Not becoming Mom, Finally!

I am keeping the blog short this week, since I've been off for a few days.  Hopefully I have been doing lots of gardening and cooking and eating, and even perhaps sitting with my feet up while I enjoy a delicious new book.  I wanted to expand on my Nightstand review that appeared in this week's Grass Roots Reader.  I had to share my love of Ruth Reichl, and recommended her newest book in paperback, For You Mom, Finally.  It seemed beset with a great mystery, as its cover and title changed from the hardcover.  The marketing gods screamed down from her publisher, Penguin, I guess.  Originally it was titled Not Becoming My Mother.  That is a huge difference in tone. You can read the "why" in this piece at USA Today.

I loved my mother, and for the most part we got along really well.  Would I have chosen the life she did?  Heck no.  Do I find myself unwittingly making some of the same choices?  Well...I don't want to spread gossip, so I won't.  Parent-child relationships are almost always challenging, and Reichl's was no different.  It is a wonderful book, and it's a short and easy read.  Pick it up soon!

See you at the bookstore--
Pamela.

Poetry Month - Local Verse: Andy (staff)

Today's poem penned by Grass Roots' newest addition, Andy.

a.m.

The sun came up with no conclusions

On a bus ride into town

Flowers sleeping in their beds

I’ve seen spirits and children all waiting

The city’s cemetery humming

Two days and I’ve not slept a wink with these thoughts that I’ve been thinking

I’m wide awake it’s morning

--Andy Osterhaus

Reading Tonight with April

April Nabholz, of the Grass Roots staff, will be reading tonight from her recently published essay, "Honeychild," about coming to Oregon with her mule.

7:00pm, in the Grass Roots loft.
Sunday, April 25th.

Local Verse: Pamela

So the other half of the Edward Hirsch as Poet-in-Residence is that he was a pompous academic, and not the approachable artist an aspiring poet would like to meet.  Yes, he led us around the Art Institute (which is fanTAStic by the way.  You should go the next time you're in Chicago!  And then go eat a hot dog for me...), and we gazed at paintings and discussed their meanings.  There was this moment as we stood in front of a painting that spoiled the man for me forever.  I don't even remember the title of the painting, but I can still see it in my head.  To me, it completely told the tale of Jonathan Swift's story "A Modest Proposal."  I swear to my grave the people in that painting were miserable and were going to eat that baby.  Ed, perhaps disgusted that no one else had anything else to say, turned to me and said, "You're wrong."  I'm sure he explained why, but I was pretty much done with him at that point.  Art is open to interpretation, as is poetry.  The artist/writer may mean one thing, but I think every individual viewer/reader brings their own story away from the end result.  Ed did inspire me to write a poem about him, however.  I read over it and only understand some of my own references with a high school giggle.  I'll leave it open to your interpretation.


ED.  (Dedicated to Edward Hirsch, Poet-in-Residence.)

Oh god.
Get me out of here.
Away from kids and paintings and laughings.
I am Ed.
I don't need this.
Do you have any Questions?
                            Complaints?
                            Dreams for the future?
                            about that?
YOU'RE WRONG!

Leave me alone.
With your England and Kangaroos
and eating babies.
Because
I am Ed.
A poet-in-residence
sho doesn't need this
except
for the money
and
to realize
my
sexual frustrations.


Pamela A. Moeller  '92

Overlook

Solitary and blue were the mornings
I drove to the lab, emeried my nails smooth
to adjust the scope and peered at the helical beauties
before Watson and Crick—that base pair—awoke.

That lab should have been mine, not shared
those nights when whispers were sharks
in Oxbridge robes following me
from room to room, closing doors and gates,
turning out all the lights I’d lit.

Out of the lab I was just Rosalind Franklin,
invisible as Moby’s wife, sure of my sound
research, my depth. Who knew I would live
just long enough to see the others crow
over the noble key when I was the one
to breach that confounding secret.

--Quinton Hallett

Note: Local poets Quinton Hallett and Nancy Carol Moody will be reading at Grassroots on Monday, April 26th at 7 PM.

WIN tickets to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at the Darkside Cinema in Corvallis!

