New post over on Finding Gemstones -
http://findinggemstones.blogspot.com/2010/08/this-is-how-we-do-it.html
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
2010 MFA Reading
I bet you've been sitting on the edge of your seat for ages waiting for a new video of me reading my poetry. Well, you can kick back and relax now, because here it is. You might have to crank up your speakers. I don't think any of the poems I read have been posted on this site, so it's all new material for y'all.
2010 Reading by Sarah M. Wells at the Ashland University summer residency
2010 Reading by Sarah M. Wells at the Ashland University summer residency
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map
Someone is coming to look at our house tomorrow (during naptime, while BW is out of town, of course), so the kids and I have been tidying up tonight, and now we are watching Dora. Does anyone else question the value of shows like Dora?
"Do you see the volcano?" Pause. Pause.
Pause.
Click! "That's right!"
Or... "Where are we going?" "Grampa's house!" "Where are we going?" "Grampa's house?" "Where are we going!" "Grampa's house?!" "Where are we going!!!" ".... Grampa's house!"
Gee, I wonder why my kids ask the same question a thousand times in a row and wait fifteen seconds before replying to my questions.
I don't believe in the value of the formulaic plot of this show. I guess I see how life is like a Dora episode: We have a destination, there are several obstacles, the goal is in sight, we need some supplies to get there, and all of our necessary supplies are tucked away in our singing backpack. Obviously.
And my kids love it! I don't get it. Maybe it's just that they are hypnotized by the colors on the screen. Maybe any multi-pixelated combination of bright colors would draw their attention.
I much prefer listening to the creation of their own fantasyland in which they pretend to be Grandma Rose and Pop-Pop, or Granny and Pop, or the Mother and the Son, or the Dog and the Cat, or some other role-playing scenario that catches their imaginations. Of course, I'm the one who turned the TV on so that I could quickly finish cleaning and write this blog. And after they go to bed, I'll turn on the computer and stare at Facebook for several hours.
"Do you see the volcano?" Pause. Pause.
Pause.
Click! "That's right!"
Or... "Where are we going?" "Grampa's house!" "Where are we going?" "Grampa's house?" "Where are we going!" "Grampa's house?!" "Where are we going!!!" ".... Grampa's house!"
Gee, I wonder why my kids ask the same question a thousand times in a row and wait fifteen seconds before replying to my questions.
I don't believe in the value of the formulaic plot of this show. I guess I see how life is like a Dora episode: We have a destination, there are several obstacles, the goal is in sight, we need some supplies to get there, and all of our necessary supplies are tucked away in our singing backpack. Obviously.
And my kids love it! I don't get it. Maybe it's just that they are hypnotized by the colors on the screen. Maybe any multi-pixelated combination of bright colors would draw their attention.
I much prefer listening to the creation of their own fantasyland in which they pretend to be Grandma Rose and Pop-Pop, or Granny and Pop, or the Mother and the Son, or the Dog and the Cat, or some other role-playing scenario that catches their imaginations. Of course, I'm the one who turned the TV on so that I could quickly finish cleaning and write this blog. And after they go to bed, I'll turn on the computer and stare at Facebook for several hours.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Work in Progress
Here's something new I've been toying with. I think maybe the title is too heavy for the poem, but the previous title was "In the Woods," and that wasn't enough. I hate titles. Can I be Emily Dickinson and rely on the first line of each poem as the title? When I am dead and suddenly famous, y'all can chronologically order my poetry in a collected works and give them numbers. No more titles.
Knowledge of Good and Evil
I show my children the Mayapple,
lift its waxen umbrella for their eyes
to see its single flower. My mother’s
faraway warning steers us away
from three-leafed vines with a red dot
in the center. I use her firm grip
to turn my curious pair from their itch
to explore the woods beyond the path.
She told me, too, which berries
could be eaten on the border
of the forest where we scavenge
between the pin oaks, lift branches
heavy with the ripest fruit.
Maybe someday we will walk
through the shadows in the lane
of pines and my son will stop,
stoop down to lift an unknown
to me, give me a new world.
Knowledge of Good and Evil
I show my children the Mayapple,
lift its waxen umbrella for their eyes
to see its single flower. My mother’s
faraway warning steers us away
from three-leafed vines with a red dot
in the center. I use her firm grip
to turn my curious pair from their itch
to explore the woods beyond the path.
