19 May 2016
When everything finally has been wrecked and further shipwrecked,
When their most ardent dream has been made hollow and unrecognizable,
They will feel inside their limbs the missing shade of blue that lingers….
–from “Half Omen Half Hope” by Joanna Klink
Make art about your hopes for the human race.
18 May 2016
I spend most of my time with 18-25 year olds 🙂 I call them Angel Babies, Angel Chirren. 🙂 I call them My Teachers. Yep. They always teach me more than I could ever teach them.
Make art about something learned from a young person.
13 May 2016
Headed off to teach a weekend Promptathon workshop at The Porches Writing Retreat 🙂
Make art about porches.
14 May 2016
Saturday morning at The Porches Writing Retreat, and we’re working on Voices.
Make art about the voice you hear down in the hall.
15 May 2016
I have a habit of collecting discarded photographs in thrift stores, those precious memories sold in estate sales, so many beautiful faces, so many voices, so many stories.
Make art about other people’s pictures.
16 May 2016
Had some sweet winged company.
A luna moth emerges from its cocoon with not long for this earth. The average lifespan is a week, during which time they have no means to eat (no mouths). Their week (and life) goal is simple: to reproduce. To make love, the strongest of human emotions.
Many observers believe this to be a reminder of the importance of love in our short time on this earth. Live and love to the fullest and enjoy every experience that gets thrown your way.
Make art about Loving fully in the moment.
17 May 2016
Okay, so the garden’s cleaned up and turned over, but it’s pouring cold hard rain outside. So I guess I’m sewing, instead of planting today.
Make art about having your plans thwarted.
This week, meet one of the most amazing writers and literary citizens in our community, Allison Joseph! Allison lives, writes, and teaches in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is part of the creative writing faculty at Southern Illinois University. She serves as editor and poetry editor of Crab Orchard Review, moderator of the Creative Writers Opportunities List, and director of the Young Writers Workshop, a summer writers’ workshop for teen writers.
Her books and chapbooks include What Keeps Us Here (Ampersand Press), Soul Train (Carnegie Mellon University Press), In Every Seam(University of Pittsburgh Press), Worldly Pleasures (Word Tech Communications), Imitation of Life (Carnegie Mellon UP), Voice: Poems (Mayapple Press), My Father’s Kites (Steel Toe Books), Trace Particles (Backbone Press), Little Epiphanies (Imaginary Friend Press), Mercurial (Mayapple Press), Mortal Rewards (White Violet Press), Multitudes (forthcoming, Word Tech Communications), The Purpose of Hands (forthcoming, Glass Lyre Press), Corporal Muse(forthcoming, Lucky Bastard Press). Her next full-length collection,Confessions of a Barefaced Woman, has been accepted for publication by Red Hen Press. She is the literary partner and wife of Jon Tribble.
I go back again and again to Allison’s work, but especially My Father’s Kites.
Buy Allison’s Books!
My Father’s Kites
http://www.steeltoebooks.com/books/39-my-fathers-kites.html
Praise for My Father’s Kites
“‘Tell me about the poet,’ urges Allison Joseph in the very first line of her remarkable new collection — and it is with insight, honesty and extraordinary technical skill that she accomplishes exactly this. My Father’s Kites is a self-revelatory collection of carefully wrought, jewel-like poems that explore the often paradoxical complexities of family relationships. Her strategy is tightly linked to her remarkable expertise as a formalist — a gift that becomes most evident in ‘What the Eye Beholds,’ a series of sonnets about her father’s flamboyant life, his gradual ‘dereliction,’ his inevitable early death, and its poignant aftermath. The arc of this sequence, flanked as it is by graceful villanelles and rondeaus. I cannot think of another contemporary poet who has done a finer job of combining form and content, to dazzling effect.” — Marilyn Taylor
Soul Train
http://www.upne.com/0887482472.html
In Every Seam
https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=34548
Wordly Pleasures
http://www.wordpoetrybooks.com/joseph.htm
Imitation of Life
http://www.amazon.com/Imitation-Life-Carnegie-Mellon-Poetry/dp/0887483860
Voice: Poems
http://mayapplepress.com/voice-poems-allison-joseph/
Trace Particles
http://backbonepress.org/chapbooks/
Mercurial
http://mayapplepress.com/mercurial-allison-joseph/
Mortal Rewards
Read More from Allison Online
20 Poems from Allison Joseph
http://www.culturalfront.org/2011/10/20-poems-by-allison-joseph.html
http://www.heartjournalonline.com/joseph/2013/12/1/two-poems-by-allison-joseph
http://atticusreview.org/september-featured-poet-allison-joseph/
https://sliverofstonemagazine.com/running-while-black-by-allison-joseph/
http://rlpoetry.org/extraction-allison-joseph/
http://www.bradley.edu/sites/poet/steel/poems/joseph.dot
Interviews
http://lunchticket.org/allison-joseph-poet/
http://www.thefourthriver.com/index.php/the-mark-of-real-life-an-interview-with-allison-joseph
http://www.midwestwriters.org/2014/06/interview-with-allison-joseph/
Hear Allison Read
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2TEGGSxUeA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BWP3KtEXpo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h5E1KynLY4
Happy reading!
