Happy Mother’s Day, A Week of Birds, and Thinking About Our Poetic Mothers and Influences (and Who Will Parent Our Books?)

Two red-winged blackbirds, one in flight

Happy Mother’s Day, and A Week of Birds

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mother in any way today. Even if, like me, you only mother books and cats. Take some time for yourself, go out and visit some flowers and birds – you deserve it!

This week has been a little reserved, cold, moody and rainy for May, a little downbeat after a sunny, late-blooming April. But it seems the birds have all appeared at once, and are not at all bothered by cold rainy days. I stood out in the rain to get these shots of red-winged blackbirds – there were three mating pairs that I counted, plus two sets of goslings and about nine ducklings on the lake. By the time I was done taking pictures, I was so cold I had to take a hot shower to warm up, but it was totally worth it. Around the feeders, hummingbirds and black-headed grosbeaks as well as goldfinches have been appearing. I tried to capture as many magical bird moments as I could because: 1. Birds are little dinosaurs. 2. Birds are like little poems unto themselves, right?

Mother Goose

Poetic Mothers

Since it’s Mother’s Day, I thought I would talk a little about poetic mothers – our influences. I’ve been reading The Writer’s Library with my mother (as part of our quarantine book club project which you can read about here on Salon) which includes terrific interviews about influential books by Nancy Pearl with great writing influences like Siri Hustvedt, Lorrie Moore, Jane Hirshfield, and Louise Erdrich. It’s wonderful to find that you have so much in common with writers you love and the books they love. Certain books come up over and over again in the book – Agatha Christie, The House of Mirth, childhood sci-fi binges – and the fiction writers talk a LOT about poetry, which was surprising. Anyway, a great read, and I bought it as an Audiobook as well, because listening to the writers is fantastic (for the most part, they voice their own interviews.)

Goslings entering the water

The other book I’ve been reading that made me think about poetic foremothers and influences is Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz, all about the friendship/frenemyship of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. It provides a lot of background and context for their relationship. Besides making me jealous that I having been meeting anyone at the Ritz for martinis, it made me think about the poets we read and pay attention to in our own lives, who we are secretly competing with (even if subconsciously,) who we read and let influence our own thoughts about poetry and poetics. I realize I am very lucky to be friends with so many wonderful poets, but I don’t really have a nemesis, per se. But maybe that’s okay. Do we need someone to compete with to reach our own potential? I think this is a very interesting question, because, especially as women are pressured NOT to be too competitive, at least in my generation.

But it does make me think about how writers need to encourage and push each other out of their comfort zones, and one way to make sure that happens is to make diverse friends from all kinds of backgrounds, some who are editors and publishers, who are full-time writers, who run their English departments, who are best-selling novelists (hey, it happens!), who have many different ways of writing and publishing, and many different voices. It reaffirms that we can all grow and learn and build our own unique paths. We don’t have to sound alike, or go to the same conferences, residencies, MFA programs, etc. There’s space for all of us.

Orange Azaleas

It also made me think of publishers and their role as “parents” of the book – not the author, who created it, but perhaps more like mentors or stepparents, who create the book’s look, help find it’s audience and marketing niches. I’ve been sort of picky about who I’m sending my manuscripts to, which slows down the publication road, but I’m hoping to find the right home – the right people who will help my books become the best versions of themselves. And I always hope – and so far I’ve been lucky – that my publishers will become friends as well.

Maybe I’ve pushed my mother’s day theme as far as it will go now. But I do hope you all find something good to do today for yourselves and your loved ones, spend some time outside with some lemonade and maybe a scone and read and write and have a magical moment with birds and flowers. It is springtime, and we have to appreciate its brief flare of beauty while we can.

Wisteria in bloom – your Mother’s Day Postcard