A Promise Kept--so far

In my next-to-last post, which was ages ago, I promised to make a habit of visiting libraries. More than a few friends rolled their eyes at that, thinking that I had slipped irrevocably into Dullsville. Well, fear not. Today my friend Marcia and I made the first of twelve visits to Colorado libraries. We didn't go far, mainly because it has been a spectacular day--warm, sunny, perfect for local exploring. So we went to Boulder, teased and pleased by the view of the snow covered Rockies with the bare "low altitude" Front Range for contrast. And miracle of miracles, found parking along Boulder Creek about a block from the Boulder Public Library.

The foyer through which we entered was amazing: a display of small sculptures greeted us and held our attention for a long time. I was particularly taken by wall-mounted "Lightning Bugs" in blown glass and cast aluminum by Caitlin Whitten. Then I stood a long time trying to figure out how Tiffany Lee had managed to cast highly detailed bronzes in the shape of draped fabric, complete with seams, buttons and button holes. Jaw dropping! Once we could bear to part with these wonders, we found art on every available wall in the meandering way to the main library area. The whole building was a feast--live fish in the aquarium near the children's area, live children in the area listening to stories, a water fountain, colorful displays of the books featured for book clubs, and a pleasant, helpful clerk at the front desk who gave us souvenir library cards. And for you doubters, he said they get a lot of people like us who just like to look at libraries.

To round out our bookish morning we visited a new POETRY bookstore, Innisfree, recently opened on 13th Street, just off Broadway. Already about to expand into the adjoining space, this shop is a tidy, welcoming feast for poets and readers. We had sandwiches, left a few of my books for the consignment shelf and chatted with Kevin, the owner, and another customer. What a great way to keep a New Year's resolution. Next month, another library, another adventure. I love books.

Getting Down to Business

Whew! My Imac is back from the digital doctor and that's a good thing, because the loaner PC did not have all my stuff and could not read the saved files on the USB thumb from the Mac word processor. I have a lot of projects going right now--a stack of submissions to get out, many with tight deadlines, and putting the polish to the teaching projects, the first of which begins at Front Range Community College at the end of January, and--oops--it's January already.

Getting back into the classroom feels right. Especially in this instance where the students will not be fighting for grades, will be there out of choice, not the demands of a degree program. They will be learning for fun--the best kind of education. The course is called Begin at Home, the ABC's of Living Local. I had tried this idea as a second blog, but it was frustrating to get a readership and difficult to put any focus into the thing. With a "bully pulpit" in the classroom I hope to do a better job of inspiring people to take a close look at their own municipalities and to their relationships to whatever places they currently call home. We will do some reflective writing, compile resource guides tailored to each individual's interests and read books and articles that may stimulate an ongoing love affair with home. And we all know that love affairs are dynamic, heavenly and hellish by turns. But the energy of the students will lighten, deepen, broaden and stimulate the class sessions and carry over when folks drive away from the student parking lot.

Be It Resolved

Here we go again--New Year's Resolutions. And the ones I thought of on my own were stale and boring, having to do with girth and guilt. Then I read my friend Margaret's Facebook page and stole her idea: do something new every week, or maybe it was month. I'll say month, because that's easier, less guilt over failure. And I know what my first few months will involve--libraries! I am a big fan of the public library. They trust me to take their books home and keep them for weeks. I wouldn't lend my books like that, except to a few really good friends. I'm a pretty good patron. I rarely miss a due date for returns, don't spill tea on the pages, don't leave books where Duncan the Dog can chew them. (He's often referred to as Destructo Dog, so keeping things out of his reach is important.) I try not to take more home than I can reasonably read at one time. And I often discipline my buying habits--borrow first, then buy if I really need my own copy to write in or refer to in the middle of the night, or the middle of a blizzard like the one my friends and family in Maine are coping with this morning. (Careful on that steep, snowy driveway, Son.)

Here's my resolution: I will visit as many libraries this year as I can. I know my own wonderful Mamie Doud Eisenhower Library in Broomfield, and the College Hill Library in nearby Westminster. I've been in the New York Public Library with its famous and fabulous reading room. I think that years ago I walked into the Library of Congress and right out again, overwhelmed. When I was in New Orleans last spring I visited the city library, a sad place, clearly never fully funded after Katrina, but still, a lively and important part of city life.

