A friend recently posted a found poem on one of my Facebook poetry sites. We both agreed writing a found poem is great way to get over a bit of writer's block. According to the American Academy of Poets: Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems. A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet. I've written, or rather, refashioned several. Here's one taken from a restaurant menu. I loved all the exotic words. Recipe for Fulfillment Pile chicken satays, sesame-crusted Char Siu buns, Manhattan summer rolls, Indian samosas and crab rangoons into a Dim Sum Tasting Tower. Stir fry tempeh with galangal, … [Read more...]
A rant about junk food
I was definitely heartened to read this story today. It is a great positive step to curbing the childhood obesity epidemic. CHICAGO (AP) Laws strictly curbing school sales of junk food and sweetened drinks may play a role in slowing childhood obesity, according to a study that seems to offer the first evidence such efforts could pay off. Please click the link to read the whole story. http://news.yahoo.com/study-junk-food-laws-may-help-curb-kids-041613114.html In fact while I was at my poetry workshop at Esalen in Big Sur, CA last month I wrote a rant about junk food triggered by the word junk, one of a list of ten given in a daily prompt. (See the Scary Seven at the bottom of this post, courtesy of Naturally Savvy.) A picture prettier than the rant (the Big Sur coast) Here's the rant: Junk food is a business. Junk food is an addiction Eating junk food is an epidemic Can you imagine that recent studies show that obesity in children is not related to … [Read more...]
A new poem from Esalen
Looking down from the road I spent five days last week writing poems at Esalen, a beautiful site high on a cliff in Big Sur CA. I go to this particular workshop almost every summer. Led by poets Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, and Joseph Millar, I always learn some lessons about writing poems, I hear excellent poems read by my fellow poets taking the workshop with me, and I never lack for something to write my poems about. This year I wrote six poems using prompts given at the end of each day's craft talks on: 1) a coming into consciousness poem, 2) a poem with sentiment and no sentimentality, and 3) a poem using various line break and syntax techniques. We also beg our leaders to give us a list of ten words and an assigned phrase with which to create a poem. Once in a while we're asked to include our pick of a body part, season of the year, or time of day. Writing to a list of words is like solving a puzzle. But sometimes the poems turn out just plain silly. This year I wrote a … [Read more...]
Poetry Pact Blogfest – About family feuds
I've been surrounded by family feuds almost all my life. My father never spoke to two of his brother-in-laws, and he refused to talk about it or respond to my mother's pleas to make amends with his enemies. There were reasons, there were always reasons, mostly having to do with money and business. These family feuds caused a lot of strain and crying in our family. My mother had to see her brothers and their families on her own, and that wasn't easy in the 1950s and 1960s when she couldn't even drive a car. Sometimes my dad would drive her to see them and sit outside with a tightly shut mouth and his arms tightly folded across his chest until she was through visiting. Later on in my generation, my brother's wife decided she didn't want to speak to me for while. I never knew why, and thankfully we've kissed and made up. She also stopped speaking to her sister for a time as well. My brother didn't speak to his brother-in-law either. I never could understand that kind of behavior. … [Read more...]
Enter to win the new anthology – Poetry Pact 2011
I'm so pleased to be a part of a Facebook poetry group called Poetry Pact. Started 18 months ago by my author colleague Jessica Bell, her goal was for us to write and post a poem a day for a year. When I joined the group I did not commit to either a poem a day or even a poem a week, but I did post over 30 poems onto the site in 2011. And I'm proud to say, several of them were chosen for our first (I hope annual) anthology, Poetry Pact 2011, Volume 1, edited by two of our group poets: Angela Felsted and Richard Merrill. (Angela became our Poetry Pact leader in 2012.) I can't tell you enough what a supportive group this is. The membership is small we keep it a secret so that we can all get a chance to Like, comment, and critique each other's work. I have received so many good suggestions on how to improve my poems from this group. The critiques are always given with complete professionalism and care, never making me feel put down or discouraged as a result. It is wonderful to be … [Read more...]
