There are a few bright spots of moss, living, green things. Yesterday, a black moth flew up from a snowbank and there are spider webs along the windowsills. They do not wait for the snow to melt.
But everything is wet. Melting and wet. That is spring. And the rain is better than snow for now. Soon the pond will fill with peepers and the night will be alive again and you’ll forget these silent days of waiting for something to happen.
It’s raining. Endlessly. But we mostly don’t mind because it melts the snow, the remaining patches and banks of which there are many. There is one bank at the end of the driveway, near the mailbox, which is still two feet tall. Below it are daffodil bulbs I planted. When will they grow?
The streams and ponds and rivers are high. The brook next to our house grows. In the summer it is dry. Usually we call it Okeefenokee Swamp or the mosquito factory. But now it is its own real, living thing. It is threatening. It could run over into our yard and wet the floors of the basement.
Or not.
Either way, the snow melts and this, my friend, is good news.
Alicia Gifford–huge congrats to the wonderful Alicia on being awarded this year’s best online short story by storysouth.
And congratulations to all of the other top tenners for their inspiring work.
Among other treasures new at Ink Pot are:
Purge, heartbreaking CNF by the lovely and talented Patricia Parkinson
&
An interview with the fascinating Richard Lewis
The amazingly talented writer Michelle Cameron (whose book In the Shadow of the Globe knocked my socks off when I read it–and truly, you don’t have to love Shakespeare to appreciate the beauty of the language in this book) has several upcoming events:
April 2, 7 PM
Stella Adler Studio presents a Shakespeare Benefit in support of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids Directed by Jason Little featuring In the Shadow of the Globe a poetic narrative in ten acts by Michelle Cameron
Stella Adler Studio
31 W. 27th St., 2nd floor
between Broadway and 6th Ave (Ave of the Americas)
212 689-0087
Suggested contribution:
$20-adults
$10-students
This performance will include scenes from Shakespeare, interwoven with poems from In the Shadow of the Globe, acted by Stella Adler Studio students. As noted, all proceeds go Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids – an extremely worthwhile cause.
In many ways, this will be the “world premiere” of In the Shadow of the Globe onstage. Stay tuned for several other staged performances in a variety of formats in coming months.
And speaking of coming months, here are two more April events upcoming:
April 7, 7:30 PM
Reading with Diane Lockward
Barnes & Noble
Route 3 East
Clifton, NJ
April 9, 2 PM
Reading and Shakespeare Seminar
Red Bank Public Library
84 West Front St.
Red Bank, NJ 07701
732-842-0690
Pre-registration recommended.
The march/april edition of The Barcelona Review is live, featuring a story by Neil LaBute AND the Pop Music and Contemporary Fiction quiz.
poem for 3.29.05:
The Wasteland
by T.S. Eliot
(note: April approaches and so it is time to read The Wasteland again. My favorite parts have always been The Burial of the Dead and Death by Water.)
I read essay (originally a lecture) Poetry and Ambition by Donald Hall the other day and have been thinking about it since. There is much in it that struck me as relevant not just to poets but to writers in general. Particularly, I was struck by what he had to say about modern writing (“Many of these poems are often readable, charming, funny, touching, sometimes even intelligent. But they are usually brief, they resemble each other, they are anecdotal, they do not extend themselves, they make no great claims, they connect small things to other small things.”). And fame (“We have a culture crowded with people who are famous for being famous.”). And especially, of the importance of the poem over the poet (and how few writers are able to reach this stage of awareness):
when the poet becomes an instrument or agency of art, the poem freed from the poet’s ego may entertain the possibility of grandeur. And this grandeur, by a familiar paradox, may turn itself an apparent 180 degrees to tell the truth. Only when the poem turns wholly away from the petty ego, only when its internal structure fully serves art’s delicious purposes, may it serve to reveal and envision. “Man can embody truth”—said Yeats; I add the italic—”he cannot know it.” Embodiment is art and artfulness.
Of course, there is crankiness and contradiction in this essay but there are also some interesting kernels to be found. Anyway, worth a read.
myfanwy collins 