Poem for Earth Day

April 22, 2019April 22, 2019 / jmcnamara / Leave a comment

White Pine at Cantigny by Jacalyn McNamara 2019

EARTH DAY
by J McNamara

Because she is cloud stuff

And hummingbird wing

They’re screaming steel at her

Where she is pollen and shimmer

Where she’s all bumble bee

They’re building barricades

Laying down the tarmac

No wonder she peels away

Layers of skin no wonder

She pulls out strands of hair

Hanging them in branches

Because she’s all soft syllable

They ring her in with wire

Still she contains them

Fruit and seed

Where she is honey

They bring in the brass

Where she is apple

The weight of the press

Where she is fragrant

The concrete asylum

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Apple Blossoms on May Day

May 1, 2017May 1, 2017 / jmcnamara / Leave a comment

“The first blossom was the best blossom” according to poet Louis MacNiece “for the child who never had seen an orchard.”

Blossom 5 by Jacalyn McNamara

In tune with the seasons on May Day, I gather blossoms from the old pioneer apple tree and bundle them into a blue pitcher for the table. This tree has been threatening to die, but this year the blossoms are profuse, a gift from the river of rain that fell in the last storm. I planted a new tree, a Fuji, five years ago, and it too has finally surged into a generous cloud of blossom.

Blossom 2 by Jacalyn McNamara

May Day is a coming-of-age and a woman’s feast. I was raised Catholic, a proper pagan. My sisters and I carried armloads of blossoms up to our farmhouse bedrooms, pulling out scarfs and making altars to welcome the May Queen, waiting to find out who we’d become, wondering if we’d marry and have children and orchards of our own. “Oh, Mary we crown thee . . .”

Blossom 3 by Jacalyn McNamara

In “Apple Blossoms,” Susan Kelly-DeWitt writes of that coming-of-age anticipation, waiting as

Blossom 1 by Jacalyn McNamara

. . . the secret

and docile buds of the apple

blossoms begin their quick

ascent to light. Night

after interminable night

the sugars pucker and swell

into green slips, green

silks. And just as you find

yourself at the end

of winter’s long, cold

rope, the blossoms open . . .

Blossom 6 by Jacalyn McNamara

The petals are fragile, liminal—the slightest wind can lift them away—but they are intended that way; they are meant to pass like a breath, the slips and silks of a girl. This gives them their breath-taking power. In Robert Haas’s “Apple Trees at Olema,” we are “shaken by the raw, backlit flaring | of the apple blossoms.”

Blossom 4 by Jacalyn McNamara

All blossoms are by nature transformative–the apple more so since it feeds us–like the hazel wand in Yeats’s “Song of the Wandering Aengus” which turns into–

. . . a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

and faded through the brightening air.

Spirit of Adventure; The Cave of the Crystal Skull by Sally Landaker

April 26, 2017April 26, 2017 / jmcnamara / Leave a comment

What would you do if your consciousness were suddenly and truly expanded, and you could perceive beings and visions from a parallel universe? What would you do with this dangerous knowledge?

The prospect sounds exciting and dreadful all at once—the essence of adventure.

Sally Landaker’s The Cave of the Crystal Skull is an adventure written for middle grade readers that explores consciousness and parallel realms. While a quest involves a search for something of great value as its mainspring, adventures turn on the undertaking of a hazardous enterprise, one whose outcome is doubtful.

Adventures usually begin in happenstance, a happy coincidence or unhappy accident that leads to a situation so hazardous, the main character is tempted to turn away. Only the concern and care for others is enough to motivate the character to go forward.

Cousins Sonia and Eric stumble on a cave while exploring Black Mountain. When they encounter “a mystifying crystal skull” and “a menacing pool of bubbling mud,” the cousins recognize they are in danger. Still they vow to continue exploring the cave but to keep it a secret.

However, the powers that lie hidden in the cave don’t intend to stay hidden.

Eric does not question his sudden focus and confidence in his soccer game. Sonia, however, experiences a shift in consciousness so profound, she grows increasingly uncomfortable as she is transported to neighboring realms and begins to question her everyday world.

Sonia becomes more obsessed and defiant, unable to resist the lure of the cave even as she realizes the risk. Each time she exits the cave, she experiences a shift in consciousness that expands the boundaries of her known self. She begins to believe the crystal skull might have healing power and when a younger cousin becomes ill, Sonia engineers a plot to test her theory.

While on a quest, the hero must defeat the guardian of the treasure in order to bring the valuables home. In an adventure, there are no “others” who have to be destroyed. That’s part of what makes Huck Finn, Gulliver, and Robinson Crusoe so eternally refreshing.

As one enthusiastic, middle-grade reviewer noted, there are “no bad guys” in this story. They aren’t needed. Adventures tell a different kind of story, one that reveals the character’s growing consciousness as she encounters her marvelous world.

Sally Landaker’s The Cave of the Crystal Skull is available in Kindle and Print at amazon.com

Incorporating Setting into Your Scenes

July 29, 2015July 29, 2015 / jmcnamara / 4 Comments

Modern readers often skip over passages of description in search of the action scenes in fiction. This, like channel-surfing, may be a sign of the shorter attention span of our times.

That’s why it’s critical to incorporate a sense of place into the scenes as you tell your story. Short story writer and novelist, Eudora Welty, is a master of creating settings that are as powerful as her characters. In her essay “Place in Fiction,” she reminds us:

Harris Beach, Brookings, Oregon, by Jacalyn McNamara 2014

“Location is the ground conductor of all the currents of emotion and belief and moral conviction that charge out from the story in its course. These charges need the warm hard earth underfoot, the light and lift of air, the stir and play of mood, the softening bath of atmosphere that give the likeness-to-life . . . ”

Whether you’re writing mysteries, science fiction, or literary fiction, this “likeness-to-life” makes your story real for the reader.