She told me, too, which berries
could be eaten on the border
of the forest where we scavenge
between the pin oaks, lift branches
heavy with the ripest fruit.
Maybe someday we will walk
through the shadows in the lane
of pines and my son will stop,
stoop down to lift an unknown
to me, give me a new world.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
True Confessions
It has been several weeks now since I've written any poems anywhere. I'm pretending that they are stored away in my brain just waiting for a moment to spill out onto the computer screen (because, let's face it, there's no such thing as putting pen to paper anymore). Surely there's some poem floating out there for me to write. Surely.
West Chester's Poetry Conference was good for me - I wrote three poems while I was there and edited a bunch, rearranged the manuscript that promises to never be finished, and devoured the advice and good counsel of other poets who served on panels and participated in the workshop with me. It was a jolly good time. And now. Now, I am all business and no time for writing or reading.
I'd like to take this opportunity to blame the sun. It is clearly the sun's fault that I haven't written anything. Also, the weeds in my flower garden. The caramel-colored paint on the walls in the dining room that insisted on being covered up by "Timeless Taupe," which was delighted to be stirred and rolled across the plaster (I heard it giggle while I worked). The eight games of Lexulous I inadvertently started and will perpetuate as long as my opponents accept. It is also clear that the spray park at the Kroc Center is forcing me to play with my kids in sprinklers all afternoon, thus purposefully distracting me from all poetic pursuits.
I will not be held responsible for the lack of poetry being generated today. Nope.
This obvious attempt by everything in the universe to divert my attentions away from rhyming couplets and iambs will continue throughout the weekend and at least another week. And then, the summer residency begins, and I will be surrounded by a legion of writers armed with laptops and collections of poetry to battle against the outside world. Writer's boot camp will at least inspire me to write something. Or drink. One of the two.
West Chester's Poetry Conference was good for me - I wrote three poems while I was there and edited a bunch, rearranged the manuscript that promises to never be finished, and devoured the advice and good counsel of other poets who served on panels and participated in the workshop with me. It was a jolly good time. And now. Now, I am all business and no time for writing or reading.
I'd like to take this opportunity to blame the sun. It is clearly the sun's fault that I haven't written anything. Also, the weeds in my flower garden. The caramel-colored paint on the walls in the dining room that insisted on being covered up by "Timeless Taupe," which was delighted to be stirred and rolled across the plaster (I heard it giggle while I worked). The eight games of Lexulous I inadvertently started and will perpetuate as long as my opponents accept. It is also clear that the spray park at the Kroc Center is forcing me to play with my kids in sprinklers all afternoon, thus purposefully distracting me from all poetic pursuits.
I will not be held responsible for the lack of poetry being generated today. Nope.
This obvious attempt by everything in the universe to divert my attentions away from rhyming couplets and iambs will continue throughout the weekend and at least another week. And then, the summer residency begins, and I will be surrounded by a legion of writers armed with laptops and collections of poetry to battle against the outside world. Writer's boot camp will at least inspire me to write something. Or drink. One of the two.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Maybe she's born with it...
New post over at Finding Gemstones -- http://findinggemstones.blogspot.com/2010/06/maybe-shes-born-with-it-maybe-its.html
Monday, May 24, 2010
Baby Spoons and the Crust
A lot of thought-provokers happened today during my 30-minute lunch break, and I can't help but take a few minutes to reflect on them here before settling in with transcripts and info sheets and all of the other important tasks I have to do.
Are kids you know picky about sandwich crusts? Lydia is. Unless she's starving and there's a good deal of peanut butter smeared to the very end of the bread slice, she isn't interested in crusts. Today she polished off her PBH and left the crusts on her plate, asking if she could eat something else. We suggested the remaining pieces of her sandwich, but she wasn't THAT hungry. Meanwhile, Elvis sat staring at his plate with a PBJ cut in half, no bites taken and that face that says, "I really, really don't want to eat this, but if I make any move like I don't, I'll get sent to time out, again, so I guess I'll just sit here and stare at it." So Lydia asked if she could eat Elvis's sandwich, unaware that Brandon had used the ends of the bread to make his sandwich - only one side visible. We handed her the sandwich and she wolfed it down. All we could say to one another was, "Hilarious." And then, of course, the fact that Lydia had half of Elvis's sandwich was enough to send him into fits and sobs, even though (as previously stated) someone was about as anti-sandwich as vegans are anti-pork chop. We gave him back half of the sandwich and he went at it with the same enthusiasm Lyd had demonstrated over her quite crusty PBJ.
