Spring hiatus

As many demands (deadlines, hoards, promises, etcetera) are trilling my name in high, insistent voices, I am taking a little break from life on the internet. Comments here will reach my personal (that is, non-work) email address, should you have the surprising, perhaps dire (unlikely, but odd things happen in this world of wonders) need for a poet and novelist.

Marly, elsewhere:

• Thaliad's adventure in verse, with art by artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins (Montreal: Phoenicia, 2012) here and here 
• The Foliate Head's collection of poems with art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, Stanza Press (UK) here
• A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage (novel) from Mercer University Press (ForeWord 2013 finalist in the general fiction category; The Ferrol Sams Award, 2012) here
• The Throne of Psyche, collection of formal poetry from Mercer, 2011, here
• Samples from my 2011-12 books at Scribd.
• See tabs above for information on individual books, including review clips.

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. —A.A. Milne

Spring & all

The face of a man who has joy. Photo: Jessica Hill.

What a delicious morning! Drove my youngest to school on torn-up roads under heavy boughs of flowers, saw a happy dog chasing birds, sang all the way home, and fell in love with an old barbering man named Anthony Cymerys who paid right attention in church. Then I wrote a poem about it all.

I flashed around the sky and landed safely, and never once remembered Benghazi or IRS targeting or any number of things that tugged at me this week... On a glad morning, I feel sure that right things win through in the end, and that being in the world but not quite of the world will save us from the realm of Babel, jargon, and lies.

Index to my online poems in Mezzo Cammin

2012.1, 2012.2

2011.2, 2011.1, 

2010.2, 2010.1, 

2009.2, 2009.1,

2008.2, 2008.1, 

and 2007.1.

Mezzo Cammin is one of my favorite places to publish. I admire the energy and work of poet, Mezzo Cammin editor, West Chester director, and founder of the woman poets' timeline project Kim Bridgford. Here's a little map to my various publications there. More will be coming out in the next few issues. I think this compact list can serve as a little introduction to my poetry, as it contains a lot of variety, including a snip from Thaliad, poems from The Foliate Head and The Throne of Psyche, and some adventures with the Fool and the King from The Book of the Red King (forthcoming, some day!)

And don't miss "Don't make fun of renowned Dan Brown."

Susan Morgan Leveille + Oaks Gallery

Click to see details.
Shawl by Susan Morgan Leveille.

Again I'm recommending weaver Susan Morgan Leveille (commission a coverlet, shawl, table covering, more!) and her Oaks Gallery at Riverwood (Dillsboro, North Carolina) for weaving and mountain crafts. Susan's great-aunt, Lucy Morgan, founded The Penland School of Crafts and taught a multitude of western North Carolina mountain women the crafts that had once been the birthright of many Scots-Irish settlers. Many surviving overshot coverlets and other weavings are evidence of her important work, as is the flourishing of Penland. "Founded in 1929 by Lucy Morgan, Penland School was originally an outgrowth of a craft-based economic development project she had started several years earlier."

Almost a century later, her great-niece Susan teaches weaving, is a superb weaver (starting when she was barely school age at Penland), and owns The Oaks Gallery with her husband. The Oaks Gallery sells jewelry, handmade clothing, pottery, carvings, metalwork, and more, all from first-rate craftspeople in North Carolina and beyond, and is a part of the Riverwood studios founded by Susan's parents, Ralph and Ruth Morgan.

Susan's work is beautiful; it also has the same sort of collectible cachet that accrues to, say, the Ben Owens family line of potters in Seagrove. The history of North Carolina mountain crafts is tied to the Morgan family in important, remembered ways.

Leveille specializes in overshot coverlet weaving, a form common in the mountains for generations. She says that she enjoys "sharing how these coverlets were made, and sharing their structure." She teaches every chance she can get, she says, both privately and in many workshops and craft schools throughout the region. Among the other traditional weaving styles she teaches are lace weave of huck toweling, and the Summer and Winter weave that was popular in colonial times. She loves teaching children and adults, and can gear workshops to any age or skill level. In her frequent school visits, she particularly loves "helping teachers relate weaving and fiber to whatever they might be teaching," from arithmetic and geometry to history and music. These concepts all come together in surprising but natural intersections in the art of weaving.