xo
Mary
12 May 2016
11 May 2016
I have a Creativity Promptathon Workshop Weekend coming up, and I always make small gifts for my participants. Nothing fancy, just something I made with my own hands. Small thank you for their trust and time.
Make art about a gift someone has given you. Or about giving a gift.
Happy National Poetry Month! Another favorite poet, the amazing Amy Tudor. 🙂 ❤
What We Love
Amy Tudor
I walk my old dog down a street called Holiday,
past trees whose white bark is trimmed with silver
in the light rain of early Spring. The dog’s small heart
is failing and the vet’s said he shouldn’t be out,
but if we walk slowly he can go four or five squares
of sidewalk, then I let him stop and rest.
He puts his nose up into the cool air, the wind ruffling
his black and white coat and the gray on his ears,
the wind smoothing over him. When he can’t go
any further (halfway past that lovely ocre-colored house
in my neighborhood, the one that’s half-hidden by linden
and guarded by an iron gate), I carry him against my chest.
One day a black lab stood at a driveway gate
and barked at us as we passed. My old dog
looked from beneath half-lidded eyes and didn’t answer,
and finally the other dog’s owner, an older man,
came out the screen door and called the dog to come back.
The dog rose from where he sat, a hind leg dragging
and his right-front hitched as he moved toward the house.
I watched it go. The man looked at me holding
my old dog against my chest. The man smiled.
He raised a hand, half-greeting, half-regret.
I should say here that I know the rules I’m breaking.
I was told years ago that poets shouldn’t waste
their time on trivial things like dying pets.
“It’s been done, and done, and done to death,”
a friend once said. And it has, sure
as death’s been done and done and done to death.
So I’ll make a deal with you– forget
what I’ve said about my dog in my arms,
his nose in the air, the wind like hands. And forget
the man and his black lab that limped up
those brick back steps. I won’t write about any of that.
I’ll write a poem about what we love instead.
What we love is a night and a house
wreathed with linden, the dark kept outside
a circle of light over an iron gate. It’s fine
as silver paper or the wind of early Spring.
What we love is a tree that grows outside our window
as we grow inside its panes, a small good thing
we bring home – or that follows us there — one day.
Then it’s a friend that walks with us, gentle
and welcome as rain. It’s what we call to us to come
when darkness is coming, and it’s what tends us,
and what we tend. And finally it’s what we carry
close against us, feeling blessed as we hold it
and joy for what it gives and has given,
for the comfort it’s been through hard, heavy days,
forgiving every burden it’s been, grateful
for even the grief we must carry when it’s gone,
that soft, warm, impossible weight.
Make art about what you love.
Daily Prompt Catch-Up!
3/25/2016
My grandmother Miz Pearl always said to plant on Good Friday. I haven’t gotten the garden in yet, but I did put in some basil and some seed potatoes. Seeds of a new season.
Make art about seeds.
3/26/2016
Easter gathering with family, and my favorite part was watching my loving generous adult sons play with the baby cousins. Make art about love and gifts across the generations.
3/27/2016
Make art about your own resurrection.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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