Writing Through November (NaNoWriMo, kids)

October is coming to an end.  In the Big Woods, we saw our first snowfall this past week.  I've brought in the plants, stocked the woodpile, stored the patio furniture, and aired my winter coats.  Later this week, I'll clean the pick-up and then move it into the garage until April, swapping it for the 4-wheel drive Blazer.

Like most folks in the Snowbelt, November is the month to hunker down, to refamiliarize ourselves with long, winter nights; the quiet of a crystalline moon, the indistinct rustle of dried oak leaves still clinging to branches, the kick and comfort of the furnace.  It is a poet's month.

For three years, I have participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  In 2009, I took the challenge of writing 50,000 words by month's end or 1,700 words daily.  I worked on a story idea, set in Cherokee, NC, at the foot of the Smoky Mountains.  I managed just over 51,000 words and haven't looked at it since.

The year Jeff died, my days were full of words and sorrowed poems and I spent that November taking the NaNoWriMo poem-a-day challenge.  I do not participate in the online community, but I did use prompts from Robert Brewer, an editor with Writer's Digest magazine.

For poets, the idea of writing a poem a day is terrifying (I hear this from other poets whenever I mention
doing the challenge).  It's a masochistic marathon, really.  Poets love to ponder words and lines, images and ideas; they wait for inspiration.  If you're writing a poem every day, you're taking inspiration from whatever, wherever you can.

I would read the prompt each morning and then spend the day thinking about it, sometimes an idea would form quickly and other times, nothing.  Some prompt were absolutely meaningless (I don't write political poems or limericks or haiku).  One prompt, that year, on 11/11/11, was to write a math poem.  I'm a poet, for pity's sake, I hate math (but I did write a poem using mathematical terms and it is one of the best poems to come from that year).

Last year, my friend Kathe R. took the challenge with me.  At the end of November, each week through mid-January, we would send one another five of the poems for critiquing.  

I'm a sporadic poet, at best, but in two years, I've written 60 poems.  Most poetry manuscripts are a minimum of 48 poems.  Let me be honest, out of those 60 poems, I consider two of them exciting, and maybe eight poems are good.  Three of these poems have been published.  Another dozen are worthy of a second look and some refining.  At roughly thirty percent (I can do some math); for any poet to write 32 half-decent poems in a year is something to celebrate.

In less than a week, the challenge goes up again and I've had a prompt idea since September (ekphrasis, I bore easily).  I'm nervous about keeping up my end of the bargain, it's not like I can carbo-load for this or do any stretches (I did draft a poem this week just to keep the wheels greased).

Afternoons pass quickly now, and night folds over the Big Woods without much warning, and I will sit in November's chill-black and write poems (and I'm going to participate in Movember).  I say, bring it.

Waste not, poet nor cook

As a poet, I have learned the value of words, the value of conciseness, of using only the best words to create a poem.  In poetry, all words carry weight.  The fatted adverbs, the slovenly adjectives and interjections are pared.  Verbs are hashed, blended, manipulated and hammered to give the poem rise.  The poet counts every syllable, listens for rhythm and threads of sound to weld the lines.  The poet is a fierce editor, slashing the underbrush, clearing the way for the reader to see the poem's true beauty.

I am a writer, I will not waste words.

THE STARLINGS

They lift in thousands,

a black wave rolling

up into the Iowa sky,

as if the dried husks

in the fields sighed,

 flocked murmur—

they scatter, collide

into rioted shadows,

seem to loll, linger

then split the blue

September, only to

weave and stitch,

ribbon the horizon

with crack-the-whip

tails flung higher,

then over and around,

rumor above our heads,

their hurried wings

like soft words—

God’s whisper.

We are a wasteful lot; wasting words, wasting time, wasting food (the biggest sin one can commit).  I began a new life plan in August, switching my diet to a mostly plant-based menu.  The concept is to eat clean, avoid the 'whites' (salt, sugar, flour and dairy).  I have eschewed processed foods for fresh fruits and vegetables.  

