tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-117795312024-03-08T01:37:48.660-08:00Of Looking At A BlackbirdUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger352125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-26086876799353985902011-08-16T16:28:00.000-07:002011-08-18T17:21:12.424-07:00Cherry-filled Chocolates and Other Thoughts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-V3APxvefYdE/Tk2sP8KBzSI/AAAAAAAAAGg/caJvj-oNQkM/s1600/chocherries.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-V3APxvefYdE/Tk2sP8KBzSI/AAAAAAAAAGg/caJvj-oNQkM/s1600/chocherries.jpg" /></a></div>The house is enveloped in fog, but I am slowly coming back to the world, even though it is not only 16 years since we have not had our dog, but almost 30 years since we didn't have the responsibility of another creature — now it's just John and me and the various appliances, services, and equipment that seem to be absorbing our night and day, sucking our lifeblood. Yes, we finally got reliable Internet (goodbye AT&T), and we're working on getting cable television, phone, and the like working again.<br />
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But I've been thinking about that review, that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/philip-levine_b_925788.html">contra-review,</a> that everyone seems to be talking about. And I've been thinking about various remarks friends have posted on FB and in their blogs: so-and-so is not a proper poet, they would rather walk on nails than read so-and-so, while others extol the virtues of the selfsame poets and applaud them. Another <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2301312/">piece recently on Slate</a> gathered the thoughts of various well-known fictionistas and asked them to confess which classic novels they have not been able to read. In that piece, Elif Batuman says, "My view is that the right book has to reach you at the right time, and no person can be reached by every book. Literature is supposed to be beautiful and/or necessary—so if at a given time you don't either enjoy or need a certain book, then you should read something else, and not feel guilty about it." This is my view too, and the point I want to make about poetry. I mean, can't we all get along? Seriously!<br />
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If I were to list the poets (past, present, and probably future too) whose work I don't care for, don't like, don't get, I would probably lose hella credibility. Let's face it. There are poetry gods and then poetry minions, like me. But while I do not care for Berryman (ouch!), I do not run around saying he wasn't a poet. See, I love chocolate and I'm fond of cherries, but I have never cared for those cherry-filled chocolates that many others adore. But do I go around insisting that they are not candy, that they shouldn't be in your box of chocolates?<br />
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Perhaps it's a silly analogy, but you get my point. I think there's room for you to like Berryman and for me to like Plath. I don't think the world will end if Phil Levine is Poet Laureate, as it didn't end when it was Kay Ryan or Ted Kooser.<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;">If you don't want to read something, read something else.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-55499776593230862412011-08-07T20:17:00.000-07:002011-08-12T22:47:57.499-07:00End of the dog era<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hFPws7R9bfA/Tj86tcy0lxI/AAAAAAAAAGU/Ur4xsovzEIs/s1600/GretaLawn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hFPws7R9bfA/Tj86tcy0lxI/AAAAAAAAAGU/Ur4xsovzEIs/s400/GretaLawn.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Today was Greta's last day. I could go back and check my journals, and I'm not that sure, but it may be 16 years to the day that we picked up the cutest little 9-week old puppy from the SPCA, and that's also where she left us. I did not decide to let her go — I let John do it. So many things went wrong with her, that, well, if they could have brought her back to her happy self, I would have done whatever was necessary, whatever it cost, but the vet didn't think there was much chance that she would ever be well again, and there were signs that she might have kidney or liver failure or both. A lot of negatives, but I think her cry of anguish at 6:00 this morning was the worst. The rest of the details, well John knows and I know, but I will leave you with this picture of her in happier days. Maybe in the next week I'll post some puppy pics too.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We brought her in in her little red wagon, and that's the way she exited the world, wrapped in blankets, while we kissed her head and held her paws and told her how much we loved her.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">```````````````````````</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It was exactly 16 years. I checked my old journal.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.141734874198.137577.626504198&l=3aa9c31330&type=1">Posted some puppy pics on Facebook for friends who asked</a>:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;"></span></div><div id="contentArea" role="main" style="float: left; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 1px; width: 714px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div data-referrer="album_pagelet" id="album_pagelet"><div><div data-referrer="album_metadata_pagelet" id="album_metadata_pagelet"><div class="fbPhotoPublicLink mtl" style="margin-top: 20px; text-align: center;"><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gG9xSxR_FJM/TkYP1LZ7yAI/AAAAAAAAAGc/vqIK1IB6CME/s1600/greta%2540burningman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gG9xSxR_FJM/TkYP1LZ7yAI/AAAAAAAAAGc/vqIK1IB6CME/s400/greta%2540burningman.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Puppy Greta at Burning Man, September 1995</td></tr>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-3814509424472686002011-08-06T15:03:00.000-07:002011-08-06T15:03:52.601-07:00Dream emailYeah, someone emailed me in my dream to ask me whether the name of my new book will be <i>Hue and Cry</i> or <i>Hue & Cry, </i>with the ampersand. According to the dream messenger, it will make all the difference, the decision. I think the dream messenger was hinting that the ampersand title was best, only now I'm not sure.<br />
