Category: musings

One-Liner Wednesday: courage

Courage, after all, is not being unafraid, but doing what needs to be done in spite of fear.

James L. Farmer

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/02/28/one-liner-wednesday-be-a-friend/

First Royalties

Last week, I received my first ever royalties payment on the copies of my poetry chapbook Hearts, which was published by Kelsay Books in May, 2023.

The payment covered the copies sold through the Kelsay Books website and on Amazon in 2023. (If you are lucky enough to still have an independent bookstore near you, they can also order Hearts for you through Ingram.)

It turns out that I had sold more copies myself, in person and through mail order, than I had online.

Yay, me?

At any rate, I’m now working on 2024 sales, so feel free to order at either of the links above, through your favorite local independent bookstore, or directly from me. I can arrange to meet up or deliver locally or send by mail in the US. You may email me at jcorey.poet@gmail.com to make arrangements or for more information.

I’m also available to give readings at bookstores, book club meetings, libraries, or anywhere else that might want to invite me. I could discuss Hearts, which revolves around my mother in her final years, or, more likely, read a more wide-ranging selection of my work and take questions. I could even throw in some blogging discussion, if that is of interest. I’m open to travelling to your venue or appearing virtually, so feel free to make a proposal that would suit you and your group!

I’m still near the beginning of the learning curve on the whole promotion aspect of authorship, so, please, also feel free to send along any advice or tips you may have.

Thanks to everyone who has purchased or read Hearts, written a review, and/or communicated with me about their own reflections and reactions. It has been a special experience for me knowing that my poems reach people and remind them of aspects of their own lives.

I also appreciate the support of the readers at Top of JC’s Mind. I’ll continue to keep you posted about my poet-life, plus a whole lot more, here.

In gratitude,
Joanne Corey

Ronald Perera memorial concert

Earlier this month, I was privileged to attend a memorial concert for Ron Perera, composer and professor emeritus of music at Smith College. The concert took place in Sweeney Concert Hall in Sage Hall, the long-time center of musical life on campus. I had taken five semesters of theory and composition with Mr. Perera and he had been my major advisor. We had been in touch variously over the decades and we had enjoyed a wonderful lunch together last spring when I was back on campus to sing with the Smith College Alumnae Chorus.

All the pieces at the concert were Ron Perera’s compositions, some of which were performed by the musicians for whom they were written. I especially appreciated seeing pianist Professor Emerita Monica Jakuc Leverett perform Out of Shadow almost 36 years after its premiere. Another piano piece that I loved was Three Waltzes for Four Hands, written for Ron’s three daughters, and performed by Professor Emeritus Kenneth Fearn and his daughter, Kaeza. I’m looking forward to ordering a copy for daughter E and son-in-law L to play for our granddaughters ABC and JG.

As a writer and choral singer, I was especially drawn to the choral pieces that opened and closed the concert. The opening was “Hold Out Your Hands Over the Earth” from The Outermost House, text by Henry Beston. The work was commissioned by the Chatham Chorale, on Cape Cod. The Perera family lived on the Cape during the summers and Ron loved to sail there. Some of the text in this movement is:

To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honor the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places.

It was a perfect reflection to begin.

Besides the music, there were four remembrances in the program. The first was from one of Ron’s daughters, Rosalind, which also served as a welcome. Two were from pastors of St. John’s Episcopal Church, located in the midst of Smith’s campus, where Ron was a long-time member and volunteer. The other was from Professor Emeritus Donald Wheelock, who was Ron’s composer-colleague for many years and who helped to organize the concert. It was beautiful to hear them speak about his kind, caring nature and the depth and breadth of his thoughts, talents, interests, and beliefs. Even as a college student, I could sense what a wonderful man he was and it was inspiring to hear how he sustained those qualities throughout his life and shared them with so many, most especially his family.

The concert closed with the Smith College Chamber Singers offering Ron’s setting of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Music, When Soft Voices Die” conducted by Jonathan Hirsh, who is a current faculty member, friend of Ron, and another concert organizer. He had graciously kept me apprised of the plans as the memorial came together so that I could arrange to attend. It was such a perfect, quiet, love-filled ending to the memorial. “And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,/ Love itself shall slumber on.”

