Signs of Winter

Signs of Winter December 2024

I have recorded signs of winter through my lens this December as I walked around my neighbourhood. The bare trees, the cold blue sky, the last leaf on the tree & on the ground, and in the neighbour's yard: the folded bud of rose that never bloomed. All these things are prophesies of the cold end of the year that is has now frosted the panes. There is no snow as of yet in Metro Vancouver. First thing every morning I get a hot cup of licorice tea and watch the newscast for Vancouver for an hour to get the facts for my day, so I keep track of these things. My favourite thing to watch is the weather forecast.

We have met for the last potluck and gift exchange of the year with the Poets Society. It is always in late November at the library. Check out my Instagram for pictures of the afternoon here.  We all read Christmas poems from the front of the room at the mic (this is of benefit if you are soft-spoken, like me) and sang carols together while Priscilla played the keyboard. 

 

I have been busily buying wrapping paper and glittering gift bags to

wrap my Christmas gifts with, in

festive colours. They are almost in transit now, despite the postal strike backing up thousands of packages before Christmas (rumour has it that the strike has now cost a billion dollar in lost revenue to small businesses). I made the gifts on an online platform this year. I usually give all the families the same gift. There are four families. Each of my two brothers and sister have over four children ( I can't afford to give presents to all the children as there will be fourteen this Christmas, as my sister-in-law is expecting any time soon.) The fourth family is my aging retired parents. For gifts in past years: one year it was Michael Bublé Christmas albums, another year it was a Brene Brown book to read. This year I can't tell the surprise but it is colourful and detailed art. 

My birthday is December 11, and is oh so close to Christmas. It has come to be known as a celebration in these parts called Empress Day. Each year they have me make a lineup of delicacies like perfume, chocolates, and wine to celebrate my special day. I reminisce on what I have tasted this year and post it on my website. We also have an Empress Greetings' YouTube movie come out on midnight of my birthday. Let me tell you, we have been working for over four weeks to get all this done. This year I didn't want to get up in the middle of the night, and it is 30 minutes long, so I will air the premiere the night before on December 10 at 7 pm. More info here. 

I hope you, my readers, will know by now how special and accounted for you are to me in each season. My writing small sprigs of bloom and botanicals here on this blog is only a window pane of revelation into my personal world. I wouldn't have anything to write worthy of notice, or even of publication, if it were not for your ready hands and eyes on the receiving end. Someone to eagerly read the poems I write, and enjoy their complexity and simpleness both at once, even if only online, or on my blogs, means so much to a writer and poet such as myself.  You are the oranges of my stocking in the wood garret of the artist so to speak. 

I found a French blue 100% linen stocking in my top drawer this winter that has never been used, and smells faintly of dust and lavender. I was delighted to find this treasure that I bought several years ago from a linen store, and can now use this year as I am spending Christmas in Abbotsford. Yes, my parents will be travelling to visit me and my brother's family who have moved here this past year, for the holidays. We are already planning a Christmas Eve and Christmas Day feast at their new home.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,

Emily

Miranda Was Seen Offshore in a Storm

Miranda and the Tempest by J.W. Waterhouse. General Domain.

I wanted to return to Miranda as a character I studied earlier in the year from Waterhouse. She was painted by J.W. Waterhouse, but she first appears in the Shakespeare play The Tempest. Her youth and her innocence make her appealing. I have mentioned Miranda before in my poetry, in LITTOP (Love in the Time of Plague, 2022).

Miranda was seen offshore in a storm,

the tempest was evidenced in the tide

of spray against the lighthouse, ghostly-eyed

in moonlight, through the wee hours of the morn.

A sun would rise, its reddened rays would pierce

fog of misconception, waiting for you:

become a conceptual woman, too

tired by the wind and its haze, coerced

no longer by manipulative hands,

the elements demand that you survive

in deference to them and their dark wails.

—Emily Isaacson, LITTOP

This poem for 2024 has a new bent:

Tossed ashore like a white-warped mollusc shell,

Ferdinand comes from the ship undeterred,

he was separated from the others,

he was rejected from the dire ship’s hull.

