Sandra Gail Lambert

Atlantic Center for the Arts - Day 19

Forty-five pages of revisions.  Thirty-one residency-written pages that have been through two drafts so far.  Four novels read.  Many, many lovely conversations.  Group trip to a bar.  Poetry, poetry - heard and read.  One tarot reading.  An enlarged writing community. 

This is my list of residency accomplishments.  Tonight is the big show in the theater where we all read.  Gainesville gals will show up and then we'll kayak in Mosquito Lagoon tomorrow, and on Sunday I'll be home to my bathtub and television.  Oh yeah, and to my friends, mother, and all the rest of my life.  And to vote.  

Sometimes you know, right in the very moment that it's happening, how happy you are. 

Jane Hilberry - Atlantic Center For the Arts Day 18

 

Jane Hilberry is a poet.  Whew, oh my, you betcha, wowza she's a poet. And she's a fine tarot card reader.  For me, the "significant other" card indicated someone we both were sure was my future agent.  Is it bad that I'm thrilled?

 

I have Jane's collection Body Painting here beside me.  I flip the pages and reread "The Car Salesman," "The Mineral of Skin," "Conception: Dialogues with Several Children and a Cosmologer," and, of course, "Sand."  Sprinkled through the book are her "Crazy Jane" poems.  Here's the last bit of one of them.  

 

Crazy Jane Talks With Bones

 

She thinks her skeleton always wanted

to be like a tree, standing in a grove,

wind washing the bones,

making them sway and dance,

and nothing to support but the veined leaves

which sooner or later loosen their hold

and fly away like messages

to the solid, boneless earth.

Renee Ashley - Atlantic Center for the Arts Day 17

 

 

 

Renée Ashley is a poet, novelist, and she's at ACA writing memoir.  I've read her book The Revisionist's Dream, am half-way through Salt, and have The Various Reasons of Light on the bedside table.  I read myself to sleep with them and wake up with a book beside my pillow and her poems inside my head.  "and, each night, we believe in everything. . ."

Here at ACA, Renée is my next door neighbor.  I hear her coming home from late-night armadillo hunts (she gave up and bought her own), I hear her laughing when she types "elf-inflicted" instead of "self-inflicted" while writing a piece of memoir, and I hear her kind support of all the writers that show up at her door, including me.

This is one of my favorite poems of hers.  It's not just about poetry.

 

WITH THE FOREST JUST BEGINNING

 

All poems begin like this: the difficult

half-light, the trees a faint outline in the sand.

 

But somewhere there'll be a white gate, waist-

high and latched, and a first pale bird who'll

 

arrive and make thread-like tracks across the un-

embellished land; no one will know he's come.

 

And the vague sun might glide up from its depth

unnoticed, and the light just might seep

 

over the edge of the quiet, nearly-visible

mountains; a cluster of cedar or willow or pine

 

might be drawn upward before you ─ but slowly,

slowly.  And then, if you're lucky, something small

 

and quick-footed will slip from the low scrub

and scatter the untouched soil.  The bird will become

 

an instant of fierce color deep back on a branch.

And the gate might shift, the latch

 

lift up.  The grasses may quicken around you, and,

as you begin to perceive your place at the edge

 

of the tentative wood, you might pick out the small

yellow eye in the gold field beside you, might catch

 

the white stream's unfaltering voice in the trees, the timber

of that singular forest rising from indistinct ground.

 

P.S.  Oops.  LIne break problem.  The last "three" lines should only be two.  "The timber" should be up there on the line above it. 

 

Doug Van Gundy - Atlantic Center for the Arts Day 16

Doug Van Gundy has gone back to West Virginia.  He had to leave after just two weeks and we miss him.  Doug is a poet and old time music fiddle player and always had us up to something.  During our first week here he gave us an evening of fiddle music, story-telling, and a bit of flat foot dancing.

A Life Above Water is his collection of poetry from Red Hen Press.  He left before I could get his permission to use it on the blog, but this link will take you to a selection.  

Kelly Cherry - Atlantic Center for the Arts Day 15

 

Kelly Cherry writes poetry, memoir, novels, short stories, essays – is there anything else?  And she's our "Master Artist," our group leader, our direct-talking, pinpoint-the-heart-of-our-writing guardian of the meeting room who thrills us when she says "I think you might have something here."

Kitty Davis - Atlantic Center for the Arts Day 14

 

Katherine "Kitty" Davis and I found each other pre-residency through the Internet, so I arrived here already knowing someone, and not just someone, another novelist.  Her novel Capturing Paris is available in stores, another is in her publisher's pipeline, and here, three doors down from me, she's working on a third.  The woman has discipline.  Here's a bit of the work-in-progress.

   

    "Lacey said the scans showed deterioration."

    "Damn the scan.  She's managing fine now." Alex looked down at Margot.  She thought he might reach over and shake her, insisting that she listen to him and believe it was simply a matter of mind or matter.

