LouAnn Shepard Muhm

This winter has not been as bleak as some.  The lack of snow was getting me down there for awhile, but now I set my sights toward spring.  A long time ago I heard someone refer to Itasca State Park in winter as “the cathedral.”  That idea stuck with me, and I was pleased to be able to work some cathedral vocabulary into an ode , of sorts.  So often it is easier to write from a distance.  In a different winter I would ski.  This winter, I’ll write about skiing.

Cathedral

Under the lancet arch of pines
we follow snow’s tracery
between dripstones,
across transept paths,
as jays cry from corbelled branches
at the finial-perched hawk.

We ski the apse,
enter the nave,
where embattlements fade
in the tree-mullioned light
and our gargoyles smile
for this one cloistered breath.

It hardly seems that we’ve had winter this year, as I’ve discussed at length, although there’s some time left.  We still are without our usual weather, though it did snow about an inch last week and my husband and I were finally able to go cross-country skiing.  We had to push over some grassy spots, but , mostly, conditions were good.  No matter how bad (read: good and snowy ) the weather gets from this point, spring is within sight, and I’m starting to schedule events for the (even) warmer months.

First up is the online poetry class I’m teaching for The Loft Literary Center, starting Feb. 6.  The class runs until April 15, and you can get all the info and register HERE.

Plans are also in the works for a poetry reading and workshop in Bemidji, MN in early May as an extension of The Great Twin Cities Poetry Read.  I will be reading with Matt Mauch, Paula Cisewski, and Sean Hill. Half-day workshops are also planned. Scheduling is in the preliminary stages–I’ll keep you posted.

A little later in May, I’ll be teaching for what I think is the 12th year (11th, maybe?) at the Young Author’s Conference in Thief River Falls, MN.  The students are younger than the students I usually work with, which is a lot of fun, and I get to see some writer friends that I don’t see any other time: Heidi Grosch, Bill Durbin, Freya Manfred and many others.  It’s a fantastic event–really sparks kids’ interest in writing.

Further out, I’ve agreed to judge poetry for The Talking Stick, a publication very near and dear to me, as it is the first place I was ever published as a poet. Winners will be honored at the book launch event in September. I’m amazed and thrilled to find the journal and its sponsor, the Jackpine Writers’ Bloc, going strong after so many years.  It’s a fantastic publication, and I encourage all of you to submit.  Just don’t tell me you’re submitting, so I can be objective in my judging. The deadline is Feb. 20 and there will be a $300 prize for first place and a $100 prize for second place in each category: Poetry, Fiction, and Creative-Nonfiction.

As I mentioned a post or two ago, I have several grant and fellowship applications in the pipeline, and I’ll hear about a few of them in February.  The one I’m most hoping for will fund a really exciting visual art/poetry collaboration with Tiffany Besonen.  I’m not going to give any details yet, but believe me–it is interesting.  We will find a way to do it even if the grant doesn’t come through, but…here’s hoping!

I doubt that any people anywhere are quite as weather-obssessed as Midwesterners, and Minnesotans in particular.  So I apologize to those who aren’t really interested, but the weather this winter is so strange that I can’t help but write about it.  Today–January 5–a day on which the average temperature Park Rapids, MN is 5 degrees Fahrenheit, it is 51 degrees.  This is a new record. 

We did have a bare dusting of snow around Christmas, and the jubilation was universal.  Local Facebook friends’ status updates were all about sledding, or skiing or snowshoeing.  It was only a couple of inches (now mostly gone), and I had visions of my friends and neighbors all suited up in their snow pants and parkas, standing by the back door with skis or sleds in hand for hours, watching intently out the window, and running outside whooping at the first sign of a flake.  We do like our winters up here in the North Country.

All of this strangeness should lead to some interesting poems.  Time will tell. I just can’t shake a feeling of unease and impending…..something.  It’s just too weird.

I’m hoping that the next session of Writing the Short Poem–my online Loft Literary Center class–fills up, and I start teaching it again in February.  There’s still time to sign up!  Just click on the course title above.