Are you a fan of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson?  You could win tickets to see the movie at the Darkside Cinema in our drawing!  Grass Roots Books is partnering with the Darkside to give our customers  the opportunity to win a pass for two to see the movie version of Larsson's bestselling thriller.  To enter, simply pre-order and pre-pay for Larsson's third book in the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, available in hardcover on May 25, at Grass Roots before April 30.

The movie will be released at the Darkside on April 30.  The passes will be valid Monday through Thursday, May 3-6.  Please visit http://www.darksidecinema.com/ for show times.  The ticket drawing will be held April 30. 

The film is in Swedish, and won several Guldbagge Awards (the Swedish Oscars), including the award for Best Film:  "Stieg Larsson's bestselling thriller is now a mesmerizing new film! Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist are vividly brought to life in this intelligent and suspenseful adaptation, directed by Niels Arden Oplev.

"Swedish star Michael Nyqvist plays disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, hired by Henrik Vanger to solve the murder of his niece, teen heiress Harriet Vanger. Harriet disappeared without a trace forty years ago, and Henrik is convinced she was murdered by a member of the family. Teaming up with Blomkvist to solve the murder is the pierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a ruthless punk-rock heroine portrayed by up-and-coming actress Noomi Rapace in an amazing performance. As the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history, as Blomkvist and Salander discover just how far the Vanger family will go to protect their secrets..."



Stop by soon to enter!

Local Verse- Ben (staff)

Here's a poem I wrote a while ago, when I was in the midst of uprooting myself to move, a little haphazardly, to Asia. I wasn't sure where I'd end up, but I was ready to get going.

Taking Off
Ben Bliss

Expeditionary angels,

Hear me out.

I know it’s your door I must knock on,

Your buzzer that needs buzzing.

I know it. But I’m going

Around back, past your big entryway

And all its columns. I’m going

On the side path, through the daphne

And the other fragrant plants

That grow beneath your windows.

I’ll meet you on the back porch,

Among your garden slippers.

You’ll know me by my reticence

And the racket I can’t help but make.

No doubt you’ve heard it before—

This clatter of tipped-over things,

These quick breaths that come before

You send us away.

I’m rattled. What is it that's leaving?

These days every song moves me.

The camera pans, there's a migratory surge

In the music, and out the window

For a moment we can see

Cloud-slung, darkening canyons.

Local Verse -- April (staff)

I usually write poetry that's more... well, reflective, maybe, I hope.  And I almost never write in rhyme.  This poem didn't start off rhymed, and it actually started off semi-seriously when I first jotted it down on a park bench last month in Taiwan.  When I looked at it a few days later, it seemed lighter to me, and when I poked it with my pencil it fell easily into poorly metered rhyme.  You should consider it completely unrepresentative of my actual poetic leanings.

A Simple Poem 
April Nabholz

Sitting here beneath this tree
Life feels, perhaps, too leisurely.
I'd like to lie down on this bench
But too short it is by just one inch.
So I'll stay sitting, that's okay,
I won't complain my life away.
Resting here in shade and sun,
Oh this is lovely, this is fun!
Smell the exhaust, smell the smog,
Smell the s*** of a passing dog,
Life's so pleasant, I could snooze
-- What's that in the bushes -- a bottle of booze?
But there isn't any left, it's all been guzzled,
Selfish people like that ought to be muzzled!
I'm not the first then, it's plain to see,
To indulge here so wholeheartedly.

Local Verse - Charles Goodrich

To continue with today's Poem-A-Day prose theme, we have a poem from local poet Charles Goodrich.  This is from his latest book, "Going to Seed: Dispatches From the Garden."  On Friday, April 23rd, tune in to The Writer's Almanac to hear Garrison Keillor read one of Goodrich's poems.

Click here to listen to Charles read from "Going to Seed: Dispatches From the Garden."

Mudding-in Peas
Charles Goodrich

     Courting the Muse is not like sowing peas. You can sit quietly through February, pencil in hand, quivering with attention for hours on end, and you may or may not be given a poem.  But you sure won't grow any peas.
     For peas you must leave your desk, step into your boots, and go out to the graden.  You will be on the cusp of winter, a bite to the air, the soil barely awake.  Hard to believe any seed would want to be sown this early.
     But now your faith in the muse pays off. Your long apprenticeship to whatever happens prepares you to believe in the genius of a pea.  The seed is ready. And you are ready to assist it.  And you have a pencil, perfect for dibbling the holes.

