#this is one of the last poems i wrote as a teenager. and teenage diana had some macabre fascinations

[creatediana]

"Second Coming [Unmarked grave]" - a Shakespearean sonnet written 4/22/2019

[musingsofabookworm1]

My Last Five Reads of Summer 2024

Last day of summer. One of the saddest days on the calendar. But at least I snuck in two books this weekend.

*By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult I pre-ordered this ages ago. I avoided reading anything about it until it arrived on my doorstep. And as if I wasn't excited enough, Shakespeare was a huge part of the plot! Most people who know enough about Shakespeare know that it is widely accepted that he didn't write his works. There are various reasonings which all make sense, and there are a number of people at the time who are pointed to as potential authors of his plays and his poems. Picoult's novel sets out to show how Emilia Bassano - the first woman in England who declared herself a professional poet - could be the writer of Shakespeare's work.

The book is written in two timelines. Obviously Bassano's is one of them. The other is one of her ancestors in, for the most part, present day: Melissa Green. Melissa, too, is playwright. Years prior to the plot, in college, a critic ripped one of her plays to shreds and told her what to write instead. So ten years later, she wrote it. And her friend, unbeknownst to Melissa, sent it in to a contest. If her play wins, it'd be performed.

I liked that part of the book. A lot. But Emilia's part dominated much more of the almost 500 pages. And her part got long. And, at times, boring. And I am someone that read a lot of Shakespeare in college and enjoyed it.

*Sigh* to three stars. Here's hoping her next effort is better.

*Small Game by Blair Braverman I had this one on hold as an ebook for a long time as the library didn't have it. Which is odd because it's by a Wisconsin author and takes place in Northern Wisconsin.

Protagonist Mara is one of four strangers chosen to be dropped into the wilderness of northern Wisconsin for a survival-themed reality show. If she survives for six weeks, she wins a big chunk of change.

That's all I knew going in, and I think that made for a solid reading experience. Until the end. Being totally up front and honest, this was one of the most disappointing endings I've ever read it. It was like the author had reached a quota or decided she didn't want to write anymore. She tried to bring the whole novel together in a page and a half. And it deserved more.

4 stars only because of the ending.

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett I loved this book! There was no prose. None! It was all written in texts and emails and dialogs. This is definitely not for everyone, but it was definitely for me. I haven't felt this sucked into a book in awhile!

The title group is cult who tricked a teenaged girl into thinking her baby was the anti-Christ. When they wanted to kill the baby, the girl called the police. The cult committed suicide, and the underage mother and baby disappeared.

18 years later, as the baby is coming of age, author Amanda Bailey wants to write a true crime book about the Alperton Angels. That's what this book is about. She wants to find the girl and the baby as well as the baby's father to get the real info about what went down.

The plot works with being written this way as texts and emails are exchanged between Amanda and people who are related to the case. When she meets up with some, the dialogs come to light. The plot does get a bit convoluted at the end but not in a confusing way.

5 stars for this one!

In the Study with the Wrench and In the Ballroom with the Candlestick by Diana Peterfreund

The second two books of a young-adult trilogy based on the board game. So nothing to report here. But I did actually like them better than the first. Oddly, I liked the second book most of all, and those are usually the worst of trilogies! 4 stars each

[severephilosopherkid]

See no one really knows what truly went behind closed doors. These people are very real and these events are very recent in history. But I can't help but loathe Thecrown! Camilla and Charles. Especially in the final two episodes.

The way Charles laughed off a rather sentimental gift from his wife which he saw mere moments after she had explained how she best expresses herself through performance was deeply selfish and pathetic. Now i'm not saying that he should have enjoyed the gift (I internally cringed when my boyfriend wrote a poem for me). But what was downright hurtful was how he entirely disregarded the sincerity, effort and thoughtfulness put into that gift. This attitude extended to all the efforts Diana was putting into saving their relationship.

