Birthing the Literary baby

Writing motherhood, a book by Lisa Garrigues can be used by not just mothers but anyone, who treats what they write as their babies.

Origins

Faces of America is a fun book to browse through. Yo-Yo mas story with three generaions of building foundation towards making a maestro is interesting.
Malcolm Gladwell being called the creative journalist is so apt. the inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander's ancestors worked with the office.
Kristi yamaguchi

Thoughts of older selves

Michael Dumanis
Major Jackson

Erin Belieu

Craig Morgan Teicher

Many facets of poets

BJ Soloy likes company. Especially poets. soloy invites them into his poems. Lot of birder language in the poems.

Cole Swensen/s poems on gardens of Andre Le Notre is not a single spurt of an aha moment.A Garden is a start is a good introduction to the thrall of her work. Imagine gardens being called Oubliettes or dungeons at some poin in history. As a style, it seems to be her way to do long works on a single subject. On Hand in The book of a hundred hands.

Laurel snyder

Cate Marvin spreads the length of a sentence to its breadth.

Nibble for the day

In an artsake interview, Caroline Klocksiem admires Miklos Radnoti poetry.
His poetry. poetry on him. Thanks to Kate Daniels. Need more time for those long lines.

For a flavour of Cornelius Eady, Hardheaded weather is the one to choose.

Rachel Zucker. This photo speaks.

Delirious hem. A good enough place to introduce The Satin Dress by Dorothy Parker.

More poets

John paul o connor

Leslea Newman

Rebecca wolff - wampum in her Figment book.


Kathleen Rooney's review of come on all you ghosts

The n

in Wintry weather and Job slaughter poem could only have come from the author of The Method.
Sasha Steensen a 5 minute chapbook in Poets on teaching

Only this way

Lyn Lifshin's poem Michelle's Citrine Dress when asked to write on Obama's first 100 days, factors in the role of the first lady in how things go in that period. Browsing through poems of Lyn Lifshin in Cold Comfort on a coveted dress, another on extra fat, the take on the dress - image - makes more sense.
I do wonder how she writes so much. And there's an answer to it.

Think you can recall

Today while trying to understand how 'Small Memories' by Jose Saramago worked even though it was more a summary like memoir instead of craft in it. I used Tristine Rainer's Your Life as a story to get an idea of how a childhood memoir should be written. In that I came across a mention William Zinsser's book with Russell Baker's essay in it.
In Inventing the truth, Frank mccourt wrote about how he came to write his Angelas Ashes book. Eileen Simpson, Alfred kazin, Jill Ker Conway and others contributed to this book.

Disavowed nostalgia

After reading ‘The Notebook’, a translated compilation of the author’s blogs, that prompt themselves to the end and next, Jose Saramago became a mystery author to me.

In a beat, the author explains why he called the book small Memories. He began with big ambitions of showing himself as a person prone to desires and terrors as in the beginnings of St Anthony, but his journey brought him to the ‘Nothing of great note .... small memories of when I was small’.

The book begins with recalling of the place where Saramago’s childhood & adolescence
Occurred. His usage of the marsupial pouch, the magical cocoon for the place called Azinhaga make you wonder if we should trust him when he says that he doesn’t bemoan the loss of the familiar place.

He came to it and did not begin with it. At the whim of his random and disoriented memory and images the reader goes through his familar landscape of childhood and adolescence, where his motto must have been 'leave no tree unclimbed'. Most stories revolve around family, neigbours and school. A myth of seamstress, then prevalent Santa, old time porters, a little of political scene are touched upon too.He does have a disclaimer whenever he is unsure of details of a sequence.

When Saramago says that the best moment of glory was dethroning a spelling bee monarch as a child over and above winning the PEN prize for his novel, our search for the writer in his 'small memories' should be put at bay. He was taken by the potter at work, blind writer punching words into the paper, shoemaker familiar with Fontenelle. He was fascinated by artists, letters in a newspaper but writing wasnt his idee fixee in his childhood. Connections with three of his works do show up in this book.

There are no chapter breaks. No wands of dramas and scenes. Its plain childhoodese. An old kind of Memoir like Harry Bernstein's.

Food

from Small memories
Vianinhas or Vienna rolls
A string of pine nuts - edible necklace.
Nonedible pinenut necklace from Native Amerians.

Nothing to declare

is a short travel memoir of the Mary Morris's stay in San Miguel. Like the lost search for themselves in a church, library.. she moved away from her NY life onto an unknown terrain, a steep hill overlooking the fishermen with their nets of dragonfly.

She begins with the ways to get there and how she found her accomodation. From there her range of roaming is nailed to the realities of the places. The Wall. The screen that divides the rich and the poor.

The Alexandria Quartet

I cared enough about the place and looked for it in my Fodor's Mexico 2006.

Centos

Centos is a way to connect impossible times and lives.

Three little sausages

Like the three little pigs, Martha Silano's poem The Sausage parade has groups of trio.

Lucretius

Overtime by Philip Whalen

Lucretius and Horace

Yesterday, I saw a Road runner land and then run looking for things to add to its nest. Something white caught his attention but didnt make the cut.

Korin screen