Bienvenu a la Camargue

In sixth-grade French class, I saw a movie called "La Criniere Blanche" (The White Mane) about a boy living in the Camargue region of southern France.

Being a horse-crazy young girl, I was transfixed by the idea of a wild region where herds of white horses ran free. The images stayed with me for decades.

Then, one day as I was driving into the parking lot of the neighborhood QFC grocery store, I encountered a wild-eyed musician. In my head.

One poem grew into another. One character led to another. And that landscape gave birth to a made-up myth about the lost daughter of Ra. All absolutely fiction (although friends and Internet research helped a lot).

The poems work best together, and so I've put In the Mane of a White Horse up on the sofa. I hope you enjoy the poems. And I hope someday to visit the Camargue.

Whoa, that was fast!

Last night we went out to Marymoor Park to watch the FSA cycling races at the velodrome.

Jamie won the scratch race, and Christine and her teammate rode a gutsy race in the Madison.

You are here

While walking home and looking at the deep green canopy of trees arching overhead, I realized again how important place is in a poem.

The poems that work best, for me, give me not only music or narrative or imagery, but a bearing. I can imagine where I'm at.

In the poem, I'm given the colors, sounds, and smells, the hard surfaces and the shiny ones, the weight of water or light—a richly woven fabric of senses.

In the best of worlds, the scene isn't just described in adjectives and similes. It's revealed in unexpected images that catch my breath, even though they are cut from the whole cloth of the poem.

Lately, my favorite example of this comes from "Mangoes," by Tracy K. Smith.

The woman in a blouse
The color of daylight
Motions to her daughter not to slouch.
They wait without luggage.
They have been waiting
Since before the station smelled
Of cigarettes….

I love the way this tells me so much without saying the name of a color or the time of day. I can imagine all the Greyhound bus stations I've ever been in (especially Oakland at six or seven in the morning).

Do you think place is important in a poem? Do you anchor your poems in time or place? How do you set the scene?

Hang on, little tomatoes

They aren't even a little bit red yet, but they make me think of The Pink Martinis.

Our Friday

Today is Tom's birthday, so we both took the day off and walked through the market and then we went to the sculpture park and the Asian art museum and the dahlia garden and had a leisurely lunch on the patio at Serafina's. All things we never have time to do, especially on a Friday.

Happy Birthday, Tom!

So much for the desire line

This must be the stuff

Oh my word! Or their words.

Today, I started to read Floating Bridge Review.

Wow!

I haven't gotten past the first poet, Allen Braden, and I admit that I'm not familiar with his work. Or, I wasn't. But the poems here (with their parentheses) are filling me and filling me. I get the feeling that the goodness goes on. There is more to discover between these pages.

Highly recommended, and you can get it from Floating Bridge Press.