Son of the king of Naples, he sees her:

Miranda, clothed in sea, her hair with kelp,

is small, and not without her father’s help,

she is the tide upon the rock, inferred

that she is only clothed in blue that’s spun,

her kindly manner catches him off guard,

her eyes, pure and deep as island tempest,

with his stalwart song, he begins to win

the beauteous girl with wrinkled sandy bar.

Her father denies his only request.

—Emily Isaacson, "Da Capo Aria Miranda"

This poem, called a Da Capo Aria,  I wrote in 10 stanzas. It was in Petrarchan Sonnet form, with a modified rhyme scheme, so every stanza has 14 lines of 10 syllables each. I submitted it for editorial feedback from Frontier Press and received the following 3 letters (excerpts are shown):

Letter 1:

Dear Emily,

Thanks for sharing this with us and trusting us with your words. I want to mention right away that so much of getting poetry published is matching the personal and emotional feelings of the readers and editors at that specific moment. In no way should notes on your work from any editor discourage or dismiss your efforts as a poet. Please remember that I am just one opinion and poetry is inherently subjective. That being said, I will do my best to provide useful and tangible feedback here. I’m excited to dig deeper into “Da Capo Aria of Miranda.”

Overall, I found your poem to be vivid, evocative, and tactful. It’s very clear to me to that you are an observant and creative poet. I also really appreciate that you are responding to William Shakespeare and are interpreting his work in a new way while also paying homage to Shakespeare with the rhyme scheme and language. I typically would advise against a rhyme scheme but for this, it works well. I think this moment is my favorite:

 

“Miranda and Ferdinand gazed then each

at one another, swore their undying

love from this life into the next, crying

sea, next turquoise […]”

 

I love the use of color and the depiction of the sea crying. My main suggestion for this poem would be to add more intimacy...

 

Letter 2: 

Hi Emily,

            Thanks for sharing this work with Frontier Poetry. This is such a technical accomplishment! I’m so impressed by this—there’s so much great stuff going on here, and I really admired the way you were able to flesh out the story of The Tempest, which actually is one of my fave Shakespeare plays. You manage to evoke the spirit of the work so effectively here; there’s a lot to work with, and thanks for working out that rhyme scheme—this is a really amazing accomplishment from a technical perspective, and I think you should be really proud of yourself. Linguistically, too, you’re such an inventive writer, and this feels contemporary despite the subject matter. Well done.

            ...I want to keep complimenting your work, which is quite advanced, as well as what you were able to do in a pretty small space. The Tempest, like all of Shakespeare, is pretty nuanced, and I think you do a great job of capturing the subtlety here. To condense this play into just five pages is pretty incredible, but you manage to keep the reader’s attention and keep the pace, something I really admire... your work is a little more complex and elevated, even stylized.

What drew you to this form? Form is something that, as a poet, I’m particularly interested in. I love this quote from poet Ocan Vuong ... 

 

Letter 3: 

Dear Emily,

Thank you for sending your poems for the 2023 Ekphrastic Poetry prize. It’s wonderful to connect with you and your work here at Frontier. I loved hearing about all the work and service you do in the poetry community through Potter’s Press and The Wild Lily Institute, as well as the courses you teach at the art gallery. And photography, too! So many interesting threads to weave into your work...

I absolutely love the syllabics and the rhyme schemes--and so much beautiful music in between, with lovely correspondences between words--the alliteration, assonance and consonance deftly done. Everything meticulously in its place.  

I love the blue dress--that splash of color at just the perfect moment.

And then the ending of that first stanza at “dyes” Oh, that’s terrific!

In the second stanza I would change “T’was” because it is too self-conscious in its archaic--suddenly you see the artifice. Revise that out.

 

I love the temper/tempest and the wind as a thoroughbred horse.

And best of all, “stately monsoon in cursive” wow!

 

In the third stanza I would take out “ere.”

Stanza 3’s language and image are less innovative and more straight-forward narrative. I think there’s room in here for some more image-work, especially using surprising language. I’ll drop links to examples of what I mean later in this letter.

