The Timbre of Sand

“In these poems Stephen Page finds rich metaphors to celebrate the varieties and topographies of love. The poet chooses to make the sonnet form contemporary and succeeds in creating a powerful and distinctive music. One leaves the work remembering subtle images of lovers voyaging, crossing Patagonia, visiting Maine, dreaming in Samburu, ‘rejoicing under Kilimanjaro,’ or calm in an ‘envelope of stars.’ Keats-like in the sensuous attention to language and its cadences, The Timbre of Sand adds to our consciousness of the world and nourishes us in the process. With his first book, Page makes an impressive debut that deserves an enthusiastic audience.”

-Colette Inez, Author of Clemency

A messiah of poety has arrived. – Sandra Valez

The most extraordinary book of contemporary sonnets I have ever read. – Monica Sells

Undoubtedly the best book of poems I have ever read. Multi-layered like a sweet onion, every time I partake of a poem, it reveals new meaning. Stephen Page is obviously brilliant as he is sensitive.
- Andrea Gabai

Awesome! Unbelievable skills, this new bard. An outsanding first book. Stephen’s poems echo in the mind hours after reading. A must buy for weekend readers as well as literary connoisseurs. A nightstand staple. – John Stauss

Buy the book The Timbre of Sand on Amazon

From the book “The Timbre of Sand” by Stephen Page

This book is an outstanding read.  Find it. Read it.

Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and James Jones’s The Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.

Written by a highly decorated Marine veteran over the course of thirty years,Matterhorn is a spellbinding and unforgettable novel that brings to life an entire world—both its horrors and its thrills—and seems destined to become a classic of combat literature.

this review from Amazon

In the afternoon you go to your mailbox and open it. You find a manila envelope addressed in loopy violet letters from Caitlin O’Neil, a writer friend of yours living in Boston. Inside is a magazine, the March/April issue of Poets and Writers. She published an article therein, ‘The Writer’s Triangle.’ The article reflects themes in your current poem, and you are quoted in it. You want to call all your friends and relatives to tell them, but decide that might be self-promoting, so you just e-mail a few of your current contacts.

Triangulated
By Caitlin O’Neil | Poets & Writers Magazine, March/April
Until I was invited to appear on a panel about life in the “toxic triangle,” I had no idea that I was in the writer’s equivalent of the plane-swallowing waters off the coast of Bermuda. I did know, only too well, how, during the year since I had left my full-time job as a public television producer and become a freelance writer, my furtive early mornings spent writing before work had given way to long afternoons puzzling over money, freelance assignments, and a growing sense of isolation. Alas, I was in the dreaded triangle, I just hadn’t quite realized it.

The term refers to the metaphorical vortex writers get pulled into while trying to balance making a living and being committed to their literary lives. Adapting the concept from a book about depression by Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, writer and psychologist Susan Schnur, put the panel together for an event to be held at Grub Street, an independent writing center in Boston that offers high-quality workshops, events and professional development opportunities for writers of all levels, last February. Schnur outlines the problem succinctly: If a writer is earning enough money, she doesn’t have enough time to write. If a writer has enough time to write, she’s broke. If a writer is cut off from people and money-generating work in order to write, she’s depressed and isolated.

“I came up with the concept by watching fifty writers do exactly what I do-continually try out new recipes for getting the issues of time/money/isolation right,” Schnur explains. “One constantly tries this, then that, but it’s almost impossible to get right.” It’s the trap Dorothy Parker must have had in mind when she wrote: “The writer’s way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning ferryboats?”

The response to Schnur’s panel invitation was overwhelming. She’d struck a nerve among the sixty or so members of The Writers’ Room in Boston’s financial district who share communal work space-and, apparently, a secret. Sitting in neighboring cubicles, we silently harbored anxiety, depression, and self-doubt-not about our writing, but about how our writing fits into our lives.

We finally brought these internal dialogues into the open one Saturday morning last spring, at the Grub Street writing center on Boston Common. Along with my co-panelists- nonfiction author Amy Sutherland, freelance journalist Paul Goldsmith, and a poet/professor Rebecca Morgan Frank-we laid bare our word-borne neuroses, challenges, and afflictions. Sutherland had clenched her teeth so hard as she pounded out her latest book that she’d needed thousands of dollars of dental work. She worked herself into such a frenzy that her husband, she explained, “would come in the door and he’d say my eyes would be going two different directions. I would have fangs and steam coming out of my ears. He would just grab The New Yorker and run to the bathroom and disappear for an hour, and I’d be back to talking to the dogs.”

Goldsmith had taken up smoking and gone to a shrink. “I was smoking a pack a day, burning through cigarettes,” he admitted. “I wound up having a panic attack where I actually thought I was having heart trouble, and then when you go to the doctor and he said, ‘You just need to get out more.’”
Frank was so busy teaching at four different schools that she never slept, let alone wrote. “I fantasize all the time about having time just to write,” she said.
Then there was me: overjoyed to have finished a novel but missing my old colleagues and the security of a full-time job.

