Memoirous

Working In Series What is a Series? Simply put, it is a group of pieces based on a common element or group of elements.   You can base a series on subject matter, a technique, a particular set of materials, a group of visual elements, or a compositional format.  A series can be created in an afternoon – as in a group of quick collage studies – or last a lifetime.  Many artists keep several series going throughout their careers. ·          Working in series allows you to explore ideas more thoroughly, give them some breathing room. ·          Working in series gives you the opportunity to try out different solutions to visual “problems”, and explore multiple possibilities. ·          Working in series gives your art practice focus and momentum.  Rather than face the blank canvas with too many possibilities to choose from, the paramete...

Because I’m trying to read authors from Maine see Artweek, I stumbled upon an old copy of Country Byways by Sarah Orne Jewett published 1881. I’d read a long time ago Country of the Pointed Firs so I was familiar with Jewett. She has a very interesting personal history and is recognized as an outstanding regional writer, though lately her work has not received a lot of interest. Byways according to Wiki is described as “sketches.” Again, I was familiar with this term. Louisa May Alcott wrote Hospital Sketches (1863) about her experience working as a Union nurse during the Civil War. Her literary hero, Charles Dickens wrote Sketches by Boz (1839). Sketches to me seem like an early form of blog posts. From Wiki: A   sketch story,   literary sketch   or simply   sketch , is a piece of writing that is generally shorter than a   short story , and contains very little, if any,   plot . The genre was invented in the   16th century   in England...

In  places to submit on Wednesday I gave the link to: Flash mystery http://flashbangmysteries.com/submissions/ Flash bangs are a type of contusion grenade meant to flush an assailant out of hiding or from shelter. They startle. Right now write a sudden mystery, a flash bang that will leave the reader startled. Flash is typically anything under 1000 words. Start small, the hardest challenge, by attempting a tweet mystery of 140 characters, and grow it, adding different word counts, 50, 100, etc The above is looking for: We want stories that feature believable characters who speak naturally, realistic situations that bleed conflict, and surprise endings that stay with us long after we reach the final period.

Again following in my theme of all things Maine and New York School of Poetry-ish and memoir, haiku prose, flash. All this to say: I’ve been reading the poems of Anne Porter. Her first collection, An Altogether Different Language (1994), published when she was 83, was named a finalist for the National Book Award. Her other volume of poetry is Living Things: Collected Poems (2006). I was struck upon beginning this collection how many of her poems seem to be reminisces. In deed, she lived a long life, passing away in 2011 just shy of 100 th birthday. A number of her poems begin with the word once . The Wingéd Children Once when my friends Were driving through the desert In Mexico They passed a pickup truck And in the back of it Each with a pair of wings Of sky-blue plush Such as is used For making bedroom-slippers There rode a dozen little Mexican children. In addition she began a series of poems with This is . Summer Cottage This...

When you reach a certain age you start losing people. There’s been a tally at the end of every year. 2017 reached new lows, new depths of grief. I’ve been thinking especially, somewhat retroactively as it happened during a very busy and then emotionally-occupying time, about my friend Curt Mortimer and all that he has meant to me through the years. His lifetime of selfless giving. Checklist Before Dying: *write a poem *vote for Hillary *watch an epic sunset *drink a good cup of coffee (especially good if accompanied by a friend) Curt had a check in every box before passing away on Election Day 2016 sitting on a park bench late afternoon. He is an example of someone who lived a good, long life committed to the people he loved. But, I’m also reminded of the first person, the first friend I had that died. They weren’t as lucky to have lived a good, long life. I remember the shock—if mortality, that time isn’t forever, that we can be too late to right wrongs, sa...

The other day I had a flash, a memory—and it still brings a chill over me. It’s one of those nightmare memories, along the lines of standing next to your high school locker naked. I needed help moving and a friend loaned me his car—just one tiny problem: it was a stick shift. Like a normal twenty-year old, I thought this wasn’t going to be a problem. I loaded up the vehicle and told myself, All I have to do is get out of first and I’m rolling. It took me an hour just to get out of the driveway. On the roadway (I remember now it wasn’t a highway, but a very busy divided road—much like Far Hills Ave.) all I wanted to do was cruise. Not have to stop for a red light. Which might have worked had I not had to go about 8 miles. Eventually I did have to stop. I can still feel the terror come over me as I stalled out and, in my anxiety and fluster, was unable to get the car into gear. Either I would be rear-ended or towed, and none of these ideas appealed to me. I started, jerked, ...

The only time I’ve ever been arrested . . . . sounds like a good writing prompt. Go! The only time I’ve ever been arrested was about 40 years ago on an overpass in Nebraska. I’d flown out from Dayton, Ohio to visit my sister working at a summer camp in Platte. It was the end of the season yet before time to go back to college. At that time in Ohio classes didn’t start until the second half of September. I remember the silty-bottom rivers and sand cranes, the sound of them calling to each other over the rolling hills. Outside of that and getting arrested there isn’t much else I remember about Nebraska. That summer a friend had introduced me to the thrill of sitting on an overpass above the highway and the rush when a semi passed beneath, the sudden whoosh as it flew out. I’d sit with my feet dangling, feeling the aero dynamics through my thin-soled sneakers. Movies and bowling cost money, but this was free. So on my last night in Nebraska I talked one of my sist...