At the reception after the concert, I was able to speak briefly with Don Wheelock and Jonathan Hirsh and at greater length with the third organizer, Professor Emerita Karen Smith Emerson. I am grateful for their work in putting the program together to celebrate a remarkable, generous, talented man who leaves a legacy of music and writings but, more importantly, of human connection and spiritual strength.

I’m also grateful to CK, Smith ’81, and her spouse who opened their lovely home near campus to B and me for the weekend. I appreciated their hospitality and their companionship at the concert and reception. I’m hoping CK will be able to sing with us the next time I’m back on campus for an event with the Smith College Alumnae Chorus.

It will be bittersweet, though, knowing that Ron will not be there to hear us. Maybe, we will perform a piece of his music in remembrance…

recording of the concert

(grand)childcare

(Photo: ABC’s bear wearing a Binghamton Rumble Ponies cap)

Spouse B, daughter T, and I are in London this week visiting daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG for half-term break. This first half of the week, both E and L are working, so our main goal is taking care of ABC and JG so they can do that.

The last time we were together in person was April when they came to our home in the US. Although we do video calls, they can’t really capture the changes that happen. JG, now 3 and attending full-day nursery school is chatting up a storm! She loves making puzzles, zooming around our rental house near their home, and following the lead of 6-year-old ABC, who likes or tolerates it most of the time. ABC, now in year 2 at school, is reading well and a master of make-believe. She can make up songs and lyrics on the spot, taking after her musically-and-literary-accomplished parents. ABC also enjoys dance and art.

I love watching B being Grandpa, playing games, reading stories, preparing meals and snacks, and dozing off during naptime. T is an involved auntie, playing endless games of hide-and-seek and whatever make-believe ABC has invented and giving gentle hugs, in deference to her still-healing shoulder.

My favorite thing is just being here as family. With the ocean between us, it’s a rare gift to snuggle on the couch, especially with JG who was born during the early part of the pandemic and whom we didn’t get to meet in person until she was a year old. Such a different grandparenting experience than with ABC who lived with us in the US until she was two.

For JG, I’m just Nana. ABC, though, remembers her Great-Nana, who passed away in 2019.

I miss my parents and wish I could be as good a grandparent as they were with E and T.

flying in the dark

I like window seats.

Granted, I don’t often get to sit in one because we are most likely to be travelling as a group of three on a long flight, which usually puts us in the center of the plane and far from the windows.

This morning, though, I got to sit in the window seat of a small jet, flying from our home airport to Detroit, from which we will continue after a ten-ish hour layover to London to visit daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG.

Even though it was dark out, I enjoyed looking out the window. Town and city lights. Occasional wisps of clouds. A few stars visible above the wing.

As we flew west, it seemed we were trying to outrun dawn. We nearly succeeded, orange and pink blossoming on the eastern horizon as we made our descent.

The stars had disappeared but Venus shown brightly.

One-Liner Wednesday: on break

After diligently posting daily for Just Jot It January, I’ve been taking a break but hope to be back with some new posts in a few days, although some planned travel may get in the way…

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/02/07/one-liner-wednesday-so-that-happened/

One-Liner Wednesday: a compassionate heart

To be compassionate is to have a heart that suffers from the misfortune of others because we think of it as our own.

Thomas Aquinas

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays and/or the last day of Just Jot It January ’24! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/31/one-liner-wednesday-jusjojan24-the-31st-goals/ 

(almost) the end of Just Jot It January ’24

Whew! Launching into the last written post of Linda’s Just Jot It January ’24! There is one more day in January, but I’ll be posting a quote tomorrow for One-Liner Wednesday, which means no running on about things.

Thanks once again to author Linda G. Hill of Life in Progress for offering this opportunity to get the blogging year off to a good start by posting every day in January.

I’m grateful to have met this challenge again this year, although I can’t carry this posting pace into the rest of the months. I’m planning to spend a lot of time through mid-April revising my full-length poetry collection in preparation for work with a professional editor, which will probably be followed by another round of revisions before a decision point on next steps toward publication. I should probably also devote some time to doing single poem submissions. I tend to be diligent about that for a bit and then fall off the wagon and go for a few months without putting work out to journals and presses. The places that are still actively considering my work have dwindled so I guess it’s time to get back on that.

Thanks also to the other Just Jot It January bloggers and readers. I appreciate having a blogging community for support and inspiration.

