Circular reading, Tim Farrington comes around to me again
Sometimes reading is such a scary circular thing, a long time ago I read a fiction book called The Monk Downstairs by Tim Farrington. Actually given to me by a colleague who thought I would enjoy it. How did she know? Anyway I really enjoyed the book, spiritually, romantically and just a good read. A disheartened graphic artist meets and eventually falls for a monk who has left his monastery and maybe his faith behind.
I didn’t even realize I had picked up another book by him, this time on the subject of depression and the dark night of the soul, called A Hell of Mercy,
until I began to read a review and it mentioned A Monk Downstairs.
I wonder when he writes, in this new book, about the bad novels he wrote if he’s talking about the novel I found very good.
Hell of Mercy is an interesting consideration of depression and the “dark night of the soul”. Farrington has been able to give his spirituality many test spins and live a life of creative endeavors that many of us forging lives of “quiet desperation” and holding jobs with insurance and caring for families with 9-5 incomes, could not experience. But he does recognize that you don’t have to follow a particular spiritual path to experience a true dark night.
“Raising a challenged child, or caring for a failing parent for years on end, is at least as purgative as donning robes and shaving one’s head; to endure a mediocre work situation for the sake of the paycheck that sustains a family demands at least as much in the way of daily surrender as years of pristine silence in a monastery.”
So the dark night comes to each of us in a variety of forms, the recognition of surrender is the complexity that brings us to a wholeness of faith. I find this book comforting in the negation of the belief that ”if we are good, bad things will not happen; if we are good enough, our suffering will end”, recognizing this as a false comfort. Bad things happen, and really bad things happen to really good people. At the same time I’m not entirely sure he makes the connection with depression and the “dark night”. He suffered with depression his whole life but the horrific reality of his mother’s death took him to a completely different reality. His despair over her death and pain it caused generated a true suffering within himself. I don’t think this essay convincingly linked his lifetime depression with his grief over his mother and his “dark night”.
Anyway, whether I totally agree with his premise in this book or not, perhaps I’ll happen on him again. I obviously enjoy his ideas and discourse.
Not feeling the romance…
Romance, Valentine’s Day, Bah Humbug. Nothing like working at your husband’s flower shop on the “love” holiday to put you out of the romantic mood. Late hours, endless phone calls, desperate boyfriends and spouses trying to get in their last minute order. He’s promised me sushi and wine to keep me going. I happened to look at the newspaper at the shop and saw an article by Sonya Colberg of NewsOK about our own ladies of Romance. (And I’m glad it hasn’t been very long ago that I pointed out the funny videos by Jill Monroe, Gina Showalter and Merline Lovelace.)
So while I’m trying to get myself through another year of frenetic shopping by guys buying for their special honey, you might want to pick up one of the titles from these spinners of the romantic tale and get in the mood yourself. I’ll have to catch up with you when I get these customers moved along.
Oklahoma Romance Writers or OK-RWA
Not feeling the romance…
Romance, Valentine’s Day, Bah Humbug. Nothing like working at your husband’s flower shop on the “love” holiday to put you out of the romantic mood. Late hours, endless phone calls, desperate boyfriends and spouses trying to get in their last minute order. He’s promised me sushi and wine to keep me going. I happened to look at the newspaper at the shop and saw an article by Sonya Colberg of NewsOK about our own ladies of Romance. (And I’m glad it hasn’t been very long ago that I pointed out the funny videos by Jill Monroe, Gina Showalter and Merline Lovelace.)
So while I’m trying to get myself through another year of frenetic shopping by guys buying for their special honey, you might want to pick up one of the titles from these spinners of the romantic tale and get in the mood yourself. I’ll have to catch up with you when I get these customers moved along.
Oklahoma Romance Writers or OK-RWA
Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, 2009
Scissortail Creative Writing Conference 2009
Oklahoma Authors to present at 4th annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival
The fourth annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival will be April 2 – 4 [2009] at the Estep Multimedia Center, located on the campus of East Central
University. This event is free and open to the public. In addition to the three featured authors, Rilla Askew, Elmer Kelton and LeAnne Howe, the festival will showcase an additional fifty regional authors.
Askew graduated from the University of Tulsa in 1980 and went on to study creative writing at Brooklyn
College, where she received her master of fine arts degree in 1989. Askew’s first novel, The Mercy Seat, received the Oklahoma Book Award and the Western Heritage Award in 1998. Her novel, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and the Myers Book Award from the Gustavus Myers
Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. Askew’s latest novel, Harpsong, won the 2008 Oklahoma Book Award and Western Heritage Award for Best Novel.
Elmer Kelton is the author of over 40 novels. Four of Kelton’s novels have won the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and seven have won the Spur award from Western Writers of America. In 1998 he received the first Lone Star award for lifetime Achievement from the Larry McMurtry Center for Arts and Humanities at
Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, Texas. He also received honorary doctorates from Hardin-Simmons University and Texas Tech University. He was given a lifetime achievement award by the National Cowboy Symposium in Lubbock, Texas. His book, The Good Old Boys, was made into a 1995 TV movie starring Tommy Lee Jones for the TNT cable network.
LeAnne Howe is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and is an American Indian author, playwright, and scholar. Her work primarily deals with American Indian experiences. She attended Oklahoma State University, majoring in English. She obtained her master of fine arts degree in Creative Writing from Vermont College in 2000. Howe’s first novel, Shell Shaker received an American Book Award in 2002 from the Before Columbus Foundation. The novel was a finalist for the 2003 Oklahoma Book Award, and awarded Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year, 2002, Creative Prose. Evidence of Red received the Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry in 2006.
