Gathering Up Brokenness

I’ve been stymied for three+ weeks about how to do what I wanted to do: weave a great horned owl and Leonard Cohen into a single cohesive blog posting.  Then it dawned on me; I’ll just plunk those two disparate elements down on the page the same way life presented them to me.  First one, then the other. Bam. Bam. Hmmm…surprising juxtapositioning may amuse.

First, I give this post lift off with Bubo virginianus, the owl who came to tea towards sunset on Site #97 at Everglades National Park’s Long Pine Key campground on the Vernal Equinox Eve. (See http://www.owlpages.com/owls.php?genus=Bubo&species=virginianus.)

There we were, my beloved Roger and I, in the March evening light, pale half-moon overhead the eve of the Leonard Cohen concert in nearby Maimi, listening to the master of song’s most famous song, Hallelujah on my MP3 player broadcast over minipod speaker. I was trying to convey to Roger that it’s the greatest anthem of love of the modern era. Everybody’s recorded it. A whole book has been written about this one song by The New York Times contributor Alan Light.  I’d just read it to psych myself for the concert. Now this is Leonard Cohen at his best, I pronounced as Roger dutifully tuned in, sipping his Honeybush tea, nibbling an I’d-Marry-You-All-Over-Again cookie.

Suddenly a sharp cry came from just behind our site at pine forest edge.

What’s that? Catbird? Nah, can’t be, I said.

Roger reached across the upended bin “table,” put his left hand on my arm and with his right hand pointed up toward the trees.

Ohmigod, a great horned owl, I whispered. Lo and behold, there was the great big bird in full view lording it over us from only thirty feet back and thirty feet up, staring down on us. With one tap of a fingertip, I shut down my gizmo  Mid-Hallelujah.  Halle— And in the ensuing quiet, I whispered, Ohmigod, it’s a hallelujah owl! The great horned was a great gift from the Universe delivered to us and us alone at Site #97.

Since my camera was right there, I didn’t even have to launch myself out of my camp chair; I just leaned to the right, held my hands steady and shot.  And shot. And shot. In low Everglades evening’s subtropical light, I captured the hallelujah owl. Then I put my camera down to just stare back.

He cried twice more. It wasn’t the usual basso profundo Who? hoot, but a fierce one-note cry, one piercing deep screech. A mating call? His Bubo hallelujah?

Roger held my hand and we watched the magisterial creature in silence until he swooped silently away. We figured a good five minutes we’d sat in the great one’s great presence on Vernal Equinox Eve.

The next night? The great man himself at the William P. Knight Center. Forty-five years I’d been following Leonard Cohen and for the first time, on the Equinox no less, I got to see him in person. Ever since Suzanne, in the 1960s, near the beginning of his music career. This year I’m sixty, and he’s seventy-nine, two years’ shy of Roger.

And you know what? Leonard’s still doing it like a pro.  I’m still swooning.

For three-and-a-half hours, maybe thirty songs – including Hallelujah with the entire house singing the chorus – the man did it to me sooooooooooooo good. And Roger too was mesmerized to be with me in Cohen’s great presence at my all-time, best-ever musical experience, yes, the very best of my lifetime.

Goodness, how do you synthesize that great owl, that great man? How bind together into an unbroken skein of words? A poem answered:

Following Leonard Cohen’s Lead

Hallelujah owl – the great horned who-er

of Everglades pines, magisterial, mythical

by Equinox Eve half-moon, come

to gather up our brokenness on silent wings.

Hallelujah stilt – black-necked ilk

skating spring Equinox shallows,

score of more on skinny legs come

to gather up our brokenness, banish the hunger.

Hallelujah storks, hallelujah spoonbills—

woodies and pinkos of Parotis Pond’s

rookeries, dozens abuzz as if come

to gather up our brokenness with procreation.

Hallelujah, birds— we fly, we feed, we breed

the wild, our imagination made entire.

