A Reading and Book Signing for Shy Ghosts Dancing

On December 30th I went to the Sheldon Museum in town with Aly. She volunteers there every week. I went to follow up with the staff about a reading and book signing for my new book. We set the date for Wednesday, January 19th!

Here’s the poster I designed for the event. If it hasn’t already, it’ll soon be appearing around Haines.

poster for Mark Zeiger's book signing January 19th 2011

I really hope people come to this! We’re laying plans for it now. Aly suggested refreshments. There’s been talk of sugar cookies, drawing from various holidays to create theme-appropriate goodies: ghosts from Halloween, Christmas trees re-purposed to serve as rain forest trees, bears, maybe a moose . . . . And, in honor of my Aunt Gail, whose comment anticipating the book got into the introduction, we hope to serve Russian tea, without rum, in this case. Continue reading →

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Mary Oliver’s Twelve Moons as Lunar Calendar

As I mentioned recently, in evaluating the fulfillment of last year’s resolution to read a poem a day, I discovered something interesting about one of my favorite poets.

Mary Oliver published a collection of poems called Twelve Moons (paid link) (check your local bookstore) which I received for my birthday last year. The collection is based around twelve poems about the full moon, using the Algonquin Nation’s names for each month’s full moon (Wolf Moon, Hunter’s Moon, etc.).

Looking through it, I realized that, with a little bit of finessing, the collection could be read in conjunction with the lunar calendar. Roughly speaking, in addition to each month’s full moon, there’s a poem that correlates with the other moon phases in each month, with a theme or subject that more or less corresponds to the season surrounding the nearest full moon.

Continue reading →

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