Entry 4: Summer Women's Book Club

Denise and I have only received a few responses from our invitations to friends over email and facebook to join our club.  So I printed a number of flyers to hang.  I asked at our county library, but they only let me hang one on the hallway bulletin board.  Ah, well.  I hope some people will glance over and see it in the coming weeks.  Our first meeting in supposed to be June 5, which is only a month away!  I have to decide whether or not to buy the first book -- Eat, Pray, Love.  If I get it from the library, I have to have it long enough to reread and for the meeting.  Maybe I should buy it so that I can write in it.  Denise says we should have the first meeting at my house.  I wish I had more couch seating.  For now, some people will have to sit on kitchen chairs. 

Entry 3: Summer Women's Book Club (Flyer)

Women’s      

SUMMER BOOK CLUB

Reading, Discussion, Friendship, Movies

                                                                                    Meetings twice a month

1^st and 3^rd Sundays, 3:00 – 4:30 p.m.

Starting:  June 5

First book:  Eat, Pray, Love

by Elizabeth Gilbert

Watching movies based on books as a group at a separate time, optional

Other books we are considering:

Sara Gruen:      Water For Elephants, Ape House

Kathryn Stockett:  The Help

Alice Sebold:  The Lovely Bones, The Almost Moon

Louise Erdrich:  Love Medicine, Plague of Doves

Alice Walker:  The Color Purple

Sue Monk Kidd:  The Secret Life of Bees, The Mermaid Chair

Jodi Picoult:     My Sister’s Keeper

Adriana Trigiani:  Big Stone Gap, Life Lessons From My Grandmothers

Jennifer Weiner:  In Her Shoes, Good In Bed

Toni Morrison:  Beloved, a mercy

Barbara Kingsolver:  Animal Dreams, Lacuna

Elizabeth Berg:  Open House, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted

Jane Austen:  Pride and Prejudice

Charlotte Bronte:  Jane Eyre

                                                                                                                       

Space is limited. CONTACT:  Sarah Campbell   606-584-4751             OR                Denise Husted    859-428-6234

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

So, here is the flyer I created with my friend to advertise our book club!  I don't think the clip art came through though.  It was an open book, a coffee cup, and two women talking over some books.  I am still feeling very positive about the whole thing.  Denise is happy with this flyer.  I already emailed it to everyone in my email whom I thought might be interested, and I told her to do the same.  She might do a facebook post too.  Two people have responded that they may be able to come once a month (one of those people is my mother), and another said they could come starting in July.  The friend who encouraged me to blog is interested as well.  I think that is a fine start.  If there is no more response than this, we plan to hang these flyers up at the library and Barnes & Noble.                               

3 Not-So-Fiction Books I've Read Recently

I've read three books about the psyche in the last two months that set my eyes wide open:

1. Man's Search For Meaning     Victor Frankl

2. The Five Love Languages     Gary Chapman

3. The Verbally Abusive Man:  Can He Change     Patricia Evans

Entry 2: Summer Women's Book Club

So, Denise and I met for lunch at the end of last week as planned.  KFC/Tace Bell.  I couldn't eat meat (Friday during Lent) and don't know why I agreed to eat there!  I had a meatless burrito and a corn on the cob.  After eating, we looked at the draft of the flyer I had made for our book club.  It helped us make some decisions.  First, I need to draw a few pictures on it (maybe a woman reading a book, an open book, a coffee cup).  We decided we won't say where we are meeting directly until we know who will be involved, but we are going to start by alternating between our two houses.  We will meet on the first and third Sundays of each month starting in June from 3:00 to 4:30 pm.  Our first book will probably be Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.  I have read it once, and there is certainly plenty in it to create discussion.  We are going to send this flyer out to our email/facebook contacts in early April and see who responds.  If that is a bust, we're going to hang flyers at the library and Barnes & Noble (maybe my church) in early May.  Denise is hoping for an even number of participants, say six or eight. 
Denise told me this weekend that she asked her mom if she was interested in being part of our book club; her mom told her no because she thinks it will never actually happen.  She told Denise we'll never get anyone to do this.  Nice, huh?

Here Is A New Poem Anyway

When I think about heaven,

 

and I do,
I tend to think big.
You see, I’m not a pearly gates, float
on clouds type of girl; I want to make quilts
with my hundreds of grandmas,
drive super fast down mountains,
star in a live Tolkien story, and
sit in God’s lap.
If these things, and more, are possible,
they will surely take place near water
(ocean, river, lake, creek),
and I suspect we’ll be naked or close to it –
certainly barefoot.

