Crone

When you cross the rusting drawbridge leading to Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, you enter a south Louisiana town long acclaimed as the Crawfish Capitol of the World that has drawn “foodies” from around the world. However, since 2014, this bustling town in Acadiana has gained added cultural dimensions with the establishment of the Teche Center for the Arts, a center on E. Bridge St. housed in the old “Murph Theatre." Foodies who appreciate art and culture as well as fine cuisine, can easily find the Center in the middle of town, a few doors down from a foodie haunt, Sydnie Mae’s Restaurant.

The Teche Center for the Arts, directed by Sandra Sarr, has as its mission to feature music, art, theatre, literary art, French lessons, history and educational exhibits for St. Martin Parish and surrounding environs in south Louisiana. As The Center was a movie house in the 1940’s, it’s complete with a stage on which poets have begun to perform readings. 

Clare Martin (r) and Bessie Senette

Last night we attended a reading of Crone, a book of poetry written by Clare Martin and dramatized by Clare and a fellow poet, Bessie Senette, before a full house of regional poets and artists. Crone has received kudos from Louisiana Poet Laureate, Jack Bedell; Sheryl St. Germain, Writer of the Year 2018 at the Louisiana Book Festival, and Luis Alberto Urrea, author of House of Broken Angels. Clare and Bessie read to an appreciative audience that saluted them with "Bravos" when the long poem ended. I found it heartening to see so many young adults in the crowd — and I attribute this interest to the workshops and readings of outstanding Louisiana poet laureates: Darrell Bourque, Jack Bedell, Ava Harmon, and Julie Kane, as well as the long-time efforts of Patrice Melnick, director of Festival of Words.

I hadn't read Crone until this morning, and when I began reading Clare’s written version, Robert Frost’s "Witch of Coos" came to mind. Like Frost, Clare used several voices to weave this supernatural "song" that held her audience spellbound. She used primitive chants divorced from rational, traditional verse, that was further emphasized by costuming, linking sorcery and spiritualism in an imagined dialogue between a wise woman and her devotee. At the reading, the audience was mesmerized by long incantations featuring props of candles, feathers, silk scarves, and a cauldron to deliver lines. 

One of the Crone chants caused me to reread: "The undulating core/of the universe encapsulated/in a most tender bulb of skin./Her breath’s ignition/resurrects the miracle nerve./It is nothing like love,/it is nothing—/Be brave, she says,/It will hurt more than a little/when I grind the scars." Clare is unsparing in her images of female suffering; e.g., lines like "dried blood flakes from her fingers./A black tooth drops/into the cauldron," and I was startled when I heard her read this last line at the performance.

Yet she predicts resurrection and deliverance in the verse: "God’s secret name must not be spoken./And yet, you call upon it over and over./ When you are desperate to believe/you are free." From that point, Clare moves on to more hopeful imagery: "We lie between the five mounds/beneath the flowering pear./Still, the wind gossips/of summer grass." For me, that last line resonated strongly in Whitmanesque power and loveliness.

The performance ended with a quotation from Rilke: "I've been circling for thousands of years" which she uses to preface end verses: "I've been circling for thousands of years,/planting seeds of conception./I've been waiting for God to show a mighty hand./I am an Old Woman, pregnant with ephemeral dust./This is proof enough for me."

In one former comment Clare made concerning the long poem, she claimed that she "channeled" a crone, and, at times during her performance last night, I felt she was or had been channeling when she wrote the entire poem at a week-end retreat. However, I really feel that Crone is a product of the freed-up imagination of a poet who has emerged from the shadows, or her own Shadow, as Jung defines the traumas that live in our memories and cause problems and suffering.

Clare founded the online poetry magazine, MockingHeart Review and Crone is her third book of poetry. It was published by Nixes Mate Books and is available on Amazon. Contact Clare Martin to find out more about copies of this spell-binding book. 

SEEKING THE HOLY DARK

I finally located my copies of Seek the Holy Dark by Clare Martin after shuffling household goods following my move to Sewanee, Tennessee where I spend six months of every year. I had read through the book once before leaving New Iberia, Louisiana and knew that the poems in this volume were deep explorations of themes of loss and darkness and would require more attention than a cursory reading.  

