Wannabee's Words

Validation

I was already excited about attending the 2010 South Coast Writers Conference.

John Daniel, author of Rogue River Journal: a Winter Alone (which won a 2006 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award), Looking After: a Son’s Memoir (winner of the 1997 Oregon Book Award for Literary Nonfiction), and the new and highly-praised The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature, is going to be the keynote speaker at Friday night's Author's Night readings. In addition, I will be taking a workshop from him on Saturday.

Another Oregon writer (Daniel lives in Oregon's Coast Range), Dennis Powers, a resident of Ashland, who wrote the suspenseful, but factual account of the 1964 Crescent City tsunami The Raging Sea: The Powerful Account of the Worst Tsunami in U.S. History, and has written a number of nautically-themed books including Sentinel of the Seas: Life and Death at the Most Dangerous Lighthouse Ever Built, about the building of St. George's Reef Lighthouse off the northern California Coast, is also going to be a presenter. I am signed up for his Saturday workshop as well. Being able to meet and take workshops from not one, but two authors whose work I already know and enjoy was exciting enough, or so I thought.

But things started getting even more exciting on Friday, when I received an e-mail that I was the winner of the 2010 Bob Simon Scholarship Award for my submission "Paper Ephemera," a poem I wrote in early January. Winning the scholarship pays for my Saturday workshops and a ticket to the Saturday fish fry. It's worth about $71, but what's really exciting is how validated I feel as a writer that my poem was chosen as the best of the submissions, particularly because I have not really looked at myself as a poet.

The poem was actually a quick write, but required a number of revisions until I was truly happy with it. The prompt given was “quiet victories, silent joys,” which I incorporated into the poem itself. The inspiration came from the fact that lately I have been working on two projects - my postcard collection and re-organizing all my 35 mm negatives from something like the last 30 years. (I've had a digital camera for the last couple of years.) The title was the last thing I chose. (See below to read “Paper Ephemera.”)

I was still excited about the win when I got another e-mail on Saturday from the conference organizers saying that two of the poems I had submitted last summer were going to be published in the 2009 Rogue River Echoes, the conference's journal.

While I had submitted essays to the scholarship award competition in the past – this was only my third try, however - I had never submitted anything  for publication in Rogue River Echoes, so I was especially pleased to have two of my poems published on my initial attempt.

Those two poems - "Longing" and "Cliff" - were written after the conference and during the Writer's Digest's "Poetic Asides" website during their 2009 April Poem-a-Day Challenge in celebration of National Poetry Month. And the only reason I was participating in that was because of having met and taken workshops from poet (also memoirist and novelist) Floyd Skloot at the 2009 South Coast Writers Workshop. (See my posting on the 2009 SCWW and Floyd Skloot. See below to read “Longing” and “Cliff.”)

Skloot, whose poetry is very accessible, and who describes himself as a lyric poet, made me feel that there was a place for the kind of poetry I wanted to write and that perhaps I should attempt the Poem-a-Day Challenge. I certainly can see the improvement I’ve made as a result of the practice of writing from prompts for 30 days straight.

This is the first validation I’ve received that my poetry has merit, and I am gratified, encouraged, and, yes – excited!

 

 

Paper Ephemera

by Carol Berger       

1-6-10

 

It is all there in the photo albums

and the postcard books:

the people, places, and things

that have made up my life.

 

If they could, each picture,

each card, would tell

its story in more depth,

but they cannot speak,

cannot reveal what lies behind

the surface of their silence.

 

No one but I

can tell those stories.

 

They will die with me,

taking with them the love,

the laughter, the beauty,

the excitement, discovery, and hope,

along with the all challenges,

changes, and choices of

one woman’s lifetime -

the quiet victories, the silent joys,

and moments of peace

that only I could recount.

 

Gone, too, will be the fears,

the failures, the heartbreaks,

the confusions, betrayals, and

disappointments –  the quiet losses,

the silent sorrows of a life

that was not always so well-lived

as those photos and postcards

would suggest.

 

Though the artifacts remain,

the memories will be gone,

and these painstakingly

preserved records of my life

will become nothing more

than meaningless scraps

of glossy paper.

 

“Longing”

by Carol Berger   

4/27/09

 

I longed for the moon,

and a pale yellow crescent

appeared in the sky.

 

I longed for the stars,

and the clouds parted,

revealing more points of light

than my eyes could count.

 

I longed for the sun,

and the morning brought

with it a bright yellow orb.

 

I longed for rain,

and the clouds

released their moisture in

millions of soft, gentle drops.

 

I longed for the wind,

and a cooling breeze

rustled through the trees.

 

I longed for a soul mate,

someone to share my life with,

but no one came.

I am longing still.

 

 

 

“Cliff”

By Carol Berger   

4-11-09

 

He was the only one who ever wrote a poem for me.

I have it still, framed and hanging on my wall,

a reminder of my college days, when my whole life

was still ahead of me, and I was mad about

the part-Cherokee young man with chocolate brown hair

and chocolate brown eyes, who was my friend and lover.

 

We met in creative writing class. He was a freshman,

and I was a junior, but that didn’t matter.

There was chemistry there, and even now,

thinking of him, the longing is still there,

the wish that things had turned out differently.

It doesn’t matter why or how it ended, just that it did.

 

He wrote brilliant science fiction and amazing poetry.

He was something of a romantic,

making candles to decorate his frat room

and covering the walls with his poems,

written on different colored pieces of construction paper,

each piece torn around the edges, rather than cut.

 

I remember making love in his frat room

in a single bed. Of all the men I’ve known,

he is the one who made me feel the most loved,

even though I knew he didn’t love me.

He was open and honest in his loving,

giving and affectionate, wanting to please.

 

He was in my life off and on for two years

until circumstances took us different directions.

I have never forgotten him saying to me,

“Your problem is that you don’t know how

to enjoy the journey. You just want to get there.”

I think he knew me better than myself.

 

Since then, I’d wondered many times

if he became the writer that I thought he’d be.

Occasionally I tried to find where he was at,

but met with no success, until one day

a couple years ago, I googled his name

one more time and found a fresh obituary.

 

It took my breath away to realize

that he was truly gone at only 53,

that my memories, which seemed so fresh,

had been aging for more than thirty years .

I knew nothing of the time that intervened

between our parting and his death.

 

His obituary was a mere outline of his life

that raised more questions than it answered.

But what would I write to a grieving wife

that I had never known?

Your husband was my lover in college,

and I have never forgotten him?

 

No, it was not my place to ask,

to tell her things she might not want to know.

My place in his life was long ago.

I wonder if he ever thought of me

with sorrow and regret and wondered

where I’d gone and what I’d done.

 

Sometimes now he haunts me in my dreams,

and then is now, and we are both still young,

Awakening from my dream alone, I realize

it’s just a memory. Much as I wish I could,

I cannot change the past, and the only man

who ever wrote me a poem is gone.

 

 

Catching Up on Poetry

It's been a busy July for me, and I am way behind on doing the Poetic Asides poetry prompts. This was the one for July 1st - to write a poem titled "Nobody's Worth . . . "

Nobody’s Worth Forgetting What I Know              7-20-09

Okay, so I’m picky.
But I know what I like
and what I don’t like.
I know what I can live with
and what I can’t.
I know what I want
and what I don’t.
I know who I am
and who I’m not.

Why do I always
forget all this
in the face of my longing
to be with someone?
Why do I try to
convince myself
that I can learn to
like what I hate,
live with what I detest,
want what I loathe?

Why do I forget
who I am
and make the other person
everything;
give up myself
and what I know to be true;
set myself up for
the inevitable broken heart
when we both realize
that for me,
there is no meeting
in the middle,
that for me, compromising
where I shouldn’t
is being compromised.

When will I learn
to tell myself the truth?
That I am just as important
and valuable as the one
I put on an unwanted pedestal;
that to change myself
for someone else
is to sell myself out;
that no one is worth having
at the loss of who I am;
that nobody’s worth forgetting
what I know.

by Carol Berger

 

 

 

 

 

More Catch-up

Here is a poem written to the July 8th prompt to write about putting out fires.


“Putting Out Brush Fires”                                                      7-23-09

After all the years,
I am tired of putting out brush fires.
Let someone else throw water on them.
Or let them burn and consume
all within their range.
I care not.

I am re-claiming my life,
leaving the brush fires behind,
to deal with more important things:
the sound of angry waves
crashing on the rocky shore,
the autumn sun
angling across a field of fallen leaves,
the softness of a lush carpet
of deep green grass beneath my feet,
the scent of lavender fields
on a hot summer day,
the taste of ripe raspberries
melting on my tongue.

No longer will I waste my time
squelching minor conflagrations
that have nothing to do with who I am
and make no difference to anyone
in the long run.

Instead, I will find my freedom
on the rapids of a raging green river;
my peace, in wild pink rhododendrons
dwelling in quiet redwood forests;
my contentment, in sunset and twilight
and the evening stars in the vast, dark sky.

And not least, I will find my joy,
in knowing that for me,
there are no more brush fires.

by Carol Berger

"Thoughts on a Summer's Evening"

I have been more than a little depressed for a while and can't seem to shake it. So when given the prompt to write a poem about summer, this is what came out:

“Thoughts on a Summer’s Evening”                    

Not even the summer sun can
cheer my heart. Instead it saddens me
by reminding me of summers long ago
when I was young and my whole life
was before me, and I still believed
that my dreams would come true.
Now I know they will not, cannot,
and so the summer sun only makes me
long for the past that I cannot have back.

This is the autumn of my life.
I did not know it would come so soon,
nor bring so much sorrow with it:
sorrow for chances I couldn’t take
and still cannot; sorrow for chances
I took in desperation that failed
and left me feeling all the more alone;
sorrow for who I used to be, for
who I could’ve been, for who I’ve become.

All too soon, winter will come,
and the icy blasts of wind will
strip the autumn leaves from the trees,
freeze the lakes, and stop my heart.
I would not mind its coming quite so much
had spring’s promises all been met,
the summer of my life long and glorious,
the autumn peaceful and full of love.
But none of this was true,
and I face the winter with only my sorrow
for what might have been, but wasn’t,
and the cruel summer sun that reminds me.

by Carol Berger

Discovering May Sarton's Journals

It is often true for me that something on one website or in one book will lead to another website or book, and that one to another one, and so it was that I recently discovered May Sarton’s journals in a rather round-about way.

 

An English major, I had never heard of Sarton before, but I have been thoroughly enjoying reading her journals.

 

Her works, which include novels, books of poetry, and journals, were written and published between 1932 and 1995, when she died.

