The Periphery Jets Back

The Periphery returns from its hiatus with pictures to entertain you. What would a vacation be without food and animals? My Anonymous brother and 'sister-in-law', Nonny Moose kept us well fed and entertained.

Introducing the new King of someone else's castle, Gunther.

And the new Queen, Minnie. She did not like the paparazzi stalking her. 

It's that time of year, when garden tomatoes abound. They're great to eat fresh off the vine with a little salt, or--

made into fiery salsa with garden peppers and onions.

Sink kitty approved all meals and their remains.

Meanwhile, at a Fiber Festival, we ran into this llama, who had a lot to say. Much of it seemed to be, "You need to buy more yarn, you don't have enough yarn ...."

This alpaca meditated before his fan, thinking deep thoughts about fiber blends. I bought some of his lovely wool.

Nonny Moose and I swooned over this fluffy fellow. Angora, so, so soft, and so, so expensive. Fifteen pounds of rabbit doesn't yield a lot of wool to play with. He seemed to enjoy being plucked, however.

What vacation would be complete without Birdy Kreep and his sonic squawks?

The birds outside were a lot quieter!

Next week - Rivers and glass.

Fragmented Friday

If you get a chance, hop on over to my friend Kathleen’s blog, One Minnesota Writer. Lots of thoughtful musings on poetry and the universe in general.

Kathleen has a neat new feature  - first morning fragments. Since she asked so nicely at the end of her post for other people’s fragments, and since I am not a crack of dawn writer, I’ll give you five mid-morning/afternoon fragments instead.  

1)      It’s almost May, we shouldn’t have this much snow on the ground. Who the heck wanted to live out here in this godforsaken land* anyway?     Oh, yeah…

2)      Dog barking at 5:00 a.m. this morning. Not cool. MY dog barking at 5:00a.m. Not cool, annoying, and embarrassing. BOTH dogs barking at 5:05a.m.? It better be the zombie apocalypse out there.

3)       I really like baseball. 

4)      If I grow 5 inches, my work desk will finally be ergonomically correct. 

5)      I can survive any meeting as long as I have a pad of paper and pen to draw with.

*Brownie points if you can name that song from the two word miniscule fragment.

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What I've Been Reading/Watching/Listening To, Etc.

By request, a rundown of the odds and ends of my life.

What I'm reading: Rereading The Lord of the Rings books. I do this every year or so, and every year I find all kinds of interesting things I didn't remember or missed the last time around. I've finished The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, working on The Two Towers.

Other reads/rereads:
L. E. Modesitt, Jr. – Imager and Imager's Challenge
Cory Doctorow's Little Brother
Kage Baker – In The Garden of Iden
Jane Lindskold – Through Wolf's Eyes
Naomi Novik – His Majesty's Dragon
Non-Fiction: Theology, geology (rockhounding), psychology (Cognitive behavioral), philosophy (war origins) and poetry (Asian forms and collections).

What I'm listening to: New David Gray album, Foundling. It's a more introspective take than his last album, Draw The Line. For that alone people probably won't like it. Some lovely music, though, good for background to paint or write.

Krishna Das – I listen to some Krisna Das every day, it helps me get through the day. Kirtan-style music. (Indian Devotional)
Janis Joplin – Do I need to explain?
Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison
Cowboy Junkies – Remnin Park
Norah Jones – The Fall
Sara Jarosz – Song Up In Her Head
Leo Kottke - A Leo Kottke Anthology

What I'm watching: When I succumb to the wasteland that is television – Warehouse 13. Love the characters and the premise. Sort of an X-Files light. Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. Pick up all sorts of interesting tidbits about food and culture from this show.

On the DVD front, I picked up a copy of James Michener's 26 hour long mini-series, Centennial. It holds up surprisingly well for a program from the late 1970's. Also rewatched all three movies of Lord of The Rings so I can better compare them to the books. I still think Peter Jackson did a good job with the plethora of source material he had. Another rewatch – Fringe box set. Gearing up for Season Three premier. John Noble is wonderful in this series.

What I'm writing: The occasional poem, but editing the mass of poems I wrote in June-July. A few essays on poetry, backstory for The Other Fantasy Novel, and bits and pieces for the Almost Finished Fantasy Novel. See the previous post for my explanation for the light writing.

What I'm knitting: Just started a knitted lace scarf with some lovely purple and forest green Merino yarn Linda gave me. Also on the needles: Socks – One toe up pair with cashmere blend feet and alpaca blend tops, one Top down pair in a new yarn I acquired on a fiber artists weekend excursion. Also knitting toys, of course.

What I'm spinning: Unidentified mystery yarn Linda gave me. Also a baby camel/silk blend. Waiting impatiently on a different spinning wheel, since the Babe wheel and I did not get along. Defecting to a Lendrum.


What I'm cooking: Chicken Biryani. Lamb Samosas. Naan bread. Red lentil dosas. (see a pattern here? Stuck on Indian food at the moment) Homemade Falafel. Three cheese polenta with garlic.