                                    for Roger

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P.S. Having celebrated Roger’s 81^st birthday last week with an outing to Lovers Key beach one last time this winter, we now prepare to depart for home on Sunday. As I pack up for the season, I’ll leave behind for you, dear reader,  these humble gifts of poetry.

• This one is definitely for the birds…and bird lovers. It’s a new anthology, Poised In Flight, from Kind of a Hurricane Press, and holds within its pages three of my poems. Read online at https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-DuKJaq66ClSkR4dWxzNFBSN0E/edit - or order a copy in paperback, available at  http://www.amazon.com/Poised-Flight-A-J-Huffman/dp/1482734222/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364912710&sr=8-1&keywords=Poised+in+Flight  Thank you, Hurricane editor Amy Huffman!

• Check out Steel Toe Review’s annual anthology at http://steeltoereview.com/2013/02/06/three-poems-by-karla-linn-merrifield-2/ Great to be in such great company, including one of my poet-heros, Jim Daniels.

• Editors Michele Lesko and Sherry O’Keefe have outdone themselves with the new issue of Ithaca Lit. Fine, fine work there too!http://ithacalit.com/karla-linn- merrifield1.htm

• I was exceedingly delighted to be published (nice and cozily with editor Walter Ruhlmann) in the new erotica issue of mgv2datura:   http://issuu.com/mgversion2/docs/mgv2_72?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage It’s also available in paperback as you’ll see on the site. Hot stuff!

• I’ve made a new poet –friend in ghazal master Gene Doty, who edits The Ghazal Page, a journal devoted to the ancient Persian poetic form. In March, to my delight, he published three of my ghazals in March. To read two of them, go to http://www.ghazalpage.net/2013/march-03.html

• And, last but not least, I’m most proud of the new issue of The Centrifugal Eye (http://www.centrifugaleye.com – and available as a collector’s edition from Lulu at http://www.lulu.com/shop/eve-anthony-hanninen-editor/the-centrifugal-eye-winterspring-2013/paperback/product-20943054.html) Look for a poem, two photographs and my book review column as well as the illuminating poetry by Colleen Powderly, Tim Diggles, Janice D. Soderling and, oh my, many other fine poets and artists. Editor Eve Hanninen is the empress of editors.

And, please, if you haven’t done so already, order a copy of my new Lithic Scatter and Other Poems: http://www.amazon.com/Lithic-Scatter-Other-Poems-Merrifield/dp/0988227991/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364661594&sr=8-1&keywords=karla+linn+merrifield  Or, drop me an email to get a signed copy (with no shipping/handling fees).

And, take note: Coming in May:  My new book of poetry and photography, Attaining Canopy: Amazon Poems from FootHills Publishing.

Also, if you’re in the Western New York area this spring, please join me for my official launch reading for both Lithic Scatter and Attaining Canopy. That’s Saturday, May 18 at 2 p.m. at Lift Bridge Book Store, 45 Main Street, Brockport, NY. It’s free and open to the public; refreshments will be served and I’ll be signing books.

Happy spring to all!  And thank you for reading.

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop...An Author Interview

“THE NEXT BIG THING” asks writers to self-interview about their books with 7-8 designated questions, post somewhere in the blog-o-sphere and then “tag” five writers for the next week to do the same. Eve Hanninen, editor of The Centrifugal Eye, and Mary Jo Balistreri both tagged me, and in turn I’m tagging writers Laury A. Egan, Sudasi J. Clements, John Roche, Colleen Powderly and Catherine Underhill Fitzpatrick. Now all they have to do  is complete the interview questions below and get their self-interviews out into Cyberspace on their blogs, websites or in social media.

Here are my answers to NBTBH interview questions:

What is the working title of the book?

