Robert Frost, My November Guest - John F. Kennedy's Inauguration

After a week of being holed up inside my house with first one malady and then another, the dark November days hang over me like the clouds over Brasstown Bald. 

I am reading lots of poetry, my own, and the work of others like Robert Frost who was my first favorite poet, and is still at the top of my list. He spoke at my college when he was a very old man, and I'll always remember his poetry reading at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy who was killed fifty years ago this week. The wind was cold, the sun on the snow blinded the 85 year old poet. When he couldn't read from his typed copy of the new poem he had written for the occasion, Dedication, he recited from memory one he had written in 1942 and which Kennedy had requested, The Gift Outright. 

 It started:

"The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours . . ." 

 Wow! I wonder how many poets I know could have done that. Below is a November poem by Frost. Hope you like it.

My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise

     ---- Robert Frost

Hear Frost read his poetry at the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6i_Ajyek2YA

November poems and November trees

I have written several poems about November. You can read one of them here. Thanks to Jayne Jaudon Ferrer it is still online in the Archives of Your Daily Poem.  Hope you like it.

From my office window, I see November trees

Thank You, Readers, for all the pageviews this month and every month.

We had over eleven hundred readers this past month just in the United States. Pageviews also came from over ten other countries. Thank you so much for visiting us here at Writers Circle 

around the Table, our blog for the series of writing classes held from March through October each year since 2010.

In the past four years we have been overjoyed with the quality of writers, teachers, poets and students who have come and shared the studio and sat around the table with like-minded people who appreciate the written word.

In the bookcases we have books to instruct, to inspire and others to enjoy reading. Students are invited to check out books and return them within a reasonable time.

Instructors who stay overnight in the studio apartment are invited to browse the bookshelves and enjoy a book while here. We also have a stack of writers' magazines to share - Writer, Writer's Digest and Poets and Writers. 

Each season we try to bring back the most popular instructors, but we continue to invite new writers who can offer instruction our local writers and poets want.

During the winter months while we are closed I will be busy contacting writers and poets in western North Carolina and North Georgia including the Atlanta area to include on next year's schedule of classes. 

Meantime, check back with us for guest posts and for articles and prompts that will keep you writing while you huddle inside by the fire. To see what is new for 2014, click on our Schedule page.

Hurry if you want your book published on paper

If you have always wanted to see your name on a published book, I mean one you can hold, one with a hard or soft back, you had better hurry. Read this post from the White Cross blog. Very interesting.

http://www.ncwriters.org/whitecross/2013/11/05/eight-tracks-rotary-phones-and-printed-books/

Writing is the easy part - now sell those books

 Follow These Five Rules to Prepare for Your Book Launch

1. Six months before the book is released, create a written marketing plan

2. Send out notices about your book acceptance to everyone on your email list, your Facebook and Twitter contacts as well. 

This is an announcement, not a pitch to sell the book. Not yet.

3. Call and set up book signings or readings, one a week for three months. The library or book store is not always the best place to hold a signing. I signed a book about horses in a farm supply and feed company. Advertise the events in local newspapers. Create interest in yourself. Include your photo if possible. 

4. Locate book clubs and make dates to visit them in person or by phone or skype. This can often be done from your own home.

If your book fits in a special niche, find those people through support groups, church groups, or social clubs, and make arrangements to give a free author chat, or give away several of your books each time you appear. One might be hesitate to give away his book, but consider this as cost of advertising. Word of mouth is the best kind of promotion, especially when it comes from one who has read and enjoyed the book

5. Guest blog for another blogger. Write short articles for your favorite charity, send to your local newspaper. If you have a cause you are passionate about, get your name out there by writing about this cause but don't write about something that will divide your audience. 

Karen Holmes, Kelsay Books, Poetry Collections

My friend, Karen Holmes, is a terrific poet. Her poetry collection Untying the Knot, will be published next year by Kelsay Books.

This is an excerpt from an interview with Karen Kelsay of Kelsay Books. I post this to reiterate what I tell my students and to guide you to read this post:

 Have you ever had to turn down a chapbook manuscript you loved? Maybe because it wasn't right for your press, or any other reason?

