I’ve been remiss in posting this, but I think you’ll like this new issue of Chocolate Zoom. In it are articles on how to grow chocolate, make chocolate treats and give chocolatey gifts.
Crossposted from my Blogetary:
Hey! Hey! HEY! It’s arrived! Presenting the April 2009 issue of Beyond Centauri, which just happens to have a flash fiction (very short short) story of mine in it. In honor of its arrival I am going to have another blog contest. Just leave a comment on my Blogetary blog by May 15 and on May 16 I’ll check in and draw a name and let you know who has won!
- Mood:
chipper
As anyone who reads my blog knows, poetry is important to me, and April is poetry month. In honor of poetry month, the folks at Drollerie Press are having an author blog tour where writers are asked about how poetry has influenced them and their writing. We are sharing those influences on each others blogs. It is my pleasure to host Sarah Avery on my blog today.
Sarah Avery, author of Closing Arguments and Atlantis Cranks Need Not Apply, knows poetry. After all, she earned a doctorate in English with a dissertation on modernist poetry before going back to her scifi/fantasy roots. After a life of travel, study, and experiences many people only think they understand, it is not surprising that she would use these two very expressive and imaginative genres for her writing.
But Sarah didn’t just get a piece of paper indicating her expertise in poetry, she also taught poetry, has seen the fear and misunderstanding some people have of poetry. She “gets” how poetry is important not just as a field of study or genre, but in every day life, as a way of expressing feelings and moments that are bigger than we are. What follows below is one of best essays I’ve read on how basic and important poetry is to everyone.
“Woof! Squeak!”
by Sarah Avery
What blew my mind the one time I got to teach a course on poetry was how terrified my students were. If my class hadn’t been specifically required for all English majors, and satisfied several requirements for the university’s core curriculum, none of those students would have chosen it. For me, poetry had been by turns a comfort, a friendly challenge, a game, and very nearly a profession–the bell before my bowl of Alpo. For most of my students, poetry had been the occasion of their worst moments in high school English classes, moments of judgment and humiliation–the buzzer before their electric shock.
What could Pavlov’s dog have to teach Skinner’s mice? To be less afraid, to perceive the thing itself despite their fears, to allow for the possibility that a poem might be delicious.
It was both more and less than I’d expected to teach them. I had a carefully balanced syllabus full of lineage, form, and technique. The day before the semester started, I’d congratulated myself on its rigor. The hour I had to face all those wide eyes in pale faces, I found myself selling it to them as a menu full of delicacies.
Things started looking up when one of the students read ahead on the syllabus and raised her hand. “You’re not really assigning Dr. Seuss, are you?”
It was the same question I’d been asked in the department copy room. One of my fellow grad students saw that I was copying pages from Green Eggs and Ham and said, “Either that’ll be the coolest thing you do all semester and they’ll talk it up for years, or it’ll blow up in your face and they’ll hate you for it. Nobody likes condescension.”
In the copy room, my impromptu answer was:
I’ll teach it flying through the air
With long lines by that dude John Clare.
I’ll teach it climbing up a tree
With paeans by that chick H.D.
I’ll teach it creeping on the ground
With Cantos penned by Ezra Pound.
To get those clueless kids to scan,
I’ll teach that book, Green Eggs and Ham.
In any case, my goofy run of couplets wasn't the answer I could give a real live student in the moment when she was deciding whether I was condescending to her or not. Instead, I said something more or less like this:
Poetry happens in the body. Everything about it is something the body does. The body has a pulse, so poetry thumps. The body breathes, so poetry pauses. What is all that sensory vividness our high school teachers wanted us to pay attention to doing in the poem? It's there because the body senses the world. If you have a body, you can get something from poetry--and bring something to poetry, too. Robert Pinsky (the Poet Laureate the year I taught the class, but long before that an undergrad at the very same big state school my students were attending), likes to say that the true medium of the art of poetry is not the page or the written word, but is rather the column of air in the body of the person speaking the poem. The instrument of the poem is the body of the reader. Dr. Seuss never tries to disguise the physicality of his poetry. That's why you get him and not e.e. cummings when you're a child first learning to read, and that's why you get him and not e.e. cummings early in the semester.