What Scott's cooking for Me for Dinner: Lobster in Vermouth Sauce with a nice New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Yes, it was awesome. Now I have to come up with something equally awesome, although the polenta was darn good if I do say so myself.


So what's new with you? Any good recipes, patterns, books, movies, music to share? Always looking for something new to explore. Feel free to share your favorites in comments!


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New Blog is Up and Running

Not that I told anyone before now, but I've created a new blog to showcase my artwork. You can find the blog on Blogger - conveniently named ConstanceBrewer

Hey, not original, but I'm just glad my name was still available.

I have a rather large series of prints I'm planning, not to mention a bunch of oil and acrylic paintings, so I decided to separate things out a bit and keep this blog more for writing and poetry, and the other for art and art type postings.

My first post is about my new print series, 36 Views of Devils Tower. You can go read all about it HERE.

Preview -



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New Poets Of The American West

Coming in July - I have a poem in this anthology. Here, read all about it: (I would be the "and many more!"...)


New Poets of the American West

an anthology of poets
from eleven Western states

Edited by Lowell Jaeger


Kim Addonizio • Sandra Alcosser • Sherman Alexie • Jimmy Santiago Baca •Ellen Bass • Jim Barnes • Marvin Bell • James Bertolino • Sherwin Bitsui • Judy Blunt • Christopher Buckley • Henry Carlile • Maxine Chernoff • Marilyn Chin • Katharine Coles • Mary Crow • Matthew Dickman • Gary Gildner • Raphael Jesús Gonzáles • Dana Gioia • Samuel Green • Mark Halperin • Sam Hamill • Joy Harjo • Jim Harrison • Jane Hirshfield • Garrett Hongo • Christopher Howell • Linda Hussa • Lawson Fasao Inada • Mark Irwin • Lowell Jaeger • Ilya Kaminsky • Melissa Kwasny • Lance Larson • Dorianne Laux • David Lee • Philip Levine • Adrian C. Louis • Clarence Major • Ron McFarland • Sandra McPherson • Jane Miller • Dixie Partridge • Simon Ortiz • Carol Muske-Dukes • Robert Pack • Greg Pape • Lucia Perillo • David Ray • Lois Red Elk • David Romtvedt • Alberto Rios • Pattiann Rogers • William Pitt Root • Wendy Rose • Vern Rutsala • Kay Ryan • Reg Saner • Leslie Marmon Silko • Maurya Simon • Floyd Skloot • Gary Soto • Kim Stafford • David St. John • Primus St. John • Luci Tapahonzo • Rawdon Tomlinson • Bill Tremblay • David Wagoner • Robert Wrigley • Al Young • and many more!


New Poets of the American West is a panoramic (and revealing) view of the West through the eyes of more than 250 poets and 450 poems, including poems in English, Spanish, Navajo, Salish, Assiniboin, and Dakota languages. Collected here are poems about horse racing, mining, trash collecting, nuclear testing, firefighting, border crossings, buffalo hunting, surfing, logging, and sifting flour. In these pages you will visit flea markets, military bases, internment camps, reservations, funerals, weddings, rodeos, nursing homes, national parks, backyard barbecues, prisons, forests, meadows, rivers, and mountain tops. In your “mind’s eye,” you will meet a simple-minded girl who gets run over by a bull, two mothers watching a bear menacingly nosing toward unsuspecting children, and children who “have yet to be toilet trained out of their souls.” You will learn to “reach into the sacred womb, / grasp a placid hoof / and coax life toward this certain moment.” You’ll teach poetry to third graders, converse with hitchhikers, lament for an incarcerated brother “trying to fill the holes in his soul / with Camel cigarettes / and crude tattoos.” You will sit at the kitchen table where perhaps the world will end “while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.” In the short time each of us has in this world, here’s your chance to experience life widely and to reflect on your experiences deeply. Lowell Jaeger, Editor In New Poets of the American West, we hear from Native Americans and first-generation immigrants, from ranchlanders and megaopolites, from poet-teachers and street-poets, and more. In fact, the West is so big, and home to such diversity that the deeper one reads in this anthology, the more voices and world views one encounters, the more textures of thought, emotion, and language one discovers, the less we may find ourselves able to speak of a single, stable something called the American West. Rather, we may find ourselves living in (or reading into) not one West, but many.


Brady Harrison, Professor
University of Montana

New Poets of the American West
is available for purchase
at amazon.com or by contacting:
fvccbookstore.com
or call 406-756-3814 (9:00 - 5:00 M-F)

For more information, please contact Lowell Jaeger at
406-756-3907 or ljaeger@fvcc.edu
ISBN: 978-0-9795185-4-6
7 x 10 - 550 pp
$24

April Poem A Day Challenge Day 9

Writing about yourself probably seems the easiest thing in the world to do. After all, we know ourselves (somewhat) and know our own likes and dislikes (usually) so it would logically follow that a poem on our favorite subject (me!) would be a no-brainer. As they say "Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear".

Poetic Asides: "For today's prompt, write a self-portrait poem. Other artists study themselves to create compositions (not all of them exactly flattering either), so it is only natural that poets, who are word artists, write self-portrait poems from time to time. In fact, some poets make self-portrait poetry "their main thing." For at least today, make it yours."

