A Poem and a Painting to Celebrate July in Rhode Island

“Hillside of Rugosa’s at Gooseberry” oil on canvas by Nancy E. Custin (used with permission of artist)

I recently attended the opening reception for Rhode Island artist Nancy E. Custin at DeBlois Gallery in Middletown RI. My favorite of her paintings, “Hillside of Rugosa’s at Gooseberry” (oil on canvas), beautifully captures a Rhode Island beach landscape in Newport.

Inspired by this painting and the summer weather,  we (the West Bay Poets’ Collaborative) recently examined treasures collected from the beach: jars filled with sand, ocean water and seaweed; shells; rocks; plants; and our own memories. We talked out and wrote down our observations.

Then we listened to the poem “Sunset” by Chinese Tung Dynasty poet Tu Fu (713-770), marveling that a poet from a culture so extremely foreign to us, writing more than 12 centuries ago, could speak so deeply to our own experiences.

Finally, we worked to pattern our poem after Tu Fu. We organized our observations into a series of images related to the title, then ended with a feeling of wonder, phrased as a question.

Here’s what we came up with.

Beaches

Beaches award relaxation and peace.
Sea shells float in tides. 
We ride the waves, search for sea glass.
Ocean whoosh-shush-shushes, rocks
us like a lullaby. Gold-gray 
granite shimmers in the sunlight.
Seaweed billows like sheets on a clothesline.
Bathing suits and beach towels, purple sunset,
radios, sea grass, suntans–
a kaleidoscope of color. 
Who knew a cool breeze could carry
all your worries away?

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I originally started this blog to help me process and muse through the novel I’m working on. I thought it would be a creative place to dig into the character and motivation of Lena, a landscape designer. But I’m finding this blog is becoming something else entirely.

The wee problem is: I don’t have a clue what this blog is becoming. !!

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Oh, well, what does it matter? It’s July in Rhode Island, and I’ve been spending every available spare minute at the beach, enjoying the cool breezes. (I am, however, also making good progress on my novel–it’s just that this blog isn’t in the least bit useful to me for that!) The Beach, and The Creative Process (whether I’m writing, crafting, cooking or sewing), carry my cares away.

Where do you go, or what do you do, when you need someone or something to carry all your worries away? 

The artist, Nancy E. Custin, with her paintings at DeBlois Gallery, Middletown, RI

June is Rhododendron Time

Flowers to inspire a poem!

I regularly get together with my poetry-loving friends at West Bay Residential Services in Warwick RI to collaborate in making poems. Recently, because the Rhododendrons were in full bloom, we wrote a poem about them.

Rhododendron

It explodes open, fire like

overnight          the bush in flames

its snow cone blooms

are clusters of blossoms

fragile          like tissue paper.

They are like cups,          or little tulips.

Do the blossoms always grow in even numbers?
??

In the center are ten     magenta

antenna          like fingers,

like bits of glowing sunset.

The leaves          two-toned

grass green on top

smooth          waxy,

the bottom a little

bit rough          light green

like spring.

Brown stems

like pretzel sticks.

Yum!

It’s rhododendron time.

The Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, Alice B. Fogel, explains in her book Strange Terrain: A Poetry Handbook for the Reluctant Reader, that some pose are about “the deep meaning of purely emotional sound.” 

In other words. there may not be much going on in a poem other than the way it sounds.

Using Fogel’s poem, Sea Gull, as a model, we wanted to write a poem about Rhododendrons that is mostly about the way the poem sounds.

• So first we talked about the word itself, with the beginning rho-do rhyme, and the den-dron near rhyme at its end.
• Then we examined clusters of rhododendrons minutely. We pulled apart blossoms, leaves and petals, talked about every plant part in detail, and wrote down our observations.
• Finally, I assembled all our word pictures into this poem.

Notice how many words in the poem rhyme with dren; also a number of words have the “o” sound found in rhodo.

Have you ever collaborated on an artistic project? How did it go? 

May is a Month for Flitting; Blame the Lilacs

I have a severe case of spring fever. I blame the lilacs.

“May,” says Amy Lowell in her poem, Lilacs, “is the month for flitting.”

You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms  

Through the wide doors of Custom Houses— 

You, and sandal-wood, and tea, 

Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks   

When a ship was in from China. 

