Early Mornings From My Window

Spring and summer are my favorites.
Sunshiny  days.
Early mornings on my patio.
A cup of coffee,
my journal,
and a smooth writing pen
completes my morning ritual.

By Gwendolyn Hooks

My End of Summer Workspace and a Related Poem

We TeachingAuthors have been sharing pictures of the view from, or of, our workspace, so let me start with this one:

This photo isn't exactly the view from my workspace. I took it while on my afternoon walk through the neighborhood. The tree caught my attention because its leaves are already starting to change colors. Can you tell? As beautiful as it is, for me, the tree is a sad reminder that summer is winding down, at least here in North America.

I'd been hoping to get away for a writing retreat this month, to spend several days focused on my current work-in-progress. And I'd planned to have pictures to share from that retreat. Sadly, I didn't manage to get away. Instead, I've been setting aside days at home devoted to the project. The following photo was taken in my office, and it will give you some clues about my project.

As you've probably guessed, I've been spending time reading and writing poetry. Of course, if you subscribe to my Creativity Newsletter, you already knew that. I shared a draft of a just-for-fun poem in my last newsletter and you can read it online here. (If you'd like to subscribe to the newsletter, which I send out every other month, you can do so here.)

In addition to reading and writing poetry, I've been listening to it, too, thanks to the Daily Poem podcast. That's where I recently heard Jane Kenyon's Three Songs at the End of Summer.   
Here's an excerpt from the poem:

Three Songs at the End of Summer (excerpt)
            by Jane Kenyon

A second crop of hay lies cut  
and turned. Five gleaming crows  
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,  
and like midwives and undertakers  
possess a weird authority.

Crickets leap from the stubble,  
parting before me like the Red Sea.  
The garden sprawls and spoils.

Across the lake the campers have learned  
to water ski. They have, or they haven’t.  
Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone  
suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,  
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.  
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod  
brighten the margins of the woods.

Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;  
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese. . . .

       Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. 

Read all of “Three Songs at the End of Summer” at the Poetry Foundation website.

I'm looking forward to reading lots more great poetry today via the Poetry Friday roundup, which is hosted this week by Australian author and poet Kathryn Apel.

Remember to always Write with Joy! 
Carmela

3 Dogs in My Writing Room!

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Howdy, Campers, and Happy Poetry Friday!  (My poem and the link to PF is below.)

For a short and sunny summer read, we TeachingAuthors are posting the view from my / of my work space.  So far, Bobbi's shared summer windows and her animal editors , Mary Ann shared two rooms with a view...and coffee, Esther offered us picture book author Zakieh Mohammed's Wednesday Writing Workout, and then she shared a photo of the "one wonderous addition" from her summer windows.

If I turned around from my desk, I'd see Eli chewing on whatever toy he's chosen from his toy drawer...

...but usually I'm poeming, politicking and bouncing on the BOSU ball I stole from my husband years ago:

working at my desk, August 2013.
Photo by Jone MacCulloch
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This is Our Summer of Dogs. My son and his fiancee are overseas, so Eli's two "nieces," Penny (the smart, shy, territorial butterscotch and white 8-year-old) and Gin (the bouncy, licky black 9-month-old puppy whose sibling's name was Tonic), are staying with us. For six weeks.

Everyone has chosen a toy from Eli's toy drawer.

Since Jone took the photo of me on the Bosu ball above, I've turned my desk to face the wall. (I rescued the letters from a business that was changing its name.)

Three dogs has been an adjustment.

That's the understatement of the year. I know it's not the same as moving to another state, changing my name, or becoming an electrician. Still, it feels as if I'm working on a master's degree in walking three dogs and picking up more than one poop at a time.

THREE DOG WALK

by April Halprin Wayland

One dog is just one.

Him and me.

Hear me hum.

Two dogs are just fine.

Two dogs.

In two straight lines.

Three dogs?  My gosh—unstoppable!

Friends say they will strengthen me.                                                   (I say they are all adoptable!)

poem (c) 2019 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.

Have a wonderful last whiff of summer or beginning of a new school year, Campers!

