Writing & Critiquing Since 1979
News & Updates: Bearlodge Writers Blog
We
Bearlodge Writers love the craft of writing and share a deep respect for
others of like mind.
Meeting in Sundance since 1979, BLW has expanded over the years to include writers from the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming.
Enjoying fellowship, we encourage friends in their writing endeavors, offer suggestions to help improve their works-in-progress, and share information and tips on the business of writing.
A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
National Poetry Month
Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.
Bearlodge Writers celebrate with poems from the following authors:
Amanda Fall
Center Stage
It’s hard to quantify a life of laundry,
the determined tuck, fold, tuck,
one more fitted sheet.
Or the innumerable sponge-swirls
over crusted dishes that will
only get dirty again.
Let’s count the checks of to-do,
endless brushing of teeth
and daily turn of key.
Yes, there is more:
award here, applause there,
but no denying—
the bulk of life is this.
Can I, then,
make it beautiful?
A symphony of everyday,
a masterpiece of mundane?
Let me leave this world knowing
I held your door, offered comfort,
sang your praises as much as my own.
Let me give my all to this—
tuck, fold, tuck,
imbue this chore with thank you,
insist that this, too,
matters.
Refraction
If only I remember
each breath is blessed,
I’d leap into morning,
eyes clear of sleep
and complacency,
open to gifts that beckon
in curling steam of tea,
in daily minutiae
unfurling with possibility.
If only I shake off haze,
wake to miracle of ordinary:
see a stray sunbeam
filter through glass,
spread in shimmering prism—
I’ll see each step I take
become prayer,
each breath speak praise.
Time Capsule
Tell me not of promotions,
purchases, promises made
yet never kept.
Tell me your treasures are more
than creased bills, dusty dreams
and a struggle to be better, thinner,
younger.
Tell me you are delighted
by laugh lines formed of decades,
eyes that know the color of sunset,
toes that count blades of grass,
heart that longs not for yesterday,
but yearns instead to fill
and spill—
a life well-worn.
A.M. Hummel
On feeding a friend's horse . . .
I’d almost forgotten the fragrance of hay,
sweet feed,
a horse’s breath;
almost pushed from my mind
the warmth of flaring nostrils
snuffling my cold fingers;
nearly washed the taste
of winter in a stable
from my mouth.
I'm satisfied.
A cat settles warm and purring into my lap.
A little dog who needed me
as badly as I needed him
barks his pleasure when I return home.
Still, feeding Zara brings back good memories.
That Cat
At 4 a.m.,
upon some whim,
he hopped
atop
my chest,
purring.
Slurring words,
sputtering,
muttering objections
I refused his affections.
He marched in place
upon my face.
My cheeks and chin,
eyebrows and nose
were all subjected
to rasping blows
from his loofah tongue.
I could have hung
that cat
at 4 a.m.!
Instead,
I pulled him close
and rubbed his chin.
Together,
we visited sleep again.
Gaydell Collier
A Fable I Saw Happen
Two birds
locked
in territorial dispute
fell
from the highest branches
of an oak
beating against each other
all the way
to the ground
where
they landed
on a cat
who was so astonished
at his good fortune
that
he missed them both
and came away
shaking
a feather
from his head.
Patricia Frolander
Hollow Heart
Weathered sheds, house, and barn huddle
in wind-sculpted snow.
Icicles border the outhouse roof.
Clothesline sags, a tattered rag flutters
in a lonesome breeze.
Flames licked the home,
devoured a hole from hearth to roof.
On the sagging porch, blackened remains
of an ice box and rocking chair
stare glumly into frosted light.
I knew the folks who lived there—
the child who perished in flame,
the mother whose mind fled with smoke,
the father who chose his gun.
Cat Dance
Dawn, barely breathing,
I thrill to glimpse, unexpected,
the golden coat, ebony-tufted ears, bobbed tail
blend in russet grass
as she cat-glides towards the reservoir.
