Eric Carle, beloved author/artist of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and many other books, lived in western Massachusetts where I grew up and I’m very happy that Bombas chose to honor his legacy with a line of socks for both children and adults.
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2025/07/30/one-liner-wednesday-i-heart-tomatoes/
Yesterday, it was my pleasure to attend a reading by my fellow Grapevine and Boiler House Poets Collective friend Merrill Oliver Douglas and Suzanne Cleary at the Broome County (NY) Arts Council.
Merrill and Suzanne met decades ago in Binghamton, where Suzanne grew up and where Merrill re-located for graduate school and then settled. Merrill grew up in New York City and Suzanne has lived in that area for over thirty years. Their mirrored biographies drew together a fun mix of people in attendance, including Merrill’s Grapevine poet-friends and some of Suzanne’s high school classmates. We filled the Artisan Gallery at the Broome County Arts Council, commandeering extra chairs as needed. Bonus: In addition to poetry, we enjoyed the BCAC Members’ Juried Exhibition on display this month.
The impetus for the reading was the release of Merrill’s first full-length poetry collection, Persephone Heads for the Gate, winner of the Gerald Cable Book Award published by Silverfish Review Press. We were treated to several poems from the new book, including the title poem, as well as a number of more recently written poems. As always with Merrill’s work, I was impressed by her ability to bring a unique but no-nonsense perspective to everyday objects and occurrences, curating just the right details to reveal the essence of her subjects. Persephone joins Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020) on the shelves at the Artisan Gallery. For those outside our area, they can also be ordered through the provided links.
This was my first opportunity to hear Suzanne Cleary read in-person and I loved it! She somehow manages to maintain energy and insight in longer narrative poems, a skill that I much admire but doubt I will ever attain. In honor of reading back in her hometown, Suzanne chose some poems with local ties, as well as those relating to different time periods and circumstances. Some were from her prior books (listings with ordering information here) while others were newer work. We all loved the first poem she read, which was about her experiences with reading Merrill’s work! We were also thrilled with the news that Suzanne will have a new book, The Odds, published in Spring 2025 by New York Quarterly Books. It was chosen by poet Jan Beatty as winner of the 2024 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award. Updated information should be available through the links I’ve provided or ask at your favorite bookstore.
Merrill and Suzanne answered audience questions and then engaged in conversation and book signing. It was a wonderful experience! I encourage you all to check out their work and enjoy!
For North Adams, Massachusetts area folks, the Boiler House Poets Collective invites you to a reading at the Bear & Bee Bookshop, 28 Holden St., North Adams, on Wednesday, October 9, at 7 PM.
This is our only public event during our week as a workshop-in-residence at the Studios at MASS MoCA.
The reading will be a sampler of the work of our ten residents this year, lasting about an hour, followed by Q&A and light refreshments.
Bear & Bee will be selling books by our poets with the authors available to do signings.
Please join us for this free event!
Gearing up for a Saturday, March 16, 2024 event from noon to 4 PM at our local Vestal, NY Barnes & Noble Bookstore, featuring five Grapevine Poets, including me. The Grapevine Poets take their name from The Grapevine Cafe in Johnson City where we meet regularly to workshop poems, talk, and eat, of course!
Merrill Douglas, Jessica Dubey, Carol Mikoda, Burt Myers, and I, Joanne Corey, will be at individual tables scattered about the store for book signing and conversation from noon to three. We will each have a stamp to mark your entry to a drawing for a Barnes and Noble gift card if you visit all five of us.
At 3:00 or so, we will have a reading in the music department. We are hoping that some of our Grapevine colleagues will appear, as well.
Please join us at whatever point you are able. You can say that you “heard it through the grapevine!”
Many thanks to Burt Myers for the flyer. Burt is a talented graphic artist besides being a talented poet.
It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming of themselves like grass.
Eudora Welty
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays and/or Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/24/one-liner-wednesday-jusjojan24-the-24th-lights-keep-flickering/
In honor of Banned Books Week, I’m sharing my poem “The Banned Bookmobile” which was first published in the Fall-Winter 2022 issue of Rat’s Ass Review.
THE BANNED BOOKMOBILE by Joanne Corey
Do you need a special license to drive
a bus of books? Children
are more fragile; books,
more combustible.
Children’s minds need fire,
need those books to start a blaze.
How else to know that a pair of penguin
dads can raise a chick?
That witches and wizards can be evil
or good or somewhere in the flawed between?
That even the bluest eye cannot
confer beauty and love?
That it’s a sin to kill
a mockingbird?
(You can read a bit of backstory for this poem in my blog post here.)
When we visited London in December, E got tickets for us to go to the Warner Brothers Studio – The Making of Harry Potter tour! The Harry Potter books and films were very important to our family, so we were thrilled to be able to go. We went on a weekday when our son-in-law had to be at work, so we were a party of five – my spouse B, our daughters E and T, our granddaughter ABC, and me. E was the only one who had been there before.
The Studios are outside London, so we needed to use trains and buses to get there. The last segment is on special studio buses. One of the first things you see after entering is a very large dragon in flight. We weren’t sure how ABC, at two and a half, would react to such things, but she loves dinosaurs and accepted dragons as a dinosaur-variant. (T is holding ABC in the foreground.)
