Pencil on paper, March 2017, all rights reserved, Karin Gustafson.
Posted tagged ‘Karin Gustafson’
Open-mouthed
March 30, 2017By the Sea, Charcoal.
March 28, 2017
Charcoal on paper by Karin Gustafson, all rights reserved.
Seeing Stars, Charcoal
March 27, 2017
Work on paper, March 2017, all rights reserved. Karin Gustafson.
Giving It A Rest
May 4, 2016
Thanks as always for your support.
Porch with a View (in a Valley)
May 29, 2015
by Jason Martin (watercolor on paper)
Porch with a View (In a Valley)
The pollen slips like dance wax
on a porch that has seen many
waxed dances, more
than I remember
and I remember enough.
If I could cast sadness as a weed,
maybe I could root it out.
But it’s one of those stones
that comes to earth’s surface,
no matter how we clear it,
with every till,
every until,
every single then here now.
The trick is to dance over it.
So, I tell myself.
Or maybe the trick
is simply to stand still,
or, more simply, to still–
to let the sadness dance over,
understanding that stones in the mind
weigh about as much
as the dust of dandelions and lilacs alike–
Oh, the slippery mind–
how it wants
to hold things in
its palms; how it wants
to have palms–this perch
at the side of a mountain, these
straitened planks–
**********************************************
This is very much of a draft poem. I am particularly uncertain of the last two stanzas, and have contemplated (long) ending at the end of the second stanza. But here I am, with extra lines. I am posting it now to move on from it a bit. The painting is by Jason Martin, and is also used as the cover of my poetry book. Going on Somewhere. (Check it out! Along with my other books, Nice, Nose Dive and 1 Mississippi.)
Have a nice weekend.
“Nice” Blurb – Plea for Help
August 16, 2014
As some of you may know, I have been working in an increasingly desultory fashion on the publication of a new novel, called Nice. (I say, “increasingly desultory” as it has become harder to work on this project the closer it is to completion.)
Unlike my first published novel, Nose Dive, which is a comical young adult mystery (and a lot of fun!), this is a serious novel, with an intense and, I hope, emotionally affecting, story. It is about child sexual abuse; it represents years of work.
I think it really is a good novel, though I’ve worked on it so long it is hard for me to still look at it. I am super happy with the cover picture, which I did myself.
Here’s my quandary–the sales information! The little blurb that goes on Amazon and elsewhere! This kind of thing is so darn hard for me that I can hardly squeeze something out.
So what I am asking for–I don’t know–ideas==approval==is the below horribly embarrassing?
It is summer, 1968–Martin Luther King Jr. shot in April, Bobby Kennedy in June–“what in the world is happening to this country?” Americans wonder.
It is summer, 1968, the civil rights movement in turmoil, the Vietnam War escalating, but Les, a ten year old suburban girl, has been trained to be nice.
Her teenage brother, Arne, on the other hand, aims for rebellion.
But they are kids, it is summer, it is 1968, and what they both truly want–aside from world peace–is to be a little more cool.
Then a distant relative visits, a cool cat, rebel of sorts, childhood favorite.
“What in the world is happening?” Les wonders, as the unthinkable does.
“What in the world is happening?” Arne wonders, as his sister changes, as he too is faced with a darker picture of growing up–
Their story traverses the landscape of country, family, heart.
Since posting – B. Young made some very useful suggestions and here’s a whole other approach:
Nice is a story of child sexual abuse and its aftermath. It takes place in the summer of 1968, the U.S. reeling from the April assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the June assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the escalating Vietnam War. It is told from the points of view of a ten year old girl and her teenage brother, each separately finding a voice in the face of personal and political disillusionment.
Better? Too terse? (I was going to add in here a very horrible joke, but cannot in the face of the terrible loss of Robin Williams this week.)
Any ideas? Should it be more direct? Less direct? Should I just press approve/publish!?
The book will be issued by my own imprint, by the way, which is BackStroke Books, and when I do press publish, it will be available on Kindle and in paper. I will let you know when. I am aiming for cheap pricing so I do hope you’ll be able to read.