Poetry Month - Local Verse: Mica (staff)

There are many things to love about poetry, and I think what I love best is it's flexibility. 

As a writer, you can box yourself in with a rondelle, or you can have a good-ol' ee cummings go at it and trip your words across the page.  Your work can be as short as a haiku, or skirt the length of a short prose story.  Endearingly, a poet can write of sorrow and pain in one poem, and on the facing page present a light-hearted and joyous romp through words and emotion.  Poetry offers me the mood swings that prose is too temperate to provide.  

On that note, I will be sharing two poems with you today. 

The first is for my 11 year old sister, Kooky--yes that is her real name--who also goes by Kookarella, Koo, LeKoo, and occasionally, Kooks.  Like me, she enjoys wordplay (our favorite joke: What is brown and sticky? A stick.), and like me, responds with laughter to things that draw groans from everyone else. With her in mind, I present the following:

A Groaner

My little sister's
name is Kooky.  And for her
I write this: "Hi, Koo!"


Hahahaha--oh--am I the only one laughing?  Well.  Looks like my attempt was aptly named. 

On the other hand, everyone has a serious side.  Mine is rather stunted, and so my serious poems--when I manage to stay somber long enough to write something down--tend to be rather short.  Understandably.

However, I love to read other poet's moody works.  They get to do all the sad thinking, draw the sad conclusions, and share them with me.  Hopefully their next page has a more uplifting work, and I am again transported back to the realm of happiness. But please don't think I am immune to melancholy (nobody's perfect, after all).  Here is proof: 


Through a Cafe Window

Have you ever locked eyes with
--through a window,
into a car,
where in the front seat sits--
a dog?

It looks at you
like being alone
is the saddest thing in the world.



Thanks for reading.

--Mica

Poetry Month - Local Verse

Complementary to our Poem-A-Day emails, we'll be posting poetry from local poets on our blog each day for the remainder of April.  Later this week we'll be focusing on poems from your very own Grass Roots staff members, but today we have a poet from Nancy Carol Moody's new collection, "Photograph With Girls."  Don't miss Nancy's poetry reading (along with Quinton Hallett) on Monday, April 26th at 7pm.

A note preceding today's poem...
Last week my landlord knocked on my door and offered to mow my grass for me.  I looked beyond him at the yard, where the emerald-green, knee-high fronds were waving and bowing in the morning sunlight.
"Oh..." I said, "no, no, sorry, I've been out of town... --and the weather has been so wet lately..."
"I really don't mind," he offered again, "I'm happy to mow it for you."
"I'll take care of it," I said.

It's true I'd been out of town -- but I was also enjoying the ragged clumps in some primal way -- our little house was beginning to resemble a jungle refuge.  I spent the following afternoon weeding, mulching, and pushing the mower back and forth.  And on some deep, compulsively tidy, domineering level, I loved it.  The grass was so long and thick I had to mow it on the highest mower setting--the mowed tracks behind me stood up shorn and uneven like a punk haircut.  Here and there I swerved around dandelions and left daisies standing. I smelled the cut grass and felt immensely satisfied.

~April


FIRST MOWING
Nancy Carol Moody

The back-fence neighbor
is mowing his lawn:
seasonal slough, his
boots bogged to the ankles.
Suddenly, inexplicably,
I desire this, too.
I step up to my yard
and move into the grass.

                      Remind me
what it is I thought
I despised: the lawn's
luminous fronds, dauntless stalks
succulent from immeasurable rain.
The holy mud they thrive in.
Chlorophyll so indecent
it takes my breath.
                      How it stains,
             oh the green glorious stain.

It feels like spring!

While sitting in my home office/craft room/"Pam Cave" this week, I noticed something peculiar about the birds in the yard: they were certifiably crazy.  They dipped and dodged and flew and soared and hollered at each other.  It was perhaps not the most poetic dance, but it was clear that spring was here, and the birds were pretty darn frisky about it.  It made me a little giddy, too, because it means it's time to get out in the yard and show it some love.  Last weekend I sat behind the counter at Grass Roots and stared longingly out the window, wanting to be home with my Honey to help him work in the yard.  Yes, it's true:  I would gladly perform hard yard labor in the sun than sit in relative comfort at the bookstore.  (This is seasonal, you understand.)  Fortunately I will be able to make up for it at least slightly next weekend when I get a few days off.  (Start praying to the weather gods now!)