And then there was Camilla in ep 10, cribbing about Diana and fairytale narratives. I'm sorry ma'am but the last time I checked you had actively supported and participated with your prince charming in gaslighting a gullible teenager into believing that she was getting married to a man who loved her. And after they were married, you, a married woman were entertaining a married man knowing full well what his feelings towards you were and how deeply it would hurt his wife (wasn't your husband supposed to be cheating on you?). Charles and Diana may, by some chance, have found their way to each other had you not consciously wedged yourself right between them both. And now you bullshit about the fact that she gets the fairytale treatment? It was YOU who pushed her into a position where she seeks recognition and affection from strangers and now you can't let her even have that? How petty even are you?

[miodesblog]

Fresh Out Of The Fridge is out now on all online platforms including i-tunes and Spotify. It’s a collection of comedic/ pop orientated songs written mostly in my twenties. Here’s some sleeve notes.

Trolley

The initial inspiration came from a conversation between two teenagers that l overheard at a bus stop. One of them had a crush on someone in a local band and the memory of it cropped up around the time of Brit Pop, when I was just starting a band. It’s about no band in particular and every Boy band ever! The phrase Light Your Lolly came from Chris Evan’s Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, in which contestants tried to win a holiday in the sun, but failing that got one in somewhere like Bournemouth.

Fresh Out Of The Fridge

I really don’t remember how I got this idea from except that I was always a bit of a wallflower at parties and didn’t really know how to flirt-especially with anyone I actually fancied. In my dreams I wasn’t so hesitant. So this song is about that. I never shared this with the band. I probably thought it was not going to go down well!

Chemicals

The band did a good job with this but I hated my vocals at the time . I was trying to not sound American and not sound like a fake cockney and managing to sound like both. It’s a funny sort of song about depression.

Lois and Sam

This song is about the flatmates I had when I first came to London. They were a right gang of two with a sour, misanthropic outlook which they took out on me. When I left the house, I promised myself that, whatever disappointment I had to face in life, I was not going to be like that when I got to their age.

Cactus

I sometimes listen to Woman’s Hour on radio 4 and during the nineties there was a little Feng-Shui craze. On the programme a consultation was in progress and this was how it went- almost verbatim. I always admired Noel Coward and Swan & Flanders and this song is in a similar comedic vein.

Belly Of A Monster

Walking around a fun fair there was a hoarding for one of the rides, where the passengers started by riding on the dragon then end up it’s belly. It made me think of all the people who end up in a situation sort of by accident - namely a job where they have no control over their life and no freedom to follow their dreams.

Stupid Over You

This is another song that I anticipated the bands rejection. I was the queen of hopeless and quite unlikely crushes. It’s got this slightly angry guitar line and a dreamy Celeste which conveys my annoyance at my own sentimentality!

Hey you!

I used to live on what’s called the Haringey Ladder in north London. Most days I would go for a walk in Finsbury Park to feed the ducks and pick up kindling (our squat still had open fires) Quite often I got men coming up to me to chat me up -or worse. It was really annoying. So this song is sort of Park Life if you’re a girl!

Elizabeth Republica

This song was co-written with the drummer Michael Andrawis. In the aftermath of Lady Diana’s death there was a wave of anti royal feeling going on-at which Michael’s earthy Dorset mum complained. It’s a bit of a tongue-in-cheek take on the protest song which is normally of a leftist nature - but were the shoe on the other foot -and The Queen And I a reality - there would be scope for singing the old girl’s praises.

Slow moving Traffic

This song kind of wrote itself. I grew up listening to a fair amount of country music and it’s a affectionate parody of the genre.

Lovely Malady

I didn’t have many boyfriends in my twenties but listened to friend’s moaning about theirs endlessly while never quite managing to leave the relationship. I couldn’t work out what made them act this way and concluded that they must get some kind of perverse kick out of it.

The Dawn and Anthony

This was originally a poem that I wrote around 18. I had a very handsome but unreliable boyfriend. The chorus was added on more recently is the perspective of the older me. It’s a funny but also a lament to passing youth and love.

Winners Green

This was written around the same time. I lived near a Suffolk village where there really was a Lord Of The Manor who closed off the path to the church on his newly acquired land. It’s a commentary on English country life in modern age, where the desirable houses are often exclusively owned by people who don’t live there.

Bus Ride Home

This song was perhaps the Ideal Home at its poppiest. It was inspired by my current crush and also the teen magazines that I read in my school days like Mizz and Jackie. These featured silly quizzes and hocus pocus ways of finding out, among other things, the suitability of boyfriends. Star signs and numerology were featured. The signs weren’t good, not that it made any difference.

