Blog | ShanaRitter

poetry on demand

Sep 4, 2017
2 min

poetry on demand

September brings a new beginning, the start of a new year, my own birthday near to the high holidays, days when the gates swing open, and the book of life is ready to be written in, again. It is also 4th Street Fair of the Arts & Crafts in my hometown of Bloomington and the Spoken Word Stage and Poetry on Demand. Tony sets up manual typewriters and perfectly squared 5 x 8 pieces of paper and away we go. People come up and order a poem, they might share a word, a favorite anim

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Apr 4, 2017
1 min

Time Change

I’ve been back home for just about as long as I was gone but time’s measure is distinct even though the length of it is close to the same. Time’s texture and weight are different, its viscosity changes, especially the way it slides through my hands. Traveling has a way of bringing things into focus; mountains, rivers, stretches of sea all take on clarity. Skies extend past the horizon. Lines have curves. There are multiple paths in every direction. There is an invitation to

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Hinting towards fall

Sep 13, 2016
1 min

Hinting towards fall

On Saturday the first falling leaves spiraled down on a light breeze. My grandsons ran across the back yard trying to catch the yellow ones with butterfly nets. They did get a few, let them go and tried for more until they spotted a few last butterflies and took off after them. They never did manage to catch a butterfly. Instead moved on to trying to kick a ball over the roof, or hit a post, or run faster than the dog. They are tired out before dusk and their sleep is sound a

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Still Thinking about Orlando

Jun 30, 2016
2 min

Still Thinking about Orlando

Driving up the road to the Smithville farmers market, I wasn’t paying much attention to NPR morning edition until I heard that people in the 100s were standing outside the funeral of one of the young men murdered at Pulse singing Amazing Grace in order to block the chants of anti-gay protestors. I thought I must have heard wrong, I’d only tuned in to the last few sentences and then turned off the radio as I pulled into the old school lot where the market is. But later in the

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A Strange Intimacy

Feb 5, 2016
2 min

A Strange Intimacy

I am lying on the table in the upstairs surgical suite after hours. My eye is taped open, my other eye covered. I am staring into a bright light with a small green dot at the center, The doctor is stitching closed a leaky wound in my eye that did not close after cataract surgery the day before. Compared to the operating room in the hospital there is an eerie peaceful quiet here. It is only the doctor, my husband and myself. I know it is getting dark out side, I am breathing d

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Walking Labyrinths

Jan 25, 2016
2 min

Walking Labyrinths

This is my first post of 2016. After almost of a month of no entries I wasn’t sure if I would come back to blogging, or if I would leave it for a longer time. I realized writing a weekly blog helps me focus, connect, commit. I am returning to this forum intending a weekly entry to share my thoughts and meanderings. I welcome you, and hope you will respond in your own way; commenting, reposting or just visiting with me on the page. Walking Labyrinths Saturday morning in the st

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The darkening

Oct 29, 2015
1 min

The darkening

The pond hasn’t iced yet though the morning sparkles with cold it’s not enough for frost. We still haven’t shifted away the last of the summer clothes, lit the first fire, layed down the feathered quilt. We’re on the bridge of seasons amidst whirring leaves swirling to the ground. Autumn’s peak has passed but it still hasn’t all turned brown. There are moments of brilliance – flame filled orange against cloudless blue. But I’m ready to draw the lines of sight into my own cent

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Walls made of words

Oct 14, 2015
2 min

Walls made of words

In a couple of days I leave for the west coast. I’ll have time to visit with long time friends before going to a writing workshop with Mark Doty in poetry and memoir. I’ve been holding the time for that the way I hold a sense of the sun’s path when I go walking in the pathless woods – real woods not metaphorical ones. In the metaphorical world I’ve been walking on nothing but paths for months and months. Paths of tasks I’ve managed to complete sometimes smoothly, sometimes

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Time, Memory and Alzheimer’s

Sep 28, 2015
1 min

Time, Memory and Alzheimer’s

The day after the full blood super moon eclipse is a Monday. It is a cloudy somewhat dreary morning in early autumn. Everything looks dry even after the misty rain that obscured the sky for a long while last night. It cleared enough to watch the moon turn that reddish tone as it disappeared curve by curve into shadow. The way Time, that most illusive of dimensions that casts shadow on everything, elucidating some moments and erases others, changing shape and color, tone and l