Write on – in whatever way works best for you – and let’s all meet up at Linda’s for Just Jot It January ’25! Don’t forget, though, that Linda coordinates One-Liner Wednesdays and Stream of Consciousness Saturdays year-round. While I don’t manage those every week, I do them often so I hope to meet you there sometimes, too.
*****
You can find out more about Just Jot It January and join in here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/30/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-30th-2024/

Writing about family

Today’s prompt for Linda’s Just Jot It January is “family,” contributed by Kim of Twisted Trunk Travels. Check out their blogs!

Over these last ten-ish years of writing poetry and blogging here at Top of JC’s Mind, I have written way more often about my family than I thought I would. Of course, it made perfect sense to blog about visiting daughter E and son-in-law L in Hawai’i, as folks often blog about their travels, but as time and circumstances changed and I faced the challenges of caregiving for various generations of the family, posts about family became more frequent. I also used poetry as a way to process things that were going on with my family, most notably about my mother’s experiences living with and dying from heart disease, which became my first published chapbook, Hearts (Kelsay Books, 2023).

I do try to protect my family members by referring to them with initials or nicknames rather than their given names. Nearly all of them use a different surname so only people who know us in real life are likely to recognize them from posts. Currently, spouse B and daughter T are most likely to appear as we are living in the same house, although we will soon be going to visit daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG in London. which may generate some posts. My daughters’ grandparents were called on the blog by the names they used for them, Nana and Paco for my parents and Grandma for B’s mom. (Sadly, B’s dad, known as Grandpa, passed away in 2005, before I was blogging and writing poetry, although his death was the subject of one of my earliest published poems.) If you are perusing the archives of Top of JC’s Mind, you’ll come across posts dealing with their final years and the grief following their deaths.

One thing that strikes me about my family posts and poems is how often they spark comments and conversations about people’s own experiences. Knowing that I offer that space for people to reflect on themselves and their own families is a big part of why I continue to write about my family.

What about you? Do you find it helpful to write about your family, either privately in a journal or in more public ways?
*****
It’s not too late to join in with #JusJoJan24! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/29/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-29th-2024/ 

JC’s Confessions #29

In the first few seasons of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert did a recurring skit, then a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.

It’s been a hard few months.

More than a few?

Hard to keep track…

When I wrote this post at the end of October, I was re-organizing to structure my time for more poetry and less volunteering, but B’s COVID diagnosis in November, which turned into two weeks of him isolating in part of the house, leaving me responsible for keeping the household going, followed by daughter T’s shoulder surgery/aftermath in December left me with a lot to do, not a lot of holiday spirit, and very little creative brain availability. Thrown on top of this was the unexpected return of the threat of shale gas development, which we thought had ended with the New York State high-volume hydrofracking ban nine years ago, this time in the guise of an unproven scheme to use supercritical carbon dioxide to extract methane from shale and sequester carbon. This necessitated the reactivation of the coalition that won the fracking ban back then and hours of conference calls, research, and emails. Oh, and what I thought would be one or two local interviews for my alma mater turned into a series of zoom interviews across the region, taking a lot more time and energy than I had expected when I said yes to the opportunity. (There’s also some other personal and family health stuff going on, which I won’t go into here.)

I’ve been struggling with prioritizing and keeping my attention where it belongs to finish tasks. My best intentions to simplify have met with the reality tsunami and washed out to sea.

I am, though, not suffering as much as I was last January when I wrote JC’s Confessions #26. Then, I realized I was still grieving. I am in a different place in dealing with losses now.

We are spending a couple of weeks in February visiting our family in London, UK. This will get me away from most meetings. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a little bit of poetry time in the early mornings or late evenings to continue work on revision of my full-length manuscript. I’m attempting to line edit the whole thing and, perhaps, re-order it to prepare for work with a professional editor in April. It’s felt like fits and starts so far but I have worked on about 20% of the poems to this point.

I have followed through on my commitment to post daily for Just Jot It January but will be pulling back the post pace for February and trying to devote that time to poetry.

So, yes, organizing my time and following through on plans is still a work in progress.

And, come next January, there is a possibility that some version of this Confession will recur.

Or, maybe, I’ll finally stop feeling badly about having to re-vamp, re-adjust, postpone, and re-jigger my life so often.

I can hope.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/28/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-28th-2024/