Poetry Writing Workshop for a Snowy Day

It's pretty, as long as you don't
have to go out in it.
Photo from 2011.

How to write an “imagist” poem, after William Carlos Williams, and after a snowstorm that you shouldn’t have been driving in.

The original –

This Is Just to Say

by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

The Common Household Line-by-line tutorial

First stanza

1. “I have” + verb which connotes consumption, such as “eaten”, “used up”, “smashed”, “drove”

2.  Insert the delectable foodstuff or other item which you ate/used but which everyone else wanted to consume

3.  “That were/was in”

4. Location of said delectable

Second stanza

5, 6, 7. “And which”

             “You were probably”

             “saving”

8. “for “ insert use for which delectable had been intended

Final stanza

9.  Blithely ask for forgiveness

10. State how much you enjoyed said item that you deprived everyone else of

11. “So “ + adjective describing the delectable item

12. “And so” + a different adjective describing the delectable item

Final steps

Finally, think of a nonchalant or understated sort of title for your poem.

Do not include any punctuation.  I would say punctuation is so twentieth-century pre-texting era, but Wm. C. Wms wrote his poem in the 20th Century so there

Here is my poem, after enduring a 1 ½ hour drive home (2 hours if you count that I had to detour to a local mall because the road was closed, and I got a sub-par lunch there) from church choir rehearsal in a snowstorm, a drive which usually takes 15 minutes. 

Cutting the Cheese

by Common Household Mom

I have eaten

the New Zealand sharp cheddar cheese

that was in

the tupperware on the second shelf of the fridge

and which

you were probably

saving

for your high-protein low-carb breakfast

Forgive me

it was delectable

so buttery

and so stress-reducing after the most harrowing drive home on the suburban streets woefully unprepared for the snow (as was I)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Here are two versions written by Older Daughter, way back in 2005, when she was a teenager.

Variations on the Theme

Yesterday, I broke the piano that you had been saving to teach with.

I’m sorry, but I was practicing karate.

I’d regret it, but it was the perfect target.

I’m sorry, but I burned the school yesterday.

I didn’t know that you were using it.

And besides, I’m a firefighter, and there was nothing else to do.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

But I think Older Daughter was actually riffing on this:

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams

Kenneth Koch

I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.

I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do

and its wooden beams were so inviting.

 

We laughed at the hollyhocks together

and then I sprayed them with lye.

Forgive me.  I simply do not know what I am doing.

 

I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.

The man who asked for it was shabby

and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

 

Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.

Forgive me.  I was clumsy, and

I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Also, I had a big mug of hot chocolate, with dark chocolate.

I feel a bit better now.  Yes, yes, I am indeed grateful that I didn’t get in a wreck or sustain any injury.  (My feet were wet and cold, though.)  My rage is contained, and I am home and back to using punctuation.

Einstein was also perturbed by snow (2019).

Blog Cookie Swap: Ginger Molasses Crinkles

The oddest things bring me cheer these days.  I was so excited to see the idea of a blog cookie swap, over at Life Of a Doctor’s Wife (the 4th item).  

I opted to make Ginger Molasses Crinkles, which hardly anyone in the family but me likes.  A treat for me!  I made half a batch, because there will be other Christmas sweets in due course.  I will give you the recipe first and then my verbiage.

Ginger-Molasses Crinkles HALF-RECIPE

This makes 2 dozen.

6 Tablespoons shortening

1/2 cup white sugar, plus more for rolling

1/2 egg

2 Tbsp molasses

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp salt

Cream shortening and sugar.  Add egg, then molasses and other ingredients.  Mix.  

Put the batter in a container and refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.  

Preheat oven to 350 F.  

Form small balls and roll in granulated sugar.  Place on greased cookie sheet (but I don’t grease the sheet and it’s fine).  Bake at 350F for 5 to 8 minutes.  

Leave them sitting on the cookie tray until they “burst”, then move gently to a cooling rack.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This recipe was given to me by a friend.  These cookies are quite easy, and I find it magical how the crinkles occur spontaneously during/after baking.  