 

Checking out what was immediately available at the library, I necessarily ended up starting toward the end of her series of journals, with At Seventy (1984) and After the Stroke (1988), then read The House by the Sea (1977), and May Sarton: A Self-Portrait (1982), which is a transcript of the film World of Light: A Portrait of May Sarton and which also includes some of her poems and her commentary on them. I have just finished Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992) and have started Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year (1993).

 

In the next few months, I plan to read all the rest of her non-fiction: I Knew a Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography (1959), Plant Dreaming Deep (1968), Journal of a Solitude (1973), A World of Light (1976), Recovering: A Journal (1980), and At Eighty-Two: A Journal (1995).

 

The idea of Sarton as a single woman living alone most of her life, loving her solitude, needing to write as much as she needed to breathe air appealed to me and still does. I find that she and I share some things – a love of flowers and nature, never being able to keep up on correspondence and other things that need to be done, a fierce independence, a strong love of home, the need for plenty of time alone.

 

One of the most valuable things for me is watching her age and become ill and dependent on others to help her, as I went through much of this when I had a serious surgery several years ago, and as I am getting to an age where I can expect to have more health problems. She paints a realistic portrait of old age and how she feels like a stranger in that land, feels she is not herself anymore, yet manages to adapt and go on. Her friendships sustain her as much as her cherished solitude does. At times she seems whiny and self-preoccupied, at others her open-heartedness comes clearly through, as well as her vulnerability. I watch her hope – even as she has cancer – that she will be well again, suffer through a solid year of at times debilitating pain, pull in the borders of her world to the home and small town she lives in after a life-time of traveling, and complain about not getting the recognition she feels she deserves, even while giving standing-room only readings of her works and receiving many honorary degrees and too many fan letters to answer them all.

 

What shines through her work is her total honesty, her ability to present herself as a complete person, flaws and all. She shows us the difficulties of aging and illness and the need to accept becoming dependent on others. Throughout it all, she strives to hold on to who she is and gives the reader much food for thought about how they will face old age and/or illness.

 

Sarton was certainly not one of the very best writers of her time, which may be why she didn’t receive the critical acclaim she felt so strongly that she deserved, but her journals are definitely a worthwhile read and worth a re-read as well.

 

 

It's Not Always Easy

It's not always easy to come up with a poem in response to the "Poetic Asides" prompt for the week. Last week's prompt was to take a headline from a magazine, newspaper, or website and use that as the title of a poem. I took this headline from a National Parks Magazine. I had only a vague idea of what I might do with it, and it went in a different direction than I had initially expected, influenced in part by my recent discovery of the Conversations with God series of books. While only in my late 50s, I find myself concerned with my mortality these days in a way I have not been before.

 

“Drift Away”                                                                     6-17-09                     

 

As I approach the final stage

of my brief passage,

this is my wish: to drift away

down a finally peaceful river,

where no rapids disturb

my lazy progress toward the sunset;

where all is calm and beautiful,

if only for that short time;

 

where lush green riverbanks give way

to majestic mountains in the distance;

where birds warble their hellos,

and frogs croak out goodbyes

as I glide silently by on my way to the sea,

relishing my last moments

on this particular river

in the deepening twilight.

 

Lord knows the trip I’ve made so far

has often been a turbulent one,

and I have sometimes gone far out of my way,

paddling up creeks that joined into the river,

but did not go where I thought they would,

wasting precious time in backtracking.

Sometimes I’ve traveled with another,

most times it’s been alone and now and then lonely.

 

On more than one occasion I have found myself

in a swirling eddy, going round and round

in circles, making no forward progress;

or going over unexpected waterfalls

and miraculously surviving the drop;

or falling into holes in the churning rapids,

then suddenly rising again into the sunlight,

relieved to be alive to see another day.

 

Sometimes I’ve beached my boat

and pitched my tent on a sand bar,

staying in one place for a while,

listening to the wind in the trees,

gazing at starlit night skies with crescent moons,

wishing the river could go on forever.

 

But all rivers run to the sea eventually,

and mine runs into the sea of the eternal now,

where I will be absorbed back into all of life,

into all that is, into God, until once again,

in the never-ending cycle of the universe,

I find myself re-born on a new river

and begin the journey once more.

 

 

by Carol Berger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But Sometimes It IS

Then again, sometimes it IS easy to write a poem based on a prompt. Today's prompt was to write about receiving a million tax-free dollars. THAT was pretty easy!!

 

 

“Million Dollar Dreams”                                                                        6-17-09

 

This million dollars

is more than adequate

for my small dreams.

 

With it, I need never again

sell my freedom for a dollar,

wear a uniform,

put up with office politics,

answer to someone

who may know less than I

and cares nothing about me

or my life outside my job,

tolerate verbal abuse

just to make a living.

 

From now on,

I can call all my time

my own,

keep my own schedule,

sleep when I want

for as long as I want,

dress as I wish, ignore

political correctness,

and speak my mind

without fear of being fired.

.

My life will be

one long weekend,

one lengthy vacation

of doing the things I love.

I will read books all day

and write my own.

I will take my wanderlust

to the road in my own RV

and experience more 

of the country I live in.

 

And I will buy my own home

for the first – and last – time,

no McMansion

with a swimming pool

in some exotic location,

but something simple and small –

a new manufactured home

placed on a small lot

in the town I live in now.

 

I want only comfort,

not extravagance,

I don’t need a luxury car,

diamond jewelry,

expensive clothes,

art treasures,

or trips around the world.

Those were never my dreams,

so why should they be now?

 

My dreams were of freedom

from others’ control,

from want, from fear,

from a life of quiet desperation.

 

This million dollars

will be more than adequate

to meet those small dreams.

 

by Carol Berger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today's Poem

I am continuing to follow the poetry prompts on "Poetic Asides." I am quite honestly most pleased with the poem I wrote to today’s prompt, which was really frustrating at first. I don’t know where Robert gets these prompts! Today’s was to pick an old adage and write a poem with that title. I must have spent a good half hour trying to find lists of adages on line and then find one that resonated with me. I finally ended up looking at a list of farm adages, where I found the phrase “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” which just seemed to jump out at me. So I titled my poem “Needle in a Haystack,” and then the poem more or less just flew out of me! I mean, it wrote itself more than maybe any other poem I have written, because I didn’t even know where I was going with it. I usually at least have an idea of what I want to say in a poem, but the ending of this came almost from outside myself.

 

"Needle in a Haystack"                                                        6/3/09

It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack -

trying to figure out what to do with my life.

I am digging my way through piles of the past,

possibilities for the present, prospects for plans

for a future, daunted by the task ahead,

hoping to find what I am looking for,

fearing I will not. And what then?

 

What if I do not find the needle?

What if my search leads only to

piles of hay scattered everywhere

and a weariness born of futility?

 

Perhaps then I shall curl up on the hay and sleep.

In the freedom of dreams may come the answers

that I cannot find by pursuing them,

and I may wake and find that

I am holding the needle in my hand.

 

by Carol Berger

Finding the Final Stanza

I finally finished a poem I started several days ago that was in response to the prompt to write about "under the surface." I had the hardest time with the last stanza on this one, but it finally came to me this afternoon.

 

“Perfect Solitude”                                              

 

I have lived alone a long time.

The solitude pleases me

and gives me room

to be myself in a way

I cannot be around others.

 

Alone, I need not shield

my vulnerability and fears,

need not contain my anger,

need not wear the mask

I feel I must at other times.

 

Alone at home, I revel in

the freedom of knowing that

the only needs and desires

to be met are mine, that here

as nowhere else, I am in control.

 

There is no dissention,

no conflict, no need for the

compromises that left me feeling

compromised, as there were

when I lived with someone else.

 

And yet, beneath my

satisfying seclusion, 

loneliness runs like a

subterranean river

that I have forgotten is there.

 

It surfaces unexpectedly,

spoiling my contentment

and making me wish for

the impossible, before it finally

disappears back underground,

leaving me to wonder

when it will rise again,

and if it always will.

 

But I have made my choice,

and if it is not a perfect one –

I pay a price I’d rather not -

it is the one promising most

freedom to be who I really am.

And so I make that choice again:

I will live alone, because

my solitude pleases me.

 

by Carol Berger

More poetry

This was written in response to a "Poetic Aside" prompt to write about something unexpected.

 

 

"Unexpected"          

 

It was mid-September
and pouring rain
when I stopped for gas
at the bottom of the road
that wound its way
up the mountainside
to Crater Lake,
but I thought nothing of it.
What was a little rain?

 

I headed my car up the road,
only to be greeted
a few miles farther by a sign
that said, “Chains required.”
Disregarding it as out of season,
I continued on, until the rain,
as if taking its cue from the sign,
turned to snow, and the world
around me became white.

 

I had no chains with me,
but I was not a stranger
to driving in snow,
and I was halfway up the road,
so I drove on past evergreens
frosted with ever deeper snow
until I reached the top
and found Rim Village covered
with four inches of new-fallen snow.

 

The parking lot was almost empty,
but the lodge and cafeteria were open,
the space between them
full of swirling flakes
falling furiously, obscuring the sight
of each building from the other.
The warmth of the lodge lobby
was a welcome contrast
to the bitter cold outdoors.

 

I hadn’t realized it could snow
in the mountains in September.
I had brought no winter clothing with me –
no parka, no boots or gloves,
nothing remotely warm.
It was my first trip to Crater Lake,
but all that I could see
from my rimside room with a view
was falling snow and grey skies.

 

The lodge dining room was closed,
and the cafeteria was closing early,
so I set off across the parking lot
in search of a warm meal,
following the faint golden glow
of the light at the cafeteria’s entrance,
until it eventually appeared
out of the whiteness,
welcoming me with its warmth.

 

I ate quickly, knowing I needed
to find my way back to the lodge
before it got too dark,
and soon was back out in the cold,
aiming for the dim light of the lodge,
trudging through snow that
covered the tops of my shoes
and chilled my mittenless hands.
I had not expected any of this.

 

Arriving back at the lodge,
I searched the racks of travel
brochures in the lobby,
hoping to come up with a Plan B.
Once in my room, I hung my now
soaking-wet-from-the-knees-down
jeans on a chair by the heater
and spread out the brochures
and my map of Oregon on the bed.

 

From the room next door,
through the old thin walls
of the historic lodge,
I could hear an older couple
with New York accents
talking about what to do.
And still, the snow kept falling,
and the lake was in hiding,
and we all slept fitfully that night.

 

Suddenly it was morning,
and I was awakened by a voice
coming through the wall
from the room next door:
“Haaa-rold! Haaa-rold!!
Wake up, wake up! The lake is out!”
Rushing to the window,
I raised the shade.
The snow had stopped.

