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Karen's Writings

The Song of Holliel This is the work I'm most proud of. After reading Tolkien all the way through for the first time, I decided I wanted to write an epic poem. I spent nearly a year thinking and planning it out, then several more months getting the first third written. Then in one long night near Christmas, the muse decended upon me and I wrote the rest. A little more editing followed, and it was finally published in Issue 39 of The Leading Edge, BYU's Magazine of Science Ficiton and Fantasy. Though I did spend a couple of years as the Fiction Director there, I would like to point out that I was NOT on the staff when my poem was published. Of course, as it was patterned after the old Epic poems, which were composed and performed orally, it is best read aloud with great flair. If you ask very nicely, I may favor you with my interpretation one day.
Sing For The Hero I wanted to write this poem ever since I finished the Song of Holliel. It is ostensibly written by the squire Holliel himself, after hearing his song sung too many times at great feasts. When I sent it to my mom, she wrote back and said, "You've done it again. Here I am crying over people who never even existed!" Mom tends to do that though. I believe that she has yet to get through Doug's Lego story "Small Parts" (also published in the Edge) without crying.
The Hero's Lament This was an earlier attempt at expressing the emotions in Sing For The Hero. Perhaps Holliel had difficulty at getting it right the first time, too.
Farewell My Love I wrote this poem while I was engaged to Peter Ahlstrom. I took the tune from the old cowboy song "Bury Me Not" which was wonderfully mournful, and wrote a song about the most deeply saddening thing I could think of at the time. In my original poem, the maiden got all dressed up and died at the end, kind of like the Lady of Shallot. Since then, I have been through several other relationships, and think that dying over star-crossed love may be terribly romantic, but it's also terribly stupid. Now the poem has a happier ending.
Do I Love Thee? My fiancee at the time kept asking, "Do you love me?" I wrote this poem in answer to that question. It turns out that his heart had not been softened as I thought, but that's another story.
Allelujah This is one of my translations from the Russian. In the little Hymns and Songs for Children that the Russian branches of our Church use, Hymn 22 says that it is written by Mabel Jones Gabbot with music by Towland H. Prichard. The music credit is correct, the tune is the same as Hymn 172 in our English Hymns, which is "In Humility Our Savior." The words though, are not a Russian translation of Mabel Jones Gabbot's English text for that song. It is, instead, a beautiful hymn which is entirely different. Here is my translation of that hymn into English. I hope to perform it one day with our Ward choir under MBL's direction.
I Loved You This is a poem that I memorized in Russian for a class in college. Pushkin, who wrote it, is credtied with legitimizing the Russian language as a literary tongue. The Russians I lived with were very impressed that I knew a Pushkin poem by heart. The Russians love him so much, that one TV station stops people on the street and has them recite their favorite bit of Pushkin, then plays the clips during commercial breaks. You can hear it in the original Russian here.
Night watch I was reading Heinlein's anthology Yesterday Through Tomorrow when I wrote "Night Watch" and "Company Man." I was intending to write a story around them called "The Jupiter-Pluto Run." I still might someday.
Company Man Another song inspired by Heinlein's Sci-fi. "Night Watch" is peaceful and meditative, but "Company Man" is a drinking song. It has the same sort of structure and tune as some Army and Boy Scout songs I've heard.
Who Needs Math at a Time Like This? I was teaching Math -- as a substitute for Remedial Algebra actually -- at Southview High School in Lorain, Ohio on September 11, 2001. I was very disturbed by the attitudes of the students, and wrote this essay that night, in order to have something to motivate them the next day. I also posted it to some Math Teacher websites.
As a side note to this, I was going through some old papers in the attic recently, and found a copy of the Detroit Free Press from January 29, 1986. The Headline of the article said, "STUDENTS EXPRESS SHOCK, DISMAY AT SHUTTLE EXPLOSION" the subtitle was a quote from me, "I felt like there was nothing inside me." I was in third or fourth grade (I had the same classroom, teacher, and most of the same students for both years, so I can never tell them apart) and our teacher, Mrs. Patterson was one of those in the running for the "Teacher in Space" program. We spent weeks leading up to the liftoff, studying the shuttle, and we knew just what would happen when we watched the liftoff in class. Except it didn't. I can still close my eyes and see the trails of smoking debris arching away from the explosion. We watched the same horrible moments over and over. Mrs. Patterson had us each write a paragraph about our feelings, and some of those were printed in the paper. It was like having a flashback to that day when I turned on the TV at Southview -- except that the kids were all turning to ME for reassurance.When I went home that day, I ate a lot of ice cream and cried
I Look Away I heard the tune to this song played on Garrison Keillor while driving to Border's Books with my dad on June 21st 2002. It was the sort of song you can hum along with even as you're hearing it for the first time. The next note is always the Right Note: the only one it could have been. As it ended, I said, "Wow, that was beautiful!" and Garrison Keillor said, "Wasn't that the most beautiful song you've heard in your life?" and I said, "Yes." When I got home, I loked it up on his site, played the sound clip for the rest of the family, and bought the CD. Mom said, "Now you really need to write the words to it." As I cut grass at the Metroparks the next day, I hummed the tune, and gradually the chorus came together. I wanted it to be wistful: the song of an immegrant remembering his motherland, and knowing he can never return. The first verse soon followed, but there I got stuck. I made several attempts at the rest of the song, for instance the first and third lines of the current second verse existed in one form or another, but it was never Right. In May of 2003, I was driving to the mall, in beautiful California, when it came on from the compilation CD I was listening to. Because I was singing along with the other songs, I began to sing the chorus and verse I knew for this one. When I had done that, I kept singing, and the rest of the song came out. It was a bit garbled, but the substance was there, and that was enough. I parked my car, and wrote down the finished song. Finally it was Right. The wistful longing was still there, but the immegrant is better off where he is. He has made for himself a new home and family, and he is happy. I deliberately left the last line ambiguous because as long as he looks to the past, his old family will be with him in spirit and memory as well. The second line of the third verse is in the form it is so that it can be my song as well as the immegrant's. It was going to be "'Cross prairie fair and ocean foam" but I have come TO the ocean and found happiness. The chorus is a bit inaccurate, but I left it as it is (besides, I do have loved ones across the sea even if I didn't come from there). I hope you will listen to the music for this, as it is the entire reason for its being.