"So," I concluded, "it looks like everyone here has a body." I waited a moment. No one contradicted me. "In that case, you've all come prepared."
That was my story. I stuck to it all semester. Green Eggs and Ham, with its thumpy pulse, took all the fear out of scansion marks, which apparently had been the source of a lot of high school trauma.
The physicality of poetry is one of the things I miss. I've been writing fiction seriously for six years now, and short essays for my blog for five years. A background in poetry does help on the sentence level, and to some extent on the structural level, but the intense focus on sound and breath is very difficult to sustain in a novel-length work. You do sometimes find those weird exceptions, novels in verse, and some of them even prosper-- like Vikram Seth's charming The Golden Gate, or Toby Barlow's current werewolf hit, Sharp Teeth. But not every story wants that form, and a writer who cares about publication and audience can't expect a verse novel to find a home out in the world. I expect to return to poetry from time to time, but prose fiction's where I live now.
But back to the students. (I miss them, too.)
What could Skinner's mice have to teach Pavlov's dog?
It was something I should have known, something I'd heard and read before. The poet who mentored me often quoted Muriel Rukeyser's aphorism, "The fear of poetry is the fear." That is to say, one of the intimidating things about poetry is that, in order to understand the good stuff, you have to open yourself to it, and ours is a culture that punishes true openness. For that matter, being open to the world lets in all kinds of suffering, along with the beauty. Numbness has it advantages. The very physicality of poetry makes it that much harder to resist feeling and thinking whatever the poem offers for you to feel and think.
Ultimately, it wasn't just the memory of humiliating ignorance in front of a classroom full of peers and a judgmental high school teacher that had zapped my some of students. The ones who had been able to connect with poetry a little bit, despite their educations, had found there something that demanded they bring, and therefore find, much more of themselves than they were accustomed even to acknowledging. Prose fiction, which was much more comfortable to them, invited them to lose themselves in story. Prose fiction does that for all of us, though the good stuff drops us back off at the end with more than we embarked with. It's a sweet deal, but very different. In most poetry, especially in modern and postmodern poetry, escape is not on offer.
Now, as a fantasy writer who brazenly embraces escapism as part of what stories ought to do, I look back on my students' predicament with more sympathy than I had when I was teaching them. The tools of sound and rhythm, breath and pulse, still matter, but instead of using them to demand the body's attention, I use them to direct the body's attention into the imagined bodies of characters in some other world. What is the medium of fiction? Not the page, not words, but the reader's identity.
Crossposted from Blogetary.
So, today’s prompt at Poetic Asides was rebirth. There are so many ways you can go with rebirth, so many possibilities. In the end, I went with what was, for me, the most basic. This challenge takes a lot of creative stamina and I’m running out of ideas.
Rebirth
Renaissance
All I wanted was a best friend.
Someone to listen to me,
be with me,
love me –
no matter what.
That’s what they told me I would have.
Then they dunked me and called me
born again.
They didn’t tell me
once reborn
it never ends.
Once reborn
you constantly die
again and again and again.
Wow, almost halfway there! Since today was Tuesday, it was a two-fer challenge again and we got two prompts. We could do either or both, as we chose. The two prompts were Love and Anti-Love. Here was my attempt:
Love -
Is it love?
He dogs my every move -
never far away.
I see him wherever I go -
he’s constantly on my tail.
Sometimes I look up –
to meet his baleful glare.
Ignore him though I try
as he rubs his cheek against my leg
I have to wonder why…
Is it love?
Or is it food?
Anti-love
Revelation
Bubble rises in my stomach,
as the words go on and on and on and on…
“Love inspires me!”
Bubble does its job, shoving food aside -
shoving it up inside…
as you swan on…
“I’m whole when I’m in love!”
Bubble reaches my mouth and I cough,
feel food in the back of my throat
and swallow down acid.
“Being in love is the only way to be!”
The bubble bursts.
Leaning over the toilet,
burning from the inside out,
I remember what you were like
when you were in love with me.
Today’s Poem a Day challenge was using the prompt, “Friday.”
So, here’s my entry:
Friday
Then–
Friday, Fryday, Freya’s day, FRIIIIDAY!
