EVERYTHING IS BLUE

This morning, I have been re-reading one of my favorite poets, Robert Francis, a New Englander and contemporary of Robert Frost. Francis always inspires me because he was an example of a poet who persisted in being authentic in his life and work, living in virtual poverty after he built a house called Fort Juniper in the woods and fields near Amherst, Massachusetts. Francis built his poet’s retreat with an inheritance of $1,000 from his father’s life insurance. He survived on a few hundred dollars a year for at least sixteen years while he wrote poems, gave music lessons, and owned, as I once wrote about him, “freedom and leisure.” A vegan, he subsisted largely on produce from his home garden and, for many years, walked to town for needed supplies.

In a journal that Francis kept for the years 1930-1950, he records that he received 641 rejections for his poetry before he was finally published, and, then, he was never as well-known as his friend, Robert Frost. He noted that two of the portraits in the Jones Library at Amherst, Massachusetts, were of poets, and he was one of the two. Francis writes: “It [his portrait, which was labeled “poet”] gives me something of a start and also a satisfaction to be summed up in one word. I submit to the label. I am enough of a poet to be called a poet. Some day I may be more poet still…” And later in life, he did become more of a poet but utilized less and less words.

Francis’s words resonated with me today when I finally sent to press Everything Is Blue, my 14^th book of poetry and 32nd book. Friends once chided me because I wouldn’t claim the title “writer,” even while I churned out articles, poems, and, finally a book in 1980. And until less than ten years ago, I didn’t claim to live so rich a life as that of a poet. This morning as I re-read Francis, I identified with his final submission to the idea of being a poet.

Everything Is Blue was inspired by one of my brother Paul’s paintings–a seascape rendered entirely in shades of blue, with the slight contrast of a silver sea gull winging through the blue sky, and his painting provided the cover for my 32^nd book of poetry. My grandson Martin, who designs all of my book covers, designed the cover using Paul’s painting.

Everything Is Blue contains a title poem inspired by the painting, poems about travels to southern locales–including deceased writers’ homes–meditations about the sea, a wry poem about robots’ place in the post-modern world, the value of growing mint, and others concerning the spiritual life, with an end poem about the place of memories in a contented life.

Here’s one of the shorter poems I wrote for Everything Is Blue:

AFTER EASTER,

a pileated woodpecker hammers

the impenitent bark of an oak,

dogwood petals scatter

under the crooked tree,

dark angels are blinded and banished,

God has corrected all his mistakes.

We have come to this coolness,

precious Spring in the branches

of the crooked tree,

the cry in the night, a useless sound.

Now the thick silence

makes no announcements,

only the woodpecker protesting

the end of steady suffering,

white petals falling softly

as millions of bodies are reborn,

their lips forming notes of risible music

rising in the unseeing air,

the sound of light

traveling through my shadow.

Everything Is Blue can be ordered online by clicking the title, or by snail mail from Border Press, P.O. Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375 after September 20, 2012.

PORCH SITTING AND MINT

Porch at Sewanee

Each evening in late summer, we schedule porch sitting time, a time when we relax and enjoy slight breezes while sitting in the shade of enormous oaks and a lone maple tree.  Our front porch in Sewanee, Tennessee is actually a back porch facing the woods on our property and is a far cry from the broad gallery of my grandmother’s day. 

Grandmother Nell’s gallery was a wrap-around porch that held tall-backed rockers, pots of pale green Boston fern, and a green slat-backed swing that creaked when we pushed it back and forth with our bare feet.  From the vantage point of that porch, my grandmother could see everyone who drove by on Tenth Avenue, or walked on the sidewalk in front of her Victorian house with its cupola that boasted one stained glass window.  Those “passings” supplied topics for evening conversations.