We don't really know what we want. Crusts or no crusts. Sandwich or no sandwich. A little bit of both. We're clueless, envious, subjective creatures.
After the PBJ episode, the kids were back to behaving like normal human beings. And then they began a conversation about heaven. We talk about heaven often--their day care place talks about heaven occasionally, and we've told them that Great Pop and Tex and the baby that was in mommy's belly (see previous post) are in heaven, so it comes up. Today's conversation started with Elvis saying, "Baby in heaven," and Lydia followed up by saying, "When the baby comes back from heaven and it grows up a little, it'll need baby spoons." Then they discussed between the two of them whether they wanted a baby boy or a baby girl.
I've often wondered whether children who do not make it to term have another go-around. It's all speculation what goes on, anyway, and why, and how, and when. Do I have four children hanging out with Jesus in heaven, waiting to meet me? Who knows? Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we cannot see, and probably this area of life--death and loss--requires the greatest amount of faith. And I believe - not in my own fantasies and musings about happy little people clinging to the robes of Christ, but in a loving, compassionate, patient, merciful, just, mysterious, and powerful God of the universe. I stand in awe of him. And because I believe these things and hope for what I cannot see, I can trust that whatever the circumstances, he is the great redeemer.
This past weekend was the first time Brandon and I talked about "the future" and "our plans" (God knows the plans he has for us... plans to prosper us and not harm us, plans to give us a hope and a future... and he chuckles at "our plans" all the time, I'm sure) since the miscarriage two weeks ago. I'm not ready to give up on more children, and he's not ready to say let's keep trying for more children, which leaves us contentedly undecided for the long term. This is our fourth miscarriage, and he's tired of this. I certainly don't enjoy going through this, either, but I guess I'm just less prepared to say enough. I can't retire my vision of our family as more-than-the-four-of-us. It is kind of nice to return to my own self - I like being able to exercise and feeling physically fit, and I like being able to have a drink now and again, and I like not being tired or anxious about whether everything's okay. But I'm happy to sacrifice the comforts of possessing my own body for nine+ months in order to have another little person in our family.
I had no response to Lydia and Elvis's dialogue, so we both just smiled and watched the two of them, and we hovered there in our land of indecision and longing. There's no real way to answer the question, "Why do you want to have more kids?" Is it because I'm wired to want to be fruitful and multiply? I don't know. I don't know why I want more children. I've heard it said, "You have a boy and a girl - that's perfect! You can be done!" as if that's the only reason people keep trying to have more kids - in order to have one of each gender. I could list off reasons why I want to have more and also the advantages to only having two. But would it really provide a solution or give additional clarity, like weighing the pros and cons? I don't know if it would. I think if I were told, you really shouldn't/can't have any more kids, I would be able to let it go, but no one has said this, except for the occasional insensitive person.
Like many forms of loss and grief, a miscarriage dominates your thoughts for an indeterminable period of time. For days, weeks, and sometimes months, the mom-to-be is focused on being a mom-to-be -- eating right, exercising right, sleeping well... and then, just like that, all of the energy put into thinking about being a mom is channeled elsewhere, and the first place it goes is into loss and grief. And that turns into questions and hypothetical situations, which turns into hunting for answers as to why this happened and sometimes evolves into blame - self, God, others, etc. And then we struggle and flounder about, gradually find other areas to channel thoughts, wrestle with God and what we believe about him and his involvement in our personal affairs, whether we believe him to be a good God or a cruel one, and what does that mean for the rest of my life? Sometimes we find rest and resolve and healing. I wonder how many of us just pack that grief into our hearts and hope that the wound will scab over if we bury it deep enough.
