Happy Birthday to Thee!

Dear Will,

I hear they made a big to-do out of your birthday again this weekend in Stratford-upon-Avon. They lined up concerts and lectures, not to mention country dancing and shop window contests. The main attraction was a parade featuring a giant birthday cake. Not bad for a guy who turned 451 years old this past Thursday.

Of course, hordes of people think you’re fantastic 365 days a year. Really, did any writer/director/performer ever have such a fan base? I think it’s safe to say, Will, that you still enjoy more adoration than Jane Austen, Christopher Nolan and Beyoncé combined. Just look at Central Park. Every summer hundreds of people spend an entire day waiting in line, hoping to get tickets to see your characters strut across the stage. What’s more, professors spend their whole careers publishing papers on your motifs, Hollywood is always coming up with modern adaptations of your works, and inmates put on productions of your plays in prisons.

We, your fans, are all colors, all ages, from all countries. Some of us are native English speakers and some of us aren’t (FYI, your plays are a hit in China and Vietnam). Some of us make money selling t-shirts and coffee cups with your image printed on them. Some of us feel smart when we say your name. Some of us hope our love for you will win points with potential dates. Some of us get a kick out of saying you didn’t really exist. Some of us like to roll our tongues over your poetry. Some of us feel clever when we casually drop your lines into our conversation. Some of us wish we could traipse around in those costumes – the capes and wigs, the black boots and crowns and brocade-trimmed trains. Some of us just love you without analysis. Some of us love you so much we want to bring you back from the dead. In a town northeast of Tokyo, there is a Shakespeare theme park where tourists can wander through replicas of Elizabethan buildings, such as the house where you were born and the Globe Theater. A doll-version of you even tells visitors the story of your life.

I fell in love with you one day in sixth grade. Miss Knerr showed us a black and white film of your Midsummer Night’s Dream, and that was it for me. Around that same time, my best (nay, my only!) friend invited me to go with her to see As You Like It and then Much Ado About Nothing. My father noticed my growing enthusiasm for your work and gave me something of his – a set of your complete works. The musty volumes were so ancient that when I opened them their burgundy bindings crumbled in my lap. I remember staying home sick from school. I was lying on the long yellow couch in our living room and, instead of watching Perry Mason re-runs or an old movie, I held one of my father’s old books and entertained myself by reading about those warring lovers, Beatrice and Benedict. After that, I memorized whole speeches. As Helena, I spewed venom at Hermia for betraying our friendship. As Beatrice, I strutted around my bedroom and gave my all to the “If I were a man” bit.

The summer before I started high school, my parents took me to San Francisco. On the way home through Ashland, Oregon, my dad made a call and snagged three tickets to see Henry VI, part II, the only play that the famed Oregon Shakespeare Festival still had seats available for that day. The next year, my parents took me to see Antony and Cleopatra. At the Tudor Guild Gift Shop, my mom encouraged me to pick out a souvenir. I bought a palm-sized plaque that had the Merchant of Venice quote “Young in limbs, in judgment old” printed on it. “Ha!” my dad said when he saw that. He’d been in the navy and believed in rules. He got mad when my brothers and I left the garage in a mess or used his scissors and didn’t return them to his desk. But he saw how passionate I was about you, Will, and he encouraged my interest.

My mom did the same. The summer before my senior year of high school, she planned a vacation for just the two of us. On a hot summer’s day, we set out in her little gold car for the six-hour drive from Beaverton, Oregon to Ashland. With the windows rolled down, we belted out show tunes and laughed. We pulled off at a rest stop and ate crackers and grapes. The next night, my mom made reservations for dinner at an Italian restaurant some distance away. After winding along miles of road lined with so many trees we may have been entering the depths of the Forest of Arden itself, we ate a gigantic meal served one course at a time – antipasto, soup, salad, pasta – a novelty for us as we were used to eating dinners at home with salad, bread and a main dish all on one plate. That same evening, back in Ashland, my mom and I saw your masterpiece,The Tempest, and on the stage, the actors seemed to shimmer with enchantment. The next day, the performer who played Prospero led a group of us on a backstage tour. On the floor I saw a sprig of silver leaves that had fallen from the scenery. I picked it up and imagined I could hear the eerie music of your magician’s isle.