I was standing in the pulpit at St. Mary’s Convent on The Mountain at Sewanee Sunday delivering a homily and had just commented on an article by The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor that appeared inTime magazine several years ago: “The Rev. Taylor speaks of finding God in darkness and delivered lectures on this theme for the Dubose Lectures here on The Mountain,” I said. “She says that she prays these days to the Holy Spirit which she sees as both the universally divine and the hardest to understand and says her job is to trust its movement…” Although I was focused on the delivery of the homily, what suddenly came to mind was the title of Martin’s latest book Seek the Holy Dark. On Monday, Martin's book turned up. Synchronicity?/!

Seek the Holy Dark is reminiscent of another female poet, Anne Sexton, whose last book was entitled The Awful Rowing Toward God; one in which Sexton confronts the idea of God and is defeated in her quest to adhere to a belief in the Omnipotent. Like Sexton, Martin explores the darkness that accompanies depression, telling her story as an attempt to experience catharsis. She joins the roster of female poets who have sought to legitimize depression by allowing themselves to participate in life, including depressive episodes, to honor those dark nights of the soul and to write mercilessly about the “holy dark.” 

In “Mourning,” Martin writes that “it is simple to relinquish the will to do anything to be a stone within a stone within a stone…over and over, though no cycle rules her, she rebirths herself. Empties her lungs, rises.”  It seems that the poet is letting herself into the darkness and allowing her soul to become intact, “stone within a stone within a stone” so she can move on and experience rebirth… no easy answer to the darkness. 

I don’t think that Martin intended her poetry to be a means of legitimizing depression but to form a link among creativity, spirituality, and her emotional struggles in darkness, seeking transformation and restoration. Her experiences are not neat, self-help examples of welcoming darkness and emerging with superficial answers. In “Dream of Sudden Water,” she speaks of “a harrowing thought/deep on my petrified bones — wash me savior/ we drop through this world/into dark awakening/we, the strong hearted.”

In poem after poem, Martin explores her captivity in depression, and at the end of Seek the Holy Dark, she speaks to the human condition with a vision that duplicates the ideas of John Moriarty in Nostos: “If nature can handle the destruction and reconstruction of a caterpillar into a butterfly, why shouldn’t I surrender and trust that it can handle what is happening to me?” Martin's version: “Beloved dead and living/voices surround me/a word/a handwritten note/subatomic change/of being/even spittle spurs/butterfly/to typhoon/to newborn star.”

Seek the Holy Dark is an Intense confessional of a gifted woman who sometimes crosses into the surreal, drawing poems from the depths of herself and seeking transformation while embracing the holy dark. A courageous contribution to the canon of feminist poetry.

Clare L. Martin, a native of south Louisiana, is author of Eating the Heart First, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Dzan Books’ Best of the Web, Best New Poets, and Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net.. She is founding publisher and editor of MockingHeart Review. Seek the Holy Dark is available on amazon.com and through Yellow Flag Press, 2275 Bascom Ave. #702, Campbell CA 95008.

  

IN A CONVENT GARDEN

For those readers who responded so enthusiastically to my last blog about Penny, the dog who aspires to the diaconate, I’ve included a poem about her in my newest collection of poetry entitled In a Convent Garden and Other Poems, which will be published in a few weeks. The volume is a product of this summer’s writing, and rather than review my own work, I’m including the acknowledgements of fellow authors in this blog for those who read the poetry I write while I’m sojourning on The Mountain here at Sewanee, Tennessee. The acknowledgements are humbling and affirming, and I’m happy to share the endorsements of gifted writers and discerning readers:

“I do not profess to know the mind of the talented Diane Marquart Moore but I do know something of its grasp of the essential, in things both ordinary and extraordinary, from the poems collected in In a Convent Garden and Other Poems. Moore is an intuitive, fiercely intelligent, and contemplative poet who renders each poem with a precision of language that makes her ideas of the metaphysical palpable and clear. Her poems, propelled by still, but spirited narration, captivate. We are taken many places: the convent garden, a fortress on the bluff, No Name Road, the plains of Khuzestan—each place absorbed by Moore through all of her senses then conveyed in sharp but measured detail to her readers, for the purpose of leading us to higher ground. This life, seen by Moore, is never spare or hopeless, which is the true gift of this book. In fact the whole book is an urging to hope. She does not spare us the truth of the ‘marrow of bondage’ all of humanity shares, but her poems promise freedom. Moore assuredly directs us to an ineffable Source. Grace surmounts the suffering of this world, and we are led into a revelation of holy shimmer that drizzles on dogs and cats, stone angels, and gratefully on us.”