There will be too much to occupy us

to worry about
what our bodies look like. 
We’ll probably be fit and healthy,
and, as it is heaven,
either hairless or eternally unshaven.
The only thing to give pause
would be scars; I mean,
if we get to choose what we’ll carry over
on our new bodies in the afterlife,
then curiosity
toward each other’s flaps and ridges
will bring endless revelations. 
I hope I can and will decide to look like myself,
that I’ll keep this crooked cesarean streak.

Tattoos might be negotiable,

supposing they are sufficiently moral,
perhaps even signs of our death: 
the hole of a stab wound now
gallantly displayed, the woman
who was stoned not showing every cut, no,
but choosing forever to wear
the puncture point
of the first stone thrown. 
And the man who threw it – isn’t he
in a heaven as big as ours?
We don’t want him there, but I think
if they did meet,
he would put a finger to this spot
and feel pain.

Any human interaction,

even if brief or forced or incomplete,
can form a connection between two souls;
it is possible such a link
is visible in the spiritual realm,
that it leaves a mark, like a scar.
We may also be able to pick
which, if any,
of these many gleams,
or painful smears and brands,
we will continue to bear  –
those shaken off
will simply be gone.

But the bond of a full relationship

is something different and greater,
and leaves such a fixed imprint
on the two souls
it shall not be erased by choice or by space;
once joined, joined forever.
Let me believe this:
let me believe
that if there has been love between us,
even imperfectly,
and one of us goes to heaven, then
the other must follow.
Separation – impossible.

Which is why, supported by a host

of beautifully battered saints and angels,
I say, “Love, you fools; love!”

Entry 1: Summer Women's Book Club

Let's face it, I'll never be a competent blogger.  I resist almost anything that should be done daily, including but not limited to exercising, brushing my teeth, taking vitamins, charting my cycle, facebook.  However, I have had an inspiration.  Instead of throwing up random poems randomly, I am going to give reports on my attempt to create a book club.  I am doing this because I think it would be interesting and because my friend and neighbor Denise wants to do it so badly.  We've talked about it here and there for years -- years!  I guess I'm finally in a place to seriously consider it.  I have a wide reading range, but it tends toward the "high end" of literary work.  Whatever that means.  Denise wants romance and popular novels, and as I am not opposed to such things at all despite my leanings, that is where our club will go.

The Beginning:
Denise asks me to go with her for a girl's night out.  She says it has been over five years since we last did this.  That doesn't seem possible, but time is a very fluid thing for me and I cannot argue.  We leave much earlier than when the movie we are going to see starts, and decide to spend the intervening time in Barnes and Noble instead of the mall.  We stay together, and start pointing out books that might be good book club possibilities.  We have a vague idea of trying to read books that have been made into movies, and including that aspect as an option.  I get out the small journal I've been carrying recently in my purse, and start writing down authors and books.  We stay in the fiction section and eventually browse row by row.  Here is what we came up with, although I have ordered it differently from the rambling list I made in the store:

Jane Austen     Pride and Prejudice
Elizabeth Gilbert     Eat Pray Love, Committed
Sara Gruen     Water For Elephants, Ape House
Kathryn Stockett     The Help (everyone is talking about this book)
Jodi Picoult     My Sister's Keeper
Adriana Trigiani     Big Stone Gap, Life Lessons From My Grandmothers, Very Valentine
Alice Sebold     The Lovely Bones, The Almost Moon
Jennifer Weiner     In Her Shoes, Good In Bed
Alice Walker     The Color Purple
Anne Rice     (Vampires), Of Love and Evil
Sue Monk Kidd     The Secret Life of Bees, The Mermaid Chair
Toni Morrison     Beloved, a mercy
Charlotte Bronte     Jane Eyre
Louise Erdrich     Love Medicine, Plague of Doves
Barbara Kingsolver     Animal Dreams, Lacuna
Alice Hoffman     Here On Earth, The Red Garden, The Third Angel
Elizabeth Berg     Open House, Once Upon a Time There Was You, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted
Ernest Hemingway     A Moveable Feast
Shakespeare
James Patterson     Sunday at Tiffany's
Elin Hilderbrand     The Castaways
Nicholas Sparks
Nora Ephron
Danielle Steele
Hester Browne
C.S. Lewis     The Chronicles of Narnia
Stephanie Myers     Twilight
J.K Rowling     Harry Potter

