Solstice Poems

The assignment 

Write a solstice poem the includes at least five of these words: luminous, bedazzling, sunny, saturated, radiant, incandescent, bright.

I spent the 2015 Solstice in the Newport Levee shopping area, raising funds for Alzheimer's research by writing instant poems. It was also Father's Day. I recreate the experience through the poetry assignment from my sister, given above.

Solstice on the Newport Levee
by Joy Dickerson

Wind whips the American flag into a bedazzling patriotism

Bright blue sky backdrops the Cincy cityscape.

Paving bricks wobble with waves of radiant heat,

I am saturated with sound--an African drummer, satellite radio,

Even explosions, as the Reds across the river

Set off a blast for each home run.

Saris of incandescent silk, too-tight tank tops

Geometric print dresses shimmer by

Shoes in every color of the rainbow

Skin in every color of coffee from black to palest ivory

(The glorious bright sunshine leaves my skin a luminous radiant red.)

The coolest sight of all on this hot day

Is the daddy dates, Daddy dragged toward

Restaurant, shop, aquarium.

Daddies making the ultimate sacrifice

On the day set aside for their honor,

Doing whatever his kid wants him to want to do.

_______

My sister Robin's poem takes us to the pool. Same writing prompt.

Solstice at the Swimming Pool

by Robin Dickerson

The pool is saturated with gentle coolness,

Sun bedazzles bright on the blue,

Swimmers ambling down through the woods luminous with expectation,

Peeking through the fence orange lilies incandescent against the green,

The earth radiates warmth.

I am saturated with summer.

Shrinklets--A way to summarize

My sister Robin is taking a class to renew her teacher's certification in Virginia. I'm working through it along with her. The teacher introduced her to the form called the shrinklet. A shrinklet helps you get at the key points of a piece of writing. For fiction, it might include the traditionals: setting, characters, plot, theme, and so on. For non-fiction, it might include key points, overall presentation, and purpose.

First, you write a short summary of what you read. Then you pick from the summary to write 5-6 rhyming couplets about the piece.

Robin challenged me to do a shrinklet of a book. First I chose Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat, a favorite of mine that I have memorized visually and textually. Here it is:

The Cat in the Hat Shrinklet

The Summary

In The Cat in the Hat, a strange visitor enters the lives of two bored children who live in an ordinary house in an ordinary town. The Cat breaks all the rules the children have learned, leaving them both horrified and marvelously entertained. His cleanup crew, Thing 1 and Thing 2, take care of the mess with zany energy and machinery, just before mom gets home. Everything is as it was, except perhaps the imaginations of the children. Growth doesn’t come through sameness.

The Shrinklet

Ordinary house, ordinary town,

Ordinary kids, feeling a bit down.

In comes the Cat, the Cat in the Hat

He make dizzying disorder—how about that!

Mom’s on her way home, what will we do?

Cat has the answer, Thing 1 and Thing 2.

All is now clean, well-ordered, the same,

No sign at all that Cat in the Hat came.

But chaos once loosed set the kids free—

But we won’t tell Mom, we won’t, will we?

Tidy and ordinary is more than a bit of a bore.

Now that we know there’s so much-much-much more.

Robin liked it, but we both thought Seuss was a bit too easy, so to explore the shrinklet further, I did Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which I've read as many times as The Cat in the Hat. I realize the key feature I forgot to use was the absolute beauty of Austen's grammar and punctuation. I'll try to add a couplet about that.

Pride and Prejudice Shrinklet

He emerges from the pond and thereafter she admires his "house."

The Summary

Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. D’Arcy. Jane Bingley and Mr. Bingley. Lydia and Wickham. A tangled skein of misunderstandings, cross-purposes, lies believed to be truths, truths believed to be lies. And that terrible Mr. Collins. A cast of memorable characters well drawn. All around the getting of husbands and the traps and lures attendant thereupon. Jane Austen has the most superb punctuation and grammar of any author; it’s like reading art. Balls and stiff formality. Singing at the piano. I have read this book at least 10 times and continue to love it. The tension of wondering whether Elizabeth and D’Arcy would ever both be ready to love each other at the same time pulls the reader through. Oh, and that memorable scene when Elizabeth sees D’Arcy emerge from swimming the pond, his clothes all plastered to his well-formed body…and she then starts to compliment his marvelous "house." 

The Shrinklet

The class struggle imperils the romance,

Leading D’Arcy and Elizabeth a slow dance.

But after D’Arcy emerges magnificently from the pond

Elizabeth admires his "house," which goes far beyond

The love-sickliness of Bingley and Jane

And the calculations of Lydia, so vain.

