Today is the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and one of the first things I read is this tender, reflective piece from Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post about the unfinished art quilt and essay “Winter” – the last in a series that his spouse Avis Collins Robinson was working on at the time of her death. (The link above is a gift so it will open for everyone without paywall.)
The piece begins:
For Avis Collins Robinson, the artist who created these works heralding the seasons, winter meant both an end and a beginning. The bare trees and sere landscape were stark, but they held the promise of spring and renewal — not a mere hope but a promise.
I wanted to share his words and her art with you as the seasons continue to unfold inexorably before us.
We are fortunate that art and words continue to speak to us, even when their creators have passed away.
It’s been a busy week and I didn’t look at Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday post until just now, early Saturday morning. (Linda puts it out on Friday so folks have a bit of a heads-up, although huge amounts of advanced planning, as well as edits, are against the SoCS rules.)
As it happens, my post yesterday goes very well with the SoCS prompt today, which is “bake.”
I wrote yesterday about a poem that was just published by Silver Birch Press, “My husband and daughters make Christmas gingerbread.” Yes, it’s “make” rather than “bake” in the title, but baking is definitely involved in the poem.
B has turned into the main baker in the house. This year, with no visits from extended family planned and just the three of us at home, B is not doing our usual Christmas practice of having at least a half dozen kinds of cookies available at once. Instead, he is doing serial baking. So far, he has made pfeffernüsse and pecan puffs.
No gingerbread yet, but I’m sure it will be coming…
It’s no secret that submitting poetry for publication is mostly an exercise in rejection, but this week is a time to share some successes. Yesterday, I posted about the publication of three poems in Emulate. Today, I’m happy to share that Silver Birch Press has published my poem “My husband and daughters make Christmas gingerbread” as part of their SPICES & SEASONINGS Series! Many thanks to Melanie and the Silver Birch Press team for including me in this several-months-long-and-counting series!
I submitted to the series back in late August and received the acceptance notification in early September, but assumed, correctly, that they would hold publication until Christmas-cookie-baking season. It’s fun and festive to have it appear now. (Photo is some of our gingerbread from 2010.)
This poem started with a prompt from Heather Dorn in December, 2015, when she was facilitating a women’s poetry workshop called Sappho’s Circle. The middle “action” section of the poem descends from that time. When the Silver Birch Press call for submissions came in this summer, calling for writing about a specific spice or seasoning, I immediately thought of that poem and set about revising it to “spice it up.”
B and I have often discussed how it is the amount of clove in these cookies that distinguishes them so that became the focus of the new opening and closing sections. I was also able to workshop the poem with my fellow Grapevine Poets before submitting to Silver Birch Press.
As it happens, Silver Birch published the poem on their site yesterday, so I was able to share it via social media then, while waiting to do the blog post today, given that I had already posted about the poems in Emulate yesterday and wanted to spread the poetic good news reporting out a bit here at Top of JC’s Mind.
Because of that, I’ve already had a number of comments on Facebook about the poem. One from my college roommate was especially touching, as she referenced her “unexpected joy” at seeing her mother’s words in the cookbook inscription in my poem. My eyes welled with tears, remembering our moms, both of whom died a few years ago.
In workshopping this poem, there was discussion about how much detail to leave in the poem and how much to cut. There is always a tension in revision on this point and I admire poets who can choose just the right detail to impact their audience. I tend to be guilty of too much detail, which sometimes leads to comments of “why should I care?” about some detail or other. I’m grateful, though, that I chose to leave that particular detail in this poem.
Granted, no other reader may have found that specific moment of joy from this poem, but, perhaps, there is another detail that struck them, that reminded them of family or baking or Christmas tradition. It’s not something that I’m likely to ever know.
This poem has been described to me as “lovely” and “charming.” I realize that others would term it overly sentimental or unsophisticated.
Perhaps, it is all of those things.
I do know, though, that it is authentic to who I am as a poet and as a person. I think – or, at least, I hope – that comes through to those who encounter my work.
As always, your comments are welcome, either here, on Facebook, or at the Silver Birch Press post.
Wishing you all a delicious treat that suits your taste!
I’m pleased to share the online version of Emulate Magazine Fall 2023 (Volume 5, Issue 1), which includes three of my MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts) ekphrastic poems. Many thanks to the Emulate Magazine team at Smith College for including my work in this issue! Smith is my alma mater, so being chosen for this publication is particularly close to my heart.
The theme of the issue is “Metamorphosis.” I was excited to discover that the editorial team had chosen my poem, “Time/Rate/Distance,” to open the issue! This poem is based on Richard Nonas’s Cut Back Through (for Bjorn), which is a long-term outdoor installation on the MASS MoCA grounds. It is comprised of three large granite chairs and five footstools. I suppose “Time/Rate/Distance” could be considered an American sonnet, because it has 14 lines, with a turn between lines 8 and 9, like an Italian sonnet. (Just throwing that comment in to address the common criticism that I don’t write enough in received Western forms, like sonnets, villanelles, and sestinas.)