There's a lot of work to be done, but above all I want to have a delicious and flourishing garden.  We have a good-sized garden at home that produces a prodigious amount of strawberries, delicious sweet corn (although not as good as that from Illinois), and a surprising number of tomatoes.  All in all, it's a good thing that I like to cook.  Like any gardener, though, I want MORE. 

Gardening is pretty new to me, although I have done a little bit of container gardening in the past.  I found the book The Bountiful Container by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey to be particularly useful and informative.  Following an introduction that brings you the story of the authors' own container gardens, the book is well-organized and full of useful information.  They start you out from the very beginning of planning your first edible container garden, to maintaining and harvesting your crop.  It is a fantastic bible for any gardener who has to rely on containers (or who wants to expand their ground space with a few containers, like me).

I am fortunate enough to have some garden beds at home, but I have just one year of real gardening experience under my apron.  I'd really like to take it to the next level, and I think I'll be taking Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades home with me.  The book is written by Steve Solomon, founder of the Territorial Seed Company, and focuses on the particular conditions and issues that organic gardeners in the Pacific Northwest face.  It is laden with information about prepping your soil, controlling pests, and planting seeds.  Anyone can take a plant and stick it in the ground, but this book helps gardeners to nurture their plants and get the most they can from them.

Turning to look at the whole yard, my home library would be incomplete without the Western Garden Book from Sunset.  This book, the biggest of them all, features information on more than 8,000 plants.  It is practically encyclopedic.  The newest edition features color illustrations and detailed maps of gardening zones in the West.  For years I have consulted it whenever some new problem faced me in my gardening endeavors, even with the containers.  I will not be sitting down to read this book cover to cover, but when I needed to know how to prune my roses, this is where I looked.  When I wanted to know what plants would possibly avoid the destruction of deer (HA!), this is where I looked.  In a word, it's indispensable.

At summer's end, I will be faced with a booming bounty of my own fresh produce.  Whatever will I do with it?  That's when the real fun will start, because it will mean I get to cook and to eat.  Fortunately, those are two of my favorite things.  It's a good thing we have such a big freezer...

I will leave you here to fantasize about your own gardens.  In the meantime, know that I will be working hard in mine, and probably making plenty of entertaining mistakes along the way.  That's where I'll be if you don't see me here.  As ever, I'll see you in the bookstore.

Pamela.

Poetry Reading Tonight - Valley Library

Jennifer Richter reads tonight in OSU's Valley Library at 7:30pm. Here's the title poem from Richter's prize-winning recent collection.


Threshold:

where mothers prop themselves, welcoming, waving, mostly waiting.  You
are a frame your child passes through, the safest place to stand when then
shaking starts.  You brace yourself.  He draws you like this, arms straight
out, too stick-thin but the hands are perfect, splayed like suns, long
fingers, the hands he draws for your are huge. Thresh, hold: separate the
seeds, gather them back. In his pictures you all come close to holding
hands, though the fingers of your family never touch; you're in the middle
of all this reaching.


Jennifer Richter’s book Threshold was chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey as the winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition.  Richter’s work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Crab Orchard Review, CALYX, Cloudbank, and in the anthology A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-five Years of Women’s Poetry.  She is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford University.

Judging a book

Don't judge a book by its cover.

All righty then.  Working in a bookstore and seeing new books everyday, it's impossible not to judge books in some way by their cover.  Seeing a well-designed cover on a new edition of a classic novel has led me to be the proud owner of two copies of the same book in a few cases, but usually I've already read the book at least once and I know what I'm getting myself into.  I try not to randomly buy books I'm unfamiliar with based on their covers, though.

When we flip the books over, however, my willingness to judge increases.  I do enjoy admiring and mocking author photos.  Dr. Phil and the authors of computer manuals just throw it all out there on the front covers:  "BAM!  This is who I am!  Look at my confident/pleading expression!  We can help each other!"

