Music fell off the wagon this decade; I’m hoping to get back to it as time allows. But I started doing papercuts, and I kept up with my fiction (mostly short stories).
Art
I started doing papercuts after I tried linocuts for a children’s book project that Malena and I worked on. I found I could get much the same effect without the hassle of setting up a reliable printing apparatus, and I enjoyed the challenge of having to keep everything connected. Plus, I had loved cutting things out since I was a kid: paper dolls, model houses, etc. So the work itself is very satisfying, and I now do a lot of them–for Christmas cards, friends’ new babies, etc. Here’s the original linocut I did for the cover of Ruby, our book project. And we set up the book to purchase in paperback on Amazon’s print-on-demand store, so you can see the rest of the papercuts in it there.
Fiction
I returned to writing short stories this decade because I’ve always been terrible at the form. I took a workshop in which I learned a great deal, and I’ve been enjoying writing shorter works. Here’s a story, “Tomé Hill,” that’s a sketch for a future novel.
Poetry
I didn’t write a lot of poetry this decade, but I did edit some earlier works and got one of them published in a little regional journal. This is a favorite from among those edited poems, and an interesting pair to the winter poem I wrote in high school.
Winter Poem
Winter here
is a raptor season.
Bald eagle mountains cock icy eyes
back over black shoulders,
over spreadwing ridges feathered
silver along their trailing edges with
unmelted snow.
In their branchy hermitages
lone redtails in ruddy habits
say extreme unction for small warm furry life
not fast enough.
Below, the snow is pierced with the stigmata
of flight feather tips, talons, a spurt of heart’s blood.
Above, a peregrine wind screams vespers:
It’s so hard
It’s so hard
It’s too hard.
But never:
I’m sorry.
The Rookery 