Yes, there have been a few I really thought were well written and clever, but they just didn't follow the guidelines closely enough. I absolutely hate to do layout work on experimental poetry. The lines need to be justified to the left and in a traditional manner. I will let a few slip by if they look like they won’t be too much trouble, but I will refuse the manuscript if it is filled with crazy lines going all over the place.

I am in process of putting together a poetry manuscript that I hope will be complete before too long. My chapbook, Now Might as Well be Then was published by Finishing Line Press in 2009, the same year my husband passed away. That book is a bitter-sweet reminder.

photo by Michelle Keller

I enjoyed working with Leah Maines editor, and Kevin Maines at Finishing Line. I hope the publishing of my next book will go as well. 

Poets can run into some nightmares with publishers. A friend had her book accepted, but the press failed and after holding her manuscript a long time, the book was never published. Writers must research, carefully, and still one never knows what might happen. 

A novelist, Nancy O., published her book in the U.K. That company went out of business and stopped sending her checks, but the book continued to be listed on Amazon.com. She could not reach anyone to ask if her book was still selling and if so, why was she not receiving any revenue.

With self-publishing and print on demand (POD) becoming easier, some poets are doing their own thing. Some of our greatest poets, like Walt Whitman and T.S. Elliot, paid to publish an early book. The first book is often used to build a name for the poet if he has not already done so.

I believe that Karen Holmes has made a perfect match with her poetry and Kelsay Books.

With winter looming and the cold days that keep us inside, this is a good time to sort poems and to arrange short stories to see what I have and what might be worth sharing with others. Would you, my readers, have any interest in collections of my poems and stories?

Writers Night Out - last of this season - Don't Miss it!!

Last month, we had a small group of 10 in attendance, so please come this Friday to give these wonderful poets a large and enthusiastic audience as we usually do for Writers' Night Out. November is our last meeting of the year -- we'll resume in March 2014.

Writers’ Night Out
Friday, Nov 8

Brothers Willow Ranch Restaurant, Young Harris, GAPrivate Room upstairs (can access by ramp from upper parking lot)

6:00-7:00 eat dinner or munchies and socialize (come early to order dinner)
7:00-ish announcements and featured reader
Break
7:45-ish Open mike, sign up at door, limit 3 minutes per poetry or prose reader (Please time yourself at home, let's make it fair to everyone. Prose readers can often eliminate some details and still captivate the audience with their piece).

Featured Poets' Bios:

Katie Chaple is the author of Pretty Little Rooms (Press 53, August 2011), winner of the 2012 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry through Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. She teaches poetry and writing at the University of West Georgia and edits Terminus Magazine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Antioch Review, Crab Orchard Review, Mead, New South, Passages North, StorySouth, The Rumpus, Washington Square, and others.

Travis Denton is the Associate Director of Poetry @ TECH as well as a McEver Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech. He is also founding editor of the literary arts publication, Terminus Magazine. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies, such as Mead, The Atlanta Review, The Greensboro Review, Washington Square, Forklift, Rattle, Tygerburning, Birmingham Poetry Review, and the Cortland Review. His second collection of poems, When Pianos Fall from the Sky, was published in October 2012 by Marick Press.

Invitation to writers - Open House at City Lights Bookstore

We hope you will join us at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC for this event. I look forward to seeing old friends, my readers, and those who want to know more about NCWN West, our regional chapter of North Carolina Writers' Network, the state literary organization.

NETWEST OPEN HOUSE AT CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE and Cafe, NOV. 10, 1:00-4:30 p.m.

We welcome all Netwest members, as well as wannabe members, to a friendly literary gathering on November 10. 

We will begin the reception upstairs in the Regional Room, with finger foods and other assorted goodies, as well as coffee, tea, cider, and wine. We'll have Echoes Across the Blue Ridge prominently displayed, along with books by individual Netwest members. 

If you want to have your book available at the open house, call City Lights with details, so that the store can enter it into their system beforehand. 

Singer-songwriter Angela Faye Martin and guitarist Paul Schofield will provide music for us.

Shortly after 2:00, we will go downstairs to the Cafe, where our three featured writers will read. An open mic. will follow. The sign-up sheet will be upstairs, so please sign up when you arrive, if you wish to read. We will set a time limit depending on how many members have signed on to read.