    "Please, Alex," Margot said.  "I want to believe you.  You know how I love Lacey.  I love both of you.  I don't want any of this to be happening."

    "I know that."

    Margot fought the urge to take him in her arms.  She wanted to tell him that it would be fine, that maybe he was right.  Lacey might not get worse.

    Alex's face grew slack, as if his determination to be positive had been exhausted. 

Carrie Green - ACA Day 13

 

Carrie Green's work is just so interesting.  Her family is from Deland, Florida and in Deland, in the 1800's, Lue Gim Gong, arrived from China, the place where oranges originated, and became the renown horticulturist who developed the eponymous Lue Gim Gong orange.  Carrie is writing a series of poems about his life. 

Here's an excerpt from Cartes de Visite

"... He will send

the finest copy to his mother,

tucked between crisp bills.

In this moment the lenses click

into place, he does not predict

the need to erase

his new sideburns with a nail,

to scratch out all sign

of what she's already lost."  

Jaimie Wilson - Atlantic Center for the Arts - Day 12

 

Jaimie Wilson is another of our poets.  And she lives so close, right in Jacksonville.  She sat with me one night and gave a thoughtful, generous, thorough review of a piece of my writing.  It's exciting when you have the sense that someone understands what you are trying to accomplish.

 

And now an excerpt from Jaimie's poem

 

What Death Leaves

 

"When your mother went,

a series of small strokes,

you were bone-tired of cleaning her.

Worn out from picking her broken sentences up off the kitchen table.

It was at the farm, you remind her.

That was Aunt Margie.

You use to love egg salad,

and I'm your daughter, your daughter.

Like a book on a plane, she took remorse with her,

but she left you a dog-eared copy.

Death is more than worms,"

Jay Orff - ACA Day 11

 

Jay Orff writes short stories, fine short stories, and is here from Minneapolis.  Us three fiction writers have done a bit of collaborative writing during our group time, and Jay has a unique, quick (quicker than mine, for sure) imagination.  His "series" is about gas stations. 

Here are the first lines of Ramon's Gasoline Station.

 

     "It was a really busy morning.  Someone was coming in to get gas like every ten minutes and then I saw the sign and realized it was because I forgot to change the gas prices and for most of the morning we were selling gas at about the same price as everyone else.  By noon I figured it out and bumped up the numbers 34 cents and bing bang bongo I had some free time.  But by then the whole vibe, the feeling, the idea to reorganize the office was gone, you know?"

Llewellyn McKernan - ACA Day 10

 

 

 

For the next few days, the blog will introduce you to our group – the six of us that Kelly Cherry picked to work with for these three weeks. 

 

First up is our West Virginian, Llewellyn McKernan, who is one of our three poets.  Kelly had said she was especially interested in "work that lends itself to development as sequence or cycle."  Llewellyn has been bringing us her pencil poems – The Last Pencil, Pencil in the All-Nite Diner, and Old Pencil so far.  These pencils have a range of voices, and they make me want to rededicate myself to them.  I mean, I'm a writer, and the last time I used a pencil it was in a sushi bar. (How about it? What do you use a pencil for, if you do?) 

 

Today Llewellyn brought in a poem from a new book about her childhood that she's bringing together.  Here are the opening lines of In the Garden.

 

"I'm holding someone's hand,

my mother's

I guess.  I am small.  Giant branches climb over

my head, spill their rich Guernsey-white flowers onto

the path,

where we walk slowly."

 

P.S.  Sorry about the small print.  I was trying to keep the line breaks intact.  I failed with one line.  "my head, spill their rich Guernsey-white flowers onto" should be all on one line. 

Poets and Baby Giggling - ACA Day 9

 

Clea Roberts came to ACA from the Yukon - from Canada's "up there" to the "down there" of Florida.  She brought her baby and her mother-in-law with her, and let me tell you, baby giggling is a fine thing to be around.

 

Clea gets lonely for poets in her town of 25,000, so she founded the Whitehorse Poetry Festival.  It takes place every two years in June - next chance 2009.

  

One evening I arrived back at my room to find that Clea had returned a map to me.  Around it, she'd wrapped one of her poems.  Now, I'd never told her I was writing a novel about a river, and yet the poem was addressed to and from one of her, very different from my, rivers. 

Here's an excerpt:

 

Breakup

 

1. (In which a woman addresses the river)

 

I was a half-believer

in the myth of water.

 

All winter I heard the river ice

whimper and stretch in its bed.

 

I could speculate on breakup,

and the first boat to water

but not the weight of the ice

as it flips and squawks,

or how the water

wears it like a skin, reptilian

or how the sound of it

is like a large crowd

whispering and breaking dishes

as it goes.

 

Clea Roberts

Where I've spent the weekend - ACA Day 7.