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It’s that time

Sep 10, 2015
2 min

It’s that time

I am at the point in working on my novel when I’ve generated enough words that I need to put one page after the other, chapter after chapter into a readable first draft. But I freeze. Part of me longs for paper and scissors, tape and glue. It may yet come to that. I am trying not to be overwhelmed. I stop to read the book I return to at this time of year “This is Real and You Are Totally Unprepared” by Alan Lew. It is about getting ready for the high holy days of Rosh Hashana

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looking up

Aug 28, 2015
2 min

looking up

On the way home from town yesterday in the surprising cool of a late August afternoon I noticed a tinge of yellow on the leaves. It seems an early fall is approaching. Late August used to be still summer, but now the kids have been back in school for weeks and I am throwing an extra blanket on the bed at night. My new year, both my birthday and Rosh Hashanah are only a few weeks away. August was a busy month full of work and family and my own writing objectives I hardly looke

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And revery.

Jul 23, 2015
1 min

And revery.

Last week I spent a perfect summer day with a small group of writer friends gathered for a retreat on my back porch.There was just a bit of a breeze and everything green as green. Immersed in words, and the precious sense of unmarked time we were all renewed. We shared writing prompts “Toast” for example, and read the fast writes out. We took stretches of alone writing time for our own ongoing projects. In between a pot luck lunch; potatoes and dill fresh from Mary Ann’s ga

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A lack of gardening

Jul 13, 2015
1 min

A lack of gardening

I have let the gardens go wild this year. Back in late April on a day that promised summer I weeded the lower part of the garden, imagined what new perennials I’d add in, what annuals I’d buy for splashes of color, where the tomatoes and peppers would go, and then I never got back to it. Every once in a while I’d pull a few weeds as I passed by, but I have just not been able to get myself to spend the morning on my kneeling bench, tools at hand, bucket at my side, nor the a

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Summer

Jul 6, 2015
1 min

Summer

July 4 has come and gone and I hardly feel like its summer. Not having kids in school will do that. Coolest, wettest, June I can ever remember will do that. And so will working from home; letters to be emailed, grants written, word count for the novel in progress met. The other evening amidst the noise of fireworks I heard a whip or will distant in the woods to the north of our home. It has been years since I’d heard that song, which for years had been carried all around the

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Why I was writing myself into corners…

Jun 25, 2015
2 min

Why I was writing myself into corners…

Last week I took a course at the writing festival in Iowa City called Novel in a Week taught by Kelly Dwyer. I discovered why it was was that even though I could hear my character’s voices, see their shoes, feel the tension of their decisions on my own skin, I kept writing myself into corners. Simply it is because I think like a poet. Poetry is my first language, fiction is a new vocabulary, cadence, rhythm, I am trying to learn. It is not writing prose that was stumping me

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Grandson

Jun 4, 2015
2 min

Grandson

It is my first grandson’s birthday today. From the first he has been a gift, along with my title of Nana. Being a grandparent I am able to step back and so I get to see him in a another kind of light. Parenthood has its own magic but along with the heart breaking wide open there is a fierceness. And of course there are all the other things you are trying to do as you are raising your children. Grandparenthood, for me, is full of tenderness, and play. I don’t have to worry ab

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Possibilities….

May 29, 2015
1 min

Possibilities….

I watched an old Star Trek voyager last night; Captain Janeway and Tom got caught in a subspace time fracture. I’ll spare the details but suffice it to say the universe is full of parallel possibilities. I think a lot about time. I think about its malleability, the thin lines between what was and what is, how quickly the future turns into the past. The way loss that took place years ago generates longing today. Writers see space and time as permeable, not as fixed lines or de

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Mother’s Day

May 9, 2015
2 min

Mother’s Day

This Mother’s Day I am thinking how grateful I am to my two daughters. From the time they were born they grounded me. They may have thought I was holding their hands to keep them safe, which of course I was, but what they may not know is they kept me as well. They kept me focused on the present and the important. When they were young girls the important was watching a stream of ants, wading in the creek to look for fairy rings, drawing with crayons and the slow process of bed

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A habit of words

Apr 23, 2015
2 min

A habit of words

I have written a poem a day for the last twenty-two days. I gave my word to do it and so I did. It is not about inspiration or finding more time. I developed a habit. It has to do with practice. It has nothing to do with good or bad. Nothing to do with how much I have to say, or whether I am doing something new, or working on something old. It is a habit of words. A habit of lines. A habit of sitting with a page that is blank and filling it. The constancy of showing up. The i

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