a visit with jack gilbert

A friend shared a link to this great piece about the poet Jack Gilbert who, at past 80 years of age, recently won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his newest collection Refusing Heaven.

photo by Kate Davidson, NPR

You can visit the NPR website by clicking here and while there, be sure to click on the links provided to hear the inspiring interview with this reclusive poet who has spent most of his life outside the usual literary circles, stages, and spotlights, and whose poems speak poignantly to the two sides of the love and grief coin. Also included are clickable links that will allow you to listen to Gilbert reading several of his most lovely poems, "Infidelity," "Refusing Heaven," "By Small and Small," and "Getting Away With It."

I love Gilbert for his unabashed refusal to play the literary "game" (in the interview, he asserts that he is not a "professional poet," he's a "real poet"). I love Gilbert for saying there are just things about this life he doesn't like ("I don't like that my hair is thinning. I don't like that two of the women I loved died.") I love Gilbert for talking about how he is fond of making lists, including lists of things that he loves and wants to accomplish - a kindred spirit! I make lists too -- lists of things I love, things I want to do. Sometimes I have made a list of things I'd already done, just so I could cross something off of a to-do list. I am sure that Jack Gilbert (a man who once listed "to be in love before I die" on a list of things to do), would understand.

a few new things

"Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well
be your own, instead of someone else's."
~ Billy Wilder ~

"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

"trust" c. 2008 miz annie
(today's Daily Devotion)

I just finished the below pillows and am really pleased with how they came out. I love the Tree of Life motif and found a great deal on a bit of yardage from another Etsy seller. The other fabrics are a mix of funky stripes, a bamboo print, and a great asian "calico" that is shot through with metallic detailing. Sort of a mish-mash but it all works together. These are 14"x14" and are up on my Etsy shop now! I am working on another, larger, pair; those are for a gift.

Front view - Tree of Life panels surrounded by
batiks and asian metallics.

Back view showing the envelope closure with
green silk cord tied around wooden buttons.

In other news, I have another job interview coming up and am very excited about that. I am hoping that when I speak with the neuro-whose-a-maperson regarding my back, the news won't be quite so dire. I am hoping to maybe get in with the pain specialist and see if we can get some cortisone injections on board so that I can find a new job and get settled in before I have to have surgery. Also, if I am doing physical therapy in the interim, there's a chance I may not need the surgery .... I realize this borders on denial, but I am a healer, after all, and I trust that I will find a solution that won't involve me being out of work for an extended period of time while recovering from major surgery. I just don't see how I have that kind of time. I am trusting the universe to meet me halfway on this one. Because I really need it to. Unless, of course, the universe has even bigger and better plans for me, and in that case, bring 'em on!

The well of Providence is deep.
It’s the buckets we bring to it that are small.
~ Mary Webb ~

me and The Bean.

(photo by joan nixon, apparently the only person alive
who can take a decent photo of me. ;-)