Poem 4: Art Prompt

When I got my new laptop, I was ready for a new wallpaper after seven years of Fra Angelico's Resurrection, Somehow, I found myself drawn to Rosetti's work after seeing a PreRaphaelite exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Art a couple of years ago. She intrigues me, and I just love having her as my wallpaper.

So when a poetry prompt suggested composing a poem on a work of art, I knew exactly where to turn. So here it is -- a rough draft, of course.

On Rosetti's La Pia de Tolomei

Folds of gossamer satin capture light,
her velvet scarf carelessly thrown aside.
Brown waves cascade down her back,
gray-green eyes focused far beyond sight.
Her hands clasped in her lap,
she twists a golden ring
around, around her finger.

Her prayer book open at her side,
rosary laid aside, letters spread beneath --
lately at prayer yet now
absorbed in troubled thoughts
in her leafy haven,
so brief a reprieve from her private prison.
Ravens circling above nearby roofs
cast darkening shadows,
unmasking clouded thoughts
as she twists her marriage band
around, around her finger.

(c) 2009 Susanne Barrett

Poem: An Unusual Ode

(National Poetry Month Official Poster, from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")

I wrote three poems today -- two of them are very serious and require more thought and work than I can give them in only a day, and one I'm saving for Good Friday next week. One of them actually rhymes and everything. (I usually write in free verse, so rhyming is quite a departure for me.) So, still needing an idea for a poem to post today, I scoured the poetry.org website, finally locating some prompts. One suggestion for writing poems was on composing unusual odes. I looked up "ode" at dictionary.com and found this definition from a cultural dictionary:

ODE: A kind of poem devoted to the praise of a person, animal, or thing. An ode is usually written in an elevated style and often expresses deep feeling. An example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” by John Keats

The prompt mentioned odes to cockroaches, traffic, etc. Unusual odes, to be sure. I thought I would write an ode to Southern California Traffic, but it quickly transitioned to an ode to SMOG. Smog (smoke + fog) isn't quite as much of a problem in San Diego as it has been in Los Angeles to the north, but when the wind comes from the north, we get far more than our usual share that blankets our coasts and mountains. One great advantage to living in the mountains is that we live pretty much above the icky brownish-gray stuff. So here is a hurried rough draft of an ode to ... smog (ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek).

An Ode to Southern California Smog

O, Smog --
Spewing from tailpipes
Before, beside, behind me --
Birthed from sedans, vans
(both full-sized and mini),
Pick-ups, 18-wheelers, Hummers,
And even the occasional
Motorcycle.

You ring the mountains,
Tarnishing their sharp shapes
With somber grays and browns --
Only unmasking pure beauty
With the next rainfall.

(c) 2009 Susanne Barrett

So, can you compose an unusual ode? If you do, please put the link in the comments section -- I'd love to read it!

ER Finale

(Photo courtesy NBC)
As I type this, I'm watching the two-hour final episode of ER. Keith and I have watched this show from the very first episode back in September 1994 when we had only one child, and I was pregnant with the baby we lost two months later in November. So I feel great attachment to ER and always have. I stopped watching for a few months around Season 9, but then ER picked back up with some intriguing story lines, and so did we. I found my eyes welling with tears as the ER opening credits started with the familiar old names ... a beginning that hasn't been used in at least five years. Kleenexes at the ready. Okay, I'm set.

I had thought that Rachel Green would show back up as a med student in the final episode, and I was right: I recognized her immediately, and as I type this, she is introducing herself to Frank as Mark Green's daughter. I'm getting such a feeling of deja vu as E and I have been watching Season 1 reruns on TNT, so we're used to seeing younger versions of Carter, Benton, Lewis, Green, Morgenstern, Hathaway, and Ross. I am looking forward to seeing older versions of them tonight, too -- well, except for Green whom we saw earlier this season in a flashback. We've already had glimpses of Weaver and Lewis already by halfway through this last episode, and we'll be seeing Corday who flew out with Rachel Green for her interview as a med student.

It's sad watching ER go ... just think of all of the great guest stars! Alan Alda, Forest Whittaker, Sally Field, Ernest Borgnine just tonight, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Angela Bassett, Rosemary Clooney, and the list goes on and on. Incredible actors. We watched the one-hour retrospective earlier with interviews with the actors over the years -- which was very cool. The show has been simply incredible ... and it's a very simple premise: working in the ER is HARD. Way hard. But it's the innovations that make ER so incredible -- the cameras, the long shots, the live show, the guest stars.

I sit here, with long breaks between typing, just absorbing the enormity of this final show ... and of all that has happened in the last fifteen years since I watched the first episode with such excitement. Back then I had only a daughter and was excitedly expecting our second child ... the child who didn't become part of our family in this life. Three more boys have joined us since then, and I watched ER through each and every pregnancy, through late-night nursings and up late with sick kids. Elizabeth was a toddler in 1994, and now she's watching this final episode with me, minus my nostalgia.

