Valentine's Wishes and a Poem

May you have love that brightens your day like a bouquet of fresh flowers:

May you have love that sweetens your daily life:

May love be like a watering can that helps all sorts of healthy seeds to sprout in you:

May you be surrounded by things that you love, whether that be antiques:

or the joys of a romantic sideboard:

May you always remember:

And may you always have poems that celebrate love and literature!

Beds of Crimson Joy


She slips from her bed of crimson joy
early in the morning, creeping back to campus.
She leaves her lover sleeping in a downy nest
to keep this date with a different ecstasy.

Cracked open by cosmic mysteries,
she, too, sees creatures in the rosebuds,
faces of angels pressed against her window.
Is it divine revelation or simple fatigue?

Tempted by two mistresses, love and literature,
teased and tormented by both,
her sore lips sound out Shakespearean syllables;
her fingers tap out iambic pentameter.

She writes tortured poems, reads restlessly,
and waits for night’s return. Her tongue tingles,
her jaw aches, the sweetness of these days
must surely rot her teeth.

She finds the surest path to transcendence: a healthy dose
of Blake and the succor of skin,
great gulps of Whitman and whiffs of gasping grasps,
Christina Rossetti and the many types of fruited joy.

"Smash": An Amusing Scarf of Stitched Cliches

On Saturday on my way to spin class, I listened to the soundtrack of A Chorus Line.  Later on Saturday, we watched Smash via Netflix.  It usually airs on network television on Monday night.  If I can avoid watching shows on regular broadcast, I do.  I just can't stand the commercials.  But I digress.  Back to the show.

I was underwhelmed.  I wanted to like it.  I'm a theatre geek from way back.  I was one of those weird kids who would watch the Tony awards.  I memorized theatre stats the way that some teens memorized baseball stats.  I wonder if kids memorize baseball stats these days.  Or any sports stats . . . but I digress.

As a way to pass the time, this show isn't bad.  I've watched worse T.V. shows and movies to be sure.  It just didn't break boundaries, the way I hoped.  It was, it must be said, a collection of cliches.  I must agree with one of the commenters on the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast who said that he saw every cliche coming, that the show did not surprise at all. 

I almost lost patience completely when the young actress (the brunette, the young inexperienced one from the midwest, who has a dream, and her parents, visiting the big city, just don't understand her dream) went to the apartment of the director who's casting a show and she's shocked--SHOCKED--when he's got something else in mind instead of talking about her acting.

Oh, puh-leaze!!!!  Even I, as a young, inexperienced 18 year old, would not have gone to a man's apartment at 10:00 at night and been surprised when he wanted sex.  Is anyone really this naive?

I love watching New York City on T.V.  It's so clean and traffic-free.  Everyone is polite, as they pass each other on the sidewalks.  The kitchens are HUGE and all recently remodeled--at least on T.V.  And it goes without saying, that in television New York City--unless it's a cop show--no one is murdered or raped.

One other thing I noticed is that every female on the show wore scarves, every day with every kind of outfit.  We saw filmy scarves and scarves with interesting textures and fibers and scarves that looked like fishing nets.

In terms of the plot of the show, that aspect may be the one that makes me tune back in.  I found it fascinating to watch a Broadway show being put together from the "wouldn't it be interesting if we did a musical based on ___________" stage.  I'm almost always fascinated by the creative process.

I wish I liked the singing more.  It was a little too American Idol for me.  At one point I said, "A real test would be to see if any of these people could hold a note for more than 10 seconds."  Everyone does that trilling, scatting singing that can sound more like warbling than belting out a showstopper.

But I'll probably watch it again.  After all, even with its faults, it's still more well-constructed than many a show.  And the faults are amusing too.

Gift Economies vs. Treasure Economies

I have several friends who have already done their taxes.  I planned to do that this week-end; I fully intended to enter the labyrinth and come out in a single afternoon.

But it took me more time than I anticipated just to organize all my receipts.  Presenting my writing business to the IRS is much more complicated this year than any other year.  I'm grateful for that, in a way.  It's amusing to me, that when I dreamed of having more writing income to be offset by writing expenses, I didn't also anticipate the additional paperwork.  Just adding up expenses made me need a cup of tea.

I've also been writing a short story this week-end.  My friend and I took a pledge that we'd have a new story finished by this Thursday.  I haven't written a short story since the summer of 2010, when I fell in love with Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, and I saw a way to revise some short stories that I'd written into a linked cycle.  But I needed more.  So, back then, I wrote one, but then my enthusiasm fizzled when my computer crashed.  I still had notes for the story that I meant to write then--it was a story I'd been thinking about since the fall of 2001.  Back then, I didn't write it back in 2001 because I was adjuncting and spending all my time driving.