Day of possibilities, the unopened present.
Day when anything can happen and nothing proved wrong.
Frypan food day, Freya’s date night,
Drink with friends and dance with all your might.
Now–
Friday is laundry day, stay at home eat pizza day;
Sleeping in on Saturn’s day and wondering about Jupiter’s day.
In the end, though, Friday is my day.
So, I got my copies of Aoife’s Kiss today! Yay! See? Here it is!
Forgive the distortion. I had to hold it up at an angle to keep the reflection from glaring it out.
Now that I have my copies, I can have a BLOG CONTEST! Yes, that’s right! Just in time for Eostra, Passover, Good Friday and Easter! If you would like a signed issue of this Aoife’s Kiss that has my short story, The Lullabye, in it, then just leave a blog comment. And it looks like a great copy! With titles like AI & the 40 Zombies and Dragon Cuisine, how can you go wrong?
You have until the 18th to leave your comment on my blogetary blog here. Then, I’ll drop your names in a hat, draw one out and the winner gets a copy!
WOW - Women on Writing is an online zine for the encouragement of women writing. Actually, anyone writing, but the focus is women. They have a quarterly writing contest and helpful articles for the working writer. Well, they just published an article I wrote for them. You can check it out here.
A lot of other stuff has come out since I wrote this article. For example, what I didn’t know when I wrote this article is that in many states, women pay more for insurance than men because women are typically more responsible and actually make appointments and participate in preventive health care. But because of that, we’re seen as being more expensive, and that’s even when we don’t use the maternity care. So, we end up paying 39% more in health insurance in many states, including California. New York, however, does not allow for discrimination due to gender.
Write your congressperson.
Crossposted from Blogetary:
So, I decided to at least try the Poem a Day Challenge.
The prompt today (April 1 that is) was origins of something. Here’s mine:
The Dawning of my Demise
Began with yearning turning
to need –
pressure building
exploding
pencil gripped and tearing
through the page.
To get my words out.
Feeding desire to throw
words on the pyre
and
see
them
burn.
To be a writer.
I was 9.
According to last years Poet Laureate, the trick is to read the prompt EARLY in the day (something I didn’t do today) so your poem can gel. So, we’ll try again tomorrow, shall we?
Now, go take a look at the latest Beyond Centauri.- Mood:
accomplished
1) If you're in the mood for some fantasy erotica, I have a short story up on Lucrezia. I submitted it quite a while ago, and after looking at it, I wish I'd gone through it one more time. And though I thought I had formatted it correctly for them, it still looks odd. But, it's there if you like: “A Summer Pastoral” . Friend of mine reminded me that Imbolc is over, Ostara is here, and Beltane is coming, so this might work for you if you're in the spring kinda mood.
2) I took a trip with my friend, Leigh, to the Women’s Expo in Ventura. Though the expo itself was a little underwhelming, my time with Leigh at the expo was great. We hung out in the Book Corner put up by Bank of Books, an independent bookstore in Ventura, California, where Leigh signed some books. We also had some cool conversation with fellow writers. The coolest thing, though, was the Cups of Courage art installation in the main area, that was there to support breast cancer awareness. You can read more about the day and see pictures of some of the cool decorated bras here on Leigh’s blog.
3) Got a nice “No, Thank you” on a little horror unrequited love story I wrote. It’s been turned down several times and each time I take another look at it and try to revise it. And each time I get the, “love the quality of your writing, but we are passing up your story at this time.” So, I’m obviously the only one enchanted by the story and concept. Considering shelving it for a while. Maybe I should I lengthen it sometime. Maybe it’s just the beginning of a story. I don’t know.
4) There's another short story in the publication process. Not sure when it will be out definitely. But, as it was a Christmas story that was supposed to be out in December, I'm not in a hurry anymore myself. We got eight months before it can be considered timely, again.
5) May I also direct to you the March 2009 issue of Aoife’s Kiss where you can read my short story, The Lullabye.
See - there’s my name, right there!
As soon as I receive my copies, I’ll be posting a blog contest for a signed issue. I haven’t yet, but when it happens, you’ll be the first to know!
