Year End Review

The window for advance sales for transparencies of light is closing today. However, that doesn't mean you still can't order a copy; only that it doesn't count towards my print run. For those of you who have ordered it, bless you for supporting my endeavers to be a voice for women who are silenced by their cultures, their families or their own inhibitions.
http://www.finishinglinepress.com/ under new releases

Now with the intensive promoting behind me, I am preparing for spring readings.

Check my website. Each reading will feature different poets reading with me or musicians or dancers. This is still in process and not finalized. If you would like me to join your book club or writer's group to share my poems, my writing discipline and practice, my experience with publication and marketing, please contact me for setting something up after March 1st.
Of course, I am still reading selections from Ceremonies of the Spirit as well. What a joy that book has been for me!!!


I am also available for blog touring...if you have a blog and set up a date for me to be interviewed or post and be available for comments from your guests, that can also be arranged.

In the meanwhile, we are headed towards the cold, dark part of the year. Here in Minnesota we got over a foot of snow. The streets are silent and the only people who are out have to be. It is quiet in my home. I have lit a candle for La Virgin de Guadalupe, as it is Her Day, in honor of the Feminine Divine. I have been catching up with my blogs and my emails and next, maybe I will be couragous enough to tackle that box of notebooks full of scribbles from various writing sessions: the Mid-town Writers Group, the class at Face to Face, the women's retreats. And get back to scanning my memoirs, written on a word processor. (It seemed like the latest at the time, who knew that in a few years, those disks would be useless?) With the gift of a laptop from my good friend Chicago poet Ned Haggard, life is much easier and will be during recuperation from hip replacement this January.

I want to reflect back over my year, what I have accomplished and what has sustained me and urged me on. All writers know there are rejections and I am persistently rejected by some of my favorite publishers and literary journals, still I get off my knees, dust myself off, find another avenue. I want to acknowledge two amazing community efforts that did accept my work: Poets for Living Waters at http://www.poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com/ and Saint Paul Almanac. Also Mississippi Crow, edited by my good friend Nadia Giordana who never stops coming up with new ways to promote not only her own work but others, especially women. Her blogtalkradio interview with me can be heard on my website: http://www.wendybrownbaez.com/ on the interviews page.
And Finishing Line Press accepted my manuscript for transparencies, for a spring birth.

I didn't do as many performances this year but Heal the Earth was my way of honoring and celebrating with a deep sense of gratitude our Mother Earth. It was amazing to work with 12 other women to make these events happen, to feel the energy shift as we created sacred space and shared our passion for the natural world.

The readings with Saint Paul Almanac were fun, I got to meet other writers and poets whom I had heard of and had never met. Especially Julia Klatt Singer, whom I knew from http://www.northography.com/. I have always admired her poetry and she will be part of my book launch in March, along with Joan Calof, story teller extraordinaire.

My biggest accomplishment was installing In the Shelter of Words, a multi-media art installation created by at risk youth from a writing workshop I taught. It showcased a CD of their words and was installed at Altered Esthetics Gallery, as part of Night On the Street and at Mid-town Global Market. Passers-by could catch a glimpse of what it means to be a teen who may not have a home, may be parenting and going to school, may be struggling to overcome choices made in the past. The sukkah is now in my garage, and someday it will be brought to another community venue with more poems added.

For the first time I read a poem while Sarah Arneson did an interpretive, intuitive dance. That was amazing, to see my words come to life and I want to do more.

This year has also had its troubles: my sister passed away form pancreatic cancer, my friend Wayne Crawford was also diagnosed with it, and the first anniversary of my husband Alejandro's death reminded me of how much I miss his vitality and being with him in Mexico. But I did take a Spanish class with the intention of interweaving more Spanish into my poems and gave a presentation at The Works: a Writer's Salon on Versos de Calaveras.

The poetry salon at All About the Journey http://www.allowharmony.com/ was a great opportunity to speak with writers and share my insights. Guess what I told them? Discipline! If you want to break out from writing to publishing, you have to be disciplined about submitting, editing, being critiqued, and blogging or keeping up your social networks. We are all in this together, my friends! Writing is a way to connect, to build bridges between us, to create understanding and awareness where there was once judgement or distance. We all have a story---but the stories are sort of the same story--overcoming adversity, appreciating how precious beauty is, wanting love and validation, wanting to give of ourselves deeply and with honor, peace and justice, truth and magic.
Don't you?

