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The Practice of Poetry(Robin Skelton, once my teacher, a guru, wizard, and poet-this book is always in use for the classes I still teach)
Possession (the novel of research and librarians, greed and determination)
Benang ( Perhaps the most imaginative historical novel I have ever read, the story of the aboriginal people in Australia)
Chaos (James Gleick makes the history, science and art of chaos theory understandable for those of us who, perhaps we were girls missed out on physics courses in our education)
Narrow Road to the Interior (Hamil translation of Basho reminding me of a world that once was so very gentle)
And and extra for an old woman’s vanity: Flight Patterns, my own book of poems by me!
Let wayward fingers
prize words out of the ether
minus thought
drift on the edge
across the final bar
that fences the horizon
only the white flag
signals trust
I hoist the blank page
and hope
there are words, and wordlings
far beyond my minding
What is this long silence?
Has the circle been completed?
Words gone missing?
AWOL, the slippery thoughts
refuse to be named.
I knew flowers, yellow round
morning gleaming
named for a larger universe
now brown and faded as the winter
breaks stems
dark waters frown at the roots.
Why the long silence?
the worn thesaurus sits unopened on the shelf
a torn page
Was that the place you last looked?
I seek out crimson
find darkness
a circle drifts, a bubble
slippery, delicate, pale on the water
winding to break against the nearest rock
completed now
and lost. Fran
I’ve posted a dance in the Atelier, painting for blog day
Here the dancers 
I set out to draw but ended up finding the background was the picture.
Hidden
within her handiwork
Babushka lives
longing for her children
remembering
their shaping
May you be blessed
in this season and all seasons
All is distraction
the house that will not clean itself of dust or ditritus;
garbage from a hundred trips of guilt
clogging the memory of a precious night;
the phone call advertising some useless other thing
and my shame at my rude reply;
the socks I did not mend
but thought it somehow important
enough to keep the socks;
the clothesline of life
pegged crooked
while I failed to see
the sun break pink against the pines
or scent of a thousand mornings.
Long years ago when I first went back to painting my teacher, a fine artist herself, told us to listen to our paintingss as we worked, to hear what the painting was telling us, and, most particularly to listen when the work was finished. I know now that when my work fails it is because I have failed to listen. Fran
I have been reading the history of Burma in fiction this past week and remembering the letters that came from Akyab when part of the story was happening. I thought you would like to look at my website, Poems from Memory Lane. Fran, Cronelogical
I once read a book about children’s rhymes in which a study was described in which a totally new skipping verse was found to have travelled from Britain throughout the English Empire of the day in less than 80 days–and that, I might add well before the internet. Fran
Who says an old idea cannot live again and that children, despite the most adverse situations will read if they can? I am sure that Joan Oleck will not mind my passing on this message from the British Columbia School Librarians to the Blue Stockings. For me this is inspiration and for those who write children’s stories hope for the future. Fran
Plane Drops 7,000 Books for Canada’s Indigenous Kids
Joan Oleck — School Library Journal, 3/5/2007
Most kids head to the library or bookstore when they need a book, but the aboriginal Cree children in Canada’s Far North can boast about a more adventurous experience. They received 7,000 novels and picture books after a military plane dropped them on to the frozen ice of a river emptying into Hudson Bay.
The February 26 drop was designated for K–10 students of the aboriginal reserve called Fort Severn First Nation. The tribe, like all of Ontario’s 26 northern first nations, suffers from geographical isolation, poverty, low literacy, and, until recently, a near-total lack of books in its school libraries. In all, two air drops delivered 900,000 new and gently used books for children in the subarctic native communities, which are unreachable by land during the winter.
The project is the brainchild of Ontario Lieutenant Governor James Bartleman, who is a member of the Mnjikaning First Nation. When Bartleman started the drive for the first nation school libraries in 2004, he collected 1.2 million books.
Bartleman’s chief-of-staff, Nanda Casucci-Byrne, says the thrill of watching the first drop outweighed the minus-10-degree temperatures and biting wind she had to brave. “It was a very large plane, the largest the community had ever seen,” she says. “It circled the community three times, and on the third time, on this predesignated spot on this frozen lake, you saw this large door at the back of the plane open. Then parachutes started to open. It was like gifts from the heavens.”