I kept the program for every play I saw at that festival, Will. I imagined that I would go to college in Ashland. I pictured myself falling in love with an actor. I’d work in a café, I thought, until I won my first bit part. If I couldn’t make it as an actress, then perhaps I could be one of the festival’s musicians, playing my recorder in the concerts that were given in the courtyard outside the theater before the evening’s show. I’d need some practice though, and probably a new recorder, since the only one I owned was the brown plastic instrument on which I’d learned to play “Hot Cross Buns” and “Pick a Little, Talk a Little.” Back then, in the early days of my affection for you, I went to church with my parents every Sunday. I didn’t think there could really be a hell, but I had no doubt that there was indeed a heaven where you were comfortably residing. I pictured you among the clouds, still wearing your doublet and tights and holding a pen with an impressive plume. Dying didn’t seem so bad, since it meant I'd get to meet you.

In Stratford-upon-Avon this weekend, visitors could make birthday cards for you. This, dear Will, is my greeting for you, written in your own perfect words. After four decades of loving you, I – like thousands of others – want to say, “Haply I think on thee.”

On a Happy Note - Some Thoughts on Spring Break and an Oddly Pleasant Dream

I’ve been a little worked up this winter. When I went to the dentist last week, the hygienist thought I'd probably been clenching my jaw lately. This didn’t come as a huge surprise to me. But on Friday our family drove to the coast and with each passing mile, I felt another muscle relax into its proper place.

It was the first day of spring, and the air felt as mild and sweet as a sleeping baby’s sigh. When we got to the Ecola Creek Lodge, we heated up a pasta dish (made with roasted red peppers, cashews and a dash of lemon juice) and ate it with a great mound of dark greens spritzed with vinaigrette. Then we all cozied up in the living room and read for a long time before watching a DVD of Laggies, a movie starring Keira Knightley. Since it had only played for about a week in Portland last fall, I thought the movie might not be the best thing ever made, but it turned out to be a gem – a romantic tale with just enough quirkiness to keep it interesting, like a dash of cayenne in a cup of cocoa. The film’s colors were a pleasure too. In one scene, the glowing green of a mossy wall made me feel like I’d stepped into the surreal beauty of a pre-Raphaelite painting.

The next morning the sun was out and we walked on the beach. Our son and I talked about Ms. Knightley and agreed she’s a gifted comedienne. We loved the way she flopped on couches and put on an American accent with just the right touch of “valley girl,” without turning her performance into a cartoon. While we talked, I pointed a toe in the sand and tried out a few chaîné turns (a ballet move) just to see if I could still do them. I did pretty well, considering my heavy leather shoulder bag was swinging around too, threatening to throw me off balance.

Later, back in our living room at the motel, we all read some more. I also checked my email and found a message from a friend/former writing student. In the year since we’d last corresponded, she’s moved to the country, where she works on her writing and her art. She now lives within walking distance to a store and to the library. It all sounded so peaceful, I felt happier, more relaxed just thinking about her enjoying this new life she’s created.

Before heading outside again, we watched another movie. This time it was The Notebook, in which a baby-faced Ryan Gosling falls in love with a baby-faced Rachel McAdams. Our daughter, who’s seen the movie before, turned it off just before a gray-haired James Garner and a well-coifed Gena Rowlands die in each other’s arms. It seemed like a good idea to end on a happy note.

After dinner, it was even warmer than before, so we took another long walk on the beach and then sat down on a bench in the sun and ate dessert before returning to the motel and watching our third DVD. Pride is based on a true story about a group of gay activists who banded together to raise money to aid striking Welsh miners in 1984. We were expecting a cheesy, feel-good crowd pleaser, but the movie was subtler than it had looked in its trailer. Even the triumphant gay pride parade at the end was bittersweet, as a caption appeared, letting us know that the real-life co-founder of the group died at the age of 26 of an illness related to AIDS.

The next morning it was too rainy to walk on the beach, so we packed our bags and got home in time for me to attend a publishing party for The Way a Woman Knows, a book of poetry authored by Carolyn Martin.* Outside the old stone church where the event was held, I ran into a former writing teacher of mine, who looked radiant in an electric blue sweater and matching earrings. Inside, I felt a little awkward in a room full of people I didn’t know. But when Carolyn took the stage, the mutual love everyone in the audience had for her was palpable. She’s one of those people whose face lights up and whose arms open wide for everyone. And I do mean everyone. I hardly know her, but when I congratulated her, she graced me with that same glowing, unconditional love I’ve seen her offer to her dear friends.

When I left the party, the rain was coming down harder than ever. I clutched my copy of Carolyn’s book inside my faux-leather jacket and made a dash across the street for the parking lot, feeling like I probably should have stayed longer. But I’d had enough mingling for one day. I was anxious to take off my cowboy boots and put on a pair of sweats. I wanted to kiss my husband and children, to write something new, to take a dance class, to make a collage, to publish another short story or maybe a book of poems.

