I spent my afternoon at a Soul Collage retreat which was
both restful, refreshing and inspiring. I knew my intention was to focus on
honoring women whose presence on the planet has influenced me both creatively
and also as a woman overall.
Here are the outcomes, including a little collage humor at
the bottom.
I included information for you in the captions, in case you
are curious who some of these women were/are. Can you see which collage has a pointillism
version of me within it?
Home & Hearth, Suffragists - Millworkers... You and I are all a part of the Women's Movement
I was concerned my painting of a woman's unclothed torso might get me "in trouble" with online censorship. So far, so good. I posted this on instagram as a test. No problems yet at all!
We love our Literary Grannies: still have edits to do on Anais collage and Vincent collage... oh, for realistic red hair...
I am a writer who respects my writing lineage. Too many literary studies only focus upon the male side of our creative lineage. One of my aims is to bring our Literary Grannies back into our consciousness. I'm Vincent's hair looks ridiculous, but I wanted to bring out that famous black and white photo of her with the magnolias. I learned last Spring that this particular magnolia breed was planted as far north as possible - in Upstate New York and Western Massachusetts - by landscape architect Frederick Olmstead who designed Central Park in New York City and other notable places. Now you know the amount of (not very useful) facts rumbling about my head!
Be alert for Billboard Man - Coming to Save an Artform in Your City!
This is an example of my flavor of art humor. I collaged my friend, Cameron Brian, into a broken billboard frame I photographed a while ago. I didn't know how or where I would use that photo and while collaging I couldn't help myself. :~)
What is happening along your adventures in Art Every Day land?
This is me, writing in a Baltimore Park. I am sitting across the street from an apartment building where Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald once lived.
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer,
performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art
will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield.
Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social
media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus
particularly enticing.
I always hope to gain wisdom from women such as Teresa of Avila. People keep asking me if I'm going to become a Catholic. No, I'm not. God and I talked about it and the answer was no. :-)
My dogs are in my backyard barking. Barking. And wait a
moment is there quie…. no, more woofs and high pitched Beth barking.
A neighbor on one side is working on his rental property so
I can hopefully have some nice new neighbors and on the other side, new air
conditioning is being installed. I never saw a crane, so I am not sure if they’ve
actually brought the big machine in or not.
All I want to do is install some interesting words on my
blog, please and thank you.
The incessant barking and oh yes, I’ve also been prepping
Emma’s room for new furniture. This means emptying the room of everything and
vacuuming the carpet and mopping the wood floor. This definitely interferes
with my plans.
These things aren’t supposed to bother me. How could I forget?
I am supposed to sit here and tap tap tap away, saintly,
like Teresa of Avila kneeling next to the three legged stool in her convent
tiny room as she scribed the words of God. She was in pain but she just kept
writing.
“Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you. All things
pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything.”
“Love turns work into rest.”
“God withholds Himself from no one who perseveres.”
Oh, to be more like Teresa of Avila. I suppose the least I
can do is to continue persevering.
I read the words of Simone Weil earlier this morning. She
wrote this:
“Affliction is a marvel of divine technique. It is a simple
and ingenious device to introduce into the soul of a finite creature that
immensity of force, blind, brutal, and cold.”
Is not being able to write with too much noise and
affliction of that level? I think I may be exaggerating. Now my brain is
fighting an inner dialogue about the pain of not being able to create and the
desire to use divine gifts in my everyday life and on and on and on.
Teresa knocks on my right shoulder and whispers into my ear, “To have courage for whatever comes in life –
everything lies in that” I feel a smile cross my face. “Trust God that
you are exactly where you are meant to be,” she continues. I feel my shoulders
relax.
The dogs are still barking and my fingers continue to move
across the page. The furniture delivery truck will be here in an hour. I feel
blessed, blessed, blessed or am at least on my way there.
What is as important to me, though, is that you are able to
step into the same relaxation I am in right now.
Read those words from Teresa of Avila to me. They are to
you, too.
Blessings: rain gently.
=====
Julie
Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her
word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown
Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different
social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus
particularly enticing.
Here I am, Hanging out with Literary Granny Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her husband at the Smithsonian's Air and Science Museum
I love to travel so much more than I ever confessed in the
past. The week I spent in the DC area for the past seven days cemented I am
heavily addicted to visiting new to me places, especially those with a women’s
history, literary history or social justice flavor. In fact, I can go nearly
anyplace and discover the women’s history, literary history or social justice
flavor that no one else had uncovered yet.