After we made pies at Thanksgiving,
I asked my son to clearly label the 
unflavored shortening.  
And he did.

Fortunately I had all the ingredients in the house.  About a year ago, Someone-Not-Me purchased butter-flavored shortening, but, just, no.  I thought I might have to use it this time, but I had enough in the carefully-labeled non-butter-flavored regular shortening.

“Grandma’s” molasses is a hearty substance – I’ve had this jar for several years, and it is good through next year.  And didn’t I read somewhere that “best by” dates are hokum anyway?  

By a miracle, the molasses jar was easy to open.  I must have taken great care to clean it off a year ago, before putting the lid on.  Molasses is notoriously hard to handle, and I find it amazing to think that it travelled at 35 mph during the Great Molasses Flood of 1919.  Measuring the molasses is probably the most difficult part of this cookie recipe.

Molasses is one of those ingredients
that look rather evil in the
mixing bowl.

It was a little difficult doling out half an egg.  Next time I am going to see what happens if I use the entire egg in the half recipe.

It's a tiny amount of batter!

It is a pleasant and healing task to make the little balls of dough and roll them in sugar.  I forgot to take a photo of them on the cookie sheet before baking.  The CHH said they looked like snickerdoodles, which are baked the same way.

In the oven the magic occurs, and in just a few short minutes, tiny San Andreas faults happen in the cookies.  Be sure to let them cool on the cookie sheet.  

So simple and crinkled

These cookies are soft and delightful.  Danger, Will Robinson: If you cook them for too long, they will turn into gingersnaps.  

They freeze well.  Cool completely, and wrap securely.

For a much more involved Christmas baking blog post, check out our Robert Frost gingerbread scene from a few years ago.

I used the half egg in tonight's dinner,
which was crustless quiche.

Book Club Selection Process

Faithful blog reader and published author Melissa has asked the question of the year.  How does the book club select books?

Due to extraordinary good fortune, I am in two book clubs.  Both clubs have great discussions and insights.  The book selection process for one is polar opposite to the other.   The description is perhaps tedious, but here it is.

Book Club 1 

was started by my husband in July 2015, includes participants of all genders, but does not usually include snacks or beverages.  The participants include a few who need to or greatly prefer to listen to audio books, and others favor the e-book format, so our selection process tries to take that into account.  

This book club tends to pick books with a more recent publication date than the other club, with an average at the year 2000, and the earliest 1813.  About half of our selections are from female authors, and about one-quarter of our books are non-fiction.  No children’s lit.  Poetry only once.  

Our process has also changed in the past year or so, because we found that audio & ebooks were not available quickly from the library.  In my understanding, this is due to publishers putting a strangle-hold on library copies.  Almost all books worth reading have a wait time at the library, for digital & audio versions.

So now, we select the book a few months out.  At our November gathering, we selected the date and the book for January.  Some attend in person and the rest on zoom.  In the winter months, we sometimes decide to do zoom only.  

To select the book, people make suggestions – titles and authors.  Someone looks up availability of the various formats at the local library.   I try to look up page count and publication date, because if it’s more than 450 pages we might need extra time.  We come to a consensus agreement on which book to read.  Then we pick a date and discussion leader.

There are seven authors that this book club has chosen more than once.  Philip Roth is a favorite for this book club (for me, he’s good but not my favorite) – we have read three of his works.  We have read two books by each of the following authors: Karen Armstrong, Fredrik Backman, Louise Erdrich, Terry Pratchett, Kim Michele Richardson, and John Steinbeck.  

Book Club 2 

was started by my children’s piano teacher in Sep 2016, with the clever name of “Page Turners Book Club” which I like to use to differentiate it from my other book club.  

For most of the discussions, the participants are all women.  We hold our meetings at participants’ houses, with snacks and beverages, sometimes including wine.   

