Welcome to November!
Ponderings
The air is turning crisp, the wind is fluttering orange leaves to the ground, eastern bluebirds are migrating through our area, and the first snow flurries are flying in the air. I love this time of year. We spend many summer evenings outside in the golden light, but in fall, I love the coziness of being inside.
The news has been full of awful things that are happening around the world. So many are grieving, and I grieve with them. But I also want to push back the dark by focusing on a more light-hearted topic in this month’s ponderings: audiobooks. I’ve been thinking about how to balance my love of audiobooks with my need for quiet in order to compose my poetry. I have been devouring audiobooks one right after the other as I go about my housework, and I’ve noticed that my creativity has slowed down. After just a couple of days of quiet, listening to instrumental music instead of audiobooks, I’ve felt my mind open to the words that the Holy Spirit whispers in my ear. I have plans to listen to two vintage children’s books in November and December—Ginger Pye and Miracles on Maple Hill. Maybe I need to remember to take breaks between audiobooks to allow space for quiet. What about you? Do you like audiobooks? Have you found that your best ideas come when you’ve let your mind be still?
Poetry
I have two poems to share with you this month. The first is a tanka poem, a thirty-one syllable poem written in a five-line form. It is featured in my poetry collection Beautiful Glimpse.
“Thankful” Warm blanket, soft dog, children laugh, husband sings, light spills in my heart while poetry fills my ears--oh! Thankful! Awake in a dream.
This second piece is a newer poem that was inspired by apple-picking time in our area. We were fortunate enough to get a bagful of granny smith apples from our own apple trees.
“Poetry Pie"
Words dangle from branches
like ripe apples, waiting
to be plucked.
Gather enough in your basket, and
take them home.
At your kitchen table, mix
the word-apples with
spices. Bake
into a poetry pie
and serve to others so
they may taste
and see that
words are good.
My November gift to you is a printable of my poem Poetry Pie.
And here is a beautiful painting by Lore Pemberton called Oldest in the Orchard that is a great art companion for my poem.
Books
During October, I read The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather. First published in 1915, this novel immerses us in the world of Thea Kronborg, a Scandinavian girl living in “a one-story town of Colorado.” Thea learns piano from Professor Wunsch, a rather interesting and grumpy character, and then a new teacher discovers her true talent, which is singing. We embark on a journey with Thea as she discovers her voice and stops at nothing until she is a star of the opera. Though I sometimes had a hard time connecting with Thea and her story, there were many beautiful passages throughout the book.
“What was it about the child that one believed in? Was it her dogged industry, so unusual in this free-and-easy country? Was it her imagination? More likely it was because she had both imagination and a stubborn will, curiously balancing and interpenetrating each other.”
“In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation.”
In this next lovely passage, Thea is taking a much-needed break. I read it aloud (link below) as well as typing it here.
“All her life she had been hurrying and sputtering, as if she had been born behind time and had been trying to catch up. Now, she reflected, as she drew herself out long upon the rugs, it was as if she were waiting for something to catch up with her. She had got to a place where she was out of the stream of meaningless activity and undirected effort.
Here she could like for half a day undistracted, holding pleasant and incomplete conceptions in her mind—almost in her hands. They were scarcely clear enough to be called ideas. They had something to do with fragrance and color and sound, but almost nothing to do with words. She was singing very little now, but a song would go through her head all morning, as a spring keeps welling up, and it was like a pleasant sensation indefinitely prolonged. It was much more like a sensation than like an idea, or an act of remembering. Music had never come to her in that sensuous form before. It had always been a thing to be struggled with, had always brought anxiety and exaltation and chagrin—never content and indolence. Thea began to wonder whether people could not utterly lose the power to work, as they can lose their voice or their memory. She had always been a little drudge, hurrying from one task to another—as if it mattered! And now her power to think seemed converted into a power of sustained sensation. She could become a mere receptacle for heat, or become a color, like the bright lizards that darted about on the hot stones outside her door; or she could become a continuous repetition of sound, like the cicadas.”
“But in that same room there was a picture—oh, that was the thing she ran upstairs so fast to see! That was her picture. She imagined that nobody cared for it but herself, and that it waited for her. That was a picture indeed. She liked even the name of it, “The Song of the Lark.” The flat country, the early morning light, the wet fields, the look in the girl’s heavy face—well, they were all hers, anyhow, whatever was there. She told herself that that picture was right. Just what she meant by this, it would take a clever person to explain. But to her the word covered the almost boundless satisfaction she felt when she looked at the picture.”
The painting that Thea was so taken in by and from which this novel gets its title can be found here.
Bonus Books
Here are two other books that feature larks in their titles. Lark Rise to Candleford is a wonderful British show based on this book by Flora Thompson that I highly recommend watching. I must admit that I have not read the book yet, but I think the cover is so pretty!
The Lark by E. Nesbit is a light-hearted read about cousins Jane and Lucilla who find themselves in need of a way to make a living.
"When did two girls of our age have such a chance as we've got - to have a lark entirely on our own? No chaperone, no rules, no..."
"No present income or future prospects," said Lucilla.
They embark on different misadventures in an English cottage left to them by their guardian (who has also gambled away their money). It’s quite a lark!
Picture Book
For a light-hearted, silly read with piano and opera themes—and a pig!—you should check out Ginger and Petunia by Patricia Polacco. It would pair well with The Song of the Lark.
Beauty
Two of my girls and I sat on this park bench in the warm sun and had quite a nice talk. What would you like to do on this park bench? Read? Write? Draw? Pray? Sketch? Talk to a friend?
As I sign off for this month, I leave you with beautiful music from Paper Horses. The four women in this group represent everything I love in music: great singer-songwriter musicians who are singing about Jesus with a country twang. Here is one of my favorite lyrics from their song An Honest Word—
“I don’t think you need one more defender. It’s enough to be your child.”
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I hope November brings you warm drinks, cozy blankets, bits of beauty, and many good books and songs.
Blessings,
Stephanie
Love this so much! Your poems are lovely and thanks for the book recommendations! I enjoyed the tv version of Lark Rise to Candleford but will also have to check out the book!