girls and Goddesses, and her most recent book, Ladies Night at the Dreamland, was published by University of Georgia Press in March 2016. Sonja’s writing has been honored with a NYFA Fellowship, an Iowa Review Award, and an Arts & Letters Essay Prize, as well as grants from Vermont Studio Center and the Deming Fund for Women.

Her work has appeared in many literary journals including the Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southeast Review, Brevity, and AGNI online, and is anthologized in several texts on writing, including Short Takes, The Truth of the Matter, The Curious Writer, and Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction.

An assistant professor in the MFA Program at the University of Memphis, Sonja is married to the artist Jim Mott and divides her time between Tennessee and New York State.

Sonja’s Website:

http://www.sonjalivingston.com/index.html

Buy Sonja’s Beautiful Books:

Ladies Night at the Dreamland

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780820349138

Queen of the Fall

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780803280670

Praise for Ladies Night at the Dreamland

A vibrant and textured creation of women throughout history, some of them famous, others notable for the bravery of their more private lives. Line by line, the writing sings. What a marvelous collection of essays. What a glorious celebration. (Lee Martin author of The Bright Forever)

A swirling, wise dream of a book, filled with gorgeous writing and a poignant crowd of characters, rescued from the stream of history with ardent insight. (Harriet Scott Chessman author of The Beauty of Ordinary Things)

These essays―sometimes charming, sometimes searing, always revealing―investigate history, gender, and the bittersweet stories of those often veiled or suppressed. Livingston writes with a gentle and inquiring spirit, a keen intellect, and a deeply compelling lyrical voice. (Kristen Iversen author of Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats)

Radiant essays inspired by ‘slivers and bits’ of real women’s lives. . . . The author calls her startlingly original essays literary nonfiction, but some read more like historical fiction, spun as they are from documented sources; and some―a brief evocation of Virginia Dare, for example―read like lyrical prose poems. . . . Wise, fresh, captivating essays. (Kirkus Reviews (starred review))

What’s remarkable about [Livingston’s] latest work is how she’s captured the ability to sustain engaging narratives through such vividly reflexive poetic prose. (Hans Rollman PopMatters)

More From Sonja Online

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v13n2/nonfiction/livingston_s/world_page.shtml

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v13n2/nonfiction/livingston_s/cake_page.shtml

http://www.riverteethjournal.com/authors/sonja-livingston-

http://therumpus.net/author/sonjalivingston/

Interviews

https://www.kenyonreview.org/2016/03/every-night-is-ladies-night-an-interview-with-sonja-livingston/

http://composejournal.com/articles/an-interview-with-sonja-livingston-author-of-queen-of-the-fall/

http://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2014/06/interview-sonja-livingston-author-of-ghostbread/

http://www.bookslut.com/features/2010_03_015957.php

Hear Sonja Read:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ4m8AlzxK0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ae43RLP8pg

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Friday Call for Submissions Love! Sonder Review

The Sonder Review Seeks Submissions of Fiction, Nonfiction, and Art

Submissions accepted year-round.

 

“The Sonder Review is currently seeking submissions of fiction, creative nonfiction, and art. We believe in prose that strikes and sparks. Words raw and shuddering and unabashed. Language both spare and piercing, delicately and deliberately crafted. We believe in storytelling that is innovative and daring, precise and oddly angled. Writing which shows us the bizarre and magical and profound; which shows us a self we have never seen and truth we have never known. But above all, we want fresh and ringing voices. Words that must be heard.”

Please visit their website for our submissions guidelines and past issues. www.sonderreview.com

Daily Prompt <3 Making the Song We Sing

Happy National Poetry Month!

My late husband John Little Bear Eaton loved Stevens, especially this poem. When I read it now, I still hear his beautiful voice reciting it, that deep Georgia drawl. 

