April’s ablaze with blossoms and a-flurry with breezes

 

What better way to celebrate April as National Poetry Month?

Soon, in Eureka Springs, a gathering of poets from surrounding states and Arkansas will begin the annual Lucidity Poetry Retreat held at the Inn of the Ozarks. The first session is at night on a Tuesday (non- season rooms are less expensive then) with workshops, lectures, read-arounds, renewal of friendships and beginnings of new ones.

The final meeting is always on a Thursday night with the Awards Banquet, but many of us will prolong our goodbyes at a local cantina.

Poets from Arkansas, Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma will travel here, not only to enjoy the seasonal spring flowerings, but also to renew inspiration, to perhaps gain new techniques for writing, and to savor the ambience and fellowship of like-minded folk.

Laughter and conversations around tables at Myrtie Mae’s restaurant or Sparky’s will enrich the experience further. New friends become old friends and old friends become "family."

On the last afternoon, the group is free to ride the trolley, visit the masseuse, the flea markets, the trinket shops downtown, Thorncrown Chapel, Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, attend an additional read-around session, or to nap.

As usual for the past few years, I’ll soon be a resident of the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow for a week, which will include the poetry retreat. Besides writing, organizing, editing on the non-Lucidity days, I will stop in at the hospital’s Purple House thrift shop, the Echo and what used to be The Red Barn—all favorite places to pick up bargains in books and other things that please my eye.

Since last year, I have made Facebook friends with Dan K., so I’ll visit his workplace and several other places he’s suggested in his newspaper columns. Oh, and the Railway Winery out past Holiday Island—I’ll have to go see friends Vicki and Greg. I will make sure to pick up an issue of the Lovely County Citizen, which is full of writing ideas.

Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the U. S. has written a clever, more-truthful-than-not, poem, called

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

[from Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems, by Billy Collins]

Another week in the Ozarks: writing/ critiquing

 

 

                OCTOBER 25, Saturday, 3 p.m. – Couchwood. Prepping to leave for a week at Eureka Springs by way of Beebe overnight at b-f-f Dot’s.

                OCTOBER 26, Sunday, 10:14 a.m. Leaving Beebe on Hwy 64, turning north on Hwy 5 at El Paso through Rosebud to Quitman—new territory for me—we hit Hwy 65, thence to Marshall for gas, and Ferguson’s for coffee and a huge cinnamon roll. The vista was aflame with reds, oranges and yellows. Then through Harrison to Hwy 62 West, and on through Alpena, Hugh, Green Forest, Berryville and Eureka Springs. Between the latter two, we were stopped in traffic for (it turned out) fire trucks and ambulances. A vehicle was burned black.

At the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, we secured keys and found our suites in 505--the Usonion house adjacent—Muse 1 and Muse 2. After unpacking—or not—we sat on the deck with lemonade and surveyed this part of the Ozarks that we both love. Meals on the weekend have to be self-prepared from stores in the main kitchen, but we’d each brought enough food, so we ate in “our” dining area. Later, Dot worked a little on the BIG Sunday AD-G puzzle, then passed the paper on to me. I stayed up as long as it took to finish.

OCTOBER 27, Monday, 8:30 a.m. On the deck early, I began what might become the penultimate chapter of Her Face in the Glass, the sequel to A Journey of Choice. The voice is Liddy. It’s late October after WW2 ended. She’s sitting out early on their porch and enjoying the ambiance of the season AND the Missouri Ozarks. (Sound familiar?)

At 7 p.m., a Haymaker session was scheduled across town. At 6:50, mesmerized by another resident’s unfolding life, I remembered, bounded up from the communal dinner, and fled.

At 10, the six poets who had, as one guy said, “tortured” (critiqued) each others’ work, “limped away” to rest for the “onslaught” of a second session the next morning. All our poems were equally discussed, dissected or divided. Fun, fun, fun!

OCTOBER 28, Tuesday, 8:30 a.m. The poets met at the Forest Hill Restaurant, and then to the Express Inn (formerly HOJO) for another session. The glassed-in breakfast room jutting out from the building was our  meeting place.

After that session, we traveled to Sparky’s for lunch, fortifying ourselves for the final session that afternoon. Afterwards, we hugged and kissed (in some cases) those friends we won’t see again for a while.

