alisonmcghee

One new book and three new one-day classes!

Posted on September 4, 2018 by alisonmcghee

Panther Mountain, 30 September 2013 Once, when I was ten years old and the proud owner of a three-speed Schwinn with a basket and a speedometer, I rode to the top of the biggest hill nearby and surveyed my surroundings. Pine woods, fields, farmhouses and barns, and the lonely two-lane road in front of me. Breaking my land speed record was the goal, so I stood up and pedaled as hard as I could down the hill. 5, 10, 15, 20, all the way up to 35 mph, with the wind roaring in my ears and my long hair blowing back (no helmet; this was back in the day).

That personal land speed record, 35 mph pedaling as fast as I could, is what this summer felt like to me. Planes and trains and automobiles, bikes and kayaks and mostly, my own two feet, traipsing around the city and the country.

Now it’s fall. Time to take a breath. Time to survey the surroundings. Time for one new book and three new one-day classes!

DEAR SISTER

Dear Sister is my new graphic novel for all ages, especially 8 on up. It’s a collection of letters and drawings from a brother to his little sister, beginning on the day she’s born and continuing for the next ten years, until he goes to college. This book was inspired in part by notes my own kids used to write each other, notes that were alternately horrifying and hilarious, and also by my own fifth-grade diary, which is filled with entries about my baby brother. Funny, tender, and honest, Dear Sister is my love letter to the sibling relationship.

Dear Sister is illustrated –amazingly so–by the talented Joe Bluhm, who’s one of the artistic geniuses behind The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. I loved working with Joe on this book. I’ll be visiting upstate New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia, southern California and the Twin Cities for Dear Sister. Please check my blog for details of upcoming readings and events – if I’m in your neck of the woods for any of them, I’d love to meet you.

To pre-order a copy of Dear Sister:

From your local indie bookstore
From Amazon
From Barnes & Noble

NEW ONE-DAY CLASSES, NOVEMBER 2-4

Do you have an interest in creative writing but haven’t yet taken the plunge? Are you a writer already, interested in exploring a new form or just taking a class for the fun of it? I’d love to see you in one of these upcoming November classes. Please join us!

Friday, November 2: Creative Writing Kickstart!

Location: Uptown Minneapolis
Time: 12-4 pm
Cost: $100, payable via personal check or this Paypal link.

Have you always wanted to write but aren’t sure how to begin? Or, are you a writer in need of an energy boost and a fresh start? This four-hour intensive Kickstart workshop will recharge your writing energy and help you develop a regular writing practice. We’ll do several brief writings and talk about various aspects of craft and process –maybe language, maybe flow, maybe dialogue, maybe tense and point of view, maybe some other things– in terms of what makes great writing great.

The class is designed for writers of all abilities, experience levels and genres – so I forbid you to worry if you’ve never written before! Whether you’re a longtime writer in need of a boost or someone who’s always had an interest in writing but never known how to sit down and get started, the class is designed for you. Bonus: Weekly writing prompts will be emailed to you for one month following the end of class. Enrollment is limited to 15.

Saturday, November 3: The Art of Writing Picture Books

Location: Uptown Minneapolis
Time: 12-4 pm
Cost: $100, payable via personal check or this Paypal link

Do you love picture books? Have you ever wanted to write one? Are you curious how to go about it? Welcome to my one-day picture book writing workshop! In our intensive, fun class, we’ll deconstruct some classic picture books, talk about ideas for new ones, and go through all the nuts and bolts, such as how long can a picture book be? What’s the relationship between writer and artist? How do you write a picture book that children will love and adults won’t mind reading ten thousand times in a row? I promise it will be informative and fun. Enrollment is limited to 15.

Sunday, November 4: The Freedom of Form

Location: Uptown Minneapolis
Time: 12-4 pm
Cost: $100, payable via personal check or this Paypal link.

When you’re stuck in a piece of writing, feeling lifeless, what do you do? Grind through, hoping desperately that a window will open? Give up? Take a break? Declare yourself a failure and slink off to drown your sorrows? I’ve taken a shot at all these methods, and none of them work as well for me as re-framing the work itself. I give myself seemingly arbitrary rules to work within, e.g., Write this scene as a series of text messages, or, Write this novel as a series of one-hundred-word passages. The freedom of assigned form is real, people, and it’s why novels usually have chapters, and picture books are usually under 500 words. It’s why enduring forms of poetry like haiku and sonnets and sestinas are still alive and thriving. In this workshop, which is designed for writers in all genres, we will play with form as a way to open up your writing, your mind and your heart to the freedom and creativity inherent in all art. We’ll complete some in-class writings, discuss published works and in general have a great and exhilarating time. Enrollment is limited to 15.

