As you probably know by now, April is National Poetry Month, and as it draws to a close, I thought it might be nice to reflect on some of the fun happenings and share a few poems.  Much like with Earth Day, I wish we could have every month set aside to appreciate poetry in its many manifestations.  I find poetry to be such a quiet and powerful mode of reflection, solace, and joy. 

As part of the celebration this month, I signed up to receive Knopf’s Poem-A-Day, and thoroughly enjoyed it.  What a great way to start each morning.  Here's one of my favorites:

Touch-Me-Nots by Jill Bialosky

She brought a little of the country into the city

in the pots of impatiens she had planted.

The petals white, pure, the opposite of color.

She had transferred the impatiens from the garden,

digging her hands into soil two parts fibrous loam,

one part leaf mold and peat moss and pushing

the roots into the earth. Despite the quality

of the soil—its rich decomposition of life—

still they would not last. The plants were hardy

and tender, with thick stems and dark green leaves,

the seedpods inside waiting to release, the air

awash in pollen. She looked into the flower

as into a pair of beckoning eyes offering

sustenance independent of a body, free floating

and regenerative and wholly belonging

to what was impossible ever to touch.

At the bookstore where I work, I set up an Open Mic Poetry Night, and despite the fact that it took place on the eve of an awful blizzard, some people still braved the weather to join us.  We had a great time.  I read a poem of Mark Doty's called "House of Beauty," which I recently heard him read when he was at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in March.  Here's a sample stanza:

In the dark recess beside the sink

--where heads lay back to be laved

under the perfected heads rowed along the walls--

the hopeful photographs of possibility darken,

now that the House of Beauty is burning.

At our Poetry Bookclub this month, we discussed Seamus Heaney’s Spirit Level, which I loved, but which required more of me as a reader than I am used to.  He packs so much into each phrase that a quick read just won’t suffice.  I was thrilled when, at the end of the night, we picked two titles for upcoming meetings: Body Clock by Eleni Sikelianos, and For Love of Common Words by Steve Scafidi.  Scafidi is one of my all-time favorite poets.  Here is a sampling:

The Egg Suckers

To the snakes and the rats and the weasels

   who skulk and tunnel and dig underneath

the moon and the earth to find the shiny

   white ovum of their dreams laying there

warmed under the hen who coughs a little

   moving away in the darkness of the gold

hay and the dust of my chicken coop

   I say hello now from about fifty feet away

in my writing room at the beginning of Spring

   for you are the egg suckers, the midnight

takers-away, the despised and slinky

   snoopers, the geniuses of the world who

will be here when we are no more--

   you who move with such deliberation,

what you want eventually you get, hauling

   the precious cargo gently between your jaws

moving back down through the hole you dug

   cradling the egg, tonguing and sucking on

the white egg I was to gather and I was

   to eat and the poor hen with her one

eye wide open watches you come and go

   as she watches me reach my hand beneath her

in the morning and hold this small compact

   beautiful form up to the sun to admire

the subtle brown of the egg and the perfect

   religious fit of it in my palm and I roll it

across my kitchen table in the morning

   before I crack it open and pour the egg

into my skillet and fry it openly thanking

   the holiness of the hen, this exotic bird

roosting here whose children I eat everyday

   over-easy with black pepper and a spoon.

And don’t forget, tomorrow is Poem-In-Your-Pocket Day (sponsored by The Academy of American Poets), so put a poem in your pocket, share it with a friend or stranger, and spread some poetry love!  Let’s squeeze the last drops of poetry appreciation from these last couple days!

Poetically yours,

Stephanie Walker

Associate Editor

Two weeks ago I came home after a full day of literary stimulation at the Northern Colorado Writers Conference. I had met some great writers, heard Denver's poet laureate Chris Ransick speak on the creative drive, and also had the chance to lead a session titled "The Ins and Outs of Literary Magazines."

And that evening I went into labor with our second child and she was born the next morning. Given her poetry prompted entrance and with April being National Poetry Month, I have a feeling she will be a lover of words. Just a hunch. 

Meet RUMINATE's newest fan: Our beautiful IlaJane Van Dyke!

(Photograph by the talented Katie Jenkins)

Cheers!

Brianna Van Dyke

Last week my parents' house went up in flames the day before my sister's sixteenth birthday.  Although the structure of the house stood strong, the inside was mutilated.  Light switch plates melted down walls, the frame on my bridal portrait had melted onto the photo while the photo itself bubbled from the intensity of the heat, and my mom's kitchen was obliterated beyond recognition.  My family's furniture was either scorched or reeked of the foul smoke, the baby hats my mom had knit were ruined by grimy soot, and my sister's jewelry was wrecked.  My parents and sister were left with nothing but the items in their cars and the clothes on their backs. 

The following day was filled with grievous scenarios.  We walked around in charred rooms filled with the nostalgia of family gatherings and celebrations. We pored over piles of scalded household nic nacs and searched for photos, childhood paintings, and our smocked dresses. We even buried our eleven year old beloved family dog--a miniature daschund runt comically named Zachaeus--whom we lost in the fire. 

In my life, it seems that God sanctions two things in the midst of calamity--always letting things get dreadfully worse and constantly placing his pointer finger on my chin and turning my face towards Him.  I could go on and on about how things got worse and how I had migraines, my sister had nightmares, tempers in the family flared, insurace representatives weren't exactly amiable, and my parents being emotionally and physically exhausted.  But God used written words--one of my favorite things in the world--to turn my head. 