So, I've been writing and been happy about how easy it is to fall back into a different kind of writing.

As I write, I like to catch up on NPR shows that I haven't had a chance to hear during the week.   I listened to Meryl Streep on this Fresh Air episode, and I was happy to hear how much Barbra Streisand had inspired her, and later, she had a chance to tell Streisand and Streep says, "We can't know what we mean to each other as artists." 

I started thinking of all the artists who have been important to me, and how they have no idea.  And I like to think that some day, there will be a person out there who finds my work important, that my work might open a door to a new world.

Of course, there's danger in that.  My short story that I'm writing revolves around a grad student who discovers that her favorite feminist writer isn't as ideal as she had believed.

I'm reminded of this Andy Warhol quote that Leslie Pietrzyk gives us in a recent post on her blog:  "Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art."

I was also struck by this quote in Nadia Bolz-Weber's blog post:  "That’s the thing with the kingdom of God, there is no personal treasure to be had…there are only gifts to be shared."

If you change the religious language to writing language, you'd end up with this:  "That’s the thing with the Poetry World, there is no personal treasure to be had…there are only gifts to be shared."

Or:  "That’s the thing with the Creative Life, there is no personal treasure to be had…there are only gifts to be shared."


How would our creative lives change if we really believed that?  For one thing, we'd write/create what interests us, not what the market demanded.  We wouldn't care about building a platform, beyond what would make it possible for seekers of our gifts to connect with us.  Could we throw away our worry stones if we believed that the gift economy trumps the treasure economy?

The Memoir as Linked Short Stories or Blog Pieces

In addition to slogging through Michener's The Source for my book club meeting in 6 days, I've also been reading Lauren F. Winner's Still:  Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis.  For a traditional review, see this post on my theology blog.  In today's post here, I want to consider the memoir as linked short stories.

Let me first offer a disclaimer.  I tend not to read widely in the genre of the modern memoir.  I first became aware of them back in the 90's when every whiny 20-something seemed to be writing their life's story--and frankly, once you've read one memoir of addiction or first job crisis or break-up, there's not much point in reading them all.  At first, I loved the idea that a memoirist could look at a smaller slice of life than someone writing autobiography.  But I quickly became bored with the lives that most people discussed.

Maybe it goes back to my love of science fiction.  Why stick to the world of reality when our imaginations offer so many other possibilities?  But the sales of memoirs of all sorts remind me that my preference is a minority view right now.

There's one major exception to my memoir refusal:  women writing about their spiritual experiences.  The works of Kathleen Norris, Nora Gallagher, Anne Lamott, and Lauren F. Winner have won me over to the idea of a memoir.  Through the works of those women and many others, I've found my life enriched in all sorts of ways.  Lately I've noticed that memoirs being written have more in common with linked short stories than they do with a traditional narrative that travels from beginning to middle to end.

In my younger days, I'd have adopted a feminist explanation that revolved around wombs and circles.  But in my tired midlife, I'm wondering about the circling narrative and what it says about our lives.  I'm also wondering if others have seen this phenomena in other memoirs that they've been reading.

Let me explain what I mean, using Winner's latest work as an example.  Her book explores the life of a woman who has made her living as a professional Christian of sorts who has a bit of a mid-faith crisis. You may remember Winner from her past books, most famously Girl Meets God, the story of her conversion to Judaism and then her conversion to Christianity, all before the age of 23, if my memory serves. Winner went on to write more books, to be a contributor to many Christian magazines, and to get a Ph.D. in History.

She also got married at the same time that her mother died and quickly felt unsettled in the marriage. She wrestled with Christian teachings on divorce. Perhaps more important, she began to feel a shift in her relationship with God. She had been a Christian who had a running discussion with God, and now she didn't feel like doing it anymore. This book chronicles her passage through this post-divorce, mid-faith time.



Instead of structuring her book in a traditional way, the book approaches the subject in a variety of ways.  She discusses the idea of middle ground with an essay on the middle tense in several languages, none of them English.  She talks about middle tints in painting.  She talks about the middles in narrative.

She weaves these essays around other essays that talk about Christian seasons, primarily Lent, and a Jewish holiday or two.  She has several short essays connected by their exploration of the Eucharist.  She talks about pilgrimages to Emily Dickinson's house and to a bookshop.