6) And if fiction is not your thing or you don’t have the few bob it would take to purchase Aoife’s Kiss or don’t win the blog contest, then may I direct you to the March issue of Chocolate Zoom, where you can read articles on babies, chocolate, being green and the business of chocolate.
7) Finally,
Life in the freelance world has dried up like Joshua Tree in August.
(Above is my mom and sister in Joshua Tree in APRIL 2002, but you get the idea.)
Anyway, last week I said that it’s a good thing I work at the Larchmont Chronicle, because that’s about the only thing going right now. What's funny is my normal freelance sources of income have dried up, but other sources are popping up out of nowhere. Literally. Springing up out of the woodwork and I'm not sure where they've gotten my name from. So, I'm very thankful for that.
I'm thankful for it all, actually.
- Mood: thankful
Besides being Women’s History Month, March is also Small Press month. In honor of Small Press month, may I direct to you the March 2009 issue of Aoife’s Kiss where you can read my short story, The Lullabye.
See - there’s my name, right there!
As soon as I receive my copies, I’ll be posting a blog contest for a signed issue. I haven’t yet, but when it happens, you’ll be the first to know!
And if fiction is not your thing or you don’t have the few bob it would take to purchase Aoife’s Kiss or don’t win the blog contest, then may I direct you to the March issue of Chocolate Zoom, where you can read articles on babies, chocolate, being green and the business of chocolate.
I also have a couple more stories that MIGHT be coming out this month that you’ll be able to read online. They aren’t up yet, but as soon as they are, I’ll post them here!
This is Women’s History Month, and today is also International Women’s Day! Celebrate the women in your life!
And now a cool cartoon from my favorite Non Sequitur:
If you're interested in reading more about chocolate than you thought you wanted to know, check out the new edition of Chocolate Zoom. All the articles are good, but to blow my own horn, you can check out these two:
South American Chocolate Meets the Silk Road and Hershey's American Chocolate Dream.
- Location:Home
- Mood: happy
One of my stories, Scary Things, is out on Bewildering Stories. It goes "live" on Monday, the 19th, but it's up now, if you are in the mood for a short story.
It's told from the viewpoint of one of the city's more maligned inhabitants, about some of the other inhabitants that can be a little more scary than he is.
Hope you enjoy, and have a good weekend!
- Mood:
artistic
Yes, time once again for another contest, this time for an autographed copy of the Winter 2008 issue of Electric Velocipede. If you haven’t had a chance to read EV, then here’s a chance to try for a free copy! It’s a great ‘zine with lots of good speculative fiction as well as speculative poetry (and a couple of my own poems, of course).
This contest will carry us into the new year with a due date of January 1, 2009. All you need to do is leave a comment on my Blogetary blog on this specific blog entry by midnight January 1. I will put all entries into a hat or do a random number generator thingy and announce a winner on January 2, 2009!
Hope you enjoy!
- Mood: happy
I would like to announce that I have a Christmas story out. So, if you're in the mood for a little story to take you into the week leading up to Christmas, take a gander at Santa is My Homeboy, on Mindflights.com.
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Pretty wrap, mostly, though bags are not out of the question. I like to challenge myself to see how creative I can get with what I can find on hand and what I have found on sale. And I reuse a lot of stuff. If I get pretty ribbons from people or really nice wrap, if possible, they are saved to reuse the next year.
2. Real tree or Artificial?
Depends on my life. I used to always say real. But I live in SoCal and after a couple of years of real trees at WAY too expensive prices getting dry after a day, I opted for a fake tree that I paid for once and can reuse every year without fear of fire. Note: Even fake trees lose needles.
3. When do you put up the tree?
Usually Thanksgiving weekend, though I've been known to do it around December 15. Depends on my life - am I working a lot, do I have the energy and hope to clean the apartment and pull out the stuff.
4. When do you take the tree down?
Never before Epiphany - January 6, which is the 12th day of Christmas.
5. Do you like eggnog?
Yes, I do. So there.
6. Favorite gift received as a child:
As a young kid - a barbie apartment. Though just a few years later, at around 12, I got my favoritest gift ever - a desk and stool. The desk was really simple and my grampa made it using our old crib as some of the materials. The stool was just a wicker stool. They lasted for years. Still had the desk when I was in college, but I was moving and didn't have room to move it and gave it to a roommate. Shouldna done that. Kept the stool and it finally fell apart about 10 years ago.