This 'diet' (and I'm loathe to use that word) can challenge the single person.  Fresh produce can go bad before you can eat it, and I'm not alone in admitting to tossing whole heads of lettuce that turned brown  after committing to 'eat more greens'.  

Not long ago, I overcooked brown rice, rendering it to a hardly-palatable mush.  I did my best to eat it with some sauteed veggies for a couple meals and regrettably threw out the remaining.  A friend later suggested I could have given it to the dogs.  Damn the waste.  Better yet, I'll refine my brown rice cooking skills, however, the dogs will always be considered part of my 'zero waste' policy.  A small garden plot next year will benefit from a compost heap and 'zero waste' should be my reality.

I'll write about wasting time in a future post.  Right now, I need to stare anxiously at my Facebook and see what my friends are eating, watching or not doing.

A Simpler Kitchen

Five days a week, from 6am to 1pm, I command the grill at a local diner.  Eggs, bacon, pancakes, sausage, hashbrowns, burgers & fries.  During the week, we offer a lunch special - meatloaf, pork steak, scalloped ham & potatoes, chicken & biscuits - and you can always get the hot roast beef sandwich drenched in gravy.  The mashed potatoes are real, the pies and desserts are made in-house, and now that the weather is turning cold, you can get a bowl of chili or ham & bean, or chicken noodle.  Next week's soup is creamy potato.

The grill is behind a service window that looks out onto the dining room and from there I watch the world: the truck drivers, the coffee ladies, the Catholic League, the local businessmen, the dusty farmers and their stoic wives, the young families.  There is talk of the weather (it's been another dry year), crop prices, the government, birth and death, marriage and scandal.

The waitresses are efficient, sassy, and quick with a laugh.

I watch it all from my place behind the grill.  I crack wise.  I nod to the regulars.  I love every minute of it.  It is a far cry from my years as a retail manager.  Maybe I don't make as much money, but the poetry found in a plate of scrambled eggs and toast is worth far more.

I have always enjoyed cooking.  I make a mean lasagna, a firebrand chili, a whiskey-infused meatloaf.  Working in the diner, I have learned the art of cooking simply.  I have memorized farm recipes from stained 3x5 cards.  This summer, I gave up processed foods, went local as much as possible, including growing my own peppers and tomatoes.  I buy honey from the Amish farm a mile up the road.  Last week, I made my own whole-wheat bread.

I revel in this simpler life; the former disco boy clubkid trading the mirrored ball and laser lights for cast iron skillets and a whisk.  I'm in bed early and wake up before the sunrise.  This morning, I'd already baked a loaf of bread, moved the woodpile and washed the windows by 7 o'clock.

A slice of warm bread dripping with butter and clover honey.  That's poetry.

How dogs, diners and death brought me back to life.

It's three years since my partner, Jeff, died. The grief was consuming, breathtaking; sometimes beautiful, sometimes hellish. “We all ask the same question,” the poet, Dorianne Laux said to me shortly after Jeff died. “Who am I in the face of death? For you, the answer is a simple one: I'm a writer.”

And so I wrote. Poems filled with my grief, my anger, my confusion. My wonder.

A year later, I loaded my belongings and my dog, Jack, and returned to Iowa where I grew up. I moved into my father's lake home in the tiny village of Delhi in Delaware County.

I found a job as a short-order cook in a small diner, a place where farmers gather in the early morning to gab over coffee and eggs.  "We're like a family here," the owner's wife told me the first day.  It was a far-cry from retail manager, but I found the artistry in working the grill.  And I found a family.

I'd only been in Iowa three months when I met Joey, a fat ball of black fur and the saddest puppy eyes. He was leashed with a bit of twine and two young girls were desperately trying to find homes for him and his three sisters.

I wrote more poems that fall and winter; poems about Iowa, about the farms and the churches, about the quiet. I still grieved for Jeff, but there was a shift, a turning, a discovery that I was going on and surprisingly, it was okay.

My second winter is coming. Joey is a big, lovable teddy bear of a dog, and he and Jack make an odd pair. The three of us crawl into bed at night, the best threesome I've ever had. 

And recently, I noticed, grief slipped into memory.

 In theory, you let go.