—Clare L. Martin, poet and author of Eating the Heart First, Press 53, 2012.

"Time out to reveal the heart"—such is the work Diane Marquart Moore has made for herself as a poet. Remembering to breathe inside the lines, remembering to delight in the gifts of the spirit, she turns In a Convent Garden and Other Poems into a new book of common prayer. Nothing escapes her heart and eye: the elder nuns, slugs, the convent cat, songs in dreams, wandering, the dog's way, Brother Rabbit, Appalachian dulcimers and the songs of katydids.

—Darrell Bourque, former poet laureate of Louisiana, author of Megan's Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie.

My heart leaps up when Diane Moore brings out a new book. She seems to breathe in life, then breathe out poetry—she "poems" with such ease and grace. Her poems are strikingly original and challenging; she makes the reader work hard, but the rewards are great.

—Jane F. Bonin, retired professor of English, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, and author of Major Themes in Prizewinning American Drama and Mario Fratti.

Diane Moore is the rare poet who has the courage to probe the exquisite wounds of human existence: loneliness, despair, suffering, want, night terrors, and betrayal. Just when the reader is at the point of pressing the button for a narcotic to dull the pain, with imagination and skillful craft, she swings through with the wry humor of a raccoon singing barroom ballads, a demonic cat dusting her allergies with dander, a sweet Sister instructing a Psalm reader to break at the asterisk or risk being swept away with the wicked, and, most healing, with joy-filled lessons learned in the course of her God-centered life.

—Anne Simon, Louisiana District Judge, Retired.

Diane Moore's eye is more precise than most painters, and she uses that eye to make a sacred music full of love and sympathy for what often gets ignored or forgotten. She is a wonderful contemporary amalgam of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Read her now and be delighted.

—Chuck Taylor, author of Magical, Fantastical, Alphabetical Soup.

Diane Moore has become a master of seeing, describing, and immersing herself in other lives. Her retired nun, Sister Mary Zita, "enters a dark cell / but her soul is not asleep;" a sculpture, "the stone angel is laughing;" and of Thomas Wolfe, she writes, "Each time I want his ghost / to give me a stone, a leaf, a door"… In A Convent Garden consists of meditations on spirituality, dreams, art, writers, travel, music, and nature.

—Gary Entsminger, author of Ophelia's Ghost and Fall of '33.

The cover photograph of In A Convent Garden and Other Poems was taken by Sr. Madeleine Mary, sister-in-charge of St. Mary’s Convent, Sewanee, Tennessee, and cover design was rendered by Martin Wayne Romero. Order copies from amazon.com after September 15, 2013.

ROCKING AT CASA AZUL



Poets' paradise

 “You rock!” a friend on Facebook wrote to me yesterday. She was referring to my poetry reading with Brad Richard at Casa Azul Thursday evening, and I know Brad and I weren’t the only poets rocking and reading at this regularly-scheduled poetry night in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. The open mic featured three seasoned poets: former poet laureate Darrell Bourque, reading from his forthcoming book, Megan’s Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie; poet Clare Martin, author of Eating the Heart First; and Patrice Melnick, owner of Casa Azul and a writer who is presently compiling her own collection of poetry. However, the performer who captured the limelight was Carol Rice, a budding poet who stole the show with her lyrics about a dead possum. It was a fun night, and I came away impressed with the work that Patrice Melnick is doing as director of the Festival of Words Cultural Arts Collective in this small town (pop. 1000) in south Louisiana.

Patrice calls her work with poets “The Casa Azul Series,” a program in its sixth year that has attracted poets from throughout south Louisiana and further afield. The program also draws an audience that participates in the poetry reading when Patrice passes around a piece of paper with an unfinished line on it, asking that members of the audience add to the line. Since the series at which I read was held on Valentine’s Day, the line for this occasion read, “My love is as…” and the hilarious poem was read at the conclusion of the reading by participant Dr. Mary Ann Wilson, professor of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The unfinished poem is a way of engaging the audience and furthers Patrice’s goal of building a community that supports poetry and the arts. She says that the engagement process has attracted professional and novice poets who read at open mic time, and it sometimes brings in poets who have never read their poetry for any occasion. Patrice has also established a documentary program, “Grand Coteau Voices: The Good, The Bad, The Complicated,” which features the stories of Grand Coteau citizens and provides a historical record of the townspeople’s lives. Chere Breaux began filming these stories in January, 2012.