 

The rim of the caldera
was illuminated by a rising sun
on the far side of the lake,
which was the deepest,
most surreal shade of blue
I had ever seen, all the more
intense for being surrounded
by the glistening white snow,
deeper than the night before.

 

Throwing my clothes on,
grabbing my camera,
I raced down the stairs and outside.
But the sun was gone, 
and the lake had disappeared
into the whiteness of falling snow,
as if a veil had opened long enough
for just a glimpse of the beauty
behind it, then suddenly closed again.

 

There was nothing to do
but leave while I still could,
before the snow got so deep
that I was stuck there.
I crept cautiously down
the road until the flakes turned
into raindrops, promising myself
to come back next summer,
and headed for the coast.

 

True to that promise,
I spent a week there the next July,
hiking trails through hot, dry,
barren pumice fields,
through wildflowers
strewn along the stream
where water ouzels dipped
beneath the surface
in search of food,
up high crests to open vistas
of distant mountain peaks,
down to the edge of the lake itself
and around its island.

 

The lake was beautiful
under warm and sunny skies –
everything was perfection.
Still, my favorite memory of Crater Lake
will always be the unexpected snow
and my brief glimpse
of the lake at sunrise.
I have no snapshots from that day,
but there are photos in my mind
that time cannot degrade,
and which continue to fill my soul
with wonder at the blessings
of the unexpected.

by Carol Berger

 

 

Wednesday Poetry Prompts

Robert from the Poetic Asides blog has continued to post poetry prompts on Wednesdays since the end of the April Poem-a-Day challenge, and I have decied to continue to participate. 

The first prompt, not surprisingly, was to write a poem about spring. The second was to title a poem "Don't You . . ." Here are my efforts:

“Spring”                                                                                                                   

 

Spring is a schizophrenic month.                                                    

Caught between winter and summer,

it can’t decide which to be,

so takes turns at being each.

 

Even as daffodils lift their yellow heads

from the earth, snow falls around them.

Or brilliantly colored tulips are drenched

in rain or pelted by hail.

 

But on the days when spring is truly itself,

blue skies reveal themselves, perhaps

with a few fluffy white clouds for accent,

and the sun shines as if for the very first time.

 

by Carol Berger

 

 

“Don’t You Know?”                                                                                  

 

Don’t you know

how fragile I am?

How deep inside

I am a vulnerable

little child,

longing

for acceptance

and love?

How every

criticism,

every slight,

every hurtful

remark

cuts deep into

my soul?

 

Don’t you know

that much of

the strength

and confidence

I seem to have

is really an

illusion,

a mask,

a defense,
and that beneath

the surface,

I am terrified

by the possibility

of rejection

and failure?

 

Even you have

been fooled by

the image

I have so carefully

cultivated

to hide

the lonely lie I live.

And now,

when I am surely

drowning,

grasping

for your hand,

you think

I am merely

playing

at drowning

and turn away,

laughing,

leaving me alone.

Don’t you know?

 

by Carol Berger

 

Here is a recommended, if somewhat older, text on writing poetry: Creating Poetry by John Drury. There are prompts included in the book.

 

April 30 Poem

HOORAY!!!!! It's all over!! Below is my last poem for the Poem-a-Day challenge.

 

Even more than writing the poems, the real challenges have been some posting problems on the Poetic Asides website and then checking to make sure all the poems are REALLY posted there. As I expected, the prompt for the last day was to write a farewell poem, so here mine is.

 

 

“The Unspeakable”                                                                                    

 

We both knew it was goodbye

without having to say it.

There was something in your eyes,

your tone of voice, your insisting

on giving me my Christmas present early,

although I said to wait until after

you got out of the hospital.

 

It was just supposed to be a routine surgery.

“Don’t call the hospital,” you said –

you’d call me as soon as you felt up to it,

in just a few days. Then, when you

came home, I was going to help you out

with groceries, housework, and errands,

whatever else you needed.

 

I tried to reassure you that everything

would be fine, but I could see that

you didn’t really believe me, and even

as I spoke, I didn’t believe myself.

We didn’t have to say what we both

were afraid was going to happen.

Troubled, I took the gift and left.

 

I waited, hoping for your call,

but it didn’t come. I thought of

calling the hospital, but didn’t,

because you’d said not to. Instead,

I rationalized that perhaps you had

forgotten to call, been too busy,

didn’t have my number with you.

 

A week went by, ten days, two weeks.

Then, just a few days before Christmas

I finally heard noises upstairs in

your apartment and decided to call

and see if you were home, ready to

give you a bad time about not having called.

Your son answered the phone.

 

I asked how you were doing.

Nothing could have prepared me for

the quick response that merely stated,

“You didn’t know? He died a week ago.”

Two heart attacks after surgery,

he explained: the first one survived,

the second one, not. Sorry no one had called.

 

I hung up the phone and began to sob.

The last time I had cried was when

you had been comforting me

over a badly broken heart.

“He’s not worth it,” you’d said.

Ah, but you were, and writing this,

I want to cry again, for the loss

of my neighbor, my best friend,

the finest man I’d ever known.

We never said goodbye the way

I would have wanted to, though I know

we both knew when we parted  

that afternoon that it would be forever.

We just couldn’t speak the unspeakable.

 

by Carol Berger

 

April 29 Poem

I was pleased to see that today's poetry prompt was something much easier than yesterday's! This may not be a great poem, but it says what I wanted to say and came to mind immediately, almost fully formed.

 

“Never Believe”              

Never believe that               
you are not enough,
you do not do enough,
you do not have enough,

or that you are flawed
or too different from others
to seek your dreams
and accomplish them.

Do not believe the voice
inside that tells you that
you are not worthy or that
others are more deserving.

Do not sacrifice yourself
for others who are not
appreciative of who you are
or everything you do for them.

Do not listen to those who
would make you doubt
yourself, who would tell you
their path is the only one.

Rather, follow your heart
and your dreams, believe
always in yourself and
that you are a gift to the world.

 

(Dedicated to Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy aka SARK)

by Carol Berger

April 26 Poem

Okay, this poem gets me completely caught up on the Poem-a-Day challenge. It's a good thing, too, since there are only two days left!

The prompt for this was to write a poem about miscommunication.

“Truth”      

It’s too late now to go back and
explain what I meant by what I said.
You wouldn’t let me speak and defend
myself then – why would you listen now?

I’d like to set the record straight,
to make you understand that
you took what I said the wrong way,
twisted it to suit your paranoia.

I doubt you ever even think about it,
but it haunts me still. I need the truth
to be known - to you and to everyone
who wonders what happened.

But you don’t want to hear the truth
that you were wrong to start a fight
where none was meant - truth never
mattered to you, and it still doesn’t.

There was miscommunication
on both sides, but only yours
was intentional, and you will
never admit that that’s the truth.

by Carol Berger

 

April 28 Poem

Today's prompt was to write a sestina. I am not opposed to sestinas, but I've never written one before, and I can see that it would really take a lot of time (like ALL day) for me to come up with something that not only fit the pattern, but that I felt was good. I got back from a ten-day vacation on Friday evening, during which I fell behind by four poems. So, in addition to trying to catch up on my sleep, e-mail, mail, laundry, and housework, etc., I have been trying to catch up and am now only one behind. Luckily today is "Two for Tuesday" day, with the second choice being to write ABOUT sestinas instead! Needless to say, that is the prompt I chose!

“Sestina Blues”       

I’d love to write a sestina today,
but I’ve got no time.
I copied out the pattern
and chose six ending words,
then wrote the words
onto the sestina pattern.

I can see that this would take all day –
or possibly forever.
I confused myself just
writing all my chosen words
onto the printed pattern page.
No sestina today!

I despair of writing anything
coherent when forced
to follow such a plan.
It might be done,
but not today –
There’s just no time.

You see, there’s laundry to do,
and vacuuming and dishes,
dusting and making the bed,
mopping the floors,
changing the sheets,
cleaning the refrigerator,

and cleaning the windows,
mending my skirts.
And then when I finish
all the housework,
there are still errands
needing to be run.

Off to the grocery store and bank,
the library, post office,
video store, gas station,
not to mention lunch
with Wendy later
in the afternoon.

Oh, and I forgot about my nap!
Yes, I’d love to write a sestina
today, but I’m just too busy.

by Carol Berger

April 24 Poem

So far today I have gone back and caught up on the poem for April 24. The prompt was to write something about travel - rather apropos, since I just got back from a ten day trip!

 

“The Road”        

No matter where I go
or how long I am gone,
at the end,
I am glad to come home.

Home to the comforts
of the familiar.
Home to the convenience
of having things
exactly the way I want them.
Home to my world.

But between departure from
and arrival back at home,
There is the road.
It’s where I go when
I feel a need for perspective.

The minute
I pull out of the driveway,
I am in another world,
leaving behind
my daily responsibilities,
my worries, my fears.

I go alone,
as all who go on
true quests must,
my ultimate goal being
to re-discover myself.

I drive because
I want to feel the movement
through time and space,
to see up close
the changing of the landscape,
to be a part of it,
not merely an observer.

Regardless of the things I do,
the friends I see,
the places I visit,
ultimately it is about
self-renewal and growth,
about expanding who I am,
clarifying what I want,
opening myself to the
possibilities of the universe,
living – if for but a time –
in the closest thing I know
to freedom.

But this freedom is bounded
by allotted time,
and eventually,
I must start toward home.

And if I’ve traveled well,
the road has done its job,
and I take a slightly different
person home with me,
changed – if only just a little –
by all I’ve seen and done;
and even home looks
just a little different
when I arrive there.

by Carol Berger

April 27 Poem

This poem came to me almost full-blown when I was flossing my teeth! The prompt - today's - was to write about longing.

 

“Longing”        

I longed for the moon,
and a pale yellow crescent
appeared in the sky.

I longed for the stars,
and the clouds parted,
revealing more points of light
than my eyes could count.

I longed for the sun,
and the morning brought
with it a bright yellow orb.

I longed for rain,
and the clouds
released their moisture in
millions of soft, gentle drops.

I longed for the wind,
and a cooling breeze
rustled through the trees.

I longed for a soul mate,
someone to share my life with,
but no one came.
I am longing still.

by Carol Berger

April 18 Poem

Well, I've written THREE poems today, and it's not even 4:00 in the afternoon! Yesterday I didn't write a single poem, and when I went to bed last night I had four poems still to do to catch up, and of course, this morning there was another prompt.