Our stories were only the beginning. The writers in the audience eagerly shared questions and problems of their own. Should I quit my job? What about kids? How do you balance paying writing and the writing you love? By the end of the morning, our panel had morphed into a confessional. Here at last were others who understood the anxiety over an elusive book contract or an article that never materializes, over the bank account that is a carefully orchestrated fugue of debits and transfers, and the pressure of all those lonely hours.

While every professional these days seems to have trouble finding a balance between work and life, the writer’s dilemma is more nuanced: to find a balance between the work one loves and the work that pays (and then try to find time for family or leisure too). The problem has long been endemic to the literary life. Wallace Stevens worked at an insurance lawyer, heading to the office each morning, penning poems between contracts. More common than the literary success of a Michael Chabon or Stephen King is the life of writers who toil, in obscurity and often in isolation, balancing the creative urge to write and the pragmatic need to make a living.

Fiction writer Cort McMeel knows this well. A full-time commodity trader in Baltimore, Maryland, by day, McMeel writes at night and on weekends.
“Trading is great in so many ways because you work fewer hours than most jobs and earn a great living,” he says. It sure beats my advertising copywriting gig where I had beer jingles dancing around in my head at night and was too burned out creatively to write during those precious night time hours.”

Stealing hours outside of a full-time job is grueling, however, and leaves little time for anything else-from eating to sleeping to being with your kids. “My wife and child are a great boon and joy,” McMeel says, ” but they, of course, take up time that the jealous mistress Muse requires. There is never enough time to write all the ideas in my head.”

With his writing time truncated, he finds it nearly impossible to produce long, in-depth fiction. “My work is completely structured around time. It’s 100 percent short stories because of child and work responsibilities,” says McMeel, who also found time to launch a new crime magazine called Murdaland last September. “The dedication it takes for sustained concentration is a whole lot tougher with youngin’s, whereas you can work up the discipline to write a good self-contained short story in two, six hour stints.” Nothing but pure love could compel someone to make such sacrifices.

Most writers, of course, dream of finding a way to write full-time, and many embark upon it even if that means credit card debt, lack of insurance, or constant hustle to find freelance work. But even when a fellowship or book advance adequately funds the dream, many writers find that having so much time isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

An anonymous writer in Boston was so happy to have a university grant that gave him all day, every day, to write that he excluded everything else: family, social engagements, food, fresh air, and exercise. “I had this feeling that I didn’t want to waste a single moment of this stretch of time that I was extremely fortunate to have.” So while he was able to write much more than he would have with a full-time job, he says, when “I got around people, I realized how isolated and depressed I was feeling.”

After long stretches at his desk, Stephen Page, a poet living in Buenos Ares, experiences bouts of isolation and “pain too,” he says, “like something has been ripped out of me.” To counteract the feeling, he makes time to be with his family “no matter what. Evenings with my spouse, and family get-togethers on Sundays.”

“Everyone focuses so much on writing, as if that’s all you need in life, but that’s a fallacy,” says writer and psychologist Schnur. “You can’t have a productive life if no one is in it but you.”

Page also relies on other forms of work, which he finds essential for his well-being. A cattle rancher and a teacher, he turns to poet Gary Snyder for inspiration. “He never quit his day job,” says Page, who has taught for many years to pay the bills but who nevertheless relies on credit cards, eats sandwiches for meals, and wears old shoes. But he also welcomes teaching as a chance to forge connections that can seem like lifelines on days when loneliness is lurking. “Teaching is a passion of mine,” says the poet. “I feel it’s necessary to pass on knowledge and influence people to stay curious all their lives.”

William Giraldi, a prose writer and fiction editor for the journal AGNI at Boston University, agrees. “Teaching is the perfect job for a writer. I cherish my teaching job because I worked construction out in the sun and snow for a year,” he says. “Even if I could support myself writing, I would continue to teach. No matter how important writing is to your life, you can’t do it all day long.”

But while many derive inspiration from teaching, or turn to it for its flexibility and steady income, such positions are often not very lucrative and demand an enormous time commitment. Writers can spend so much time cobbling together enough teaching gigs to pay the bills that they’re left with no time to do the work that the teaching was meant to support in the first place.

McMeel believes that writers should steer clear of academia. Instead “get out in the world and mix it up, get your hands dirty, get your ass kicked a little bit,” he says. “Adults who have been in jobs that require risk are way more likely to have stories of failure and glory and betrayal and redemption than young adults in high school and college.”

On this point, Page agrees. “I think to round out your writing, you need to be bigger than yourself, to help people achieve what they want in life, support them, and understand them. Hopefully, it will all come back to you.”
Schnur says that this is the biggest issue for writers: “to realize that all the stuff that goes into getting to their desks is as important as what they actually do once they’re at their desks.”

We live in a culture that doesn’t always “take seriously or value [a writers] profound need to write,” she says, adding that for many of us, “writing is as necessary as eating and sleeping.”

