Liz: Dysfunctionality of Wuth. Hts & poetry

Hi everyone!
I have just caught up on a bunch of entries. It was fun! I love reading what you all write! I have a rare moment to post a blog . . . Pat is out helping his brother Chad move some things into his new apartment, and the children are in bed. It is 9:30pm and I am very tired but I need to be up sitting near Claire's room til she goes to sleep. You know how it is!
I absolutely loved Rae's post with the four generations of poems! That is wonderful! I especially loved Grandma's. What a great idea to do that, Rae.
I wanted to say something about the dysfunctionality of Wuthering Heights. I remember thinking that it was a strange story; I think it read it in 97 or 98 at BYU. Right now I am actually reading A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolfe. I'd always wanted to read it and it just seemed like a good time. Well, Virginia has theories on the writing of the Bronte sisters and of women in that era. She basically says that because women were treated as inferior and had such fewer opportunities than men, and more specifically because they were scorned for writing anything or thinking that they could possibly have anything to contribute that way, the writing of women in that time is "crippled." She says that their minds were not free to write uninhibited. I find a lot of logic in that. Surely that can't always be the case, but there were definitely fewer women writers in that era, and I can't help thinking that if I had lived then and had a tendency, urge, and desire to write and love words, I would probably hide it and not discover the full gift because of the way others around me would treat me for it--or simply because the opportunities to write would not exist like they do for me today.
So I am happy that I live now!! :)
I also wanted to say that I am very excited about the March theme! I am going to enter a writing contest in May, and I wrote a poem to enter about a week ago. (I suppose I could share it--maybe in another post) Also, I just made up some new lyrics (kind of poetry, right?) to Take Me Out to the Ballgame. I'll share them here, although Rae, Abby, and Mim have already seen them:
(this is about my sweet baby Andrew, (7 1/2 months old) who hates green beans.)
Take me out of my highchair!
I'm so tired I could cry!
I don't want to be here anymore;
I just wanted to crawl on the floor
And it's oh-so-boring in here, Mom,
This is not any fun!
I ate one-two-three bites of green beans
And now I'm DONE!

I am not sure what I will choose for March yet but there are tons of options. Thanks for the ideas, and thanks everyone for this neat blog. I love you all!!
LIZ

Beccy: Good Things

Hi from sunny St. George. It was 70 degrees at 8 p.m.! We're staying in a condo that belongs to some friends, just here for the weekend. Troy and Kyle are doing a 50-mile bike ride in the morning to finish Kyle's Cycling merit badge (last one he has to finish and then he's done with his Eagle and all necessary m.b's). Once the kids were in bed, I camped out on the couch with Troy's laptop and read the entire archive of our family blog. It's great to be back! Your posts are more interesting and fun than the Sept. 2007 rerun BYU-Arizona game Troy is watching on TV. :)

I'm reading This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin. Another good addition to our list of music reads. Also Hearing the Voice of the Lord by Gerald Lund. Those are the top two books of the stack on my nightstand.

Other non-fiction: Lately I have been reading the Book of Mormon with the BYU Religion 121 manual. For some reason, I have been fascinated with Mormon himself this time. I've read the whole book rather quickly this time, trying to see it from Mormon's perspective--wondering how he was affected by what he read. He must have named his son after the earlier Moroni, since he obviously had tremendous respect for him. We know very little about his lineage, and I wonder if his parents were wicked and he might have been ashamed of them? Just a thought. The manual points out that he obviously grew up surrounded by evil, and yet he remained so pure that he received a personal visit from the Savior in his youth (in his 17th year if I'm remembering right). What an example for youth today.

For some reason, it had never caught my attention before that the Jaredites' final battle occurred at the same place as the Nephites' final battle; the base of the Hill Cumorah (the Jaredites called it Ramah I think--don't have my scriptures handy and now I've moved from couch to bed. Troy's snoring. :) Mormon wrote a letter to the Lamanite King "requesting" that they gather there for the final battle, of course knowing how it would end. That got me thinking about why Mormon requested it. Historic irony? Both civilizations annihilated in the same place, several thousand years apart. I wanted to find some place--a verse even--where Mormon comments on the record of the Jaredites. Moroni abridged the Jaredite record and obviously made many comments on it, but I couldn't find anywhere that Mormon gave his impressions of it. Anyone??

Well this is not poetry. I've been helping Jared with his 4th grade poetry notebook all week, so I'm already in that mode. Being in Tucson last week made me think about B. Kingsolver and I'd like to re-read her poetry. More when I get back home.

I was listening to Julie Beck this morning, and after reading over your posts I'm thinking that you are all "women who know." I love your educated opinions and insights, your cleverness and careful choices, your wit and wisdom. And Martha Stewart thinks she can label something a "good thing." Ha!

Abby: Politics, Romance, Poetry, and I'm back?

Well, I'm sort of back. I guess I just haven't had much to say. I'm not sure what I'll read for poetry, but I've loved the little I've read of Emily Dickinson so maybe I'll try that. I've never really read much poetry actually. So this should be fun. I loved the poetry from Grandma, Grandma Tense, Beccy, and Curt. I'm sure that Lulu will have some poetry to share. And Liz. And Kate, if we add her to here! I do have some to share, though more for laughs than anything else. I'll have to digging but I have a poem I wrote in junior high in the style of Shel Silverstein's "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout". Here's a link for another that some of you have already seen on my blog...it's good for a laugh too. I wrote it when I was thirteen, as a response to an English prompt in class.

