Old enough to play nice
Getting old in a little town

Watermark

Sharon Brogan is the proud owner, she notes, of a rejection letter from The New Yorker magazine which she has pinned to her wall. Showing better taste, Calyx, a Journal of Art and Literature by Women, has published Sharon.

Watermark, A Poet’s Corner is filled with Sharon’s writing and many compelling photos, some which seem to deliberately accompany a particular poem and some for other blogging purposes or which stand on their own. What attracted me the first time I visited Watermark is an ethereal quality to the layout of Sharon’s Weblog that pulls me in, when I visit, in a quiet but insistent manner. Perhaps it is related to a quote she has posted from Alice Notley:

“I think the poet becomes more and more of a shaman, getting older, in the sense that so much happens to one, and there's nothing left but the poetry function, which is a healing, ecstatic function, as much as it is anything else.”

Do you think that can come through the screen from a Weblog?

There is a section, "Solstice Letter," which is a fairly lengthy series of short poems guiding the reader through Sharon's sensibilities of the seasons of an entire year.

It’s just my take, but I think Sharon’s great strength is the very short poem – almost haiku in form. Three that stand out for me:

She writes here
sitting alone
at a table for two
drinking lemon tea
this heavy braid
the only remnant
of my youth
body like a river
all slow curves
and pools

Sharon lives in way off Montana with a couple of dogs, a couple of cats, some other pets and nearby friends. Her Weblog is a special place, perhaps of renewal – and we can all use some of that now and again.

NOTE: I took issue yesterday with Sharon for not crediting me on another site. It was an innocent mistake and I believe we have resolved this between us.

Comments

and compliments to you both for behaving like grownups online. Gives hope to the rest of us.

We should all be so adult (especially, our leaders!)

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