I really think authors should give careful consideration to the image they are projecting of themselves on the back cover of their books.  In general, I frown upon Glamor Shots-like images of overly made-up women in clothes that don't belong to them trying to pose in the style of senior photos.  I also think authors should think about the content of the book they are posing for.  My inspiration today came from a conversation I had with a regular customer and a coworker.  As we discussed poetry and poets; Shel Silverstein's name came up.  He writes clever fantastic poetry and illustrates them dynamically.  The photos of himself he uses on his books, however?  They kind of creep me out.  I'm just saying.  It is definitely an instance where I have to separate the image given to me of the author from what I'm reading.

The same discussion lead me to pick up a copy of Good Poems, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor.  We were looking for a particular poem that had come up("Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver, if you're keeping score.  I was easily distracted by the sound of geese flying overhead outside.), and my hand alighted on the copy of Good Poems sitting on top of the case.  And then the book flipped open, and staring menacingly at me from the inside of the back cover was Mr. Keillor.  EEEEK!  I know he's an odd-looking fellow, but Mr. Keillor looks more like a serial killer in this photo than the affable, Midwestern host of a weekly radio show where humor features significantly.  Please, Garrison, keep your gift for dramatic rendering to your reading, and not your portraits.

I can not discuss my obsession with author photos (yes, I'm afraid this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I'll spare you...) without mentioning Robert B. Parker.  Parker authored over 70 books throughout his life, mostly crime novels.  (Unfortunately he died of a heart attack while writing at his desk this past January.  What a way for a writer to go...)  It's been interesting to see how his image has changed on the backs of his novels throughout my bookselling career.  As a writer of crime fiction, I first noticed his photos depicting him in a leather bomber jacket, wearing sunglasses and a hat, glowering as one of his large dogs poised beside him.  Yeah, don't want to meet him in a dark alley.  Later he seemed to go for more of a "warm and fuzzy" look, as he posed, head perched tenderly upon his hand as he lounged in a wing-back chair, a charming and boyish smile on his face.  "Sit here with Uncle Bobby, kids, and I'll tell you a story!" 

Finally he seemed to reach a happy medium, as he leaned jauntily against a picket fence, an expression on his face that's at least non-threatening.  And his dog doesn't look like he wants to take a bite out of your hand.  It's as if he's inviting us to his next backyard barbeque.

Someday the question will be, how do I want to present myself on the back of a book to my adoring readers?  Whatever I decide on, I hope it will be welcoming enough that people will want to read what I have to say.  I also hope it will be true enough that the people who know me won't mock me too mercilessly.  Regardless, I'm sure I'll fall under the scrutiny of some harsh and judging eye.  That is just the nature of the book business I guess.

I'll be at the desk at Grass Roots pondering that in the meantime.  See you in the bookstore--
Pamela.

Fleshly Poetry Section

The poetry section has been fleshed out and is awaiting your eager eyes!  Challenge yourself this National Poetry Month and introduce yourself to a new poet.  We've been hard at work scrutinizing our poetry shelves and have gathered -- as collies gather peripherally roaming sheep -- the best of the best, the famous and the obscure, the celebrated and the overlooked.

Come delve!  Come dive!  Immerse yourself!  Dangle poetry books on strings from your ceiling! Write love letters to your favorite poet, dead or alive!  Send poems in the mail!  Tattoo a poem on your buttock!  Place a prank call and read a poem to the person who answers! Rent an airplane and write a poem in cursive across the sky!

A sampling of our recent acquisitions (and a few re-acquisitions)...

Hardcovers: 
The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems by Robert Hass, $34.99 
The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan (United States Poet Laureate), $24.00 
A Poet to His Beloved: The Early Love Poems of W. B. Yeats, $9.95
The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems by Edward Hirsch, $27.00 
Frost: Poems by Robert Frost $12.50 
Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud, ed. Robert Pinsky (CD included) $29.95

Softcovers: 
The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova (dual Russian and English translations), $15.00
Erotic Poems by e.e. cummings, $12.95
Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams, $12.95
Collected Poems by Dylan Thomas, $14.95
The Crooked Inheritance by Marge Piercy, $17.00
Leaves of Grass (the original 1855 edition) by Walt Whitman, $3.00

Local Recent Releases:
Photograph With Girls by Nancy Carol Moody
Refuge from Flux by Quinton Hallett
Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden by Charles Goodrich

Come on in! Go wild!  The poetry is here for you!