I also love scooting around in the ordinary, the mundane “oh,
that’s no big deal” places in the neighborhoods where the locals go and the
tourists usually don’t.
I have started a top ten list of surprisingly wonderful
places to go in the DC area that might be a new spot for you as well as a list
of places to visit with children and/or how to approach such places with
special needs children.
What surprised and delighted me the most, though, was my own
ability to roll with the punches during this trip. I didn’t have a single melt
down or need to stand up for myself, most likely because I was primarily on my
own. There were several times my plans were thwarted because my primary
responsibility was to be the almost invisible support for Emma who was
attending a high school leadership forum which was the reason we went at all.
My daughter, Katherine, stayed home to be with Samuel all
week.
One of her comments to me has continued to resound through
me: “That’s one of the qualities that is so good about you. When things don’t
go your way, you just pick another way and manage to enjoy it as much as what
you wanted to do in the first place.”
It is a beneficial quality whose origins were not
necessarily the best. I became one of the best “lemonade maker from lemons” I
know because I never expect things to work out in my favor.
What I was reminded this week that while things may not work
out in my favor or according to my plan, when I nestle myself deeply into the
moment, the moment was what I wanted in the first place – not the activity that
filled the moment.
An example: I tried to get to Baltimore on three separate
occasions. I was so excited to go on the afternoon Emma and her group were
taking a field trip away from the conference center. I bought a bunch of snacks
for them earlier and put them in a purple, polka dot bag for her to share with
her friends and within moments realized my rental car keys were on their way to
Emma’s field trip in the purple bag.
I could have stomped my feet and shaken my fist at the sky
and barked at the
You just don't see this in the desert I live in here in California: seedings growing from the hollow of a fallen tree......
housekeeping staff to just go away instead of waking me from
a nice, deep, restorative nap “because I am trapped here at the hotel!”
Instead, I thought, “What a gift. A chance to take a break instead of rush,
rush, rush.”
I did things like nap. I took a bubble bath. I wrote a blog
post. I went to the hotel restaurant and had some chicken noodle soup better
than I’ve ever had and a seasonal beer. I sat on the patio and wrote the
sunset.
When you travel next, please remember this:
1.Make a wild, crazy, absolutely out of this world
list of things you would like to do on your vacation or trip.
2.Start doing those items one at a time without concerning
yourself with the ‘what’s next’ on your list.
3.Stay alert to the surprising places that call to
you. I found my favorite new park and a very intriguing, hidden cemetery this
way.
4.Take some time off intentionally in the middle
of your trip and treat yourself to a “spa day.” Not with a ridiculous price tag
or anything, simply take a day of rest where you can take a bath or drink a
glass of wine or simply let the kids play on the lawn at sunset while you sit
on a picnic basket and eat fresh fruit, veggies and maybe one sweet craving and
call it dinner.
5.Document with images on your camera and bits and
pieces of writing on the way without worrying about telling the whole story “now”.
It will ripen as you go. It always has and it always will, as long as you are
willing to allow it to be so.
Love Your Literary Grannies: Today, we feature a tiny snippet about Harriet Monroe!
The name “Harriet Monroe” probably means nothing to you.
I knew I needed to feature her as a literary granny after reading her name over and over again and then realizing the impact she had on the rising popularity of new poetry, especially new and cutting edge poetry, is unmatched by anyone of either gender.
Harriet Monroe was the founding editor of Poetry Magazine. In a time of slumping subscriptions, her magazine continues to thrive and recently celebrated its 100th anniversary.
Miss Monroe worked for two years with no salary and continued to work during those two years as an art critic for the Chicago Tribune. When her work load became too heavy, she spent many years working for a minimal salary simply because she felt her work – and the importance of sharing poetic voices which might not have been heard without Poetry Magazine was of utmost importance.
I didn’t want to write a profile without reading more in depth of her life.
Harriet Monroe - today's lovely literary granny early in her career.
I discovered she wrote an autobiography. I discovered it was out of print. I discovered it on a used book website. I bought a first edition for a very low price and was rarely as excited to get a book in the mail as I was for this one.
I am reading it slowly, many parts aloud, so I can get a feeling for the sound of her voice. There are few activities I enjoy as much as reading aloud and being read to, aloud. I don’t want to wait to introduce her to you, my dear readers. Just know there will be more coming in the future.