And thank you, Amy, for hosting Poetry Friday at The Poem Farm! 

This week, Amy's hosting a celebration of the life of Lee Bennett Hopkins; she invites everyone who wishes to share a poem inspired by or including a line from a LBH poem. Tag with #DearOneLBH.  

Stay tuned! TeachingAuthors will continue the appreciation
of Lee's poetry on September 20th.

posted by April Halprin Wayland, with the help of Eli, Penny and Gin, with love

The Views From MY Windows This Summer…

I’m happy to report: this summer’s views from my Chicago hi-rise’s windows remain the same as shared in my July post two years ago… with but one wondrous addition when looking south:

YAY!

I’m also happy to report: like Christine at today’s Poetry Friday link, I too have been wondering and wandering.
Feast your eyes on but a few of the people, places and “animals” my iPhone camera captured the past three months.

Enjoy the view wherever you are wandering and wondering!

Esther Hershenhorn

Two Rooms with a View

We Teaching Authors are looking out our windows this month (what else would you do in August?)

Coffee and a laptop on the deck.

To be honest, my home office has zero view. It was originally a tiny living room with plantation shutters. If you open the shutters the view is...a bunch of shrubbery, grown to where there is no view.  It's so claustrophobic, I only use it when I don't need to be inspired...just focused. Revisions and research and such. Nothing like a no-view room to keep you on task.

Here is where my laptop and I spend the majority of time in good weather...the back deck. Our lot is so heavily wooded that in summer I can imagine I'm on a Vermont mountain top (if I ignore the ancient swing set we've never gotten around to taking down.) We are surrounded by neighbors, but unless someone is mowing the lawn or using a chain saw, I feel alone in the woods.

We also have a rental house on Ocean Isle Beach, NC. We spend a lot of time there during the off-season (Oct-May) because it stays rented the rest of the time. When my husband and I designed it, I made sure to put in a writing porch off the master bedroom. Now that is some view.

Need coffee!

The ocean calms me, even on the days when it's so gloomy, you can't tell where the sky ends and the sea begins. For me a calm mind is a working mind. All the negative you-don't-know-what-you're-doing gremlins disappear. Words materialize on the page. Magic! When weather forces me inside, the view is the same from the dining room table. Even when fog rolls in, rain falls, and the waves explode on the shore, my creative mind stays in a Zen-like state.

And coffee appears, along with creativity.

No matter what the view, this is what writers aspire to achieve, this condition of creative mindfulness, aka, The Zone.  Go forth, and find your Creative Zone.

Find the horizon...I dare you!

Sunrise the morning before Hurricane Michael last fall.

Summer Windows and Winners!

Congratulations to Irene L, the winner of our giveaway of HOW I LEARNED TO FALL OUT OF TREES by Vincent X. Kirsch!

We are on the last days of a busy summer. We at Teaching Authors thought you might enjoy seeing what our working space looks like!

This is my workdesk. I'm working on revisions as I take Harold Underdown and Eileen Robinson's Kid Book Revisions Summer School 2019. It's a lot of reading and writing and more reading and writing!

But, I have help! This is Apollo.

We are best companions.

But sometimes, all this reading and writing can be exhausting! Apollo knows what to do.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name. 

(The Naming of Cats, by TS Eliot) 

I hope you are enjoying your summer days!

--Bobbi Miller

7 Ideas From My Messy Desk

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Howdy, Campers~ Happy Poetry Friday! My poem and the link to PF are below.

We at TeachingAuthors are easing our way back into blogging after a lovely summer s-t-r-e-t-c-h. Ahhhhh.

Our round-robin topic is The View From Our Desks.
Bobbi started us out from her new home, which she and her cat, Comma, are just moving into. She posted a poem aptly titled, The View From the Window by R.S. Thomas; Carmela's view is itinerant, beginning with her Creativity Camp, followed up with conference presentations (Carmela deserves a vacation!); Esther gave us stunning out-the-window views from her Chicago office; JoAnn is spending the summer writing poetry in her outside office, and Carla shares the long view: both the view from her office window...and also what she's thinking as she edits her upcoming book.