It's been an amazing show -- the stuff of life ... and death. It's realism and romance and suffering and grief and joy. The characters are flawed yet heroic, real people who cry and laugh, who transform at times and sometimes don't. Sam and Gates finally get back together, holding hands after the death of a patient who had known her husband for 72 years which finally softened Sam's hard heart toward Tony. Kim returned from Paris to see Carter at the opening of the Joshua Carter Center, named for their son who died in utero, and the death of Joshua remains an insurmountable obstacle to their relationship. Elizabeth Corday, Peter Benton, Kerry Weaver, Susan Lewis, Rachel Green, and Carter go out for drinks after the Opening, and the look on Carter's face at one point was priceless ... nostalgia and joy and pain. Life. Then Carter takes Rachel back to the ER and teaches her how to place an IV. Aaah, poetic justice as Carter, the original student fifteen years before, teaches Mark Green's daughter her first procedure.

The ER theme music starts playing as a huge trauma comes in -- an industrial fire with multiple casualties. Everyone is flying here and there, triaging patients, treating those most severely burned and injured. Although he doesn't actually work at County at this point, Carter pulls on gown and gloves and, as he runs alongside a patient's gurney into the ER, he calls behind him, "You comin, Dr. Green?" Rachel's face lights up and she races into the ER after him, ready to help.

And ER is over. Just like that.

Poem: Spring Gardening

Here's the poem I wrote for the second day of National Poetry Month -- obviously a rough draft, so please keep that fact in mind:

Spring Gardening

Cool between my fingers,
the damp earth
births wonder.
Roots burrow,
shoots emerge,
miracles blossom
beneath the dirt
I mold around the
delicate seedlings --
the stuff of revelation
in the palm of my hand.

(c) 2009 Susanne Barrett

National Poetry Month

Yes, April is National Poetry Month, and there are many ways to celebrate poetry this month. I am going to attempt to make all my Facebook status reports and Tweets either rhyme or be quotes from or about poems. The boys and I are studying Emily Dickinson's poems this month; I read them a short biography this morning and we'll read a poem or two a day over the course of the month.

In addition, the website poets.org is hosting a NaPoWriMo -- National Poetry Writing Month. We're supposed to write and post a poem a day for the entire month. I will try it -- no telling if any of it will rise above the level of complete and utter crap, but it may spark some better work later on. What I will be posting here will be in rough draft form only, so please don't judge my writing purely on the quality of the verse I'll be putting up here. Here's a link to poets.org's poetry prompts that may help you if you're struggling for ideas: Prompts.

Here's a poem I wrote a couple of weeks ago at our church's women's retreat; I had the chance to share it there with the speaker who asked me to read it to the group. The speaker had asked us to take a cheap taco shop napkin, write our hopes and dreams on it, and put it in an urn that represented ashes. Then in its place we were to take a gorgeous scarf (my lovely purple and blue one is from Turkey, Peggy tells me) as a symbol of how God would take our hopes and dreams and guve us His plan that is beyond our wildest expectations. The poem is still quite rough, but I think it has promise:

Beauty from Ashes

Crumpled in my fist --
longings, needs, desires
that I cling to in desperation,
even fear --
I place them into the flowered urn --
now rendered as ashes --
Dry in my mouth and
dry in my soul.

All that is dreamed of, unfulfilled,
that I have harbored
far too long
I offer with trepidation,
somehow trusting that
goodness and peace
will emerge.

Violet melds into sapphire,
fragile against my cheek and
filmy to my touch.
Faith is burgeoning,
thrusting forth roots, shoots,
beginning its slow work of
bringing beauty from the ashes.

(c)2009 Susanne Barrett

So what are your plans for National Poetry Month? Yes, it's only been around since 1996, but that's no reason NOT to celebrate the written word in poetic form. Any reason is a good excuse to read and write poetry. My poetry notebook is at hand and will be scribbled in a great deal this month -- I hope.

Dancing with the Stars

Last night and tonight made up Week 4 of the 8th Season of Dancing with the Stars and was a double-elimination. Thankfully, the "right" people went home tonight: Holly & Dmitri and Steve & Karina. Last week, Denise & Max went home, and the first ones eliminated were Belinda & Jonathan.

Now that the dross is eliminated from the show (the two couples eliminated tonight were embarassingly bad, especially Steve Wozniak, or however his name is spelled), I am really looking forward to the rest of the season. The front runners are three couples: Giles and Cheryl who received the first perfect score, Melissa and Tony, and Shawn & Mark. The couple I like best is Ty & Chelsie who started the first week *very* rough and are improving so rapidly. We recognize Chelsie from last summer's So You Think You Can Dance and really loved her dancing. She's the second pro to come to Dancing with the Stars from Fox's So You Think You Can Dance, Lacey being the first. A rodeo star, Ty is married to San Diego native singer Jewel who had to back out of Dancing with the Stars with an injury before the show started. Ty has come along by leaps and bounds, and his shyness and humility are refreshing. Currently they are my favorite couple this season, and Shawn & Mark are my second favorite couple. There are other couples I like also, but these two are my favorites.

