Jana Remy
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Jana Remy

  • Writing
    • Disability
    • Making History
    • Digital Humanities
      • dayofDH
    • Canoeing
    • Creative Nonfiction & Essays
    • Feminism
    • Bibliographies
      • Pacific Worlds Bibliography
    • Social Media
      • Mentions/Links
  • Scholarship
    • Awards/Fellowships
    • Conferences & Invited Talks
    • Collaboration
    • Workshops
    • Conference Planning
    • Technical Skills
  • Teaching
    • Blogposts About Teaching
Tag:

poetry

corona diarymary monday

Corona Diary: Mary Monday

SIP Day 38, wearing a navy blue cotton sundress, writing from my home office; 80 degrees outside today

Many years ago, when I was an avid blogger, I would share or link to poetry on Mondays. I can’t remember exactly how this began, but it came from my love of Mary Oliver’s poetry and so I called this weekly feature “Mary Monday.”

Since I began blogging two decades ago, I have all-but-lapsed the past few years, posting only once or twice per year, when I used to post twice per day (generally one text post, one photo post). It feels right to pick up this practice again now, if only in some small effort to document my daily tasks/thoughts/work/reveries. Also, in the past 10 years WordPress has changed significantly, and it seems a worthy project to teach myself how to use the new editor.

Previous Mary Monday posts

So true to the roots of Mary Monday, you might consider spending some time with poet Mary Oliver today, being interviewed about her craft, and specifically, about her mornings:

And below is a bit of a Mary Oliver poem that resonates specifically with me, as she seems to be imagining herself becoming a fish or a mermaid, or remembering some past primordial self where she was a creature of the water:

An excerpt from The Sea, by Mary Oliver

Stroke by
stroke my
body remembers that life and cries for
the lost parts of itself–
fins, gills
opening like flowers into
the flesh–my legs
want to lock and become
one muscle, I swear I know
just what the blue-gray scales
shingling
the rest of me would
feel like!

April 27, 2020
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booksmary mondaypoetry

close as two pages…

Because I do like me some book-ish poetry…

Untitled
by Elizabeth Bishop

Close close all night
the lovers keep.
They turn together
in their sleep,

close as two pages
in a book
that read each other
in the dark.

Each knows all
the other knows,
learned by heart
from head to toes.

 

books on my desk

A few of the books that are regularly stacked on my desk at home…

June 27, 2016
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deep thoughtsmary mondaypoetry

resolved #2, 2015

This photo has nothing whatsoever to do with poetry.  It's a snap of the kids sitting on the back porch in the sunshine over the holidays.

This photo has nothing whatsoever to do with poetry. It’s a snap of the kids sitting on the back porch in the sunshine over the holidays.   :)

For those of you who are longtime readers of my blog, you know that I have a certain fascination with poetry.  At times I’ve penned a bit of poetry for this space and have often linked to, or included poetry in my posts.

Why poetry?  I’m not sure, but I think it has something to do with the chewiness and brevity of a poem.  It does so much work in so little space.  This appeals to the minimalist in me.

So as a way to include my poetry in my year, I resolved to listen to The Writer’s Almanac podcast each morning as I sit down to breakfast.  I must say that it’s great to start the day with beautiful words.

January 28, 2015
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mary monday

Mary Monday: an interview about prayer and other morning rituals

Getting Monday off to a great start with “A Thousand Mornings” by Mary Oliver:

How are you starting your week?

October 13, 2014
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making a fist
bodyfamilysongs/poetry

making a fist

Perhaps one hard lesson of the last few years of my life has been to learn to express uncomfortable feelings–the coping mechanism of so many years of suppressing sadness is hard to undo.  But what I’ve realized is that I can tell when there’s something I need to express…because my left hand will be balled into a tight fist. Generally I don’t even know that I’m doing it, but I will look down and see the knuckles white and fingers tight and know that something is awry.

(It’s been interesting to peruse my photos from the last few years and to see how many of them include that tight fist in the frame.)

Today, I am finding my hand in a fist because of that hug that I gave my college-bound son at the side of my car just before he walked away with two suitcases in hand.*   That moment recalled many similar hugs that I’ve given in the past.  Hugs meant to hold on to someone who was leaving.  To keep them close and safe, despite distance.  To offer a memory for me to grasp on days when my hands are empty.

Making a Fist
by Naomi Shihab Nye

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

“How do you know if you are going to die?”
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
“When you can no longer make a fist.”

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

*He’s not gone to college quite yet, but will be with his Dad for a few days until he leaves

August 17, 2012
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About Me

About Me

Hi there friend, and welcome to my blog. I started writing on the internet two decades ago. Since then I've started and finished a PhD program, left the Mormon church and became a Quaker, got divorced, remarried, found full-time work in academia, took up rock climbing and outrigger canoeing, and traveled across the globe (China! Belgium! Italy! Chicago! Montana! Portland! Gettysburg! and oh-so-many points in-between). This blog is eclectic and random--it has poetry and cooking and books. And cats. And flowers. And the ocean (my ocean). But in that sense it's a good reflection of me and my wide-ranging, far-reaching, magpie curiosity.

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