In the fourth stanza I love the word “spoiled” there. I would add an “a” to the far away island and revise “niggardly” --it’s too archaic. Any outdated or archaic language draws too much attention to itself. Dropping articles like “a” and “the” is often something you learn in workshops, but it’s awkward usually. I would go back in and add any dropped articles. I love the cilantro!! That is a great moment.

The images are very vivid and clear.

 

Part II

 

The pacing, the sentences and syntax, the storytelling is all very well done.

 

Stanza 2

 

I like the mollusc shell and the word “dire” and the kelp...  I would change “maid” to “girl”.

All of my changes are for the purpose of moving the poem more in the direction of what editors at contemporary poetry journals like Frontier are looking for. There are many contemporary poets who are working with the classics and ancient mythology, but even if this is the subject, the craft of the poem and the language must take into account centuries of development and innovation-- I would look at these poets who either write on the same themes or are formal poets...

_____________________________________________

I thought you might like to see the kind of things editors say, and the revisions made were from these comments. Read the completed poem at my poetry blog here. 

Sincerely,

Emily

Labour Day Weekend

 

Four Poets on the grass at Mill Lake in August 2024.

What We Found Over Breakfast

 

This is the story of March in photographs. You can tell I am hanging on baited breath for the blossoms to appear. We then met at the Clearbrook Library for the Fraser Valley Poets Society reading. The last three photograps were the day of the meeting out front. You can see the beautiful blossom backdrop of the International Friendship Garden in my post on Instagram here. 

I read the poem from the book Hallmark by Emily Isaacson, of the story of how the Smith family house had burned to the ground one night when a vagrant snuck in and caused a fire. The Smith family was my grandparents who lived on Esplanade, and the house on their one million dollar estate in Hemet, California overlooking the San Jacinto Valley was left empty after they died. The poem is told from the perspective of the vagrant, who refers to themselves as a mouse. The title is in reference to Margaret Atwood, aptly called ``What We Found Over Breakfast``in reference to her book  Morning in the Burned House. 

Here is the poem:

What We Found Over Breakfast

By candlelight I pen this solemn note,

to the master and the mistress of this house,

I am no bigger than a field mouse,

but I have sailed upon the seven seas,

and now—what has become of me—

I cannot speak for misery—

It was in a moment of charm

that I accepted the old house with open arms.

This burned-down house—

the morning finds but none too soon—

was charred by my own match;

a fiddler’s tune I played upon the thatch,

your rooftop bearing me, it let me stay,

but now that mournful resonance

is but insoluble dissonance.

If I should run from you

I must confess

that it was I who fell from grace

with just one note—

upon your blackened cinders

grand old house, I stand,

with now an inextinguished hand.

With terror, I would flee

into the night—

I would desist from digging at the site

of one more grave—

the Esplanade—

a place that once was loved

lies in unbeguiling ashes

not caused by anyone excepting me.

A coward, I would bow

to take my strap—

I would stretch out my hand

at curt command

but would the haunting eyes

that looked out o’er the plains

be no more furious distain.

Emily

Signs of Spring in February

Photo by Emily Isaacson

The signs of spring are appearing, although today was the first sunny day this week. I am going on a weiner roast down by the river this evening. What kind of weiner would a nutritionist eat you might ask? Well definitely something with turkey or chicken I would answer. Hopefully one that is not made of by-products. I also happen to be highly allergic to pork.

Photo by Emily Isaacson

I am just working on finishing up my seasonal newsletter that I started last spring with my website platform newsletter program. It has been a roaring success so far with about 200 subscribers (although only 10% of people who get newsletters read them, and our success rate is closer to 30-40%).

I have been studying Miranda from The Tempest as well as Shakespeare's Juliet and Ophelia. My studies of Ophelia resulted in a seven stanza poem that I made into a YouTube movie. My studies of Miranda resulted in a long requiem-style poem that is based on the plot of The Tempest with a few modifications. Making that work in sonnet form was a challenge, since it had to rhyme, but I could not even cover it in less than 10 stanzas. 

