Three writers together; what might they do? Play a game!

Marilyn, me and Christine - at the Lucidity Poetry Retreat, 2017

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

                Early in April, three women were in residency at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs. Lee, from NOLA, Kay from Tulsa/New York, and Pat from AR. All three of us were working on memoirs. [They are not the women in the picture, except for me.]

                At 9:30, the night before two of us left for home, we gathered in the 505 kitchen. Kay brought a novel with her. “For a game,” she said. She and I drank wine; Lee had dessert: banana cream—a sliced banana (and a little sugar) covered by fat-free Pet Milk. I couldn’t—and still can’t—imagine anything with Pet Milk in it as tasting good.

                We “gamed” while we visited. Here are the rules: One writer picks a sentence or two from a novel, writes it on a lined sheet. Then she passes it to the next, who reads it (silently) and writes something that continues the first. But before passing it to the third writer, she folds down the first sentence so that only the second sentence is visible.

                The third writer reads the second sentence, then writes a response to that, folds it so that only her response shows and passes it on. Around and round it goes until the page is full. Here is the complete “story.”

                “Beth puts a finger to his lips. He stops talking. / “Don’t say it. I can’t hear it now. Let me have this moment of not knowing. This one moment.” / “Okay, I’ve settled down enough to respond to your accusations. But be nicer. Don’t forget to give yourself the feelings and not blame me.”

                “Oh, you narcissist! I come to you with my pain, and all you can do is say ‘Don’t blame me’!” / “That is not what I said. It’s complicated, don’t you get that?” / “No, it’s not. It’s simple. You simply admit you’re wrong and I’m not.” /

              “Oh, yeah? Is that what your ex-husbands would say?” / “No. In fact, they wouldn’t say that. Why bring them into this? Deflecting again? Can’t you have this conversation?” / “Yes, I could, but, why do it? It’ll just make things worse—if they could get any worse!” /

                “Of course, things can get worse! Aliens could land in Eureka Springs. The zombie Apocalypse could happen!” / “Sure. Make fun. This is funny to you, isn’t it? I’m done. When you get serious—if you get serious about dealing with this, you know where to find me.” / “Until then, I’m moving to Texas. Let me know when you’ve decided.”  THE END

                We three agreed this worked very well with “in-tune” writers. Since I changed the names of the other two, and they gave me the sheet, I transcribe it here without asking.

          The next morning, after we had coffee around the same table, Lee began her 10-hour drive south. I left two hours later for a four-hour drive. Kay stayed for three more weeks.

         In a day or two, two or three new residents checked in to the writers colony. Perhaps Kay will suggest they play a game. Every day is different. Every writer is different.  Every game will be different.

It’s so much fun being a writer.

[The women pictured at the top are poets from Texas and were in my workshop group. Here are the others in that group.] I have no photos of Lee and Kay, sorry to say.

Phyllis & Pat 

Mary and Carol             Above: Phyllis & Sandra

     

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 of spring in the Ozarks

 

               APRIL 21- Easter Monday, – Prepping to leave for a week at Eureka Springs – Lucidity Poetry retreat (for two days and three evenings) but living at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow. On the road at 9:30 and drove four hours straight only to find the doors all locked at 1:30. Luckily, the other resident was on “his” porch and while he went down for some lunch, I found the keys to my room and came back up for a nap. I unpacked the car then and parked.
             After that, I went outside and wrote.

FROM THE COLONY DECK

Dogwood
as far as I
can see in these mountains.
Settling in to write this Easter
Monday.

The sun
merely a bright
spot behind a cloud bank.
On Easter Monday, the weather’s
still cool.
        
           At dusk, I hear an owl from somewhere down Dairy Hollow Road.

again this year
heartburn follows
Jana’s great dinner.

