Author: Narya Rose Deckard
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Night Locks the Birds in the Sky: Review of Bird Ornaments
How many ways can we come to know the body through metaphor? In Angel T. Dionne’s book of poems Bird Ornaments, it can be and become so many things: a “dimensional graph/of genetic variations,” string beans for arms, caterpillars for eyebrows, teeth become adversaries. And usually when we think of metaphors, we imagine them opening… Read more
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Let’s Behead Ourselves: Living As Symbols, Not Images
As I spend time thinking about language and its imperfections, how it only reveals slivers of truths, not a whole truth, I discover how easily we deceive ourselves into believing we could possibly ever know something wholly. Take self-identity for an example. We define ourselves by our jobs, at least in the U.S., in such… Read more
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Write Like a Knight; Irony in Creating Without Control
John O’Donohue says near the end of chapter 2 in Eternal Echoes that “It is vital that one’s spiritual quest be accompanied by a sense of irony” because it “ensures humility” (129). With dramatic irony, the audience knows more than the main character does; irony in this instance is not recognizing your own situation and/or… Read more
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The Bridge of Bear Mother: Ancient Slumber and Quickening
St. Brigid, Imbolc, and the 5 of Cups The bridge draws my eye first along its breadth, the bridge to which the figure in the image looks, the thing that connects one bank to another. What draws us together in this way? St. Brigid, her quickening breath that had slowed for winter slumber, warm and… Read more
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From Dormant Roots to Dragonfire: Writing the Self
One of the most important experiences I had in my MFA was writing a poem. Here’s what happened:My teacher told us to go outside sometime that week and read Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.” She said this poem was meant to be read aloud…. loudly.Yell it.Yell the poem as loud as you… Read more
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Resting but Ready
Hibernation is always on my mind, particularly in the season when it’s at least somewhat socially acceptable. This week I’m thinking about hibernation in terms of the Tarot card Strength, which has an image of a woman holding the mouth of a lion. Whether she’s shutting it or keeping it open, I’m not sure. Strength… Read more
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Wisdom from Riddles
Bard by Morgan Llewelyn has a great passage about a society too focused on the material world: The speaker describes two roads to take: “One would develop the forces locked within our minds; the other direction led to the constant refinement of tools and weapons, increasing reliance on matter rather than spirit. In choose the… Read more
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The Emptiness of Letting Go
I practice the tradition of doing something New Year’s day that sets the tone for the year: I always go hiking. This year I hiked at my local park, Lakeside, with my Rottweiler mix Losi, and followed Bobcat Way, then Shade Seeker, and completed the circle by finishing on the Outer Loop. Though the parking… Read more
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the story of abundance and loss: The Season of Coming and Going with Tarot: Days 23 & 24
Card for the 23rd: The Queen of Pentacles reversed Card for the 24th: 5 of cups Snow fall in western Maryland on this eve of Christmas. I take Losi out first thing in the gray-blue light of late winter dawn and she bounds through the freshly fallen snow. I wonder at her wonder, how most… Read more
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Epiphany: A Season of Coming and Going with Tarot: Day 22
The Eight of Swords reversed: a revelation, however small A woman stands with arms bound and eyes covered. She’s in a pretty helpless position, emphasized by the seeming jail of swords keeping her trapped on this island of emotional turmoil she stands upon. Water lies dark all around her, reflecting a dark sky. If upright… Read more