christina61
New Member
member is offline
Joined: May 2008
Gender: Female 
Posts: 33
Karma: 0 |  | Biomythography: a winter Saturday
« Thread Started on Nov 12, 2008, 6:20pm » | |
"Sometimes on Saturdays in winter, my mother made the three of us a little clay out of flour and water and Diamond Crystal Shaker Salt. I always fashioned tiny little figures out of my share of the mixture. I would beg or swipe a little vanilla extract from my mother's shelf in the kitchen, where she kept her wonderful spices and herbs and extracts, and mix that with the clay. Sometimes I dabbed the figures on either side of the head behind the ears as I had seen my mother do with her glycerine and rosewater when she got dressed to go out.
I loved the way the rich, dark brown vanilla scented the flour-clay; it reminded me of my mother's hands when she made peanut brittle and eggnog at holidays. But most of all I loved the live color it would bring to the pasty-white clay.
from Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde, Persephone Press, 1982.
| |
|
lisajean
New Member
member is offline
Joined: Jul 2008
Gender: Female
Posts: 7
Karma: 0 | | Re: Biomythography: a winter Saturday
« Reply #1 on Nov 12, 2008, 6:32pm » | |
This is really lovely.
I sometimes worry that I depend too much on my past and my youth memories when I write poems. How relevant is my past, don't I have anything to write about the present? But then I read something like this and I know that the past is indeed relevant.
Lisa Jean
| |
|
kbecker
New Member
member is offline
Joined: Aug 2008
Gender: Female
Posts: 23
Karma: 0 | | Re: Biomythography: a winter Saturday
« Reply #2 on Nov 14, 2008, 3:26pm » | |
I finished a poem yesterday (after 13 months!) and once it was done I realized I had incorporated bits of the past that I had "forgotten" until they arose in the poem that had been prompted by current circumstance. It is always interesting to me how details I had not thought twice about *consciously* become embedded and then reappear when I need them. This seems to me to be the value of a journal: to capture the things that will one day be past, but might well inform the present and future life and work.
Enjoying the entries and responses here!
Kim
| |
|
christina61
New Member
member is offline
Joined: May 2008
Gender: Female
Posts: 33
Karma: 0 | | Re: Biomythography: a winter Saturday
« Reply #3 on Nov 14, 2008, 5:02pm » | |
Exactly!!!!
| |
|
bobbichukran
New Member
member is offline
Joined: Oct 2008
Gender: Female
Posts: 4
Karma: 0 | | Re: Biomythography: a winter Saturday
« Reply #4 on Nov 15, 2008, 4:21am » | |
Nov 12, 2008, 6:32pm, lisajean wrote:
I sometimes worry that I depend too much on my past and my youth memories when I write poems. How relevant is my past, don't I have anything to write about the present? But then I read something like this and I know that the past is indeed relevant. |
|
Hi lisa jean and all,
I have a quote hanging on the board behind my computer...."We write to save what we love." Dana Wildsmith. I'm not sure where I first read it, or heard it, but that's the reason why I rely on memories when I write. It helps me to get some perspective on them and perhaps understand why or how they happened. And I've found that the more I write, the more memories that come to me. Most of them probably aren't interesting to others, but it's important to me to "capture them" in words on paper. My father died four years ago Monday from complications of Alzheimer's, so I'm SURE that's part of my motivation.
best,
bobbi c.
| |
|
kbecker
New Member
member is offline
Joined: Aug 2008
Gender: Female
Posts: 23
Karma: 0 | | Re: Biomythography: a winter Saturday
« Reply #5 on Nov 16, 2008, 4:45pm » | |
Bobbi, thanks for sharing "We write to save what we love." I am going to remember that.
I am very sorry for your loss. Anniversaries of deaths are always hard.
I do find with my work that some poems come from what I think of as "deep memories" (ones I'd thought I'd forgotten) and some from present experience. In thinking of Nin's fabricated journals, though, I also think of the poems I have written not about my own, but about others' experiences I have appropriated. My husband calls them my "vampire" poems. Maybe others do this as well.
Anyway, yesterday I found my Moleskine I took on my last couple trips and it was interesting to read how I never said "today we did this," but instead had written down impressions of this and that. An artist friend of mine never travels with a camera (nor do I), but instead fills her sketchbook. So my journals have been more sketches that I then might go back and make a painting of words of. Christina, I liked your window poem very much. I, too, am in an old house and very often think of how I am inhabiting the same space and looking out the same windows (in some cases) as those who were here over a hundred years ago.
Sorry for this hodgepodge of a reply, but you all are giving me lots to think about. Thank you for that.
Kim
| |
|
christina61
New Member
member is offline
Joined: May 2008
Gender: Female
Posts: 33
Karma: 0 | | Re: Biomythography: a winter Saturday
« Reply #6 on Nov 16, 2008, 5:55pm » | |
Condolences on your father's death Bobbi.
I agree with you about the importance of memory and how one remembers more the more one remembers.
| |
|
![[Search This Thread]](http://images.proboards.com/search2.gif "[Search This Thread]")
![[Share Topic]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/share.png "[Share Topic]")
![[Print]](http://images.proboards.com/buttons/print.gif "[Print]")
Author
Logged