7. Hardest person to buy for?
Men. Most men in my life - gay or straight - I just can't seem to hit their gift vibe. I try. But typically, what they want, I can't afford. And they aren't interested in the cute little decorated nailfiles I found on sale at the general store down the street that make my girlfriends squeal. Got my dad a trainset, small, mind you, one year, only to get a, "yeah, it's okay."
Men.
8. Easiest person to buy for?
Most of the women I know, but especially my sister. I always see things that I think she'll like. THe trick is to not just buy for her.
9. Do you have a nativity scene?
At one time I had a home made one that I made while in grade school out of homemade dough clay that I painted and shellacked. It lasted for years until I think one year it got left in my trunk and the trunk had a leak in it. Now I have some tiny wood ornament I hang on my tree. I haven't seen a nativity scene I'm willing to spend money on. Most look too too to me. I prefer a nativity scene that might be a little more modern - pared down. Simple shapes, not too much detail. The kind of scene where someone could look at it and easily think that it could be anyone in there - any young girl looking at her baby and scared man who doesn't know what to do with a family.
10. Mail or email Christmas cards?
Mail, if possible. I like real mail. Positive, real mail - not just bills. And I'm sure other people do too. And in case you think it's a waste. I don't think so. All the card I get, I reuse. I save the ones with real notes in them, but the others, I cut up and reuse the next year for gift tags.
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
A plastic lobster accompanied by a plastic seagull on a plastic post. I have no idea why my friend thought it was funny. But he did. So I laughed when he gave it to me as if I understood, cuz I didn't want to hurt his feelings, and then donated them soon after.
12. Favorite Christmas Movie?
Christmas Carol with Alistair Sim
Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire
Miracle on 34th Street - both 1946 and 1994
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
All year round, but especially after CHristmas when all the sales are on. I keep a gift cupboard and whenever I'm on a trip or at a sale and see something that I know would make a good gift later, I get it then. Put it in my cupboard, and then bdays and Christmas are not so much of a hardship.
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
I usually end up donating presents I don't care for. Typically, if I don't care for them, I don't think anyone else will either.
15.Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
My cranberry relish on toast. I also like to have a little smorgasborg I share with the cat - whatever I can afford that's cold cut like and cheesy.
16. Lights on the tree?
I like white lights, mostly, but I also really like bubble lights. A lot of them have burned out. I need to replace a string or two, but haven't been able to afford to. Maybe I'll find some on sale after Christmas this year.
17. Favorite Christmas song?
Christmas Carol or Christmas Song? I have quite a few. Love the Wexford Carol and the Boar's Head Carol. Good Christian Men Rejoice and COventry Carol and many others. ALso like songs like White Christmas, Old-Time CHristmas, and many others...
18.Travel at Christmas or stay home?
Depends. This year staying home. But sometimes I travel up north for Cmas.
19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?
Now Dasher! Now Dancer! Now Prancer and Vixen!
On Comet! On Cupid! On Donder and Blitzen!
And sometimes Rudolph. And don't forget Olive. And Rudolph's younger brother.
20. Angel on the tree top or a star?
Angel. But not the angels you think. Again - ultra modern where it is shape and form that suggests angelic-ness. I grew up with this angel mom got at a drugstore that I've never been able to replace. It was simple. Cone, head at top. Wings, and a halo. In bright tin painted blue and gold. Angels have no gender and are not children. They are separate beings with their own classifications. We shouldn't impose what we think we are on them. So, I like just the simple suggestion of angelic-ness.
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
Christmas morning. It ruins it to do it all on the Eve. Though it's okay to open one on the Eve.
22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
Having to apologize to all my cynical friends that yes, in fact, I REALLY DO LIKE CHRISTMAS, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
23. Favorite ornament theme or color?
Orange kitties is one. Pretty shoes is another. Angels. Instruments. Motion ornaments that you hang over the lights so they'll move (heat propelled). Whatever is pretty.