I know her quest,
hear them quacking in fresh light.
I hasten to bur oak surrounding
spring-filled depths,
watch her step to the edge,
shake her watered paw
retreat, circle,
dip again.
Frightened fowl paddle, half-fly
to the center of their refuge.
Her ballet ebbs and flows.
She looks my way,
slips into shadowed leaves,
rhythm ended,
music silenced.
Maureen Helms Blake
Miracle
I open hope and pour
it out, empty all upon
the waiting ground
Love, juicywet,
resurrects from
dark of giving up
Then on this day
heart blooms in sweet surrender,
believes in all that still might be
I Believe
Yet one more storm
assaults my daffodils.
April snow and ice
bruise the fragile buds,
strain their stems until
a few collapse.
But others, stalwart,
bear the weight of frozen rain,
bend, but do not break,
bloom, despite the risks.
I take to heart their
hardy show of faith,
defiant against all odds.
I too shall bloom.
Constance Brewer
101 Uses For A Beast Of Burden Sestina
If by chance you travel around the world,
sometimes you'll wish you'd stayed at home
when you run across a strange new recipe
made with a substance resembling meat.
Not wanting to insult your host family,
you pray it is at least somewhat edible.
Because if the substance is not edible,
but rather a flavor new to your world
you could embarrass yourself and family
despite the good story you take home
about the time you ate wild yak meat
and were given a hide with the recipe.
It might become an ongoing joke, this recipe.
Your brother announces, "Eww, yak's not edible!".
Your aunt proclaims it's not really a kosher meat
despite the Discovery Channel view of the world.
The teasing rekindles whenever you come home
until you wish you'd never told your family,
though being a bona fide member of this family
meant you were inclined to share that recipe,
flush with excitement at finally being home,
you never even thought about it being edible,
just a sharable part of your tour of the world.
Like a snapshot of the various cultures you meet
where most ingest some form of protein - like meat.
Why couldn't vegetarianism run in the family?
Then the relatives' brains wouldn't be whirled
by the thought of tasting a brand new yak recipe-
not that roots and plants are always that edible,
at least not the way they prepared them at home.
About now you wished you'd never come home,
never informed your kin about sampling yak meat,
didn't confess you found it deliciously edible
for fear of being disowned by your weird family.
Just maybe you could return the ill-favored recipe,
necessitating another trip around the known world.
You'd be far from home and your pesky family,
in possession of the tasty meat of wild yak recipe,
wandering Mongolia, where edible yak is the whole world.
Left at Alpha Centauri, Proceed With Caution
I peer out from behind
the relative safety of my face
plate at the gathering of alien
life forms arrayed before me.
Recycled air from the home
planet swirls before my two eyes,
not the four or eight mismatched
pairs. One of the creatures gestures
for me to come down the ramp, away
from the ship. Another indicates
it's absolutely safe to remove
my helmet and breathe their air.
I'm not fooled by the general
gregariousness. I've met foreigners
in other places. I trusted before,
on other planets. Not this time.
You don't live to my advancing
age by being less than cautious.
I pretend to misinterpret the signals.
Before the crowd can turn uglier,
I take a few steps down the ramp,
launch into the canned speech
I give all extraterrestrial beings
who attempt to pry me from my
safety zone, hand out multi-colored
food bricks from stored rations.
They ignore my reluctance to join
them, chatter, eat, wave anemone
antennae. Another few minutes
and they will forget the gawky
Earthling in the ill-fitting space
suit, the one that remains tethered
at all times to the mothership.
Governor Mead Appoints Patricia Frolander as Poet Laureate of Wyoming
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Matt Mead signed an Executive Order today naming Patricia Frolander as Poet Laureate of Wyoming. Frolander is Wyoming’s fifth Poet Laureate and is a rancher from Wyoming’s Black Hills.
