41: Cloquet Forestry Center

I arrived yesterday afternoon, the sun full and bright, the Boreal forest opening up: the colors of pine, stone, timber. I am in a cabin and have figured out this new fangled wireless thing (I'm only teasing; our home is wireless) and how to upload photographs onto an external hard drive. I'm listening to Norah Jones on Pandora and feel absolutely naughty, though in twenty minutes, I will be back outside, eating pasta underneath a timbered pavilion, poets flanking me, mosquitoes finding sweet spots.

It's my week away, my workshop in the woods. The title: The Work and Play of the Poem with Michael Dennis Browne, the professor who, half a dozen years ago, opened my eyes to the beauty and the shape of poetry, to the musicality of it, to the way it can burst in your heart like a lark's song.

I know I am in the perfect place when I can touch pinecones at my doorstep, when I write poetry on long walks, when my camera is the quiet one and words begin to surface. My eyes are drinking this wonder, my ears, my heart. I am learning to write again, after a half-year dormancy, and I am grateful.

PS: I have started a photoset on Flickr for this trip. You can follow the beauty here, though I must admit, I have been strangely still with my camera these first twenty four hours. I promise more soon. Soon.

40: Bratwurst

For this week's local meal, we had bratwurst from Cannon Falls boiled in beer from New Ulm: diced onions, red pepper flakes, hot sauce. For this upcoming week, I will be eating off the land as well, for the catering through Split Rock is very eco-friendly and focused on local farming practices. I will sleep with the woods around me, good food, good company, good words.

39: Kindred Spirit Farm

CSA pick up today. This place, truly, is so lovely.

38: Fireflies

Tonight we went to our neighbors' house, invited for steaks (none for me; I am still propelling back toward vegetarianism) and corn, Caesar salad and potatoes. It's the first time we've been over, though we've exchanged small things across the fence: bottles of homebrew mead, seeds from a summer garden. We sat on their back patio, watching Wisconsin fireworks warm the stone barrier between our driveway and their row of just planted lilac sprigs. They have a sweet year old daughter, Bailey, and are getting married at the end of August. Calla lilies, she says, though she wanted hydrangea.

There's something about a summer evening, of sitting back in patio chairs, drink sweating in your hands, watching as the fireflies settle in the gloaming. There's something about sitting at the edge of the yard, straddling stone, running your fingers along the grass, trying to capture that green spark, trying to remember what it was to sit in your childhood lawn, loving every living moment as conversation drifted in the night air.

37: Birding

We have four eggs now. Wait, no. Scratch that. Mama Bird Robin has four eggs and is letting us peek at them once in a while. She scolds me from the top of the garage when I peek in, but I can't help it. I'm enamored.

36: The Risky Business of Judging a Book by Its Cover

When I first picked this book up, it was from an endcap display, rows upon rows of this gorgeous cover--the landscape of western Montana. Years and years ago, Ryan and I drove through that part of the country on our way to Oregon; until we hit Missoula, it was sleepy, flat, sparse. But then the last of Montana rose before us, and Idaho, and I was in love.

I had hoped Blind Your Ponies would take me into the world of Annie Proulx, of cowboys and longing and poetry.

I hadn't realized, instead, I would stumble through awkward metaphors, painful stock characterization, paper doll dialog, and too many high school basketball games.

I will admit, West has heart, and he's sincere, even if it's a bit didactic. It's certainly a "feel good" sort of book, all fluff.

And I will admit, I am the sort of reader who reads just as much for good writing as I do for plot or theme. I am a particular sort of reader who loves the way words are strung together. This is how my heart thumps; it's not enough when the underdogs win. It doesn't help that I've been reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek side-by-side and Stanley Gordon West is like reading a clunky student essay in comparison.

In my first year of teaching (and I cannot believe, three years in, I can finally phrase it as if it were in the distant past), I taught Finding Laura Buggs, a companion to his Until They Bring the Streetcars Back. I dutifully read both the summer before starting my new job, and I cringed. I was assigned to teach this black-and-white novel to a class of struggling juniors, and I hated it. I hated his aw, shucks characters, his poodle skirts, his laughable plot twists. But I would be remiss if I did not also say this: the kids loved it. These are kids who hate to read, didn't like most of what I brought to them, though the gore of Stephen King's story about a man who slowly devoured himself while stranded on a desert island pleased them, and anything they liked, I immediately tried to like too. I don't think they ever knew just how much I hated this writer's style of writing, and I will also say this: fellow teachers like him. Smart people.

I'm the same person who did not fall in love with Eat, Pray, Love when I expected the prose to be held up more by sensual imagery. My smart person teacher friend, the same who likes West, she pointed out that this kind of writing that doesn't swell in my heart is more journalistic.

I am a dutiful reader, if nothing else. I finished this near-600 page book, though I immediately packaged it to send out to the next reader, ousting it from my house. It's got a beautiful cover, yes, but what's inside was woefully dim in comparison.

35: Call + Response

I think of the Bly poem "Call and Answer," though this poem came out of the recent anti-war movement, but that methodical call and response, the way art can become a communal experience as opposed to this silent experience. Writing is a solitary act. Being a writer is so lonely sometimes. Being any kind of artist is, though it doesn't have to be.

For now, there are no rules. We're just feeling it out, trying to see where it will take us.

For now, it's about us: three, though right now just two. My mother and myself. And Chelsea, when her life isn't battling her quite so fiercely with chaos. You're welcome to stop by.