As I filled my friends in on what was going on, I received from one of them a quote from the prophet Isaiah "...to comfort all who mourn, beauty for ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning...then they will rebuild."  And on this same day, my dad began chronicling the journey through the daunting task of moving forward.  He wrote, "We lost everything. We lost nothing."  People texted and e-mailed words of love, and these simple expressions became like water for our thirsting spirits.  

Sunday morning, Easter Sunday, we attended church as a family.  The liturgy was filled with the promises of the resurrection, and I was once again reminded that the old words of the Scriptures and hymns are like home to me. Standing there with my husband and family members, I felt a part of something magnificent as we recited together the words that have been spoken and sung for centuries. 

This week, I am just thankful for words, and I am thankful for the Ruminate community commited to creating and publishing more of them.

Grace,

Whitney Hale

Hello my name is Daryle Dickens and I’ll be your blog writer today. I feel honored to be a part of Ruminate’s blog writing team. So much so that I have a bit of writer’s blog with this first post I am attempting to write. This is why I thought I would start with a simple introduction and some background.

I live in Fort Collins Colorado the hometown of Ruminate Magazine. I met Brianna, the founder of Ruminate, a few years back during my tenure as Executive Director of Everyday Joe’s Coffee House. Everyday Joe’s is a non-profit ministry coffee house, so I know a bit about taking steps of faith in unusual ministry endeavors. Now I make my living as a writer, specifically in the realm of blogs and social media.

I have a real passion for the arts and those who create. This is why writing about artists is my favorite thing to do. I prefer to focus on the artist rather than the art; the soul behind the creation. That is my goal for my little corner of the Ruminate Blog: I want to introduce you to the people who have by-lines in Ruminate. By gaining a perspective on them and their life we gain a perspective on their writing and their art.

I look forward to meeting people and sharing our conversations with you.

Excelsior!

Daryle Dickens

My high school English teacher was ferociously unforgiving when it came to the rules of grammar and punctuation. One mistake resulted in an F, one rebellious comma, complete anguish. So, needless to say, I became quite familiar with the rules. I conformed my thoughts to “two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction must have a comma.” I molded my emotions around “use a semicolon between two independent clauses joined by a conjunctive adverb.” I became quite obsessed with these little rules: quoting them, obeying them, and even passing them on to new generations of English students. Lately, however, I’ve experienced a new freedom, a freedom I so wished had been discovered before turning in so many flat and lifeless papers. 

As a prose editor for Ruminate I have made many mistakes, but the biggest was while editing our first issue. One author, in particular, and if you are reading this I offer my most heartfelt apology because you probably know who you are, received my many, many comma corrections with grace and professionalism. But, even as I was supporting my argument with an almost exegetical confidence, and maybe a little cross-referencing, I knew in my heart that something was wrong, that something was missing.

Over time, like a musician moving from fundamentals to music, I began to feel the phrase, the sentence, and the freedom in between. I was reading for cadence, tone, hearing more than the “black notes” on the page. The punctuation created atmosphere and rhythm. I began inhaling and exhaling, experiencing physically what I was only ever able to experience mentally. And then, while editing a beautiful piece for our upcoming Issue 12, I was struck by a character’s voice, the immediacy with which I found myself inside his head, familiar with his movements and the space he occupied. I knew that the author had accomplished something wonderful, and that punctuation was an important part of this accomplishment.

So, though I don’t fully blame my English teacher for the many restrictive years of applying “the rules,” I am very glad to have found a more soulful purpose for those burdensome jots and tittles. And now, can even say thank you, for if I’d never understood the rules, I would have never known freedom.

Grace and Peace,

Amy Lowe

*That “beautiful piece” can be found in our upcoming summer issue and is by author and playwright Matthew Ira Swaye. Enjoy!

Each spring I experience familiar rumblings of renewal.  I note with gratitude longer hours of daylight, leisurely walks under Colorado sunny sky that help to shrug off the remnant of winter, copious amounts of energy for new projects, and a deep sense that all shall be well in the world with the advent of warmer temperatures.

The budding season this year has delivered yet another experience that I was not anticipating: a visceral, insatiable desire to clean things out.   It is not a pragmatic need for “spring cleaning,” nor is the impulse a response to the material disorder that seems to accompany my life in graduate school.  Instead this inclination to de-clutter seems to be generated by my increasing vocational needs:  long stretches of time to work without interruption at the easel, and temporal margins that allow enough room to steep in the things that feed my studio practice and also allow for the germination of new ideas.

I don’t want to presume that all people who commit themselves to creative endeavors have the same needs.  But let’s face it: any of us who on a regular basis show up to a blank canvas, blank page, computer screen, or to a silent rehearsal room have chosen a way of life that can get stymied when too many things encroach upon our thoughts and schedules.  Fidelity to creative work requires well-honed discernment regarding what merits our attention.   Much to my chagrin, my attention has limits.  But I am increasingly convinced that embracing those limits, rather than ignoring them, leads to deep satisfaction in the process of creating excellent work.

At this moment in history there are oodles of people more erudite than I who have drawn comparisons between creative vocations and tending gardens.  The parallels are not lost, nor do I find the return to this analogy trite.  For as I prepare my garden for new crops by raking up leaves that were forgotten over winter, or rooting out the gargantuan morning glory that has volunteered this year and promises to once again dominate the entire flower bed, I remember that the work of clearing away unwanted debris is well worth the effort.  It’s a process of making room for new growth, an act of hospitality toward those things that will ultimately nourish and inspire.

For those of you who are joining me this spring in revising life to better provide for your vocational needs, I hope for us to have confident focus, and look forward to the fruit that will emerge! 

Walk in beauty—

Stefani M. Rossi