I really enjoy the dances, the music, and the couples who learn to dance well together. I miss dancing, especially the ability to do physical activities that I cannot do currently. I would LOVE to take ballroom dancing lessons - and with my husband who claims he has no rhythm. Aaah, one can dream....

But the next best thing is watching Dancing with the Stars and cheering on our favorites through the Viennese Waltz, the Samba, the Mambo, the Foxtrot, the Quickstep, etc. Whether Ballroom or Latin, all of the dances are fun to watch. However, we don't allow the boys to watch because of the rather revealing costumes (or the lack thereof). How ABC calls Dancing with the Stars a "family show" is completely beyond me with the vast majority of the women dancing around half-naked. But E and I try to ignore the immodest costumes and enjoy the dances and music.

So we'll continue enjoying the beautiful ballroom dancing this spring and also watch So You Think You Can Dance this summer. Dance, baby, dance!

Brave Writer vs. Other Writing Programs

I started working for Julie Bogart and Brave Writer, her language arts business for homeschooling families, in the spring of 2002 when I taught a poetry class. My health worsened immediately after the class and I couldn't handle teaching another course, so I helped Julie with the poetry portion of the Slingshot, a monthly language arts subscription for high school students. Later I wrote more of the Slingshot, the novel portion and the writing assignment suggestion as well as the poetry. As I have started improving in health in the last year, I picked back up with teaching the newer "One Thing" series of classes, including courses in Shakespeare, poetry, and grammar. Julie asked me to write the Boomerang this spring for her, the monthly language arts subscription for grades 7-9, and I'm enjoying writing it each month.

I've extensively used Julie's two writing guides, The Writer's Jungle and Help for High School. Both are really terrific in developing kids into writers. I love her approach: nurturing our children into discovering and developing their voice as writers. Because Julie comes at writing from the position of a professional writer rather than as a teacher/academic, her approach is very different from any writing program available. Julie's focus is the writer, not forms nor content ... both of which come into play once the writer is expressing him- or herself with relative ease and confidence.

After spending the weekend at a homeschooling conference, Julie addressed the differences between Brave Writer and other programs on the market. Her Brave Writer blog is a wonderful writing resource, even if you are using other programs (which can work with Brave Writer) and really is a not-to-be-missed home school resource. You may read her post by clicking here: Brave Writer vs. Other Programs. On the Brave Writer site are many FREE resources, including articles and her extremely helpful Yahoo loop which is really a FlyLady for homeschoolers.

If your family (like mine) has some reluctant writers, then Brave Writer may be the program for you. It's a wonderful way to teach writing that truly comes from the heart of our writers. That's what writing is all about in the end, after all. And the focus is on our kids first and the writing second which is exactly the way it should be.

Twilight: The Movie

I just sat down with E and watched Twilight tonight. She received the books (all four) for Christmas, either as gifts or with gift cards/Christmas money and has read them each several times already. I, on the other hand, have read nary a word of Stephanie Meyer's ever-popular vampire series although after watching the film, I would like to.

The film definitely possessed shades of the Harry Potter films, with Edward Cullen played by Robert Pattison who portrayed Cedric Diggory in the fourth HP film. And the young girl playing Bella kept reminding me of Emma Watson who played Hermione -- mostly in her facial expressions as well as the overall shape of her face and eyes.

But the film was very well done, although I understand that it is quite different from the book. I was captured by Edward's intense stares from minute one, and was engaged in the characters and the story immediately. The climax of the story was exciting and unpredictable, and the denouement was well-done.

It's a story that most adults would appreciate and most tween and teen girls swoon over (metaphorically, of course). But it's a fast-paced film with exciting twists and turns, good character development, and believable conflict left wide open for the following films. It's well-worth checking out from the library or video store. E received the first copy from our library, so we had a virgin DVD, and tomorrow night we'll explore the second DVD of extra features.

But Twilight is good. Very good. And the books have definitely moved up my list to the very top and I will start them as soon as I can procure them from the library. For some strange reason, E refuses to lend me her books as I tend to read them in the spa and get them all steamy and wrinkly. Picky, picky girl.....

What a Week!

Sorry I haven't been here -- I've missed writing my blog terribly but it's definitely been "one of those" weeks. The two middle boys in 6th and 8th grades had standardized testing as required by our private independent study program (PSP), Heritage Christian School. The Stanford Achievement Tests are required for all students in grades 4-11 unless high schoolers are taking either the PSAT (which E did) or the SAT (which she will in June). B is in third this year, so he won't be starting until next year, if he's ready. If he isn't (he's my latest reader thus far), then I can sign a waiver with the school and skip it again. But he may be ready by then -- a year can make a huge difference in reading ability.