 

It's hard to even say the words out loud, but I've done initial research, written out the whole loose beginning to end on yellow sheets, and am over 3,000 words into an on-the-computer draft.  This is usually at least, at least, three weeks of work.  I've done it in six days.  And it's likely I'll move forward another thousand words tonight. 

Here at ACA, propped up against my pillows, writing, I'm having the time of my life. 

The Book on a Wall - ACA Day 5

Leslie Sussan is writing a memoir.  It's layered and haunting and all the threads of it gave her that trapped in a sticky spider's web feeling of confusion.  So, she went visual and spent the first days here at ACA taping all 164 pages of the manuscript up on a wall of the painting studio.  Isn't it beautiful? 

 

 

Atlantic Center for the Arts - Day Four

 

These are my favorite signs here.  I feel cared for like a turtle nest on the beach or a woodstork rookery.  Although today is a rough day.  I'm overtired, had bad dreams, and am pretty sure that I'm a crap and/or lazy writer.

News from the Coastal Scrub - ACA Day 3

 

Here's the view from my little, lovely apartment at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.  This morning I was up at four, wrote until 6:30, strolled the grounds under the setting full moon with a mug of soy milk mixed with protein powder, wrote more (I've started a new chapter, and about 8am the structure of it appeared in my mind!), and am now in the Commons Room pealing a grapefruit and blogging.  Need I say it? Life is Good.  

Today I meet in my group (three poets, three fiction writers, and Kelly Cherry).  Later are the introductory readings where I get to hear bits of writing from the whole mass of us.  And give one myself.  Then dinner, then bed, then up to write again in morning.  This is all so exciting. 

New Technology

So, can anyone tell me why my cursor jumps around, willy-nilly, while I'm typing?

Women's Wonderlands

 

Publishing works in geologic time.  And acceptances have more layers than I ever knew. 

University of Wisconsin Press called for submissions to an anthology - Women's Wonderlands: Good Lesbian Travel Writing.  I sent off an essay, and it was accepted by an editor.  I was excited.  Then it needed to be approved by another editor.  I was worried.  That worked out and then a committee needed to approve it.  The book, with me in it, passed.  I celebrated.

And now, it seems, as I should have known, there was one last committee.  And "outside readers." It turns out everyone approves, the outside readers raved, and the original editor says we should "break out the bubbly."  It's almost a year after that first acceptance, and the planned pub date is Fall 2009.

She did caution that there could still be changes.  Another committee?  You really do have to open your hands and let the wind take the pages, don't you?    

Atlantic Center For the Arts

Residency #131 with Eamon Grennan, Honor Moore, and "my" master artist, Kelly Cherry, begins in one week.  I am packing, packing, packing.  And packing more. 

Don't smirk - I need those five pillows. And there's an explanation for the clothes.  This time of year in Florida it can be anything from humid and high eighties to the bitter chill of fifties at night.  Now, yes, it's laughable that I think I'll be going through two reams, one thousand pages, of paper in the three weeks I'm there, but I have an image of writing for hours, day after day, emerging only to be fed and linger with other writers who have also just staggered out of their trances. That's not quite true, of course.  I will also emerge to catch the internet replay of "Dancing With the Stars."  I heart Mr. Sapp. 

Besides, I have a big van.  There are no limits. The kayak is already loaded.  

Native Plant Sale Tomorrow (and tonight)

 

Native Plant Sale - At the Morningside Nature Center, from 8:30 until noon, Saturday, October 4.  (And tonight from 4:30 to 6:30 for members.)

Twice a year I cashier at the sale here in Gainesville. (Making change out of a cash box is a dying art, but I was a retailer pre-fancy cash registers.) Let me tell you, it's a wild place full of rabid gardeners.  The cars leave with plants hanging out the sides, filling windshields from the passenger seat, and tucked in on every floor surface. 

Each time I get handed a pile of twenties and give back a bit of change I see the local economy meshing with the local environment.  These plants won't need fertilizer or pesticides and not much water if they're planted in the right places. And the money goes to nurseries that will now cultivate even more native plants and next spring we'll have another plant sale and more dotted horsemint, firebush, viburnums, anise, woodland sunflowers, and bluecurls will replace all the imported, drug dependent plants.  

Wherever you live, find out about the native plants in your area.   

Fight cancer by blogging

Check this out.  I've been reading this woman's blog for quite awhile, and I so respect her directness and humor and devotion to this writing community of which I'm a tiny, tiny part.  Now she's fighting cancer with a raffle of her professional editorial skills.

Do you have a clue about how to write a query letter (as I so painfully notice that I didn't when I read back over my early submissions), some beginning pages you're not sure about, or even (I hope I win this one.  Pick me. Pick me.) a FULL MANUSCRIPT at the ready?  There is also an offering to edit a children's picture book manuscript and even the chance to receive a love note.  

This is a kind offer of a friend to help a friend.  And we get to participate.