Fire & Ice: My Time as a Poetry Bully

I recently heard that the best predictor of which children will be emotionally healthy are the ones who have been raised hearing stories of family, relatives and ancestors. (This was the most statistically significant variable in an econometric model, for those of you who are interested in statistics).  Stories like these give children two things: 1) a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves; and 2) a sense that people that they know or are related to have dealt with adversities, and  that those bad times eventually pass and furthermore the stories suggests ways to deal with pain.

So I decided that my husband and I should each tell one story from our side of the family when we are all together for dinner (about 5 times a week). Actually, my kids know lots of stories from my mother's family and from my family, because my grandmother told plenty of stories, and my mother told some, and I have seven brothers and sisters, so I have lots of stories from my growing-up years. My dad was quite silent about his family so I don't have many stories, but I have a few. My husband's family is very taciturn about their past, so it's harder for him to come up with material.

Tonight my husband told about something amusing that happened when he shared a room with his little brother, so I decided to tell something about when I shared a room with my sister who was six years younger than me, from the time I was 13-18 years old and she was 7-12. We had just moved to a new house and my parents assigned us to a bedroom together, and though I liked my little sister, I was resentful that I was down the hall from my sisters who were one year old and one year younger than me. I wanted to be down there, talking about teenager topics, not stuck with a 2nd grader. So my reaction to this was that when I would go to bed and my sister would either wake up or already be awake and want to talk, I decided to make her memorize a poem. And the poem I chose was Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice."

Every night I we would lie in the dark and I would drill her on her lines. When she made an error, I told her to start over. Imagine a 2nd grader speaking into the night, "Some say the world will end in fire. Some say ice." It took a couple of months for her to get  the entire poem memorized, and once she did, she had to recite it every night. We never spoke of it during the daytime and we never mentioned to anyone else in our family that this is what we did when waiting for sleep to come. I remember myself being a gentle coach, but it would be interesting to hear her recollections of this time.

Years later when my sister was in college, she was assigned to pick a poem that was meaningful to her, and to write an essay about it. So naturally she picked that poem and told the story. When she got her graded paper back, her professor had written that she wanted to see her, and when my sister went to talk to the professor, she was asked if this had actually happened. When my sister said that it had, her professor told her how lucky she was.

I'm not sure that my sister thought she was lucky; I'm not sure she was lucky. But it made a great story at dinner tonight.

Journal of the Month

I got my mom a subscription to a  mystery-novel-of-the-month club when she was caring for my grandmother during my grandmother's last year of life. My sister got her an assorted-nuts-of-the-month club subscription. I've tried to sign my husband up for a wine-of-the-month club, only to find out they wouldn't accept overseas subscriptions. That's the extent of my experience with x-of-the-month clubs.

Certainly I'd never heard of the Journal of the Month until now, but now I'm telling you about this service that offers the delivery of a different literary journal once a month. It's a great way to sample literary magazines you've only heard of or read samples from online. It's a good idea especially for people just beginning to publish, who don't have a lot experience with the many good journals out there. A six-month subscription will set you back $48 (and there are shorter and longer subscriptions available, with increasing discounts for longer commitments), which isn't bad if you consider price per journal. Participating magazines include The Believer, A Public Space, Ploughshares, Iowa Review and more.

If you know what you like, this may not be for you, but if you are open to trying new things or are new to publishing, this could be fun.

Wanted: Women over 40

Check out this interesting opportunity for the woman poet over 40 who has yet to publish a full-length book in any genre: The Patricia Dobler Poetry Award from Carlow University. This prize pays for the winner's travel and lodging in order to allow her to participate in the school's MFA low-residency program for 10 or 11 days. The author will also get to publish in the school's annual anthology and have a reading with one of the competition judges, Patricia Smith. (The other judge is Jan Beatty--what great company!)

Great idea, to reward and encourage a woman poet beginning her career, a time when there is precious little encouragement to be had and only intrinsic rewards. But hurry it you are interested: the deadline is April 1.

Repeating Geography

My Japanese isn't good enough to understand the details in the news broadcast, though I can usually follow the story. However, I have to be studiously watching the news, not overhearing it, to manage that much. So yesterday I wasn't paying attention to the news, but perked up when I heard mention of Futatabi, the name of the mountain we live at the base of. When I looked at the screen, it was a story about North Korea. Across the bottom of the screen ran the ubiquitous transcription of what was being said (I don't know why they do this for the Japanese news, but it's one of the ways I learn kanji (the characters used in Japanese), by matching up what I hear with what I see on the screen). Sure enough, there was the kanji for Futatabi, our mountain, but it wasn't written as Futatabi-san, with the kanji for mountain, pronounced 'san', following it. In fact, it was used to begin a sentence and came just before the subject of the sentence, sort of like an adverb might be, (i.e. Finally,.....).

再び

This is the kanji for futatabi. Actually, the kanji is the left part, and it is read "futata" with the hiragana syllable "bi" on the right.

 

I asked my husband why the newscaster had said Futatabi. He said it meant "again, or a second time, or once again." He said they were emphasizing that it was the second time that North Korea had performed some objectional action. Now I know how to express "again" or "a second time" other ways, but I'd never heard "futatabi" used that way. I pointed out that it was the same kanji as our mountain, to which my husband agreed. I'd never thought about the meaning of our mountain's name before but suddenly it occurred to me that we live in the shadow of "Once Again Mountain" or "Second Time Mountain" .... or "Repeated Again Mountain." I pointed that out to my husband, and he admitted that he had also never really considered the literal meaning of out mountain's name, but that my observation was true.

Imagine that. For the past few years I have been thinking about and talking about and writing poems using the notion of repetition, and wondering why we repeat certain things in our thoughts and our speech and our writing and actions. I've been obsessed with repetition as a theme, a trope, and a device, and all this time I've been living at the bottom of "Once Again Mountain." Unknowingly echoing my geography as its shadow looms above.

Skylight Books Podcast

Here's a good podcast series I recently discovered. It's authors talking about their works and their craft, and giving readings at the bookstore Skylight Books in Los Angeles. I've listened to and have downloaded (to listen) authors such as Mark L. Danielewski, Panio Gianopolous, Susan Straight, Ben Marcus, TC Boyle, Kate Zambreno, and Charles Yu, and poets Amanda Auchter, Nathalie Handal, Eileen Myles, and Carol Moldaw. And more.

Here's their website. The podcast is also available on iTunes.