Not sure what happened last week, but I was not able to post on Friday/Hot Flash. (We all know what happened last week.) Leonard Cohen died. Outside of Bob Dylan I cannot name another more prolific songwriter/poet. He was someone who embodied my mantra of Write Right Now. I don’t think he ever passed up an opportunity to chronicle a moment, experience, a relationship, turn it into words, something to be sung. Cohen’s writing process, as he told an interviewer in 1998, was “like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I’m stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it’s delicious and it’s horrible and I’m in it and it’s not very graceful and it’s very awkward and it’s very painful and yet there’s something inevitable about it.” A perfect description of what it’s like to write for any writer. I wished I’d had this quote when working on 365 Affirmations for the Writer      There’s also no denying the inspiration for these lines: f...

I was reminiscing with someone in their thirties, I know, what do they have to reminisce about, but this person hit the nail on the old pumpkin head. How Halloween has grown into a major American holiday. “When I was little it was just one day. Now my kids are sucked into harvest parties and activities for a whole month—not the least a whole weekend of unending trick or treating. Growing up it was monumental to carve a pumpkin. Now suburban moms buy a station wagon full and put them everywhere for decorations. Trick or treating was one night only. And, we didn’t drive around and hand-pick the best neighborhoods. We simply walked up and down the streets. We didn’t spend half a year figuring out a novelty costume. I wore what my siblings had outgrown. Ahh, simplicity. Anyway, my friend took a garbage bags of random costumes to the Syrian refugees she’s been visiting and mentoring. To say the least, the kids were beside themselves with excitement. I can’t imagine fleeing...

Last Friday I wrote about poetry books sitting on my shelf, and how the titles themselves lend inspiration. I have a book titled Poems from Italy by R. H. Bowden. From what I can find online he was something of a literary dabbler. He wrote plays, poetry, fiction as well as nonfiction. He and his wife often traveled and loved to vacation in Italy where they often walked the hills of Tuscany and Umbria. He has one poem, “In the Umbrian Mountains Above Gubbio” an area I have also explored. Another poem is “To Italy at Fifty.” These poems are basically travel notes, observations, the kind of thing all of us (or at least think about) jot down. In the midst of a journey, when we are looking with fresh eyes, we are keen to make comparisons, contrasts—we leave the analytical for later. In retrospect we can make generalizations or judgments, but in the moment it is best just to get things down. Just like how we take pictures. We photograph something and think, Later I’ll get prints m...

I have a lot of poetry books on my shelf. Sometimes even just the titles are inspiring. For today’s Hot Flash I want to highlight one of these titles. The Weather of Six Mornings by Jane Cooper The book contains some of her earliest poems, those referencing a love killed during WWII. Her life continued hesitatingly. College, career, teaching, publishing. It seems she grieved for the better part of her life. A few other poems have to do with her childhood home in Jacksonville, Florida. I especially like the one about St. John’s River and the water birds. My mind drifts back to my first solo bike trip, Jacksonville to Key West, and an alien feeling comes over me. Pelicans and bursting sunsets, warm sand and foaming ocean. It was another world—in January! Let’s borrow that title for Hot Flash Friday and begin now to write consecutively for 6 mornings. Sunlight lies along my table like abandoned pages. I try to speak of what is so hard for me --this clutter of...

Samuel Taylor lived to age 61 in a time when this was considered a rip old age, but his entire life he was plagued with health problems. Namely mental illness. At the time bi-polar wasn’t a thing, yet Coleridge had all the symptoms. A bout with rheumatic fever in childhood eventually led to a dependence upon opium (laudanum) and alcohol. When touring Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth’s residence in the Lake District, Grasmere, for 8 years, also brought me back into the orbit of ST Coleridge, as he was a perpetual houseguest for those 8 years. I remembered while touring the cottage that Coleridge was pretty unstable, an eccentric creative genius. The guide made mention that often Coleridge would cry out in his sleep. Scream, shout, holler. The bedrooms were like little boxes, right next to each other. There wasn’t a lot of room to accommodate someone with night terrors. This would have had to have impacted the entire household. Yet, he was apparently welcomed. Throughout his l...

Hi everyone! I’m back from my trip. 1,100 miles from John O’Groats to Land’s End in Cornwall. There is really no one word to describe my experience—though HARD comes first to mind. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Plus I had the pressure of trying to finish in less days than I originally planned because of a snafu at the beginning involving Air Canada. (Still trying to resolve getting reimbursed for my train tickets I had to re-purchase.) I plan to post my daily trip diary here starting next week and into the following weeks. BUT since today is Hot Flash Friday I wanted to pull something from my bike trip, something that reinforced this writerly journey I’m on. It has to do with William Wordsworth. While in the Lake District I stopped at Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s residence for eight years, before marriage and then through 3 of his 5 children. He also seemed to have eternal houseguests, a sister and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Before moving to Dove Cottage...

