writing

Hey poets, be good literary citizens. No more excuses.

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

This post reiterates advice I would give myself. Additionally, I would add something I wish I had known a year ago before my book of poetry was published. No one told me that most writing contests require unpublished work. If you want to enter poetry contests, enter before you publish. Many contests even include work published in blogs as previously published. I continue to hunt for contests that allow previously published work. It seems few exist. If any of you writers out there know about such a contest, please let me know.

bripike's avatarBrianna Pike

With AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) and National Poetry Month just around the corner, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a working poet. I’ve got a couple of projects in the works for the month of April (updates to come soon) but I keep coming back to a piece of advice I’m always giving my students, which is that poetry doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Poetry is about the poet but it’s also about the community where the poet lives and works.

Admittedly, the idea of community is constantly evolving. Your community can be your workplace, the local bookstore or coffee shop you frequent or your local library. However, community can also mean something much bigger, especially in the wake  Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I’ve blogged about my love affair with social media and the poetry world. This love centers around the fact that Facebook…

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Brilliant books by brilliant writers

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

In case you are looking for something new to read. I would add any book by Leslie Marmon Silko. My all time favorite book, “Storyteller”, written by her contains a story I must have read 50 times, “Yellow Woman”.

Samuel Snoek-Brown's avatarSamuel Snoek-Brown

And all these writers are women.

I spotted this list of 30 books by women in my Facebook newsfeed — the always-glorious Lidia Yuknavitch shared it — and I loved the first line of the intro:

“Let’s be real: You should be reading books, and books by women, every month of the year.”

Amen!

But yes, it’s Women’s History Month here in the states, and while Emily Temple, author of this listicle, claims, “That women have contributed just as much to our literary culture as men doesn’t even need to be said,” I think, sadly, it does. We need to say it again and again, not just this month but every month.

So read a bunch of books by women. And the ones you don’t finish? Well, there’s always next month, and the month after that, and the rest of the year.

Need a hint of where to start? There are a bunch…

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Haiku Adventure-Part Seven

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

This rather short adventure was an experiment soon to end.  Since my haiku posts generated so many positive responses, I may consider its continuance.  My most recent adventure, however, is to take Word Press’ Blogging 101 in spite of the fact that I have been blogging for more than three years.  I feel certain I can learn something new.  For now here is another haiku.

Three large purple onions

waiting

mother’s old stoneware bowl.

Haiku Adventure–Part Two

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

After receiving positive feedback on the following three poems, I learned that two of them cannot be haiku.  Why?  They instruct, give directions.  Such teaching is forbidden in haiku.  Regardless, I decided to post them anyway.  At least the Meditations will illustrate what not to do if you want to write real haiku.

 

Meditations

shut your eyes, be still

listen to the wind, rain, thunder

shut your eyes, be still

 

 

open your eyes, be still

watch coyote and bobcat climb

open yours eyes, be still

 

There are several other reasons why these two poems cannot be haiku–more than one image and a contrasting image in a single poem–forbidden.  I knew there must be some reason I had never previously seriously attempted haiku.  Too many rules.

 

This one, however, meets modern haiku standards or so I have been told.  I will eventually get this.  Learning, challenging oneself, remains a positive experience.

 

Night

big dipper illuminates

clouds race

darkness suddenly descends

 

IMG_1322

Haiku Adventure

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Since I felt out of sync with writing and accomplishing little in that vein, I decided I needed a challenge.  In spite of two published books,  one instructive, non-fiction and the other a book of poems, I never attempted writing haiku.  Even though I probably, due to teaching schedule among other activities like singing and horses, cannot write one haiku a day, I committed to writing seven a week.  The first thing I noticed is the difficulty.  Haiku poems may be short; however, getting them even close to “right” remains quite difficult, a real challenge.  Here are the first three written this week:

 

milkweed rising to the sun

wait for monarchs

who never ever come

 

 

 

cirrocumulus clouds fly

across an azure sky

snowflakes and cottonballs

 

 

 

OPI Bogota Blackberry

on my freshly scrubbed feet

walks along in wonder

Who Is the Best Writer: A Matter of Taste and Viewpoint

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Until I was asked to be a judge for a memoir competition, I did not spend a lot of time thinking about this topic.  For years my general awareness about writing preferences included the knowledge that the writers I prefer and usually read rarely hit the best seller list and generally are not white, main stream USA.  What do I read:  Native American (American Indian), Indian as in the country of India, and Latin American writers, and writers from the Middle East, especially Iran.  My favorite writer is Leslie Marmon Silko.  My favorite book of hers is Storyteller.  My favorite story, “Yellow Woman”, is in that book as well as numerous literary anthologies. I estimate I have read that story at least fifty times, maybe more.  Why?  In spite of asking myself that question, I remain somewhat clueless.  Because of my current teaching assignment which includes British literature from Beowulf to now, I try my best to read a bunch of British literature.  For instance, I just read I, Claudius by Robert Graves.  Of course, it has nothing to do with Britain; perhaps it does not count.   Next on my list is The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai.  This book won the Man Booker Prize in 2006.  Although she writes in English, she obviously is not British unless you consider being in a former British colony counts as British.