Because so many people visit, the start times of the tour are staggered throughout the day. There are some introductory remarks from tour guides and a short film before your group is ushered into the Great Hall. Because we were there in December, everything was decorated for Christmas, including, of course, Christmas crackers at each place at the table.
You can see little details of the set, like the tree-toppers with flying witches…
and the wreath around the crest on the fireplace.
After the Great Hall, the rest of the tour is self-guided, laid out in a uni-directional way. There are lots of sets, like Harry’s Gryffindor bedroom,
costumes, like these from the Yule Ball,
and props, like this display of wands.
There were certain displays that ABC did not like, such as these disembodied hairpieces.
Sometimes, context mattered. For example, we rushed ABC out of the dark Forbidden Forest Set with its spiders because she was not a fan, but, later, when we saw the huge model of Aragog, Hagrid’s former pet giant spider, which was several meters wide, mounted on a wall, ABC decided to sing “The Eensy, Weensy Spider” to it.
As a big fan of trains, ABC enjoyed the Hogwarts Express.
Even better, we got to walk through the train cars!
For some reason, I had to rush ABC through the grand Gringotts Bank set, because she did not approve.
The destroyed Gringotts was much more to her liking! She insisted on watching the scene multiple times. It must have been the attraction of the dragon…
The last part of the display before the obligatory exit-through-the giftshop was the model of Hogwarts used for the external shots. ABC was a big fan!
It was a beautiful model. Because it was winter, we got to see it with snow which made it look even more magical!
We all had a lovely time. I hope we will be able to visit again in the coming years. It will be fun to see how ABC reacts over time. Warner Brothers also continues to add new displays, as well as having various limited time features, so there will be new things to see each time.
Eventually, ABC – and any future siblings – will be able to read the Harry Potter books and see the films. Perhaps, E and L will embark on our family tradition of reading each book aloud as a family.
Maybe, B and I will be able to join in via videochat…
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert does a recurring skit, now 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.
~ JC
I am mostly oblivious to pop culture. If I read the Grammy nominations, chances are I don’t know any of the songs and haven’t heard of the majority of the artists. I haven’t ever seen Titanic or Avatar or Jurassic movies or the vast majority of superhero movies. I don’t stream and binge watch series from Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. and I don’t have premium television packages, which means that I also haven’t seen many of the shows nominated for Emmys, although I think it is good that I haven’t seen Game of Thrones or The Handmaid’s Tale because I would probably have nightmares. I don’t watch collegiate or professional sports, except an occasional baseball game. I don’t vacation at theme parks.
I am involved with a few popular things, the most notable being the Harry Potter books and movies. For the most part, though, if you want to discuss a pop culture topic with me, you’ll likely have to explain it to me first.
Some people might say that I am elitist and they are entitled to that opinion. I would like to say in my defense that I grew up in a tiny town in New England, have never lived in a large city, and have never had a high-powered career. Even though I am now a poet, I am a community-educated one and most people find my poetry accessible rather than esoteric. But, the fact remains that I am a poet, so maybe I am guilty as charged…
Having our granddaughter ABC living in our home has been a privilege.
Now 26 months old, she is energetic and tall enough to climb onto furniture that used to be out of reach. She is still petite for her age, but she is similar to her mom in that regard.
Her bangs are almost long enough to tuck behind her ears.
She loves imaginative play. Lately, she has been running a pretend ice cream shop. She also has been loving eating ice cream, sometimes with sprinkles on top!
She is adding more and more words to her vocabulary and making longer sentences. She will also now address each person in the room when she is saying hello or good-bye.
It’s still a wonderful feeling when she snuggles near you, although if she suspects you are trying to get her to settle down to sleep, she is more likely to squirm to get down and starting running and jumping around in order to stay awake. Her mother used to do the same thing!
She has a new appreciation for books and will sit long enough for you to read each page, instead of just zooming through looking at pictures.
She loves to sing. She takes after her parents, who are both accomplished musicians. She sometimes devises her own codas to songs that she knows or comes up with her own little tunes. It is incredibly cute!
Among her new obsessions this summer, besides the aforementioned ice cream, are sidewalk chalk, bubbles, and riding the carousels. Our county has several historic – and free – carousels in our parks. Sometimes she will ask for dog – pig – cow, because one of her favorite carousels has a dog and a boar among the horses. The “cow” is actually a black and white paint horse that does resemble the dairy cows around here. Another park has all horses, but still has its original organ rather than using recorded music all the time as the other carousels do. This park also has a more accessible playground, which is easier for a small 2-year-old to navigate. Her favorite horse there is a palomino she has dubbed “yellow horse.” When she asks for dog-pig-cow-yellow-horse, we take it to mean that any carousel will do!
And this will all end soon, and not just because summer will come to an end.
Some time in the coming weeks, E’s spousal visa will finally come through and she and ABC will move permanently to London to join their spouse and father L.
We know they will be happy to finally live together full-time, instead of just transoceanic visits.
But it will be so hard to have them so far away after having them so close for so long.
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert does a recurring skit, now 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.
~ JC
I own a lot of books that I haven’t read. What’s worse, I own a lot of books by people that I know, either poet-friends who I know in person or blogger-friends who I know only online, that I haven’t read. While I feel guilty that I haven’t read these books yet, I am comforted by owning them. I’m not sure when I will have the time and brainpower to read them, but, someday, I hope…
Joanne Corey 