This book club has selected plenty of 21st century books, but has more of a selection from earlier eras (average publication date 1975; earliest 1595 -- Shakespeare) than Book Club 1.  The selections are 65% from female authors.  This group also reads children's and Y.A. lit.  We usually discuss poetry in November, either picking the works of one poet, or reading poems from a selection of authors.

This group is quite intentional about book selection, and picks the books for the entire year ahead of time.  If we can, we like to have a book for each of these categories, sometimes combining them:

- A Pulitzer Prize winner

- A beloved classic

- A novel for Black History month

- Women’s history

- Children’s / Y.A. lit

- winter or Christmas focus for December

- something lighter for September and May

- poetry month - usually November

- coordinated with a theater performance: Shakespeare, or another play

In July or August we gather suggestions for the year starting in September or October.  I am not the ‘director’ of this club, but I try to get the suggestions ahead of time so I can look up the page count & publication date.  Another person looks up what local theater performances in the upcoming year might be of interest.  Then there is a lively discussion to pick the books.  If there is a theater play (Shakespeare, anyone?) being presented in town, we plan to read and discuss that play in the month or two before the performance.

We just had our session for poetry in November.  We had a selection of poems focussed on winter, some of which we read out loud.  It was wonderful to hear the reflections and insights of these women!  I get almost nothing out of poetry when I read it on my own.

This book club is more likely to revisit an author's work, reading eleven authors more than once.  We've read three works each by Kate DiCamillo, Charles Dickens, Ann Patchett, William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Strout, Colson Whitehead.  And two works each by Jane Austen,  Annie Dillard, Margot Livesey, Maggie O'Farrell, and Mary Oliver (two sessions reading selected poems).

Book Club 1 started in July 2015, but all the 
selections that year were by male authors.
The members of the book club have changed
since then, and so has our author selection.

I apologize for the totally crappy resolution of the charts.  I don't have time or knowledge to fix it.

First Lines: November 2024 edition

Page from "Altered Book"
Artist: Chris Fondi

I drastically altered my reading habits after Nov 5th.  No news.  No opinion pieces.  Only books.  Among the things I am mourning, one is this loss, this big change in what I read.

Animals encountered in this month’s reading include: an elephant detective, giraffes who travel, a dog with a gold tooth, modern-day dinosaurs, and a bear.

 

Book 1

In Which My Grandmother Tells the Story of My Mother’s birth

Lower Alabama 1931

We didn’t expect her quite as early as she came.  We were at Mother’s peeling peaches to can.

 

 

Book 2

A TRIP TO SEE A DIAMOND 

‘Arise, Sir Chopra.’ As the gleaming blade touched gently down upon his shoulder, Inspector Ashwin Chopra (Retd) found himself overcome by a jumble of conflicting emotions.

 

Book 3

Woodrow Wilson Nickel died in the year 2025, on a usual day, in the usual way, at the rather unusual age of 105.

 

Book 4

CORONADO ISLAND, CALIFORNIA 

MAY 1966 

The walled and gated McGrath estate was a world unto itself, protected and private.

 

Book 5

In the distance a thunderous bellow rang out, followed by the terrible sound of falling trees and a stampede of terrified animals.

 

 

Book 6

1. Knives and Chromosomes

Bertie Pollock (6) was the son of Irene Pollock (37) and Stuart Pollock (40), and older brother of Ulysses Colquhoun Pollock (1).   

Book 7

August 7

When I tell you that my white name is Cedar Hawk Songmaker and that I am the adopted child of Minneapolis liberals, and that when I went looking for my Ojibwe parents and found that I was born Mary Potts I hid the knowledge, maybe you’ll understand.  Or not.

 

 

Book 8

If I’d known what there was to know about Early Auden, that strangest of boys, I might have been scared off, or at least kept my distance like all the others.

 

Book 9

In the first place, it did not seem quite right that a girl that young should be free to wander the hotel and seaside town without a chaperone.  