At the signing ceremony today, Governor Mead noted that Frolander has won several awards for her work and been published in anthologies, literary reviews, magazines and newspapers. Governor Mead complimented Frolander for her book of poetry titled, Married Into It. “It’s great work and it resonates with me and should resonate with all of Wyoming because it speaks about Wyoming and speaks about our people.”
The Poet Laureate of Wyoming position is an honorary title and Frolander will serve without compensation. She can submit writings for occasions of her choice. Today, Frolander came to the Capitol with a group of fellow writers. She said receiving this distinction was a great honor. “It’s a privilege and I am excited to serve the State of Wyoming. I not only want to further poetry, but literature in general. I think this is a wonderful opportunity and I would like to thank everyone who accompanied me and all of those poets in Wyoming whom I dearly love.”
Governor Mead also expressed thanks to the Wyoming Arts Council and its board for the help in selecting a Poet Laureate.
Left to right: South Dakota photographer Roger Clements; Mike Shay, Wyoming Arts Council; authors Gaydell Collier, Jim Bowers, Jytte Bowers, Pat Frolander; Wyoming Governor Matt Mead; in front of the Governor - Morgan Callan Rogers; Rita Basom, Wyoming Arts Council; authors Jeanne Rogers and Mary Hawkins.
New Release: Just Beyond Harmony
Recently Gaydell Collier unearthed diaries and letters from the 1960s when she and her husband Roy embarked on The Grand Experiment: raising their four children in a primitive log cabin west of Laramie, Wyoming, to teach them values and self-reliance. Now 50 years later, she recalls the joy, the dreams, the humor, and the struggles of those years of growth for the kids, Roy, and most of all, Gaydell, herself.
Robert Roripaugh, former Wyoming Poet Laureate, says of the new release: "Gaydell Collier's delightful sense of humor never undermines her frankness and honesty, and she reminds us that isolation, wind, cold, and difficulties are the other side of the West's natural beauty, opportunity, open space, and freedom. Just Beyond Harmony belongs on a shelf alongside books like Elinore Pruitt Stewart's Letters of a Woman Homesteader, Hughie Call's Golden Fleece, and Ivan Doig's Heart Earth."
And from Jeanne Williams, award winning author of 69 books: "A warm, wonderful story, written with depth, humor, and faith."
With commitment, humor, optimism, and perhaps a touch of insanity, the Collier family struggles to earn their place in the Harmony community.
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- paperback, 256 pages, illustrations ($17.95) ISBN 978-0-93127-98-4
- OR hardcover limited edition (only 200 copies) signed & numbered ($35) ISBN 978-0-931271-97-7
- Available at bookstores or from High Plains Press at 1-800-552-7819 or www.highplainspress.com
New Release: Married Into It
New Release: Married Into It
What happens when a young urban woman marries into a fourth generation rural ranching family and must learn the traditions, customs, and lifestyle of the land, all under the scrutinizing eye of its close knit community? Author Patricia Frolander’s clear-eyed poems chronicle her forty-six years of challenges and triumphs, bruises and breakthroughs, as she moves from outsider to neighbor in Married Into It, the newly released poetry collection from High Plains Press.
Kent Meyers, award-winning author of The Work of Wolves, says of the new release: “Patricia Frolander writes of a place and way of life where disaster can be measured in seconds and where the most harrowing loss can emerge from the simplest of mistakes. Frolander understands just how indifferent the world is to human presence, but she makes of that understanding a quiet grandeur. Against indifference, these poems insist on redemptive beauty and the power of relationship.”
Readers will find themselves rooting for Frolander as she discovers her strength, wit, wisdom and heart in the Wyoming soil she tends, all the while nurturing a piece of land, and a life, she can call her own.
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Additional information, interviews, photos or review copies are available by contacting author Patricia Frolander pfrolander@rangeweb.net. Excerpts of her work can be also found at www.bearlodgewriters.com/patfrolander.html. To purchase your copy of Married Into It please visit www.highplainspress.com or call 1-800-552-7819.