Thanks for reading, and happy fall to all.

Alison McGhee, writer

alison_mcghee@hotmail.com
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Poem of the Week, by Thomas Reiter

Posted on August 26, 2018 by alisonmcghee

pigs-eye-2014 A few years ago my brother sent me a photo of my nephew, with the caption Getting his mind blown at Nickelodeon Universe. Nickelodeon Universe is a crowded and noisy place, but in the photo, my tiny nephew stands alone in a huge open space, his head craned up, staring at something I can’t see. The photo conveys profound stillness and concentration. Sometimes it pops up on my screensaver and I wonder again what my nephew was staring at, what was going through his mind.

That photo makes me think of my grandmother, who once, in the middle of a thunderstorm, saw a ball of fire –molten electricity–appear in her living room. It raced around the floor, she told me, it climbed the walls and the stairs. Half a century later, she still shuddered at the memory. That photo of my nephew reminds me of the time I was walking down a country road and saw in the distance a quivering blackness that quaked and chirped. It turned out to be a tree so covered with black birds that it looked like an otherworldly living creature. Sometimes the world turns inside out for a minute and we stop, like the poet below, and stare. We don’t know then that we will remember that moment forever.

To the Boy Who Burned a Snowman, by Thomas Reiter

I thought of you again this morning
after a spring snowfall; of how, one
after another, wooden matches
—your mother’s stove lighters?—
flared as you came up the road
long after dark so many years ago,
a boy I’d never seen before.

I watched from an upstairs window:
you set the head against your forefinger,
the other end against your thumb,
and with a dip of the shoulder
like a submarine pitcher, a fireman,
pinwheeled a burst off the macadam.

No design but play, yet somehow
one with distance landed beside
the snowman I fashioned that morning—
an impulse from the crystalline yard,
my children grown and gone.

The hound’s-tooth coat, its frayed hem
trailing on the snow, its worth
fallen far below Goodwill, caught fire
that climbed to the woolen muffler
mice had nested in. And last the Tinkertoy
arms outstretched to you. You didn’t

see me, nor did I tap a threatening
gesture on the pane. A full moon,
and so of all the proud men
created from that out-of-season snow
he was his own light. You took

a step back as if to run, but then
slowly approached. You stood facing him
as though something—a secret?—
passed between snowman and boy.

You never reappeared, who started him
on his way home. He’d had his time.
I watched him pass into the spring grass,
where his absence would abound.

For more information on Thomas Reiter, please read this interview.

Poem of the Week, by Jalal Al-din Muhammad Rumi

Posted on August 18, 2018 by alisonmcghee

Once, a long time ago, someone close to me handed me a memo and asked me to read it. It was a work memo that summarized some unfair working conditions. I didn’t know who had written it, but my first comment was “Wow. Whoever wrote this can’t spell worth a damn and doesn’t know how to use punctuation, either.” The person who had handed me the memo didn’t hear me say this, for which I was instantly grateful, because it turned out that they had written it. This was a person I loved with all my heart. The shame I felt in that moment is something that will be with me forever.

The older I get, the softer I want to be. The judgment I carried around when I was young was mostly internal, but it was harsh. And what good did it do anyone? What good did it do me? In the course of my life I have seen how people blossom when they are surrounded with love and acceptance. And I have watched them wither and turn silent and wary when faced with judgment and scorn. Please, from now on let me be only ground. Let me be crumbled, that others may flower around me.

A Continual Autumn, by Jalal Al-din Muhammad Rumi

Inside each of us there’s
a continual autumn.
Our leaves fall and are
blown out over the water,
a crow sits in the blackened limbs and
talks about what’s gone.
There’s a necessary dying, and
then we are reborn breathing again.

Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground.
Be crumbled
so wildflowers will come up where you are.

For more information on Rumi, please click here.

Poem of the Week, by Peggy Shumaker

Posted on August 11, 2018 by alisonmcghee

28056283_10156130850921407_3444412315520744499_n My youngest didn’t walk until she was 22 months old. Instinct told me she was fine so I didn’t worry about this, but I observed her with interest. One day, when I was in the kitchen and she was sitting in a patch of sun on the living room floor, her back to me, I watched in wonder as she rose –no hands, no support, no nothing– to a full stand and began to walk. I had never seen a child go from crawling to perfect walking in an instant like that. She never went back to crawling.