That night I dreamt that it was the first evening of my spring writing classes. In the dream, I’d come to class without my binder full of lesson plans and I had to think of a new prompt on the spot, which is a laughable idea for a dedicated over-preparer like myself. Miraculously, though, the assignment I came up with in the dream worked. Everyone was writing so intently I hated to stop them. Among the students were some of the participants from my real-life classes, as well as a couple of characters created by my unconscious, including a man who reminded me of Truman Capote and a woman of about 80 with dyed black hair and a purple coat. On her fingers she wore carefully feathered black and purple paint, and when it was her turn to read what she’d written, we were all transfixed by her odd, high-pitched voice and her intriguing words.

When I woke up, I thought about how much I love teaching and how much I love listening to my students read. As much, at least, as I love playing with words, eating, reading, dancing in the kitchen, watching movies and sitting in the sun at the beach.

*The Way a Woman Knows by Carolyn Martin was published by The Poetry Box® and can be ordered at www.thePoetryBox.com.

Let's Get Surreal

Here’s a poem from my chapbook, Baila Conmigo, which was published by Dancing Girl Press last fall. When I wrote this piece, I was inspired by Benjamin Péret’s weird poem “Hello” and its string of incongruous images that somehow work together to make a certain sense.

For Betsy   (after Benjamin Péret)

You are my symphony of stained glass and hot peppered cashews

my bathtub of tainted apricots
my jaguar springing on the tattered dew
my purple blouse with the hand-embroidered itch
my frog in the waterproofed suit
my bottle of coiled perfume
my tortured pearl rising blister-style and on cue
my secret dress trading sequins with the Sphinx
my rush hour tongue probing the chambers of a flaming stew
my needle in the carpet
my hornet in the hog's breath
my candy cigarette dipped in kerosene
my beloved X-ray machine—
your fingertips find every bruise and probe old wounds
then push me, barefoot, onto roiling paths that burn—
and for that I want to say
thank you.


To order Baila Conmigo or to see other titles by Dancing Girl Press, you can click   https://dulcetshop.myshopify.com/products/baila-conmigo-linda-ferguson.

Women's Day

On March 8, I'll be participating in an International Women's Day Poetry Reading presented by Soapstone.

I'm excited about this event for a big long list of reasons, including the fact that one of the readers is Sharon Wood-Wortman, the co-author of The Portland Bridge Book. When my son was in third grade, he was obsessed with bridges, and Ms. Wood-Wortman's book was one of his favorites. It's not every day you get to meet a legend from your family's history, so I'm expecting March 8 to be pretty thrilling from this standpoint...not to mention that we'll all get to hear some great poetry.

The event is free and open to the public.

 International Women's Day Poetry Reading

March 8, 2015

6:00 - 8:00 pm

TaborSpace, 5441 SE Belmont

 

Hosted by Ellen Goldberg

 

Readers include

 Fran Adler, Judith Arcana , Shawn Aveningo, Gail Barker, Judith Barrington, Emily Carr,

 Brittney Corrigan, Pam Crow, Linda Ferguson, Andrea Hollander, Tricia Knoll, Elise Kuechle, Carter McKenzie, Penelope Schott, Marilyn Stablein, Ila Suzanne, Carlyn Syvanen,

 and Sharon Wood-Wortman.

Sweet Indeed

Dear Friends,

I recently got some pleasant news. The Milo Review, which published my story "All the Sweet and Beautiful Boys" in their fall 2013 print and online issues, is now running the piece on their website as a Feature Story. You can find it at https://themiloreview.com/all-the-sweet-and-beautiful-boys/.

Here's to more pleasant surprises for us all in 2015.

Happy New Year, Happy Reading!

Dear Friends,

As 2014 comes to an end, I've come up with a list of some favorite reading experiences from the past 12 months. Happy New Year to you all!

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. I’ve had a crush on Ms. Patchett ever since a book club I used to belong to read The Magician’s Assistant in 2002. The next year we read her opus, Bel Canto, a story about a political mass-kidnapping that ends with all the tragic beauty and irony of an opera, and some of the lines from that book still shimmer in my mind.

What a pleasure, then, to get a glimpse inside the life of one of my literary idols. In this book of previously published essays, she writes, among other things, about her dog, a nun, the bookstore she started with another woman, and the South Carolina college that got itself into hot water when it selected her book Truth and Beauty as required summer reading.

My favorite piece was about the grueling physical tests required for admission to the Los Angeles Police Academy. I especially loved reading about how she trained for the tests herself, and in the process, learned to scale a six-foot wall. As the daughter of a retired LAPD detective, Ms. Patchett manages to tell us something about the bond she shares with her father without going overboard.