All of these essays are linked together, some more loosely than others, by their connections to the theme of the book.  Technically, they are stand-alone creations; the reader could dip in and out and read an essay from the back and then skip back to the front.  But they're more rewarding when read as a whole.

Liked some linked short story collections, there's a central narrator throughout, along with secondary characters.  Could a memoir work if the narrative voice shifted from character to character?  Probably, but no memoirists who even attempt this feat come to mind.

Unlike many religious memoirs, Winner's story doesn't rigidly follow a calendar or liturgical year--like, say, Nora Gallagher's Things Seen and Unseen does.  Still:  Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis does contain essays rooted in the calendar, liturgical, or academic year, but again, the book circles in and under and through them, instead of travelling in a straight line.

The book reminds me of the early works of Kathleen Norris.  For example, her book The Cloister Walk loosely follows her time in a monastery, but it takes all sorts of interesting side trips and digressions and diversions. 

I could argue that argue the books like The Cloister Walk and Still:  Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis read more like a collection of quality blog posts than traditional memoirs.  To my knowledge, neither Norris nor Winner blog, but that shouldn't prevent those of us who do from thinking about our blog posts and how they fit together.

The very nature of a blog gives us a structure.  Add to that structure the fact that many of us circle back to connected topics in a variety of ways, and I imagine that many of us have some very interesting book manuscripts lurking in our blogs.

I've thought of my blogs as a source for essays and a repository for a variety of future inspirations.  It's only been lately that I've begun to think of my blogs as the rough draft of a book--or a variety of books!

Valentine to Fabric, Color, and Curves

Yesterday I left my office world of flat screens and words to go to the Fashion Department's Tie Dye workshop.  My department donated supplies.  I took pictures.

I find the process of bunching up the cloth in rubber bands and applying the dye to be soothing in a strange way.  Even taking pictures of others doing it was a balm:

I often wish I could do more with fabric and color in my daily life. 

Some days, I wish I was paid to turn cloth into wonderful colors.  I am probably paid more to administer a college department than I would be if I was paid to dye cloth.

I was struck by all the dress forms around the department.

But these forms are so tiny--where are the forms that show us the proportions of larger women?   I'm not the only one who has noticed this.  I loved this bit of resistance (if you can't read the words, someone wrote "Thick Gurls are way better" and "Big Giirl Sexy"--are the misspellings intentional?  Let's say they are):

On my way out, I stopped to admire the window that the fashion students had put together.  You may or may not be able to discern an Alice in Wonderland theme:

Then, last night, my spouse and I made valentines for my nephew, who has just discovered the U.S. Mail and who yearns for mail.  I can completely relate!

My spouse made the more professional looking one:

I made a book with glue that oozed everywhere.

A final reminder:

Kairos Time for Writers and Other Artists

I've been thinking a lot about time in general.  On my theology blog this morning, I wrote this post that talked about the difference between Kairos time and Chronos time:  "The world moves rather rigidly on Chronos time. We march forward to the incessant beat of the clock.  Kairos time talks about the right or opportune time. It's often a more indeterminate time, an opening, a qualitative measure rather than the quantitative measure of Chronos time. In theological terms, we often use the idea of Kairos time when we talk about God's timetable rather than the timetable we create."

As you might expect, on my theology blog, I wrote about the theological implications of these two ways of viewing time.  But these ideas of time have some implications for writers and other types of writers.

In my writing goals, I try to keep both a long view of time and a close up view.  I try to write poems on a weekly basis, and I'm lucky to have writing assignments that come my way, and usually, those deadlines are within a month or two.  I also have a longer view of time:  what I hope to accomplish before I die.

In my professional life, I have some control over outcomes.  I have projects with deadlines and assessment measures, and I meet them, or I don't.  I'm lucky in that in my professional life I'm often working on projects that I can accomplish.  And if a project is doomed, I usually know that from the start, and it's usually not my fault, and we all agree to move on.  For example, I could create all sorts of fine programs to benefit students if money was in gushing supply.  However, our budgets are tight right now, so I don't continue to bash my head against the budget wall by creating programs that will never get funded.  I move along.

I have some control over my long-term writing projects, but not as much as I might like.  I can create a manuscript, and I can send it out.  If I want a publisher to accept it (as opposed to publishing something myself), that's where my control ends.  There are many fine manuscripts circulating out there; I don't kid myself that my manuscript is more deserving.  It's one amongst many deserving manuscripts, in a landscape of shrinking publishers.

