Dear ,

I mentioned last week that Richard and I were getting up early to see what we hoped would be a stunning sunrise on the 10,023-foot summit of Haleakalā (house of the sun), the East Maui volcano. It was indeed quite spectacular to see the sun rise above the clouds over the volcano—well worth getting up at 2 a.m. for!

I know our cellphone photo doesn't do the experience justice, but it does give you some idea of how beautiful it was. I am a sunrise junkie, and this one is definitely in my top two. (The one that startled me awake on my 52-hour bus ride from Erie, PA to Flagstaff, AZ when I was 19, on my way out to the southwest for the first time, was such a quintessentially perfect introduction to red rock country that it will probably always be my number one sunrise.) 

Speaking of volcanoes and sunrises, we flew from Maui to the Big Island last Tuesday, and my big brother Mike took us on a boat ride out to see the current Kilauea volcano action. What an adventure! The boat was rocking and bouncing like crazy, so the photos are all very blurry, but this is what the eruption from Fissure 8 looks like from six to seven miles away. Scientists estimate it is pouring out about 98,000 liters of lava per second. The yellow glow in the background that looks a bit like a sunrise is Fissure 8 (Look at all that steam!), and the yellow fire in the foreground is one of the many spots where lava is spewing into the ocean.

The most moving part of the experience was that the boat driver and his two assistants had all grown up in this area, and shared their experiences, both from childhood and in the past months. "The mayor gave us one day at Isaac Hale Park," one of them said, "where we always went to swim, so we could swim there one last time before it was covered in lava." He told us the water, once so clear, cool, and blue, was a warm, muddy brown, but they swam anyway. His dated litany of the people he knew who'd lost their homes: ". . .my best friend, May 25th, my grandmother, May 28th . . ." was nearly matter-of-fact. But we heard the emotion in his voice when he told us, "A house can be rebuilt. But the beach where we learned to surf, the land—that is gone. One last time. Now all we have are memories."

We left for this four-hour boat ride at 4 a.m. That morning's sunrise, on the starboard side of the boat as we were headed back to Hilo, is my most haunting one.

After a nap, Richard, Mike, his wife Linda, and I headed up to the top of Mauna Kea, the highest point in the state of Hawai'i. Here's a photo of me and Mike near the top.

Which brings me, finally, to the word of the week: souvenir. We, as English-speaking Americans, use this word as a noun. We buy souvenirs of places we've been. But in its original French, souvenir is a noun: to remember. Sometimes, when not even a photo remains, our memories are our only souvenirs.

This week's featured writer, Lauren Coggins, is the one who inspired my using this word in the zine. It happened weeks ago, when I received a message from her that made me jump for joy: "Maureen, I have to share some excitement. I know so few people who would appreciate this . . . I had a poem published in The Briar Cliff Review recently and the two copies arrived today. It’s apparently their 30th anniversary edition, and here’s the thing—my little poem is five pages away from a poem by Ted Kooser. So tickled." (Whether or not you are one of the myriad of people who don't know that Ted Kooser is the 13th Poet Laureate of the United States, I know you can see why she was excited about sharing this news with someone she knows does. In fact, there's a terrific Ted Kooser poem in Spinning Words into Gold.)

Knowing what a fine poet Lauren is, as I've been fortunate enough to have the chance to work with her, of course I had to ask if I could read her poem. Not only was I totally taken with "Pick Yourself Up," it was a synchronicity for me, as my husband and I had just gone hiking with our son and his girlfriend during which we'd quite a conversation about the importance of "leaving no trace" when our Eagle Scout son wrapped up and packed out his apple core instead of tossing it in the woods like the rest of us. 

Lauren's poem feels like even more of a synchronicity from here in Hawai'i, where the land is so new, so full of surprises. "It’s just a little poem that came together in a way that surprised me," she said. "Which tends to be a sign of good things!"

Indeed. What a lovely souvenir. My thanks to Lauren for allowing me to share it with you, so that you can reflect on your own memories and souvenirs.

Love and light,

Maureen

Upcoming WordPlay

WordPlay Success Story

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Meet Lauren Coggins

Lauren Coggins grew up in Charlotte and lives in Lake Wylie. She’s been delighted to have had a handful of poems published, in Southern Poetry Review, Reed Magazine, and Kakalak, among others, and remains hopeful in the eventual goal of publishing a chapbook.

About poetry, she has co-opted some advice she came across a while back, that was given to one famous author, by another. It works for poems, too: Gene Wolfe once told Neil Gaiman that “you never learn how to write a novel, you just learn how to write the novel you’re on.”

Lauren can be reached at lcogginz@bellsouth.net.

What Lauren says about WordPlay

"A few years ago, I got back into writing poetry. Which is a short way of saying that I exhumed, and spent time with, a lot of old notes and ideas. With things that had once seemed completed.

As an undergrad at Queens (’01), I was lucky to take writing classes with poet Cathy Smith Bowers. I’m still grateful – her teachings on the “abiding image,” and on poetry as “shining a light on a moment of intensity” were resonant. Over time, they proved resonant in ways that drew me back, eventually, to poetry.

But I needed someone who could read my poems in ways that I could not. Enter Maureen, whose coaching has been a catalyst. Her style makes it easy to be vulnerable, and to talk about the emotion behind the writing even as we’ve covered things like metaphors and line breaks. Understanding how she reads the poems, so that I can better understand them myself, has been so very helpful. What a joy, for someone to help you be surprised by your own work!

Maureen’s passion for the craft is contagious. Her input has helped me become a better self-editor, and it’s helped give me the confidence to feel that my poems have a small place – to lift words from Mary Oliver – 'in the family of things.'”

Featured Writing

"Pick Yourself Up"

​​​​​​​by

Lauren Coggins

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we tell one another, in idiom,

as though we could carry ourselves.

As though we could take our own hands

and hoist ourselves upon our own backs,

like the packs of those Scouts

whose credo goes: leave no trace.

And it occurs to me that even

in the wilderness of a person, I still

should be a good steward, should pack

everything out I carried in, and leave

things as I found them. The way

I once knelt by a stream while hiking,

stopped short by the clear, clear

water, the glint of mica in the sand

and the slurry of it so smooth

when I reached in, that I might as well

have touched nothing – my palms

in the current, full of that silt

I couldn’t feel. The sensation all

in the seeing of it through my fingers,

and my hands so clean, after,

that it seemed we’d repelled

one another, that earth and me:

a thing I couldn’t hold, that refused

to touch me back – neither of us

the other’s souvenir.

                            ~ Lauren Coggins
                      in The Briar Cliff Review, Volume 30