So, anyway, we had to be at Del Cerro Baptist Church, our Class Day site, which is a 75-mile round trip from our house. On Monday we were to be there at 8:15 AM, and by 8:45 AM on Tuesday and Wednesday. So we're talking EARLY mornings for this night-owl family. And on Thursday we were back again at Del Cerro for our twice-monthly co-op Class Days. So today (Friday) is the first day we've had a semi-normal school day all week long. On Monday and Tuesday, B and I did his schoolwork while I graded Class Day essays at the nearest Starbuck's to the Class Day site. On Wednesday, we had all four kids with us and after dropping T and J at the testing site, B, E and I went shopping for T's birthday gift and then settled in at Starbuck's until the boys finished. From there we drove to the San Diego Zoo where the scooter once again was a huge blessing as I could motor around the zoo with no one having to push me up and down hills. Bliss! We met my parents there (they give us annual passes to the zoo and Wild Animal Park each spring which we use several times) and they took us to lunch. E bought T a stuffed animal of his choice as his gift. After the zoo, we came home and had Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches (such a treat!) and rootbeer floats to celebrate T's 14th birthday.

On Thursday we had Class Day, and I had all but one essay graded from my Starbuck mornings all week. Usually I'm grading 3-4 essays during my free period between classes, but not this time. I was sooo proud of myself. Or I was until I relized that I had left the Intermediate Writing essays in my *other* bag I had been taking to Starbuck's all week. I couldn't run all the way home and back in time for class, so the students will have to wait to get their essays back until next time. I've never forgotten essays before ... but it's been that kind of week....

Today I ran down to Alpine for the Friday Healing Mass with Father Acker. The quiet, the prayer, the Scripture, the Communion ... just what I needed. I came home by 10:40 and helped the boys through their limited schoolwork of math, grammar, spelling, writing, piano, guitar, and typing. I curled up on the sofa by 3 PM and rested all afternoon, if editing the 150 photos from retreat and the zoo and writing part of the Brave Writer Boomerang qualifies as resting.

And, thankfully, tomorrow is another day.

Another day to finish the Boomerang and complete my reading of Cry of the Peacock for Logos on Sunday. And REST some more.

This Weekend....

... is Lake Murray's annual women's retreat at the Pine Valley Bible Conference Center. I think this will be my 15th or 16th retreat, and I've enjoyed being part of the preparations. For the past six weeks or so, I've been helping taking registrations between services and after second service, keeping track of names, addresses, schedules, checks, and dates. I will also be leading a discussion group after our speakers ... which reminds me that I had better look back over that questions list before tomorrow night! And I also have the most important task of being in charge of the overhead projector with the praise songs and hymns on the screen for everyone to sing from.

But my favorite part of retreat is the balance of quiet time with God and fun time with friends. Our family will be here at Lake Murray Community Church for sixteen years this June, so these women are among my closest friends. It's often VERY hard to live so far away from them, and we always have. Most of the families at our church live in La Mesa or El Cajon, but for eight years we drove to church from North Park (20 minutes away) and for the over seven years we've been in our little mountain town we've been driving for 35-40 minutes to church (depending on who is driving, Keith or myself). So we've always lived outside of the main circle of church families. Facebook helps wonderfully in staying "in the loop" but the annual retreats are wonderful times to build friendships with these wonderful women, many of whom drove up the mountain to help clean my house weekly for several years after I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis.

I also love time alone with God at retreat, especially time to write in my prayer journal. When I spoke at retreat several years ago on having extended time in silence and solitude with God, we spent several hours alone with the Lord over the weekend. We did the same the next year when Judith spoke, and this past year when Julie Hogan spoke. This weekend we have a speaker from the Navigators, and although I am looking forward to what God has prepared her to speak to us, I have really enjoyed the hours' long time along with God. I may stay after the group leaves with my journal, prayer book, and Bible and spend some time listening to Jesus. My Pine Valley friend Sheri may join me. She has attended our last two Lake Murray retreats, but this year she is unable to. We have enjoyed doing silent retreats at Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside, in Alpine at the prayer labyrinth that is an outreach of Queen of Angels Catholic Church, and of course at the Pine Valley Bible Conference Center.

So I shall "see" you all on Monday after I come back. I'm actually walking out the door this minute (3:00 PM on Friday afternoon), although B is in tears and T and J are both hugging me repeatedly. And E is moping around, saying she will miss her TV/movie partner. Keith and I had a short prayer time together and a chat before leaving this morning. I feel centered by the Holy Eucharist at Alpine Anglican this morning and ready for retreating!