Monthly Archives: January 2010

Homestretch

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Mayan Numeral, by Joanna Wiebe, an illustration from Wild and Precious Life

I am almost done copy-editing my book, Birth Mother.  I’ve been doing this task for about half a year. It is amazing how much time it takes to copy-edit 60,000 words.  Of course, as I edit, I keep re-writing parts, too, and that doesn’t make it go any faster. Not that there is any rush, except for my desire to be done with the project and move onto another book.

For I have decided to write a detective story! When we were on holiday in Jamaica this past September, the blonde Brooklynite and I were reading detective stories poolside at the Negril, Jamaica Rockhouse Hotel.  I was poring over the activities of Mma Precious Ramotswe, the first female private investigator in Botswana.   The blonde Brooklynite was reading classic detective fiction.  I had lots of time on my hands, there in that poolside deck chair, between reading bits about Precious from Alexander McCall Smith’s The Full Cupboard of Life, and waiting for Richie the bartender to bring me more lime slushies.  In that plethora of free time I began mentally playing with my theory that almost anyone is capable of crime, given the right circumstances.  Later, I realized that one of my friends would make the perfect model for an interesting and unusual detective. I announced my interest to the blonde Brooklynite who then proceeded to give me for Christmas an array of classic detective fiction in paperback, as well as a nice hard-backed copy of The Classic Era of Crime Fiction, all from her own library. The die was cast.

Pathfinder

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The coin is in the air.

World – no details – turns dreaming to memory:
prints in the dust, a trace of totem, a feather like a bird’s.

Souvenirs to be drawn with the left hand sensing hair, bone, flesh,
wings lifting light.

Never flew one of these things before,

don’t under stand the controls
What do I do when the bridge becomes a tunnel?
The walls are too tight, I’m losing feathers.

Landing abruptly, welcomed by trees, I look down to see
my prints in the earth, feathers, and a puzzling device,

interlocked circles of night and day, an artifact, something made.

Is this what draws me? I feel a rhythm of tracking like jungles slashed
with flashing knives, glints of gold and green, sap bleeding,
leaves rustling in their decay, inexorable forward pulsing
forming a track, a path, a new way of being.
I feel newness in my wings; artifacts, something made.

Breathe. Receive the air. Take what I need. Send the air out.

Through white shutters, day comes
with weather, machines, finches, jays, oak branch striving.

Oats. Walnuts. Oranges. Fire. I see the wood on the porch and turn my head.
My feet are on the floor.
Arms full of split oak, I remember again,
O yes, the dream! Cloven prints on the path. Feathers. Coin. Woods.
Deer trapped by the new highway,
learning to fly.

Joanna Wiebe, March 25, 1989

Rhoda’s at it again

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My Mennonite Weekly Review arrived today — my first issue of a new subscription, a Christmas gift from my mother, Katie Funk Wiebe. Page six contains the announcement that “Mennonite Brethren author Rhoda Janzen has a second book in the works”. Holt is going to publish this one too.

Backslider.

That’s the title.

When I was growing up in the MB church, being called a “backslider” was a pretty serious insult. I am curious to see Rhoda’s spin on it. (Rhoda’s current confessional is called mennonite in a little black dress…no caps.)

In the meantime, Mom’s book, You Never Gave Me a Name, is doing pretty well. Not reviewed in the New York Times, like Rhoda’s book, but pretty impressive stat from Tower Books: #242 in Ethnic Cultures – General. Rhoda didn’t even place in that category! Not that I’m competitive.   Mennonite Weekly Review is giving away a copy of You Never Gave Me a Name with gift subscriptions or gift renewals, along with Robert Rhodes’Nightwatch: Alone on the Prairie with the Hutterites.