My new book went through several working titles over the years, including Magpie Muse and Dancing with Green Bees. The final title of the newly published book is: Lithic Scatter and Other Poems.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Lithic Scatter was seventeen years and many thousands of miles in the making.  I began writing it on my first road trip west in 1996 with my then fiancé.  I’d flown over the United States to San Francisco and Los Angeles but had never driven the breadth of our magnificent country.  So, when I first set foot in the Badlands west of the Mississippi, I began to write. “Feet of Clay” officially became my first Western poem. And the clay of that poem firmly grounded me in the geology of the American West. I just kept on writing through many more such road trips, listening to the land.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I’m not sure how you take a collection of poetry and turn it into a movie, but perhaps such a film could recreate in celluloid the world of the Ancient Puebloans and their lives in the desert, homes among the cliffs.  The cover art, one of my photographs and titled “Self-Portrait, c. 1140 CE,” would be the main character and narrator. She’d have to be played by a grand dame of cinema.  I’d cast Judy Dench in the role!

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

At once sweeping, visceral, earthy, gritty, ethereal, and primordial, Karla Linn Merrifield’s Lithic Scatter and Other Poems presents the frontier seen — and felt — through the eyes of a visionary poet who explores the region’s vast terrains as anthropologist and archeologist, historian and ethnographer, shaman and seeker-after-self.  

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

As I mentioned above, Lithic Scatter took seventeen years to write, but the initial draft congealed in late 1999 after my husband’s and my second trip west, what we refer to as  “Wild West II,” which happened to be our honeymoon trip, and then followed by our 14-day dory adventure down the Colorado River, an expedition that changed my life because I almost lost my life at one point in the journey.  Many of the poems compiled in that first iteration have gone by the wayside – for now. I’ve kept all those “deleted” poems and will no doubt return to them in the future.   For a sequel?  Perhaps.  And with new ones I’ll no doubt write this summer when we make yet another road trip to the Southwest.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Landscapes. Petroglyphs and pictographs. Wildness of rivers and wildness of mountains and wildness of the creatures who dwell in them. Ponderosa pines and bristlecone pines. Rice grass and cacti. Scree, talus and lithic scatter. The ghosts of the Ancient Puebloans often referred to as Anasazi. Western writers such as Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey. Georgia O’Keeffe and her vision of the West.  Most of all: my husband who was with me every step of the way.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I can think of any number of things! For example, there’s definitely a feminist slant to many of the poems, so I can imagine many women embracing the book with nods of approval for the roles women play in the poems, from the title poem to “Amazons of the Anasazi Follow the Chimney Rock Tour Guide.” Art lovers can certainly appreciate the suite of five poems about Georgia O’Keeffe, “A Vocabulary of Circular Forms.” Nature lovers will have a great time meeting up with the  flora and fauna of the American West. And a long odyssey across country through a dozen states should satisfy fellow vagabonds as well as arm-chair travelers.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

The book was published in February by Mercury Heartlink in Albuqueque, New Mexico. That it’s a such a beautiful book to hold in your hands is due to publisher and designer (and fellow poet) Stewart S. Warren. His loving attention to detail reminds me of the artistic craft expressed by the Anasazi in their petroglyphs— timeless.

.

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Ready to order your copy of Lithic Scatter and Other Poems?!  To order a signed copy (with no postage!), email me at klmerrifield@yahoo.com and I'll tell you where to mail your check. Or order from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0988227991/ref=cm_cr_dpvoterdr?ie=UTF8&keywords=Karla%20Linn%20Merrifield&qid=1360946137&sr=8-1#R39EAPGXE1C8FU.2115.Helpful.Reviews.

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And here's another link to The Centrifugal Eye's Next Big Thing posting -- celebrating the journal's 5th Anniversary Anthology: http://nephologia.blogspot.com/.  Now there's another book you should have on your shelf...better yet, in your hands.

And meet my poet-friend Jo Balistreri at http://www.facebook.com/jo.balistreri?ref=ts&fref=ts.

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Happy trails to the Spring Equinox!