I have since made up a draft for a flyer advertising our club.  The heading is:  SUMMER (Women's) BOOK CLUB / Reading, Discussion, Friendship, Movies.  At the bottom I have listed a lot of the books we are considering, and on this list all of the writers are female.  Why not?  It gives us more than enough great stories to tackle.  Denise and I are supposed to meet for lunch this Friday, which should give me my next installment.  If you live anywhere near Dry Ridge, Kentucky and are interested, I can give you further details as they arise!  Or stay tuned.

3 Recent Poems

Here are three poems written very recently.  This is the only way I know to put them out into the world at this time!  Here world!

MARY OLIVER

is a much-loved poet.

A single poem may show her

outdoors observing and absorbing

nature, offering life lessons.

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t

like her.  She is exactly

what a poet should be. 

I stay inside too much.  Mary

Oliver makes me feel like

I should be sitting out in the woods more,

learning the names of the trees

and teaching my children

their secrets. 

I cannot even classify my dead

indoor plant.  It is a sign of things gone wrong. 

It is a sign my husband

can point to proving that I am not

taking care of anything, though

I have surreptiously hired a girl

to help me clean for two

hours each week.

Meanwhile, I am reading the book

Three Cups of Tea – people said it

was good.  It is about a man building

schools

in remote parts of Pakistan. 

What am I doing with my life?

I go outside to throw away

the dead plant and notice the Halloween

pumpkins rotting on the front stoop. 

My neighbors have started putting up

their Christmas decorations.  I look back

at the blue foil wreath from

last Christmas

still hanging on

our front door. 

I take the pumpkins behind the house

and fling the small ones

down the hill into the small

wooded area at the end of our back yard.

I pick up the big mushy pumpkin last;

its clown-like face is caved in on top.  

I name it Mary Oliver.  Well Mary I say

and chunk her back into the woods

where she loves to be.

ON THE FEAST OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 2010

This is what they will tell you: 

That Mary was conceived without

Original Sin.  That her parents

were probably called Joachim and Anne. 

That they were probably holy people. 

That no one has ever witnessed

an immaculate conception.

Do you think it was

a very proper event?  Did they maybe

have intercourse routinely on Wednesday

afternoons?  Did she lift the edge

of her tunic demurely and lie back,

a martyr to the whims of man? 

Did he look off to the side while

thrusting discreetly, finishing

with a sharp breath in, a slow sigh out? 

Or did he arrive home from work one day

to find her making supper, flour

on her cheek when she turned to greet him,

adorable and smiling?  Did her heart jump

when he looked at her with such

admiration and desire?  Did they even

make it behind the curtain? 

Were there tunics everywhere? 

Did she pull him eagerly into her? 

Did he try to muffle his shouts when

he called out her name?  Did she laugh

when a drop of sweat fell off the end

of his nose?  When talking later across

the food, did they suddenly pause, amazed,

as they felt their lives shifting,

fully aware the exact second

the miracle took place?

Years later when their young daughter

comes to them with her own miracle,

they will not be undone –

they already know the crazy mystery

of the madness of their interfering God.

EXCEPTIONAL

I am in therapy with my husband again. 

I don’t like the new place.  The floor is mud,

and though there are rugs, by the time I reach

one I am already slurping up to my knees

and forgo it out of politeness.  My husband somehow

keeps making it onto a couch without getting

filthy or damaging it, while the therapist waits

comfortably in an oversized armchair. 

The light is so dim, I have to squint a lot.

Whether it is couples therapy or divorce therapy

is still up in the air.  I am focused on doing what is right,

not wanting to fuck up sainthood.  From her throne,

the therapist suggests that maybe I think I am

exceptional.  I take it she is not trying to become a saint. 

I decide not to tell them that last week

I stopped taking all of my medications,

missed two days and then deliberately let it go. 

My priest says that I am in a certain phase of life,

a normal phase.  If only I could find somewhere

to breathe without gasping, somewhere to take off

all my clothes and the act remain pure.  If only I could

find the map showing me how to get to the next spot. 

There will be people following me.  I don’t want to become

some statue they travel a long way to see or some

bit of bone they hold to gain power. 

I just want to be a light in the window.