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The Flower Can Always Be Changing
“A lamp and a flower pot in the center. The flower can always be changing.”—Virginia Woolf
From the bestselling author of Rumi and the Red Handbag comes a new collection of brief essays about the intersection of poetry, painting, photography and beauty. Inspired by the words of Virginia Woolf, Lemay welcomes you into her home, her art and her life as a poet and photographer of the every day. Lemay shares visits to the museum with her daughter, the beauty in an average workday at the library, and encourages writers and readers to make an appointment with flowers, with life.
From the bestselling author of Rumi and the Red Handbag comes a new collection of brief essays about the intersection of poetry, painting, photography and beauty. Inspired by the words of Virginia Woolf, Lemay welcomes you into her home, her art and her life as a poet and photographer of the every day. Lemay shares visits to the museum with her daughter, the beauty in an average workday at the library, and encourages writers and readers to make an appointment with flowers, with life.
135 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2018
3 people are currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Shawna Lemay
14 books84 followers"A lamp and a flower pot in the center. The flower can always be changing." –Virginia Woolf.
The Flower Can Always Be Changing:
From the bestselling author of Rumi and the Red Handbag comes a new collection of brief essays about the intersection of poetry, painting, photography and beauty. Inspired by the words of Virginia Woolf, Lemay welcomes you into her home, her art and her life as a poet and photographer of the every day. Lemay shares visits to the museum with her daughter, the beauty in an average workday at the library, and encourages writers and readers to make an appointment with flowers, with life.
Rumi and the Red Handbag was shortlisted for the Alberta Readers Choice Award. All the God-Sized Fruit, her first book, won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Calm Things: Essays was shortlisted for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction. She has an M.A. in English from the University of Alberta.
The Flower Can Always Be Changing:
From the bestselling author of Rumi and the Red Handbag comes a new collection of brief essays about the intersection of poetry, painting, photography and beauty. Inspired by the words of Virginia Woolf, Lemay welcomes you into her home, her art and her life as a poet and photographer of the every day. Lemay shares visits to the museum with her daughter, the beauty in an average workday at the library, and encourages writers and readers to make an appointment with flowers, with life.
Rumi and the Red Handbag was shortlisted for the Alberta Readers Choice Award. All the God-Sized Fruit, her first book, won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Calm Things: Essays was shortlisted for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction. She has an M.A. in English from the University of Alberta.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 22, 2018
A beautiful book. Calming, funny, serious, thoughtful, and just quirky enough for me. I especially loved the short-short pieces.
April 18, 2018
I don’t know what to say yet. I’m still luxuriating. I aspire to the overt (from an introvert) honesty, testimony, deftly carved precision of language that defines so much of Shawna’s writing.
It’s magic. It’s daily, regular, spectacular magic.
I don’t know what to say.
It’s magic. It’s daily, regular, spectacular magic.
I don’t know what to say.
May 17, 2018
As always, Shawna Lemay manages to profoundly answer the question, "What did I miss?" She sees through the world with both wisdom and wit. She speaks to insomnia a couple of times, but the book really addresses the problem of sleep walking. The tendency people like me have to walk through the world with eyes closed. Shawna shares both the brilliance she encounters by keeping her eyes open, and the pain and loneliness that comes with the poetic vision. Wonder filled.
December 5, 2018
This is a beautiful book of meditations on flowers, light, photography, art, and writing—on discouragement and inspiration, disappointment and resilience, the long slow process of creating and experiencing art. The book is small and lovely, and it would be perfect as a stocking stuffer. Some of my favourite passages are about winter. For example:
I want to say winter strengthens me but I know the grocery store flowers are the only reason I make it through.
The time it takes for art to move out into the world and to be accepted or admired or understood is often longer than the artist’s life. Some of the blossoms get lost.
Or:
The good news is that if there is despair, there is also gentleness and tenderness. If winter has made us brittle, it means we have felt it all the way to our bones, and we know winter because we have looked at it carefully and with awe. If winter has left us depleted, we know how disconcertedly fine it will be to soon fill up again, soaking in the sun and the slowly warming air.