Pride and prejudice both must give way

For true love to blossom and triumph o’er the day.

Hearts and minds in balance—it’s this

That guarantees Lizzie’s matrimonial bliss.

[added couplet]

Reading Austen is absolutely no chore.

Her grammar and punctuation are really top drawer.

The Poems that Didn't Win

I submitted these poems to the Linda Ogle Russ Writing Contest at the Spring Literary Arts Festival and much to my chagrin, they didn't win. I love them too much to just weep silently, so I'm putting them here on the blog for all to share. The theme for this year's festival was "Inspriation, Imagination, Illumination."

Even Unto the Word

In the firmament of inspiration

New stars birth themselves from the

Struggles of a woman, a man: Rosa

Parks; Harvey Milk; Bob and Jeannie Graetz.

In the firmament of inspiration

Resides the path

Even unto the Word.

In a reality that is

More real than real

Art takes shape. From the

Great and fertile void froths forth an

Inflorescence of the

New.

Even unto the Word.

Into the darkness a flash:

Lightning

Lucidity

Until which everything was fixed

Mirror reflects

Insight flames

Neon, hums and moans

Even unto the Word.

The Wander Woman

Tootle toot toot, here comes the wander woman

In her denim trousers patched over with blue velvet

And fluttering scarves pinned to her scarlet shirt—

A rainbow of butterflies.

Here comes the wander woman, tootle toot toot,

With her box of smellful powders she always carries by

And her stained glass shards in a satin bag

And her tootle flute held to her mouth,

Scents and colors and sounds.

The wander woman stops

And drops her box and bag upon the ground

And gathers round her the young, the young at heart.

The bag of glass is passed, and the box of smellful powders,

And each chooses with great impulse.

Then the wander woman toots her tootle flute, toot toot,

And the young, the young at heart,

Hold the shards to the sun

And fling the smellful powders,

And dance to the rhythm of the colors

And sing to the smell of the music

And inhale the notes of the song.

The wander woman’s song on her tootle flute

Turns color into sound into scent

Into laughing into breathing into seeing

Into vision into knowing into Now.

And the wander woman smiles and packs up

And wanders on...

Moments Inspire

Sitting in a tin can

Atop an explosion

Step out onto the moon

Neil Armstrong

Girls can do anything

Girls are the future

Let’s work with the girls

Karen Freberg

Come out into the light

I’m here to recruit you

I am someone you know

Harvey Milk

“Move or I calla cops”

“You may do that”

The world changed on a bus

Rosa Parks

Sign this document

Even though you may hang for it

Redefine freedom

Thomas Jefferson

What will my verse be?

Fighter? Writer? Agent of change?

I won’t be around to see.

I am me.

Appalachia Project: A Parchment of Leaves, 2002

A Parchment of Leaves, by Silas House, 2002

"Then I noticed the new leaves on the redbud tree. The purple buds were being pushed away to make way for the leaves. I walked out to the tree and put my finger to a leaf, smooth like it was coated with wax. I could feel its veins, wet and round. I had always found comfort in the leaves, in their silence. They were like a parchment that holds the words of wisdom. Simply holding them in my hand gave me some of the peace that a tree possesses. To be like that--to just be--that's the most noble thing of all." (page 218)


The redbud tree is a key symbol in A Parchment of Leaves, by Silas House. The book tells the story of Vine, a Cherokee, as she negotiates divergent worlds and worldviews. Her family had settled in Kentucky after eluding the Trail of Tears (during which Cherokee people were removed from North Carolina to the reservations in the west), so she was always a displaced person of a kind. Her marriage to the white man Saul was equally a displacement, into yet another set of values and aesthetics. Vine experiences yet another disruption when her birth family is forcibly removed from their home when a white person purchases the land they lived on for generations. The family returns to North Carolina, where a Cherokee settlement has survived, but Vine is left on her own to hold onto her sense of identity as a woman, wife, mother, Cherokee, friend, and child of god.

Vine's father tried to be as "normal" (non-Cherokee) as possible in raising Vine. After the return to North Carolina, we learn that he has restored himself to his native identity. I was hoping for a depiction of this, and for Vine to take part in it, but the author wisely stopped the story when he should. I want a next book that tells this story.

Place and Time

The book is set in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and the land is beautifully described. Vine cannot see herself as separate from the land, the streams, the soil, the rock. She grew up among and in them. The book takes place between about 1913 and 1920 and encompasses World War I. The war plays a role in the plot, as Vine's husband must live away from home to work in a job that keeps him from going overseas.