Back to my contest assignment:  Two of the books I was assigned to read nearly put me to sleep.  One did not; in fact I liked it a lot–enough to mark pages with passages I plan to use when I need writing inspiration/ideas later.  When I read a bunch of reviews recently, it came as quite a shock to find one of those put-me-to-sleep books favorably reviewed.  Could I really have been that far off base?  I consider the possibility that even though I have read some excellent memoirs, I find many of them impossible to read.  Why?  From my viewpoint, many memoirs whine, lament, and carry on about the past in a way I find highly objectionable.  Who wants to read hundreds of pages about how someone overcame addiction or some hideous disease or a divorce? Apparently, a lot of people.  Even though I consider The Glass Castle an excellent book, I even had a difficult time plugging through the last 50 pages of that one.  Some of Storyteller is a memoir–a combination of poetry, vignettes, photos, but it also includes several enlightening short stories.  While writing now and reflecting, I can only think of one other memoir type book, I actually recommend to people, Jimmy Santiago Baca’s A Place to Stand.  While stopping by the library this morning, I did pick up Willie Nelson’s latest, Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.  It even has a foreword by Kinky Friedman, who in my opinion would make a much better governor than any one we have experienced in Texas lately or will have for the foreseeable future.  With a title like that, about Willie, and Kinky thrown in, surely it won’t be too boring.

 

Wine tastings and a few favorite things

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Arrived home from work and fed Rosie.  Looked at the dry native grass around my house and decided to water a bit of it even though I loathe wasting water.  Green is probably safer than winter brown.  The recent giant wildfire raised my concerns about the fire danger in this drought.  I cannot remember when it rained and the next ten days show no rain in sight.  As soon as I finish writing this or shortly thereafter, I get to run back to town and join probably 100 plus other people at friends’ house to taste the wine and food brought by Market Street.  These friends run a bed and breakfast with a spectacular garden complete with koi pond and just about every kind of flower you can grow in this area.  It’s cool, nearly froze last night, so I will wear the black turtle neck and slacks I wore to work.  It’s hard to believe that it was just above freezing last night and is supposed to hit 100 next Monday–the desert has now reached here apparently.

Thinking about this leads me to think about some of my favorites, especially when it comes to wine:  zinfandels, especially from Lodi, California.  The moderately priced one I buy most often is OVZ.  It frequently goes on sale here which is even better.  I also like  Seven Deadly Zins–unfortunately I have never seen it on sale.  Basically, I love red wines and almost never drink white.  A moderately priced nice blend is Apothic Red.  Market Street had a super sale so I bought several–ten percent off if you buy six at a time.  The best malbec I ever drank came directly in baggage from Argentina, a present to me from my Argentinian exchange student when he arrived.  You can’t get it here and when his mom tried to ship me some, she was not allowed.

The students at school  kept commenting on my black attire today.  They asked if I was going to a funeral or something.  I laughed.  I like black; I look good in black.  It also shows off my turquoise jewelry.  My most favorite color is orange. Turquoise looks good with it too.  Red and green are ok.  Finally after decades I have learned to like hot pink, but really I am not a pink person–see my poem about Hot Pink Toenails–on an old blog.  It remains one of my blog posts that people look at most–I have no clue why.  The one color I really do not like is blue, especially pale blue. Perhaps tomorrow I will post about favorite books.  I really would like readers to comment about their favorites.  It fascinates me what people perceive and feel about this and that.  Often I am the only person I know who reads what I read.

Off to taste some new wines and maybe find a new favorite.

Mother, Barbara Lewis Duke

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Mom was tiny, tough, and pretty.  She acquired the name Lewis because my grandparents had hoped for a boy and, for reasons I do not know, wanted a child named Lewis.  My grandparents named her younger brother Louis.  The following poem about my mother is one of the prose poems in my new book of poetry, On the Rim of Wonder, published last month by Uno Mundo Press.  Currently you can purchase it from Amazon or if you are in Amarillo, at Hastings on Georgia.  Shortly, it will be available on Kindle and signed copies can be ordered from me.