 

The titles and authors revealed:

 

Several of my reads this month included a character with a physical disability, including:

character with withered arm, in West with Giraffes.  Brutal combat injuries in

The Women.  Character with amputated limb (war injury) in The Hazelbourne…

 

Book 1

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss

By Margaret Renkl

240 pages • first pub 2019

Extremely short and poignant essays.  Some about nature, some about loss, and love mixed into all of it,

as the subtitle says.  I finished this book on Nov 3rd.  Otherwise, I might not have made it

through.  Includes encounters with animals but I forgot to note any.

 

 

Book 2

The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown

(Baby Ganesh Agency Investigation series #2)

By Vaseem Khan

368 pages • first pub 2016

Started on Nov 6 because I could not concentrate on anything else, and did not want

to see ANY news.  Highly entertaining.  I have no idea if books like this, that take

place in other countries but are written for an American audience (e.g. No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency),

give an accurate portrayal of the country, but this one seems to.   Except for the

elephant detective, that is.  That’s highly imaginative. 

 

 

Book 3

West with Giraffes

By Lynda Rutledge

346 pages • first pub 2021

Fictionalized account of the improbable but true travels of two giraffes in 1938 US. 

Repetitive, but I liked the characters.

Book 4

The Women

By Kristin Hannah

471 pages • first pub 2024 

The only reason I completed this book at this time was because it was for book club. 

The book is useful for learning in a visceral way about the lives of US Army

nurses during the Vietnam War.  The first half was interesting if desperate and gory. 

The second half seemed to me quite a soap opera.  Everyone raves about this book. 

My response is: I didn’t enjoy reading it but I learned from it.  Also, huge

number of content warnings.  Surprisingly, rape is not one of them. What I mean is, I do

not remember reading about rape, although the conditions described in the book seemed

ripe for it.

 

Book 5

The Fairy-Tale Detectives

The Sisters Grimm #1

By Michael Buckley with Peter Ferguson.  Children’s lit.

284 pages • first pub 2005

I liked the main characters - the Grimm sisters.  Even though it’s kids’ lit,

I was supremely annoyed by the resemblance of the bully character to

some real-life prominent people.  

 

Book 6

Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers (44 Scotland Street series #9)

By Alexander McCall Smith

295 pages • first pub 2013

The book was good, but I was annoyed that it was not available in kindle

format from the library.  I had to read it on Libby.  Not optimal.  But still,

I so much need to escape to Scotland at this time.  Includes the familiar character

Cyril the Dog With the Gold Tooth.

 

Book 7

Future Home of the Living God

By Louise Erdrich

288 pages • first pub 2017

A weird book. Written in 2017 but incredibly prescient about what has now

happened to women's rights.  Also addresses climate change, but in a way I would

not have thought of, with the occasional appearance of dinosaurs.  The only reason I

read this book was because it was for book club, coming up in December.

 

 

Book 8

Navigating Early

By Clare Vanderpool

306 pages • first pub 2013. Y.A. lit. 

Really enjoyed this book - full of symbolism and very interesting characters. 

Includes an important encounter with a bear.

 

 

Book 9

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club

By Helen Simonson

420 pages • first pub 2024

Takes place in Hazelbourne-on-Sea, a British seaside town, after WWI. 

Less jolly than I had assumed based on the short blurb I read.  Kinda hits you

over the head with the sexism, but that is probably accurate for post World War I

Britain.  Also portrays the racism of that time, but in a more muted way than the sexism. 

The amount of mental energy the characters spend on appearing proper is huge. 

The need for chaperones in every circumstance, oy!

There are many characters, and key facts about them, introduced in the first 30 pages. 

It took a lot of concentration, and I had to read that part twice.

And then there are the names of residences to learn, because Britain:

Hotel Meredith

Clivehill - residence of Lady Mercer.

Penneston - mansion of Lady Wirrall.

Cabbage Beach - residence of Mrs Fog’s childhood friends

Quote: 

“Of course it is so much nicer to have your own cook.  Hotel cooking is all

theater and suspicious butter,” she said, as the waiter presented her a bread roll

and a small china pot of butter with his silver tongs.