paula j lambert

Posting an excerpt here of the story I’ll be reading this Friday at the Columbus Arts Festival. This is the first year prose writers will be included with the poets on the Ohio Magazine Word Is Art Stage. Though the vast majority of my writing and publishing history is in fiction, folks in Columbus know me mostly for poetry. It’ll be fun to show my fiction side here in town!

Click here for the audio link!

The story was originally published in 2003, in Volume 7 of Lake Effect: A Journal of the Literary Arts.  I thought it would be a good one to submit to this year’s ArtsFest as I needed to select something fun, that would read well to an audience, and that would connect in some personal way to festival itself. Last year, I saw a really terrific Elvis act at ArtsFest–I mean really terrific, with a full bad-ass band behind him. The crowd loved it–it was not a corny impersonator act, it was a really hot tribute band that played well enough to remind everyone what a great performer Elvis really was.

There was a time I was writing about Elvis a lot. I was not a particular fan–on the cusp of being too young, I think, as he died when I was just 14. What fascinated me was Elvis as Cultural Phenomenon: what was it that kept him in the public psyche so long, and so powerfully? I lived in the Deep South for sixteen years (you’ll note my accent comes back when reading this story–can’t help it!), including seven in Mississippi, first and briefly in Jackson and then in Bentonia, home of the Bentonia Blues and part of Yazoo County, the mouth of the Mississippi Delta. I visited Elvis’ birthplace in Tupelo on three separate occasions and have been to Graceland at least twice. The story of Elvis Presley is not just an American phenomenon–it has the added aura of being a particularly Southern one.

There’s plenty that can and has been said on that, plenty written, and I wrote about it myself off and on for years, both in poetry and prose. For now I’ll just leave it with this, “Salvation,” a story about a Iris and her new man Orin who “took her to Tupelo for their honeymoon, so he could show her where Vernon and Gladys had borne their king.”

Enjoy the clip. To find out how the story turns out, come see me at the festival!

As this lovely Mother’s Day weekend comes to a close, I feel drawn to compose a final few words. So many brave and lovely, wonderful things have been shared this weekend, privately and publicly, and I want to say these final two things. The first is this: that blended families can work, and work well. They can be beautiful. All families–loving relationships of all kinds–take hard work to flourish. You start with love, yes, and you end there–always. But it also takes the work of listening, laughing, talking, forgiving (over and over again–and that includes forgiving oneself), allowing space and room to breathe, insisting on firm and mutual respect. We all have our families of origin and families of choice, our bloodlines and our lovelines. It is difficult to love. But how wonderful to make the choice to do it. Over and over again.

Until four years ago, I had made the conscious and deliberate choice through my adult life not to have children of my own. It wasn’t a need in my life. It’s so okay not to have children–that’s the second thing I wanted to say. As I’ve aged, I’ve not regretted the choice (as some suggested through the years I would); it was the right one for me. I have had no need in my life for my own biological children–no desire. It’s so totally okay; it was for me, and it is for others who make that choice.

When I did happen to meet a guy who happened to have a passel of kids, it was the right thing, a blessed thing, a cherished thing for us to enter into a lifetime partnership. I made the choice then to become not just a life partner, but a co-parent to his children, now our children. I’m a stepmother and love my children fiercely, wildly, completely. It’s an honor to be part of their lives.

Parenting is difficult work. Loving anyone is difficult work–even being loved is difficult work. I’m thankful for the family I came from, every day. I’m thankful for the family I’m a part of now, every day. I’m thankful for the years I had as a single, independent woman. I’m thankful for the life I have now. It’s all relative. We live, we love: who we are, who we’re with. We keep our eyes open. We cherish. We forgive. We respect. We receive. Oh, my, what we receive.  

One of my favorite parts of our recent trip home to Massachusetts was discovering The Grolier Book Shop. As we were planning our trip into Harvard Square the next day, my husband somehow discovered the store through an online search. “It’s a poetry bookstore,” he said. “The whole store. It’s all poetry.”