She was a poet herself, but her greatest contribution to the literary world was her magazine.
Laura Ingram in the Dictionary of Literary Biography wrote this of Miss Monroe’s legacy: "The abundant richness of this movement might well have been less spectacular without the encouragement and vitality which Poetry offered in those years when young poets were seeking to break the bonds of traditionalism and to create a new poetic voice for the modern age."
Her editorial policy was quoted in the second edition: “"Open Door will be the policy of this magazine—may the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius! To this end the editors . . . desire to print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written."
Pages from the First Volume of "Poetry" magazine
Without Harriet Monroe, poetry was dwindling in popularity. I am sure it would delight her to see poetry continues to be alive and well and hopefully will become even more alive and even more well known as we get to know our literary grannies, poetic and prosody and all other forms of writing as well.
I’ve barely started her memoir and yesterday I giggled about her correspondence with Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island and others. Usually I am all about literary grannies in April during A to Z, but since I got sidetracked then, I’m writing some additional profiles this July.
It’s important we know who came before us in the writing world – for all creative people, including you!
Enjoy this meandering throughout July – please let me know of any Grannies I should research and build a relationship with as well. I’m grateful, always, for your input.
It would be very obvious to say I was named for my Aunt
Julie, but that is not exactly directly the truth. She was actually named Juliet
and my parents almost didn’t name me Julie for fear I would get teased because
of the character Julie Jordan in the musical Carousel. I didn’t get teased as a child, but when I was
younger I regularly got sung to by teachers with the opening line of the song.
Historically and literarily speaking, most Julies were Julia
or Juliette or Juliet I suppose.
I am glad to claim Julia Ward Howe as a Julie in my literary
lineage.
She was known mostly for her song, The Battle Hymn of the
Republic, but besides this
Literary Granny Julia Ward Howe
accomplishment she was a poet, abolitionist, and
activist. She also wrote plays and creative non-fiction, including a work about
Margaret Fuller, another woman I claim in my literary lineage.
The story of Battle Hymn of the Republic goes like this:
Mrs. Howe was visiting, along with the Secretary of War for the Union, some of
the army camps. The soldiers were busily singing “John Brown’s Body” and that
tune must have entered into her poet’s mind because she was awakened with the
first stanza of the famous poem written and complete in her mind.
By the time dawn arrived, the entire poem had been written
by candlelightand started its life as a song sung to the tune of John
Brown’s Body.
Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the lord,
He is trampling out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He hath loosed his fateful lightning
of His terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on
I have seen Him in the watch fires
of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar
in the evening dews and damps,
I can read his righteous sentence
in the dim and daring lamps,
His day is marching on
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on
I have read a fiery Gospel
writ in burnished rows of steel,
"As ye deal with My contemners
so with you My grace shall deal,"
Let the Hero born of woman
crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on
He has sounded forth the
trumpet
that shall never call retreat,
He is sitting out the hearts of men
before His judgment seat,
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him!
Be jubilant, my feet,
Our God is marching on
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on
The following stanzas are presented
as sung by The Mormon Tabernacle Choir in 1960
In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom
that transfigures you and me,
As He died to make men holy
let us live to make men free,
His truth is marching on
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on
He is coming like the glory
of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty
He is honor to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool
and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah
Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on
There is creative fire in friendships, just as there was between Elinor Wylie and Edna St. Vincent Millay
It has taken me longer than I thought to this experience on paper.
Sometimes it works like that for me: I find something too evocative to put into words, so I don’t. I wait for the right words to come. I wait longer. What I have discovered about myself is sometimes I never get to writing them down. I wait and then forget.
Slowly and meanderingly, the memory and the core feeling it brings up in my belly stops itching like it once did.
It was several weeks ago I sniffed out a place that has haunted me for at least eight years. Since the first time I “got to know” Edna St. Vincent Millay – because she haunted me and wouldn’t let go – I have had a yearning to visit her home at Steepletop.
The Home at Steepletop
In 2008 I wrote of her haunting:
“Someone from history will start tapping on my shoulder and over time I hear the name enough times that it becomes like a familiar song on the radio, the one you didn't know but all of a sudden could sing along quite well without even thinking about it. Edna St. Vincent Millay comes to mind as another woman who haunted me, as did Martha Graham for a time.”