I also love that there are references to the sponge-cakes Jane Austen talks about in a letter to her sister Cassandra, and to the ha-ha in Austen’s Mansfield Park. And I love that the title comes from a diary entry by Virginia Woolf: “A lamp and a flower pot in the center. The flower can always be changing.”
I’m a long-time fan of Shawna Lemay’s thoughtful and illuminating blog posts and her gorgeous photos of flowers, always changing, and it’s a pleasure to read her work in print as well as online.
I want to say winter strengthens me but I know the grocery store flowers are the only reason I make it through.
The time it takes for art to move out into the world and to be accepted or admired or understood is often longer than the artist’s life. Some of the blossoms get lost.
Or:
The good news is that if there is despair, there is also gentleness and tenderness. If winter has made us brittle, it means we have felt it all the way to our bones, and we know winter because we have looked at it carefully and with awe. If winter has left us depleted, we know how disconcertedly fine it will be to soon fill up again, soaking in the sun and the slowly warming air.
I also love that there are references to the sponge-cakes Jane Austen talks about in a letter to her sister Cassandra, and to the ha-ha in Austen’s Mansfield Park. And I love that the title comes from a diary entry by Virginia Woolf: “A lamp and a flower pot in the center. The flower can always be changing.”
I’m a long-time fan of Shawna Lemay’s thoughtful and illuminating blog posts and her gorgeous photos of flowers, always changing, and it’s a pleasure to read her work in print as well as online.
June 22, 2018
For those who have never read any of Shawna Lemay's delightful blog entries through Transactions with Beauty or her previous blogs, you are in for a treat. In this book, Shawna shares her insecurities about being a writer and talks about her shyness while also celebrating light, beauty and the ever changing flower. Through the book there are references to books and art. I have long been an admirer of Shawna's and this book is another great opportunity to enjoy her wisdom, her openness and her close attention.This is a book to carry around with you in your purse or pocket, to take out when you are sitting at a cafe on a patio in the summer or huddling under the blankets while the snow falls on a winter afternoon, your hand cradling a big mug of tea. Read it all at once and then go back and open the book at random. There is whimsy here and solace for the lonely, for the frustrated writer, for the introvert, for those who have an ambivalent relationship with winter. Once you've finished this book, pick up her first book of essays, Calm Things, which came out a decade ago with Palimpsest Press. Then read her wonderful novel, Rumi and the Red Handbag, then her other novel Hive, a Forgery and then her poetry. And then go to her blog. In this era of difficult times, Shawn Lemay is a source of light.
January 27, 2019
Beautiful nuggets of wisdom, questions, answers, non-answers. Honest writing about love, nature, writing, poetry, photography, beauty. I felt like I was in my backyard with a kindred spirit. I want to hug her, drink wine with her, spend time sitting quietly in a room full of her husband's paintings. I want to walk in the forest with our cameras and explore. Reading her essays (I'm reading 2 others by Shawna). I did not want this book to end. How such a small book can be so huge, make one feel so serene and accepting of one's self. I have been toying writing essays for decades and LeMay's books may just be the catalyst I need. I took my time reading this little jewel.
May 20, 2018
What an interesting and enjoyable read about poetry and art. A nice, short, refreshing read with some good thoughts.
August 17, 2018
Shawna Lemay gives us an unspeakably beautiful, edgy exploration of infinite impermanence and the way that impacts what we define as beauty. This book is a delight, through and through. Savour every page.
June 11, 2019
Review from prairiefire.ca Review by Jody Baltessen
Shawna Lemay’s The flower can always be changing opens with an essay on the life and death and life of flowers filmed in time lapse photography.