Call to action – April Platform Challenge – Day 19
As part of the April Platform Challenge my task today is to ask you to do two things: Please click on the share buttons - they are big and prominent at the top of the right side bar on this page Please sign-up for my email feed see the little box just under the share buttons. It has room for you to type in your email address. Please click Submit when you've finished. And one more thing that is not part of my assignment: Please join me at the LA Times Festival of Books on the University of California campus either or both Saturday and Sunday June 21 and 22, from 12 noon until 2:00 pm. I'll be at the Greater Los Angeles Writer's Society booth number 970. Hopefully I'll be signing lots of copies of my book: Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother's Memoir of Living with Her Son's Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide (Lucky Press, 2011). You can't miss me. I'm the one with the long gray hair. … [Read more...]
What I Miss
Paul loved playing the piano What I Miss Twelve years didn't erase him. He is still with me everyday. The memories haven't dimmed. I clearly see his face, his clear blue eyes, his buzzed hair in my mind. I miss hearing him play his music as his bent fingers lightly trickled up and down the keyboard. I miss hearing his footsteps on the stairs and hardwood floors as he prowled around the house at night. I miss hearing his deep voice as he said, hello when he came home from work I also miss his expertise. He solved our computer problems at night leaving carefully written instructions in his childish printing for us to find the next morning. I don't miss his smoking, I don't miss his bad moods during his last few years, I don't miss that his sickness sometimes made him angry and me angry at him. No, I don't miss those things. But, I don't think about them. I just think about the things about him that I miss. 2008, 2011 … [Read more...]
Ventura County Book Fair
Paul's Putting A Face On Suicide poster will go to the fair with me I'll be signing books from ten to four tomorrow at the Ventura County Book Fair, and I'll read about ten minutes at 1:30 pm. The fair will be held in Camarillo California at the The Pleasant Valley Community Park Auditorium, 1605 Burnley Street. So I'd love to see my Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara county friends there. But just in case you can't make it, here are a couple of the poems I plan to read from my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On. You might have read them here before, but for me they are timeless. My Jazzman My jazzman beat it out on the mighty eighty-eights, played those riffs, tapped his feet bent his head down to the keys, felt those sounds on his fingertips. Yeah, he was a hot man on those eighty-eights. But all too soon his bag grew dark. He went down, deep down. My jazzman played the blues, lost that spark, closed the lid. And, yeah, you got it right, quit the … [Read more...]
Logo shirts and prickly cacti
I just came back from a retirement party for Gibby Gilbert, a graphic artist whom I had worked with for years at Northrop Grumman. He is a true character. He always did a great job even though he complained a lot and worried that we'd never get our work done on time for our proposal deadline. He was an incredible asset to any proposal he worked. And when he wasn't very busy he would walk up and down the halls, and if he had any news or gossip, he always stop by my office to clue me in. He also bought old logo shirts at thrift shops and wore a different one every day. At holiday time, his shirt was always very appropriate. So today we were asked to wear a logo shirt or a Hawaiian shirt, his second favorite kind of attire, in his honor. (I wore a bowling shirt I bought to wear to a fifties bowling party a few years ago - the team logo is on the back and the name of the bowler, Frank, is on the front.) Gibby says now that he's retiring he's going to give them all back to the thrift … [Read more...]
An end of August poem
Van Gogh's Starry Night Star Fishing Today I want to tell you about variable stars. They intrigue me because they change. They change in brightness. Some repeat cycles with almost clocklike precision others change irregularly. Some require only hours or days to return to their starting brightness. Others require years to change. Yet, whether they change imperceptibly or violently all variable stars change. The most spectacular variable is the Nova. It can get up to 200,000 times brighter than the Sun. But, alas, it is temporary. It periodically blows off a tiny percent of the Sun's mass at speeds up to 600 miles a second until it loses too much mass to continue. Whereas Supernovas brighten up to 10 billion times the Sun's brightness for a few days and then fade away forever. One more thing. Variable stars change their brightness by pulsating ever expanding and contracting like a balloon, They repeat their brightness cycles from one day to hundreds of … [Read more...]
Back from Esalen Institute (Big Sur, CA)
After almost a seven-hour drive, I arrived home Friday evening after a wonderful five days of writing poems, chatting with old friends, hearing some brilliant poems by very talented poets, soaking in the hot sulfur baths, walking Highway 1 north to the South Coast Center, and eating healthy Esalen garden food. Unfortunately the long drive home in sometimes very heavy traffic almost erased all that Esalen wonderfulness. I did take a few photos so I'll have reminders. This time, rather than take the usual Big Sur ocean and cliff scenes, I gravitated to the many succulent garden areas on the property - some in pots and some in the ground. These gardens were new to me. Like the rest of us water-challenged gardeners, now Esalen is also doing its part to conserve. Of course I couldn't resist the little white Buddha or the tree masks I passed everyday on my way back and forth to my workshop room. … [Read more...]