 

Barbie Doll

 

Barbara Lewis Duke, pretty, petite, blue-eyed and blond, my mother, one

fearless, controlling woman.  Long after Mom’s death, Dad said, “Barbara was

afraid of absolutely no one and nothing”.  They married late:  34 and 38.  He

adored her unconditionally.  She filled my life with horses, music, love,

cornfields, hayrides, books, ambition.  Whatever she felt she had missed,

my sister and I were going to possess:  books, piano lessons, a college education.

Her father, who died long before I was born, loved fancy, fast horses.  So did she.

During my preschool, croupy years, she quieted my hysterical night coughing

with stories of run away horses pulling her in a wagon.  With less than one hundred

pounds and lots of determination, she stopped them, a tiny Barbie Doll flying

across the Missouri River Bottom, strong, willful, free.

 

 

 

 

Random Thoughts at the End of a Rather Long Day

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

When I realized the time and know 5:30 tomorrow morning will come sooner than I may prefer, I decided I had to write something here to fulfill my commitment to write daily for at least one month–three weeks down and one to go.  Will I continue?  Don’t know yet.  Pluses:  I have gained quite a few new followers, at least ten, maybe more–have not taken an exact count; it proves that if you stick to something, there are pay offs; and it forces me to think about some things I’ve read or experienced in a way that I might not if I were not going to blog about it.

What are some of those things I am thinking about?  First, the weather.  We desperately need rain and this statement comes from someone not all that fond of rain.  I like the green results but do not like to be out in the rain normally.  It is a wonder I love Costa Rica because it rains almost daily at least it did when I was there two summers ago.  Fire warnings are even currently posted on overhead flashing signs on the interstates–not daily, but every time the wind rises which here is almost daily.  Second, when I think about the destruction of volcanoes–from reading another chapter in Apocalyptic Planet last night, I keep wondering what would happen today if another explosion like Krakatoa in the 1800s occurred.  Mass famine I imagine and a bunch of certain types of religious people claiming the end of the world.  Third, after spending two boring mornings giving STAAR tests–the state standardized tests in Texas, and another morning left to go, wondering exactly why I still think standardized tests are good.  Fourth, wondering how to turn this blog into a sort of website where people who want a signed copy of my new book, On the Rim of Wonder, can order it directly from me on this blog/website (I have had requests already which is, of course, a wonderful thing since book marketing is not all that easy).  Fifth, well this will have to wait until another day when my mind is really sharp and we can have a discussion about the effects of poverty and why it is so difficult to escape.

In the meantime, while I was out watering around my house–to keep my xeroscape garden alive (even drought resistant flowers need some) and to, I hope, make my house safer in case of a wildfire, I thought about all the lovely flowers blooming in spite of the dry weather.  Here they are in all their enduring beauty.

 

SAM_1081

 

SAM_1074

 

SAM_1078

 

SAM_0461

 

SAM_0161

 

SAM_0160

Commitments, Hosting Benefits, and What We Take for Granted

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Shortness of post is necessitated by the time.  Why bother?  Nearly three weeks ago, I committed to writing daily.  Blogging seemed like a logical means to accomplish this.  I expect others and myself to follow through on commitments.  So here I am writing in the middle of the night.

Tonight I hosted a fund raiser for the Hilltop Senior Center here in Amarillo.  We tried to sell tickets in advance but not all that many sold.  The Director of the Center and I became a bit worried, but continued with planning, hoping some would show up even if at the last minute.  They did.  We had great Mexican food donated by Braceros on Sixth Avenue, wine, my wonderful well water, cheeses, fruit, and cakes.  Even the silent auction proved to be a great success.  However, nature became the real star of the event, nature and my dog Isabella.  Unlike earlier in the week when the wind shrieked to 6o miles an hour creating several days of endless dust, today the wind laid low, the sun shone, and it was hot.  This morning the heat went on and this afternoon the air conditioning as it rose to past 90.  Thirty degrees difference between night and day is rather typical here and some days, like to day, this difference increases to nearly forty.

At dark the stars seem so much brighter out here in the country.  Many of the guests walked back and forth on the patio, looking for different constellations.  People came inside for a while only to go back out and look at the stars and the crescent moon.  What I take for granted daily, became a wonder for my company.  As I write this, I think about all the things each of us take for granted, things we eat, experience, feel daily.  How often do we really take the time to appreciate these things, to realize that although they may be ordinary for us, for others they would be incomparable blessings.  So now as I finish this, get ready for bed, and snuggle into my cool sheets, I will meditate and give thanks to the universe for the wonder of the stars.