Happy Thanksgiving !

Happy Thanksgiving to All!

Photo: Peter Tonery.

My son Nick, who lives in Germany, sent us flowers for the holidays.
They're beautiful.  Wish he were coming home for the holidays.

The pie is homemade. What we call seven apple pie.  Apples picked from our orchard of 38 trees.

Did a lot of prep work yesterday for today's celebration.  Hopefully will have everything else done by Noon today.  Guests arrive at 3 p.m.  Now onward!

My poem "Meanwhile" makes its debut on Eunoia Review

Here's the link: http://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/

Hope you enjoy the poem!

Thank you Eunoia Review.  This is my second appearance.  Eunoia  Review publishes strong work.  Thrilled to be included here.

The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home

Announcing New Anthology from Holy Cow! Press, edited by Jim Perlman.

Just received my contributor's copy, and it is gorgeous!

Here's a blurb:
 
Home is one the the great themes of literature, of human beings, of the animal kingdom altogether. Odysseus finds his way home to Penelope, and arctic terms fly thousands of miles to return to their nesting grounds. The main danger for authors exploring this primal subject is sentimentality; the writers anthologized here, however, remember that home is not only our refuge and snug harbor but also a place where we get bored, abused, battered, and bent. It couldn't be more important: home often seems, indeed, 'the heart of all that is.” At the very least, it's a place where we can learn, in Susan Elbe's memorable phrase, 'to shoot this tin-can loneliness / off fence posts.” Farzana Marie points out that a poem is a kind of house, and it's true of the essays here, too. Come on in. Make yourself at home.”--Bart Sutter, author of The Reindeer Camps
This engaging anthology on the theme of home includes twenty personal essays and nearly eighty poems from a wide variety of social and cultural perspectives, as unique and diverse as the authors who have written them. Herein is previously uncollected writings by Joseph Bruchac, Jane Yolen, Marge Piercy, Naomi Shihab Nye, Roberta Hill, Mark Vinz and many others. * * I'm one of the many others.
In a world of increasing change and mobility, these writings explore our most fundamental concerns for self-identity: what is our home, where have we come from, who are we?

Giving, Thanks . . .

An Offering

Trace the curve of the gibbous moon

Sip slowly a cold glass of water                                                        

Taste the first bite of autumn’s apples

Breathe deeply– the air of one breath

Enter the cathedral of forever woods

Kneel between rows of the garden’s raised beds

Smell the wet earth drifting toward sleep

Hold a hand that has been left empty

Look up to the sky and wonder

If this answers what you’re waiting for.                                            

M.J.Iuppa

** First appeared in The Wild Goose Poetry Review

Susan Deer Cloud visits Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery 

Poets Walk.  Here she is next to her poem.

photo taken by Roja Singh.

 

Susan Deer Cloud's visit was  everything I had hoped for.  Her poetry is bold and honest, a voice that captures time and place and the heart of its narrative makes a listener stop and think about the daily consequences of our living.  I have been Susan's company twice and I am at ease,but also surprised by what she may say or do, which means she  isn't rehearsed but in the moment.

Her latest collection Fox Mountain  (Foothills Publishing) is a strong sequence of poems dedicated to place.                

Big Pencil Awards

at Writers and Books 

11/16/2013

 

The evening focuses on acknowledging those people and groups responsible for enriching the Rochester community through literature.

Local Honorees:

• Gregory Gerard – A teacher of adults who has inspired the creation and appreciation of literature

• Donna Marbach – A teacher of young people who has inspired the creation and appreciation of literature

• Mary Widger – An individual who has made significant contributions to Writers & Books

• Steven Huff – An individual who has made lifelong contributions to Rochester’s literary community

• Patricia Braus on behalf of Rochester Education Foundation’s program Give Back, Give Books – An organization that has made significant contrubutions to the Rochester literary community

• David Schickler – A writer who has had an impact on Rochester Readers

The evening was delightful. Congratulations to all the winners.  Well-deserved.



Today, 11/17/2013, at Books ETC in Macedon NY,  4-5:30 p.m.David Michael Nixon and I will be reading from our poetry.  David and I planned this reading as a braid of two voices.  David also promises to sing.  He has an exceptional voice, long standing member of Golden Links.