I finally submitted "Da Capo Aria of Miranda" for the ekphrastic poetry contest hosted by Frontier literary journal. According to the Poetry Foundation, "ekphrastic means 'Description' in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art." I have written ekphrastic poems before, but in relation to paintings in Europe or musical compositions.

Since I requested editorial feedback from Frontier, and since the poem is in no way like most of what they publish, we'll have to wait and see the results. Of course they did say they were open to all styles. The ekphrastic part was that it was a response to The Tempest by Shakespeare and inspired by the painting "Miranda and the Tempest" by J. W Waterhouse (below). 

What I learned about Miranda included that she was young--only about 15 years old; innocent, as she grew up on a desert island; and represented compassion. I tried to weave these ideas into the text. Here I read online the notes for the Shakespeare play, and the play itself, for about four hours prior to beginning the poem several days later, and it took me about a week and a half to write and perfect, which is about the norm right now. The polishing consists of playing the poem, like I would play the piano, where I count out the syllables for every line, and check that it rhymes or agree to an acceptable slant rhyme. I do this a few times before publication.

Since I couldn't use the Miranda poem for this month since it is tied up with the contest, I ended up writing another poem on the word "Ithaca". This word is also the title of a poem written in 2011 by a Greek journalist and is about a Greek isle in the Mediterranean. The word holds over a hundred years of symbolism that largely goes along with the early poem. It later became so well-known, word-worn, and famous, partly for having been read so many times, including one YouTube reading online by Sean Connery. 

I wrote a modern poem in sonnet form on the same theme, that was seven stanzas, only the original poem was free verse, using repetition, whereas mine was a rhyming, syllabic poem with a rhyme scheme. I made the YouTube video for the month with that poem and sourced literally all the images except nine from AI with the help of Adobe Stock. It is amazing what you can find now with AI, and my only criteria was that each image required you to suspend your disbelief. 

The result was 30 minutes long, but it really teaches the poem, not just portrays it, on a scholarly way. That was the poem for February, titled, "Jouney to Ithaca."

I wrote under the movie: Journey to Ithaca is a re-telling of a century-old favourite. The island of Ithaca, is a Greek island in the Mediterranean. It is also the mythic location where Homer's Odyssey took place. In the early 1900's a Greek poet and journalist by the name of Constantine Cavafy wrote the poem "Ithaka" that spanned a century of interest in the symbolism of the poem. The idea that the journey could mean more than the destination caught hold of its readers. The poem was read at the funeral of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. 

According to the website Greeka: "Since Homer's Odyssey, Ithaca symbolizes the destination of a long journey, the supreme aim that every man tries to fulfill all his life long, the sweet homeland, the eternal calmness, and satisfaction.   Many artists and literary people have been inspired by this interpretation of Homer's poem and have given to this small island of the Ionian Sea a special sense. Famous poets have been inspired by Ithaca and have used its name metaphorically on their works.

"The most famous poem about Ithaca has been written by the renowned Greek poet Constantine Cavafy and is entitled "Ithaka". There he makes an allusion of the legendary journey of Ulysses to the journey of every man through life and suggests that each person is looking for his own Ithaca, his personal supreme goal. However, in the end, it is not the goal but the journey that matters, because this journey makes us wise and gives people the richest good: experience, knowledge, and maturity."  (Source: https://www.greeka.com/ionian/ithaca/about/poem)

Even the main soundtrack on the video was titled Ithaka. This is a inspiring and well-used concept for artists to go back to. The keys in the poem and the video were symbolic as well I learned on a key website that a key symbolizes all forces that open and close, bind and release and stand for liberation and incarceration. . . keys to the city were symbols of the residents’ right to self-determination. This is particularly relevant in the journeying theme; it is our right to reach our eventual destination and decide what that is.

I read the poem in fromt of an audience at SippChai's first open mic, a nearby coffee shop. Hopefully thay will have more open mics as it really draws local poets.