Update from Train/Novel
May 13, 2014
I am right now sitting on a train going backwards. This is not the same as sitting backwards on a train going forwards–that is, upon a back-facing seat.
This is sitting on a train that is, as it were, backtracking.
In this case, although we have all paid a substantial premium to take a train that is supposed to be faster and more reliable than the other trains on this line (in other words, we are on the Acela); we are hampered by an engine malfunction and are undergoing some kind of backwards maneuver to allow the back (functioning) locomotive to take over for the front (problematic) locomotive.
Ah. And now, we are stopped–with a dirt and gravel slide out one window and a stone wall on the other.
It reminds me today of noveling–i.e. trying to finalize and publish a novel.
Those who follow this blog may wonder–oh yeah, wasn’t she talking about that months ago?
Oh great. So, now we are moving backwards again–past cheery penguins and a worried polar bear painted on the side of a parking lot–they have big black gaps in their middles where the walls break to ventilate exhaust.
As in, yes, I was talking about this months ago.
The conductor, by the way, said that this delay would take about ten minutes, but it feels like at least fifteen. The good news is that we are moving quite quickly now; unfortunately, all passengers agree that we are still heading in the wrong direction.
So, about that novel.
Finalizing, publishing, seems to be one of those things ready any minute now, only not. This is my fault. Small corrections take an unduly long time as I just can’t bear to attend to them. (And also because I always sense that I should instead be doing major corrections.) I feel as if I’ve lost all sense of discrimination about the stupid thing–i.e. is something boring? Flowing? Awkward? Good?
By the way–we have been going backwards now for about twenty minutes and really fast too. (Since when do train conductors feel that they have to live out my metaphors!)
One of my problems now is deciding about the formatting. The paragraphs look way too tightly spaced on the page. I feel like I can hardly read them. On the other hand, when I pull books off the shelf and look at them, they seem to have similar tight spacing. Have I never noticed this before in books off the shelf?
By the way, it turns out — all passengers now agree–that we have NOT been going backwards for this last speedy half hour.
On the other hand, the train will be about an hour late.
Above is the picture I did for the novel’s cover. (All rights reserved.) I’ll save posting the actual cover till it’s ready. Any day/week/month now! (Ha!)
When the Bloom’s Gone
September 28, 2013
When the Bloom’s Gone
I knew for certain when we wed
we’d make our bed in a dandelion head.
Even cowslips were too darn costly
for those who lived on kisses mostly.
For all that ever touched my lips
were yours and, with them, arms and hips,
and all those bits that make us whole,
the byways traveled to the soul.
We hungered so for lovers’ food
we met in fields aside the wood
to feast ourselves upon a meal
not yet stamped by church’s seal.
Now you have gone and I remain
with only tatters of dandelion mane.
I drape them on my arms and hips
but would find more cover in cowslips.
My name’s been dragged full through the mud;
my story fodder for gossips’ cud–
they tell me that a widow’s weeds
would have far better filled my needs
but I remember nights in bed
with auraed spore just overhead
like wisps of cloud and star at once–
oh yes, they’ve shredded these cold months–
yet still I wait in balding home,
edged by dry and sharp rhizome,
for to taste once more your love
with dandelion sky above.