I am now back from my trip and realizing that I only have a few more days before the PAD challenge is over, so today seemed like a good day to try and make some progress.

This poem is in response to the prompt to write something about some kind of interaction.

 

“Enemy”       

You were toxic for me,
so I ended our friendship.
I was tired of the arguing
and of your constant
boundary violations,
despite my
repeated reminders
that I would not tolerate
such behavior.
Even at the end,
you continued to be
arrogant, demanding,
controlling, and
manipulative.

Two years later I saw you
in the grocery store.
At first I did not
recognize you.
From a distance,
I saw only a man
in a cap who smiled
at me and said hello.
I opened my mouth
to return the greeting.
Then, as you approached,
I realized who it was,
and closed my mouth
without speaking.

by Carol Berger

April 23 Poem

Here is a poem written in response to the prompt to write a poem about regret.

 

“Cancer”                                                                                                        

Regret is like a cancer –

it can eat you up.

It can make you waste today

while you are dwelling on

a past you cannot change.

It can poison your future

by attaching itself

firmly in your mind.

It can make you crazy,

stop you in your tracks,

break your heart.

Best to look for its signs

when they first appear

and cut it out before it spreads,

by accepting that

what’s done is done,

and cannot be changed.

There is no chemotherapy

once regret takes hold.

 

by Carol Berger

April 25 Poem

I may yet write a fourth poem today . . . At the moment I am only two behind!

 

“Ichiro Bobblehead Day”   

 

We are up early,
so we can get in line by 7 a.m.
We drive thirty-five miles
to Safeco Field
in hopes of getting
an Ichiro bobblehead,
the first to honor
the Seattle Mariners’
Japanese outfielder, 
and given out free
to the first twenty thousand
ticket holders to come
through the turnstiles,
beginning at ten.

The line started forming
the day before,
but we are not that crazy
and vow we will not
wait in line for more than
three hours.

 

It takes a while to find
the end of the line,
which loops back and forth,
up and down,
a cordoned off street.

 

We see people who had
pitched tents
the night before
and waited all night long.
There are people
sitting in folding chairs
they brought with them
to make the wait
more comfortable.
People are eating
and talking,
reading and
listening to music.

 

Despite a police presence
to keep people
from cutting the line,
we see a dozen scruffy men
join a woman standing
in line ahead of us.
Those of us in line
behind her complain,
and the police investigate.
The lady says
she is paying for these
poor street people
to see the game,
and the cop lets them stay.
Later we find out that
she bought them
cheap seats
in return for
their giving her
their bobbleheads,
which she later sold
for a large profit.

 

But other than that,
it’s a good and patient crowd,
growing more excited
as ten o’clock approaches.

 

Suddenly we see the line
begin to move,
although it takes a while
for the movement
to reach where
we are standing.
We try not to worry
that they will run out of
the coveted bobbleheads
before we get there.

 

Eventually we reach
the entrance
to the stadium,
where there are
boxes and boxes
of small Ichiros
with bobbling heads
that look just like
their namesake.
We are so excited
to open our boxes
that we stop
in the foyer
and are asked
to move on
to accommodate
the people
coming behind us.

 

Just a few minutes after
getting our Ichiros,
the 20,000 bobbleheads
are all gone,
and only empty
cardboard boxes
remain.

Smiling,
we hug our Ichiros close
and head for our seats.

 

by Carol Berger

 

April 22 Poem

This is my response to the April 22nd prompt to write a poem relating to work.

 

"A Temporary State of Bliss"                                                              

 

For a short time I knew the joy

of working at something I really loved -

something so much fun, so fulfilling,

so meaningful and important

that I was loath to label it “work.”

 

Finally I was using the talent

that had lain dormant far too long

and was living the dream that I

had been afraid to reach for -

until he handed it to me.

 

I was having the time of my life,

but I forgot that he had the power

to take it all away, regardless of

how well I did my job, how much I gave,

how much I cared about the work.

 

I put my whole soul into my job,

but that didn’t matter to him

once my success made him jealous

and fearful. He stopped trusting me,

though he had no real reason to.

 

He turned harmless comments into

sinister motives on my part,

though I had none, and distanced

himself from me, until finally,

he threw a fit of rage, then fired me.

 

To him, it was just “business” –

not so for me, who trusted him,

who thought he valued who I was,

who had been ecstatically happy

to be living my dream at last,

never thinking that it would end.

For once in my life, work had not been

just about the money and “putting in my time” -

I had finally found my bliss.

And now, I don’t think I’ll ever find it again.

 

by Carol Berger

 

 

 

April 20 Poem

The prompt for the 20th was to write about some kind of rebirth.

Right now I am still a couple of poems behind, and I catch up when I finally figure out how I want to approach that particular prompt.

 

“Sleep”         

Every night, I die to the world.
My sleep mask helps darken the room
by shutting out any stray beams of light
from street lamps and headlights at night,
or from the rising sun which streams in the
window opposite the bed in the morning,

My ear plugs help cover the sounds of
cars and trucks going by on the highway
below my window, the phone ringing in
another room, the upstairs neighbor’s
flushing toilet or the sound of her dog’s
toenails clicking on the floor above my head.

But that is only the first line of defense
against noise in the night.
A small machine next to my bed
makes the sound of the ocean
breaking on the shore, and the floor fan
drowns out even the tsunami sirens.
 
Sleep is sacred and not to be disturbed,
even at the risk of drowning in a tsunami
or waking up to a house fire.
Should these calamities befall me in the night,
I will deal with then – the odds are slim –
and so I sleep the sleep of a dead man.

Come morning, whether it be 6 a.m. or noon,
is when the miracle occurs every day.
Where, with the help of copious quantities
of chocolate milk and a long hot shower,
I resurrect myself for the day,
longing all the while to go back to bed.

by Carol Berger

April 21 Poem

The prompt for the 21st was to write a haiku, so I researched haiku just a little. Classical haiku is not titled, is about nature, is three lines, and follows a 5/7/5 syllable pattern. So I tried to adhere to these things.

 

The golden sun sinks down
and drowns in the restless sea.
Stars float in darkness.
 

by Carol Berger

April 15 Poem

I continue to play catch-up, as I am on vacation. Most of the time, the weather has been very nice, to the point of being downright hot to someone more used to the cooler temperatures of the Pacific Northwest Coast. The library I am at while posting this is HOT!!! I can't wait to leave and go to the air conditioned grocery store and get some ice cream and something cold to drink!!!

The prompt for April 15 was to take one of your favorite poems, change one word in the title, and write a poem to go with the new title. My poem, titled "Spring Equinox," is based on Floyd Skloot’s “Autumn Equinox.” I tried also to follow his rhyming pattern, line length, number of lines in a stanza, and number of stanzas. Since I don't normally rhyme my poetry,this was a real challenge.

"Spring Equinox"                

I feel the winter coming to an end.
The days grow longer, and spring flowers bloom
and greet the sun like a good and long-lost friend
who’s come to vanquish winter’s months of gloom.

My spirits soar at bright blue cloudless skies;
I greet the sun like a good and long-lost friend.
No longer do I heave such heavy sighs -
I feel the winter coming to an end.

My soul feels hope as the earth comes alive.
No longer do I heave such heavy sighs,
and I and all around me start to thrive.
My spirits soar at bright blue cloudless skies.

Tree frogs croak and robins sing their tune.
My soul feels hope as the earth comes alive.
I see the miracle that spring has hewn.
And I and all around me start to thrive

I feel the winter coming to an end
and greet the sun like a good and long-lost friend.
And I and all around me start to thrive.
My soul feels hope as the earth comes alive.
                                                                                                                                                     by Carol Berger

April 16 Poem

I was on my way to bed when I decided to just "look at" a poem I had started the other day, and of course, I got sucked right into it and got into flow and forgot how tired I was and what time it was and how early I have to get up tomorrow, and finished writing it. Since I had barely started it, that was a lot of writing! The good thing is that it helped catch me up a bit.

This poem is in response to the April 16th prompt to choose a color and write a poem connected to it. This changed considerably from my first idea of what to write, though the color did not.

“Memories of Green”        

Green was my first favorite color.
In grade school, I always chose the green
construction paper over the red, and
my bedroom wallpaper was a pink pattern
on light green.

Green was the color of the grass
in my grandfather’s yard when I was growing up.
Deep, dark green grass like a plush carpet
that I loved to walk barefoot on in summer
to cool my feet.

Green were the leaves of the plants and trees
that grew in my grandfather’s garden,
tended with loving care and well-watered.
My love for beautiful gardens was his
legacy to me.

Pale green was the color of my first car,
bought at eighteen and driven through
three years of college, until the repairs
became too expensive, and I had to
let it go.

Avacado green was the color we painted
the bedroom walls in our funky apartment
in an old Victorian carriage house in Old Town,
where my husband and I met and married
in our twenties.

Green and yellow was the color of the rug
in the rental house we were living in
when we divorced seven and a half years
later, so he could drink without
my disapproval.

Green was the color of the many houseplants
that kept me company for years of living alone,
until I had bought or grown so many
that the pleasure I had found in them
turned into work.

Green was the color of the woods I hiked
as an adult. Under a canopy of evergreens
and deciduous trees leafy with summer,
I walked on trails bordered by ferns and salal
and Oregon grape.

Green was the color of the glacial rivers
I saw while hiking in the mountains,
and of the shallower depths of Crater Lake,
I traveled alone to places I had longed to go,
seeking beauty.

Now my favorite color is a deep royal purple.
I dress in that color, because I look good in it, 
not for any other reason. Not because
“when I am old, I shall wear purple,”
because I was not old when I started wearing it,
though soon I shall be.
Sometimes these days, I think perhaps
I should bring more green back into my life.
Purple is beautiful, but it doesn’t have
the memories of green.

by Carol Berger

April 19 Poem

This is the poem for today. The prompt was to write something about anger. No problem with THIS one - it popped out pretty much intact right after I read the prompt, delaying my shower while I typed it into the computer!

I am still on the road, and it is a little hard to keep up with writing the poems, especially as I am pretty tired much of the time and writing late at night when I am at my most tired.

“Signs”           

I should have known that one day                                                            
you would turn your anger on me.
The signs were all there,
but we were friends,
and I never dreampt
that one day you would turn
to me with hatred in your eyes
and speak to me through
gritted teeth in a voice
seething with cruelty,
saying I had violated boundaries,
that you had never drawn for me.
And all the while,
during your outburst of verbal abuse,
all I could wonder was:
what about my boundaries?
How could I know that
you live by double standards,
and that it’s really all about you.
The signs were all there,
but in my trusting,
I chose not to see them.

by Carol Berger

April 17 Poem

Today I was out tiptoeing though the tulips quite literally, as I went to the Wooden Shoe Bulb Company's Tulip Festival in Woodburn, Oregon.