“I Must Speak My Poem” (page 11) is based on Stephen Vitiello’s sound installation All Those Vanished Engines, housed in the Boiler House at MASS MoCA. My beloved Boiler House Poets Collective recorded our first reading there and we always visit when we are back for our reunion residencies. I was disappointed this year that we weren’t able to climb all the way to the rooftop, which offers a spectacular view of North Adams and the surrounding hills.
“Translation” (page 26) is a haiku based on the works of Justin Favela, whose pieces translating landscape paintings by José María Velasco using the paper and glue techniques of piñata art were part of the MASS MoCA Kissing Through a Curtain exhibition (2020-2021). I especially love that this poem appears on the page with a striking photograph by Avery Maltz.
All three of these poems are part of my chapbook manuscript of ekphrastic poems based on current and past exhibitions at MASS MoCA. Two of them are also included in my full-length manuscript centered on the North Adams area. I will, of course, add Emulate Magazine to my list of acknowledgements and my author page, joannecorey.com.
Be sure to check out this issue of Emulate Magazine! It is chock-full of poetry, prose, and images, all centered on metamorphosis and the myriad ways it manifests.
To me, the holiday season is not the same without sending cards and/or letters to people.
My ideal for many years was to send cards with handwritten notes to everyone on my list, with some people getting customized printed letters.
I’ve modified from that ideal, though, perhaps permanently, as life has gotten more stressful or busy or overwhelming in various ways.
For example, there have been years that I wrote to friends in November rather than December because I couldn’t bear to send a holiday letter that announced the death of a parent. There have been times when other family members have sent out cards to our extended family so I could concentrate on sending cards to my friends.
I send out greetings to people from many decades of my life, going back to high school days, continuing through college, and on through my decades living here. I send cards to people I haven’t seen for forty years. I send cards to people who I haven’t heard from for years and years. (That should have been “whom” but stream of consciousness rules don’t allow for edits!)
Perhaps, there are people who get my greetings and think “Why?” after all this time do I still send out my well wishes and stories of what I and my family are doing these days.
It’s important to me to let you know that I’m thinking about you and wishing you well and honoring the place you had in my life.
Even if you never read what I’ve written or even open the envelope.
I’m pleased to share the December post from the Kelsay Books blog that features the three of us on our MASS MoCA adventures. While Jessica and I live near one another and are long-time members of the Grapevine Poets and BHPC, this was our first time meeting Mary Beth. Although Mary Beth, as a Massachusite, was already familiar with MASS MoCA, we were thrilled to welcome her to BHPC and look forward to her return next fall for our 2024 reunion residency.
Mary Beth was the first of us to publish with Kelsay. Her debut collection, Winter at a Summer House, was published in November, 2021. Jessica’s second chapbook, All Those Years Underwater, followed in November, 2022. (Jessica’s first chapbook, For Dear Life, had been published by Finishing Line Press in May, 2022.) My first chapbook, Hearts, appeared in May, 2023.
I love this photo of us taken by fellow BHPC member Wendy Stewart! Wendy managed to catch not only, from left to right, me, Mary Beth, and Jessica, with our books and smiles but also a reflection of part of Natalie Jeremijenko’s Tree Logic, the iconic art installation at the main entrance to MASS MoCA. Commonly referred to as “the upside-down trees,” the maples had graced the courtyard since April 1999, with the trees replaced occasionally so that they could re-orient themselves and spread their roots. The image of the upside-down tree had come to symbolize MASS MoCA and was featured on a number of items in the gift shop.
As I was heading home from our residency, I was shocked to read that Tree Logic was ending its almost 25 years on exhibit in just a few days. The final trees are transplanted on the MASS MoCA campus along the Speedway. I’ll make sure to visit them next October when BHPC is again in residence, or, perhaps, I will make it back to the Museum next May for the 25th anniversary celebration.
I know the trees will be reaching for the light in their new orientation, their roots expanding to anchor them to the site of so much change over the decades. Over time, they will straighten, although they will always bear some remembrance of their time of inversion.
It seems to me that the bulk of what we’ve done is a celebration of family. They’re all families that hang together, they all love one another, they go through the ordeal of life, but they come out on the other side of that ordeal connected. Together.
Norman Lear, who died yesterday at the age of 101, on his work which included television series All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons, Good Times, Sanford and Son, and One Day at a Time.
These days, I create poems. I create posts here at Top of JC’s Mind.
I also express myself creatively in less obvious ways. Through cooking. Through taking photos (on occasion. I’m not one to be constantly photographing.) In conversation. While singing. In correspondence. In my own thoughts as I’m puzzling through a complex situation and trying to find options.
I love my role in creating my family.
I also love being part of creating community, whether that is on a small, local level or something much broader, like the global community working on climate change. Even though I am a very, very tiny part of such a large community, I realize that my creativity and energy are adding to the effort.
An aspect of creativity that was very important to me as a young adult was writing music. That part of my creative life was lost to me in 2005 when we went through a crisis at my Catholic parish that fractured my relationship with it and my music ministry. Because I wrote music for them, my impetus to use my creativity to write music also broke. I think that rupture may be part of the reason I turned to poetry as a means of creative expression. That artistic energy needed somewhere to go.