******************************************
Here’s a poem for dVerse Poets Pub Poetics prompt by Claudia Schoenfeld featuring the cool digital images of Catrin Welzstein, one of which may be seen above. (More of Catrin’s work may be found at http://catrinwelzstein.blogspot.de)
Brainscape
June 29, 2013
Drawing By Diana Barco (From “Going on Somewhere”)
Brainscape
You know, a brain is not nearly so large
as what it holds, the lodgings of joy and sorrow,
exhilaration and despair, jammed tenements, walls thin
as a hair’s breadth, everyone pounding
against the noise–
I don’t know much
about the addresses–whether ecstasy holes up at 413 South Cortex,
and grief, 414, to the front–
only that the brain passing through experience
sometimes derails, its trains of thought caught
in synaptic whiplash, its emotional impulses shorting
sparks, catapulting blow-outs and when the
tracks get swarmed, new routes
are formed, and that old byway
that climbed through spacious fields
where long-stemmed grass was starsprayed
with pale fleurettes and the deep red mouths of poppies laughed
as big as Jupiter, and the sun shone gold,
and you, as warm, held me,
our bared ribs twined
like clasped hands, swerves suddenly
into changed lands, fixes on a switchbacked
track, no going back and though we still hold on, up slides
down and gathered gold, outweighing
balances, seesaws the scale, and here cut flowers mound
to memorialize the missing, those who are no more are known never
to return, and ecstasy–
though I will have just passed through
her door—now pushes me
out her window, and despair alone extends
a sharp-spined net, offers me
a floor to sleep on, though I don’t sleep,
only wait till I can catch my breath
and the next train home.
***************************
Here’s a poem for With Real Toads, Fireblossom’s Friday, to write something about heartbreaking loss. I am also posting it for dVerse Poets Pub open link night.
I hesitate to post a poem of this kind for fear it will be deemed autobiographical by readers. All I can say is that poets are poets — we write about all kinds of human experience, and poetry, by its use of distillation and metaphor, tends to make that experience seem hyper-dramatic and perhaps more personally intense than it may be.
The drawing above is by a dear friend, Diana Barco, who illustrated my book of poetry “Going on Somewhere.” (This is a new poem, written today and not in the book, though I do urge you to check out the book! As well as my other books, Nose Dive –a humorous mystery, and 1 Mississippi, a counting book for those who like elephants.)
On a Trip Once
April 27, 2013
On a Trip Once
Increasingly, I don’t believe in ecstatic experience–
to me, there is ecstasy
and there is experience;
ecstasy that bit where you feel
the wonder of your connection with all
beingness–the velvet purr
of digging your fingers
through a time-mulched fern-feeding log,
and experience–when you understand,
hungover and with bug bites fisting
your wrists, that you too will swell
and rot, your particular beingness decay, bones
fray.
Still, certain moments well,
sparkles on a stream, for no reason–random sun–
I stand in one, on a concrete step
before a white-knobbed sink, which in turn fronts an open window
in the Majestic Tea Room, Mumbai–
Bombay then, and hardly majestic–
though high-ceilinged and robins-egg, the pale blue
blurred by warmth and fans and waiters with their beautiful
dark-hollowed faces, long-fingered
hands–and, just outside the window
and on his own concrete dais,
sits a pan seller, his betel nut grated in small tins, and in a larger can, a soak
of green serving leaves, as tensile
as young skin, and wafting up, not the smells
of the street, or worse of side walls sometimes in India, but the sweet scent of his
rose chutney, and I wish never
to stop washing my hands, not because they feel grimed, but because the sublime
is hard to find, and somehow it is here–was there–
flickering along the wilt of peeled window frame and in the searching fragrance of
jellied rose, the ecstasy of the quotidian caught
in the trappings of the exotic, there, on that sink’s step, no longer concrete
but like the peated log, something mind sifts,
wonders at, tries to connect.
*****************************
Here’s a sort of a poem for my Poetics prompt on “a trip” on dVerse Poets Pub. I’m hosting today and would love to see you.
The above photo is by Meredith Martin (my older daughter). It doesn’t really have anything to do with the poem–a pan seller is a person!– but I think it’s a fun picture of India.
Process notes–“pan” is a concoction made sometimes with betel nut, sometimes without. It includes various spices, like fennel, and a sweet rose chutney (made from the flower), all wrapped in an edible green leaf, forming a small stuffed triangle. The pan sellers in India used to make each pan by hand, sitting on street corners or in little booths with an array of spices and tins. Nowadays, a lot of the pan seems to be packaged. (The poem above should probably be made into two very separate poems some time! But this is how it came out for now. It has been edited since first posting.)
ManicDDaily 
Recent Comments