Tired as I am, I wanted to try to catch up a little on the PAD challenge, so I wrote two poems tonight, both short. The second poem is in the entry below this.

This poem is in response to the prompt to write a poem about "All I Want     is . . . " I think my time in the tulip fields definitely influenced this poem!!

 

“All I Want is Purple Tulips”       4-17-09

And when I die,
I want no fancy coffin -
something plain will do.

I want no elaborate ceremony,
with mourners dressed in black
and somber words spoken.

All I want is lots of flowers,
the springtime flowers I loved –
big, bright yellow daffodils
and dark blue hyacinths,
soft white lilacs, and most of all,
I want purple tulips.

by Carol Berger

April 14 Poem

This is the poem for April 14. The prompt was to write a love poem or write an un-love poem. I think mine falls sort of in the middle.

“Love Poems”        

Speak not to me of love or writing love poems.
My heart has been broken so often
that I no longer believe in love,
nor know what it really is,
if I ever did.

My failed attempts to find it have brought me
far more pain and sadness than joy,
killed any hope that I might ever
find a lasting love. I am done
with love poems.

by Carol Berger

April 13 Poem

I am just now posting my poem for April 13th. I considered and rejected several approaches to this prompt, then seized on the one I wanted, but wrestled with the wording for quite some time.

The prompt was "hobby," and I started out writing about indoor and balcony gardening, then trashed that and decided to inventory all the hobbies I'd ever had. This was getting much too long, and I felt the most important part was about my camping experiences, so I switched to writing exclusively about camping. I initially focused on my first camping trip, but found the poem wanting to say something else, so cut that section out and ended up with the following, after extensive revision.

 

“Remembrances of Camping”      

I remember waking up in the tent
in the early morning chill,
listening to the sounds of the rest of
the campground waking up,
smelling coffee and bacon in the air.

I remember snuggling in my sleeping bag,
reading a book by flashlight
at the end of a long day of hiking,
feeling cozy and safe in my tent,
as if I were wrapped in a cocoon.

I remember falling asleep at night
to the sound of someone in
an adjacent campsite playing a flute
by their campfire, with the occasional
hooting of an owl as counterpoint.

I remember the sunset lighting the sky red
behind the dark trees across the lake,
moonlight shining on the rippled water,
the brightness of millions of stars
in the clear summer night sky.

And I remember being young and strong,
fearless and hopeful, and finding God
in trees and mountains, rivers and lakes,
waterfalls and sandy beaches
in a way I never could find him in any church.

Twenty years ago, I went on my last camping trip,
not realizing then that it would be my last,
that my life would change, and I would go
in a different direction and stop camping
without ever intending to stop.

But the times I camped had become a part of me,
and though I know I will not camp again,
sometimes these days when summer’s in the air,
I find a longing fills my heart and gives rise
to memories of camping trips long past.

It’s then that I go camping in my mind,
back to the places that I used to love to go,
back to the time when camping fed my soul.
And the past becomes as real as if it were now,
and I feel as if I’m coming home after a long time away.

by Carol Berger

 

April 12 Poem

Well, I am glad to be on schedule by posting the following poem, which was to be written to the prompt, "So we decided ..."

I am noticing that I am tending to write a lot of narrative poems, and this is another one.

“So We Decided to Go Up to the Lighthouse”    

It was Tracie’s one night at the bed and breakfast.
We had met on the porch that afternoon
and, each of us being a woman traveling alone,
had struck up a camaraderie.

I had told her how the previous night
I had gone up to the lighthouse alone at sunset.
Once it got darker, I could clearly see
the big Fresnel lens turning in the lantern house
and thought how apropos it was to call the lenses “jewels.”
The motion of the sparkling glass had mesmerized me.
At first the prisms’ rainbow colors
shone against the near woods,
then more focused beams began to appear,
shining across the cove below and the trees above it,
before sweeping out over the shoreline to the open ocean.
Only one star had been out, with a sliver of the moon
above and to the west of it. I had stayed there
until I was too cold to stay any longer.

I told Tracie that I was going up again that night,
but later this time, when it was even darker.
Afraid to go alone, Tracie asked if she could come along,
and so we decided to go up to the lighthouse
together at ten o’clock that night.

Bundled up warmly against the cold night,
with flashlights in our hands, we headed out the door.
The house inside and porch without glowed with warm light,
as we gazed back while crossing the lawn.
A spotlight shone on the parking area,
and another on the fenced-in grounds,
but once we were out the gate in the picket fence
and past the unlit gift shop, there was only
the light of our flashlights on the trail
that had once been an access road
and wound up through the woods a quarter of a mile
to where the lighthouse stood on a promontory.

It was so quiet, we could hear every sound
that came from the woods around us.
Leaves rustled in the breeze, our shoes crunched
unseen sticks beneath our feet,
and Tracie thought of bears and cougars.
Even I was a little spooked when we suddenly
ran into a couple coming down the hill without flashlights.
We were both glad when we could begin to see
brightness up ahead and knew we were getting close.

When we got there, the light was already
as bright and focused as it had been the night before
when I had left it to go back to the inn.
The moon was surrounded by dozens of stars,
as if the night sky had the measles.
There was just enough light to see the waves
breaking way below us if we looked closely.

Eight strong beams radiated out from the lens,
seeming to go straight out for a while,
then arc down to the water, in an optical illusion.
Stationing ourselves at the base of the lighthouse,
we were suddenly at the center of a carousel of light,
spokes turning directly in front of us,
seemingly coming straight down to the earth,
and almost fluorescent against the night sky.

There were no sounds except the breaking of the waves
on the beach below, until suddenly Tracie exclaimed,
“Wow!” and I shifted my gaze in time to see something
streaking through the sky, with a wide swath behind it.
“A comet!” I said, but neither of us were astronomers
and guessed it could be a meteor or perhaps
a piece of space junk burning up. We ruled out
shooting stars and UFOs while we stood there,
hoping it would happen again, knowing it would not.

We felt the extraordinariness of the moment,
as if the streaking object were the frosting on the cake
of seeing the light from the lighthouse at night.
There was something deep and spiritual about it all,
something that made the universe suddenly seem
much more real and vast, and us a very small part of it.
Something that spoke of both time and eternity.

We stayed there for a good hour, marveling at the beauty
of the night sky and the lighthouse beams, amazed
by what we’d seen and felt, until finally, reluctantly,
we turned to go back down the trail to the warmth of the inn.

by Carol Berger

April 9 Poem

Okay, here is the "memories" poem for April 9th. That means I wrote TWO poems today!

“Cliff”

He was the only one who ever wrote a poem for me.
I have it still, framed and hanging on my wall,
a reminder of my college days, when my whole life
was still ahead of me, and I was mad about
the part-Cherokee young man with chocolate brown hair
and chocolate brown eyes, who was my friend and lover.

We met in creative writing class. He was a freshman,
and I was a junior, but that didn’t matter.
There was chemistry there, and even now,
thinking of him, the longing is still there,
the wish that things had turned out differently.
It doesn’t matter why or how it ended, just that it did.

He wrote brilliant science fiction and amazing poetry.
He was something of a romantic,
making candles to decorate his frat room
and covering the walls with his poems,
written on different colored pieces of construction paper,
each piece torn around the edges, rather than cut.

I remember making love in his frat room
in a single bed. Of all the men I’ve known,
he is the one who made me feel the most loved,
even though I knew he didn’t love me.
He was open and honest in his loving,
giving and affectionate, wanting to please.

He was in my life off and on for two years
until circumstances took us different directions.
I have never forgotten him saying to me,
“Your problem is that you don’t know how
to enjoy the journey. You just want to get there.”
I think he knew me better than myself.

Since then, I’d wondered many times
if he became the writer that I thought he’d be.
Occasionally I tried to find where he was at,
but met with no success, until one day
a couple years ago, I googled his name
one more time and found a fresh obituary.

It took my breath away to realize
that he was truly gone at only 53,
that my memories, which seemed so fresh,
had been aging for more than thirty years .
I knew nothing of the time that intervened
between our parting and his death.

His obituary was a mere outline of his life
that raised more questions than it answered.
But what would I write to a grieving wife
that I had never known?
Your husband was my lover in college,
and I never forgotten him?

No, it was not my place to ask,
to tell her things she might not want to know.
My place in his life was long ago.
I wonder if he ever thought of me
with sorrow and regret and wondered
where I’d gone and what I’d done.

Sometimes now he haunts me in my dreams,
and then is now, and we are both still young,
Awakening from my dream alone, I realize
it’s just a memory. Much as I wish I could,
I cannot change the past, and the only man
who ever wrote me a poem is gone.
                                                                                                                                                     by Carol Berger

April 11 Poem

Today's prompt was to write about an object. I was in the mood for writing something sort of fun at last.

“The Man in my Life”           

I first met him on Tax Day 2001.
It was love at first sight for both of us,
and we’ve been together ever since.
April 16th will be our eighth anniversary.

Born in Canada, he emigrated
to Washington, where we met.
Now we live in Oregon by the sea
and travel to California every summer.

He loves to travel, although he wasn’t
very happy the time he got stuck in the sand
on the beach up to the tops of his tires
and had to be winched out by some passersby.

He has big, bright eyes that sometimes
flash to high beam, and he sports a nice tan
that the sales sticker described as
“Cinnamon Metallic Glaze.”

When we’re not together,
he likes to hang out in our garage,
safe from the rusting moisture of
the ocean and rare icy mornings.

He always greets me with a big smile
and says, “Hi – I’m a Dodge Neon.”
A low-maintenance kind of guy,
he’s easily satisfied with some oil and gas.

At a loss for what to call him,
I asked my friends for suggestions.
Kerri came back ten minutes later
and said, “Nolan, for Nolan Ryan.”

So Nolan Neon he became and still is.
Although named for the famous pitcher,
he can’t pitch at all, but he loves the game
and enjoys listening to it on his radio.

That baseball season and the next three,
until we moved away, he took me
to dozens of Mariner games at Safeco Field,
never complaining that he had to wait for me
for hours on the street in the hot sun
or the cold rain until the game was over,
so he could drive me home.
That’s what I call true love.

by Carol Berger

April 10 Poem

Okay, so you noticed that there's no April 9 poem. The April 9th prompt was "memory." Because I have been writing SO many poems about my memories, I am trying to figure out something different to do with this poem. All I could think of was sad stuff, and I wasn't in the mood to write something sad. So I'll  be catching up on that prompt in the next couple of days.