You called to them: “Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,   

May is a month for flitting.” 

Until they writhed on their high stools 

And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers.

This morning this lovely poem induced me to give in to my spring fever. Why writhe at my computer desk when I could be outside breathing in the fresh scent of…

Lilacs in dooryards 

Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;   

Lilacs watching a deserted house 

Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;

So I took an unscheduled walk around Pawtuxet Village (where my novel is set–therefore I was able to convince myself I was doing research). Then I stopped at the Elephant Tea Room, to question the owner, my friend Tony, about life in the village (more research, over a cup of tea). When I told him what I was up to, he said, “You need to talk to Heather!”

Heather Rigney, whose novel, Making the Merrow, is also set in Pawtuxet Village, happened to be sitting there with her laptop, when I walked in and got nosy. She generously abandoned her plans and spent an hour chatting with me, sharing  information about Pawtuxet Village now and in history, talking about the writing life and the realities of book marketing, and generally unsticking me from the rut I had fallen into. We flitted merrily from subject to subject until I realized that I was probably keeping her from her writing!!, and developed the good sense to leave her alone–but not before we exchanged contact information.

Thank you, Heather, for the serendipitous encounter that makes me even more convinced that I am in the right place, right now–both in my life and in my novel. (P.S. I will take your advice!)

And thank you, Amy Lowell, for encouraging me to abandon my rule-making nature and simply play without expectation of results, with words and ideas, to make…

poetry out of a bit of moonlight   

And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.

To enjoy the whole of Amy Lowell’s Lilacs poem, click here. 

Here’s how I will remedy my spring fever:

I shall flit, for as long as the flaunted fragrance of lilacs intoxicates me. 

What will you do with your spring fever?

Lighthouse with Lilacs, oil on canvas, by Ken Karner

Names of Wildflowers: Garden in the Woods and a poem by Reginald Gibbons

New England Wildflower Society’s Garden in the Woods is a 45-acre living museum of New England native plants. It’s a magical place for a 2-mile stroll on woodland paths. It’s a tranquil, beautiful garden just 21 miles west of Boston.

Poets love the names of wildflowers. Celadine Poppy, White Wakerobin, Blood Root, Trout Lily….

Reginald Gibbons begins his 1986 poem, Wildflowers, with

Coleridge carefully wrote down a whole page
of them, all beginning with the letter b. 

Later in the poem, he tells us

Many poems have made delicate word-chimes–

like wind-chimes not for wind but for the breath of man– 

out of their lovely names. 

To read the rest of Gibbons’ poem, click here

Lovely names, indeed. But I’m able to name only some of the flowers I saw on a recent visit to Garden in the Woods. And after an extensive internet search, I’m still clueless.

Do you know these wildflowers’ names?

Trout Lily

Do you know?

(Hobblebush –thank you, Poet Katherine Solomon!)

?

?

?

Large-flowered Trillium

?

Faucet Flower (wink)

Wild Bleeding Heart

Daffodils: Wordsworth and I visit Laurel Ridge Foundation Narcissus Plantings in Litchfield, CT

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The Lake Isle of Innisfree: a Romantic view of Landscape

This Wednesday,  April 30, is National Poem in Your Pocket Day, and The Lake Isle of Innisfree is one of many public-domain poems you can print to carry with you, to share with coworkers, friends, and strangers in the grocery aisle.

This is one of the poems I’ll be sharing, because I love its language and its inherent musical sounds (meter and rhyme).

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

W. B. Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

How does this blog intersect with my novel-writing process?

What does this blog have to do with the plot and the structure of my novel?

Nothing. As I begin writing this blog, I already have the plot and structure of my novel firmly in place, and I’ve written my SFD.

You will find very, very little about the story here. For that, you will want to read the novel.

This blog is the story behind the story.

A Few of My Favorite Things: Poetry, Painting and Gardening

“Poetry, Painting, and Gardening (or the Science of Landscape) will forever by men of Taste be deemed Three Sisters, or the Three New Graces who dress and adorn nature.” Horace Walpole

For a number of years, I’ve been blogging about “Living Well in New England” at TracyLeeKarner.com

This blog is part of my creative process as I write a novel. The main character is a landscape designer. Her company’s name is 3 Sisters Landscapes–the name of this blog.

This blog will be my musing place.