Spring has sprung, and the world here in the Pacific Northwest is turning green. We have rain today, and should for the next few days, but so far, April has been unusually dry. Drought this early doesn’t bode well for summer. Snowpack levels are currently at 68% of normal.
We rely on water generated by glaciers on Mount Rainier and the Cascade Mountains in general, so the low snowpack means trouble later down the road.
Dry forests in this part of the world mean dry underbrush—if we remain in drought conditions, we could have a repeat of 2018’s West Coast Wildfires. 2018 Washington wildfires – Wikipedia.
That August, one couldn’t escape the smoke. We thought we would find fresh air by going to the beach, but it was just as bad there. The following is an image I shot on August 23, 2018, in Cannon Beach. That year, smoke from wildfires burning all over the West was so thick one could barely see the water from our beachfront condo.
At the time the photo was taken, the sun was still an hour above the horizon, and it should have been full daylight instead of noxious twilight.
The brown haze was so dense that the above image appears grainy and overexposed. But as you can see by the red sun, brownish-gray smoke obscures the view of the ocean, hiding the rocks of Tillamook Head. The temperature had risen to 90 degrees at the surf’s edge, an unheard-of temperature for that area of the Northern Pacific coast. Those of us with asthma suffered, as the sun was obscured for most of the day, with intense humidity not helping.
In so many ways, the scene in Cannon Beach that day was unreal, apocalyptic.
The following image is the same view of Tillamook Head as seen from the same condo on August 13, 2016. That was a year of fabulous sunsets, deep blue skies, and perfect kite-flying winds.
Sunset at Tillamook Head, Copyright 2016 Connie J. Jasperson
But spring always brings the hope that better days are ahead, that the rain will fall, and that the traditional methods of forest fire management as practiced by our tribes will keep our forests safe. Indigenous Fire Practices Shape our Land – Fire (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
Drought is something thing I can’t change. It’s a thing to consider for world building, a distraction for when life gets crazy here at Casa del Jasperson. Some medications my husband has been taking are not working as well as we wished, and some have caused severe problems. He’s improving since we stopped the offending meds, so life is good.
Writing happens in short bursts. I have several manuscripts in the works so I work on whichever one interests me. I have basically scrapped one novel that had too many storylines. I’m parting it out into several novellas, which has rekindled my inspiration.
Alas, poetry has infiltrated my senile brain again, my secret love affair. I love the many ways words can be manipulated on a blank page. To me, poetry is something beautiful and visually simple, a thing that looks like it should be uncomplicated. But nothing could be farther from the truth.
I grew up in an isolated rural environment, and summers could be lonely. My sister and I would get away from family dynamics by reading. My favorite “We Don’t Have Anything to Read” book was the volume of collected works by William Butler Yeats. That book shaped my view of poetry and literature in general.
Yeats was an unconventional person. His penchant for finding romance in most things meant his personal life and politics were sometimes messy. And yes, his love affairs were famous, especially his enduring but unrequited love for the Irish revolutionary/actress Maud Gonne.
Some might call that an obsession.
Yeats was probably not an appropriate literary hero for a ten-year-old girl in 1963, but he was just that to me.
As I grew into young adulthood, I admired how he struggled against the conventional morality of his day, as did all free-thinking artists and writers. It seemed as if his troubles and those of his contemporaries powered their writing.
Yeats’s poetry has rhythm and rhyme, and some consider it too old-fashioned. But while modern poetry doesn’t always rhyme, it must have tempo and rhythm.
Some might ask, “If it doesn’t rhyme, what makes poetry ‘poetic?'” It is prose with syllabic tempo and visual words. It conveys images, both auditory and visual.
Sometimes, poetry is long, even epic in length. The epic poem, Manfred, by George Gordon, Lord Byron clocks in at around 250 pages and contains supernatural elements, as ghost stories were popular in England at the time. It is a Romantic-era closet drama, a play that is intended to be read aloud by one narrator rather than performed.
Poetry is a primal form of communication in the human species. It’s a literary invention that emerged as soon as we had words. Before we had written languages, poetry preserved our thoughts and feelings. It conveys them in an abstract way, passed down verbatim from generation to generation.
Our species remembers the words and the stories our ancestors told. Nowadays, we consider those sagas of the gods and heroes as allegories to explain historical natural occurrences.
We who write fantasy draw upon and recreate those stories in our image.
Poets select words for the impact they deliver. An entire story must be conveyed using the least number of words possible. Choices are made for symbolism, power, and syllabic cadence, even if there is no rhyme involved.
I try to do the same when I get to the revision process, eliminating weak passages and strengthening others. Sometimes, I have better results than others, but I keep trying.
So, now you know where I’m at in my writing life, the worries and little things that either hinder or spur creativity. I hope your writing is going as well as mine is.
Credits and Attributions:
Images © 2018-2024 Connie J. Jasperson, All Rights Reserved
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 