Today's prompt was "Friday."

                                                                                                                                   “Considering Friday”                    4-10-09

Friday is always
the day after Thursday
and the day before Saturday.

Friday always has
twenty-four hours,
like every other day of the week.

It has a morning, an afternoon,
an evening, a night,
like every other day of the week.

It has a sunrise and a sunset,
high tides and low,
like every other day of the week.

For some, Friday is a special day,
but Friday is not the same for all of us.

It is not necessarily the end of the work week
or the last day of classes until Monday.

It is not necessarily date or party night
or the last day before a three-day
holiday weekend beginning on Saturday.

For some of us, TGIF does not apply,
and it’s just another day,
like every other day of the week.

by Carol Berger

April 8 Poem

I tend not to write light poetry, and this evening the prompt to write something about "routine" took me to another serious subject. This event occurred almost 13 years ago, but is nonetheless still fresh in my mind.

“Routine Ended”        
  

We worked together for twelve years, often side by side.
I got to know him well, and the entire time,
it was his routine to come to work half an hour early
to sit and smoke a cigarette or two,
drink a cup of coffee, and talk to everyone he knew
in the break room at the change of shift.
Until the morning he didn’t.

I didn’t think anything about his absence, assuming
he was at a doctor appointment or working in the back,
until our supervisor, said he hadn’t called
to say that he’d be late, and asked me,
knowing that I knew him best, “Did he say anything
to you last night about coming in late today?” 
No, I said, then asked if he had called the house.

He’d called and gotten no answer,
but tried to reassure me that things were probably alright.
Or was it more that he was trying
to reassure himself, when we both knew
that something must be wrong for my friend
to break his morning routine with no warning.
And so my supervisor went over to the house.

When he came back, he was afraid to tell me what he found.
Afraid to tell me about the crime scene tape and police cars
outside the house. Afraid to tell me how my friend
had followed his morning routine at home,
getting ready for another day at work,
when suddenly he said to his wife, “I can’t do this anymore,”
went in the closet, closed the door, and blew his brains out with a gun.

Everyone was afraid for me that I would
break down at the news, but though I cried,
I seemed to be the only one who understood why.
I was the one he had talked to, who knew the best 
that he had never gotten over the death of his oldest son
in a freak accident that put the son in a coma for two years,
and then, despite a series of doctors and hospitals, a grave.

They had quarreled before the wreck,
and my friend never forgave himself for that,
clinging to the hope that his son would live,
even after everyone else knew there was no chance.
He had said to me, only a few weeks before ending his life,
“Today is the tenth anniversary of my son’s death.”
A strange anniversary to mark, I thought.

He’d been nervous lately, visibly shaking at work.
Our supervisor had been riding him about
being too slow at his job, threatening remedial training
that would have deeply humiliated my friend.
Career military, he had been in Viet Nam and had
confided in me that he had not been feeling well
and feared it was effects of Agent Orange.

He was a man with much on his mind,
the responsibility for a wife and second son,
too many debts that he told no one about,
a past that had haunted him a dozen years,
and a future that seemed to hold no hope.
He would never have gone to therapy
or asked for help - that would have been being weak.
Still a soldier at heart, he expected himself to be strong.
I think he felt that he had failed everyone;
that there were no acceptable solutions
to his problems, no other way to stop the pain,
and not enough reason for him to go on.
And so he chose to end a routine
that he could not live with any more.
 
by Carol Berger

April 7 Poem

Today, being Tuesday, it was "Two for Tuesday," where we are provided with two different prompts and can write about one or the other or both. The prompts were "clean" and "dirty."

Choosing not to take "dirty" literally, I knew at once what I would write about. This poem is about a real person and a real event. Out of respect for her family, I do not use her name. It is the longest poem I have written and took the most time. I felt a need to edit it even more thoroughly than I usually do. It was a dificult poem to write, rather disturbing. Physically and emotionally, I felt like I was reliving the whole incident over again.

 

“The Secret”         

She planned it all, but no one knew.
She quit her job, sold the house,
put the bank accounts in her sons’ names,
acted as if nothing were wrong,
giving credible explanations
of wanting to do something different,
of no longer needing the house now
her two sons were living with their father.

She was the most positive,
loving, and giving person
anyone could ever know,
forever happy, always smiling;
so none of us suspected that
under that well-polished façade,
loneliness and despair were conspiring
to drive her to a desperate act.

I didn’t know her all that well.
We worked together for ten years,
but our schedules were different;
her job took her out of the office,
while I remained in all day.
We lived two blocks apart,
but I was only ever at her house twice,
though I knew I was welcome any time.

Nevertheless, she considered me a good friend,
and when I moved to another state,
she came to my moving-away party,
came the day I was leaving to help pack,
came to visit me in my new home once for a day
on the way home from a trip to California.
She waved and smiled as she drove away.
How could I know that was the last time I’d see her?

A few months later, she called to say
she was off work for a month,
having a hysterectomy.
We spoke once or twice after that,
as she laid the groundwork of the lie
she lived for the next six months,
behaving normally on the surface,
while the guilt she was feeling inside consumed her.

Then came the phone call from her sister
on a warm summer night
that she’d had an “accident” and was dead.
My phone number was on a postcard
found among her possessions
in the small room she’d rented.
When was the last time I had seen her,
talked to her? What did I know?

What I knew in my heart
was that it was no accident,
that the loneliness I’d sometimes sensed,
the unfulfilled longing to be loved,
had finally overwhelmed her.
How did she die? I asked.
Hit and killed by a train, her sister said.
Not in her car, but on the tracks.

She parked her car and walked over onto the tracks,
but stepped off when she saw the train coming,
Then, at the last moment,
knowing the engineer had no room to stop,
she stepped back onto the tracks,
and died instantly when the train hit her,
just blocks from the neighborhood
where she and I had lived.

Her sister told me about my friend’s
bizarre behavior towards the end,
which I, five hundred miles away,
could not have known of;
of interventions attempted that failed;
of her giving all her possessions away,
because she “didn’t need them anymore.”
And of notebooks found with writings.

Notebooks about how she felt “dirty” and undeserving,
and filled with pages of self- blame and self-loathing.
Words that told the real story.
Suddenly, everything fell into place,
and I understood the real reason why,
after coming here from Europe
right after finishing high school,
she had never once gone back to visit.
And I knew what she felt dirty about,
And why she chose a train to end her life.

Neither her sister nor I would say it,
and my friend had never told me,
but I knew without knowing
that she had been sexually abused while growing up.
After a quarter century of living
with that secret and blaming herself,
she had chosen to end the pain and self-hatred.
And in the manner of her death,
she also chose to reveal the identity of her abuser:
her father was a train conductor.

by Carol Berger

 

 

April 6 Poem

I live at the ocean, and today is a glorious, sunny, warm day. The poetry prompt to write about something missing seemed much too gloomy for a day like today. So I decided to take the concept a different direction. Since the prompts are ideas to get you started, you can pretty much take them where you want to go. I continue to amaze myself by finding things that relate to them that I am interested in writing about. For me, the idea of the Poem-a-Day challenge is not just to crank out something, but a polished poem with feeling.

 

“December Storm”       4-6-09

Today the sunlight is missing.    

It has been absent for days on end,
but this day the winter weather also brings
torrential rain and gale force winds
that blow the rain sideways
and pound it against the double-glass panes.

They rattle and flex, yet do not break.
I watch my reflection move with the windows,
even as I remain still at my desk,
staring out at a world gone dark grey.

Soap suds of ocean foam,
blown from the beach two blocks away,
run down the windows,
as if trying to wash them clean.

One lone seagull attempting to fly against the wind
hangs in the air, beating his wings furiously,
but making no progress in the storm.

I watch the trees swaying erratically,
but continuing to stand,
while two long strips of metal siding
come loose from the house next door
and flap around noisily on the ground outside.

But the power stays on,
and for all the fury of the elements,
I am not afraid, here in my house,
my fortress, my safe haven,
where nothing is missing,
and all is calm.

by Carol Berger

April 5 Poem

This morning's prompt - to write about some kind of landmark - came the closest so far to stumping me. I rejected a lot of possibiIities in terms of individual landmarks, then chose to approach "landmark" from a slightly different angle.

 

"The Land of Matt"        

In the not-so-distant past,
landmarks were about survival -
a lighthouse steering sailors to shore
on a stormy night far out at sea;
a mountain, rock formation, or river
guiding explorers or pioneers to their destination.

Spotting a landmark meant
that you were headed in the right direction,
and failing to see one or missing the “mark”
could cost not only time and distance,
it could cost you your life
in an often violent and unforgiving environment.

I thought I had studied you well,
knew your terrain,
learnt your geography,
had memorized where the riptides and sand bars were.
I thought I was going the right way
and would arrive safely.

But when push came to shove,
I found myself wandering lost
in an alien and desolate land,
on an endless and cold ocean,
with no landmarks to guide me
to safe harbor or shelter.

Were they there, and I just didn’t see them?
Or did I stray too far in one direction?
Whatever went wrong in my journey
may not have cost me my life,
but it cost me my dreams -
dreams that were a long time coming
and not soon again fulfilled, if ever.
Where was GPS when I needed it?

by Carol Berger

 

April 4 Poem

I am now begining to wake up in the morning, truly excited to see what the prompt for the day will be! Today's prompt was to write about an animal, either general or specific. Writing this poem took me back over 30 years. A friend said that so far my poems sounded more like auto-biography than poetry, but I feel that poetry is about expressing yourself, and I am finding it wonderfully therapeutic to reconnect with parts of my past, as well as present. I also feel my poems are generic enough that most people should be able to relate them to experiences and feelings in their own lives. They say, "write what you know," and all I know is my own life.

 

"Sunshine Lady of Zephyr"       

Runt of a litter of ten,
least spotted and more delicate
than all of the other Dalmatians
bred by my mother-in-law,
when offered one, we chose you.
We registered you with the AKC
as Sunshine Lady of Zephyr,
but we called you Sunny.

You loved to sit in my husband’s lap
while he played his guitar,
or lie on the kitchen floor
near the space heater
while I cooked or did dishes,
or on the living room rug
near the stereo speakers
and chew through the speaker wires.

I took you through obedience training,
where you learned to sit and heel.
When we walked around the neighborhood,
you would stop at every corner on your own,
waiting to cross the street,
growling protectively at strange dogs.
But obedience only went so far
when you chose not to obey.

Daily, when time came for me to leave,
I had to chase you around the yard
to get you to come in.
You tried to dig your way under the fence
to go visit the neighbor’s dogs.
We adopted one of your brothers
to keep you company,
but that did not work well.