When I was a student at Potter Academy, a tiny high school in East Sebago, Maine, I was often sent to the library to listen to tapes of Chaucer. I was the only college prep student in my senior class and the teacher could not find any other way for me to study what the rest of the students would have found impossibly boring. I can still see that "library" aka the principal's office. George Cobb in his gray tweed jacket sat behind me, back to back like bookends, while I listened to poetry that I never quite understood. But the library idea was etched into me, a place of privilege and quiet, a place where I could find the exotic and unusual. Today I'm off to my local to talk to my friends at the reference desk about my tour of libraries. And to pick up Muriel Rukeyser's collected poems. And to sit and marvel at the other riches all within my reach.

Pick Me, Pick Me!

Whew! The last scene in the novel is drafted and today--confined as I am for the week by a knee brace and crutch--I begin the major revisions. I think that by the end of the year I will be ready to offer this story to the world. Will the world want it? No way of knowing that in advance. One huge hurdle remains, the agent search. I've had two unsatisfying encounters with agents over the previous novel (still sulking in its ms box), so I'm wary of this process. I've read and talked about the search, but it's making me shake. I feel like a third-grader waving her hand at the teacher, "Pick me, oh, please, pick me! I know the answer." So tired I have to hold the waving arm up with my free hand.

My third grade teacher, Miss Glascow, rarely picked me, except to stay in at recess and finish my arithmetic. (We didn't call it math in those dark days.) Even then I was a word-nerd, giving the numerals personalities, but rarely understanding their sterile, hard-wired interactions. A division sign was a little house with one number hiding inside and another knocking at the door. I never understood those numbers that ended up dancing on the roof. What did they mean? Well, I couldn't tell Miss G. what they meant and she thought that sitting at my desk while the rest of the class played tag outside would enlighten me.

A literary agent might be like her--asking me to explain the inexplicable, holding me back a grade, never picking me or my characters. The book business is about numbers--bottom lines and sales quotas, etc. (That etc. is a weasel word; it means I don't know any other specifics.) I just want to cut loose of the business part of writing. I want to go out and play with my imaginary friends, like Number Nine. She's lively and friendly, a great gal, that Nine. Okay, okay, I'll write the dang query letter: "Dear Miss Glascow, Please, please, pick me."

Eating a Novel

The turkey is reduced to leftovers, the pies will be finished by noon today, and we will immediately pull Christmas decorations from the dark hole under the stairs. One major holiday down, one to go. And this week it seems to me that holiday meals and manuscript critiques have much in common. Certain stock ingredients are called for, but the side dishes and the seasoning vary from one cook/author to another. The novel needs characters, setting and plot, the way a holiday table needs a turkey and stuffing and green-bean casserole. But is the setting as speculative as apple stuffing--an unimaginable reality for some--or as familiar as contemporary white-bread-and-sage America? What tastes like Heavenly Hash to some tastes like tripe to others, and they each take a seat at the table during the dreaded but necessary manuscript critique, where Fred picks the onions out of every chapter, Marla demands more sweetness in the plot, and Aunt Sally sniffs the setting like a hound in search of contraband.

The kitchen counter and the writing desk are awash in revisions and dripped gravy, exhaustion looms, and the dog throws up in the dining room just as pie is served. There sits the cook, hoping each guest gets something tasty and no one gets salmonella, hoping that as they close the book and sigh, they are full and waiting for the next feast from the same table.

Joy, Party Girl

Joy, Party Girl
Karen Douglass

Joy comes to anyone's party,
drinks anyone's Bud Lite.
Her little dress is ready, pressed,
slingbacks waiting by the door.

Joy has no taste. She laughs out loud
in church at whatever inner light or sight
giggles her while the poor preacher
frowns and pounds home the point.

Joy is a tramp, climbing stairs
belonging to strangers, eating
another one's bread, spicing up
a leftover plate of grief.

Uninvited, Joy appears, not always
on time or with her hair combed.
At the table, Joy sits opposite Despair,
tickles his shins with her bare toes.

Who ME?

Well, now, here's news I never expected. Seems that Scott Owens, Editor of Wild Goose Review has nominated moi, well, my poem "No-News Day," for a Pushcart Prize. Thanks Scott. You can read the poem at the web site, Spring 2010 issue. (There is an index, one that works!)