Meanwhile, the season of impatience for grant and fellowship application results has arrived, snow or no snow.  I have three major applications out there, and by the end of Feb., I will have results from two of them.  One is for a really interesting collaboration with visual artist Tiffany Besonen that will result in a travelling gallery exhibit.  Cross your fingers for us, and do a snow dance!

Two weeks later, and we still have no snow to speak of.  I’ts disappointing.  One thing that could really cheer me up, though, would be a full class roster for Writing the Short Poem, the class I’m teaching online for The Loft Literary Center, beginning in February.  There’s a 15 % discount for all who sign up before January 1.  Time’s running short!

Go to my Workshops Page  for more info

I know that people who live in warmer places think I’m crazy, but I love winter.  At least in December, I do.  (March is a little different story).  It’s December 1st , and we are without the snow and cold that we should have here in the North at this time of year.  It’s unsettling.    Will this be a brown Christmas, or is Mother Nature saving up for a big snow (fingers crossed)?

There’s just something about snow.  There are few things that I find as soul-satisfying as a long walk in a heavy snowfall, or a cross-country ski through the woods by lantern-light.  It’s the silence, I think.  The silence of new snow is like no other.  It’s a cushioned silence, a velvet silence, a rabbit-soft silence.

And there are the indoor pleasures of winter:  a comfortable couch, a good book, a hot drink, and a window with a busy bird feeder just visible above the frosted corners of the glass…hot baths, new wool socks, anything filled with goosedown…these are a few of my fav-o-rite things.

Even the harsher aspects of winter appeal to me.  The Long Winter was the Laura Ingalls Wilder book that most captured my imagination.  I’ve probably read it 20 times. I will never get the image of the cows with their heads frozen to the ground by their own breath out of my mind, and I am still determined to make a faux-apple pie out of green pumpkin someday.  I know the reality wasn’t that enjoyable, and that the family probably barely survived (assuming the stories were true), but the vicarous thrill and triumph of making it through that brutal season marked me forever.

Winter around here can be a little like that–a seeming (though not usually actual) feat of survival.  It makes me feel tough to live here, and strong, and indomitable.  Maybe what I really love about winter is that it binds me in some way to all my favorite literary heroines–I can bundle up and venture out into a snowstorm like Laura and Mary taking hot water to Pa;  I can revel in the warmth of a long-awaited fire like Jane Eyre finally liberated from Lowood; daydream about the gifts I will buy like the March sisters planning for Marmee.  Then there’s Jack London’s hapless Yukon traveler and his faithful, much-smarter dog, Whittier’s “fenceless drift that once was road,” Capote’s dotty cousin crying out joyously, “It’s fruitcake weather!”   So many literary winters I’ve read of while snow swirled outside my own window.

Welcome, Winter. 

 All photos (including site header and author photos) taken by Steven R. Peterson

I can hardly believe that I’m coming down to my last couple of weeks of teaching Writing the Short Poem online for The Loft. Teaching at The Loft has been a wistful wish of mine for many, many years, but geography precluded it.  It hardly seems real that I have the opportunity now, and that my students seem satisfied, and want to work with me again. I am developing a structure for taking on private students, and will propose additional online classes to The Loft, in hopes that I can keep these connections, and make new ones. 

The ten weeks have flown by. The students’ talent, intellect, and generosity in responding to each other is really astonishing.  There have been a couple of bumps in the road, but we’ve weathered them, and I certainly learned a lot (yay–another flipping growth experience).  But the ups have far outweighed the downs, and I will go into the next session with more experience and the memory of this great class.  I feel that I’ve gotten to know these people, and I will miss them. There’s really nothing better than teaching people who want to learn.