For me, that’s the greatest strength of this nonfiction collection. Whether she’s writing about her family, her husband or her late beloved friend, Lucy Grealy, Ms. Patchett’s aim is never to simply pluck our heart strings. She’s a master of elegant language, and her emotional revelations are mixed with a humor, intelligence and restraint that say much more than pages of damp confessions ever could. That’s why it means so much when she writes, “…[W]hen love calls out, ‘How far would you go for me?’ you can look it in the eye and say truthfully, ‘Farther than you would ever have thought possible.’”

Lila by Marilynne Robinson. Part of a trilogy of novels (along with Gilead and Home), Lila is the story about a homeless woman and an aging preacher. Against all odds, they’re married, and for the first time in her life, Lila is warm and safe in the preacher’s plain, clean house in Iowa. Where she once traveled from town to town, finding shelter wherever she could, Lila now has an abundant garden, a caring husband and a child growing inside of her. But the past, with its violence and cruelty and love is always with her too, making her wonder if she can truly feel at home in this new, protected world.

 

Roots of Style by Isabel Toledo; illustrations by Ruben Toledo. This book is a passionate paean to personal style by Ms. Toledo, the Cuban-American woman who designed Michelle Obama’s 2009 inauguration suit. Her detailed description of the first lady’s ensemble left me a little breathless. For example, although some fashion experts thought the matching dress and coat were sewn with sequins, in reality that sparkle was the effect of sunlight on the layers of wool lace and silk, which its designer combined for warmth as well as beauty. Ms. Toledo may not use the polished written prose of Ann Patchett, but she communicates her love of fabric and movement and self-expression in a way that makes us admire her literary ability as well as her artistry as a designer.

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. An evil uncle, a shipwreck and a life-and-death hide-and-seek through the heather-covered Scottish highlands. Combine this with a complex bro-mance (between our foolish but well-intentioned teen hero and his friend, a Scottish rebel on the run) with Stevenson’s ability to capture the old Scots language on the page, and hoot man, you have a recipe for fun.

Christina Rossetti: A Divided Life by Georgina Battiscombe. An exploration of the life and mind of the author of the bizarre and compelling poem “Goblin Market.” Battiscombe’s thesis is that there’s a “doubleness” about Rossetti, who was a dark beauty with a temper and penchant for sumptuous language, but who also adhered to her religious beliefs with a determination that bordered on fanaticism.

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall. In this third Penderwick tale, three of the sisters are on vacation in Maine with their Aunt Claire, who promptly sprains her ankle, leaving the girls somewhat free to pursue their own adventures. Complications cheerfully follow. Jane makes an idiot of herself over a boy named Dominic, and Skye, the cranky, soccer-loving sister is terrified of her new responsibilities as the OAP (Oldest Available Penderwick). Meanwhile, the sisters’ beloved friend Jeffrey meets a man who shares his love of music and also bears a decided physical resemblance to him. Ms. Birdsall’s characters are fresh and modern, while reminding us of fictional friends from other eras, like Betsy and Tacy, Henry Huggins and even Laurie and Jo. Oh, how I wish the Penderwicks would take me along on their next vacation.

The Plover by Brian Doyle. Can you pick a favorite book that you read this year? As my son says, that might be like picking a favorite kind of pie. But if I absolutely had to narrow it down to one, I’d choose Mr. Doyle’s novel. As much as I loved his Mink River, The Plover moved me even more, as I sailed along with the ultimate loner, Declan O’Donnell, who sets off on a solitary voyage only to gradually collect a boatload of passengers, including – to name just a few – two rats, a politician, a singer, a pirate and an injured girl who can only speak to birds. Mr. Doyle’s poetic prose kept me turning the pages as much as the high seas adventure did. But this book is more than lyrical images, likable characters and a compelling premise. Underneath it all is the idea that we’re connected to everything and everybody, from the fish in the sea to a murderous villain to an 18^th century philosophical writer. Perhaps Mr. Doyle is saying that the inhabitants and landscape of our world are like the drops of water that make up the ocean. Combined, they may drown us, or, one by one, they may be drawn up to the sky by the light of the sun.

 

 

Hell's Teeth! The Magic of Mary Stewart

I discovered my first Mary Stewart book, Touch Not the Cat, in a 1976 Reader’s Digest Condensed Book of my dad’s. It was, I found, not Mrs. Stewart’s best work, but how I loved that mysterious tale of twins and telepathy, and I’ve been a passionate fan of hers ever since. After that, I saved up my babysitting money each month to buy her older novels, which all transported me to a world where well-read heroines quote Shakespeare, Milton and Tennyson, and the handsome devils who fall in love them all know exactly what they mean.