The Darryl Fisher High School Creative Writing Contest winners will also be awarded during the festival. For more information contact Dr. Ken Hada at 580-559-5557. To view the schedule of readers, visit http://www.ecok.edu/scissortail/Creative_Writing_Festival.asp
Finalists Named, Oklahoma Book Awards
What’s better than the Oscars, the Grammy’s, and the SAG awards? The Oklahoma Book Award winners! and the prelude to the April 4th dinner celebrating the ultimate in Oklahoma authors, are the finalist lists. Just out, hot out of the judges’ mouths, drum roll please…. 
Who are these people that bring us the best of Oklahoma authors year after year. It’s the folks at the Oklahoma Center for the Book, a state affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. The purpose is to focus attention on the vital role of books and reading. They also have a very cool award dinner, a meet and greet with the authors and a chance to purchase and get autographs from your favorites.
Oklahoma Book Awards are given each year in fiction, non-fiction, children/young adult, poetry, and design/illustration categories for work written by an Oklahoman or about Oklahoma.
Here’s last years happy recipients, note blue ribbons with large bronze medal hanging around their necks.
So check out a finalist, you’ve got time before the winners are announced to pick your favorite. I’m narrowing my choices and we’ll compare notes after the big day.
New Poet Laureate Named, Jim Barnes
Governor Brad Henry has appointed our state’s new poet laureate, Jim Weaver McKown Barnes.
“As Oklahoma’s Poet Laureate, Jim Barnes has the task of broadening understanding and appreciation of poetry,” Henry said. “His work is a testament to the strong cultural fabric of Oklahoma and an inspiration for others to follow.”
Jim Barnes’ remarks upon learning of this esteemed appointment, “I am indeed honored and delighted to accept the Poet Laureateship of Oklahoma. I am honored to serve my home state in the cause of literacy and literature, and I am delighted to think, with the appointment as Poet Laureate, that perhaps all my years of living in the realm of poetry have not been outside the boundaries of understanding. No art is more important to me than poetry, for poetry makes everything happen.”
Go to this site for a nice soundbite from the author before his recent acclaim.
The Oklahoma Humanities Council facilitates the poet laureate selection committee, which reviews statewide nominations on behalf of the governor, and coordinates the activities and appearances of the poet laureate throughout his/her term.
For Poetry, Picture and a Biography of Jim Barnes, go to http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jim%20Barnes%20Poetry%20Picture%20and%20Bio.htm.
His newest collection, is Visiting Picasso. 
His other works include the non-fiction prose book, On Native Ground: Memoirs and Impressions, which won the American Book Award in 1998. He has also authored several volumes of poetry, including The Sawdust War: Poems ; Paris: Poems; and On a Wing of the Sun: Three Volumes of Poetry.
So I’ll end with one of his poems, from On a Wing of the Sun,
Contemporary Native American Poetry
‘For one thing, you can believe it:
the skin chewed soft enought to wear,
the bones hewn hard as a totem
from hemlock. It’s a kind of scare-
crow that will follow you home nights.
You’ve seen it ragged against a field,
but you seldom think, at the time,
to get there it had to walk through hell.’
SKIM, time out for a great graphic novel
I’ve been doing nasty statistic reports at work, my brain is fried, so I decided I needed a diversion. I used to do this in college when I should have been studying for a final or doing a report. All of a sudden I would start some book that was not what I needed to be reading but wanted to read. I read the “Fire Next Time” by James Baldwin doing that, and can still remember it vividly.
I digress.
Skim
words by Mariko Tamaki
drawings by Jillian Tamaki
Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press
143 pages
Anyway I picked up Skim on Sadie’s recommendation
and I had a library hold on it and it just got back. It really is good. I’ve also discovered I like black and white graphic novels rather than color. The color distracts me from the writing.
(Copyright of this image belongs to Jillian Tamaki)
Jillian Tamaki is the illustrator, Mariko Tamaki the author. It is the teen angst novel, but carried out with subtlety, good dialogue, empathy for the characters, and experiences we’ve all had through the horrifics of growing up. I’m glad the ALA (American Library Association )Great Graphic Novels for Teens List, put this one on it.
Another graphic I read with black & white illustrations was kimmie66 by Aaron Alexovich. Telly’s adventures in virtual reality to find her friend Kimmie. Might want to give that one a try.
While I like these graphics, my disclaimer for parents would be, if you want to know what your child is reading, then read some of their books, and it’s up to you to determine what’s right at what age for your child, I’m not their parent.
Ok Heritage Association, lunch with Oklahoma Voices
The Oklahoma Heritage Association started a lunch with an Oklahoma Author program, called Oklahoma Voices. The Association itself has published more than 100 books celebrating Oklahoma history and culture. For ten dollars, or for twenty five which would include an autographed book, you can lunch with an Oklahoma Voice. The first event is a sit down with Peter G. Pierce, author of Baseball in the Cross Timbers: The Story of the Sooner State League, on Feb. 4th.
The next event will be on March 4th, this time with Bob Burke and Gini Moore Campbell, authors of Lee Allan Smith: Oklahoma City’s Best Friend.
And I think the April event will be very intriguing with Larry Lewis discussing Struggles in a New State: The 1910 Journey of the Abernathy Boys as a Framework of the Political Issues and Societal Changes in Oklahoma.
So get yourself signed up and have lunch with an Oklahoma author.
