Collaborations with Mary Hillier in 2008

Mary's art is so amazing! She and I have collaborated several times now and have two more publications coming up.

I'd love it if you take a look at this In The Fray Issue containing four of our collaborations. While you're there, take a look around the journal. It's diverse and interesting. They also pay, which is unusual for a zine.

Here's one of the images as a teaser. Nude Maiden On The Cross. Click to enlarge.



This went with my City of Forgiven Whores:

In this city
where birds fly upside
down, and sadness is a welt
made by a raindrop, he comes to me.

He speaks of sleep-talking dreamers,
whores dunked by blind preachers,
then kisses me like when we were young.

I tug him inside
and we soar till our wings melt —
two candles, burnt to the nub
of a universe rebuilding.

We fall past old gods
converted to new ways of seeing
into the clear cleansing river of Eros
that finally Huck Finns us away.

Pageland, S.C., my hometown, as training area in World War II

Click HERE for the link about when Hospital Training Grounds were established in Pageland during World War II.

Scroll down for photos from the link and later.

An excerpt from the link:
It was expected that the 8th Evacuation Hospital would be activated on September 1, 1942. To provide field experience during July and August, the members of the University unit applied for active duty. While awaiting orders, the individuals closed medical practices, transferred patients and their records, sold or stored equipment, and made wills. By the end of June members of the unit received a red-bordered “IMMEDIATE ACTION” order to active duty.

The unit was assigned to the 3d Evacuation Hospital which it joined in Pageland, South Carolina. The new officers spent the first two weeks in basic training. Four or five hours each day were devoted to lectures on military courtesy, medical records, military administration, field sanitation, camouflage, and the use of gas masks. Both officers and enlisted men went on road marches and learned to roll packs and pitch tents. After general training they set up an evacuation hospital to serve the troops during maneuvers. Tents for the medical and surgical wards, operating room, dispensary, kitchen, x-ray, and messes were pitched in a field. The members of the unit were also responsible for unpacking the hospital equipment and drugs for the pharmacy. They discovered that most items had been wrapped in November 1918 newspapers. The equipment was incomplete in modern operating room equipment, lacking in essential laboratory and X-ray equipment, and stocked with obsolete items.

end of excerpt.

Click photos to see larger. The captions are UNDER each photo.

The gym shown in the website photo was across the street from my house, where I lived after this happened, and was part of the high school. The big two story house was two doors down from where I later lived. It's an interesting slice of war time I'd not seen until someone from Pageland posted this link.



The house two doors down. This was used as nurses quarters.




This is the same house, taken when I was in seventh grade. My female friends flocked to play touch football in the neighbor's front yard in hopes that the 'new boy in town' would come out. His family had recently moved into the big white house. The neighbor in the house whose yard we were in is now in her nineties and going strong.





Sandbox behind the white house. Me with neighborhood kids. I'm wearing the glasses.The shed behind us was where the 'new kid's' older twin brothers hung me by my shirt laughing to get even for my punching HIM in the stomach after he tackled me playing touch football to show off to my friends. The house behind that belonged to one of the poorer families in town.



A younger shot, playing in the middle neighbor's yard:-)




Pageland High School Gym, where I later attended many basketball games and the junior senior prom. The gym still stands, but the High School was torn down and a Middle School built in its place. My father was school superintendent, so we lived in the house designated for that position across from the school (yes, we paid rent)



Our house. My bedroom overlooked the side porch and had front dormer windows. When I practiced my clarinet too late at night, Mrs. Tucker called up from their bedroom window below...'Priscilla , can you stop for the night?'. Oh dear. I always did.



Playing with little next door neighbor outside my side porch.




Headed for the prom junior year in that gym. Ohhh, those glasses.

Meatloaf For Crying Out Loud

I don't think there's a bad cut on his Bat Out of Hell album , made in the late seventies, his only hit album to my knowledge.

Dreams At Stake (Living with ME/CFS)

Please take the time to read this powerful interview on the blog, Dreams at Stake, to get a feeling for what it's like to have a severe case of ME/CFS. Go to Dreams At Stake post.

This is the illness that has tied me mostly to my own home since September 23, 1990. Not fun at all.

Are blogs beginning to lose their readership to communities such as Facebook?

I remember when personal blogs were read by a large number of people and many comments made to posts. I admit to not reading other blog posts the way I used to , just as readership of mine has dropped to about half of what it was not long after I first started. Maybe the blog, with the exception of those 'star' blogs that everyone reads, is going the way of the website now. I started with a website and still have it . I know people read it . My web-tracker shows more visitors there than to my blog, but no-one except spammers has signed the guest book in years. I'm thinking about removing the guest book. I mainly use the website as a place I enjoy playing with and storing the last version of poems I've written or haiga I've created. There's no interaction on a website which I know I've come to like and enjoy.