Once the massive crates hit the ice, nearly everyone in the community of 250 people hopped on their Skidoos and dogsleds and raced to reach the containers. Bartleman helped nearly 50 children tear open boxes and choose books. Some of the kids even plopped down on the snow and began to read, says Casucci-Byrne.
“When we put out this appeal, we thought, ‘If we get 150,000 books, it’ll be tremendous,’” she says. “Nine hundred thousand books later, and seeing this airplane coming to the most northerly, remote area of Ontario, and seeing these books fall from the sky… it was a beautiful picture.”
A mystery ship on a misty tide
floats silent, its passengers sleeping
waiting for a signal
from an empty window
Poet
aged and lonely
riding gently over the sea
The ferry woman dips
her paddle
singing the song
the song of her fathers
westerly, westerly
we go to the Island
where your beloved
is waiting for thee
Fran
Satin Flower ferry woman
hastens to the jetty
fearing lest the whirlwind
damage her vessel
A fragile word maker
awaits her coming
Fran
The ferry woman waits
aboard her ladyslipper boat
“Please step with care
and don’t forget to bring your silver pen
for the Muse of the Island
has lost hers.”
On Dream Island where the muse
rests silent
the parrot watches over her
waiting for dawn
and the coming of the poet
but the ferry sits unused upon the further shore
My impatient muse waved farewell and sailed to her island retreat where she plays and waits for the ferry women to bring any candidates for her services. That lazy lady swings in a hammock quite unsympathetic to my distant messages, refuses to read emails, won’t answer thought waving, and, as for snail mail, refuses to give out her address. I’ll have to call in the chief ferry woman and make my way over the sea.
cronelogical
The subject for next meeting is laughter: Laughter is listening to the babe’s first words, finding an answer in a twisted pun, touch and remember a moment when the song was new. We laugh when given the circumstance it would seem suitable to cry or rail against the fate that brings us to the spot. To laugh at ourselves is the real test.
cronelogical
We spoke of blue stockings
and I trust that I knew
that a blue stocking woman
would write what was true
but I found in my search
there were only a few
who had been preserved
however well deserved
their efforts had been. (in the 18th century, that is)
And then I found an interview with Iris Murdoch in which she said, in differentiating between philosophy and literature: ” Literature has no continuous task, it is not in that sense a kind of ‘work’. It is indeed something in which we all indulge spontaneously, and so might seem nearer to play. Literary modes are natural to us, very close to ordinary life and to the way we live as reflective beings. Not all literature is fiction but the greater part of it is or involves fiction,invention, masks, playing roles, pretending, imagining, story-telling. When we return home and ‘tell our day’, we are artfully shaping material into story form. (These stories are often funny, incidentally.) So in a way as word-users we all exist in a literary atmosphere, we live and breath literature, we are all literary artists, we are constantly employing language to make interesting forms out of experience which originally seemed dull or incoherent. How far reshaping involves offences against truth is a problem any artist must face. A deep motive for making literature or art of any sort is the desire to defeat the formlessness of the world and cheer oneself up by constructing forms out of what might otherwise seem a mass of senseless rubble.”
cronelogical
Written on a window, soon after her marriage, 1713.
Whilst thirst of praise and vain desire of fame,
In every age is every woman’s aim;
With courtship pleas’d, of silly toasters proud,
Fond of a train, and happy in a crowd;
On each proud fop bestowing some kind glance,
Each conquest owing to some loose advance;
While vain coquets affect to be pursued,
And think they’re virtuous, if not grossly lewd:
Let this great maxim be my virtue’s guide;
In part she is to blame that has been try’d–
He comes too near, that comes to be deny’d.{22} Written on a window, soon after her marriage, 1713.
An Early Blue Stocking! I have my doubts! Not even the most modest flirtying allowed!
Tis true, my dears, a little flattery will not come amiss
However blue my stocking I see nothing too remiss
returning flattery with a gentle kiss!
Fran
The elven folk, dear Imogen refused to leave their flower so I send them to you in a flower dance:
Fran
A watercolor from long ago
I thought you might enjoy
Cronelogical
A photo taken by Fran
Enjoy 2007
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