The Idea of Order at Key West
by Wallace Stevens



She sang beyond the genius of the sea.   
The water never formed to mind or voice,   
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion   
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,   
That was not ours although we understood,   
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.   
The song and water were not medleyed sound   
Even if what she sang was what she heard,   
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred   
The grinding water and the gasping wind;   
But it was she and not the sea we heard.
For she was the maker of the song she sang.   
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.   
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew   
It was the spirit that we sought and knew   
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea   
That rose, or even colored by many waves;   
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,   
However clear, it would have been deep air,   
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound   
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,   
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,   
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped   
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres   
Of sky and sea.
                           It was her voice that made   
The sky acutest at its vanishing.   
She measured to the hour its solitude.   
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,   
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,   
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her   
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,   
Why, when the singing ended and we turned   
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,   
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,   
As the night descended, tilting in the air,   
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,   
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,   
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,   
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,   
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,   
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

 

Make art about being the maker of your own song. 

 

Daily Prompt <3 The Wandering

Happy National Poetry Month![image error] Thinking a lot about my sweet daddy, so there must be Yeats.

The Song of Wandering Aengus

by William Butler Yeats


I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

 

Make art about your wandering. 

 

Special Call for Submissions Love! Blink-Ink Wants Your Magic!

Yep, magic seems just about right right now :-) 

Blink-Ink Call for Submissions “Magic Issue”

Deadline: May 15, 2016

 Do you speak Dragon? Have you been known to pull bunnies from within your silk top hat? Ancient magic buried deep, long predating mankind. The Fae with their magics and the enchantment of the glimmer, an uncle who pulls a coin from behind you ear (yet again). From the smallest magic of a kitchen witch or tomten, to the shifting of realms and the haunting of worlds by great powers unseen. In fifty words or so tell your magical story. Please send in the body of an email to: blinkinkinfo@gmail. Up to three pieces, no attachments or bios please.www.blink-ink.org

Daily Prompt :-) A Star Is Born

Happy National Poetry Month! My first grandchild—a beautiful boy named Max!–was born yesterday[image error] Our own lil star mariner[image error]❤ Oh the beauty and mystery of how this miraculous universe expresses itself[image error] Stardust and myth❤

The Voyage Of Earendel The Evening Star

by J.R.R. Tolkien

Earendel arose where the shadow flows

At Ocean’s silent birm;

Through the mouth of night as a ray of light

Where the shores are sheer and dim

He launched his bark like a silver spark

From the last and lonely sand;

Then on sunlit breath of day’s fiery death

He sailed from Westerland.

He threaded his path o’er the aftermath

Of the splendor of the Sun,

And wandered far past many a star

In his gleaming galleon.

On the gathering tide of darkness ride

The argosies of the sky,

And spangle the night eith their sails of light

As the streaming star goes by.

Unheeding he dips past these twinkling ships,

By his wayward spirit whirled

On an endless quest through the darkling West

O’er the margin of the world;

And he fares in haste o’er the jewelled waste

And the dusk from whence he came

With his heart afire with bright desire

And his face in silver flame.

The Ship of the Moon from the East comes soon

From the Haven of the Sun,

Whose white gates gleam in the coming beam

Of the mighty silver one.

Lo! With bellying clouds as his vessel’s shrouds

He weighs anchor down the dark,

And on shimmering oars leaves the blazing

shores

In his argent-timbered bark.

Then Earendel fled from from that Shipman dread

Beyond the dark earth’s pale,

Back under the rim of the Ocean dim ,

And behind the world set sail;

And he heard the mirth of the folk of earth

And the falling of their tears,

As the world dropped back in a cloudy wrack

On its journey down the years.

Then he glimmering passed to the starless vast

As an isled lamp at sea,

And beyond the ken of mortal men

Set his lonely errantry,

Tracking the Sun in his galleon

Through the pathless firmament,

Till his light grew old in abysses cold

And his eager flame was spent.

Make art about birth, about the miraculous being born.

http://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000003302881/born-from-dust.html

 

 

Daily Prompt

Happy National Poetry Month! No way we could celebrate poetry without Lucille Clifton!

won’t you celebrate with me

by Lucille Clifton

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
 
Make art about celebration. Or survival.