That is why so many writers learn to set the alarm for an hour earlier, steal an hour between classes, or earn a sabbatical after years of hard work. It’s not self-discipline but love, noted Annie Dilliard, who said writing “is like rearing children-willpower has very little to do with it.”
Giraldi puts it this way: “If you tell me you’re trying to find time to write, that’s like saying ‘I’m trying to work it out with my husband.’ You can’t try; you have to make it happen.”

Like other forms of love-marriage, parenthood-writing is about deep commitment. Balances are negotiated, sacrifices are made, but in the end it is necessity that dictates what gets done. “Writers don’t chose the task of writing,” says Giraldi. “It chooses them.”

And like any relationship, the bargain goes both ways. You, too, must chose writing, by setting aside the time, money, and energy it takes to stay committed.
“You have to be willing to spend serious time-as serious as that of the writing itself-teasing apart what you need in order to get writing,” says Schnur, whether that means a babysitter, an editor, or a workspace.  ”It’s a recipe,” she says, “that you need to be constantly adjusting.”

Caitlin O’Neil

by Stephen Page from the chapbook “Still Dandelions.”

Diane Sahms-Guarnieri

Diane Sahms-Guarnieri and g emil reutter will be reading their poetry at The Moonstone Arts Center in Philadelphia, Pa. (USA) on January 24th@7pm (EST). We are hopeful you can join us for this event as it will be streamed live by Moonstone.The live stream link is:http://www.moonstonelive.org/ For more information on the event please visit: http://www.moonstoneartscenter.org/moonstone-arts-center-events/mps-diane-sahms-guarnieri-g-emil-reutter/

http://dianesahmsguarnieri.wordpress.com/

All the best,

Carvings by g emil reutter

Diane and g

From “The Tibre of Sand” by Stephen Page

Remembering Ruby

Fifty-year-old Barbie might be middle-aged but she sure doesn’t show it. When she was in her 30s, her manufacturer Mattel sent her for plastic surgery, not to maintain her youthful appearance, but rather in response to market demands to morph her into a more realistic-looking doll. In 1992, Barbie’s waistline slightly expanded. Then in 1998, Mattel altered one version of the doll—Really Rad Barbie—giving her a decreased cup size and slimmer hips. Currently, her estimated measurements—38-18-34—contrast greatly with the American woman’s average of 41-34-43. Barbie’s curves fall several inches short of what typical women possess today.

On the other hand, considering that the average woman in the U.S. is a size 12, a doll that wears a double-digit dress size would be a much more accurate reflection of American women. The late Anita Roddick (1942-2007), the founder of The Body Shop, thought the same. In 1997, the socially-conscious international cosmetics franchise created Ruby: a chubby-cheeked, chestnut-haired, computer-generated figurine. Ruby was the brainchild of The Body Shop’s self-esteem campaign, “Love Your Body.” Her size 16 image was accompanied by the caption, “There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only 8 who do.” She sent the message that you should love what you’ve got, not loathe it.

If you’re familiar with Ruby, you know that she’s not easy to locate. So, where’s this confident and curvaceous character been hiding? You can find her at www.bestrejectedadvertising.com under the category of “Banned,” courtesy of Mattel. The U.S. toy manufacturer thwarted the innovative campaign in its early days by serving The Body Shop with a cease-and-desist order; all posters had to be removed from American shops. Why? In Roddick’s own words: “Ruby was making Barbie look bad, presumably by mocking the plastic twig-like bestseller … Mattel thought that Ruby was insulting to Barbie.” Outside of Roddick’s explanation on her website, no other information regarding Mattel’s specific legal grounds can be found online. We can surmise that Ruby’s rolls and less-than-perky breasts were the offending culprits.

This year Ruby would have turned 12. But imagine if she had grown from being a self-esteem campaigner into a three-dimensional doll in direct competition with Barbie. Do you think that when she would have reached her 30s, she would have gone under the knife too? Would the folks at The Body Shop have decided she needed a tummy tuck, a breast lift, and some lipo to give her a competitive edge? The Body Shop’s global communications head told the New York Times that Ruby represented “a reality check” in contrast to the “stereotypical notions of unattainable ideals.” Odds would tell us that the Rubenesque beauty wouldn’t have any part of her body nipped or tucked; in fact, like many women approaching middle-age, she might even have gained a couple of pounds. Regrettably, we’ll never know for sure.

Although Ruby’s existence was short-lived, her presence generated controversy. She caused Mattel to sit up and take notice. Along similar lines, consider that Barbie underwent cosmetic surgery to appease consumers’ demands. Although Mattel was conservative in its alterations of Barbie’s figure, the company did respond to the public. Furthermore, with sales of the blonde figurine consistently dropping, the toy manufacturer has even more incentive to cater to the customer. If more and more women let corporate giants like Mattel know what they really want, who’s to say that Barbie’s waistline (and the rest of her) can’t fill out as she eases into her fifties? Something to ponder in memory of both Ruby and the visionary Roddick.

This article first published on AnyBody

here:

http://anybody.squarespace.com/anybody_vent/2009/6/21/remembering-ruby.html

Good article, Ms. Haywood.

Sharon Haywood’s bio is here:

http://www.sharonhaywood.com/bio