Thank You And Good Night

I was instructed by my old band mates that I ought to be more friendly and chatty on stage and make some attempt at promoting us at the end of each gig. I absolutely hated having to do this - so whimsically wrote a song that would cover the essential elements. The music has been in my head for years and years and I must admit I felt a little pathos towards the end because the last gig was played over twenty years ago. Now here I was recording the song on a desktop computer with programmed instruments.

[britneyshakespeare]

Hello! How about #10 & 40 for the weird questions for writers?

Thank you!

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

Hm. I suppose so. But it's been several different types of hauntings that have occurred, from my own work and other people's.

I used to feel very drawn to "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger, for instance, when I was in high school, because I discovered the poem when I read somewhere that that was John F. Kennedy's favorite poem and he would have Jackie read it to him. I was a big literature AND U.S. history nerd then and that felt incredibly ominous to me, and as someone with a lot of health issues and a constant death wish it resonated with me on a personal level too. It's still one of my favorite poems of all time. (It was one of the first poems I didn't write that I posted to my poetry blog.) I've imitated that form many times. The relentless iambic tetrameter and the unpredictable rhyme scheme really work to make it feel like fate is running at you, especially with that inimitable refrain. As much as I can mimic the form, I don't think I've ever had one of my own refrains hit me like the image of rushing to a rendezvous with Death. Of course, it's hard for me to ever really shock myself.

But sometimes I do, and I guess that's when I feel haunted by my own writing. I almost never feel like I'm writing something significant in the moment I'm writing it. Far more frequently, whether I think I have a decent idea or not, I'm just writing to pass the time while keeping busy. When I reread something after I've forgotten it, it sometimes does surprise me like "wow, I actually had something really good going on here." I can think of one poem I wrote on April Fools Day 2019, the month I was going to turn 20, that I've never actually posted on Tumblr. It was a free verse about the relationship male influence has had on my development of self-efficacy. That one only took a few weeks for me to be like, "Damn, this is one of my best."

But there are also things I notice in retrospect that I wrote into poems before I understood myself consciously. A big example of that is before I realized I was aromantic, I would write about the loneliness of trying to force myself to feel love. Teenage Diana never thought she just wasn't made that way. It didn't occur to me at all. I liked romance sooooo much in theory but it was so fleeting and futile in execution. Yeah fuck that.

40. Please share a poem with me, I need it.

Hmmm, okay. I'll do one of mine, and then one from someone else.

First one that came to mind of my own work was this little ditty I wrote on Halloween of 2018. I was well into my self-described "Ghostfucker" era, in which I was knowingly (but sometimes still self-doubting) aroace, but I would still get a lot of comphet I didn't know how to sort out, most passionately though, for dead men I could romanticize without a threat of them harming me or the love ever being unsatisfyingly "consummated." I had been writing these elaborate, self-deprecating poems about being in love with spirits and throwing all my hopes into the high heavens for like a full year at that point, and would continue those redundant themes for about another year from then on. And around this time I started exploring the split I felt between fantasy and reality, mind and body, so on. Lots of metaphors pertained to duality and contradictory ideas. A very strange time for my writing. This is my favorite one of those poems I can think of that I posted, and it still has a special place in my heart.

As for something by another writer, I think I'll go with "Íntima (Intimate)" by Julia de Burgos. Last year I checked out her Complete Poems translated by Jack Agüeros from my library, and read the whole damn thing, only renewing it once. I've never gobbled up a poet's entire body of work so fast. I was just skimming the shelves and found her in the Latin American section, had a little look-see, and I immediately fell into it. I have at this point in my life read so many many poets and it's such a rare and magnificent thing when, especially at my current knowledge and familiarity with the medium, I am instantly hit with the realization that I have found a new favorite. Not just something good, or great. Those I find all the time. I can name hundreds of good or great poets whose works are worth reading. But FAVORITE. Something that blows my mind and sucks me in. And Julia de Burgos is that, a fascinating woman with an incredible mind and a list of accomplishments worth reading about. Her gift for natural imagery is something I envy deeply. I think she's far, far too underappreciated in the Anglophone world. She's just the best.