I remember my daughter and her silent rise from the floor. I remember the older man I watched fall on the ice while crossing my street, and his panicked struggle to rise. I remember my grandmother falling in a restaurant, her own panicked struggle to rise before my father knelt and in one swift motion swept her up in his arms. Our first and wild instinct is to get up when we fall, to lift ourselves up, up, up. I’m thinking now of my beautiful dog on his last day of life this past March, when I watched him haul himself up, and I said to the painter, Look! He’s up! I’m going to call the vet and tell her not to come! and as soon as I said the words, he collapsed before us on all four legs and never rose again. Sometimes the simplest poems, like this one below, are the ones that bring memories rushing over me.

Placing Our Feet with Care on This Earth

In Los Angeles, my friend will soon learn to walk.
Her ankles will remember how to line up

so her weight can settle down
and they can hold up.

In Alaska, snowmelt’s ankle-deep
slush puddles firm up overnight.

Slick, this world. Our soles
get away from us.

For more information on Peggy Shumaker, please read her bio.

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Poem of the Week, by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Posted on August 4, 2018 by alisonmcghee

IMG_0116-2 Neither my friend nor I had been to a high school reunion in many years –in my case, decades–and we were both nervous. The years we had spent growing up together in upstate New York seemed far away, and we hadn’t kept in touch with many classmates. So we met early, at the bar in that tiny stoplight-less town, and fortified ourselves with gin while paging through our yearbook to remind ourselves of faces and names. At one point I said to him, It’s been decades. We don’t look the same, will anyone else?

Of course not. The banquet room was full of strangers. But as the night wore on, fragments of memory returned. In the curve of a middle-age woman’s smile I flashed back on the girl she used to be, laughing down the hall, her long dark hair parted in the middle. A man came smiling up to me —Alison!–and I remembered dancing at a bar with him and some other friends the week we graduated. Another classmate came up to my friend and told him, almost crying, how much she admired the man he had become.

So what was it like?, the painter asked me when we talked late that night. It was like saying goodbye to my former self, I said, like putting my childhood to bed. All of which reminds me of this poem, which I loved the minute I read it years ago. Sometimes it’s so hard to know you’re beautiful when you’re young.

Nighties
– Maria Mazziotti Gillan

At my bridal shower, someone gave me
a pink see-through nightgown and pink satin
slippers with slender heels and feathers.
The gown had feathers on it, too.

I’ve always hated my legs and even then,
when I was still thin and in good shape,
I didn’t want to wear that nightgown
or slippers, didn’t want to parade

in front of you like some pinup.
But I wore them anyway, all those negligees
I got as shower presents, sleazy nylon
I didn’t know was tacky. When I wore

sporty nightgowns, I’d leap into bed
not wanting you to notice how
the nightgown revealed what I thought
my biggest flaw. In all the young years

of our marriage, I wore a different nightgown
every night, not that it stayed on for long,
and afterward I’d pull it back on, not wanting
our children to see me naked in our bed.

I felt so sophisticated in those nightgowns,
like the ones Doris Day wore in movies.
Only years later, when my daughter buys me
a nightgown made of soft and smooth blue silk,

do I realize that the first ones I owned
were imitations of this one
I hold now to my cheek, grateful
to have been once so young,

to have loved you in nylon and silk
and in my own incredible skin.

For more information on Maria Mazziotti Gillan, please click here.

Poem of the Week, by Laura Hansen

Posted on July 28, 2018 by alisonmcghee

Shack hammock (1) Long ago, when I taught Mandarin at a big city high school in Minneapolis, some of my students would stay after school and talk with me. One was a Hmong young man, quiet and shy, with halting English. He would sit in the chair by my desk and cast his glance at the floor. For a long time I would inwardly urge him to look at me —look at me look at me come on look me in the eye– and then it came to me that his avoiding my direct gaze was part of his culture, and a sign of respect. All my annoyance melted away and from then on I was more soft-spoken, gentle, and slow in his presence.