But unlike in other professional areas of my life, I don't move on.  I keep submitting.  I want a book with a spine with my name on it.  I want it to an object of beauty before the reader even gets to the actual writing.  I want paper with enough heft and fiber to delight the fingers.

I've adopted a Kairos attitude when it comes to my publishing.  It may sound a bit New Agey, but I believe there's a larger current than the one I can see, than the shallows where I swim.  I send my work out, but it may not be the right time.

That doesn't excuse me from the work of writing or submitting.  But it means I'm not going to beat myself up when I don't get the publishing prizes I would like.  I'm going to wish the winners well.  If they're decades younger than I am, well, great for them.  My rewards will be sweeter if I must wait.

That last paragraph makes me sound so well-adjusted.  Don't get me wrong.  There are days when I gnash my teeth, days when I wonder if I'm deluding myself.  But I've gotten enough encouragement that I keep going.

I'm also always trying to stay open to serendipity.  Along the way, I've had this vision for what I wanted in terms of my writing:  a best-selling novel, a book of poems with a spine, a monthly column that would pay me enough to live on and provide health insurance.

So far, I haven't gotten those.  But I've gotten other things that I didn't even realize that I wanted enough to ask the universe to send them, like my blogging at the Living Lutheran website and my assignments writing prayers and bulletin inserts.

My hope is that all of these developments will work together and that as the years and decades go by, I'll look back and see patterns that I can't even discern now.  And a book with a spine would be nice!

Literary Thrillers and Our Modern World

Today is John Grisham's birthday.  Today, he's fairly well-accepted as an American writer, and one of those wonderful kind of artists who does a lot for the community where he lives.  I wonder if grad students today see him as a good writer.  When I was in grad school in the late 80's and early 90's, he was one of the authors that MFA students liked to sneer at.

I think of an encounter I had with an MFA student years ago, when I was almost done with grad school. He learned that I had literary ambitions, and he asked, "Are you hoping to be good or are you hoping to sell a lot of novels, like John Grisham?"


At that time, I was the only person in America who hadn't read The Firm. I had been finishing my Ph.D. in British Literature, and I hadn't read any literature written by a non-Brit in almost two years. I thought the MFA student offered me a false choice. I asked, "Can't a book be both?"

He said no, and I have to admit that so far, it seems like the rare book that's both beautifully written and compelling to read in the way that sells lots of copies. I have since read several of Grisham's novels, and I think he pulls it off.

I think of that MFA student and the question he was really asking: would you accept boat loads of money for your writing? Of course I would; wouldn't we all?


I think of John Grisham reading Writer's Digest and seeing a formula for building suspense.  He followed it--and he was a strong enough writer that he pulled it off.  He made a book that people couldn't put down.  Not many of us can say that.  I think of him writing The Firm and A Time to Kill as he commuted to his law firm job.  How many people have dreamed of writing their way out of their current job?  And Grisham actually did it.

Thus, the jealousy targeted towards him.

I celebrate anyone who can write a book that lots of readers want to buy--hurrah for that.  And if there are some literary elements, like with the books of John Grisham, so much the better. 

Today is also the birthday of Kate Chopin, who wrote short stories that seem surprisingly modern for nineteenth century American fiction.  I didn't read The Awakening until I taught an American Lit survey class.  Even though I knew the ending, I found the book compelling and suspenseful in ways similar to modern thrillers:  a woman held back at every turn--how will she escape her fate?

Chopin is seen as a feminist writer and she is--but she also explores race in a way that few other authors were doing.  And she sees the issue of class in ways that few others wrote about at the time.  Her short stories are amazing in their analysis of race, gender, and class--she does so much in just a few pages.

Another writer who propelled us towards the future that we're enjoying today was Elizabeth Bishop, who was also born today.  Think about other poets, like T. S. Eliot, who were exploring big topics like how to exist in a world where World War I had changed the landscape both literally and figuratively.  Think about Bishop's poems, how she explored daily life in such beautiful poems.  Many of us are writing poems that are more aligned with Bishop's poetic world view--I might argue that more of us are writing poems that are similar to Bishop's "Sestina" than are writing poems along the lines of "The Waste Land."

You might mourn that development.  You might say that the Grishams and Bishops of the world have ruined literature for the big questions which it should address.  But I would argue that the literature world is big enough for both, that we don't have to choose.  One day I'm writing a poem about the joy of tea and scones on a rainy day, and the next day I'm wrestling with what it means to live during the Holocene extinction.  The world is big enough for both approaches, and everything in between.