Peg Duthie's Blog, page 68

let there be light

Spirit of Compassion
Isn't it amazing
how we crave to know an outcome
before its time
even as we accept
that we cannot know
how anything will go?...

Rev. Marta I. Valentin, A Prayer as the Supreme Court Considers SB 1070

Let there be light,
Let there be understanding,
Let all the nations gather,
Let them be face to face...

Let there be light,
open our hearts to wonder,
perish the way of terror,
hallow the world God made.

- Frances W. Davis

Hymn geek note: "Let There Be Light" was first published in 1968; the author was a Canadian teacher. It has appeared in Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, UCC, Unitarian Universalist hymnals. (Source re other denominations: Routley and Cutts, An English-Speaking Hymnal Guide [Chicago: GIA Publications, 2005].)

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Revision in Science Fiction Poetry [guest post by Elizabeth Barrette]

Today, my guest from the Couplets blog tour is Elizabeth Barrette ( ysabetwordsmith ):

Revision in Science Fiction Poetry


I've been writing science fiction poetry for many years. You can read some of it in my book Prismatica: Science Fiction Poetry Spanning the Spectrum . One effect of that much practice is that I've come to compose poetry very fast -- so fast that most revisions happen before I even write out the poem. Slowing down the process so that I can show the changes will roughly triple the time it takes to write. Once in a while, though, I make revisions after a poem has been written down, usually based on outside input. I'll share a few examples of these.

( Resolutions... )



You can read more about and by Elizabeth Barrette at her website, PenUltimate Productions, including about her two other books (From Nature's Patient Hands and Composing Magic and Plunge Magazine, a new publication dedicated to queer women genre literature.


Couplets: A multi-author poetry blog tour

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Unitarian Universalists to "smuggle" banned books to Arizona

http://immigrationjustice.blogs.uua.org/education/smuggle-a-banned-book-to-ga/

Arizona outlawed "ethnic studies" courses in public schools and removed nearly 100 books that were used as texts or supplemental reading in these courses from classrooms in Tucson. We cheered the efforts of Tony Diaz, the so-called "librotraficante" who smuggled nearly 1,000 copies of these books in a caravan from Houston to Tucson, setting up "underground libraries" to house the books and make them widely available to children and adults.

(The post details the plan: UUs attending this year's General Assembly are being asked to bring one of the banned books with them to the convention; the books will be on display during the week and then donated to the underground library system. The HUUmanists homepage includes instructions (last paragraph under "What's New") on how to contribute to the project even if one isn't attending GA.

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"living in years in foolish error"

Though I was always waked for eclipses, and indeed carried to the window as an infant in arms and shown Halley's Comet in my sleep, and though I'd been taught at our diningroom table about the solar system and knew the earth revolved around the sun, and our moon around us, I never found out the moon didn't come up in the west until I was a writer and Herschel Brickell, the literary critic, told me after I misplaced it in a story. He said valuable words to me about my new profession: "Always be sure you get your moon in the right part of the sky."

- Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings

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"Proportions" and procedure

Process: as part of the Couplets tour, there's a guest post by me at Heather Kamins's blog, on the first draft and published version of my poem "Proportions."

Procedure: some of you may recall that I was planning to host an open house early next month. We're going to push it back to later in the year. In the meantime, please feel free to recommend soft foods (especially ones that would be simple for the BYM to obtain or prepare).

Postscript: it is a lovely, lovely thing when the painkillers start to work more than one hour out of each four.

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from Steve Martin's PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE

Gaston: How do you draw something? It seems so impossible.

Picasso: It's all in the wrist. And the wrist starts here.
(Picasso points to his noggin.)

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sprawling, yet (mostly) meticulous

It has been a week of dropped eggs, burnt beans, buggered-up code, scorched towels, hurt feelings, feet in mouth, and other damage, but there has also been plenty in the way of good tidings.

The book:
It's back on a couple of Top 100 lists in the US and the UK. \o/
Heather Kamins reviews it.
Renee Emerson liked the sharpshooter poems in particular.

The copyediting:

Sarah Suiter's Magdalene House: A Place about Mercy is now available.
I have resumed reading The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage (1999 ed.). I love this line from the foreword:

As the previous edition of this book noted, there is little difference between a Martini and a martini, but a rule can shield against untidiness in detail that might make readers doubt large facts.

And this:

The 1923 booklet cautioned printers that in following copy, they must make allowance "for the intelligence (or lack of intelligence)" of the advertiser. It listed pasha, pigmy and seraglio among "Words Frequently Misspelled" (raising a question: What were they doing in the Times at all, not to mention frequently?).

More on poetry:
Joanne posted a haiga by me (warning: photograph of human ashes). (On a related note: Jen Hoffman's Your daughter's grief: An open letter to moms.)
Signal boost: poetree is looking for hosts.
Reb Livingston holds forth on being boring (and consequently "sort of happier").

Also: showed a high school pal and his wife around a bit of Nashville, dived into a croque-madame at my monthly meetup at Sky Blue with a neighbor, and talked marketing with my publisher over tempura and a "Pacific Queen" roll (mango, tuna, macadamia, cukes, and avocado).



As I told James Monday night, I never had a prayer of being hip -- I despise waiting in lines too much even to try -- but I do love this city so.

Also: Go White Sox! (home opener in 2.5 hours) :-D

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guest post: poems by Christina Nguyen

My guest today is Christina Nguyen (A wish for the sky), who writes:

I take time to write poetry every day, and I love writing in response to prompts. Most of what I write is Japanese short form poetry like haiku and tanka. ( Here is my poetic response to several of Peg's photos )

 

 

Christina Nguyen is a writer and poet living in Minnesota. She’s the editorial assistant for Atlas Poetica and plays with words and poetry on Twitter as @TinaNguyen. In 2012, some of her work will appear in Ribbons, Modern Haiku, red lights, A Hundred Gourds, Frogpond, Prune Juice, Moonbathing, Roadrunner, and other journals.

 

This post has been brought to you by Couplets: a multi-author poetry blog tour.

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Easter eve

Rehearsing...



with lily-of-the-valley breaks:



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ever ancient, ever new

After visiting the Acropolis, last October, Saz and I walked back toward and through the Plaka. On our way down, we encountered a poem:



We later spotted it on several other buildings in Athens, but in this first instance, it had been spraypainted onto the wall of the Church of St. Elisseos. It's that square just to the right of the green door:



If I hadn't seen it up close -- were I looking at this picture for the first time -- I'd be assuming that the square was a metal screen or decorative cutout within the wall.

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