24. Favorite item of holiday wear?
I have wreath earrings I like a lot. And at this time of year (Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years) I can freely wear a lot of the blingy, sparkly stuff I have without having to make an excuse for it.
25. What do you want for Christmas this year?
I would like the world to come a little closer to love, peace, and understanding. I would love for my sister and dad to declare a truce. I would love for Prop 8 to be repealed and people's eyes be opened to the harm that prop does. But if you're really interested, check my Amazon wishlist. It's long and there's lots to choose from.
26. On a scale of 1 to 10, how many lights (like the Griswalds) do you have outside?
None. I live in an apartment. I have a couple of strings of lights I keep up around the windows year round. I don't turn them on often, except at Christmas. I like pretty sparkly lights.
29. Favorite Christmas tradition?
Doing stockings for my mom and sister.
30. Non-stop Christmas music radio station?
THere's a clear channel radio station I only listen to around after Thanksgiving that has tunes that I listen to when I'm tired of my own, and there's Live365 online that has Christmas year round. The clear channel station tends to be a bit smarmy and play the same stuff over and over again - usually that shitty song about the red shoes.
31. Stockings or not?
YES!
32. Pie or Cake?
Pie if it's good and cake if it's good. But I prefer cookies and candy and scandinavian/germanic breads. Pralines, pfefferneuse, liebkuchen, tortone, and stuff like that.
33. Do gift cards make good gifts?
Not this Christmas. You don't know which company is going to go belly up next. Get them a Visa or American Express gift card that they can spend anywhere.
34. What is your preferred spelling for the Jewish Festival of Lights?
I grew up with the H beginning, but respect the C beginning.
- Mood:
awake
On Saturday, November 15, 2008, I joined my friends and several thousand others across the United States to march for marriage equality. We were in LA, the area between City Hall and the LA Times building. There were many speakers at the event. Alec Mapa was the MC. Mayor Villaraigosa gave a speech in English and Spanish. Rev. Eric Lee of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was there and have a speech. Several LA Council members, Rocky Gelgadillo, the prosecutor gave a speech. Lucy Lawless gave a speech. I saw Pauley Perrette (Abby from NCIS) making her way through the crowd.
Some of the chants included:
2,4,6,8!
We just want to stop the H8!
Whaddo we want?
Equal Rights!
When do we want it?
Now!
This was an incredible event, almost too much to write about coherently. You can read more about the different rallies all over the US on Towleroad.
This was to be a nationwide, and even global wide, protest of Prop. 8 and other laws like it. I am proud of the Angelenos who showed their support no matter what the orientation. One woman spoke about how the proposition basically nullified her entire family - her two gay dads and lesbian mother, as well as her sister, are not considered a family. Yet, they raised her. Her mother was more worried about whether or not she’d be hurt at the protest than what the protest was about - just like any mother. Her fathers, like any parents, took she and her sister to school, gave them snacks, went to parent-teacher conferences and have raised two beautiful girls. But there are people in the world who don’t think that counts. For some reason some people fear that perfectly non-threatening family.
Ignorance leads to fear and fear to hate and discrimination. If you don’t understand why two people of the same sex fall in love and want to get married, then ask them! They will give you the same answers people of the opposite sex would give. If you don’t understand why people are so angry about not being able to marry, then ask them and they will explain it to you. And you will hear the same explanation you’d get from people who were banned from marrying from one another because they were different races or different religions.
One of the signs I liked the most (besides the one my friends had showing how they’d been together for 19 years - more than most marriages) was the socialist looking “Defend Equality Love Unites.” I think that was the best message because it’s true. All you need is love.
If you believe in marriage equality, I urge you to raise your voice and let others know. If going to protests and rallies isn't your thing, then write your congresspeople, write letters to the editor, blog about it, host open discussions where people can ask and discuss this without getting villified, talk to your neighbors and family about. As one speaker yesterday said, make this the most interesting Thanksgiving you've ever had.
- Mood: chipper
Electric Velocipede is a scifi/steampunk type journal and it is publishing two of my poems, The Story and Homemade Rosewater. EV is a print journal, but it has some of the poetry and fiction online if you want to check it out, including my two poems.
So, take a look. Hope you enjoy!
- Mood: chipper
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