truancy

I've been a blogging truant for most of 2012, but promise something new to wind up this year.

First New Year's Resolution? I will blog at least once a week in 2013. I will blog at least once a week in 2013!

Today is Poem In Your Pocket Day

In the spirit of #pocketpoem on twitter, I share this.

Defining Success

Each day I write a little something, believing one day

a wordsmith's bullet will hit the target. It isn’t easy,

resurrecting dormant vocabulary and proper punctuation,

diagramming feelings into prose and poetry;

however, I shamelessly aim for heartfelt truth

and fire off simple rounds. If the only upshot

my writing accomplishes is to cause the reader

(yes, you!) to realize you have much to say,

then, my posted ponderings become successful

when you set pen to paper, fingertips to keyboard,
and shoot your words into the bulls-eye.

Cathy Safiran

March 25, 2012

First Impression

Being a lover of winter, snow, and fairy tales, I was immediately intrigued when I learned of Eowyn Ivey’s first novel, The Snow Child, set in Alaska. Newlyweds in 1966, hubby and I bought the books Homesteading in Alaska, and How to Get Out of the Rat Race and Live on $500 a Year. That never happened. Still dreamers, Alaska is on our bucket list.

The Snow Child is a delight to hold. The paper is lightly textured and feels like cotton. An impish mysterious small figure peeks from behind the paper-white bark of a stark tree. A red fox peeks from behind another tree and watches the child. The dark night holds a sliver of the moon- or is it an eclipse? Perhaps an eye? I’m only on page forty, so I’m eager to discover everything that will be revealed in the story.

I inspected this book carefully before beginning to read. First edition 2012. The paper feels gentle. The type is the perfect size for bedtime reading by tired eyes. There is a handmade quality to this edition. The edge of the book is not surgically sliced at a hard ninety degree angle. The pages are slightly angled, almost divided in sections, like the sewn signatures of a hand made book. The cover beneath the dust jacket is white as snow and the end papers are dark-night blue. Lovely. A mother who always swaddled her babies, I feel Eowyn Ivey’s story is revered by the designers of her book and her publisher Little, Brown and Company by the way The Snow Child is presented. I know I am in for a treat!

Swaddled in bed last night beneath a wool blanket and down throw, our house as still as Jack and Mabel's homesteader cabin, I began reading The Snow Child and slipped with them into their world near the Wolverine River in Alaska. I read slowly, pondering Eowyn Ivey’s phrases, sentences, and skill as a writer. And, tonight, when I read from The Snow Child, I hope to again fall asleep with a tear on my cheek that sparkles as one of Alaska’s snowflakes.

Cathy Safiran

February 5, 2012