I've titled this post, "7 Ideas From My Messy Desk" because I've read that including numbers in a blog title attracts attention. (For you, dear readers, there really are seven ideas at the end.)

You and I know we can prove anything with sources from the internet, (which is why I use Snopes.com to check who actually said a quote, among other things)...and (surprise!) I've found a post which cites several studies indicating that a messy desk actually spurs creativity. Just the kind of study I love!

And...my desk is messy--or at least the side table is. I was going to clean up my office up for you...but why pretend?

I try to keep my desk itself clear, but on my side table you'll see:

• the aftermath of our annual block party (I want to print up new signs for next year before I put them away); 
• books I'm going through for my revised Writing Picture Books for Children class this fall; 
• two books my father loved by Tagore, which he discovered in India during WWII that I've been meaning to read for decades; 
• my handout, "Social Change Through Every Day Actions" from my presentation at the International Literacy Association's conference in Orlando two weeks ago; 
• a pile of 50-year-old letters from my father; 
• books and notes from my trips to New Zealand and Japan this spring;
• a bunch of nearly unreadable ideas jotted down in the middle of the night.

W

Not neat. But an office I would have died for when I was a teenager.
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Here are two poems on today's topic:

MY DESK 1.
by April Halprin Wayland

If you come by
I'll clean it up

but if you don't

I won't.

MY DESK 2.
by April Halprin Wayland

My desk's a sorcerer's printing press,
a paper field
of don't-forgets.

Memos piled in mountain peaks.
Scrawled ideas
in ancient Greek.

Each brilliant message?
Lost in space.
Possibly a sign of grace. 

poems (c) April Halprin Wayland 2017. all rights reserved.

Do you ever write notes to yourself at night...brilliant ideas that are sure to rock the literary world...and when you wake up, they're either utterly incomprehensible, absurd or worse, ho-hum? Here's seven from the last few weeks:

1. Never say no to a rubber band; 
2. "I'm not shouting!" she shouts; 
3. a friend wrote to me: "so glad the conf was good and...that you had fun at the Penguin dinner. (which sounds like the start of a poem)"; 
4. per Nancy Bo Flood: Some languages have no tenses; so they can't talk about the past or future; 
5. Two kids: one named Smoke, one named Mirrors;
6. from A.Word.A.Day: "Natalie came home from school excited and worried, announcing, “Laura was hit by the school bus and had a conclusion!”;
7. Mr. Tongue Goes to the Unemployment Office (I have no idea what I was thinking, but I'm still laughing!)

I'd love to read ideas you've jotted down late at night!

Thank you, Donna, at Mainely Write for hosting Poetry Friday today!

 posted with the help of Monkey (can you find him in the picture of my office, above?) and Eli, who is pictured in his uncluttered corner office:

The View from MY Chicago Desk

Ah! Let’s hear it for the soul-warming, sunny southern exposure the view from my Chicago desk offers me daily!

And, what about those postcard-perfect images my balcony conjures up
when I look west,
to the spine-steeling Water Tower, the only public building to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871,

or east, to Lake Michigan’s Spirit-calming ever-changing blue, blue waters?
I pinch myself often to test my Good Fortune’s realness.

No matter the work, woe or worry I’m wrestling, seeing my big-shouldered city that Carl Sandburg poetically-tagged “a tall bold slugger” miraculously keeps me at bat.

And should I falter somehow, and strike out, I can always pull up an internal treasure or two I’ve stored for such times.

Like the pure joy the seven talented writers (pictured below) magically made and bottled last week during our Manuscript Workshop at the Landgrove Inn in Landgrove, Vermont.

                           ( Left to right: Heather Preusser, Lee Miao, Libby Ester,
                             Jerry Oberle, Mary Serocynski, Beth Najberg,
                             Cheryl Sullivan)

Happy viewing from your desks, both in-and-ex-ternally!

Esther Hershenhorn

PS.
If you’re curious as to what I would see if able to look north, click here. :)