Send me weird writing asks :D

[theagingboomer]

Different things inspire different people. For Santa Barbara psychologist and author Diana Raab, the inspiration has been poetry. And since April is National Poetry Month, it seems fitting that she explains how it has helped her through much of her life.

National Poetry Month which makes me reflect on the effect poetry has had on my life as a baby boomer.

My introduction to poetry in grade school did not leave a lasting impression. Memorizing verses from Chaucer and Shakespeare — which I scarcely understood — brought me very little gratification. However, things changed in the late ’60s as I was trying to navigate my teenage angst AND I discovered the poems of Rod McKuen. His book, Listening to the Warm (1967) calmed my nerves with his focus on love, spirituality, and the natural world. He inspired me to write my own poems during that time of turbulence, with friends being drafted to Vietnam as I protested war on city streets.

Diana Raab, PhD

I took a little hiatus from writing poetry until the 1980s when I found myself with three little kids and limited time to write. Poetry seemed like a quick fix because it was manageable to fit a few minutes into each day for creative expression.

Growing up, cancer was considered a taboo and rarely spoken about. When I found myself with a breast cancer diagnosis in 2001, keeping it a secret seemed more painful than anything. Once again, I turned to poetry to help me navigate my feelings. My father was a Holocaust survivor and taught me that from all bad comes good, and that when something sad or bad happens, you should think positively and grow from the experience.

Like many baby boomers, I returned to graduate school for my Master of Fine Arts in writing, and was introduced to poet Billy Collins, also a baby boomer, whose poetry was inspiring and accessible because he wrote about real-life experiences, like his poem “Forgetfulness.” It describes the condition of forgetting things. As a boomer, this poem resonated with me because I’d begun to feel the effects of a failing memory.

As one who rebelled against Chaucer and Shakespeare and preferred being on the edge, I realized that poetry was a creative way to tap into the voice of my soul. That’s why my poems are narrative poems or poetry that tell stories— often stories of my life growing up. Poetry helped me gain insights and it was a place where my imagination could roam free.

In my forthcoming book, Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Program for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life, I write about what it was like growing up as a baby boomer and how writing poetry encourages a certain interconnectedness between us.

As young boomers, we seemed much more interconnected — walking home from school, playing in one another’s backyards, being a part of our parent’s dinner parties. We’ve lost some of that vibe. Wouldn’t it be great if baby boomers circled back to those times, and maybe even got together to do something creative, like write poetry. It would be a win-win situation.

Diana Raab, PhD is a memoirist, poet, thought-provoker and author of 8 books and over 1000 articles. Psychologist.  Her poetry book, Lust, was inspired by this story. Her book, Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Program for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life is due out in September 2017.

The post How Poetry Has Affected One Boomer’s Life appeared first on BoomerCafe.com.

x

[drrobw]

‘Gratitude is Not a Happy Pill’

Editor’s Note: An interview with theologian Diana Butler Bass on her new book, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks.

Thanks for your beautiful new book on gratitude. A few years ago I took an online course called “The Science of Happiness,” then attended the International Positive Psychology conference in Orlando. (Because where else would you hold a positive psychology conference?) It was remarkable how much interest there was in learning how to be happy. So: What explains this obsession?

I’m a bit of a deconstructionist about these things. When people are asking questions about how to be happier, it means that they’re not. It reveals a spiritual longing that people have.

I think Americans have a tendency to equate gratitude with stuff. It’s primarily about being thankful for economic benefits, like the things we have in our houses. It’s good to have a comfortable life, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not entirely what gratitude is. It’s not a thank-you list for material blessings. It’s a disposition of our character in which we can experience the fullness of life beyond our immediate circumstances.

You confess early on in the book that gratitude doesn’t come naturally to you, which I suspect might be the case for a lot of us.

The reason I wrote this book was not because I’m an expert in gratitude. I wrote from the exact opposite perspective, that of a gratitude klutz. When I write about church history or congregations or theology, I’m actually an expert in those things, and I have academic authority to speak about them.