In the midst of all the other things we were trying to do and see in Cambridge, we’d managed to forget about it, though. Still, Michael happened to glance down a side road as we were walking and stopped short. “There it is! The Grolier!”

Of course we went in. Or rather, he and our daughter went in ahead of me, saw it was small, a bit crowded, and very, very hot inside. They came back out, looking a little grumpy. “We’ll wait out here. Are you gonna be long?”

Long enough. I cried. I lingered. I ran my hands over the covers of so many books. I read the broadsides posted on the wall–and bought four of them. The best part, though, was what happened when I first walked into the shop–the very first thing.

Just inside the front door, low and to the right, was a rack of chapbooks. Dozens and dozens–I can’t guess how many. Crowded in, and no printed spines, of course, so no way to glance for titles. But I was drawn in immediately, ran my hand across them, and spotted one I knew was from Wick Poetry Center–the very distinctive, wide, mottled green border of their cover. I have at least four friends who have published chaps with Wick, and I held my breath at I lifted the volume carefully out of the shelf: “Wouldn’t it be marvelous if it was someone I know?”

It was. It was David Hassler’s Sabishi: Poems from Japan.  David is actually Director of the Wick Poetry Center; we did our MFA’s together at Bowling Green State University (he finished a year ahead of me), and I had seen him not one full week before at the 10th Annual Columbus State Community College Creative Writing Conference, where he served as keynote speaker.

He was a brilliant keynote. His workshop was wonderful, focusing on a poem by Lisa Mueller called “Curriculum Vitae,” a piece I had never seen before and which brought the participants together is wonderful ways “refracting the light of the poem,” in Dave’s words, as we all discussed it. The keynote speech itself was more than marvelous: funny, poignant, and leaving the room in tears. It would be a bit too much to run down the full content here, but I was struck, truly, at how synchronous it seemed our work had been through the years, led down paths of influence related to Carl Jung, eastern philosophy, and exploration of the power of mind/body connections. We didn’t know each other well back at BGSU, and I saw that as a very real loss–felt that our paths crossing now, at this particular point in both our lives, was a small, treasured gift from the universe.

Shall I confess I was so overcome by his talk that I went to the ladies room and wept? It was a good while before I could rejoin the Full/Crescent Press table at the Book Fair, where people were beginning to pack things away as the conference was coming to its close. I was able to talk to David before it all ended, to weep a bit more with him, to embrace. Truly, the light of humankindness shines through David Hassler, in his person, in his poetry, in all the work he does.

So now, standing in what seemed like a sort of Holy Temple, this all-poetry shop back home in Boston–why had I never known it existed?–and being greeted by my poet-friend from “home” in Ohio, I was nearly overcome. I bought more than just that one book. I got three others and the broadsides. I threw in a Grolier printed book bag as well, to carry it all, to walk with through the rest of our sojourn through Cambridge, more than happy to tell the world where I’d been, and where they should go, too.

Here’s a tiny excerpt from the title poem of Sabishi, enough, perhaps, to explain what draws me to his work–and what might draw you:

I have left blue days in Ohio
to come here and be lonely, but
I cannot explain to these women why,
or what I think I have lost.
I cannot explain how I want to crawl
under the engine of my heart
and tighten nuts and bolts.
I cannot explain the mechanics of it,
why being lonely is work I want to do.

So, my husband calls this, “Photobombing the Women’s Rights Movement.”  (I thought the sepia was a nice added touch.)

This amazing sculpture by Ted Aub commemorates the moment Amelia Bloomer introduced Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I just wanted in on the conversation.

Gosh, can you imagine the lightning-charged energy of the moment?

Seneca Falls provided a nice book-end to our trip, having stopped first at Rochester, as noted in previous post. We’d already visited the grave sites of Frederick Douglas and Susan B. Anthony; we needed to see how they lived.

I’ve been to Seneca Falls many times before, of course, but it was a first for my husband and daughter. I love not only the Women’s Rights history there, but also the industrial history of water-powered factories so much like those of my hometown in Massachusetts.

That it also claims to be the real-life setting of Bedford Falls (from It’s a Wonderful Life) is pure bonus.