In January I fully intended to read something political, but it didn't happen. I especially wanted to read something that explained the way "delegates" play into the primaries. It all sounds so similar to an electoral college when you really get down to the basics of it. And this whole time I had thought primaries were purely decided on the popular vote. I think I have it figured out now, but I was hoping to find a book that explained everything without being biased. I did request some childrens' books on elections from the library (thinking the simpler the explanation, the better it might be), but they only became available to me this last week so I haven't sat down to look at them.

I have been watching the debates and keeping close tabs on what's been going on and have been more interested in things than I have for quite some time. Right now I'm not feeling very optimistic about our presidential candidates. I try not to think about how things might have been if certain (grrr...Huckabee really bugs me) candidates hadn't entered the race at a later date than others in the Republican party and I shudder to think of Hilary as President. I started out so gung-ho about these primaries but right now I'm politically frustrated.

In February, I sort of read within our topic of Romance but I didn't have enough to say about the books to give them their own post. For the last couple of months I have been reading Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series and thoroughly enjoying each book. I'm reading book four right now. They're fantasy, for those of you who haven't heard of them. Sort of "Tolkienesque" but at the same time not. I love how well he develops his characters and how involved I feel in the story. I haven't wanted to read much else lately. I guess I can count them for romance since Aunt Rae said they could be books with some romance in them or relationships and these do meet that criterion.

Autumn and I are reading "The Spiderwick Chronicles" together and enjoying them.

I've also been reading a lot of homeschooling literature as I prepare for next year. (Yeah, that may come as a surprise for any of you who haven't talked to me recently or caught that little paragraph on my blog...but we're homeschooling next year and I'm REALLY excited!)

Lynness Re: March Theme

I did not know Barbara Kingsolver was a poet. Interesting you should
mention Emily Dickinson- I haven't read her since high school, but one
of my best friends is moving, possibly to Germany, and is downsizing and
gave me a collection of Emily Dickinson poems, so I may be reading
that. I think all of us should post our own poems too!! I would love to
read more of y'all's (perfect time to use that Southern ubiquity- to
coin a noun) and have a couple of my own that don't make me cringe when
I read over them a few years after they were written. Curt's poem made
us laugh outloud! :)

PS- to all of you who live in Utah, I am online at the moment looking
for plane tickets out there for the last week in March and will
definitely want to get together!

Rae: March Theme

Celebrate words! Revisit some old poem friends or discover some new ones, as you wish. Share a favorite with us if you like.

If you need direction in your discovery...here are some of my favorite poets: May Swenson, Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Barbara Kingsolver(!), Leslie Norris, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Hardy, Ogden Nash, Robert Service, Dorothy Parker, Carl Sandburg, Elizabeth Bishop and Amy Clampitt.

Little known observation: 90 percent or so of Emily Dickinson's verses can be sung to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas. Try it. "There is no frigate like a book..."

Happy wording!

Rae: Four Generations of Words

January

Your face is cheerless like a lonely man's
Who longs for word from his distant son.
Your feet follow frozen, tiresome paths;
Harsh winds leave your arms stiff and numb.
You yearn for warmth of September lovers
Who planted springtime's promise, sleeping
Beneath protective patchwork covers
While first month's steel dawn came creeping.
Thawing winds squeeze tears from your eyes
To wear away winter's cape, all frozen,
And you shall hand me white hyacinths
Like a longed-for letter, newly opened.

By Beverly A. Hawkes


March

Your feet are muddy like a little boy's.
You get no more than dry--then you're half drowned.
You love to buff and swagger with your noise,
Then whine and tease, or sulk without a sound.
At first you're frozen numb, then you're half thawed.
You scuff your feet, filling your eyes with sand.
You run away, then serenely homeward plod
Bringing pussy willows in your hand.
Spring's door is closed, your childish hand unlocks it,
Bringing piping frogs in every pocket.

By Hortense Spencer Andersen (Gma Hawkes' mother)
Published in the March Improvement Era, 1943


Portrait of a Flower

One yellow dandelion
Quietly asserts herself
In a green congregation.
Vivid petals burst out bravely in an
Uncelebrated bouquet of self.

A weed of certain stem
With settled roots,
Green palms stretched wide
To collect the sun.

By Rebecca Martin



Birds can flutter.
When they fly low
It makes me shudder.
Oops! It flew into the window.

By Curt Martin
(the poem is a quatrain)

Rae: "Dysfunctional" Heights

OK, I just want to know what's the matter with those Bronte sisters? They must have had way too much time on their hands and life wasn't exciting enough! I read Wuthering Heights for my romantic read. It was kind of a warped romance, however. I think during sweeps week, Jane and Mr. Rochester, Linton, Heathcliff and Catherine should do a show with Oprah and Dr. Phil. What a hoot!

Seriously, though, I really enjoyed the writing if not the story itself so much. It's sometimes refreshing to read something written during the Victorian age. The wordiness makes you think a little harder as you read and you have to keep track of all the characters as well. Fortunately, the edition I was reading had a handy-dandy geneaological chart in the front for consulting purposes.

We have been enjoying having Miriam and Maddie here in Utah for a visit. Miriam explained to Gma Hawkes what we do here on the blog and she said to pass along that she loves all of you dear readers and that if she was capable and well she would be reading right along with us!

Happy reading!