Emily

From Siberian-cold January

Well we are facing 2024 this Siberian-cold-like January, with temperatures outside that feels like in the - 20's with the wind factor. After an amazingly mild December, with little snow so far, I thought Abbotsford had gotten off easy. Well we were in for a surprise with some of the coldest weather in my memory including a -15 and I have spent quite a few winters driving around in the snow. I can't help but think it is related to the death of 2,840, 545 hectares of trees from the 2, 245 forest fires on record in British Columbia last summer.

Last year was a prolific year (even though the writing occured mostly on weekends) with the fruit being a small volume titled Odes released in the fall. The subject of the book leant itself to dealing with all manner of botanicals, selected in part from the Celtic Tree Calendar, in honour of the twelve nieces and nephews of my extended family. I started the year by pitching it to them as a game, to see who could guess whose poem, but the poems were so varied and mature in their subject matters, that I ended up writing them by the month in which the children were born. Indeed, the poems are not intended to be children's poems, but written to them to have meaning throughout the course of their lives and in all they might encounter...

"We seek out literature for inspiration to eschew control. We seek out the prophetic for protection in the spiritual realm. There is a need for visionary gifts. There is a need for seeing into the past and future with redemptive eyes. There is a yearning to stand on a hill and see all the possible tragedies that could befall any individual, and to fashion an amulet, to give hope in dark times."

I wrote a brief introduction in September as accompaniment for the $15 edition. It begins ...

"I have long wondered whether our love for trees is what drives us to buy recycled paper. There are so many facets of connection, made real and renewed every time we are in nature. The throwback to animism, where we acknowledge a higher power that has given soul to nature, and spirit to trees, endears us to them like friends. Indeed, the sacred bond between trees and people goes back to the beginning of poetry, and in essence the beginning of poetry could not exist without a tribute to trees."

This slender book of just over a hundred pages was meant to be a Christmas gift to my family members in lieu of gifts in a spartan year that required a certain amount of frugality. It was launched in September at a live performance in the Clark Theatre for the residents of Mission at their new annual variety show. Along with other perfomers from various art forms, it made a stunning debut on the stage which was reported in the Mission Record. 

We later had a release party for Odes at the library in Clearbrook with the Fraser Valley Poets Society. I sold them the illustrated edition, as it was all I had in print, with the non-illustrated versions and hardcover coming out by Christmas. The three editions were given as gifts to the four other familes that make up my extended family, and close relatives. By the time it was published there were thirteen grandchildren as my younger sister gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Vienna, with her second husband. Needless to say, Vienna is as cute as a little doll and already a family favourite.

The end of the pandemic escalated into a Baroque like coronation of splendour and pomp. Yes, it was the last year of the pandemic, which ended in May. It was declared officially over just in the nick of time as I was writing "Requiem for a King's Coronation March", and needed that information to complete the poem. Were we in a pandemic or not at that very time, was quite relevant. 

Although the word "requiem" refers to a funeral mass, I adopted this term as a name for a form of seven stanzas of Italian Petrarchan form, with a modified rhyme scheme. The King's coronation was not meant to hearken to a funeral by any means. The end result, with the video made and finished by 5 pm PST the night before it was to air, was a miraculous work: that I was inspired and had the energy to write and produce it was completely spur of the moment, a shocking admission. I have since accepted that it might as well be one of my life's most significant works, as the occasion seldom presents itself to anyone to write for a royal coronation in Great Britain in their lifetime.

As for the rest of the year, I continued on in spite of my fear that it might be my last. I thought my poetry writing would end too. As I approached turning 48 I thought I would be dead before the year turned. Yet I lived on. I did not die. This was a truly new reality for me that I would live to be 48, as I had such a strong sense that I would die young and unprepared. I say this as I have so many projects still unfinished, and no one wants to die in such as state as to have so many works of potential for development on the back burner. (You'd think I have a massive stove.)

So I continue on with the sense that God has been merciful. I may be living on borrowed time, but I have decided for the year of 2024-5 to do a 2-year study in the Women of Waterhouse. I am writing poems every weekend about Shakespearean women, and those of Greek myths. I look forward to sharing here in this blog what I am learning, and what these studies entail. 

Yours,

Emily