Discovering Ethel Romig Fuller

There is much that could be said about her, but I am still learning about this former Oregon Poet Laureate. This poem is a delight.

Today – Ethel Romig Fuller

I have spread wet linen

On lavender bushes,

I have swept rose petals

From a garden walk.

I have labeled jars of raspberry jam,

I have baked a sunshine cake;

I have embroidered a yellow duck

On a small blue frock.

I have polished andirons,

Dusted the highboy,

Cut sweet peas for a black bowl,

Wound the tall clock,

Pleated a lace ruffle…

To-day

I have lived a poem.

Extreme Ironing

What is not to love?

Can't find their website, but apparently there are lots of practitioners of the sport. For, example, in Australia.

Things are Looking Up

Snow. My thesis. Laundry. Art. It's a good life.
I want to blog more, but I am tired.
However, last night was the first night of our Knit Night club. We don't have much of a name yet, and three of our members (who do knit) were not knitting last night.
So, in honor of all that, here is a link to our two favorite Knitting Web Sites Ravelry and Knitty. Sorry that Knitty doesn't have a logo I could re-post here.


Also, a new fantastic poem I discovered by Emily Dickinson, about snow, and filled with laundry images. What is not to love about "It ruffles wrists of posts"?

It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain,—
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem,—
The summer’s empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen,—
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.

(Thanks to Bartleby Great Books Online.)

Laundry Getting Ready to Travel

Friends just went to Guatemala. Before they went, they prepared their clothes with some spray that was supposed to make them insect-proof. I don't know if that part was a success, but I love the photo they took of the clothes all strung out and ready to be processed. Such happy colorful and cooperative clothes! Thanks, Kayte and Jim.

RIP Freyja

Dear little kitty who liked laundry baskets, I'll miss you. Hopefully we'll trap and relocate that nasty raccoon. I hope there are lots of laundry baskets full of warm socks in kitty heaven.

Common Themes, Common Threads

Here are some new blogs I've found. The Laundry Narrative and The Thrifty Poet. Interestingly, the Laundry Narrative blogger doesn't describe laundry as one of the things she's interested in (on her profile) and Thrifty Poet doesn't have any poems on her blog, but they both seem to like clothes, one of them is a mom, and there is a lot of colorful musing going on. I can get behind that. Oh, and Thrifty Poet does list several very important books by poets on her list of books she wants to read. Donald Hall, Louise Bogan, and Eavan Boland -- which is how I found her blog in the first place.

Cassie Premo Steele actually has an entire post about Eavan Boland, and quotes a piece of her prose, one of my favorite bits.

“The more I lifted a child, conscious of nothing but the sweetness of a child’s skin, or the light behind an apple tree, or rain on the slates, the more language and poetry came to my assistance.” ---Eavan Boland

I'm eating my lunch at work and since I don't like to eat at the computer, I'm searching for something new about EB to read while I eat my lunch at my little round office table. I didn't get very far.

But, in other news, I have decided to diary again, and even to try PAD, if I can find the time. Oh, and write my thesis. Remember that?

I've been worried that I needed something 'new' for my thesis, some new spin, and I've been thinking that while so much scholarship about EB focuses on her as a poet, I could focus on her as a mother -- that the role of domestic imagery in her poems is not just political or feminist, but deeply personal. That while she write poems about being a fore-bearer for other women poets (and there is plenty of criticism about that), she's also a fore-bearer for mothers who want to write. She is a fore-mother. Not a forefather. No. It seems that Cassie Premo Steele agrees with me.

"This is why Eavan Boland’s writing is, for mother writers, revolutionary: she asserts that the selfish, interiorly focused mother can be a poet. Not just be a poet, but also somehow a good poet. And a good mother."

Maybe I'll making some progress after all. A photo for good luck.



Found at this new blog, Fiber Fantasies, when searching for a new photo of EB. What luck. So much richness.

Domestic Images Inside Out

Accidental Mysteries does it again. What could be more of a domestic image than this? Woman, high heel shoes, and bones. Strangely unsettling, but beautiful. Too bad her apron doesn't show. I bet a string of pearls would have shown up nicely.