Zooming out to a broader time period, it’s amazing for me to see how my path in poetry has developed.  If you had told me ten years ago that I would have the publications that I have, modest as they are,  I’d never have believed you.  I wouldn’t have believed that I had done readings in Grand Marais and Minneapolis, let alone New York and Great Britain, or attended workshops with poets I so admire–Jane Hirshfield, Joan Houlihan, Martha Rhodes, Dara Weir–it’s too much to fathom.  I know it’s a predictable time of the year to be enumerating blessings, and I hate being predictable, but enumerate I must.  I’ll keep it relatively professional here, and spare you the list of even-more-amazing personal blessings.  They are many.

I hope you have your own long list of blessings this year and every year.

As I wrote in my last post, I’m really thinking about what it takes to be an individual in an increasingly homogenized world.  Evidence would suggest I’m not the only one (“People say I’m a dreamer…”).  So, although I don’t live in a place that has an Occupy Wall Street protest, or that would have any impact if it did (local population around 3000), I will be striking my own small blow against our current corporate culture by doing my best to support local, independent businesses.  I already bank at a locally-owned institution, shop at a locally-owned grocery store, and frequent as many main-street businesses as I can.  This year, however, I’m going to try even harder.  Sorry, Wal-Mart–I have forsaken you.

By far my favorite local enterprise to support, however, is my fantastic local independent bookstore, Beagle Books.  Jen Geraedts and Sally Wizik Wills, who own and manage the store (as well as the equally wonderful Sister Wolf Books, open only in the summer) have done an amazing job of promoting my book and supporting me as a writer.  I am truly indebted. 

Now, for the first time, it is possible for people to buy Breaking the Glass online from Beagle Books (or from your favorite independent bookstore) through IndieBound  which is “a community-oriented movement begun by the independent bookseller members of the American Booksellers Association. It brings together booksellers, readers, indie retailers, local business alliances, and anyone else with a passionate belief that healthy local economies help communities thrive. Supporting local, indie businesses means that dollars, jobs, diversity, choice, and taxes stay local, creating strong, unique communities and happy citizens.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  As we begin the march toward our busiest consumer season, please join me in doing your best to support local independent businesses with your words and your dollars.

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P.S.  Buying Breaking the Glass directly from the publisher, Loonfeather Press, using this order form  is still a great way to get the book and support a local independent small press. However, I wanted people to have an online buying option, too.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “outliers” this week.  Malcolm Gladwell had a bestseller by that title, and said about it,   “I’m interested in people who are outliers—in men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.”

There have been several outliers in the news this week:  Steve Jobs, whose untimely death will rob us of whatever new, world-transforming technology he might have come up with; Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — Africa’s first elected female president — her compatriot, peace activist Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakul Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner, who were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; and Tomas Transtromer, who was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature, after having been criticized early in his career for being “not political enough.”

What is it that made these people, and others like them, willing to overcome their fear, their need to conform and their apathy, to do something, be something, say something?

The Occupy Wall Street protesters inspire me, as well.  Yes, some of them are not very well informed.  Yes, some of them are not dressed very professionally.  But aren’t they saying something you’d like to say?  Are they saying anything you haven’t said in your living room, away from the threat of handcuffs and billy clubs, and pepper spray?  Is it so beyond the pale to say that it’s wrong for oil companies and health insurers to have made record profits in the last three years, when those are the two areas where most Americans have felt most financially assaulted?  Shouldn’t banks and large corporations have to obey the law, and also obey the spirit of the law, not find ways to subvert and circumvent it?  Is it right that one percent of the US population holds 40% of our wealth, or that we’re not raising taxes on the wealthiest among us, even as they ask us to?

This week I encourage all of us, myself included, to connect with our inner outlier.  Whatever you do, however large or small a blow you make against group-think, and sameness, and timidity in the face of difference, make sure it is your act, and your thought, and your voice.