So if you're out and about before the big windstorm arrives, please join us!

 
  

                                                                    

Susan Deer Cloud Reading November 14, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.

St John Fisher’s

Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program

&

Office of Multicultural Affairs and Diversity Programs

Present

Poet Susan Deer Cloud

Reading from her newest poetry collection

Fox Mountain

(Foothills Publishing, 2013)

Susan Deer Cloud is a mixed lineage mountain Indian from the Catskills.  An alumna of Binghamton University (B.A. and M.A.) and Goddard College (MFA), she is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, two New York State Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowships, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and a Chenango County Council for the Arts Individual Artist Grant. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies; her most recent books are Braiding Starlight, The Last Ceremony & Car Stealer.

~ She likes to eat blueberries in winter and sing to feral cats. ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Thursday, November 14th, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.

St. John Fisher College ~ Golisano Gateway Midlevel

Free and Open to the Public ~ Book signing to follow reading

Contact: M.J.Iuppa   (585) 385-8412

------------------------------------------------------------

This reading/program is sponsored by a grant from Poets & Writers, which is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs

Apple Picking Time!

Photo George D. Marron

This is our guard turkey.  She was watching us pick apples in the orchard yesterday.   Notice the suspicion in her eye.She's eyeing us up, who are those people, what are they doing by my trees, with my fruit? When we turned our backs, she'd charge after us.

Yesterday, My son George and his adorable children came out to the farm. It was a great time.  We picked a lot of apples: Romes, Paula Reds, Winter Banana, Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Cortland, Northern Spy.  My Grandson Jack  is an exceptional worker.  We both stayed out and kept picking the Romes (pink applesauce!). It was a cold, blustery day. Jack was using the ladder and able to get a lot of the Winter Bananas, which I am so happy about.  They look gorgeous.Then we headed inside where the rest of the crew was making pizza. We ate and drank cider and Brigid and Little George loved up  our cats, Carmelita and Charlie (The cats were in heaven!).

We picked a lot of remaining veggies in our garden.  (Garden is nearly all picked, but there are still some hearty veggies still growing). Because we so close to the lake we haven't had a hard frost yet. (Thankfully).

So George's van was packed with 2 boxes of apples, brussel sprouts, fennel, beets, kale, collards, red cabbage,  cauliflower, peppers (green and hot) for Brian who loves to make salsa, and he makes a great salsa, tomatoes,(mostly yellow large sized cherries), and then we stuffed the children in! The apples are delicious and we have an exceptional apple parer and corer.  The kids kept eating apples all afternoon, peeling and eating the accordion-sliced  apple, one slice after another. So sweet!

Fall is the best time of year!


******

Let's see, update on my challenge of 31X31.  I think I have written 20 poems.  A bit behind.
But still grateful for accomplishing this.


Re/verse published my poem "Pumpernickel,"which was originally published in Tar River Review.
 http://littleeaglereverse.blogspot.com

Poems recently accepted and forthcoming in: Tar River Poetry, When Women Waken, Avocet, Northern Cardinal Review, Poetry Haiku (UK), First Literary Review-East, In Glided Frame (anthology;
Flash Fiction World Contest (UK).

 

 

Mid-October, Glorious Weekend

Photo by K.Iuppa, Fall 2013

This is a 3 day weekend, beginning with Friday.  Went to my two year eye exam.  My eyesight has improved!  Time for new glasses.  Peter had his eye exam earlier in the week, so we're both shopping.  I haven't bought new glasses in ages, and they are so, so expensive.  I was stunned.  We spent quite a few hours today pricing out glasses. This experience is close to buying a new car, with circles and arrows and wheedling and dealing on the price.
We're still shopping. . .

Came home and I spent approximately three hours putting up carrots.  Tomorrow, we're going to pull  our potatoes. We're nearly done with the gardens.  Still have kale and collard greens to harvest.  No frost yet, but the night's are getting cooler.  I'm going to put up applesauce tomorrow too.
 
There is so much to do.  . . .