OCTOBER 29, Wednesday, 8:45 a.m., in the 505 conference room—by then it had turned cold--too cold to sit outside. My goal this morning was to write the challenging assignment for the Bombadil’s online writing group, a branch of the Missouri State Poetry Society. Dot worked on her fourth novel (she read two or three books during the week). And I wrote until time to meet our friend Vicki for lunch at Catfish Cabin.

Afterwards, Vicki returned to work and Dot and I browsed at the Echo, a thrift shop that helps a medical entity.  Mid-afternoon, we returned with our bargains, and worked (or napped) until dinner time down the hill.

We secluded ourselves until 9:30 p.m. (wine-thirty) when we broke for snacks and visiting.

Alas, everything must end, and so must this post.

 Happy November to you.

 

In addition to writing . . .

by Pat Laster

Besides writing at the (ahem) writers’ colony this year, I decided to add another activity: a daily walk. With the ups and downs, hills and valleys, twists and turns in this town, I was pretty sure I would work up (walk up) an elevated heart rate.
DAY ONE: Dress: bluejeans, t-shirt, old walking shoes. Route: up the rocky eroded path across from the Colony to the Crescent Hotel parking lot, thence to the street winding down in front of St. Elizabeth’s Church to Spring Street, down Spring St. to #515, my home-away-from-home. Huffing, puffing up the hill (noticing rocks and roots I’d like to take back to Couchwood), catching my breath downhill and on the level street to “home.” Time: 25 minutes.
DAY TWO: Dress: knit tapered pants, a long-tailed, long-sleeved Henderson Reddie t-shirt that showed stomach/hip protrusions. Goal-within-a-goal: by the end of two weeks, no protrusions. Shoes had sprung a flapping sole; jury-rigged with a rubber band for the moment. Route: the reverse of yesterday, except downward on Spring Street instead of the rocky decline. Huffing and puffing on the upward climb, jogging on the downward stretch. Time: 25 minutes.
DAY THREE: Dress: same as yesterday; I didn’t even look for the aforesaid protrusions; I knew they were still there. Route: Of all the times I’ve been a resident here, I’d never ventured further down Polk Street--on the back side of the Colony--than to the Farm House across Dairy Hollow Road which at one time sheltered three more writers.
So, I decided to walk down Dairy Hollow Road which I calculated as north. Good. Not much traffic. Level. Nondescript dwellings, unkempt yards, and then a pasture-like area. Two deer bounded across the road from the forest to the green space.
On and on I walked. I knew there was a private or church school not far. Sure enough, there it was, at the T in the road. Dairy Hollow turned right and climbed severely. The other way climbed more gently so I took it. Besides, it was the direction “home.”
Anderson Road, it was, and it led to the ubiquitous incline, so I slowed. By that time, the rubber band had popped off and my right sole was flapping.
Folks, this was hard climbing. Especially for a 70-something who only walked to the mailbox or the pear tree or to the shed during the day. I’d been walking for thirty minutes. Ahead, I heard dogs and hoped against hope they were penned. They were, but my! they were large. And loud. I slogged on up and around a bend. Houses appeared. I finally saw a human and hailed him. “Any shortcut to the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow?” I asked.
He pointed as he talked. “Up here a’ways is a street to the left; it jogs more to the left to Tad’s, then to the Joy Motel . . . Don’t go to the highway,” he said. I thanked him, said, yes, I knew my way now, but lawsy me! I was at the junction of 62W, 62B and Scenic Route 62. I was mile upon curvy mile from home!
But at least I knew where home was. And it was still daylight though nearly six p.m. I walked on sidewalks not two feet from some houses. The autumn/Halloween decorations and chrysanthemums were everywhere. A white bush-flower that I knew but couldn’t put a name to except “Aberystwrth” (the Welsh tune to “Jesus, Lover of my Soul”) grew alongside the paths.
Finally, 45 minutes into my daily walk/slog, I remembered the plant name: ageratum. I had grown the blue kind many years ago.
One hour after I began walking, I stepped onto Writers Colony grounds. I’d made a complete circle. I deserved a treat, I did. So I gathered up food from the residents’ fridge (pre-ordered) and made the last few steps uphill to my suite. My treat: ice cream.
Forget losing the protrusions. I deserve this. #

c 2011 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press. Check out my poetry blog, pittypatter.blogspot.com, and my first novel, A Journey of Choice, on Amazon, etc.