Sherri is pleased to announce her graduation from Pacific University with a Master of Fine Arts in Writing.
Celebrate accordingly.
"Once upon a time
when women were birds
there was the simple understanding
that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk
was to heal the world through joy."
~Terry Tempest Williams
"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."
- Jackie Robinson, #42 Brooklyn Dodgers
The Darkling Thrush
By Thomas Hardy
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Water
Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble
pricked and the green thread
nibbled away, the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself.
Water is another matter,
has no direction but its own bright grace,
runs through all imaginable colors,
takes limpid lessons
from stone,
and in those functionings plays out
the unrealized ambitions of the foam.
- by Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)
i. A reference to Moby Dick.To celebrate the launch of The Intentional Ducati #3, the Pinewood Table is hosting a reading at the Blackbird Wine Shop and Atomic Cheese, 7pm on Weds, January 4. See you there!
ii. A paragraph made entirely of nouns.
iii. In consecutive order, sentences of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 word(s). For example: "This will not be easy. Not easy at all. Difficult, in fact. Damned hard. Aaargh!"
iv. A 'Support Our Troops' magnetic ribbon, or a variation thereof.
v. A piece of taxidermy.
vi. A character who crosses a literal bridge.
vii. The same word used as both a noun and a verb in one sentence. For example: "She tore at the dress with her hands, almost ripping it away from the fence, but the rip hit a seam and wouldn't rip anymore."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.
Inversnaid
THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
From up here the water is still blue, the grass green
and the wind that buoys me is 12 billion years old.
~ from "Bird's-Eye View," Jim Harrison, Songs of Unreason
"Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him."
~ Maya Angelou
"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."
~ Benjamin Franklin
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
~ Yogi Berra
The moon hung orange as any sun
Just before it faces evening,
Like a flaming breast in the sky
Calling my name, and I walked out
Under it and rubbed the moonlight
All over my face and hands the way
The old folks used to do with sunlight
~ from The Night Richard Pryor Met Mudbone by A. Van Jordan
Have you ever fallen
Into the vowels on a dark
Woman's lips as she blew
A simple phrase like Good Morning
To a man she's just met?
Nothing, maybe, to the naked ear,
But close your eyes and listen
To the dark sounds rounded
Off in the shadows of her mouth—
There lies the secret to end
All wars.
~ from Morena by A. Van Jordan
"Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved. But it was not grief that Olanna felt, it was greater than grief. It was stranger than grief. She did not know where her sister was. She did not know."
~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
"The ranks of the stars move in progression, the sun and the moon shine in turn, the four seasons succeed each other in good order, the yin and yang go through their great transformations, and the wind and the rain pass over the whole land. All things obtain what is congenial to them and come to life, receive what is nourishing to them and come to completion. One does not see this process taking place, but sees only the results. Thus it is called godlike. All men understand that the process has reached completion, but none understands the formless forces that bring it about."
~ Xunzi (c. 296 -c. 236 B.C.)
April Rain Song
Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.
Langston Hughes
"Beauty is not wasting a day. Beauty is noticing life's little intricacies and taking time out of your busy day to really enjoy those little intricacies. Beauty is being real, being genuine, being pure with no facade—what you see is what you get. Beauty is expanding your mind, always seeking knowledge, not being content, always going after something and challenging yourself."
- Jake Plummer, retired QB of the Denver Broncos, speaking at the funeral of his friend, Pat Tillman. "What Was He Thinking," Sports Illustrated, Feb. 14, 2011.
"Don't miss the conversation."
- Pam Houston, given as advice to new MFA students at orientation
"The joke of the world is less like a banana peel than a rake, the old rake in the grass, the one you step on, foot to forehead. It all comes together. In a twinkling. You have to admire the gag for its symmetry, accomplishing all with one right angle, the same right angle which accomplishes all philosophy. One step on the rake, and it's mind under matter once again. You wake up with a piece of tree in your head."
Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard
"As he swung through the air, trembling, he saw the blackness give way below, like a parting of clouds, to a deep patch of stars on the ground. It was the pond, he hoped, the hole in the woods reflecting the sky. He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars." - The Living, Annie Dillard
Geese on the soccer fields, Longview, WA |
Photo by Zachary Kaufman / The Columbian |