Quote for the week:  Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. … Stay hungry. Stay foolish.      –Steve Jobs

Don’t they?  It’s odd to me that this thing that we supposedly love, that inspires and feeds us, is so hard to make ourselves do.  What is up with that?  I suppose there’s some performance anxiety, and some inertia, and some straight-up mental and emotional laziness.  It takes a lot out of a person to create.  Or that’s what I say to myself when I’m not writing much.  When I really write (as opposed to sitting down with paper and pretending to write), it doesn’t seem like work.  When I can get into the flow, the poem seems to materialize “without my stir,” as Shakespeare might say. I think the thing is not to try to control it too much–not to be too invested in getting a good outcome, but to be willing to just try stuff and see what happens.  That is a weak spot for me.  I don’t like to commit things to paper unless I think they are going to work, to become something “Worthwhile.”   So, my goal for this week, which I am writing here in an effort to make myself accountable, is to write at least two draft poems.  I have the seed of an idea from the Ekphrasis class I just finished teaching–a poem in response to a painting.  So this week I vow to get that seed in the ground, and to find at least one other to plant.  At first I wrote “one other worth planting”, which (just to keep the plant metaphor going) would be the root of the problem, wouldn’t it?  So NO, not one “worth” planting, but just one that I have in my possession to plant.  Because, in the words of Banquo, “who can look into the seeds of time, /And say which grain will grow and which will not”?

Not sure why all of these quotes from Shakespeare’s Scottish play (bad luck to say the name) are coming to me this morning.  Perhaps my subconscious is sending me a message about ambition? Perhaps a reminder from my old buddy Will S. that (to paraphrase)  “the poem‘s the thing.”

Quote for the week:  “The scariest moment is always just before you start [writing]. After that, things can only get better.” ~~Stephen King

It’s the start of my very favorite time of year.  I love the cooler weather, the smell in the air, and the feeling of “fresh start” that’s all around.  I know some people feel that more in the spring–rebirth and all that–but I guess I’ve been forever imprinted by the school calendar.  Others leave that schedule behind as they get older, but teachers never do.  Give me a cool day, a vista of changing leaves , and a new notebook any time.

Last week I had the overwhelming pleasure of attending Concordia College’s symposium, The Role of the Artist in Society.  It was one of the most thought-provoking and inspiring things I’ve attended in a long time.  I went with artist collaborator and friend Tiffany Besonen, who had a piece in the exhibit (Dis)covering the Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces. The exhibit is an offshoot of a larger show that includes a piece of Tiffany’s work that incorporates my poetry.  We were able to spend some time with the exhibit’s curator and general force of nature, Jennifer Heath, who is one of the most generous and creative people I’ve met.  We also fleshed out the plan for our next, much more complicated, collaboration.  Very exciting!

Today, I’ll be attending the book release party for The Talking Stick, a Minnesota Literary Journal.  This is volume 20.  Hard to believe!  I became involved with The Jackpine Writers’ Bloc, which publishes the journal, many years ago.  I’ve had quite a few poems in the book over the years, and actually designed the layout for a few of the early editions.  I’m so happy to see it still going strong.  I’ll be especially proud today to be there to hear one of my best student-poets, Ashley Ziehm, read the poem she had included in the book.  She’s only the second high school student to be published there.

I’m just about to finish the class on ekphrastic poetry that I’ve been teaching at the Nemeth Art Center.  It’s been a wonderful experience.  I’m always so gratified by the generosity of the participants in classes like these.  They bring such careful attention to the work–their own and their classmates’.  My little secret is that I always learn more than they do.  This class will culminate with a reading at the Art Center on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2:30 pm.  The class participants and possibly a few of my high school students will be reading poems written in response to the artwork currently on exhibit.  Hope to see you there!

Week after next, I’ll be starting to teach Writing the Short Poem for The Loft Literary Center.  It’s an online class, and it will be very interesting to see how it all comes together.  I have a wonderful group of students, a few of whom I’ve worked with before in one capacity or another.  It will be a dynamic group!  Registration closes next week, so if you’re on the fence, you’ll have to decide soon.

Finally, this is what I’m dreaming about this morning…a little writer’s shed in the back yard.  Maybe someday.

Quote for the week: The difference between the right and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug.                  Mark Twain