Charles Goodrich event Friday, April 9

Corvallis poet Charles Goodrich will be reading from his newest book, Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden, on Friday, April 9 at 7:00 p.m. at the Troubadour Music Center.  The book is a collection of 52 prose-style poems, one for each week in the garden through the year.  Books will be available for purchase at the event.  Don't miss this opportunity to meet a local poet!


The Troubadour is located at 521 SW Second Street in Corvallis.  Please call us at Grass Roots if you have any questions.  We hope to see you there!

Memoirs...Nothing more than memoirs...

Hello.  My name is Pamela, and I am a failed writer.

Shameful, isn't it?  I realize I'm exceedingly fortunate that Grass Roots allows me to write on their blog.  I always wanted to be a writer, though.  That hasn't gone so well, but love of words and writing and books and stories has led me to a career in bookstores.  Approximately 12 years of my life have been spent behind the counter and on the floor at bookstores.  Yes, the books are a powerful temptation when you are surrounded by them everyday.  Sometimes you have to look away from their sheer brilliance, and then you discover why you're really there: It's all about the customers!  Seriously, I have loved the people I've met while working in bookstores.  I love talking about books I've read, some of which I enjoyed and some of which I've abhorred.  (Isn't it brilliant that we all like different things?  I still refuse to read The DaVinci Code, as a matter of fact.)  I love helping customers on a treasure hunt to find just the right book for them or for their loved one.  I love the impossible searches, when customers have just a little bit of information about a book, and that may be incorrect.  (CHALLENGE!)  I especially love when the impossible search becomes the miracle find, and you send away your customer overjoyed and ecstatic, a book in their hands.  I also love watching customers as they browse through the store, as they meet people they know or make knew friends, as they discuss the books I've put in their hands.  I have worked in stores long enough to watch the kids grow up.  It's been an interesting life so far.

When I think about what kind of book I should be writing, or what kind I'll write "someday," a memoir seems like an obvious choice.  In a guest blog entry at Powells.com, Wendy Peterson, author of the memoir I Want to Be Left Behind, at one time called the genre "first person narcissist" when she worked at the New Yorker magazine early in her career.  She eventually went for the style herself, so I don't feel so bad about leaning in that direction.  I have certainly read a few fantastic memoirs that are so entertaining and well-told stories, I would jump at the chance to join the ranks of those narcissists.

One of my favorite authors is Augusten Burroughs.  The movie Running With Scissors, based on his first memoir, certainly brought him into the limelight, but I loved him before that.  His life has been colorful, and his childhood and early adulthood were the definition of dysfunctional.  He could give you a sob story, but instead he writes of his difficulties and the series of unfortunate events in his life with humor.  He is hilarious.  My favorite book by him is actually his second memoir, Dry.  In it he chronicles his alcoholism, drug abuse, and rehab.  A reader could sob or be disgusted by the life he led, but I couldn't help but laugh out loud.  It is readable and hilarious.  If you're a fan of David Sedaris, I would definitely turn you toward Burroughs.  I hope someday to recount my own dysfunctional family with the same humor and style.

Still full of unusual "characters" but written with a different style, If You Lived Here I'd Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska by Heather Lende had the power to draw me in emotionally to the little town of Haines, Alaska.  Lende is the obituary writer and the social columnist for her newspaper, and she writes of life and death in her first book.  I laughed!  I cried!  It was better than Cats!  Well, I never saw Cats, but I was emotionally drawn into this little town, the beauty of the area, and the strength of the people there.  I eagerly anticipate the publication of her second book next month, Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs: Family, Friendships, and Faith in Small-Town Alaska.

Finally, I couldn't speak of memoirs without somehow bringing food into the mix.  To me, food and life are so irrevocably entwined, and not just in a sustaining way.  I LOVE food, make no bones about it.  As a result, one of the best memoirs I've read is My Life in France by Julia Child.  Child famously learned to cook late in life, but she embraced it with such joy and passion that the world fell in love with her.  I am inspired by this book, and how one can change one's life and turn it into something extraordinary and fun.  The movie Julie & Julia was half-based on this book, and I admit I think it was the best part of the movie.  (That Julie was so whiney...)

Speaking of whiney, I could sit around all day and complain about not being able to write my "life's work," but instead maybe I'll just start today.