The year 2011 is approaching fast and I want to fling confetti this new year's eve. I have lived through my own story of deaths and loss and rejections and yes, self-doubt. But I am here, and I have a story to tell. Listen.

How to get your copy of transparencies of light

transparencies of light is now available on the website of Finishing Line Press, a small prestigious publisher of chapbooks. Advances sales until Dec; publication date Feb 4th. Order today and you will recieve your copy in time

for Women's History Month!

transparencies of light articulates a woman’s point of view: whether virgin, mother or grandmother, single or in love, hooker or Goth rocker, dancer or dreamer, friends or sisters, from the pueblo or the big city, in troubled places or in quiet solitude, she speaks up with passion and courage. transparencies embraces the terrors and joys of ordinary life and the challenge to live in dignity despite extraordinary circumstances. These women are survivors. From the birth of their children to the birth of themselves, they remove the veils of invisibility to voice their stories and to reveal their destinies.

transparencies of light draws out the universally, transcendently human in the particular (the mother who startles the doctor with the strength of her grip as she demands the birth of her child; the woman whose tears seal the prayer at the Western Wall; the shattered souvenir happening upon the frightened yet determined Israeli soldiers). They reveal the face of the Spiritual in the world as a daily reality. transparencies show us that G-d is neither abandoned nor abandoning but a part of our daily breath --Ned Haggard, author of Weave of the Sea

"I want to be / the one to find the message” Wendy Brown-Báez writes, and in transparencies of light she unfolds a quilt of messages from a host of voices, voices of women imploring or demanding, sorrowing or rejoicing. What impresses me most about this work is its sincerity—its conviction that poetry can reach beyond and broaden our lives, can be made of “rose petals or ash” and yet break stone. --Lightsey Darst, author of Find the Girl

paper $12 plus $1 shipping per copy
order online at Finishing Line Press

the direct link is
http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm

or mail check or MO to
Finishing Line Press
Post Office Box 1626
Georgetown, KY 40324
Advance sales will determine print run
and it will be published Feb 4th
in time for March: Women's History Month

I prefer you order directly from Finishing Line Press. But of course, if you want it personalized with my signature, send me the check or MO for $12 plus $2 shipping and I will order it!

contact me at poetaluna (at) yahoo.com

Facebook | Would you like to host a poetry salon?

Facebook Would you like to host a poetry salon?

Life is too short

Life is too short for advertisements.
Get back to the story. Will she find the person
who dropped the message? Will she keep her job?
Is the man in the mirror her true love? And which road will she take—
the one through narrow streets of the village leading her to a surprise
or the wide and fast highway?

Life is too short for long phone calls with someone
whose purpose is to hear himself talk. Commune
over a leisurely lunch or linger over dessert.
Life is too short to rush through meals, too short
to depend on wheels, too short not to take the meandering
path through woods, stroll along the beach,
pause and feel the wind in your hair.

Life is too short for memories. Write them down, pass
them around, repeat the details of an evening’s festivities
with laughter. Life is too short for tears. Soak hankies to
throw into the washer, bend over a flower and add to the music of
a river. Fill up a chalice on the altar. Sprinkle them over the cuts
and burns as needed. Give them away.

Heal the Earth: a celebration with poetry and music

Heal the Earth
a celebration in poetry, music and dance

of our connection with Mother Earth
with musical interludes by Eunice Collette,
a blessing by healing facilitators

Chrisma McIntyre and Kristin Burich,
and poets Wendy Brown-Baez, Nancy E. Cox,

Didi Koka, Nicole Lynskey, Margareth Miller,

LouAnn Shepard Muhm, and Zilla Way
featuring original artwork by Laurie Langer

and a dance by Amy Sabrina

Saturday Oct 9 @ 3:00 pm
St Paul Central Library
90 West 4th at St. Paul, MN 55005

A Plea

Today I am thinking about the violence in my neighborhood. I am remembering the young 17 year old girl who was shot coming out of a party one block away. After she died, during the prayer walk, her sisters begged that the violence stop, that there be no retaliation. I am thinking about the recent question asked on my list serve of women poets about myths where a woman attacks another woman. I am thinking about the article that I read in the City Pages about the girl gangs: the Ladiis and the Baddest. I am thinking about the dog my room-mate just got for protection because one of our neighbors had his home broken into in the daytime, while he was at home. And I am thinking about the dreams I once had as a young woman of Peace and Love, to unite us all in brotherhood, recognition that we all share the planet.