She writes, “The colours. The fading. The beauty of decline, the simplicity. All of the attendant moods arrive and pass in waves, swelling and subsiding, at dawn, at dusk.” (10). While we rarely take notice of their slow and certain demise, the outcome of their decline nonetheless affects us when we discard the brittle remains of a once vibrant bouquet. We might reflect then on the reason the flowers came into our lives, that we will miss their cheerful presence in the room, and that their ruin is a sad but inevitable (beautiful even) outcome of the passing of time. This first piece sets the stage for a series of short essays and reflections in which Lemay considers flowers, the clarity of objects seen through the lens of a camera and in variable conditions of light, our small grievances, her own writing habits, and the stillness she so needs for her practice—but that requires effort to attain.
Drawing inspiration from writers, philosophers and artists as diverse as Clarice Lispector and Francis Bacon, Remedios Varo and Georgia O’Keeffe, Rumi and Thomas Merton, Lemay distills the necessary fragility of flowers, the notion that their very impermanence allows us to experience more fully the larger arc of passing days. Flowers, her central motif, are used to measure time and to observe and respond to daily and seasonal changes in the light. For Lemay, flowers offer the hope of blooming, of becoming, but also of solace as they fade and fall away—a reminder that so much in life is transitory and that we ought to take the time to appreciate it in every way possible. As for light, Lemay writes: “I’ve become obsessed with light and how it changes the way we see something we always see.” (76) These ideas come full circle in the final essay, “All Summer Long, Flowers”. Here Lemay references Thomas Merton’s classic advice to watch the sun rise each morning because the intensity of these brief moments opens our hearts and allows us to consider our own place in the world. She writes: “All summer long, flowers. And all winter long the path through the garden is inward. A time to learn to be awake to the flowers within.” (128)
Lemay’s little book comes to us at a loud and rancorous time, something she acknowledges in the essay “My Griefs”. After describing her experience with Bell’s Palsy, a condition that causes temporary—in most cases—numbness and loss of control over the muscles on one side of the face, she writes: “My griefs are small and I know yours might be large”. Indeed, several pieces in the book are about the slight annoyances and aggravations we encounter every day. Things like sudden cruel teasing from a friend, how we rationalize our actions as we maneuver away from unwanted conversations or encounters, the vacuous Internet, the mistaken idea that writing is easy. For Lemay, griefs large or small hold potential, and she encourages us to “extract the poetry in the quotidian” and to “realize that this type of seeking is available” (77) to us all.
The flower can always be changing is both a thoughtful exploration of one writer’s creative process and an invitation to us all to seek out the space of mind required to do our own best work.
Shawna Lemay’s The flower can always be changing opens with an essay on the life and death and life of flowers filmed in time lapse photography.
She writes, “The colours. The fading. The beauty of decline, the simplicity. All of the attendant moods arrive and pass in waves, swelling and subsiding, at dawn, at dusk.” (10). While we rarely take notice of their slow and certain demise, the outcome of their decline nonetheless affects us when we discard the brittle remains of a once vibrant bouquet. We might reflect then on the reason the flowers came into our lives, that we will miss their cheerful presence in the room, and that their ruin is a sad but inevitable (beautiful even) outcome of the passing of time. This first piece sets the stage for a series of short essays and reflections in which Lemay considers flowers, the clarity of objects seen through the lens of a camera and in variable conditions of light, our small grievances, her own writing habits, and the stillness she so needs for her practice—but that requires effort to attain.