Our very small Sewanee porch with its plethora of wrought iron is a place where we sit in late evening to garner a bit of peace and to listen to cicadas, crickets, and tree frogs, all singing in a monotonous cadence, a summons to enjoy nature’s plainchants.  Also, in late summer, the distant cries of boys practicing football on the university field pierce the quiet of our porch sit, announcing that Fall is about to commence.  As E. B. White once quoted from Thoreau: “…slight sound[s] at evening lift me up by the ears, and make life seem inexpressibly serene and grand…”

Porches of any kind incite nostalgia in me, remind me of evenings at some outdoor retreat where cool drinks are served and of the old custom of serving mint juleps on the verandah at Belmont Plantation in New Iberia, Louisiana.  On the long porch, painted a forest green, at 5 p.m. daily, the Wyche family gathered with friends for evening libations and to tell family stories or to discuss politics, food, and books.  I might add, there was never any silence.  “Big Jimmy’s” special mint julep held a sprig from his own patch, and he claimed that if a man couldn’t grow the plant, he was hen-pecked.  I have no clue regarding the origin of this story, nor do I understand why a man’s ability to grow mint depends on his relationship with his wife.

While thinking about Jimmy’s cool libation, I remembered my father’s love of mint and the many patches he had grown near the porches in my childhood, and even into adulthood, the last patch being beside a screen porch in Franklinton, Louisiana.  During my father’s demise, he sat on that porch daily, winter or summer, a melancholy figure looking out at his backyard garden of pole beans, tomatoes, lettuce, and field peas, silent and suffering from the lung cancer that would take his life.  In several of the books I’ve written, I mention that he did indulge in sudden outbursts while sitting on the screened porch – recitations of “Invictus,” in which he claimed he was the “master of his fate, and the captain of his soul,” believing that he could control both his life and the time of his death.  He was wrong, of course.

View of woods from porch

While sitting on my Sewanee porch this morning, I enjoyed 68 degree weather and proofed my new book of poetry, Everything Is Blue, now in press.  One of the poems is about mint, and several excerpts from the long poem seem to belong with this blog:




IN MEMORY OF MINT (verses one, two, five, and six of six verses)

It was not a sentimental act –
planting the mint
although my father planted a patch
every place we lived,
every time we moved,
and the underground runners
took over our backyards,
a space of its own forever.

He would have liked modernity

and what it has claimed

for the use of mint:

mint rubbing,

otherwise known as wasting time,

a way of achieving peace and calm,

rubbing mint leaves

between the fingers for two hours,

a scent, sweet and aromatic,

hovering above the head,

relaxing the brain.

I suppose mint symbolizes indolence,

the long plantation porch

and between the white columns,

a wicker table holding glasses

beaded with condensation,

filled with bourbon, ice, sugar,

a mint leaf drooping from frosted rims.

Porch sitting, mint rubbing, wasting time,

always the easy air of summer,

bees droning around a plant

pungent enough to defy my querulous line:

“it was not a sentimental act,”

as I bend to break a leaf,

rubbing it between my fingers,

a sacred but trivial salute

to my father.

IN PRINT: Redeemed By Blood, a novel

For the New Year’s reading, my latest book, Redeemed by Blood, has been produced “in print” and will be available on www.amazon.com in the next day or so. (I will update this post with a link when the book is available.) If the more-than-500 readers who took advantage of a freebie Kindle offer during a five-day period are indicators of reading enjoyment, those who like to hold the actual novel in their hands and to place it on their bookshelves should welcome this print edition.


Redeemed by Blood spans five generations of a southern family haunted by the ghost of a Civil War veteran involved in a black/white debacle, carrying the reader through the War Between the States, the rise of the KKK, and violence that affects several generations. Dade Green, in the form of a poltergeist, appears to each generation to warn them about the outcomes of racial prejudice. The surprise ending involving Dade’s great-great-great grandson brings resolution of a family issue and the release of a tormented soul who has witnessed all the horrors of war and slavery.

This novel may be the swan song of my novel writing as I have no book-length ideas or material left in my box of unpublished work, so I’m happy to offer Redeemed by Blood in the print version. It’s my 30th book, and I have plans to pursue my first love, poetry, this coming year. Sequels to this novel, or any of my other novels, will depend on the direction of “The Muse.”

Most of the writing of Redeemed by Blood occurred while I sojourned in Louisiana last year, with forays into the memorial park at Shiloh in Tennessee and visits to north Georgia for material. Pertinent research was also done concerning Virginia Military Institute, the Civil War, railroads in the old South, the transcendentalists, and material from two personal diaries.

