Poetry Corner with Jude Hopkins #WomensFiction #RomCom #RockStarRomance #PoetryCorner

I’m Jude Hopkins, author of Babe in the Woods, a women’s fiction novel with a bit of romance added. I’m so pleased to be guest-blogging today on Creatively Green. 

In addition to writing my debut novel and several essays, I have always loved writing poetry. 

Perhaps my favorite poem from among those I wrote was “The Over-Ripe Imagination in Buckle-Up Country,” published by Timber Creek Review in 2010. 

Here it is:

The sun, like the hills, tempers the natives,

appearing only after cresting the Alleghenies

and departs long before turning in for the night,

taking the sky with it.

Here there are no tales of sunsets like bloody yolks

or ones stippling the dusk with magenta —

such scenes unfailingly compromised

by mountains or mist.

The ring of hills surrounding the town

serves as a golden mean,

muscling back the kind of trouble

born of unbounded heavens.

So the people here spend their lives longing

to feel a fire hot enough to burn diamonds —

All the while casting onto phantoms

their hooded glances, their bitten lips

and swear they smell the sea in every remnant

of a hurricane that comes here to die.

As someone who was raised in northwestern Pennsylvania, I grew up surrounded by beautiful lush forests that certainly provided a stunning natural environment as a backdrop. I loved the smell of the woods, the majestic pine trees, the springs that provided the clearest, cleanest water I could ever imagine. 

But for all its beauty, the rustic nature of my hometown area also had its drawbacks. As a young girl, I often felt trapped; the trees that filled the hills around me kept me from an easy exit. It was as if the hills, like nature’s chaperone, prevented me from all the fun happening beyond them. 

As a result, I yearned an awful lot as a young girl, yearned for the city, yearned for access to more and different people, yearned for the excitement denied me in a region so rural. 

This poem is about those feelings: the way nature kept me from experiencing what I thought I desired. I longed to see a California sunset in which the sun seemed to sink right into the Pacific Ocean. Instead, the hills in my area always cut off such a view, leaving a stark image of a darkened silhouette, behind which a fiery sun continued with its fireworks. I was only left to imagine what it was like to see such a display and experience the parallel excitement such a wide-open place could bring.

The hills were “a golden mean,” I wrote in the poem, “muscling back the kind of trouble born of unbounded heavens.” As a result, I yearned for a fire “hot enough to burn diamonds.” Even rain that traveled to my region from a distant hurricane was something I wanted to smell to see if I could detect any of the exotic scents it absorbed from its travels.

In time, I left the region, got to experience the excitement of cities and lived in Los Angeles for a while where I watched many a “bloody yolk” sunset “stippl[le] the dusk with magenta.” But I came to appreciate what I once knew, the trees with their roots tangled in the soil and the quiet peace of the forest. In fact, I returned home to “buckle-up country” for those very reasons, a lot wiser and much less wistful.

My upcoming novel, Babe in the Woods, follows a protagonist with a similar sensibility. She, too, desired to get out of her rural hometown into a city but returns with a tempered sensibility and a better understanding of who she is and what she wants, all inspired by my own longings and experiences.

Babe in the Woods

Jude Hopkins

Genre: Women’s Fiction

Publisher: The Wild Rose Press Inc.

Date of Publication: June 7, 2023

ISBN 978-1-5092-4843-8 

ISBN 978-1-5092-4844-5 

Number of pages: 294

Word Count: 72,321 

Cover Artist:  Tina Lynn Stout

Tagline: Timber! She’s Falling in Love

Book Description: 

It’s September 1995, the first year of the rest of Hadley Todd's life. After living in Los Angeles, Hadley returns to her hometown in rural New York to write and be near her father. 

In addition to looking after him and teaching high school malcontents, Hadley hopes to channel her recent L.A. heartbreak into a play about the last moment of a woman’s innocence. But she seeks inspiration.

Enter Trey Harding, a young, handsome reporter who covers sports at the high school. Trey reminds Hadley of her L.A. ex and is the perfect spark to fire up her imagination. The fact that Trey is an aspiring rock star and she has L.A. record biz connections makes the alliance perfect. She dangles promises of music biz glory while watching his moves. 

But the surprising twist that transpires when the two of them go to Hollywood is not something Hadley prepared for.

Amazon     BN

Excerpt:

There was a knock on the door as Hadley sat down with a bowl of chocolate-chip ice cream. She glanced at the clock: 8 p.m. Sunday night. She’d shot the whole weekend, mostly grading papers and sleeping the day before.

“My God,” she said aloud, remembering Trey’s promise to make good on a date. How could he possibly show up after she’d been so deliberately elusive? She had forgotten the resiliency of some guys.

“Who is it?” she trilled, bouncing a mound of the frozen dessert on her tongue. She cleared her throat and repeated the question, all the while picking up the detritus from the weekend—the pizza box, the ice cream container, the National Enquirer.

“ ‘Tis I, Old Dog Trey,” he yelled through the door. “Ever faithful. We have a meeting, remember?”

She used her fingers to comb her hair and moaned when the mirror reflected a wan, puffy face staring back at her.

“I never confirmed any meeting,” she said through the door. She hurried to straighten the cushions on the couch. “I’ll take a rain check.” Her heart was doing double time.

“C’mon. Please open the door. It’s getting chilly out here.” His voice was deeper than usual.

She brushed the lint off her sweatshirt and zipped up her jeans before opening the door.

Trey was twirling the end of a white stick in his mouth. With a loud slurping sound, he pulled from his mouth a bright red lollipop before sticking out his tongue, which now matched the color of his shirt.  

“Fire your secretary,” he said, tapping his watch. “May I come in?”

She let him in, the shame of her unkempt apartment equaled only by the shame of her own disheveled appearance.

He stood close to her. “I have to say, you are much more attractive without all that make-up.” He talked with the lollipop stuck in his cheek. “Definitely younger.”

It was an approach she remembered from her time with Derek. First you surprise them, then compliment them when they’re at their most vulnerable. She made a mental note.

He walked toward the nearest chair, sat down, but quickly jumped up again, fishing in his pockets. “Where are my manners? Here.” He extended a lollipop, grape flavor, her favorite.

“No thanks.” It wasn’t even on the level of the apple Neil had given her on the first day of school. Besides, what was with men and their semiotics anyway? Perhaps it beat communicating with words. And how in the world would he have known grape was her favorite flavor? Was she that transparent? Was there a grape “type” as opposed to an orange or cherry type? The grape type would be moody and dark. The orange type would be young, perky, sassy. The cherry type? Passionate, desirable. Like him.

Lollipops aside, he was lusciousness itself, the blood-red shirt adding to his angel-faced carnality. His skin glowed, no doubt from a day spent in the autumn sun with a frisky faun. 

About the Author:

Jude Hopkins has published essays in The Los Angeles Times, Medium, the belladonna—and poetry in various journals including Gyroscope Review, Timber Creek Review and California Quarterly. Her first novel, Babe in the Woods, will be published June 7, 2023. She has also taught English and news writing at various universities, including the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, Arizona State University and St. Bonaventure University in Olean, N.Y. She also worked at Capitol Records in Hollywood for a few halcyon and unforgettable years.

Website:  https://www.judehopkinswriting.net/

Blog: https://www.judehopkinswriting.net/my-blog 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HeyJudeNotJudy