You heaved sad sighs because
you were no longer the only child,
the focus of all attention,
He took over your favorite spot to lie.
You refused to play with him,
and so we returned him after only a few days,
restoring you to what you saw
as your rightful position as lady of the house.

One day I left you alone in the car
while I was in class for an hour –
only to find when I returned that
you had eaten a large chunk out of the parking boot.
Then we moved to an apartment,
and while the only things left in the house
were you and the bare mattress on its springs,
you had fun eating a foot long and wide hole in it.

The apartment was no place for you.
You barked when we put you in the bathroom
behind a kiddy gate when you
came into heat and started bleeding.
Management said the neighbors were complaining,
and I was tired of chewed up speaker wires,
parking boots, and mattresses, and dog hairs on my clothes.
I placed an ad to find you a new home.

My husband reluctantly faced the truth
that the whole dog thing was not working,
and so the day came when
off you went with your bowls and brushes,
collar and leash, your toys and registration,
seeming glad to go to your next adventure,
acting as if we had never existed,
taking your sunshine with you.

by Carol Berger

April 3 Poem

I am having a great time with PAD! Today's challenge was the hardest so far, and I can tell that a lot of the poets are having trouble with this one! The prompt was to write a poem titled "The Problem with ...." and then fill in the blank with the problem your poem is about. Lots of people are writing poems called "The Problem with Problems," which I thought of and quickly discarded. There are a lot of titles that have been used by several people. So far (after about 350 people have posted), no one has used my title!! So, here is today's effort.

“The Problem with Deciding”         

Most of my decisions
are not truly decisions.
My likes and dislikes are so strong,
that faced with a choice,
I almost never have to think,
but respond immediately
with a pre-programmed answer
of which I am completely sure.

Not this time.
Like Hamlet,
faced with “to be or not to be,”
I am wrestling within myself
to know the right thing to do.
“To stay or go? If to go, where?
If to go, when? If to stay, how?”
Those are the questions.

The stakes are much higher
than choosing the flavor
of an ice cream cone,
the color of a skirt,
where to vacation this year,
which book to buy.
No, this decision is more like
the two roads in Robert Frost’s poem.

I cannot know for sure
where either road will lead.
and one or both could be a dead end.
To be responsible and play it safe,
or take a risk and follow my heart?
But which road is risk, and which is safe?
Or are both a little of each?
And where does my heart truly lie?

My hopes and dreams and fears
swirl around in my mind
until I am more confused than ever,
knowing that to choose one
is to rule out the other path.
But choose I must and soon,
and though I know not what
the consequences may be,
I need to feel as sure of my decision
as I am that chocolate is the flavor,
purple is the color,
the ocean is the place.

And that is the problem with deciding.

by Carol Berger

April 2 Poem

Almost 1,000 people posted poems yesterday on the "Poetic Asides" website!!

Today the prompt was for an "outsider poem."

 

“House on the Hill”       

First the home health nurse stopped coming,
then the physical therapist.
My care giver, too, departed,
and my handyman and errand runner
went to California to see family
on an extended vacation.

Alone at last, two months after the surgery,
I sat in my great room
with its eight picture windows,
looking out at a world
I no longer felt a part of,
wondering if anyone knew I was there.

It was the time when the cards and gifts
had stopped coming,
and the calls and visits had come to a halt.
Divorced from the initial hubbub,
I was left on my own to try to figure out
how to repair my shambled life.

To the south, I could see the ocean,
the mountains, the trees, the sky,
watch the weather transit from west to east.
To the west, the headland rose,
dotted with houses, and to the east,
I overlooked the town.

Watching people come and go on the street,
overlooking the site of my suddenly previous-job,
following cars and trucks as they wound up the highway
and disappeared where the road turned south,
it was as if I was viewing another world,
one that I did not exist in.

In time, I would drive again,
though at first, that, too, felt alien;
would finally venture forth to walk alone,
first on streets and then on trails,
asserting a much different self
into the world I had left, then watched from afar.

There is something about isolation
that alters the soul and remains with it,
becomes a part of it, even after it is ended.
Years later, I sometimes still feel the sense of separation,
when dark winter nights show me only
the reflection of myself in the eight picture windows
of the house on the hill,
and I remember.

by Carol Berger

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month, and the "Poetic Asides" blog (Rober Lee Brewer) from Writer's DIgest started its Poem-A-Day challenge this morning.

Though I have never thought of myself as a poet, recently I had two of my poems published in the "4 and 20" on line poetry journal. This has encouraged me that perhaps I should put a little more energy into poetry.

So, I decided to try the Poem-A-Day challenge. It will at least keep me writing, now that I am no longer writing for a newspaper or editing newsletters.

So I will be posting my poems for the month on this site as well as at the "official" Poem-A-Day site, which is http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/.

Here are the two poems I had published in the January issue of "4 and 20." (See their website by using the link in the left column.)

 

“Heceta”

 

Roaring surf below.

Silent stars above.

At the base of the lighthouse,

The beams hypnotize my heart.

 

 

“Longing”

 

I long to melt like butter

in the warmth of your love.

Instead,

you serve up cold toast.

April 1 Poem

The prompt for the first day of the Poem-A-Day challenge was "origin," however you wanted to interpret that.

I drew a complete blank at first, then suddenly within a very few minutes, KNEW exactly what I wanted to write and whipped it out in about a half an hour.

By the time I posted it, over 450 other people has also posted their work on the "Poetic Asides" website.

I was most pleased to receive an e-mail kudo from another poet within only about 20 minutes of posting mine! Wow, this is FUN!!!!!

Here is the poem I wrote:

 

"Lobiesquatch"                                                                                April 1, 2009

 

"May I help you find something?"

the sales lady asked.

Annoyed to be disturbed,

in a rather cheeky way, I said,

"Yes, I'm looking for

something in a Sasquatch."

 

Her reply stunned me -

"Oh, we have the most wonderful

stuffed Sasquatches!

A lady in Gig Harbor makes them."

And she proceeded to show me two,

both with grey fur.

 

"Do they come in brown?"

I wanted a brown one

to send to my friend,

both of us Sasquatch afficianados.

"If you can come back next week,

We will have a brown one for you."

 

A week passed with me still in wonder,

and then I went to the shop again,

planning to buy the brown one

for my friend's upcoming birthday.

I was not prepared fot the owner

to show me a white one as well.

 

He held her up and waved her arms

back and forth, side to side,

as if she wanted to hug me.

"Take me home with you,"

she as much as said,

in her furry white silence.

 

"I love you," her brown eyes spoke.

And then and there

I fell in love with her

and knew I had to have her.

I took her home

and named her Lobiesquatch.

 

In the twenty-three years

since she was born as Lobiesquatch,

she has slept with me almost every night,

traveled with me on almost every trip I've taken:

It's a toss-up whether she likes

camping or bed and breakfasts better.

 

Like the Velveteen Rabbit,

over time she has become

the Velveteen Sasquatch.

Most of her fur is now long gone;

what's left is matted and grey

from being loved too much.

 

Her rubber face is rapidly deteriorating,

and her arms and legs and head are loose.

She is trying valiantly to hang on,

as she and I grow old together,

to be there for me until the end,

as a good life companion should.

 

I can still see her soul in her eyes.

Her little arms still wave at me in love.
We have shared something special,

this little stuffed Sasquatch and I.

She long ago became real to me,

as alter ego, friend, and daughter,

as unconditional love itself.

How could I have known?

 

by Carol Berger

Life changes

If there's something that will derail you from doing your own writing, it's getting a job as a journalist. During the ten and a half months that I worked for a newspaper, I did next to no personal writing, including on this website. The experience was good, but is now over, and one of the things I am looking forward to is doing my own writing again. That, and having lots of time to read! At the moment, I am reading LOTS of Floyd Skloot and will be reviewing his books in a later entry.

South Coast Writers Conference 2009

This weekend I went to the 14th Annual South Coast Writers Conference in Gold Beach, Oregon. It was the third time I had attended the conference since I moved to nearby Port Orford four years ago. And it turned out to be the best one, as far as I was concerned, despite my initial lack of excitement at the workshops being offered.

What made the difference was discovering Floyd Skloot!

As a journalist/essayist/non-fiction writer, I am always off-put by the emphasis that seems to be placed on fiction, science fiction, poetry, humor, and children’s books in the conference. So initially I had a hard time finding three workshops I had enthusiasm for, much less four, when I registered weeks ahead of the event.

In what would turn out to be a fortuitous choice, I chose two workshops by a writer I had never heard of, Skloot – “Working with Fragments of Memory” and “Formal and Free: cultivating flexibility in the approach to poetry ” – and “Writing in Nature” by Robin Cody, both Oregon writers. I didn’t even choose a workshop for the fourth session, and none of the all-day intensive Friday workshops interested me enough for me to justify the time and money involved.

About three weeks before the conference, I went on line at the conference website to see if there was any updated information. I found a recommended reading list of books for each presenter and decided I’d read some of Floyd Skloot’s books, seeing as I would have two workshops with him. I found four memoirs and a book of poetry at the library and checked them all out. It was in reading these books that I found out who Skloot is, that he has been widely published and received many awards and much critical acclaim, and that I began my addiction to Floyd Skloot’s writing. And I became very excited about going to a conference where I would be able to meet and listen to him in person.

On December 7th, 1988, Skloot, who had at that point written novels and poetry, contracted a brain virus that left him with almost no memory and with significant physical impairments. His memoirs (The Night Side: Chronic fatigue syndrome and the illness experience, In the Shadow of Memory, A World of Light, and The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life) chronicle his now 20-year journey of learning to compensate for the damage done, to live with his limitations, and to amazingly successfully re-invent his life. He has painstakingly reconstructed the first 41 years of his life and turned it into a series of fascinating essays that are not only auto-biographical, but examine the concept of memory, the idea of family, the issue of self-identity, and most of all, how to live life to its fullest no matter what may befall one.

His poetry takes much of its inspiration from his experiences in life and is some of the most accessible yet critically acclaimed poetry I have ever read. Too often, critically acclaimed poetry is a labyrinth of inaccessibility for even a college graduate to make real sense of or to care about what’s being said. But Skloot’s poetry is full of feeling, as well as superb technique. I, who hadn’t read poetry in the more than forty years since I graduated from college (despite writing an occasional poem in response to an event in my life that I felt a need to record in some manner), found myself gobbling up poem after poem from The End of Dreams.