"It was a gray and mild day on the streets of Corvallis outside the bookstore, and the people walking by held infinite promise..."

See you in the bookstore,
Pamela.

Sneak Preview of Charles Goodrich

Grass Roots Books is hosting a poetry reading and book release party for Charles Goodrich, who will be presenting his newest title, Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden.  The event is Friday, April 9, at Troubadour Music.  You can catch a sneak peak of his reading here: Dispatches from the garden

National Poetry Month - Day 2

April 2, 2010 Today's poem is from our current national Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan.  All poems should be read aloud, and this one is no exception.  So take a sip of water and read aloud  to yourself,  your dog, your housemate, or your neighbor.  The flow of vowels and consonants in these lines makes reading them feel a little bit like mouth yoga - all of the parallel pronunciations feel lovely.  Ready, set, go!

Dew Kay Ryan As neatly as peas in their green canoe, as discreetly as beads strung in a row, sit drops of dew along a blade of grass. But unattached and subject to their weight, they slip if they accumulate. Down the green tongue out of the morning sun into the general damp, they're gone. Kay Ryan was born in California in 1945 and grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She received both a bachelor's and master's degree from UCLA. Ryan was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2006. In 2008, Ryan was appointed the Library of Congress's sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Since 1971, she has lived in Marin County in California. Ryan has published several collections of poetry, including The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005); Say Uncle (2000); Elephant Rocks (1996); Flamingo Watching (1994), which was a finalist for both the Lamont Poetry Selection and the Lenore Marshall Prize; Strangely Marked Metal (1985); and Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983). Ryan's awards include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Union League Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, and three Pushcart Prizes. Her work has been selected four times for The Best American Poetry and was included in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997.   About her work, J. D. McClatchy has said: "Her poems are compact, exhilarating, strange affairs, like Erik Satie miniatures or Joseph Cornell boxes. She is an anomaly in today's literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost." This biography has been adapted from www.poets.org. Today's poem brought to you from the front desk courtesy of April.

National Poetry Month - Day 1

National Poetry Month has begun!

In honor of National Poetry Month, we will, as in past years, offer a poem each day as a gift throughout the month of April. If you'd like to be added to our email list so you receive them directly each day, let us know.  Otherwise, check here.

A note about National Poetry Month:

National Poetry Month was initiated by the American Academy of Poets and was first celebrated in 1996. When the American Academy of Poets conceived National Poetry Month, they defined seven goals in association with the holiday. I'm printing them here in their entirety because they are so relevant (I particularly love the second and third).

The Goals of National Poetry Month are to:
-Highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets
-Introduce more Americans to the pleasures of reading poetry
-Bring poets and poetry to the public in immediate and innovative ways
-Make poetry a more important part of the school curriculum
-Increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media
-Encourage increased publication, distribution, and sales of poetry books
-Increase public and private philanthropic support for poets and poetry

Without further ado --- today's poem:

I'm running this poem for the first day of April because it is a poem about releasing one's fears, lying back, and surrendering ourselves to something larger. This is how spring can feel to me, especially in the cold Northeast: the first puffs of spring come breezing over the snowbanks and suddenly shoulders are relaxing, heads are tilting up, and people start breathing again. Strawberries will come! Asparagus! Wild greens of their own accord! So take this poem as an entrance to the spring and another year. Lie back, and let the world hold you.

First Lesson
Philip Booth 

Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man's float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Philip Booth, 1925-2007, was born and died in Hanover, New Hampshire. Booth spent much of his childhood in Castine, Maine, in a house that had been in his mother's family for generations. The landscape of New England, particularly the coast of Maine, often occupies a place of primary importance in Booth's poems.  Booth studied with Robert Frost as a freshman at Dartmouth College and obtained his M.A. in English from Columbia University. He later taught at Dartmouth, Wellesley College, and Syracuse University, where he was one of the founders of the graduate program in creative writing. Over the course of his career, Philip Booth published ten collections of poetry, from Letter From a Distant Land in 1957 to Lifelines: Selected Poems, 1950-1999 in 1999. Booth's honors include Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and the Theodore Roethke Prize. In 1983 he was elected a Fellow of The Academy of American Poets.

This biography adapted from www.poets.org and www.poetryfoundation.org.

~April