A novel of poetic beauty

Sometimes prose is poetry. As National Poetry Month kicks off, I want to shout out THE WOOD WIFE, a book that’s new to me but has been around since 1996 and won the Mythopoeic Award.
I ordered it after reading a good review and because I’m a fan of Terri Windling’s skill as an editor of many fantasy and horror anthologies. One of my all-time favorites is THE FAERY REEL, which she co-edited with Ellen Datlow.
I haven’t finished reading THE WOOD WIFE (about 2/3 inhaled), so this isn’t a review. It’s more of a love letter to a story that keeps fascinating me and to words that make me pause and sigh.
And because it’s about a fictional poet, Davis Cooper, and filled with snippets of his poetry, it’s perfect for National Poetry Month. The book isn’t a verse novel it’s just filled with poetic language, pieces of Cooper’s poems and musings on arts of all kinds.
The hills call in a tongue

I can not speak, a constant murmuring,

calling the rain from my dry bones,

and syllables from the marrow.—THE WOOD WIFE, Davis Cooper

This story is as elusive as its shapeshifter characters, making you question what is real, what is imagination. But it is solidly set. Windling, who is also an artist, paints the scenes with vivid words that carry the reader to the wild desert and hills surrounding Tucson:
She turned slowly, and saw the great white stag pick its way up the rocks of the creek. His eyes were black as a starless night. His hide was velvet, his horns were ivory, he was made of more than flesh and bones. He gathered the dying light of the sky into his being, like a radiant star.

The protagonist, Maggie Black, is forty and a respected poet herself who inherits Davis’s house after his strange death, which appears to be murder. She goes to check it out, not intending to stay but interested in the mystery and any writings he may have left behind. She finds herself enchanted by the desert and its magic and drawn into something beyond time and space.

The Drowned Girl leaves wet footprints,

plaits her hair with pond weed, fingers

white as milk, as death, as loneliness,

upon root, wood, black stone…--THE WOOD WIFE, Davis Cooper

At one point Maggie is surprised to figure out that she’d always seen Davis’s poems as set in England where he was born. But instead of lush, green woods, she realized he was writing about the desert landscape. Her new friend, Fox, responds: “What does it matter whose head those images came from? ‘Poetry is a conversation not a monologue,’ Fox quoted Cooper in a passable English accent. “A writer can only put the words on paper; the vision has to come from the reader, right? It’s language, not paint, not film. That’s the beauty of it to me.”

*

Anyone want to have a conversation on poetry, on this book, on the beauty of language?

Sweet mystery

What is more mysterious than life, than the intricacies of nature? This fern captivated me from the moment I noticed it in the garden of my late mother-in-law. Her name, too, was Fern.

*

The writer in me sees: A fairy's chariot. A creature from a distant planet. A deep sea being, like an octopus, curling into itself when flung upon land. A mystery waiting to unfold.

*

I love that my eyes, my mind, take these leaps. And I know that helps my writing.

I'm currently two-thirds done with my fairy tale WIP and ready to take the giant leap into the climax and resolution, where all the complex, mysterious threads come together. I've been hearing the characters' dialogue for weeks. I haven't written down these confrontations, because I see them, I know them. They are developing, waiting to unfold and will be there when I need them.

*

Here is another view of a fern frond unfolding. This one looks like an upside down seahorse, doesn't it?

*
Fern loved the sea, lived by it most of her life. She also loved literature but rarely let anyone see her writings, her words scribbled on backs of envelopes, scraps of lined paper or sometimes typed.

After she died, my daughter found a folder of her writings with a note (on an envelope) to me. It read, "Did I ever show you, I think not, these poor, few travesties of lyric songs. You may see them, dear."

*

A moment, please. My eyes tear, my heart aches. I do miss her.

*

Since April is National Poetry month, I'll share one of Fern's poems, hoping that I found the most finished draft she wrote.

*

She called it No Myth.

*

Forewarned, Psyche dared not find

the face of Love in light,

nor flare of discontent which might

unseat that lord; no sight

reveal if he be radiant or foul.

And yet he knows her contour,

slant and color of the eye,

her soul, computerized,

conditioned, tidied, tamed,

claimed, tuned to die,

he shoots the shaft, reversed, towards home.

Did she risk an open query,

haggle over price to pay,

trade, while tugging at Love's sleeve,

deceit for immortality?

Or make that godly, girlish move

aware, sure, pure in sin,

knowing lone Beauty, Love

needs not consort with Truth to win.

*

Thank you, Fern, for opening my eyes to so much, to the magic and the truth all around us.

*

(once again, I cross my fingers that Blogger won't make too much mess of the paragraph spacing)

Witches and zombies and poems, oh my!

It's April First, which means April Fool's Day and National Poetry Month (you didn't see that coming, did you?).
I'm not playing tricks on you, but I am going to be playful and post some zombie haiku I wrote for a contest Angela Ackerman at The Bookshelf Muse held some time ago. I won a highly coveted critique from her. Still grateful.
Also, I just got picked as a Most Relevant finalist in Andrea Cremer's paranormal haiku contest, although I didn't win the ARC of her upcoming NIGHTSHADE. Her sorting hat picked someone quite deserving, but I soooooo want to read that book! *howls mournfully*
*
So here you go--a string of spooky, funny or just-plain-gross haiku.
*
heads thrown back, ears flat,
wolves howled the moon loose from its
mooring in the trees
*
hovering around
a circle of ancient stones,
wraiths found their anchor
*
the witches circled,
gazing on the flightless creatures
impotent below
*
my darlings, my dears,
bring me back a nice spoonful
of brains for our tea
*
along the old road
not a soul--only echoes
of shuffling footsteps
*
wrapping moist innards
in bamboo leaves, she pauses
to lick her fingers