I noted back then there was an artist’s colony there, but no tours of the home or grounds for literary travelers such as I. I tabled the thought, although the idea of an artist’s colony stuck with me. I still haven’t responded to that yearning: an artist’s colony for multi-generations so that parents and/or grandparents and caretakers who are responsible for their children could come and so could the children.
This is how my writing camp idea was initially born and now has been thriving for several years both virtually and in person.
So Lovely! The office across the street from Steepletop.
I also became a fan of Elinor Wylie via my series on Literary Grannies from 2012. I noted her friendship with Millay and I bought her poetry collection Trivial Breath. I was fascinated by her history as a mother and then, her many children that never came to be. I felt an odd kinship with her as I suppose was her haunting.
I literally stumbled and then tenaciously stalked Steepletop that day in April. I was so close I simply could not leave the Berkshires without a visit.
What I got was better than a visit.
I backtracked after reaching Auesterlitz and couldn’t find my way to Steepletop. I drove back to the hamlet and telephoned, expecting to get an answering machine. Instead, I got the warm voice of Peter Bergman, the Executive Director of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, although I didn’t know at the time to whom I was speaking. He gave me simple directions and invited me to tour the grounds “anytime”. With my heart pounding and my passion guiding the car’s forward movement, I found myself able to experience the grandeur and silent wonder of a place I have dreamed of visiting not on my own or with a crowd. I was blessed to experience Millay’s home on a one-on-one tour with the curator. When I found more of Elinor Wylie’s work on the shelves in the store I literally shouted, “Elinor!” as the reality of their friendship wasn’t at the forefront of my mind until I took her book off the shelf.
Millay was the more famous of the two women, but she loved Elinor with a strength beyond what many ever come to know. In the home at Steepletop there is a bottle of wine meant to be shared with Elinor but instead shared by her widowed husband and Millay shortly after Wylie’s death. It has been left empty on the mantel ever since as a forever altar in honor of their friendship.
I cried several times during the tour. There were times my feet seemed to be glued to the floorboards as I didn’t think I could take another step. When we arrived at the doorstep of Millay’s library, I literally thought I couldn’t go inside.
I’m not sure when you are reading this, but I am writing to you on Mother’s Day. It seems fitting I share this poem written by a woman who was never a mother – Millay, and her friend – who left her three-year-old son with his father and only faced stillbirth, miscarriage and infant loss after she left.
Mr. Bergman recited this poem as he stood next to the spot Millay was found dead on October 19, 1950.
“The courage my mother had," by Edna St. Vincent Millay from Collected Poems (Harper Collins).
The courage that my mother had
The courage that my mother had Went with her, and is with her still: Rock from New England quarried; Now granite in a granite hill.
The golden brooch my mother wore She left behind for me to wear; I have no thing I treasure more: Yet, it is something I could spare.
Oh, if instead she'd left to me The thing she took into the grave!- That courage like a rock, which she Has no more need of, and I have.
Motherhood and friendship, friendship and motherhood weave through the lives of women whether their art form is poetry or mommying or quilting or being a book keeper.
May we all have courage like a rock – to remember our literary grannies and our sisters, mothers and friends of today with a similar passion as these remarkable women shared.
This young girl from St. Louis grew up to write “Life has loveliness to sell" and many others...
I remember when I first started discovering some of the women poets of the early twentieth century. It felt like I had found a huge room full of women who were like sisters, mothers, cousins and aunties to me.
Sara Teasdale was one of them.A lyrical poet whose work focused on words from a women’s perspective, she won the first Columbia Poetry Prize in 1918, a prize that would later be renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Today I was thumbing through my collection of “all things Sara” when I realized I have used her as an inspiration for creativity many, many times. She has showed up in lessons I have taught, she has appeared in essays, her images fill my photo album:how had I put those memories of our earliest “relationship” aside.
Sometimes that happens with passion: we fall head over heels in love with one.. and then another… and then another and while the one a few ones back is still tucked away back there, sometimes underneath the surface she is still doing her poetic best to awaken the memory.
Literary Grannies do that: they walk around in your thoughts, tip toe by tip toe, untraceable sometimes for years. When you do manage to notice, they are never angry. They may even give you candy and most definitely a hug or a kiss and a squeeze on the cheek.
If you haven’t “met” her before, please settle into your seat and allow her words to fill your breath, your heart and your mind.
“Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things, Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Soaring fire that sways and sings, And children's faces looking up, Holding wonder like a cup.”
☼
“I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful when rain bends down the bough.”
☼
“I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.”
