A House Near Luccoli

Amazon.com: Paperback & Kindle
Now an Audiobook

Nook Book

Published by
All Things That Matter Press
Follow Me on Pinterest

Welcome from DM Denton

Picture2014
My full name is Diane M Denton (nee DiGiacomo), a native of Buffalo, New York. My writing life began as a child retreating into the stories and poems that came to me, always believing that writing was the love I would keep and that would keep me.  Early on, I developed an interest in history, especially European history, while my participation in and appreciation of music was encouraged through memories shared about my maternal grandmother, who was a concert pianist in Chicago in the 1920’s.  My early pursuits also included drawing and painting—and acting, which I eventually gave up, admitting that my inclination for drama was better written than acted out, my imagination more consistent than my courage.
Picture1971
My educational journey took me from Theater Arts and Communication at SUNY Brockport, to a History and Literature major at Daemen College (formerly Rosary Hill College) in Amherst, NY; culminating in a dream-fulfilling semester at Wroxton College, England (run by Fairleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey), not far from Stratford Upon Avon, Warwick, Woodstock, Oxford, as well as the picturesque Cotswolds.  Not least because of a fateful encounter, I impetuously stayed in Wroxton for sixteen years—a yellow-stoned village with thatched cottages, a duck pond, and twelfth century church and abbey turned Jacobean manor house.  I lived, for better or worse, right off the pages of Fielding, the Brontes, Austin, Hardy, DH Lawrence, and even Dickens, surrounded by the beautiful hills, woods and fields of the Oxfordshire countryside, and all kinds of colorful characters.  This truly turned out to be a life-changing experience that resonates in my personal and professional endeavors to this day.

I returned to the US in 1990, to a rural area of Western New York State where I still reside in a cozy log cabin with my beloved mother and cats. I have been employed in a variety of “day jobs” from retail to media consulting, as a volunteer coordinator for Western New York Public Broadcasting, and presently as secretary for the Zoning and Codes Administration in the town where I live.  In addition to writing, music, and art, I am passionate about nurturing nature and a consciousness for a more compassionate, inclusive, and peaceful world.

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
         ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death - fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.
                       ~Edna Ferber


Writing is both mask and unveiling.                        
                           ~E.B. White


Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.         
                            ~ Goethe

 I hope you enjoy your stroll along my appointed sands!

Emily Dickinson wrote ...

Picture
The moon is distant from the sea
and yet with amber hands
she leads him, docile as a boy,
along appointed sands.

I can visualize her taking a break from late night writing, looking out of her bedroom window beyond swaying branches and sliding clouds at that moody orb begging to be personified. She sees his face but also his soul illuminating her own. There's supremacy in his position, suspended between heaven and earth, offering her some influence too, at least with words. 

She has never seen the sea, yet is well versed in waves and tides and depths and even foreign shores. She might really be alone but for the companions her musings make, such so-called isolation filled by a myriad of encounters in a life traversed though not traveled, only seeming to stand still if the movement of her poetry isn't considered.

It's amazing where her imagination takes her and also what it brings her, a window not only for looking through but opening.

Opening. Eyes seeing more than meet them. A heart loving beyond reason. An intellect curious for more than it can get hold of. A soul reaching into the memory of every-where-and-time. Opening.

A spider's web sparkles with dew to strangle a fly, the wind blows to caress the trees and bring them down, water washes what it can also drowned, snow blankets the spring that wants to rise up.

A writer finds her voice in silence, sails away without leaving port, realizes she may never return, cries without tears, and smiles without anyone to appreciate how wise she looks when she does. 

She thinks and therefore is, falters and therefore isn't, feels her destiny so it only matters that she keeps on writing.

The window is wide open and she leans out as far as possible without falling into the prickly bushes below.

Because even in retreat she needs to let her spirit go, telling stories she feels compelled to tell, into the past as if it was the future, studying like a scholar and imagining like a fool, taking chances without risking anything, looking up for something to show her the way of shining on her own appointed sands.

© Copyright 2012 DM Denton. All rights reserved.


                                             Contact DM Denton