Drawing inspiration from writers, philosophers and artists as diverse as Clarice Lispector and Francis Bacon, Remedios Varo and Georgia O’Keeffe, Rumi and Thomas Merton, Lemay distills the necessary fragility of flowers, the notion that their very impermanence allows us to experience more fully the larger arc of passing days. Flowers, her central motif, are used to measure time and to observe and respond to daily and seasonal changes in the light. For Lemay, flowers offer the hope of blooming, of becoming, but also of solace as they fade and fall away—a reminder that so much in life is transitory and that we ought to take the time to appreciate it in every way possible. As for light, Lemay writes: “I’ve become obsessed with light and how it changes the way we see something we always see.” (76) These ideas come full circle in the final essay, “All Summer Long, Flowers”. Here Lemay references Thomas Merton’s classic advice to watch the sun rise each morning because the intensity of these brief moments opens our hearts and allows us to consider our own place in the world. She writes: “All summer long, flowers. And all winter long the path through the garden is inward. A time to learn to be awake to the flowers within.” (128)
Lemay’s little book comes to us at a loud and rancorous time, something she acknowledges in the essay “My Griefs”. After describing her experience with Bell’s Palsy, a condition that causes temporary—in most cases—numbness and loss of control over the muscles on one side of the face, she writes: “My griefs are small and I know yours might be large”. Indeed, several pieces in the book are about the slight annoyances and aggravations we encounter every day. Things like sudden cruel teasing from a friend, how we rationalize our actions as we maneuver away from unwanted conversations or encounters, the vacuous Internet, the mistaken idea that writing is easy. For Lemay, griefs large or small hold potential, and she encourages us to “extract the poetry in the quotidian” and to “realize that this type of seeking is available” (77) to us all.
The flower can always be changing is both a thoughtful exploration of one writer’s creative process and an invitation to us all to seek out the space of mind required to do our own best work.
June 23, 2018
What can I say about this gem of a pocket-size book with the inviting cover that hasn’t already been expressed with more eloquence than I can attempt? Lemay’s short essays and flash insights are heartwarming and inspiring. I took my time, reading one or more of the pieces each morning to start my day — as I do with poetry— sitting in our three-season sunroom amidst the flowers, how appropriate. Among my favourites in this gentle collection are Looking for a Quiet Poem, Precedence (loved the idea of Desire Lines) and Cloudier. Quote from the latter: ““The noise of the highway is louder. A poor, obscure, plain and little butterfly comes, goes. / Sitting in the same backyard for fifteen years now. Pondering nearly the same things, Making minimal headway. Things get cloudier most days. Everything more uncertain all the time. The same unrequited desire for silence. The same melancholy, only deeper now, frayed.” Oh how I can relate to the author’s sentiments. Perhaps it is part of aging, the feeling of repetition and melancholy, but also with a more intense observation and appreciation for the simple things in nature which is so evident throughout these essays.
And the thought that comes to my mind as I draw to the end and close ‘The Flowers Can Always…” on its final perfect word (no spoilers, go, read the book) is a quote I read once long ago (attributed I believe to C S Lewis, although he might have been quoting another writer) and it is this: “We read to know that we are not alone.”
Thank you Shawna Lemay, for this beautiful reminder.
And the thought that comes to my mind as I draw to the end and close ‘The Flowers Can Always…” on its final perfect word (no spoilers, go, read the book) is a quote I read once long ago (attributed I believe to C S Lewis, although he might have been quoting another writer) and it is this: “We read to know that we are not alone.”
Thank you Shawna Lemay, for this beautiful reminder.
October 30, 2018
I was immediately drawn to this little gem. With its gorgeous cover of pink poppies and coneflowers, it promised something beautiful on the inside, and I was not disappointed. Readers who are drawn to beauty on a page will find this book a joy. Through her short essays, the author encourages the reader to ‘align with the poetry of the everyday’.
March 6, 2021
This was a library copy. Loved it so much I've bought one of my own. Inspiring in a gentle way
January 25, 2022
Thoughtful and evocative. I so wanted to mark up my library copy that I’ve ordered my own copy.
July 24, 2018
This little jewel is to be treasured, admired, and experienced more than read. I know I will return to it often for its sympathetic insight into everyday questions of what makes life rich and meaningful. Is it the dramatic moment of achievement or the simple glory of a rose in bloom? Do public accolades count more than moments of joy with our loved ones? What’s worth striving for, holding our breath to savour, or capturing in a photograph?
This book is ideal for artists in every medium, to find inspiration, reassurance and affirmation.
This book is ideal for artists in every medium, to find inspiration, reassurance and affirmation.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews