Joan L. Cannon - Poem

I am fortunate to have made a friend some years ago when I first put up the NCWN-West blog, www.netwestwriters.blogspot.com  A wonderful writer and interesting woman contacted me. She lived in Morganton, NC near where I vacationed a while ago. I could tell she felt isolated living in a retirement community not knowing many writers. She asked if she could join NCWN-West. I think she was already a member of the North Carolina Writer's Network. I had to tell her she did not live in one of the NC counties that made up the region included in the NCWN-West Program. But I put her name on my Email list and sent her the same information I sent to those who lived in the nine counties SW of Asheville. 

Over the years Joan and I have become friends although we have never met face to face. Not too long after my husband passed away, Joan lost her beloved. Now she has moved back up north to be near her children. 

Recently someone asked Joan if she missed North Carolina. She wrote this poem in response and shared it with me. It is published here with her permission.

NORTH CAROLINA

by Joan Cannon

If I wrote a poem about a place I miss

I fear it would lead to empty rooms

whose doors are closed and to qualms

about what a reader might see behind them.

What might I?

Outsize and distant whale backs of blue and purple and grey

that show the hand of majesty and time and decay

—make outsize demands on the viewer’s humility,

they clutch the throat and pull a smile as much as a sigh.

It’s good for the soul to feel so small.

We used to drive to feel the surge of exotic grandeur

that brought a peculiar joy—the kind that makes one sad

...save for the fact that it was there we found a fresh era

with energy to thrill to what was new to us,

that thrust discoveries at us once again.

Horizons so immense beckon with merciless guile

as if we might somehow make them ours—

we who knew the other end of such a monster

from its tail of almost human scale.

The Blue Ridge perhaps dwindles into the Berkshires

 I now find gently enfolding. Do I miss those views?

A little.

In that place, the last of our matchless road

was ended. We’d had what should have been time enough—

not unlike the months of over half a century before—

like a delayed honeymoon at the end instead of the beginning.

Yes, I’d go there again...

only if I were in the right company.

Joan L. Cannon is a retired teacher, retail manager and author of two novels in paperback Settling and Maiden Run , a collection of short stories called Peripheral Vision, and her latest, a collection of poetry, My Mind Is Made of Crumbs, all available from Amazon and on order from independent booksellers.

Guest Blogger, Joan L. Cannon

I am honored to have as guest blogger today, my friend, Joan L. Cannon.  Joan and I met online a few years ago when I first set up the Netwest Writers' blog. I admire her for many reasons. I enjoy her writing, her use of language and I envy her vocabulary. : )
Thank you, Joan, for contributing to Writing Life Stories.

 I often choose the moniker “Old Scribe” as a user name online. Since I am at least the first part, and hope to deserve the second, it’s appropriate. I’ve wasted a good many years wishing I’d started sooner.


In my mid-fifties, I took two correspondence courses in fiction writing. Like most English majors, I was confident about writing an essay or a report. I knew grammatical rules and something about how to organize, and how to research (in those long-gone days of using a brick and mortar library for the purpose). Though a lifelong enthusiast of fiction, I had no confidence in my ability to write it, and that was what I wanted more than anything.

It’s a poor day when you can’t learn something, and I did benefit from those classes, though less than I had hoped. They reminded me of psychology courses I’d taken for teacher certification: they seemed mostly to be common sense. I got a great deal from a really good writers’ conference I was fortunate enough to attend. It didn’t take too many years to show me that I couldn’t afford to keep looking for ways to formal instruction.

I began by selling my first short story to a small literary magazine recommended by my course instructor. I thought I might be on the way at least to paying for my hobby, a hobby I couldn’t help viewing as work.

I wish I hadn’t always put my family duties first on some days, and realize I would not change that lost time for anything because of how I lost it. So now it’s a question of making the most of the time I have remaining. Any younger person who wants to write and lacks time has a wealth of sources for assistance in how to budget time, manage the demands of others. I didn’t even consult them.

The other hold-up for me was that I was too lazy to stick to the endless revisions that in those days required re-typing pages every time I saw a needed change. I almost never finished anything that wasn’t an assignment.

Then we got a computer in 1983, and my life was changed forever.

There’s just no advice I can give to anyone who might read this because it means she’s already three quarters of the way to where she needs to be to write, and write, and write. She has a computer and knows how to use it.

Maybe I can show that even starting very late, and selling nothing for almost 15 years, you can still have an occasional success in being published—if you have a computer. That’s where you can meet people who will help; that’s where you can find possible markets and the advisors to help you break into them; that’s where you can find like minds if there aren’t any in your geographical neighborhood. The Internet is what keeps me plodding ahead with hope. I honestly don’t think it’s too late, however late it may be. Last night I had a poem accepted for an upcoming print anthology. I found the contest online, sent it online, got the acceptance online.

Finally, here I am because a lady I met online has been boosting me ever since I found her, and that’s why this is on her blog. She introduced me to a wonderful website whose editor invited me to submit on a regular basis. I have three or more dozen articles published there since Glenda suggested I might be interested in Senior Women Web. I’m conceited about being among their regular contributors. Without the ‘Net… Oh, did I mention that I’m having my 83rd birthday in September?

Joan L. Cannon is a Manhattan native who spent most of her life in a small village in Connecticut. She graduated with a degree in English Literature from Carleton College. Among other jobs, she has taught English and theatre arts, been an editor, and retail manager. She lives now in the North Carolina foothills.

Her short fiction has appeared in both literary and commercial markets, she has two novels out and a third looking for a home. A story can be read at http://www.bookstogonow.com/rescue.html. She has had poetry appear recently online in Lowestoft Chronicle and Wild Goose Poetry Review. A collection of stories will be released soon. She is a regular contributor of book reviews and essays to Senior Women Web.  Joan's Website is www.jlcannon.net;  Read more of Joan's thoughts on writing on her blog  www.hilltopnotes.blogspot.com.            

EUDORA WELTY SAID IT BEST

"I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within." --Eudora Welty

I have two lovely friends who grew up with normal loving parents. They suffered no hardships in life, and seem to have had no disfunctionality in their homes. Several times I've heard these friends comment on the sheltered lives they lived and because tof that, they sometimes wondered if their writing was as interesting as work by those who grew up poor, in a broken home, or who lost a parent as a child.
Neither of them had a sister who ran away from home and married at 14, or no one in their past lived in a trailer park with a one-legged man who drank all day, they did not grow up with a father who made moonshine, and no one in the family birthed a child in Wal-Mart. Unique incidents like those above find their way onto to the pages of best selling books these days.
But the writing of both my friends resonates with me, and I admire the humor and pathos in their work.
Like Welty, they use their imaginations, bring the daring from within, to create short stories and authentic poems.
To me, that is the fun of fiction - reaching down inside and bringing up situations that only I can create. I have a book idea that I hope one day to put on paper. The setting is a retirement community. The main characters are three elderly women, feisty and funny. That is all I'll say now, but hopefully one day I'll dig down inside and find my daring. And then I'll tell this tale.

Meanwhile, I ordered Joan Cannon's book, Maiden Run, and I am waiting to receive it. I love the cover and from reading the summary, I am sure it is a book I will enjoy reading.