Poets' stage at Casa Azul



Patrice migrated to Grand Coteau during a sabbatical from teaching English as an Associate Professor at Xavier University in New Orleans and moved to the “provinces” following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She was a former Peace Corps worker in the Central African Republic, worked at Pelican Publishing in New Orleans for several years, and has written a riveting memoir entitled Po-Boy Contraband, that includes chapters concerning her struggles with a debilitating disease and commentary about how important poetry, Reggae, Zydeco, the Neville Brothers, and other music has been in treating her illness. Concerning the music important to her, she writes in her first book, Turning Up the Volume: “Like drunks sliding quarters into a jukebox to draw out the voices of Patsy Cline, Lyle Lovett, Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson, Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas and Lucinda Williams; all those voices wail from the car radio, howl from the neon lit jukebox in the corner. Those voices call inside my head like richly-feathered, hungry owls…”



Patrice Melnick, poet, writer, director
of Festival of Words

 I appreciate the comment about my poetry reading from the friend who says I rock, but last Thursday I was just one voice holding forth in the back room of a small shop painted a vivid blue hue that sits on the main drag of Grand Coteau, Louisiana. Under the arching branches of old live oaks, Casa Azul rocks every Thursday evening, bringing in new and old poets, children and elderly participants who are happy to have a venue in bayou country for celebrating the work of the Muse.

Brava Patrice – keep on creating the space for us to rock!

PROMPTING THE MUSE WITHIN…

At a recent poetry reading, “A Midwinter Night Poetry Reading” at A and E Gallery here in New Iberia, where I read alongside Julie Kane, Louisiana Poet Laureate and Lafayette poet Clare Martin, I met several new writers and editors who are promoting creative writing in the area. One of them, Jonathan Penton, is a poet and editor of “Unlikely Stories, Episode IV” an online literary journal and a coordinator of Acadiana Wordlab, “an uncensored weekly writing workshop” in Lafayette, Louisiana. I sat across from Jonathan at the dinner following the reading and was briefly introduced to the idea of Jonathan’s weekly literary drafting workshop in Lafayette.

I had no idea that I was being “auditioned,” for lack of a better word, but yesterday I received a message from Jonathan inviting me to be a February presenter at the Wordlab. The Lab requires no formal membership and serves as a space where people can gather every Saturday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. to work on their writing craft at Cite’ des Arts in Lafayette. It focuses on art as a writing prompt, but the prompts aren’t confined to literary art – visual artists, filmmakers, and musicians have contributed to the work of the Lab.

The relaxing component of the Acadiana Wordlab is that it’s a drafting workshop, rather than a critique workshop. A presenter features a work of art, a lecture on the craft, or a discussion of art and then asks participants to respond by writing for twenty minutes or more. After writing, the participants read their creations aloud, and if time permits, the presenter makes a second prompt, followed by more writing and reading aloud.

I understand the process because about fifteen years ago, I formed and coordinated a writing group called “The Reflections,” an adult education class at the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in New Iberia, Louisiana. At meetings in the “Upper Room” of the parish hall, I’d present a short lecture on a spiritual book, request members of the group to respond for twenty minutes, then to read their “reflections.” The results were amazing – illuminating quick sketches that I called the “feminine face of God” – spontaneous, poignant, strong and nurturing responses written in the spirit of both pathos and humor, which reflected the essence of the female soul. As I wrote in the chapbook, Meditations of My Heart, that we later produced, “they educated my own heart and enriched my spiritual journey.” Other members of the group said that the experience engendered the same responses in them.

Four members of the Reflections group of twelve participants went on to become authors of books: Margaret Simon, author of the young adult book, Blessen; Dr. Victoria Sullivan, author of the speculative fiction, Adoption and of the nature guide, Why Water Plants Don’t Drown; Mary Wyche Estes, author of Mending of the Heart and of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal, 1875-1902; and Janet Faulk, author of Road Home, a collection of essays about growing up “southern.” One “Reflections “songstress has become an outstanding voice in the music group, “Blue Merlot,” and co-wrote, with Grammy Award winner “Bubba” Murrell, the lyrics and music for the recording “Women at the Well.” Folk artist Jean Wattigny continued her work as an artist of whimsical paintings for which she has gained regional recognition.

