To see the world in the town of Sandpoint alludes to a literary perspective. Located in remote Northern Idaho, between a profound alpine lake and an imposing mountain, bejeweled by ski slopes, the town is a cradle of contrasts. Contrasts which modulate the moonbeams of cognition and art. You will find wealth, but we don’t wear it, you find poverty, but we help privately; you find sports that aren’t nationally televised; contemplation without gurus; extremists, centrists, and humanists; young and, well, young at heart; sufferers and recoverers; declared religions and individual spiritualists; Boomers, Earthers, Preppers, GenXers; a spectrum of relational preferences that create the web of our community; and women who form the connective rhizome of culture.
This book contains the seeds and flowers of one type of women’s culture: language. The Sandpoint Monday Writers, founded by writer Karen Seashore in the 1990’s, has thrived with a series of instigators. For the last ten years, during my attendance, our prime instigator has been poet and artist, Robens Napolitan. We take our task seriously. The energy shared at the beginning of each week helps us maintain our balance. We are word workers. Some of us have been or are professional word crafters, some have degrees, some don’t. Some publish, some don’t. But all of us agree that words help us shape our worlds. Our work here keeps us limber and connects our outer and inner landscapes.
The process is simple. We meet in a quiet corner or room in a cafe every Monday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Robens brings an envelope stuffed with headlines from various newspapers and magazines. She passes them around and we each select one as a prompt. The selector chooses the time, usually from six to ten minutes. Robens sets the egg timer. We free write or type with a minimum of “thinking.” Some call this stream of consciousness, first thought best thought, extemporaneous, or as Natalie Goldberg described, Writing Down The Bones. Then we read our work aloud to each other; only occasionally a few exclamations or connections squeak out. Some of these free writes are sculpted into poems. After over ten years, we authenticate our themes – and growth. Another tradition, which Robens’ initiated, is to collect five words or phrases from each member, then use the resultant list as inspiration for more considered writing during the month, if we choose. As a result, you may find a curious echo effect in both verse and prose within the more crafted and edited results.
We can detect from this collection the reflection of life here in this place, time, lives, and cultural spaces. Our metaphors and similes are unlocked and loaded. We slant all over the place, and rock ourselves to sleep with laughter about it. If you are a visitor to Sandpoint and find this book, or even if you have never been here, you will be anointed with the wonder we find in words: You will be Sandpointed. We hope that you take one of these works to heart and spread it generously within your own community
The Sandpoint Writers: Desiree Aguirre, Jackie Henrion, Sandy Lamson, Robens Napolitan, Sandra Rasor, and Rhoda Sanford contributed to this collection to show what emerges from the evolution of collective focus. Each Monday, they summon the power of creativity; diverse voices, writing in short bursts formed by their histories, families, friends, town, nation, and the world. They breathe the work to life by reading aloud without restraint, with trust accumulated over years. The next natural step is to share the work with others, resonating, like an Aeolian harp, in a strange yet seductive harmonic tone that others may wish to re-create.
