BUONA FESTA, NONNA ♥

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Italian grandmother, Mother's Day, Nonna, poems, poetry, postaweek2012, stories, Torrington Library

As northwestern Connecticut towns go, Torrington, though pleasant enough, does not enjoy the tony reputation of its neighboring communities, their stature or style. But here in town, you can see a movie at the multiplex. You can fill your growler with winter ale at the pub. Or you can head over to the Torrington Library where Jessica Hodorski, the program coordinator, throws open the doors, invites you in and unveils the history, lore, art and mystery that is poetry.

 The Torrington Library

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Ms. Hodorski’s eyes light up when she talks about poetry. Of course, it is what you expect of a librarian, of someone who says to call her “Jess” because that’s what everyone calls her ~ in the stacks, behind the desk and even at her writing workshops. Line cooks and engineers, programmers and waitresses, high schoolers and home schoolers, post grads and playwrights ~ they all show up to play with words. And so do I.

……..Jess

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 Jess

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This year at the Poetry Cafe, I read my poem, The Ticket. It used to be a messy bit of memoir that sprawled over several pages. The kind of piece that bulged with details. But now it’s a small moment ~ a snapshot, not an entire album.  I thank my writing partners for that. They do the mind-slammingly hard stuff ~ read the ‘vomit draft’ (and each revision thereafter), rescue what works and chuck the rest.

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Nonna

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The Ticket is about my grandmother who married quite young and came to America seeking a better life. I’m so thankful she stayed. Happy Mother’s Day, Nonna.

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The Ticket

In the dank cellar on Oak Avenue,

she shovels coal into the firebox.

Outside, the hens squawk about their fate.

She misses the hill town in Piemonte,

where the earth drives you mad with the scent of growing things.

Here there is bread to bake and children to bear,

the ache in the small of her back

indifferent to her desire

for purses of gnocchi and fresh butter.

Here there are no clusters of purple grapes

ripening under an apricot sky,

just grey sheets to soak

in a claw-footed tub

and a brown metal bed that lists.

She used to feast on music and laughter,

stories, tart and sweet,

but those days are done

and she is swallowed up

by black stockings, rolled down to just below her knees,

and shapeless dresses skirting hard-looking calves.

With a ragged moppeen,

she scrubs away sin and regret,

kneels on yellowed linoleum squares

in a house grown smaller in size.

She fingers the ticket in her pocket.

Will he remember the feel of her cheekbones?

the line of her hip under his hand?

She packs the one smiling photograph of them.

That and the white silk dress on a wire hanger.

Toni 5/13/12

IS THERE LIFE AFTER WORLD BOOK NIGHT?

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Chris Cleave, Literature, Little Bee, Northwest CT YMCA, postaweek2012, reading, Stonewall Kitchen in Avon, stories, World Book Night, YMCA

World Book Night was an enchiridion of joy.  A Blue-Book Elegant Success.

I gave away 20 copies of Chris Cleave‘s Little Bee and experienced  a blizzard of endorphins with every encounter.

Everyone loved the idea of World Book Night.  Faces lit up.  Smiles appeared.

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Here’s what my day looked like  ~

The chef of the Farm Table in Avon took some copies for his kitchen staff. He’s starting a book group!

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Working long hours at Stonewall Kitchen in Avon makes it tough to get to the library. The clerk and her colleague plan to read Little Bee during breaks and share their thoughts.

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Here’s the pin I wore ~ it’s so CSA. (CSA is text for cool, sweet, and awesome.)

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Next stop ~ downtown Torrington at the YMCA.

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Armed with books, I met some members, residents, and workers who enjoy reading.  They were just an uppercase great bunch..and I wished I had more books to share.

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I did have enough book marks, even for …

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…. the Shy Reader.

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World Book Night 2012 is over.  But the tweets and messages and emails keep coming from givers and readers alike.  And a half million more people own a book today than yesterday.  No-strings-attached perfection, I’d say.

So..What about you?  Were you a giver?  A reader?  Share your experience here …or read about the event on https://www.facebook.com/worldbooknightusa

Toni 4/25/12

THESE GUYS HAVE ALL THE FUN

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Anne Hull, Books about writing nonfiction, creative nonfiction, feature writing, Gene Weingarten, literary journalism, narrative journalism, new journalism, non fiction, postaweek2011, stories, storyteller, telling true stories, Washington Post, writing

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Telling true stories is what Gene Weingarten does best.  Call it what you like ~ narrative journalism, new journalism, literary journalism, creative nonfiction or feature writing ~ his stories have us by the throat.  Weingarten, winner of not one, but two, Pulitzers, is The Best Storyteller around. He’s simply a master at finding a story. But it’s his courage, patience, savvy, and dogged research that fill the page with words. Perfectly. Every time.

We hunger for true stories, not just information. I get my story fix in the daily newspapers, online posts, and podcasts that take me out into the real world and teach me something new. Stories are what make us human and we all tell them. To be a socko-boffo storyteller like Weingarten, you need to be an Olympian observer and a raging good thinker. His stories are full of laser-accurate details, not steel-plated facts.

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Anne Hull, a Pulitzer finalist, describes a Mexican woman who was part of a legal guest-worker program in North Carolina in her piece for the St.Petersburg Times ~

She was thirty-five, barely five feet tall in her sandals. Her pans of tamales had gradually found their way to her hips. For a mother of eight, she was unusually mild-mannered. A hen would fall asleep in her hand as she drew the hatchet back to chop its neck. 

In those few sentences, Hull tells us plenty about a woman desperate for work, one who travels by bus for four days to stand at a steel table with a small knife and pick meat from blue crabs, ten hours at a clip. There’s no laundry list of details, just a few sharp observations. Nonfiction writers like Weingarten and Hull know it’s the little things that really matter in our stories.

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My favorite place for storytelling is radio. NPR journalists tell stories through oral histories, poems, anecdotes, music and memories. The storyteller might be a town official, a hot dog cart owner or a marine biologist. And the voices that share the stories bring us all a little closer together. We feel like their stories are our stories, stories that want to be told…and heard…and shared.

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Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, says that stories are for joining the past to the future. The writing group loves stories ~ writing them, telling them and listening to them. We find the world and the people in it a marvel.  Here’s a list of books that help us fill the page with words.

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You can never have too many stories.

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Toni 6/20/11

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…..Books about Writing Nonfiction

Beyond the Writers’ Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction by Carol Bly

Damn! Why Didn’t I Write That? How Ordinary People Are Raking in $100,000 or More Writing Nonfiction Books & How You Can Too! By Marc McCutcheon

Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir edited by William Zinsser

Legacy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Personal History by Linda Spence

On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser

The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick

Telling True Stories edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call

Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction – and Get It Published by Susan Rabiner & Alfred Fortunato

Writing About Your Life: A Journey into the Past by William Zinsser

Writing Creative Nonfiction: Fiction Techniques for Crafting Great Nonfiction by Theodore A. Rees Cheney

Writing Creative Nonfiction: Instruction and Insights from the Teachers of the Associated Writing Programs edited by Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard

Writing Personal Essays: How to Shape Your Life Experiences for the Page by Sheila Bender

Writing to Change the World by Mary Pipher

Writing to Learn: How to Write and Think Clearly About Any Subject at All by William Zinsser