Are kids you know picky about sandwich crusts? Lydia is. Unless she's starving and there's a good deal of peanut butter smeared to the very end of the bread slice, she isn't interested in crusts. Today she polished off her PBH and left the crusts on her plate, asking if she could eat something else. We suggested the remaining pieces of her sandwich, but she wasn't THAT hungry. Meanwhile, Elvis sat staring at his plate with a PBJ cut in half, no bites taken and that face that says, "I really, really don't want to eat this, but if I make any move like I don't, I'll get sent to time out, again, so I guess I'll just sit here and stare at it." So Lydia asked if she could eat Elvis's sandwich, unaware that Brandon had used the ends of the bread to make his sandwich - only one side visible. We handed her the sandwich and she wolfed it down. All we could say to one another was, "Hilarious." And then, of course, the fact that Lydia had half of Elvis's sandwich was enough to send him into fits and sobs, even though (as previously stated) someone was about as anti-sandwich as vegans are anti-pork chop. We gave him back half of the sandwich and he went at it with the same enthusiasm Lyd had demonstrated over her quite crusty PBJ.
We don't really know what we want. Crusts or no crusts. Sandwich or no sandwich. A little bit of both. We're clueless, envious, subjective creatures.
After the PBJ episode, the kids were back to behaving like normal human beings. And then they began a conversation about heaven. We talk about heaven often--their day care place talks about heaven occasionally, and we've told them that Great Pop and Tex and the baby that was in mommy's belly (see previous post) are in heaven, so it comes up. Today's conversation started with Elvis saying, "Baby in heaven," and Lydia followed up by saying, "When the baby comes back from heaven and it grows up a little, it'll need baby spoons." Then they discussed between the two of them whether they wanted a baby boy or a baby girl.
I've often wondered whether children who do not make it to term have another go-around. It's all speculation what goes on, anyway, and why, and how, and when. Do I have four children hanging out with Jesus in heaven, waiting to meet me? Who knows? Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we cannot see, and probably this area of life--death and loss--requires the greatest amount of faith. And I believe - not in my own fantasies and musings about happy little people clinging to the robes of Christ, but in a loving, compassionate, patient, merciful, just, mysterious, and powerful God of the universe. I stand in awe of him. And because I believe these things and hope for what I cannot see, I can trust that whatever the circumstances, he is the great redeemer.
This past weekend was the first time Brandon and I talked about "the future" and "our plans" (God knows the plans he has for us... plans to prosper us and not harm us, plans to give us a hope and a future... and he chuckles at "our plans" all the time, I'm sure) since the miscarriage two weeks ago. I'm not ready to give up on more children, and he's not ready to say let's keep trying for more children, which leaves us contentedly undecided for the long term. This is our fourth miscarriage, and he's tired of this. I certainly don't enjoy going through this, either, but I guess I'm just less prepared to say enough. I can't retire my vision of our family as more-than-the-four-of-us. It is kind of nice to return to my own self - I like being able to exercise and feeling physically fit, and I like being able to have a drink now and again, and I like not being tired or anxious about whether everything's okay. But I'm happy to sacrifice the comforts of possessing my own body for nine+ months in order to have another little person in our family.
I had no response to Lydia and Elvis's dialogue, so we both just smiled and watched the two of them, and we hovered there in our land of indecision and longing. There's no real way to answer the question, "Why do you want to have more kids?" Is it because I'm wired to want to be fruitful and multiply? I don't know. I don't know why I want more children. I've heard it said, "You have a boy and a girl - that's perfect! You can be done!" as if that's the only reason people keep trying to have more kids - in order to have one of each gender. I could list off reasons why I want to have more and also the advantages to only having two. But would it really provide a solution or give additional clarity, like weighing the pros and cons? I don't know if it would. I think if I were told, you really shouldn't/can't have any more kids, I would be able to let it go, but no one has said this, except for the occasional insensitive person.
Like many forms of loss and grief, a miscarriage dominates your thoughts for an indeterminable period of time. For days, weeks, and sometimes months, the mom-to-be is focused on being a mom-to-be -- eating right, exercising right, sleeping well... and then, just like that, all of the energy put into thinking about being a mom is channeled elsewhere, and the first place it goes is into loss and grief. And that turns into questions and hypothetical situations, which turns into hunting for answers as to why this happened and sometimes evolves into blame - self, God, others, etc. And then we struggle and flounder about, gradually find other areas to channel thoughts, wrestle with God and what we believe about him and his involvement in our personal affairs, whether we believe him to be a good God or a cruel one, and what does that mean for the rest of my life? Sometimes we find rest and resolve and healing. I wonder how many of us just pack that grief into our hearts and hope that the wound will scab over if we bury it deep enough.
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