By the time I had finished three of the four memoirs – I am just now finishing the last – and read The End of Dreams, I felt I knew Floyd Skloot, though I had never met him. So it was no surprise when, at the Friday night author reading, I recognized him immediately as he walked by and set up a table of his books for sale just a few feet from me.

One would never know think that Skloot is anything other than normal, unless he tells you about his affliction. He is articulate, intelligent, and funny. His reading of three of his poems was one of the best of the evening, full of finesse and feeling. I found the next day in the two workshops I took from him that he is an excellent teacher as well. By the time the conference was over, I had purchased all four memoirs and The End of Dreams, plus his latest volumes of poetry, The Snow’s Music and Floyd Skloot: Selected Poems: 1970-2005, and the older Approximately Paradise.

Cody’s workshop was not about nature writing per se, but how to use nature in writing. He led the class through a number of exercises that used a place in nature as a starting point for the writing. Cody is also a very good teacher. Like Skloot, he resides in Oregon, although Cody is a native. His book Voyage of a Summer Sun - Canoeing the Columbia River, relating his experiences canoeing the length of the Columbia River solo, won the 1996 Oregon Book Award and is well worth reading.

I was having an excellent time at the conference, and although I had planned to leave early to be elsewhere, I decided to stay for the fourth and final workshop, choosing to attend Lori Ries’ “Come Play with Me,” on writing children’s picture books. I was feeling adventurous and figured I’d find out about an area of writing I had never even considered. Ries’s presentation was well-organized and thorough, and I left feeling as if I could write a children’s picture book. (Most publishing companies provide the illustrator, which lets me off the hook!)

It was amazing to see so many talented writers from Oregon and especially so many who had received awards and other recognition for their work. I felt particularly fortunate to have attended this conference. Wannabee is not sure she will still be residing close enough to attend next year’s conference, but if she is, she surely will.

See my category “Writer’s Conferences” in the left margin for a link to my posting on the 2008 conference. Also see my link to the South Coast Writers Conference website under “Helpful Links” for more information. The 15th Annual SCWC will be held February 13-13, 2010.

Where Wannabee has been

I am about to make my first post in almost four months.

It has taken me this long to find the time in what has become a very busy schedule.

Four months ago I was asked to write an article for a local newspaper. The editor was impressed enough with my writing that he made me a staff writer.

At the present time I am covering six beats, plus writing occasional features and reviews. This keeps me VERY busy, as I said above. I attend meetings and do interviews and then spend more than a little time writing articles about them. I almost always have a front page story, sometimes two, and this week, all the stories were mine. I have had as many as four major stories in the paper at once, and it's only an eight page paper!

I credit the on-line classes I took through Gotham Writers Workshop and my experience in writing this blog, albeit briefly prior to my writing for the paper, with giving me the skills and confidence to make the leap to my present position.

And it's true - the more I write, the better my writing becomes.

I would encourage anyone who wants to start writing to take one of Gotham's classes. Their classes get you writing and keep you writing. You also pick up critiquing skills that help you edit your own work. Gotham's website is www.writingclasses.com.  While I took Non-fiction Writing, Memoir, and Travel Writing, ironically I did not get around to taking a class in Article Writing!

Into Thin Air

Into Thin Air: a Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
Jon Krakauer
Villard Books, 1997

In May 1996, a rogue storm killed nine climbers on Mount Everest, several of them from an expedition led by Rob Hall of New Zealand, the others from an expedition led by American Scott Fischer. Hall and Fischer were themselves counted among the victims. One of the survivors from Hall’s expedition was John Krakauer, a writer from Outside Magazine, who had volunteered to go on the expedition to research and write a story on the commercialization of Everest.

Krakauer was no inexperienced novice, having been a climber for over 30 years at the time of the expedition, and that is part of what makes his telling of the story particularly compelling. He had the background and personal experience necessary to write the story in a way that someone who had never climbed a mountain could not. And he was there when the disaster happened, observing with a writer’s eye for details.

I have never had any desire to climb a mountain, nor any real knowledge of mountain climbing, despite living near some of the most-climbed peaks in the Pacific Northwest - Mount Rainier and Mount Hood. I didn’t pay much attention to the Everest disaster at the time, and all I remembered hearing before reading Krakauer’s book was that some guy was able to call his wife on the phone from the top of Everest right before he died. Perhaps it was my recent unexplained interest in disaster stories that led me to Into Thin Air a few weeks ago, twelve years after the Everest disaster.

In the author’s note at the end of the book, Krakauer writes, “My intent … was to tell what happened on the mountain as accurately and honestly as possible, and to do it in a sensitive and respectful manner.”  Krakauer succeeds in this admirably. There are no “bad guys” in this book, just real human beings who did the best they could in unexpected and calamitous circumstances. The book is not about blame, but about understanding what happened.

Albeit through Krakauer’s eyes, we get to know many of the climbers from Hall’s and Fischer’s expeditions as they prepare to ascend the mountain: a postal worker making his second attempt at Everest, an attorney who had climbed six of the Seven Summits, a pathologist, a publisher who had attempted Everest three times, an anesthesiologist, a cardiologist, a 47-year old Japanese woman, a female “millionaire socialite-cum-climber,” among others. Most of the climbers had had at least some high-altitude climbing experience. We also get to know the leaders and guides for both expeditions, most of whom were very experienced climbers. These were expeditions that should have succeeded.

The immediacy of Krakauer’s writing, as he relives every day, every hour, and sometimes every minute of the experience, conveys the hard work involved in climbing to the peak of Everest and the desire that drove the climbers on, until a sudden turn in the weather left them struggling to stay alive in a hostile environment where they only had themselves to depend upon.

No one seemed aware of the approaching storm. Some bad decisions were made. Mistakes and more bad decisions were made by men and women weakened both physically and mentally by the elements. In the end, some of the most experienced people failed to survive, while other less experienced people miraculously did.

This is a true and tragic story that’s not easily forgotten, especially by Krakauer, who ends his introduction to the book by confessing, “I was a party to the death of good people, which is something that is apt to remain on my conscience for a very long time.”  This is a story Krakauer had to tell in the way that only he could, and I for one am glad he shared it with us.

 

Wannabee's Words is now Domain Mapped

Late last night and with the help of a WONDERFUL customer service representative at GoDaddy, I finally got this website domain mapped. So now it can be accessed at www.wannabeeswords.com. I am hoping that at some point, Google will discover my existence. Now if Amazon would only send me the copy of Blogging for Dummies that I ordered almost a month ago!!

What's on Writer Wannabee's Bookshelf

I’m going to guess that every writer – especially beginners aspiring to be published some day - has a shelf full of books about writing, marketing, and related matters.

This is a list of what’s on mine at the moment, in no particular order. These are by no means all or even the best books out there. The list doesn’t include a number of books I have read in the past, but don’t presently own. Because I write nonfiction, you will find books focused on style, grammar, punctuation, and memoir, as well as books on freelancing and getting published.

Writing Freelance – Christine Adamec

The Associated Press Stylebook

Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art – Judith Barrington

Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Artmaking – David Bayles and Ted Orland

Writing and Publishing Personal Essays – Sheila Bender

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Magazine Articles – Sheree Bykofsky, Jennifer Bayse Sander, and Lynne Rominger

Modern American Memoirs – edited by Cort Conley and Annie Dillard

101 Things Every Writer Needs to Know – Scott Edelstein

The Complete Writer’s Kit: Everything You Need to Get Inspired, Get Writing, and Get Published – Scott Edelstein

The No-Experience-Necessary Writer’s Course: a Unique Stress-free Approach for Anyone Who Has Ever Wanted to Write – Scott Edelstein

The Renegade Writer – Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell

The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters that Rock: The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Selling More Work Faster – Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell

Telling True Stories: a Nonfiction Writers’ Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University – edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call

Freelancing for Newspapers: Writing for an Overlooked Market – Sue Fagalde Lick

A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation – Noah Lukeman

Damn! Why Didn’t I Write That?: How Ordinary People are Raking in $100,000 or More Writing Nonfiction Books and How You Can Too! – Marc McCutcheon

Dan Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual: How to Write, Print, and Sell Your Own Book – Dan Poynter

Print-on-Demand Book Publishing – Morris Rosenthal

The Elements of Style – William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation – Lynne Truss

Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style – Virginia Tufte

Writer’s Market

Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir – edited by William Zinsser

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction – William Zinsser

Writing About Your Life: A Journey into the Past – William Zinsser

A Woman Who Writes about the Sea

I discovered Joan Druett a few years back, when I found her book Hen Frigates cited in a footnote of another book. It took me a while, but I found a copy of Hen Frigates and read it. Since then, if it's a non-fiction book by Joan Druett, I have to read it! A month or so ago, I came across another Druett book titled She Captains in a most unlikely place - a hardware store! - so of course, I bought it.

Druett is a maritime writer from New Zealand. Her husband is an artist and often does the illustrations for her books. Her latest effort, which I discovered on Amazon, is Island of the Lost. Having just recently seen Castaway with Tom Hanks, this story of two groups marooned on the same island simultaneously was an irresistable (and very satisfying) read for me.

Island of the Lost

Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
Joan Druett
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007

On January 3, 1864, the schooner Grafton wrecked on the southern end of Auckland Island, 285 miles south of New Zealand. On May 10 of the same year, the square-rigger Invercauld wrecked on the northwestern promontory of the same island. The five survivors of the Grafton and the 19 survivors of the Invercauld co-habited the same island for an entire year without either group ever once being aware that the other group was there, the reason being the twenty miles of “impassable cliffs and chasms” between the north and south ends of the islands. In Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World, maritime historian Joan Druett tells the vastly different stories of the two groups of survivors.

From journals, letters, published books and other research documents, Druett has interwoven the stories of the two groups and shown how through cooperation, discipline, hard work, routine, ingenuity, and respect the survivors of the Grafton had a far different experience and outcome from the group of Invercauld survivors, whose leadership failed them, who splintered into groups, and who gave themselves over to the despair of their situation.

We come to know each of the men from the Grafton as they hunt for food, build shelter, make clothing and tools, and wait to be rescued for almost two years before deciding to try to build a boat and escape. We watch the men from the Invercauld succumb to apathy and lethargy, or else to cannibalism. Only one resourceful seaman had the ability to cope with their circumstances and helped keep the final few survivors alive.

Druett has very skillfully penned a fascinating tale of human nature, death, and survival in a hostile environment. It is a book that is hard to put down, with a story that is unbelievable - except that it is true. Amazingly, the few Invercauld survivors are rescued, and the Grafton castaways make an heroic journey back to safety. More than just history, this is a book about survival against all odds and how that survival depends at least in part on attitude. It is a good lesson for us all.