Leveille has taught at Penland, the John C. Campbell Folk School, and numerous other important craft centers. She is also one of the co-founders of the Stecoah Valley Weavers, a guild that operates from Robbinsville's Stecoah Valley Center on a principle of economic and individual development much like her great aunt's vision for the Penland School.

The Western Carolina mountains are a frequent destination for East Coast travelers. Take a vacation at Campbell or Penland and take a class with Susan--or meet her in Dillsboro, where she also teaches. She is superb weaver, and one of those people who are a thread in the fabric of a better, more beautiful world.

Susan Morgan Leveille, detail showing Norwegian krokbragd weave

The Bandersnatch

Drifted into a wee small nap, and woke dreaming that I was at a literary conference, staying in a marvelous hotel with sunny big rooms and wide halls that felt like home (only tidier, lacking progeny.) The place was called The Bandersnatch, and the outside was made of wood, wonderfully carved in a folk-art sort of way with the Bandersnatch itself closely surrounded by flowers and leaves and insects, all stained deep, brilliant colors with inks rather than being painted. The predominant color was a deep greeney color with a dash of turquoise blue in the mix. The sight was so wonderful that I felt disoriented on waking to realize that there is no such carved, inked hotel called The Bandersnatch in this world.

I tell you not to bore you with somebody else's dream but in order to increase the knowledge of The Bandersnatch, in hopes that some quirky, generous billionaire should be inspired to add it to the collection of marvels in our world. I believe my friend Clive could design the carved, inked Bandersnatch in his prospect of flowers and leaves. I always wanted to see a Bandersnatch, and now I have. However, all its sharp detail is disintegrating, as is the way in dreams. Like vampires, they suffer from the light.

P. S. As this is a second post of the day, I would hate for you to miss the beau présent challenge in the first. Scroll down! Be not shy but increase the strangeness and color of the world! Love, Marly

Word-doodling

Wandering around the labyrinth of Arts and Letters Daily over morning tea, I found a Sara Lodge review of Daniel Levin Becker's Many Subtle Channels--it's more like a feature piece, and is a sort of introduction to the fascinating word-twisters of OuLiPo, the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle. Since I spent my afternoon and evening at a long track meet, I felt a bit frivolous and immediately started playing with the beau présent, which Lodge defines this way: "A beau présent, meanwhile, is a poem that contains only the letters in the recipient’s name. Writing one for Malcolm X would thus pose a challenge."

I used my writer's name, Marly Youmans, rather than my full name, just to limit the exercise further. Try one! (And if you do, leave it or a link to it in the comments.)

A May Lay
Marly Youmans beau présent

You, a man, say, marl--
You, ram-Rama-Ramayama--
You, Mara, Mary, Lou--
You, lars or Lars--

Nary a you--
You, many.

And what about Malcolm X being a challenge? Why not take a stab at it?

LOL Mall
Malcolm X beau présent

Loco, all-mal mall?
Loco lox loom?
All-loco ox?

Mmm.
O, calm,
O, cool--

Loco XOXO, ma'am.
Loco LOL.

"Pretty well"

"In short, I am an ignoramus, but pretty well for a yeoman." -R. D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone

The "romance of Exmoor" was at first self-published (1869), or, as would have been said, "privately printed." The book did not sell very well. But the next year it caught fire with readers and has never been out of print since. Lorna Doone was admired by Mrs. Oliphant, Robert Louis Stevenson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Hardy. Now there's a self-publishing story!

"Poets share La. connection, mastery of language"

Greg Langley on four books of poetry by poets with Louisiana connections here. As a child I lived in lovely Gramercy and Baton Rouge . . . Mr. Langley reviews Thaliad in The Baton Rouge Advocate.

Happy Mother's Day--

My mother's hands, at some finishing work on a piece fresh off the loom.
She is also a great gardener, particularly with native plants.
She used to be head of Serials at Western Carolina University's Hunter Library.
She lives on top of a mountain next to the sky...