Feminism? It has not filtered down to my neighborhood. Poetry? The kids walk along the street repeating rap and hiphop lyrics to themselves, ready to burst into cussing and screaming at the least provocation.

But I can’t sit still and watch the chaos around me without doing something. So I go down to my local library and volunteer to teach a writing workshop. I call my workshops Writing Circles for Healing: words to light the way because it is something I know. I have experienced the violence of losing my partner and my son to suicide and the shock, despair, anger and guilt this has put me through was assuaged by prayerful patience, by the love and support of friends, by dark hours of shaking a fist at God, by putting myself into challenging situations where I didn’t speak the language and knew almost no one, by loving and surrendering my expectation, and by writing down my words: poems, stories, memoir, essays, and then acting them out and sharing them. And by holding the space for others to be vulnerable and to dip into the deep well of their pain, their memories, their losses and their passions.

So. I have to be trained as a volunteer, I have to go through an orientation, we have to see who will come and sign up for creative writing. But I will be there. Ready for whomever shows up. Ready to walk through my neighborhood with a notebook in my bag and a smile. Maybe, just maybe, the light will shine and get us through these times to something that resembles my first dream of peace and love. Maybe I can convince the girls to be powerful with hope and openness and courage to speak their truth as much as with fists and weapons. Maybe we can start a revolution to take back our homes and to feel part of the neighborhood instead feeling that we are at war.

writing in a group

A few week-ends ago I led a writing workshop as part of Celebrate Yourself week-end women's retreat. The Saturday workshop was a writing circle for healing and Sunday's I call Spiritual Tune Up. The process of writing circles is simple: we read a poem, write spontaneously, then read what we have written without critiquing. All comments must consist of positive feed-back. The purpose of this is to quiet the left brain critic who tells us we can't write or that we're not good enough or what will the others think? The Judge, the Critic, or the child who was criticized for her creativity, this part of ourselves that watches us without tolerance or amusement at our efforts, not to mention never praises us for taking a risk, is calmed. Reading what we have written aloud is a risk; we feel vulnerable and sensitive and courageous. I acknowledge that.

Sunday's workshop starts with a meditation and uses poems with a spiritual slant to inspire us.

I have learned through the years of leading workshops to trust the process. Natalie Goldberg says go for what is rich with emotion, go for what you feel reluctant to say, go for the material that is hardest to write. Sometimes what we begin with: an image, a memory, a feeling, is not at all where we end up.

This week-end, someone thoughtfully brought along a box of kleenex, because as we opened our hearts, we needed it. There were losses and griefs that were heart-wrenching, there were stories of self-denial and fears of not being enough, not being held as precious and beloved. And as well, as I used prompts that focused on our blessings and our passions, there was laughter and remembrance of our innate worthiness. We honored our wholeness within our pain and brokenness.

Remembering is important for me, too. One line came into my head as I wrote: What would it be like to look up to myself?

I know the stories we are compelled to share are sometimes the ones we don't feel safe enough to share. How many of us have taken a writing workshop only to feel ripped to shreds by a critique that ignores the hard work we did to capture our deepest longings, our deepest despair, our deepest truth, the rent in the fabric of our daily lives that can lead to transformation and transcendence if we follow the frayed thread and not give up too soon?

It was a blessing for me to be in the circle, a circle that becomes sacred time and space as we articulate in our fumbling words, in our genius words, who we are and what has happened to us. The shortest bridge between two people is a story and I listen to yours and hold it close to me.

Venus in pink

…………skies, flutter of
a silk dress on the line, the last
drops pooling on the tile for a second
before disappearing, scorched.

You wonder how it can be so hot
this early, the washing hung before the sun
can bleach it. Later, you watch the girls
on the beach saunter by

(That’s a bikini? you think, trying
not be envious of their smooth
curves, the strut, the tan
that you once upon a time

never needed. You were blond, unplucked,
a ripening strawberry hidden among the
green, a rose blooming on the stem.
The bold canter of your heart, wild dances in

moonlight.) Today, in silence, hands raw from
wringing, you follow the flight of the heron
sailing up the river at sunrise. You still
wear pink, but silk and with a slip.