The poem below makes me think of that long-ago student, and others too: The young man with OCD who sat in the chair next to me clicking and clicking and clicking his pen, asking How am I doing in this class? How am I doing in this class? How am I doing in this class? and then I’m sorry I keep asking, I’m sorry I keep asking. Sometimes, if it felt right, I would put my hand over his as he clicked his pen. And when he apologized for his constant How am I doing in this class? I would say, No worries. Whenever you need to ask, ask, and I’ll tell you, which seemed like the right thing to do.

Every time I read this poem, by the lovely Laura Hansen, I think of the unnoticed and unsung among us. The girl who taps her fingers up and down her legs, the child who calls up the MGM lion on Youtube over and over to watch him roar, the man who walks up and down my block with a flower in his pocket. We are not immortal, no, nor are we more sacred, but the sacred comes to us in our solitude.

Sometimes I Pray that You Won’t Talk to Me, by Laura Hansen

Adrienne knew the wholeness of being alone,
as a plane rides lonely and level on its radio beam.

And, I admit, there are times when I wish
that you would walk on without saying hello.

I may be at a table at Arby’s, reading or staring,
and you may think that I am lonely, alone,

but I will be thinking my own thoughts
with no regard to how I look as I unwrap

my Jr. sandwich, slow-turning the pages
of the latest mystery I’ve been reading.

If you see me in the park, on a bench
or on a trail, know that I am not looking for you.

I will be waiting, like Mary O., for the trees
to reveal the yellow paint-splash of the warbler.

It will be dangerous to approach me, lost
as I am inside my own head. I may

mistake you for a honeybee. Or a tiger.
Conversation comes hard for the wanderer,

for the one born with silence always
clamoring for attention in our heads.

Our eyes hear more than voices,
our feet lead us away from your world.

We are not immortal, no, nor are we
more sacred, but the sacred comes to us

in our solitude, in the brush of tree bark
under our hands, in the soft way the sun

cups the star-studded Potentilla
in the fast food parking lot,

yes, even there.

For more information on Laura Hansen, please check out her website.

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Poem of the Week, by Naomi Shihab Nye

Posted on July 21, 2018 by alisonmcghee

Photos 223 For years I’ve written haikus for people I don’t know. They send me a photo of someone and a few words about that person, along with $30, and I conjure up something about the person looking back at me from the photo. This takes some time. I want to get to something essential, something of this human being’s heart and soul. No one has ever sent me a photo of someone they don’t love dearly, and I respect that love and want the haiku to reflect it. Once it’s finished, I hand-letter the haiku on a piece of card stock and mail it back. All the proceeds go to support a school I’m involved with in Haiti. The photo/haiku/school forms an invisible triangle: 1) Me at my wooden desk gazing at 2) a photo of someone I don’t know in support of 3) both the sender and students, none of whom I’ve met in real life. You can’t order a poem like you order a taco, except sometimes you can. Poems are everywhere. Like the wondrous Ms. Nye says, what we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.

Valentine for Ernest Mann, by Naomi Shihab Nye

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,
write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.
So I’ll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn’t understand why she was crying.
“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the off sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

For more information on Naomi Shihab Nye, please click here.

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Poem of the Week, by Dorianne Laux

Posted on July 15, 2018 by alisonmcghee

Screen Shot 2018-04-05 at 8.44.54 AM A few days ago at the store I stood in line, my groceries on the conveyor belt: butter, greens, an avocado, carrots and peppers and potatoes. The person behind me placed their items on the belt: two packages of ice cream sandwiches. About once a year I get a craving for an ice cream sandwich, and looking at the picture on the boxes made me want one. I turned to see who was buying them. She was middle-aged, with faded hair and a worn, tired face, wearing a jacket with a broken zipper. Hunched over. She’s been through some things, was the thought in my mind, and I waited for her to look up so I could smile at her and chat a little while we waited for the cashier. But she never did look up. And I thought of this poem, by the wondrous Dorianne Laux. So many people out there, all of us maybe, who have been through some things. Oh, the water.

Oh, The Water, by Dorianne Laux

You are the hero of this poem,
the one who leans into the night
and shoulders the stars, smoking
a cigarette you’ve sworn is your last
before reeling the children into bed.

Or you’re the last worker on the line,
lifting labeled crates onto the dock,
brown arms bare to the elbow,
your shirt smelling of seaweed and soap.

You’re the oldest daughter
of an exhausted mother, an inconsolable
father, sister to the stones thrown down
on your path. You’re the brother
who warms his own brother’s bottle,
whose arm falls asleep along the rail of his crib.