Here’s a passage I read from The School of Charity by Evelyn Underhill:”We too have our share in the creative process. We live and die within the workshop …accepted as pupils and partners with our first movement of generosity in action, prayer, or love…we, in our measure, are allowed to stand beside Him; making little things, contributing our action to His great action on life. So we must use the material of life faithfully, with a great sense of responsibility…”

And here’s Jean Wattigny’s response to that passage: “When we speak of creating, I think of the creative process as action – doing, not comparing. There is no creation without full emptiness – total immersion in the present moment. Looking back to see what should have been done and looking forward to see what we may have ahead of us makes us nothing in the Now. If we’re thinking too much about the painting when we’re mixing the colors, we’re ahead of the process – we’ll only have muddy colors. Creation is in the moment of doing and doing is God’s work, God’s way.”

I might add that my own writing catapulted ahead light years following this two-year experiment in prompting the Muse!

Cover drawing of Meditations of My Heart by Paul Schexnayder, renowned New Iberia artist.

EATING THE HEART FIRST

Strange, how poetry wells up out of small towns perched on the bayous of Louisiana, and fine poets seem to emerge from the mists, reading poems that reflect the watery landscape. Their works are almost organic, coming out of the soil and water of Acadiana, appearing at celebrations of the rural arts such as the Fire and Water Celebration I attended Saturday in Arnaudville, Louisiana. Arnaudville, population 1500, is a town near the muddy Bayou Teche, that body of water which has birthed a culture rich in the arts. The last time I visited Arnaudville in the 90’s, the town was just beginning to develop an artistic energy that has burgeoned and begun to attract new residents from throughout the U.S. Today it draws artists and musicians from around the world.



Darrell Bourque, former
Louisiana Poet Laureate

 I went to hear my friends, Darrell Bourque and Margaret Simon, read from their latest works and to reconnect with Clare Martin, a woman with whom I once worked on the executive staff of Bayou Girl Scout Council in Lafayette, Louisiana. During the 90’s, Clare worked as Public Relations Officer of the Council, and one day at coffee break, she showed me a few of her unpublished poems. After I had read the few poems that she handed to me, I could tell she had “voice,” and although the poems were dark, they were mysterious and filled with longing for a fulfilling work and life that touched me deeply. After both of us left the Council, I saw Clare a few times – on one occasion I wrote a letter of reference for her to work on her Master’s at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette; on another, I heard her read at a poetry celebration here in New Iberia. I lost touch with Clare but discovered Saturday that for the past eight years, she has found new life through her poetry, writing for the Avatar Review, Louisiana Literature, Poets and Artists, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and publishing in numerous literary journals and poetry anthologies. She has also been nominated for several awards that include Best New Poet, Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web (2011), and Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net (2008 and 2011).



Clare Martin, Author of
Eating the Heart First

 In Arnaudville, Clare read from her debut book of poetry, Eating the Heart First, published by Press 53 in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and I was stunned by the power of the poems she shared with us. They ranged from memories about her first child, Adam, who was born weighing only two pounds and maimed with cerebral palsy, to her bouts with mental darkness, and I kept thinking of two famous female poets, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, who gave us revelations of their darkest moments in stark and powerful language similar to that expressed in Eating the Heart First. I bought a copy of Clare’s book and spent Sat. evening reading the work of someone I had once divined would become a fine poet. Before I left the “Little Big Cup Restaurant,” site of the reading, Clare told me that she was going to send her book to Oprah, and I think she possesses just enough tenacity and talent to enlist Oprah’s endorsement of Eating the Heart First.



Authors: Diane Moore (L)
and Margaret Simon (R)

 Margaret Simon, author of Blessen, sat next to us at a front table, and was moved to tears by Clare’s reading, and Darrell Bourque, former poet laureate of Louisiana, whispered to me, “She is a good poet. Darrell endorsed the back cover of Eating the Heart First, praising Clare’s work as “an oneiric treatise guided by the powers she believes in: the power of memory, the power of water, the power of moons, the powers of longing, and the power of love.”







One of the shorter, lighter poems akin to Haiku that I favored in Eating the Heart First, is entitled “Tattoo:”

“She has a tattoo
on her hip of a painted
Chinese horse—the brushstroke
animal grazes at her waist.

Black ink struggles
as if locked in wind.
In muscular unison the horse
strides to her belly:
         a field of moons.

Copies of this impressive book of poetry can be purchased from Press 53, P.O. Box 30314, Winston-Salem, NC 27130. Cover design of Eating the Heart First by Kevin Morgan Watson, and cover art, “He Cometh Out of the Swamp,” by Pamela Womax. Author photo by Jo Depew.