Self-portraits are some of the hardest things to do. How to be honest to your audience and honest to yourself without exposing everything to the cruel light of Other People. Ego has a say, for some, a bigger say than others. I think sometimes think artistic self-portraits to be easier than written self-portraits. . . but mostly, we tend to exaggerate our good features and downplay our bad - at least a little bit. For me the impulse in writing is to be a tad too honest on somethings, and too circumspect on others.

The challenge in self-portrait, confessional, any of the "I" type of poetry is to talk about yourself in a manner that doesn't make other people roll their eyes and walk away-or turn the page. Somehow you have to bring out the things in yourself the reader can identify with, enough so it pulls them through the poem. Empathy is far stronger than sympathy.

My poem for today came out shorter than I expected. After all, this was me I was waxing philosophical about. But the poem demanded to be short and to the point. So "Mid-Life Eval" ended up being five stanzas of three lines each. It insisted on ending with a question, which is something I don't like to do, but the question is theologically strange, so I can live with it. It wasn't as kind to myself as I'd hoped it would be, but that's the danger of letting the muse have free rein to your psyche.

Cadmus Sowing the Dragon's Teeth
by Maxfield Parrish

Kreativ Blogger Award

Carla, over at Carla Nayland Historical Fiction bludgeoned me with this colorful award. As with all bling, it comes with strings, namely some play along questions. So here they are, in no particularly coherent order . . .





List 7 of your favourite things.

• paper - forms:art papers with all their wondrous weights and textures, books, and Post-it® notes – savior of the absentminded.

• dogs - The only beings that worship me as their god. Please don't tell them I'm not omnipotent.

• the Internet - Instant gratification for the terminally curious. I want to bake the inventor of Google Earth a cake for allowing me to see what's parked in my British friend's driveway. (Hi Oonah!)

• Wool and wooly things - From alpaca fleece to Rambouillet roving to yak yarn and everything in between.

• National Forests and Parks - Legal trespassing on spectacular scenery, and source of inspiration for poetic and theological treatises.

• Poetry - Saving my sanity stanza by stanza, line by line, rhyme by rhyme.

• Mythology, sociology, theology, and physics – The cause of inner dichotomy since the dawn of time.

List 7 of your favourite activities.

• hiking/walking meditations - AKA wandering aimlessly/purposefully through vast uncharted (by me) areas of wilderness in a never ending quest for inspiration/spiritual enlightenment, and a nagging obsession with Man vs. Wild – note to self, bring plenty of power bars, since eating bugs/snakes/yak eyeballs is out of the question.
  

• Spinning/knitting/dyeing wool - OR 101 things to do with a sheep fleece. What? Everyone doesn't like making their clothes from the animal up? Yes, I have a loom too. Don't come whining to me for a loincloth when the zombie apocalypse hits. Plan ahead.

• Printmaking/drawing/graphic design – See zombie apocalypse. Your only news and cartoons will come from me. Reduced to bare essentials and printed with the finest ink and papers harvested from the undead.

• Reading/writing poetry and other fiction – I want to create an earworm so insidious schoolchildren 200 years from now will be belting out my verses instead of "The Midnight Ride Of Paul Revere" or "Casey At The Bat". A really annoying rap song would be quicker, but I do have standards.

• Mad Scientist – otherwise known as cooking. I almost never make a recipe the same way twice. Usually because I've lost the recipe, or forgot to write it down while creating a new dish. ADHD Rule of Cooking: If it has more than 7 ingredients, it probably didn't need those extra ones anyhow. Better off leaving them out, no one will miss them.

• Philosophical Discourse. Name the topic. AKA Will argue for coffee, with coffee, over coffee, about coffee.

• Home Repair – It's my house - if I want my living room to be burnt orange, I can do that. What's not to like?

List 7 things no-one knows about you.

• I once spent 4 months in the jungles of Honduras learning: The velocity of a fist size beetle determines how badly the windshield will get broken. If you accidentally kill a chicken, villagers will take the equivalent of $2.50 in compensation. Plus the dead chicken. Toenails do grow back from jungle rot. Eventually.

• I can sing the Canadian National Anthem in both English and French. Yes, we had a minor league hockey team in my hometown, why do you ask??

• If I had to do it over again, I'd be a physicist of some sort. Astro or quantum. Oh, and I'd pay more attention in math class.

• I took a train trip from Siena, Italy to Amsterdam by myself one weekend just to go to the Vincent Van Gogh museum. I also went to the Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum, back to UNISI just in time to take an art history test. Van Gogh wasn't on it…

• My eldest child and I have the exact same birthmark, in the exact same place.

• There is rap music on my iPod.

• I originally wanted to fly UH-60 Black Hawks in the Army. Instead of going up, in the air, they thought I'd be happier blowing things up, in the air. Go figure.

Pass the award on to 7 others.

• Since, as Anonymous always reminds me, I don't have seven friends, the award is up for grabs. Just follow the loose-goose rules and let the rest of us know you played, so we can go read all about YOU.