Union

Union brings us home
to the one we have loved
in the reverence of our heart

Union is where love looks
through the reflection in my eyes
to see the within
as crystalline purity
and absolute wonder

Oh my brother my lover my friend
your love awakens my angelhood
is it God I am seeing
or God’s vision of me I am becoming?

(hush, He is so close now
as near as my heartbeat
pressed against yours)

Union give us the possibility
of eternity
all in an instant
the yearning depends
the searching is completed
the fulfillment finds meaning
and the Book of Life falls open
to the page which we have written.

Lovers

I want to touch you like tender rain
I want to run my fingers through your hair
like a breeze, like a whisper
and melt you with heated kisses
I want to pick the cherries from your boughs
and lay them in my fine woven basket
I want to bury myself in your golden nectar
the way bees enter flowers, come out sticky and drunk with pollen
I want to entwine around you like a morning glory
brilliantly awake to the world
I want to dance together as butterflies do
intricately measuring the air
I want to be covered by you the way
dandelions take over the lawn

Moontime

The moon sang to her bones
and she rose up, beating the dance into the lush
grass, arms held out as in embrace,
in prayer.

Her body undulated like a river and she entered the
pulse of her own rhythm. She was meant to
dance wildly in solitude while others
shielded their hearts from her
blaze.

The woman would shed her skin the way she
shed her blood, whisper words of comfort
to those left behind.

Asks for no surety, makes no bonds,
marks the day with praise, fondles the red circle
around her waist. The woman dances

skin to skin with the moon, with the dirt
under her feet, with the song that breathes
up from her gladness.

Dancing One More Time

You are not good for me
and yet I yearn for you.
How dare you walk away,
what right do you have to pocket my love
like a penny begged on a corner
without a backward glance?

What right do you have
to dance with strangers
while I await you like a school girl
drunk on a holiday
afraid she is about to lose her virtue
afraid the chance might pass her by?

What right do you have to be cold
and cruel?
The dance steps we perfected
of coming together and breaking away
have torn up the dance floor
so that I stumble,
my feet aching in
broken shoes.

Geyser

There is no delight
without love
There is no love
without tears
But I am a well
a fountain
a geyser
rushing up from an overflowing heart:
hot and steamy
but jettisoning
to no one
into empty space
where the audience applauds
when I am on time.

Duet

You were my warrior and I your lonely wife
at the window. You were my farmer and I
the basket, the crushed grapes, the ripe fermentation.

You were my tailor and I the seam, you my
cobbler and I the sole, you were my waiter
and I the lady at table, lean and flushed

with the touch of the sun, desiring cool
drinks or ices to quench my thirst. You were
the engineer and I the gleaming parts, the roar

of the engine, the twist and fit of the cogs.
You were the angel and I the prayer, you
were the jester and I the riddle and song.

Falling in love

I dropped my coins in the wishing well
and dusted my pillow with charms and roses
and still, it is a surprise, a wave of giddy
nerves, trembling knees, that urges me to dance.
Blood rises in the circuitous cells
that comprise my bones, my muscles, my will.
It flings me up and up,
a giant wave cresting to reach the moon.
It is like tearing open a package dressed in brown paper
to a gold bracelet shimmering with jewels, the
one I had admired in the jeweler’s window
the one I thought I could not afford.

Mi Sol

Today I am pondering the intricacies of desire
how I wanted you to look at me, the gaze
between us as warm as floating in a Mediterranean sea

You were the sun beating down on my shore
and I the moon, vigilantly shining through the dark,
a path to the sea, a motion of nearing

that guided us to the horizon. But then came
sunset, a door closing, our final kisses
as blank as whitewashed walls
as tender as rain

beyond words

Beyond Words

She wanted nothing he could not bring
by coming alone. Alone. She was.
Finally. The dishes put away in their
stacked piles. The soft air of the humming
fan. And within, the
sky that rippled out when
she touched her heart
and remembered.

The ghost breathed a coolness into the
green of her desire. But still.
She was. A greed for caresses
while her eyes took him to island places.
Oasis. Fresh rose water poured over the
palms. Disguised as a virgin. The
fig of the mouth.

Only knowing in the final moment
of unveiling she would rise
under the challenge of his hands.
Finally. He brought her refuge and his
cloak of secrets when he came to
her alone.