A couple of weeks ago, during our daughter’s spring break from school, we were able to drive from Ohio to Massachusetts to see family. We broke up the trip out there by spending one night in Rochester, New York. We wanted to take a look at Eastman School of Music (and we discovered the National Museum of Play–who knew?!) but we also wanted–I wanted–very much to visit historic Mount Hope Cemetery.

Mount Hope is  the final resting place of several famous people, including Frederick Douglas and Susan B. Anthony. I had somehow forgotten that Frederick Douglas had been married twice,  and it was interesting to see that two separate grave stones mark his site, each with a different year of birth. Susan B. Anthony has a comparatively tiny marker and is kept company by the large family all around her. It was lovely to see and read about and remember all the details of their respective and mutual histories, to be able to share it with our teenage daughter–who was far more up-to-date than we on many details of the history of the region and the times! It’s a wonderful thing for history to come alive in new and surprising ways…as it did when we discovered another famous resident of the cemetery: George Washington’s drummer boy!

The real reason I wanted to visit Mount Hope, though, was to pay respects to my dear friend David Shevin, who passed away suddenly in July of 2010. Dave was a poet and publisher and teacher and activist, a heck of a nice man–a good man–and a very dear friend. I found him there at Mount Hope, with a bit of help from the conveniently located records office.  I was quite suddenly overwhelmed when I saw his name in the over-sized record books; the handwriting looked so much like Dave’s that it almost seemed he’d written his own name there. I burst quite suddenly into tears, mighty glad for a teenager so instinctual about stepping in for a close, tight hug and then just the right broad smile.

Dave’s stone is just the right size for its own tight hug, and I most certainly did hold on a while, letting loose a little soft wail and keen. We chatted a bit then, and what another lovely thing is that, to be able to say, “Hey, old pal,” just because you can, and “We have a new pope, you know,” and talk about this and that so-and-so, the mutual friends, who laughs and who still cries–”she misses you, you know.” And then, just gradually, have the chatter out of your system, feel like now, maybe, the goodbye wasn’t so sudden after all, maybe not even a real goodbye at all.

I can stop by again, old pal, next time I’m passing through, visit again with you, pay respects to Frederick and Susan–I just know you tell each other jokes all night out here, whispering in the dark, tossing pebbles to the drummer boy, asking him to wake up and play for you all, telling him it’s time for a song.

What do you call a broken boomerang, friend?

And, hey, isn’t it time the workers of the world awaken? Yeah, Joe Hill. Yeah.

And I’ll leave folks here with a taste of your work, Red Davy, a poem here that begins: “Can I tell you what I was dreaming/after you had to leave?”

This is actually just a brief reminder that I am in Tweetspeak Poetry’s Poetry Classroom this month, where we’re discussing works from The Sudden Seduction of Gravity. The April 1st classroom opened with “The Burden of Too Much Meaning,” and April 8th introduced discussion on “The Hypochondriac’s Question to the Woman with Synesthesia.” You can join the discussion related to either or both, asking questions, offering comments, or starting your own poem! And watch for new poems through the rest of National Poetry Month.

I’ve had in mind for a while now the goal of keeping this blog more consistently active, having a vague commitment to myself to write “twice a week or so.” Vague commitments are slippery things. The word that was important to me was “consistent,” and if I fail in the “twice a week or so” I can at least keep going at it to keep my voice out here.

I’ve been exploring–experimenting might be a better word–with various forms of social media for a while now, trying to understand how things work AND how different kinds of media work together. There is more exploring to be done, and if my pace seems slow, it’s only because I’m going at it with the concept of “play” in mind rather than “work.” I follow what I can as my health and personal schedule allow, and my early attempts were more frustrated little bursts than what I’ve come to think of now as extended flirtations.

Things are coming together now in ways that make it more fun, and I’m still trying to trust the process as one that will continue to fall into place. The good folks at Every Day Poems started picking up my poems a while ago, thanks at first to Tania Runyan. Then L.L. Barkat separately discovered some work that she liked, not knowing that Tania had already reserved a few poems from my book. (Barkat picked up “Embouchure” from my “Other Publications” link here. Eventually Tweetspeak asked me do a Journey into Poetry column, and then invited me to be part of their April Poetry Classroom!