Will I eventually return to writing music? At this point, I don’t anticipate that happening.
Yes, it’s been over a month since I returned home from the Boiler House Poets Collective residency with The Studios at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts) in North Adams but I am finally getting around to a wrap-up post. I did post a couple of times during the residency, about Marika Maijala and our reading at the Bear & Bee Bookshop, although that was a far cry from most of our years in residence when I would post daily. Things were very busy, so posting took a back seat and this past month has been loaded with other commitments, such as the launch of the Third Act Upstate New York working group and the first concert of the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton’s 45th anniversary season. I also needed time to reflect on the residency and what it meant for the future of the Boiler House Poets Collective.
Until this year, the Boiler House Poets Collective reunion residencies had always had at least half of the participants being members of the original group that met in 2015 as the first group of poets in residence brought together in a collaboration between Jeffrey Levine of Tupelo Press and The Studios at MASS MoCA. For 2023, the number of participants went from eight to ten, with only myself and Kyle Laws planning to return in 2023. (Sadly, last-minute health complications prevented Kyle from joining us, so I was the lone “original” in 2023. I’m hoping to have this be a one-time occurrence.)
I had inherited the role of liaison with The Studios but also wound up acting as an organizer for this year of transition. I was determined to assemble a full complement of ten and to provide for all the elements that had been part of past residencies, including studio time, museum visits, daily workshopping, a group project, a public reading, and discussion/social time (often accompanied by food and drink). Because, in prior years, we had always had a core of originals, adding in new participants from among our poet-friends as slots became available, we hadn’t felt called to define who we were as a group. I thought, at this juncture, we needed to be more intentional about our identity and our goals. I let people know that we would be having an organizational meeting near the end of the residency to talk about what was important to us and what our plans would be going forward.
I admit that I was really nervous about how things would work out with so many people who had never met each other. For the first time, we had a member who was not herself a poet. In 2022, the BHPC residency overlapped with the residency of Nancy Edelstein, whose work centers around light. With that inspiration, I had designed our group project around the theme of light, inviting each person to contribute work that had to do with light. I had expected a group of poems but the amazing thing was that people began to notice light in new ways. One of our members was inspired to take photographs showcasing light and shadow. We were able to share our light-themed work with each other. It’s not yet clear whether or not we will produce some conglomeration of these that is shareable with the public. If we do, I’ll be sure to share it here.
Another thing that was new for BHPC this year was that we workshopped some pieces that were not poetry, including an essay, scene from a play, and excerpt of a radio play. It was interesting to expand our literary horizons. While we expect to remain grounded in poetry, it’s good to have that flexibility to serve our members’ needs.
I felt that the group had a good vibe from the time of our opening night dinner when we were first together but I was nervous for our organizational meeting when people would be assessing how things had gone and if they wanted to return in 2024. I was thrilled – and a bit teary – when all but one person immediately said they wanted to return next year; the remaining person hopes to but lives across the country, creating a lot more complications than those of us within easy driving distance. People enthusiastically volunteered for organizational roles, including inventing some duties I would never have thought of on my own, so that I will be able to concentrate on just doing the liaison role. I even have a deputy who is shadowing me and can take over if I’m sidelined for any reason. This new constellation has embraced being a collective in a wonderful way and I am immensely grateful.
On a personal level, I appreciated how supportive people were of my work. As regular readers here at Top of JC’s Mind may recall, I grew up in the North Adams area and have two manuscripts, a full-length and a chapbook, that I am submitting to presses and contests. I’m at a crossroads with the full-length collection. I have a contract offer from a hybrid publisher but I’m not sure that is the way I want to go. One day over lunch, people were listening to my concerns and offering suggestions, which were very helpful and have led to my scheduling a manuscript consultation with a professional editor next month. I’m hoping that will help me clarify the path I need to pursue.
I also appreciated that people took my work seriously. One of the poets said that my poems were important in preserving the history of the area. That was so gratifying to me, even though I seldom dare to think in those terms. I do think about those poems as being ones that only I would write, given my perspective as someone who grew up there but that has lived elsewhere most of my adult life. It’s a sort of inside/outside perspective that would be difficult to replicate in quite the same way. I don’t tend to think that my following the dictum to “write what you know” would seem important to someone else, so it was nice to hear. It makes my search for a publisher and my wish to have the book be as strong as possible feel more weighty.
So, I have joyfully marked the dates for the 2024 Boiler House Poets Collective residency on my calendar for next October. I’m looking forward to being among this remarkable group of women again, but I’m also grateful to know that, if something happens that prevents me from being there, the group will go on without me.
Today’s notification from WordPress: “Congratulations! Your site, Joanne Corey, passed 100 all-time views.” This is my author site and domain name that I finally set up in honor of the release of my first chapbook and the tenth anniversary of Top of JC’s Mind. I suppose it shouldn’t have taken almost two months to get 100 views, but, hey, not bad for a poet. 😉
This super-sized One-Liner Wednesday post is part of a series spearheaded by Linda Hill, author and blogger at Life in Progress. Click the link for a lovely autumnal photo and for instructions on how to join in the #1linerWeds fun!
Joanne Corey 