Methods & Muses Vol. 34

The Personal is Arboreal

Hello Everyone,

I hope this post finds you strong, and please accept my apologies for the tardiness.

June was a challenging month, both in terms of the personal, as Benjamin and I are relocating again, and the arboreal, as smoke from the Canada wildfires filled the air.

Now, I try to keep my M&M words on the optimistic side, because I believe joy is a force that sustains us, a power that helps. Not to worry, this post will be upbeat, in fact, I’m aiming for a plethora of joy, because what’s happened, and continues to happen to plants and animals, breaks me, but I must heal, to help with the healing.

I invite you to view Benjamin’s peaceful photos, lovingly collaged among my scribbles.

Please take your time with each image.

Inhale

and

exhale.

June was also a good-busy twirl of reading, writing, and collaborating.

I am tired, for sure, but as my poet-friend, Erin Schneider, would say, I am holding ‘bouquets of gratitude.’

In this spirit, thank you:

Benjamin Dauer and Kelly Smith-Campbell, my Half Wild bandmates, my art-loves, for dancing across the digital digits once again to create our video poem, Crane Waltz. Thank you for your voices, music, kick ass boot-and-skirt images, your love for Sandhill Cranes, your tech witch-and-wizardry, for sharing your time and your beautiful brains. I love you.

Erin Schneider, Philip Matthews, and Jenn Morea, my new poet-friends, for floating with me through Olbrich Botanical Gardens, writing gorgeous poems about plants – I love how you love their colors and petals, roots and tendrils. Thank you for sharing the awe of photosynthesis, and for listening to my poem about Paper Birches. Thank you, Dina Fisher, for your visual art, and for asking Erin to gather us. I loved exploring our plant-life connection to the stars, and I’m so excited to experience the installation!

Andrea Ott, and all the hard-working medical students of Blood and Thunder Literary Journal for publishing my work and nestling me among poet-nurses like Jenna Rindo, who calls pain an emotion and has passed ‘quantum particles of peace and comfort’ to her critical patients, poets like Kristen Hoggatt-Abader, who write with compassion about the ‘public enemies’ that afflict us like madness and addiction, and physician-painter, Heather Bullock, who finds time to paint between rotations and whose work graces the cover of the current issue. Thank you.

Mom, for being a good sport, as I write about your life and mine intertwined in the story of hip dysplasia and anxiety. Your young courage, the worry we both carry, your sense of humor and strength have formed me, and I am grateful. Despite what you might think, you’re a damn good subject for poetry. Thank you, and I love you.  

Michael McDermott, for establishing Black Earth Institute and About Place Journal. Thank you, Nickole Brown and Erin Coughlin Hollowell, for offering me a chance to work as an Assistant Editor – to read poems and prose, and get paid for it! Thank you, Athene Dilke and Jen Stever, for your careful eyes and thoughtful comments. It’s a pleasure to work with all of you. Thank you, Mary Silwance, for your writing, time, and energy. I am humbled by your clarity.

Cynthia Marie Hoffman, my poet-friend of the groovy boots, for strolling and laughing, for your gentle voice and being in my corner about novellas, for your honesty and quick-smart wit in navigating the weird (and frustrating) world of publishing poetry. Thank you for your mad-maven, match-making skills as you knew to introduce me to Jenny. Most of all, thank you for your poetry. Stuffed animals do write letters when we’re not looking, and yes, I dream of houses too. You rule.

Jenny Conrad, for asking me to read with you, for hustling to complete the book fest proposal, networking with poets like Heather Swan, and stirring my head with thoughts of poetry’s relationship with pain, the pros and cons of confession, and Lorrie Moore’s work. Most of all, thank you for the artistry that is your brilliant, dreamscape of a chapbook. I can’t wait for our tour!

Tyler Wagner for strolling by the lake, reading and shuffling my poems with care, and for suggesting a different (and now perfect) title. Thanks for seeing chapbooks as visual art and seeing your poems “maybe on an egg carton.” Most of all, thank you for your poetic voice – I love how you write about fish and mice and radicchio. I love that poetry is the ‘closest thing to prayer’ that you know. Here’s to the holy work and to doing some text transfers soon!

Christine Driscoll, for strolling with me and chatting in the park about the beauty of turkeys, the power and responsibility that comes with writing historical fiction, the joy of collecting horse figurines, and the spark plug that is New York City. Your insight and wisdom as to what marks or shapes each generation floors me. I look forward to more talks of passion projects. Thank you.

Jeanie Tomasko, once again, for the feedback on my work, and for sharing all of your work – your poetry, elegant chapbook, energetic paintings, and playful blue dog drawings. You inspire all kinds of art, so please, please teach another chapbook class with Rita Mae! Thank you also for drawing a map on a napkin, so Benjamin and I could find our way to gorgeous Cave Point. Here’s to more café conversations and art making in the very near future!  

Thank you, Rita Mae Reese and Ceara Yahn, for accepting my workshop proposal, Personal Timelines. Connecting with artists and being in an art classroom mean a lot to me, and I can’t wait to share poetry and collage with the lovely community of Art Lit Lab. I’m so excited and grateful!

Last and most vital, thank you Mother Nature, for every, single, breath.