My friend, Isabel Anders, who co-authored the mystery, Chant of Death, with me, has written a five star review of Redeemed by Blood for www.amazon.com, which you may wish to read when you‘re considering buying the print or Kindle version of this novel. Here is an excerpt from Anders’ review: “Following the Green family descendants through to contemporary times, the author boldly captures the drama of the soul’s struggle and fulfillment of a life’s quest, believably inhabiting the growing consciousness of a diverse set of characters with vivid, masterful descriptions of unforgettable scenarios…”

REDEEMED BY BLOOD

Several of my books were published in 2011, and the last novel written this year goes on Kindle today. Redeemed by Blood becomes my thirtieth book, but it isn’t my final one as I have in the writing mill another book of poetry, Breakthrough, now competing in a contest, which will eventually be published, and a non-fiction book about Rip Van Winkle Gardens that I was commissioned to do. 2012 promises to yield more writing activity – and more reading!

Redeemed by Blood isn’t in print version yet because most of my books have graduated to Kindle by this time (except for the poetry) and are enjoying wider readership. Redeemed is a multigenerational epic novel that begins when the idyllic life of young Dade Green changes with his parents’ deaths. He enrolls in Virginia Military Institute and joins the Confederate Army to fight a war against slavery even though his slave, Ebenezer, is his best friend. He’s forced to sell his slave and later meets up with him, only to witness his horrible death by hanging. Dade loses a leg during the war, endures life in an abusive Union Camp called Fort Delaware but survives, marries Sarah, a Mississippi journalist, and bears several children.

As if in recapitulation about wartime horrors and Dade’s ambivalence toward slavery, his son, Ellis Paul, becomes involved with the Ku Klux Klan. Dade witnesses another innocent black man‘s death, and his killers go unpunished. Dade dies feeling guilt so terrible that his ghost haunts the family and his old home for several generations. Attempts at exorcism fail, until his “sins” are redeemed and his soul is released by a transforming event involving his great-great-great grandson.

This novel is a fictional memoir set in Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. It contains glimmers of truth about a dysfunctional family through five generations, vivids scenes of Civil War battles, brief excerpts from Civil War memorabilia, and the fictitious diary of a rebellious teenager. It’s the longest novel that I’ve written, and readers of Civil War books, memoirs, and novels about racial relations might enjoy it, especially during these sesquicentennial commemorative years of the Civil War.

Merry Christmas and happy reading in the New Year!

P.S. For non-Kindle readers, the print version of Redeemed by Blood is forthcoming.

RETURN OF THE KAJUN KWEEN

Now in Kindle format

Petite Marie Melancon of The Kajun Kween fame has been waiting in the wings for several years, and today she went into press again as a Young Adult book of fiction on Kindle. Thanksgiving seems to be a good holiday to recognize Petite for her heroic antics in deepest south Louisiana as the heroine of Kurrent Komics, a fictitious New York comic book publication.

Petite Marie Melancon appeared in print in 2003 as a publication of Border Press and decided this year to join the world of electronic publishing, having seen some of her sister YA books enjoying popularity on Kindle – Flood on the Rio Teche, Martin Finds His Totem, and other titles published by BP.

A thirteen-year old who is extremely tall for any age (6’2”), Petite is self-conscious about her height but decides to interview for a New York City publisher anyway. She beats out other jolie catins (baby dolls) in a race to provide true adventures about French Louisiana for the comic strip, “Kajun Kween.”

This adventuresome enfant terrible hasn’t bargained for encounters with a mother alligator protecting her egg nest, a giant snapping turtle, or for a visit from a loup garou during a late-night adventure poling alone in her pirogue in a swamp. During her adventures, a potbelly pig drops from a tornado into her pasture and becomes her companion. Romance enters her life when she competes in a hot pepper eating contest and a gumbo cook-off in New Iberia, Louisiana, and Henri becomes her prince consort as she enjoys the simple life on a Louisiana chenier. Petite fnally realizes that her height is not such a disadvantage and that acts of courage do not always mean heroics.

For those readers who prefer their books via Kindle, Petite wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving as you follow her unusual adventures in bayou country.