APRIL 22 – Tuesday. The annual (for 21 years) Lucidity Poets Retreat doesn’t begin till tonight. So I tackle the myriad submissions to CALLIOPE’s poetry file. This is a gratis job (a non-profit writers’ publication), but –despite the general editor’s wishes (“You went there to write!”)—I spread all of them out on the kitchen table and sort them by dates received—some as far back as December. Though a newbie at editing poetry for a lit mag, I try to respond (via email) as soon and as personally as possible.
The opening session of the Retreat brought old friends together (of all the hugging you ever saw: in someone’s coat collar or lapel might be one of my earrings) and a few new folks who quickly became friends.

          APRIL 23 – Wednesday. The honor of leading one of four workshops starting at 8:30 meant my leaving here at 8.  Three Texans, an Illini, and four Mizzou poets had been assigned to the group.  In two long sessions, we critiqued each others’ poems sent in earlier. Lunch at Sparky’s Bistro with Missouri and Mountain Home friends lasted until 1:30, and the next session began at 2. I eschewed that one for a nap. The evening lectures added more information and inspiration. Afterward, we participated in a read-around. I lasted one round, but some of them stayed for two. When the leader called for a 3^rd round, I heard that several called out, “Enough!” By then it was ‘way after 10 pm.

 

            APRIL 24 – Thursday. Another workshop session, another lecture, a group picture, then the afternoon was free. It threatened rain, and I came down with a fresh cold. Sure enough, we had to wear raincoats over our dressy clothes for the final activity.

            The Awards banquet began at 5:30. Dr. John Crawford provided the pre-and-post banquet piano music. Though I was sure my poem would win at least an honorable mention, alas, it didn’t. With a runny nose and sneezing spells, I didn’t feel like attending the usual ritual of goodbyes at the local pub. My sleep was noisy and fitful. Rest was out in the woods somewhere, or in the fields. It certainly was NOT in MY bed.

 

            APRIL 25 – Friday.  After two days of arising by alarm for early workshops, I slept in till rested, arising at 8:05. This day was all mine. Coffee and journal on the back deck, and time to write. And write I did—for two hours. After breakfast, I continued toward my goal of organizing all the Calliope poetry submitted thus far, and trying to get them all a schedule for publication. Turned out to be a complicated procedure that meant emails to most of the poets before I could call myself done. 

          After a sumptuous dinner (provided at the Colony each week night) of salmon “cakes” (I call them” patties”), mashed potatoes, steamed, uncut asparagus, salad and lemon meringue pie, I drove across town to the only local store, Dollar General. I needed more antihistamine, some throat lozenges, batteries for my camera, toothpaste and the most important thing, ice cream. I continued working on the poems submitted until bedtime. The Haagen-Dazs strawberry provided a cooling, sweet midnight delight.

 

            APRIL 26 – Saturday. Another whole day alone—except for the loud folks motorcycling, walking, yelling, playing their car radios loudly—I finally finished the CALLIOPE task with each poem tucked away in folders labeled “Summer ‘14”, “Fall ’14,” “Winter ‘14/’15,” “Spring ‘15” and a couple as far out as “Summer ’15.”

 

           APRIL 27 – Sunday. Sunday. Here it is 9 p.m. and I’ve just now wasted four hours of typing into my website 62 "found" poems. SIXTY-TWO. I could tell the machine or the text editor was getting tired. First, it skipped two spaces instead of one, then three spaces. Once, the screen went completely away, but came back presently. When the 62^nd poem—the end of the ones beginning with F—was typed in and a note as to the date, I looked around for a SAVE CHANGES. Couldn’t find it, so started searching. And, for want of a SAVE, the lot was lost.

         But—after fuming, whining, crabbing, grousing—I decided that this was nothing compared to the destruction and deaths caused by today’s tornadoes.

         Forgive me, Lord, for magnifying the insignificant things instead of the important ones that really matter.

 

Cold week in the Ozarks: a journaling

Bundled up last October; not quite as cold this spring. But still cold--most of the week.