We’ve stood next to you in the checkout line,
watched you flip through tabloids or stare
at the TV Guide as if it were the moon,
your cart full of cereal, toothpaste, shampoo,
day-old bread, bags of gassed fruit,
frozen pizzas on sale for 2.99.

In the car you might slide in a tape, listen
to Van Morrison sing Oh, the water.
You stop at the light and hum along, alone.

When you slam the trunk in the driveway,
spilling the groceries, dropping your keys,
you’re someone’s love, their one brave hope;
and if they don’t run to greet you or help
with the load, they can hear you,
they know you’ve come home.

For more information on Dorianne Laux, please check out her website.

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Poem of the Week, by Hafiz

Posted on July 1, 2018 by alisonmcghee

Excerpt from a small, vinyl, dark-blue diary I kept when I was in fifth grade: It’s weird but when you walk into a room of people you can feel the air. The air is a color and a texture that you can see and feel and it’s how people are feeling. But what’s really weird is you can change how they feel if you concentrate really hard.

I believed this at ten, and I still believe it. Emotional energy is invisible, but it’s real, and with focus and intention, you can shift it. When we were in our twenties, my sister and I used to go to parties together. Sometimes those parties would feel flat and dull, not fun. My sister and I would look at each other and murmur social overdrive, social overdrive, and then throw ourselves into the scene with the goal of putting everyone at ease and making everyone feel connected and happy.

Before every class I teach, I silently breathe in and out and vow to meet the participants where they are, not where I am. With intuition and insight and deep intention, you can lift up another human being. Or a roomful of them, or a nation. The trick is channeling not anger and bitterness –no matter how despairing the situation–but love and kindness. Something that Hafiz, who lived and died 700 years ago, knew well.

With That Moon Language, by Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them,
“Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud;
otherwise, someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this,
this great pull in us
to connect.
Why not become the one
who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in this world
is dying to hear?

For more information about the Persian poet Hafiz, please click here.

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Poem of the Week, by John Ashbery

Posted on June 22, 2018 by alisonmcghee

Growing up in the age of Darwinian elementary schools –the gym teacher would choose the two best athletes to captain every team, and one by one they would pick off first the good athletes, then the midlings, then the uncoordinated, until finally there was only one child remaining, huddled against the wall– I hated gym class. Not because I was bad at sports (I’m not) but because I can’t stand cruelty. And that little ritual was fundamentally cruel.

I don’t see the point of competition unless you’re competing with yourself, trying to get better at something you value, something you love. All the years I sat on bleachers cheering on my children, it was an effort to remember that I was supposed to cheer for their team and not any random child on the field who made a great goal, who ran fast, who helped lift up another player. There were times when the other parents glared at me because in my absentmindedness/idiocy I would cheer for the opposing team.

I still don’t like team sports. What I don’t like about them is exactly what I despise in my country today, which is the idea that there are winners and losers, and winning is what matters. What is happening in my country right now is so far beyond right vs. left. What is happening right now is wrong, and on some level, every single one of us knows it. No matter how you spin it, there is no excuse –not one, ever– to torture children and their families. Democracy is crumbling and fascism is rising and the elected officials who should stop it, who should call out injustice and hold abusers accountable, are silent despite our protests. This poem starts out sweet and ends up terrifying, and boy does it feel familiar. It doesn’t end this way, but I would like it too: We are all one here, and if one of us goes the other goes too.

How to Continue, by John Ashbery

Oh there once was a woman
and she kept a shop
selling trinkets to tourists
not far from a dock
who came to see what life could be
far back on the island.

And it was always a party there
always different but very nice
New friends to give you advice
or fall in love with you which is nice
and each grew so perfectly from the other
it was a marvel of poetry
and irony

And in this unsafe quarter
much was scary and dirty
but no one seemed to mind
very much
the parties went on from house to house
There were friends and lovers galore
all around the store
There was moonshine in winter
and starshine in summer
and everybody was happy to have discovered
what they discovered

And then one day the ship sailed away
There were no more dreamers just sleepers
in heavy attitudes on the dock
moving as if they knew how
among the trinkets and the souvenirs
the random shops of modern furniture
and a gale came and said
it is time to take all of you away
from the tops of the trees to the little houses
on little paths so startled

And when it became time to go
they none of them would leave without the other
for they said we are all one here
and if one of us goes the other will not go
and the wind whispered it to the stars
the people all got up to go
and looked back on love

For more information on John Ashbery, please click here.
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