The winsome cover illustration is by Paul Schexnayder, New Iberia, Louisiana artist, whose drawings and paintings have been internationally recognized. We regret that the interior illustrations cannot be used in ebook format. Soft-cover editions of this YA book can be ordered from www.borderpressbooks.com.

A PREQUEL IN A LOUISIANA SETTING…

I’ve written short suspense stories during my career as an author, but not in the form of a “prequel,” a sort of teaser for a book already published. However, when Isabel Anders, co-author of Chant of Death and editor of a Kindle ebook, An Essential Evil, presented the idea to me, I spun out a short suspense story before I left Sewanee, Tennessee. Since many readers have asked for more background about Father Malachi, the protagonist in the short story’s sequel, Chant of Death, Isabel and I focused on this character as the central figure for a prequel in a Louisiana setting.

In the prequel, An Essential Evil, readers are introduced to Malachi Marchand, a clinical psychiatrist in his life prior to becoming a Religious and his problems concerning his deranged wife, Virginia. Malachi’s relationship with his bizarre spouse almost seems to be an “essential evil” that leads him into a vocation at St. Andrew’s Abbey in southern Louisiana. The route into this monastic life is a deeply disturbed one involving the bizarre murder of a dog, an exorcism, a suicide, and Malachi’s crisis of spirit following his wife’s death.

The prequel, of course, precedes Chant of Death, a Louisiana mystery in which Fr. Malachi, now Abbot of St. Andrew’s Monastery, faces the challenge of becoming a clerical detective and gets involved in problems concerning the seven deadly sins as they are committed by a group of chanting monks at the Louisiana monastery. Although Fr. Malachi has entered what he thinks is a quiet contemplative life, he is forced to face physical and spiritual assaults, even murder, as he carries out a Benedictine lifestyle during post-modern times. He discovers that life inside a monastery is sometimes as problematical as life “on the outside.”

The prequel is available only in Kindle format and can be ordered from Amazon. Its sequel, Chant of Death, was published by Pinyon Press in Montrose, Colorado.

SILENCE NEVER BETRAYS ON KINDLE

Yesterday, while going through statistics on sales of books I’ve written and published on Kindle, I discovered that readers are scattered throughout the U.S. and Europe. I appreciate this wide readership through an electronic reading device that has accelerated sales of the work I do. This blog is a thank you note to readers who use Kindle and a notification that another book I’ve written, Silence Never Betrays, has been published on Kindle.

Briefly, Silence Never Betrays is about Hadrian Boswell, eccentric owner of The Oaks, an antebellum mansion in a small town in southwest Louisiana. Hadrian has a terrible fear of the dark and is an insomniac. He spends many nights frightening guests who visit the mansion, putting on weird costumes to scare them. Hadrian’s servant and companion, King, alternately despises and admires his employer. Because of Hadrian’s shenanigans, most townspeople shun him, as do famous artists and writers after they spend a few nights at The Oaks.

Waverly Bradford has been in love with Hadrian, despite their aborted marriage, thirty years earlier, since they attended art school together in New Orleans. Waverly, living on nearby Deer Island, visits Hadrian when he returns to Comeaux to renovate his mansion. However, the visit is short-lived. Hadrian stages a prank that causes her to flee from the mansion. Waverly vows to get revenge.

Meanwhile, Joseph Hollier seeks out Hadrian for art instruction, and they embark on a wild painting excursion to Last Island, a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico. During a night boat ride, Hadrian damages his right hand trying to escape “cachemars.”

Joseph moves in with Hadrian, and King plots to get rid of Joseph; however, Joseph plots to get rid of Hadrian…and, perhaps, King. Houngans enter the scene, and Hadrian mysteriously falls from a second-story gallery of The Oaks. He dies in the local hospital, a despised and lonely man. Or is he really dead?

Other books I’ve written that appear on Kindle include: Chant of Death (co-authored with Isabel Anders, published by Pinyon Publishing), The Maine Event, Nothing for Free, Goat Man Murder, Flood on the Rio Teche (YA), and Martin Finds His Totem (YA) published by Border Press.

I look forward to the time when I can share thirteen books of my poetry on Kindle, many of which are already listed on Amazon.com.

Again, bountiful thanks to readers who continue to show interest in my work.