 

by Pat Laster

 

 APRIL 1- Monday, 7:55 a.m. – Couchwood. Sunny and foggy; up at 6:58 before alarm. Prepping to leave for a week at Eureka Springs – Lucidity Poetry retreat (for two days and three evenings) but living at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow.

APRIL 2 – Tuesday, 8:14 a.m. At WCDH in the Peach Blossom Suite. Lower floor accessible street-side by stone steps (a death-trap by night without a flashlight) or park-side by a narrow path between the building and the edge of a 6-foot drop-off onto Polk Street. 42 degrees, rainy.
          After the first night, I wrote:

Lighting’s

poor, chair’s too low. 

The heating unit sounds

like a squadron of motorbikes

revving.

 

Coffee’s

good, the décor’s

pleasing and restful, bed’s

comfortable, dresser storage

ample.

          9:42 a.m. –breakfast: an Easter dinner roll spread with peanut butter and dried berries brought from home, almonds (ditto), cold skim milk and coffee from the common kitchen here. A cinquain texted to the roll baker:

Brother
Guy, I just ate
one of your homemade rolls
at Dairy Hollow in April.
Yum, yum!

APRIL 3 – Wednesday, 6:23 a.m., up with alarm at 5:58, 34 degrees!?! A call during the night from Tech Support Simon, who was “tuning up” my 3-week-old laptop, interrupted my sleep, making the alarm seem even earlier.
          Leading a Lucidity poets’ workshop across town that started at 8:30 meant leaving here at 8.  Jottings from the session included: “forensic = law,” a line from one poem, “The dead always want more,” and a reminder that “specifics are better than generalizations.”

APRIL 4 – Thursday. My notes begin at 11:30 with a lecture by our renown and long-standing professor Larry Thomas from Ypsilanti, Michigan, who has traveled this route for 19 years. After this year, he’s bowing out. Past age 80, he deserves to, though we will miss him terribly. Notes: Frost’s quandary can become our own: “What should I do today?”
          In another note the lecturer says, “A poem says one thing and means another.” I don’t agree with that statement, because many of my works are literal, not metaphorical. Perhaps he was talking about GOOD/GREAT poems.

APRIL 5 – Friday. 42 degrees—finally sunny. 10:05 a.m. After two days of arising by alarm for Lucidity workshops at 8:30, I sleep in till I’m rested. Vivid dreams of being back in the music classroom of 7^th graders are thankfully quashed by notification of a full bladder. At 7:20, I rouse, decide it’s too early, so, like a cat, I stretch, yawn, assume my favorite (fetal) position and return to sleep. But not a deep sleep, for I begin building Fibonacci (a new form of poetry for me) in my head. [6 more pages of notes.]

APRIL 6 – Saturday, 7:38 a.m. 50 degrees! I take my coffee outside and a bird seems to greet me. “Sweetie, sweetie, sweetie, sweetie,” with an occasional 5^th “sweetie.” It must know I stand below. [Tee-hee.]
           From inside, I grab a straight-back, slatted-back, caned-seat wooden chair. (Yes, I know there’s too many adjectives, but I want to be specific.) Add a pillow, fetch the oak TV tray that I brought with me “just in case.” (This is the “case.”) Voila! An outdoors writing station! [7 more pages of notes, mostly research about boardinghouse rates and related information.]

APRIL 7 – Sunday, 7:32 a.m.—up at 7:27, 51 degrees, cloudy. DREAM: I’d accepted an interim choir directing job at a local church. After one-and-a-half rehearsals of a difficult but doable anthem, I up and quit. “Lack of respect,” I shouted.
          First inciting event: While I was “teaching,” a man whom I knew talked–not whispered--to his neighbor the entire time. Second inciting event: Four women—two of whom I knew—quit singing and began hand-jiving in rhythm.
          Skip to the end: As I was leaving, the talkative tenor had gathered the group and some Cokesbury hymnals in the choir loft to “pick out something for Sunday.”
          I think I just dreamed a short story!