With as many problems as facebook has, if you stay away from all the applications and have it work for you, it's a good site to use. I can post poetry there without the search engines picking it up, like on blogger, making it ineligible for publication in many journals (and I don't post poems even there if I'm going to submit to a journal that's very strict about that rule). I can message people without giving out my email to a lot of people, connect with new poets, get announcements when a journal is taking new submissions and, just recently, a group was started about my old hometown of 2500 people. That group has been a real bonus. I've reconnected to people who were friends but no longer live there, some who do, and met people related to people I was close to. I feel like my hometown had been lost when my parents died but has been returned to me, even if only on the internet. Some of these connections have led to phone calls and a lot of catching up. So special.

So what about this blog? Do I keep on pounding out notes when I see my visitors now are more often coming from a google search that won't interest them in my blog or do I let it slide and post once a month?

I just don't know. My energy is limited by ME/CFS, so I'm trying to choose wisely.

Annie Lennox Every Time We Say Goodbye HIV Tribute

William Michaelian fascinates me!

Read his blog Recently Banned Literature and you'll see why. If I didn't have this snarky cold back again I'd tell you but if you check out his blog you'll find out for yourself.

Steve Vai Tender Surrender

Wonderful guitar work in a haunting, mellow song.

Featured on Poetic Asides. Thank you Robert Brewer!

Go to Poetic Asides to read an interview Robert did with me about Sea Trails and my writing. I really appreciate this, Robert!

Getting sick from a doc visit.

I keep forgetting that sick people go to see doctors and sick people are contagious lol. I had to see my internist last Wednesday about a few problems. Started with a scratchy throat on Saturday which got worse and yes, today am losing my voice and feel swimmy. A cold has taken me. I'd gone for a while without catching anything.

Maybe we ought to have virus free bubbles to step into when we go??

Hope this leaves soon! Being sick all of the time is hard enough. To be sicker is harder.

Pris

How about some blues for a Sunday morning?

Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Eric Clapton...can it get any better?

Paternity, Scott Owens' new book is wonderful!

Paternity by Scott Owens


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I'm entranced with Scott Owens’ latest book, Paternity. After three readings, my admiration only grew. The core subject of his book is his relationship with his daughter, Sawyer, but poems are also included about his stepsons as well as his father’s bad parenting. I’m not a parent, but I don’t need to be in order to enjoy both the expert craftsmanship of these poems as well as their magic. It’s both a book of the love of a father for his daughter and at the same time, a type of atonement for his own father’s failings. By being a better father, Owens walks away from the ghosts of his past into a better now of his own creation.

From On The Days I Am Not My Father

I don’t yell. I don’t hold inside
the day’s supply of frustrations.
My hands stay open all day.
I don’t wake tired and sore,
dazed from senseless, panicking
dreams. On the days I am not
my father I hold my son
when he cries, let him touch my face
without flinching…


A poet friend, after reading this book, wrote me that he would assign Paternity as a textbook for poetry students were it up to him. I completely agree. Every word, every phrase, every break is carefully thought out. And the poems sing, just as Owens describes singing to Sawyer on his cell phone to the amusement of passers-by.

This passage from The Word for What Only 4-Year Olds Can See is moving:

Today my daughter made up a word,
effuctress, to explain why I couldn’t see
the rainbow bird outside the window.
Effuctress, she says, are things
that can only be seen by 4-year olds.

I would recommend this book to parents and non-parents, lovers of good poetry. The first group will identify. The latter will be inspired to be better people. Both will aspire to become better poets.

From The Hours 7 PM

I no longer bathe with you.
No Gary Snyder, I grow self-conscious
as you fixate on differences,
but I still hold on to this time
of washing things away.

Scott Owens has published five poetry collections before Paternity and is editor of The Wild Goose Review. His work has received numerous awards and two Pushcart nominations. Paternity was published by and can be purchased at Main Street Rag.

View all my reviews >>

Robert H. Keller, M.D. now has a page on Facebook!

Dr. Keller worked with me with my ME/CFS for over 8 years. While seeing him, I experienced improvement for the first time. His death last year came as both a shock and loss. He died of a blood disease that attacks bodily organs. It's generally not reversable, but if anyone could have beat it, he could. He was dedicated and a brilliant doctor.

Many people still enter my blog with his name as the search word. Links on facebook are iffy, but I'll list that. If the link doesn't work, search for him there under this exact search name: Robert H. Keller, M.D.

Here's the link to try:
Robert H.Keller, M.D.

His daughter started the page just today. I hope she doesn't mind, but I copied one of the photos she posted here on my blog, too.

Very evocative photograpy/videos/architecture...Alastair Cook

I'm thoroughly enjoying the work of Scottish photographer Alastair Cook. To visit his site go to www.alastaircook.com