I wrote this because gratitude had eluded me. I was getting into my late 50s, and I realized as I looked ahead, there are people who when they age are not very grateful, and in fact are full of regrets. But I also know older people who are wonderful to be around, and usually those are people that have significant practices of gratitude. I wanted to be more like them. So this book was, in part, a deeply personal impulse to put myself on a path and experience gratitude as part of the mature spiritual life. The book’s authority emerges from this desire and from my own struggle to be a better person.

I appreciate the honesty in the book when you say that sometimes that kind of gratitude is impossible because of very real impediments. You tell a story of surviving abuse when you were a teenager, and how you struggled for years to forgive.

That section is key to the personal authenticity of this book. Before I wrote, I thought to myself: “The last thing the world needs in 2018 is another book on gratitude by a privileged white lady.” When outsiders look at someone like me, they generally see a successful person. They don’t know about the times in my life when I’ve been victimized and have suffered.

For the book to be real, I knew I had to share the story about when I was a teenager and was abused by a relative. It was very hard to write about, as I’ve never told it in public. Never. But I wanted readers to know that I wasn’t telling them to feel gratitude even in the midst of their pain, but was sharing as someone who has found — after a really hard struggle — gratefulness beyond my pain.

Christians say the worst things to people in pain. I had a friend who was raped and a person who wound up being a pastor told her, “This feels terrible right now, but the Bible tells us we should be grateful for everything.” We do this all the time, saying you should be grateful for getting cancer, or that your spouse left you, or you lost your job.

But you should never tell a person who has been a victim of injustice or pain to be thankful for those things. Instead, the Bible says we’re thankful through or in those things. For isn’t the same as through. Prepositions matter.

I have been deeply angry about being abused. But at the same time, what I learned through the longer trajectory of life is that, ultimately, the violence did not own me. And that’s what I became thankful for. I still feel some level of pain — even rage — about it, but I can look back now and say, “Oh my gosh, no matter how horrible that was, I’ve never succumbed to letting the pain define me.” I can be thankful for my resiliency, and for my friends and family who helped me and loved me.

So this is not your typical hearts-and-flowers gratitude book. This accounts for suffering and despair and unexpected election results. Gratitude is not a happy pill or Pollyanna. This is gratitude on the ground with the feet of people who are fighting and marching for a better world.

You talk about several spiritual practices that can help cultivate gratitude. What are they?

In the book I share some of those. There’s a difference between a tool and a practice. When you’re planting a garden, sometimes you use a hoe, sometimes a shovel, sometimes your fingers — all these different tools can change over time. But the practice is growing the garden. With gratitude, the “tool” might be writing in a journal or doing meditation. For someone like Phyllis Tickle, it really was a lifetime of fixed-hour prayer. The tools are different, but the practice is thankfulness.

I’ve always wished I could be like Phyllis, but I’m a person who likes to change up my tools! Right now, two things are very helpful for me. One is poetry, which helps me to see deeply past the immediate moment to a deeper reality. So much of poetry is about seeing abundance and thanksgiving. During Lent, my husband and I read a poem before dinner together every night, and connected it to gratitude.

And the second thing is really kind of goofy. Instead of keeping a journal right now, I have a river rock with the word “gratitude” inscribed on it. That rock sits on my nightstand. Every night when I go to bed, it’s the last thing I see. When I wake up in the morning, I hold it in my hand and say, “Thank you for the new day.” Or “Thank you that the sun is shining.” So, this little act — of rock holding — frames my rising up and my going to sleep. It’s so important to me that I carry the rock around in my travel bag, so I can also have it with me when I’m in airplanes or at a hotel.

I’ve noticed that your last two books, “Grounded” and “Grateful,” really go for the “Gr” words. So on a lighter note, I’ve come up with a list of possible future book ideas for you! These are topics I would love to see you tackle: grammar, grumpiness, greed, gregariousness.

I do think I do have another G-word book in me. I was thinking of a book called “Grovel.” That would be a good title for a book about prayer!

That would be awesome.

Another one I also wanted to write was “Grit,” but that one’s already been published. For now, I’m content with being grounded and grateful.

This article originally appeared at RNS.

‘Gratitude is Not a Happy Pill’ was originally published on Dr. Robin Weinstein