Love Stories: a collection by Leanne Dyck

"All you need is love," sings The Beatles. I'm celebrating love in all its wondrous forms in this collection. And I ask you, who do you love?

photo by ldyck

Her First Crush

Lasting Love

The Pitter Patter of Little Feet

Answering Machine

Alone with Him

A Stone Heart

Devotion

Dream

Walk with Me

Mirror Talk

Regardless of what you wear

or the colour and length of your hair

I love you

Regardless of any apparent

or perceived flaws in your appearance

I love you

Regardless of any apparent

or perceived flaws in your personality

or in your physical or mental ability

I love you

Regardless of where you live

or how much money you have

I love you

Regardless of the mistakes you've made

or will make 

I love you

Regardless what others may say to you or about you

Regardless how they may treat you

I love you

Regardless of anything in the present, past or future

--anything, any time, any where

I love you

Always remember and never forget

you can depend on my steadfast and unconditional

Love

photo by Byron

Without a reader,

a writer's words mean

Nothing

February on this blog

Sunday, February 16

Two Paths (short story)

Inspiration for this story came from two sources--a quote by Ella Winter "Don't you know you can't go home again?" and Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken

Sunday, February 23

Grandma's Knitting Needles Sing (children's story)

This children's story celebrates the bond between grandparents and grandchildren, introduces the art of knitting, and explains how wool is produced.

Book Review: Poems by Maya Angelou, reviewed by Leanne Dyck

 I've been doing a lot of reading but not for pleasure. And I've missed it. I felt the key to returning would be finding something undemanding. Maya Angelou took me by the hand and brought me back.

Photo by ldyck

Poems 

Maya Angleou

Bantam Books

1986

I've thoroughly enjoyed my time with Maya Angelou. She was entertaining, inspirational, and insightful. Admittedly, some of her writing required a second reading, and some escaped me. But others will remain with me long after this book is closed. 

Still I Rise

 You can write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

with the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bring the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise

Such power... Such pride... 

What does this poem say to me as a Caucasian... as a woman... as a neurodivergent? 

I know my time with Maya Angelou has changed me. I close this book with regret wishing I could have stayed longer.

Other genres that have kept me reading...

short story collections such as...

How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa

graphic novels such as...

Ducks by Kate Beaton

novellas such as...

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Middle Grade fiction such as...

The Dollhouse: a ghost story by Charis Cotter

Young Adult fiction such as...

When Everything Feels Like the Movies by Raziel Reid

More... 

How to get back to reading consistently again 

by Akanksha Narang

How to Make Reading a Habit

by James Clear

photo by Byron Dyck

January on this blog

Sunday, January 19

Studying Poetry (a poem)

I was introduced to poetry, as many of you were, in grade school. Later, I matriculated and a professor furthered my studying on the subject. Those two experiences were remarkably different. How? Well...

Sunday, January 26

Making Giant Snowballs (children's story)

Making Giant Snowballs encourages children to show acceptance and kindness--especially to people who are different from themselves.

Byron did: in praise of poetry by Leanne Dyck

Byron did. So did Shelley and Yeats and Burns and Cohen and Atwood and Browning and...

'Let me count the ways' wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning

But my ways refuse to be counted. My brain can't think like that. My pen won't write like that.

Lord Byron wrote:  'She walks in beauty, like the night' -- and women swooned.

Poetry is like French. It sounds pretty coming out of someone else's mouth. It pours out of someone else's pen. But not mine.

Metaphors as yummy as pettifor and language that would be swarmed by bees make poetry challenging to understand. Most of it sails passed my ears and over my head.

 A Coat by W. B. Yeats

I made my song a coat

covered with embroideries

Out of old mythologies

From heel to throat

But the fools caught it

Wore it in the world's eyes

As though they'd wrought it

Song, let them take it

For there's more

enterprise

In walking naked

We have poetry in our souls, they say. But I've checked. Mine has gone. If it was ever there.

Margaret Atwood wrote:  'We turned out the lights in the cellar and played Murder in the Dark.' Then she wrote, 'I heard that this game was once played at a summer cottage by six normal people and a poet, and the poet really tried to kill someone.'

I used to claim that my amazing dyslexic brain was to blame.

"People with dyslexia can't work with syllables," I'd say.

But then I read that Yeats had dyslexia.

Robert Burns wrote:  'My love is like a red, red rose.'

Maybe poetry is like a garden. Maybe it has to be seeded and carefully tended. Rhythm, rhyme, meter -- maybe if I studied... Maybe... But who has that kind of time?

It might be trite,

but it's also right --

I'm not a poet

And I know it.

Guest Post Leaf Press, Ursula Vaira (founder and publisher)

Ursula Vaira founded Leaf Press in 2001 as a poetry chapbook publisher. Since 2007 she has been publishing trade poetry while continuing the chapbook tradition and the weekly on-line Monday’s Poem.

"Poetry, paddling and west-coast wilderness camping are my passions, and they show in my writing (And See What Happens, Caitlin Press) and in the works I choose for Leaf's list. This year I am so proud to have published Poems for Planet Earth, a round-up of poems from readers at internationally renowned Planet Earth Poetry in Victoria BC; Surge Narrows by Emilia Nielsen, in which 'words rush like cold, clean water over the skin' (Anne Simpson); milk tooth bane bone by Daniela Elza, 'an open armature for wonder' (David Abram); and Dark Matter by Leanne McIntosh, an invitation to 'listen, listen as though the moon/has just pressed her face/against ours.'

Publishing is not for the easily frightened. The hours are long.  The money is spare. The printing bills come due. Invoice payments arrive late. Contracts are signed long before the granting agencies approve or reject funding applications. No one lasts long in the biz without a passion for the work.

But the rewards! Money aside. Glory aside. But being able to work so intimately with these amazing poets, to spend hours and hours inside their words during the editing and design and typesetting until I know nearly every word by heart--and then to sit in an audience during the book launch, watching the effect of the poet's words play on each face ... I don't know, it just does it for me.

 Ursula Vaira, Publisher

Leaf Press – Publishing Poetry Only

www.leafpress.ca

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