Did your Mom ever order from the Avon catalog? Remember the Avon lady? She came around door-to-door with brochures and samples (usually a neighbor trying to earn extra bucks). I always loved the Hawaiian White Ginger. What is this fragrance? On-line it is described as containing notes of citruses, green grass, jasmine, rose and ginger. I’m not sure it’s something found naturally in nature or was spawned in a laboratory. It’s something only myself and a grandmotherly-type person would like. Thus this classic fragrance as well as the Avon lady have long been retired. Yet just the other day I was reminded of this when an odor wafted by me. That smell! And immediately the rhythms of onomatopoeia , the surfboard balance of the words: Hawaiian White Ginger came over me. I remembered exactly what it was like to wear it and how it felt. Comfortable, gracious, light and airy, like an exotic flower opening up on a dewy evening. All that in one whiff. Right now, using your se...

 How many of us have had that feeling, that tickle inside your stomach, that your brakes have failed? Let’s just say as a kid growing up, a lot. I was constantly getting into trouble. Not shoplifting, skipping school, smoking behind the garden shed kind of trouble. More like smoking outside the fireworks factory. I still remember snaking out late at night to go on a motorcycle ride with my friend. He zipped me into a jumpsuit—in case we crashed, he said, I wouldn’t lose the top layer of skin. Good thing, because we came to a sign at the bottom of a steep hill that as we flashed by it—my brain translated the letters: Bridge Out . Go ahead—tell us about the crazy, the craziest of crazy. Flash about the inkling you got before all hell broke loose, before the wheels came off. (The worst part is when your mother/mother/conscience asks: Why? There is no answer.) Right now, write.

The importance of an epitaph Epitaph a short text honoring a deceased person. Technically it is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque. The essence of writing small. The original 6-word memoir, the ultimate flash. This is an easy task, a flash you can write in your bathing suit sitting on a towel at the beach. Take a second or two to scribble down what you think you might be known for, what you want to leave behind, the last word. Right now write, your own epitaph.

The Woodshop Joan Didion spent the night in the same room as her work when it was almost finished. Don DeLillo kept a picture of Borges close by. Where, and how, do you do your work? CutBank Literary Journal is looking for photos of writers’ workspaces, and some thoughts about their practice. Take a few moments to respond to the following: Where do you do your work? What do you keep on your desk? What's your view like? What do you eat/drink while you work? Do you have any superstitions about your work? Share a recent line/sentence written in this space. Then, along with your responses, send us a well-lit, high-resolution photo of your workspace. [Note: Please keep files smaller than 1MB.] Submissions should also include your name, e-mail address, a brief bio, and a link to your website. Please email your submissions  and use “Woodshop” as your subject. Right now write: a brief flash about your workplace--where you create.

Escaping the heat in the 2800 block of W. Augusta, 1988. Photo by Michael Fryer (Vintage Tribune Chicago, IL) Here is another Facebook group I’ve discovered. Simply Pictures of Chicago —such as over the weekend, tone of pics of the electrical storm Saturday and Sunday evening. A lot of sunset shots. Just everyday stuff. Crowds at the beach. Michigan Avenue. A hot dog stand. This is the ESSENCE of flash. An Instagram moment that is here now and a minute late gone. And, if you, me, we don’t grab it then it will forever be a regret. Because the light changes, the clouds, move, or something else comes along and that moment is lost. That’s why I’ve been enjoying Stephen Spender’s poetry. This one from, Collected Poems 1928 – 1985 , Stephen Spender An Air Raid Across the Bay at Plymouth   Above the whispering sea And waiting rocks of black coast, Across the bay, the serchlight beams Swing and swing back across the sky. Their ends fuse in a cone of light ...

At this blog (Memoirous--about memories) I’ve mentioned in the past certain blogs or websites that can help to spark flashes. Right now I’m onto Forgotten Chicago and Abandoned Spaces. I signed up for notifications so whenever there is a new post it shows up in my feed. Which is all Facebook gobbely-gook. What I mean to say is I love the pictures and they motivate me to flash and write about memories. Abandoned Spaces viscerally calls up nostalgic curiosity. I am always intrigued by the various spaces, once inhabited but now abandoned and the various relics left behind.  Abandoned Spaces The abandoned Helmsley Castle, Yorkshire, England Sometimes it is a shoe store still warehousing and displaying styles from the 60s, sometimes it is a schoolroom from Chernobyl with decaying textbooks fertilizing a tree growing up between broken desks. Who isn’t fascinated by ruins? They call to us, remind us that we are all mortal, that nothing stays the same, but will eventua...