These women, though, do more than sit around and read the classics. Charity Selborne, the protagonist of Mrs. Stewart’s first novel, Madam, Will You Talk? not only throws herself into saving a young boy from his menacing father, but knows how to drive her car fast enough along the winding roads of Provence to elude the monstrous man. Lucy Waring, in This Rough Magic, crosses paths with a cold-blooded smuggler then escapes by swimming from a bay in Corfu to the Albanian coast. Created mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, these heroines are Every Women who generally hold low-status jobs, but there’s no doubt that they’re at least as clever as (if not more clever than) their counterparts in contemporary fiction.

Besides the thrill of seeing an ordinary woman outwit a host of dangerous foes (from a former Nazi to a madman obsessed with making human sacrifices to a mountain), Mrs. Stewart gives us the pleasure of travelling to such disparate places as Damascus, Corfu and Scotland’s Isle of Skye. I can still remember how she made me love these locales with her lengthy descriptions that seemed to caress every tree, every leaf, every bird’s wing. Here she is, in The Moon-Spinners, describing some scenery in Crete:

 “The track to Agios Georgios wound its way between high banks of maquis, the scented maquis of Greece. I could smell verbena, and lavender, and a kind of sage. Over the hot white rock and the deep green of the maquis, the Judas trees lifted their clouds of scented flowers the color of purple daphne, their branches reaching landwards, away from the African winds.”*

I confess that as a 13-year-old, I often skimmed over such passages, eager to plunge on through the plot and get to the good parts, where the heroine vexes the villain and kisses a handsome but oh-so-honorable man who just happens to fiercely return her affection. “My dear girl,” Nicholas Drury tells the heroine of Wildfire at Midnight, “my instincts work overtime where you’re concerned.” Sigh.

As much as I loved these romances, I was – and am – equally thrilled by Mrs. Stewart’s vocabulary. Besides beginning her chapters with lines from old ballads or plays or poems (“Nine coaches waiting—hurry, hurry, hurry—/Ay, to the devil….”), she has her characters all speak in classy sentences that are peppered with bursts of well-mannered British slang such as “hell’s teeth,” “damnable” and “beastly.” Her heroines are all unequivocally decent (at least four of them put themselves in danger to protect a child and one even goes all out to save a beached dolphin in the middle of the night), but their speech reveals a bit of an edge and more than a spark of humor. Charity Selborne hardly bats an eyelash when her friend dryly refers to an exciting man as “The Wolf of Orange” and Gianetta Brooke tells us after her brush with death in Wildfire at Midnight that “I had been fortified with whisky and a cigarette and was content, for a moment to rest there in the sun before attempting the tramp back to the hotel.”

If you go to a used bookstore, you’ll see that the women on the covers of Mrs. Stewart’s novels all have different looks, depending on the decade in which a particular volume was published. Today, the latest editions feature bright, retro-hip art that could be mistaken for 1950’s Dior fashion drawings. My favorites are the dark covers from the 60's, each depicting a heroine in lipstick, high heels and polished hairdo. I also own several crumbling 70’s editions that show full-hipped women in bell-bottom pants, their long, loose hair blowing in the breeze. Clearly, the publishers were trying to appeal to more modern audiences with those covers. But they had it all wrong. A Mary Stewart heroine is always as well-coifed as she is well-read.

Even in the midst of deadly encounters, Charity and company carry combs and mirrors in their hand bags and wear petticoats beneath their frocks. Mrs. Stewart may have been a serious, hard-working woman, but she also understood the importance of clothes, as we see in this exchange between Charity and her friend Louise in Madam, Will You Talk?:

“My dear,” I said gratefully, “don’t tell me you’ve brought my clothes! I knew you were the most wonderful woman in the world!”

She laughed. “No one can face a crisis unless they’re suitably clad.”

Sadly, Mary Stewart died this year. But the good news is she lived to be 97, and new generations of women are still being delighted by her books. Or maybe I should say new generations of women and men, because I’ve read a few of her novels aloud to my family, and my husband and my son are as captivated by them as my mother, my daughter and I have been. My husband likes Wildfire at Midnight and my son has a thing for The Ivy Tree. I couldn't possibly pick a favorite, but if you’ve never read a Mary Stewart book before, you can safely start with any of them. Hell’s teeth, I believe you’ll be damnably glad you did.

*Mary Stewart’s novels were originally published by Hodder & Stoughton in London. The Moon-Spinners came out in 1962, Wildfire at Midnight was published in 1956, and Madam, Will You Talk? was published in 1955.