I almost said no to the Classroom. Very. Nearly. I started work on a new book and had formed a personal challenge plan to have it completely drafted by the end of April, National Poetry Month. I was afraid it would take my focus away from producing new work, but the new work is actually progressing nicely, thank you very much, and the Classroom is helping me see things happening in the other work that I wasn’t consciously aware of.

I have also been connecting to goodreads, slowly but surely, feeling myself almost “on the down low” slinking around to see how it all works. Brilliantly, it turns out. I’m starting to connect the way the friendships and commenting works, to see how exciting it is to be connected with people who love books, love similar work, feel a real excitement for and in the written word.

I’ve started a blog there, and today was able to connect comments on the Tweetspeak Poetry Classroom to a workshop I recently attended at the Columbus State Community College Creative Writing Workshop.

It’s lovely when “technology,” something that has always seemed clunky and scary and, well…inorganic…to me, suddenly melts away into what feels like conversation with friends around a table full of tea and cookies and heaped-up piles of really good books. Marvelous!

There’s a Part 2 to this, but it will wait, for now…all things come together eventually.

Don’t they?

National Poetry Month is such a lovely concept and for so many reasons. But it’s also a tool. Many poets challenge themselves to write thirty poems in thirty days–one new poem each day of the month. (Lots of poets do it all over again in November, during National Novel Writing Month.)

I first tried it three years ago, not knowing it was a “thing” and that so many poets simply call it 30/30. It was, at the time, a personal challenge I’d set for myself, and one which, honestly, I didn’t think I could live up to. But I did!

It helped that I started reading my poems at the open mics in town. That’s where I found out so many other poets were doing the same thing. And of course it helped even more that one of those open mics is First Draft Poetry Night, hosted at that time by Joanna Schroeder, now by Louise Robertson. First Draft requires that any poem read must be a new poem, or least one never performed before. It’s scary to read something brand new, something that often really is just a draft, but the spirit of that show is that it’s all okay. The emphasis is on producing new work–on taking those risks.

Turned out, I finished that month successfully, thirty poems in thirty days, and actually kept going into May. The idea of stopping caused more anxiety than had the prospect of starting. That petered out, eventually, about ten days in, but the overall process was a huge confidence booster, and I found that writing had become an easier process for me. I wasn’t afraid of making mistakes. I didn’t care if everything I wrote down wasn’t perfect or complete. I took more risks.

I started over again in November and made it through again. The next April, I again wrote thirty poems, even though I spent part of that time in the hospital. In fact, most of the poems from that month and the next November were where most of the poems from The Sudden Seduction of Gravity came from.

So, this month, I’ve set myself this challenge: To complete a rough draft of the new collection I’ve started. I have so far (as of today!) two poems. The book is tentatively titled Not All the Bones of Birds Are Hollow. I have a very rough scratch-list outline of titles and ideas that form a skeletal structure of what I’ve no doubt will be a completed book.

I’ve other things set up for April. Tweetspeak Poetry will be using The Sudden Seduction of Gravity in their April Poetry Classroom. (This month, Tania Runyan is teacher!)

I also have several quite-big family events going on, including two music recitals coinciding with a visit from grandma–which I’m delighted about, but which I know I’ll have to work around. The idea, of course, is not to wait till there’s a better time, till you have more time. It never happens.

The idea is to challenge yourself. To be even more creative. To learn to see in your surroundings the potential for poetry everywhere. It’s amazing to see yourself constantly grabbing for slips of poetry, or reciting a line over and over again in the car so you don’t forget it because you can’t write it down.

A while ago, while reading Amy Newman‘s Dear Editor, I was entranced by one of the poems that involved a tea kettle on the stove. When I stopped to make lunch, I opened the refrigerator and suddenly saw so much more than food.

THAT’S the idea. To surround yourself with poetry, reading others’ and writing your own–even scraps of it, a little every day but consistently–and allow yourself the see the world differently. It’s like sunshine. It’s like love.