All my life I have loved more than one thing

“All my life I have loved more than one thing……”
Mary Oliver

I have loved the quiet breath of anticipation
just before the sunrise tips the horizon in gold
and I have loved the tapestry of brilliant
colors enfolding day into night

and I have loved the silence of a forest path
with its gossamer of web and wing
and boisterous laughter
around a dinner table

I have loved the holy shine on a new-born’s
face when he comes to light
and the tender curls on the back of a neck
of a stranger seated in front of me

I have loved loud rock’n’roll and the brash throb
of its heart-beat urging me to dance
and the soft melodies of Andrea Bocelli
singing in a language I can not translate

I love a friend’s listening ear without
offering me judgment or advice
and I love the harsh voice of truth
telling me I need to think again

and I love stories and the feel of a book
in my hands and I love casting
twigs into the fire, empty and serene,
while the stars mark the miles to eternity

I have loved the fragrance of gardenias
and the sound of waves hitting the beach
and the taste of crusty bread dipped into
freshly pressed olive oil and salt

I have loved the touch of a masseuse’s
wisdom and the crushing weight of a love
I yearn for even though I know
it will break my heart

I have loved places where I laid down
into deep sleep, beaches or meadows,
and I have loved being awakened from
a dream by the sound of my own name

Alive, I tell you

and in the dream
surely as close as my breath
as close as my own shade

spread around us upon the cobbles.
It was not passion
and yet there were kisses

and joy, there was the time after margaritas
we staggered across the swaying
planked bridge, holding onto

each other as if that would prevent us
from falling. Those magical
nights of having you all to myself.

I accepted the gloom and the
moods and the way frustration
flared up like a firecracker

gone off at the wrong party
for the sake of the music,
your voice in sync with some

sappy love song, the way it made
my heart quiver and shake, the way it
made my world spin into orbit

around your invincible sun.

Blazing through night

You are my fiesta, my fireworks against the
pitch black, my bone rattling boom, my
roar of the crowd, my glittering
cannon flyer, my sequined stunt man

You are my foot stomping, hand clapping
flamenco dance, my tango, my pasa doble
with a heart clutching spin, my waltz until we
fall down, wings burst into star dust and blood

You are my long drink of water
in a desert of games, those odd ones of
false appearances and deceit, snark
whistles and snake tongues

You are my hallowed ground, my shivering
awe that traces along my spine, my communion
from a well of sweet gospel, blind
transformation, awakened zeal

You are my fire keeper, my hearth, my flame,
my driftwood of sculptured loss, my turnstile of
fate, you are the face in my
tortilla, the honey on my papaya

You are the pebbles cast in moonlight,
the backward look, the courage, the sacrifice
You are the rules that broke every one
until we were no longer sorry,
until we were found

Aftermath

This is a piece of my heart left over
after the harvest, after the fire, after the feast.
This is the muscle that stretches its arms,
this is the ache that learned how to sing.

This is where I will hold you close,
soothing song of sympathy, drum roll
of hope, tune of gratitude,
and willingness to give everything
you could ask for, if only you would.

This I will feed you, milk and honey,
berries and cream and those warm figs
that fell off the tree, crusty
bread, olives and cheese,
these I will set on our table of
communion, a gaze between us
of forest, of gardens, of fields.

This I will hold, this I will release,
gladness that arched between us
like sun come back from the storm, like
the way the first man greeted his
flesh-formed maiden, like the world
had been created just for we two.

Michael's gift: today's poem

You are my hearth
my soul-keeper
my flame
I was born to be ignited by you
I plunge sprouting wings
fanned into fire
by the breath of your love

You are my slow river
my ark
traveling through dark liquid night
silently
downward I sail
past star-glistened rocks
drenched in salt spray
and then opening
to the luminescent
shattered
moon trail of the sea
gently rocking
gently rocking

You light me within
and I am the lantern
the lighthouse’s cherished beam

Kissing you
I dream of sunrise
surprising my sleep-frosted eyes
like a squeeze of tropical fruit
across a blue tablecloth
quenching my heat-blistered tongue
and filling my parched throat
with sweet wildness

Love

I am still waiting for a sign,
a shiver across my shoulders, a word
written in snow by sparrow feet

hoping by that simple gesture
that means so much, the fertile
dark will be sundered.

Our longing we never shared,
too risky the journey,
the plow finding stones

and the heart crying foul once again.
But still I would hear it now
that you have reached light,

those flames burnt across my soul,
the grace of knowing we were once
twined, even if only in froth and sand.