Like Christy, A Parchment of Leaves depicts a spiritual journey. But Vine's god is not up in heaven or in a book. Vine's god is in the wind and in the trees and all of the other living things. Vine's god is in the yearning she has to comfort her children, make love with her husband. The paragraph I quoted at the beginning of this post, in addition to explicating the title of the book, is one of the clearest statements of Vine's relationship to the most sacred--the earth and the life upon it. She brings the redbud tree from her birth home when she gets married and its fragility, peril, and growth and beauty parallel her own. The tree recurs as a source of strength for Vine. (And makes me want to plant one in my yard next fall.)

Please see below for a poem I wrote called "Strong Like a Tree," that expresses a sentiment similar to the one stated by Vine at the beginning of this post.

Parchment starts and stays slow until about two-thirds of the way through. It's almost like the author doesn't have enough confidence in our understanding of Vine and so he goes out of his way to establish her goodness and credibility. Several times I felt like the other shoe was going to drop, my heart beat faster as I turned the page, and then nothing big happened. Honestly, if I hadn't committed to reading the book for this project, I don't know if I would have stuck with it. Now, I'm so glad I did. I guess the author's strategy worked, because I feel absolutely committed to Vine now and shed tears for her and felt pain for her.

Matriarchy

The book starts out as a story of a courtship and marriage but evolves into the story of a group of women. These are Saul's mother, Esme; Saul's brother's wife, Aidia; and the divorced (gasp!) midwife, Serena; as well as Vine. As is still common in Appalachia, good men go away to work wherever they can find a job and bad men drink too much, get in trouble, and wander off. This leaves a family group of women, a matriarchy. Esme is the matriarch. Vine is sort of matriarch-in-training. Each woman has one child.

The story of the friendship and mothership that evolves among these women is beautiful. They support each other through so much. And over and over again, they put aside opinions and judgments to reach out to each other. The children are part of their mothers, always referenced, always on the hip, under the kitchen table, wrapped in a quilt. It was striking and yet subtle, as it is in real life, that once a child is there, it is always there, a constant. The relationship of the women to each other and to their children, in addition to a spouse, makes them rich.

I did think that the author left the women an inordinate amount of time for pursuit of their own interests, for roaming around, and resting. A huge unspoken absence was laundry. When you have a family and have to carry and heat water, you work on laundry all the time. Even "modern" women with kids do wash almost every day. Cooking also seemed to be a snap. These women would have been bone tired most of the time, although their informal cooperative did allow for shared labor. There was a golden glow where housework and farm work was concerned.

Striking Images

• Vine returns to the village of her birth to find all of the houses destroyed. She locates her family's homesite by the orientation of the trees and finds the slab of rock that was the front stoop. She sits there remembering until she is run off by the owner of the mountain, who thinks a piece of paper lets you possess something.
• Vine setting out on a horse to cross the mountains to find her people in North Carolina, carrying with her the lock of hair of her great-grandmother who first left North Carolina to live in Kentucky.
• Marvelous depiction of a pentacostal church service, where Vine is amused and terrified. She was raised as a Quaker, very quietly worshipful. The singing, speaking in tongues, flailing on the floor, and general chaos were outside of her realm of experience and unlike anything she had ever considered to be worshipful.
• The combing of hair, Vine's by her mother; daughter Birdie's by Vine.
• The washing of the bodies of the dead--a woman's duty. All four women perform this task.

Cherokee People

Author Silas House, who is part
Cherokee

When I decided to read novels of Appalachia, I did not think about native Americans. One of the reasons I chose to read this book second was that I was curious about the role the Cherokee played in the region. They are one of the few native groups that still reside in the land of their ancestors, even if they had to reclaim it after the Trail of Tears. In Ohio, the native Americans were moved out before large-scale settlement occurred; they have not been part of my personal experience of Appalachia. Because of earlier studies, I at least am aware that a strange void existed where there should have been people. We whites were able to envision the land in our own way, impose our values without interference from people who had actually lived there and knew the place.


Strong Like a Tree, by Joy Dickerson

I want to be strong like a tree

With a sturdy wooden trunk,

A crown of dancing green.

I want to feel sap rise,

Hear leaves shake,

Grow back broken branches.

I want to sway in the wind,

Capture the light of the sun,

Taste rain.

I want to be strong like a tree,

Roots making love to the soil,

Holding fast,

Bounty of earth

In my grasp.

I want to be strong like a tree,

To know in my heartwood

That spring will come

And, with it, bring

A warm time.

Conclusion

A Parchment of Leaves is excellent, as a depiction of Appalachia, but more so as a story of one woman's struggle to hold onto meaning and love. If you've read this book, I'd love to hear from you about your response to it.