☼
“It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.”
☼
“No one worth possessing can quite be possessed”
☼
“My soul is a broken field, plowed by pain.”
☼
“I am the pool of gold When sunset burns and dies-- You are my deepening skies; Give me your stars to hold”
☼
“Look for a lovely thing and you will find it, it is not far, it never will be far”
Sara Teasdale in Mixed Media: lyric poet with a sad end to her life.
In the Remains of the Fire; Lessons from Literary Granny George Sand
George Sand, also known as Armandine Aurore Lucille Dupin
I wrote this poetic piece of prose
during an afternoon of writing with friends. We had been working with
the words from who we called "The Two Georges" - well respected women
authors who chose to use men's names: George Eliot and George Sand.
We told stories around a circle and created a collaborative story and in between circles, we wrote.
Once again I am reminded of the
power of writing with others, both for the passion in the moment and
most importantly in the what comes next.
I find truth in the remains of the fire. Not in the flames, but the remnants
of wood, the coal grey scratches on my hand as I let go. There are the tingles
of pain as I breathe it in, the repetition of the now missing fire into my
chest.
I have to pause.
I have to ask my heavenly father-mother about the fire’s path, now that it
has died, now that the fire no longer breathes.
What can be made from this no-longer fire?
Truth lives in the what’s left, not in the romance of the heat or the
momentary kisses and skin against skin, the wooziness of being there in the
fire in just that moment when up the smoke goes, up around heaven’s chimney,
the shouts of climax, the pleasure of the otherworldlyness.
The truth vibes in the messiness of the charred wood and what we find from
that. Sometimes it is stuck to our shoes, left unswept on our floors, stuck in
our hair. The truth lives in being willing to sit amidst the rubble and not
quickly, giddily push it away to make more room for more fleeting moments of
ecstasy but instead…
Be there for the almost wordless wonder that is born when I release my
addiction to the fire and instead, learn to play with the dust it left behind,
to not cry when I wash my smoky sweater but to laugh at the profound meaning of
what the deposits of those flames left against my skin.
* * * * *
This post is Number 30 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog
Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips
especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.
Courage + Literary Granny & Woman Extraordinaire: George Eliot (also known as Mary Ann Evans)
Reading the words of literary granny and superstar George
Eliot today astonished me even more than usual. She said, “Our words have wings
but fly not where we would.” I can’t imagine George, AKA Mary Ann Evans, ever
being unable to “fly” where her words are going or where they have been.
There are moments when I write in the voice of who I wish I
could be.
This may surprise many of you who hear me as a very brave,
very “on every minute” sort of person.
There are certain things I do that require some people lots
of courage, like performing on stage in front of an audience or perhaps public
speaking – and enjoying each moment.
Yes. These are both true.
I am an activist and an advocate and underneath all of that
I have an inferiority complex that weaves through my blood enough to stop the
flow almost completely.
Reading the words of literary granny and superstar George
Eliot today astonished me even more than usual. She said, “Our words have wings
but fly not where we would.” I can’t imagine George, AKA Mary Ann Evans, ever
being unable to “fly” where her words are going or where they have been.
When I settle in more deeply, though, I realize she didn’t
use her real name to write.
She hid her identity and even her gender underneath a
masculine given name. George.
During her time, her words went many places she could not go
– as Mary Ann Evans.
It makes me wonder, who would I be as a writer if I sent my
words into the world under a different identity? I think of JK Rowlings, who
published the ridiculously successful Harry Potter books using her initials
rather than her first name because her publishers believed a feminine name
would hurt sales.
She has certainly flown up and over where her words flew.
Many of us know her story, from welfare mom to international sensation, but
when she was starting out the prevailing business belief was her identity as a
she should be cloaked.
It is risky to throw your words into the air and then follow
them.
It is risky to throw your words into the world and then feel
comfortable going wherever they take you.
“People might point and laugh,” I foolishly believe.
So what if they do?
Yes. So what if they do.
That is my mantra for the time being. I am going to be more bold
and courageous in following my words into the world and beyond because I am
stripping away the power from “they” who point, laugh and ridicule.
So what if they do? I will take note and move one rung
higher on the ladder of my literary adventures.
Are you feeling brave enough to join me in flight?
* * * * *
This post is my first with the Linking up with My Ladies Party from Dysfunction Junction. I hope to meet lots of new, phenomenal bloggers who will quickly become my friends!
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