ALONE ON A WINDY RIDGE: August is always the weirdest

Thursday, August 12, 2010

August is always the weirdest

...month going. That's a given. This August is no exception. Nothing but weird.

How weird is a meatloaf cupcake with mashed potato icing? An image of this arrived with a letter today.

How weird are the words "Good Year Blimp" handwritten on a postcard? Weird I tell you. Those are the first words that popped out at me. This arrived the other day.

How weird is a yard full of grackles? Seriously weird. They arrived the other day and just hung around as if the souls they were carrying were too heavy. They stayed the night.

And that's not all. Things clicked. I'm writing. I've been writing August away.

*
August briefs:

I'm reading Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds by Lyndall Gordon and loving it, absolutely loving it. It's the most compelling and inspiring biography I've encountered in quite some time.

I gave Brenda Schmidt a facelift.
(Aug. 13 Clarification - This just means my other blog has a new template and new author/artist pics. That's all.)

I hopped on Select Hops. Check out my tomatoes!

6 comments:

Blondi Blathers said...: Putting a hold on that Emily Dickinson bio at my library. Thanks for the recommendation. Sounds like good reading.; 12/8/10 9:04 PM
Brenda Schmidt said...: I hope you enjoy it as much as I am!; 13/8/10 8:30 AM
Shawna Lemay said...: August really is weird isn't it? would love to see that cupcake photo. wow. and your tomatoes look marvelous!; 14/8/10 9:40 AM
Brenda Schmidt said...: It is! Yay for friends who indulge my weird side! I love getting such things. Nice surprises!

I'm pretty tickled with the tomatoes. Unless something happens, that one plant alone will keep us going until frost.; 14/8/10 9:54 AM
Bernadette said...: Haha! I love this bit from your bio at the face-lifted blog: "Brenda ... also specializes in the fine art of road trips."; 30/8/10 4:46 AM
Brenda Schmidt said...: It's taken years to master, believe me!; 30/8/10 8:13 AM

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"This is a skilled poet having good fun, and inviting us all to join the party." - Shelley A. Leedahl, SaskBooks Reviews. Read more.

"Employing a variety of forms and the culvert stories — who knew? — of numerous people, she digs beneath the obvious roads to find out what keeps the water — the subconscious, the unconscious — flowing smoothly, discovering a variety of things about herself, notably the everyday masks we wear and the aging process we won’t always admit to." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"For Schmidt is indeed a poet. Readers can expect to encounter many visual and acoustic delights along the way, from internal rhymes to arresting images." - Trevor Cook, The Antigonish Review #196.

"In Grid..., Creighton's Brenda Schmidt turns a colder eye to the landscape than most other Canadian poets." - Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press. Read more.

"You can just feel the stones rattling off your undercarriage on this Grid." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"Like the Prairies, this is not a collection that gives itself away: the true beauty of this book lies in subtleties that may not be obvious at first glance." - Emily McGiffin, The Malahat Review. Read more.

"In Grid, moments are approached in their apparent stability only to be swept away in song rife with interruption and fresh stimuli, lending a new perspective. It is as though the familiar ground is an eye glancing back and the reflection only a nodal-point, open to opportunity and play." - Justin Dittrick, SPG Book Reviews. Read more.

"There is grit in these poems, so much that it seems unfair to think of them as nature poems; like the best nature writing, they undo our expectations of nature rather than uphold them." - Tanis MacDonald, Arc Poetry Magazine. Read more.

"In her fourth collection Grid, Schmidt’s wry humour transcends what we have watched heap up in Canada for more than a century—nature poems—balancing in canola fields between the beautiful lure of nature and our curious urge to separate ourselves from disappearing allotments of our own solace. We have wandered “off the grid” but fortunately Schmidt is an entertaining and insightful guide who can still find Li Po in a Dark-eyed Junco, if she has to." - Garry Thomas Morse, Jacket 2. Read more.

"These supple, witty, and incisive poems delineate our relationship to grids and systems both visible and invisible, natural and political." - Judges' citation, Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry nomination. Jurors: Shawna Lemay, Barbara Nickel, Sharon Thesen.