Esalen (Big Sur, California) here I come!
I'm looking forward to going to Esalen at Big Sur, California on Sunday. I'll be there for five days to attend a poetry workshop led by Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, and Joseph Millar. I've taken this workshop several times before so I know what to expect lots of poetry writing, sharing what we write late each day, and always very gentle, encouraging feedback. I'll also know several of the people there. Like me, they are Esalen and poetry junkies. Although I usually like to go to Esalen at least once a year, this will be my first time in almost two years. Perhaps the work of my book got in the way last year definitely a poor excuse. Because my mantra is always: Take care of myself, I never should have let myself skip a year. But I'll make up for it very soon. Usually I go to Esalen without my husband, Bob. The last time he went was to celebrate my sixtieth birthday there. Here's the piece I wrote about that time over a decade ago. Turning Sixty As sixtieth birthdays go it … [Read more...]
Published Twitter-length poems
I was so busy during the month of June with the WOW blog tour, I didn't get a chance to post my two Twitter length poems that "unFold" magazine published. Here they are: Riding the Waves [June 13, 2011] Hummingbirds are skinny-dipping in my garden pool, bouncing off the fountain, surfing the surrounding leaves. Since He Left His Toothbrush [June 15, 2011] He recited Byron's words yet we'll go no more a roving by the light of the moon as a final fare thee well, but she knew he'd be back. To read more of these fun and challenging 140-character or less poems go to: http://unfoldmag.wordpress.com/ And I'm happy to say, "unFold" will publish one more of my new short poems in the Fall. … [Read more...]
What’s so great about her?
For one thing she is my great niece. For another thing she wrote the poem I've posted below and... she is only twelve years old. Need I say more? Holocaust Poem People march Fear It's all around They're coming closer I feel myself being lifted And thrown into the back of a truck People All around me I feel them Hear their cries It's dark Where are we going? Will I be ok? We hit a bump More cries We stop And get out of the truck People with guns Pointed at us Shoved into a building Small, cold Days later We are on a train So few people Darkness It never ends We stop once more Get pulled out of the train We are told to follow The men with the guns Pointed at us They lead us to another building Told to undress Don't worry, they said We were told it was a shower We go into a small chamber The doors are locked The lights go off The silence is so loud The … [Read more...]
I love my garden
Sun Tipped Leaves An Isolation Poem Every day I isolate myself in my office. I sit there for hours thinking, looking out my window at my cement pool and fountain. And I write a little in between. I like the isolated space to do my work I like that my husband stays away I like the solitude and quiet. And I like that as the trees rustle outside, their leaves tipped with sunlight, I can't hear their sway I can't hear their song. … [Read more...]
My Jazzman
A young man whom Paul roomed with on Suffolk Street in downtown Manhattan contacted me today. And though his email is most welcome, it made me think of My Jazzman even more. My jazzman beat it out on the mighty eighty-eights, played those riffs, tapped his feet bent his head down to the keys, felt those sounds on his fingertips. Yeah, he was a hot man on those eighty-eights. But all too soon his bag grew dark. He went down, deep down. My jazzman played the blues, lost that spark, closed the lid. And, yeah, you got it right, quit the scene. laid himself down in that bone yard for the big sleep. Yeah, for the really big sleep. … [Read more...]
More kudos for Leaving the Hall Light On
http://www.LuckyPress.com/madelinesharples.html My friend and advisor on all things related to getting a book published, Mark Shelmerdine, CEO of Jeffers Press, sent me this note yesterday after he finished reading a review copy of my book. I thank him immensely for his kind words. I finished Leaving the Hall Light On last night. It is a very moving, very intimate and very inspiring memoir. It must have taken great courage to reveal your story to yourself and your family let alone to the world at large. I have huge respect for the way you have exposed your feelings for Paul, Bob and Ben with such candor; it is something that it would be impossible for me to do probably because I am a reticent Brit. The poetry and photographs add an extra dimension that is missing from most memoirs like this since as a reader you get much closer to the reality of what is being described on the page. For 321 pages I was completely caught up in your life and the heart-wrenching drama that you were … [Read more...]