My New Book -- 1.7 Billion Years in the Making

 

A “a spirited celebration of the natural world …” – Mercury Heartlink Releases Karla Linn Merrifield’s Newest Poetry Collection

            Lithic Scatter and Other Poems is an intimate journey across the diverse landscape of the American West

          “I go on an archeological expedition of sorts. I pick up a symbolic trowel and dig,” is how poet Karla Linn Merrifield of Kent, NY, succinctly conveys the poetic process as she explores the West – its geology, human history, rivers and mountains, deserts and oases, politics and environmental challenges – in her new, Lithic Scatter and Other Poems.

         Merrifield’s is a deeply spiritual and sensual collection in which nature and the human-as-animal are integrated into the web of life. Thus, in the opening poem,“Dancing with Green Bees,” readers learn: “Landscape bids you to absorb time. And in “Land Marking,” early settlers survive: despite coyotes… locoweed/  storms… drought along the river”.    

“There is magic here, and reverence for the sacred feminine, all woven together with exquisite, earthy details. Merrifield’s broad scope shines in lines like these, from “One Hard Lesson,” where we are drawn in as the speaker considers a collection of rocks gathered from many travels: these solid stories of the Earth,/remind me who I am on a Sunday morning,/ knowing the destiny of every rock is to become sand, says poet Sudasi J. Clement, poetry editor of Santa Fe Literary Review and  author of The Bones We Have in Common, the 2012 prize-winning chapbook from Slipstream Press.

Or, as the publisher says:  “At once sweeping, visceral, earthy, gritty, ethereal, and primordial, Karla Linn Merrifield’s Lithic Scatter and Other Poems unfolds a kaleidoscopic odyssey of the American West at its all-natural wildest.”

The “poet-guardian of the Earth”covers time and territory as her “poem-maps show the way”

           

         Those words of New Mexico poet Michael G. Smith hint at the scope of Lithic Scatter, which was inspired by Merrifield’s many lengthy treks through the West. The 59 poems traverse a dozen states covering some 1.7 billion years!  In Kansas, for example, we learn about Jewish immigrants who escaped European pogroms to become homesteaders, safe at last// in a sod house on one-hundred-sixty acres,/ in the blank ark of the sere open prairie. In Nevada, you’re mesmerized,/ needing more than both hands// to navigate this terrain of faultlines,/ how it shrinks humanity, how it favors lizards. In Arizona, readers arrive during the seasons of kiva spells/  and adobe smoke,/ in rimrocks of Arizona and alcoved dwellings of the Ancient Puebloans (Anasazi).

            Merrifield is also a well-informed tour guide to a dozen National Parks, Monuments, and Historical Sites.  Thus, in Yosemite National Park in California, she turns eyes to a rock-climber inching/  upward a half mile on El Capitan’s vertical face sees only granite,/  curses its polish, oblivious to the glacier whose ghost is sheen on stone. And, at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State, a frog along the trail speaks through the poet, instructing hikers to plant your feet/ on the earth and look up toward the canopy/ of ancient treetops.

            Lithic Scatter and Other Poems (114 pages), with a cover photograph by the author, is available for $16 in selected area bookstores and from online booksellers, as well as from the author via query to her at klmerrifield@yahoo.com or by phone at (585) 259-6934. Purchase directly from the author and she will sign it for you -- and mail it at no additional cost to you.

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About the Author:   
                                                     

          A seven-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn Merrifield has had more than 300 poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has nine books to her credit, the newest of which are Lithic Scatter and Other Poems (Mercury Heartlink) and The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica (Finishing Line Press). Forthcoming from Salmon Poetry is Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North, and from FootHills Publishing, Attaining Canopy: Amazon Poems. Her Godwit:  Poems of Canada (FootHills) received the 2009 Eiseman Award for Poetry and she recently received the Dr. Sherwin Howard Award for the best poetry published in Weber - The Contemporary West in 2012.  She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com). Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.

About the Publisher:

     Established in 1994 and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Mercury HeartLink is owned and operated by publisher Stewart S. Warren as an alternative to large commercial publishing houses and the unguided and less professional endeavors of self-publishing, Mercury HeartLink works closely with writers and other artists to offer solutions that are client-centered and to provide support in the larger realm of self-realization.