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Foggy day, but we could not get the dog in to see the vet today. We'll try again for tomorrow.<br />
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There's some lack of clarity about date (September 11? 22?), but the group is fixing to do a group reading at Booksmith on Haight. The idea is to video it and put the videos on YouTube. More about this when the date is certain.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-34958916843781683102011-07-17T22:16:00.000-07:002011-07-18T12:07:37.201-07:00Sunday eveningSleepy. Our socked in summer fog lifted, shortly after our visitors left, before noon, and the day turned gorgeous. John could not resist going out on the bike, and I, still in exhausted introvert recovery from people and cleaning and cooking and eating and drinking (not to mention taking care of the dog) just stayed home. But I could not stay in either, and found myself weeding and working out front and doing my share of sweat equity, though you could not say that it actually got what you would call hot.<br />
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Sweet potato chips with beer later, during the cocktail hour, and then a glass of pinot grigio with dinner (eggplant cutlets with broiled mozzarella for me, and a really nice salad). The Maytag clothes dryer, 22 years old, keeps shutting off, and besides, sounds like it's drying sand when it's on, which John says means the bearings are shot. We haven't even recovered from the tv going out; it's in the shop again (third time). But, I don't know, I'm not going to let a dryer get me down. Seems like there are more important things.<br />
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As I said on FB, <i>Harvard Review</i> #40 came in the mail yesterday, with my poem "A Study in Chiarascuro" on p. 96, and I'm pleased, a poem I liked, though the poetry group basically did not, so HR's taking it was some vindication. It's an odd poem that I'd rather not explain, one of those poems that feels like someone else wrote it.<br />
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But I honestly could use something good happening to me, for me, now: a poem accepted, a possibility of a pay check. John's got a part-time gig teaching photography for the city, starting in August. Other things too; he's on a roll. Maybe it will be my turn soon.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-26672391994518765892011-06-30T14:56:00.000-07:002011-06-30T14:56:17.693-07:00Up to date<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've started posts about the amazing and successful </span><a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kickstarter</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> experience with </span><a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1347395197/create-a-fine-art-book-called-in-character?ref=live"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">John's book project</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. And I've started a post about the recent </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QthIVgp_Ic"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">benefit reading for Dean Young at UC Berkeley</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, from my personal point of view. And now I want to point you to </span><a href="http://myblog.webbish6.com/2011/06/interview-with-diane-k-martin.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jeannine Hall Galley's interview with me</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (thanks, Jeannine!) on her blog. So this blog post attempts to do all of that (and more) and bring you up to date.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First, the Kickstarter. We are, as some of you know, in rather dire straits financially — well, in that matter we are hardly different from a great many others. But at the same time, we're both trying to complete art projects and put them out for the world in the form of books. Publishing, for me, for my second book of poetry, is not unlike the first. At this point, I'm entering second-book competitions and approaching some publishers through open readings. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Hue and Cry</b></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> has evolved from its original version in 2008, and I'm pretty happy with it and optimistic about its success. John's fine art photography project is a much more ambitious enterprise, and for that we used Kickstarter. His goal was/is to use the funds generated to finance the creation of a book dummy by a top book designer and hopefully convince a publisher that his book is worthy to publish. Well, I don't want to say much more here other than succeeding with Kickstarter seemed utterly hopeless at first (if you don't make your pledge goal, you end up with nothing) and then, thanks to our incredible friends and family, it worked! (More news on his book to come, when there is something to report.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The benefit reading was June 23rd. I had already contributed what I could to Dean, whom I adore, but I was very excited by the terrific slate of readers. In addition to hearing them read, I hoped to meet Michael Wieger, of Copper Canyon, who was responsible for placing </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/spring-2011/demoiselles">my poems</a> in the voices of Picasso's women friends / lovers / wives on <a href="http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/spring-2011/demoiselles"><i>Narrative</i></a>.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Well, after a glass of wine, I did approach him. We talked about the Picasso exhibit that's now in the De Young, and he told me that he visited that show in Seattle with his daughter and took my poems with him to help relate to the paintings. This made me very, very happy!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's not that much to say about Jeannine's interview with me other than she's a super poet (her </span><strong><em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She Returns to the Floating World</span></em></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, will be published by </span><a href="http://www.kitsunebooks.com/" style="color: #58674b; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kitsune Books</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in late 2011) and very nice person, and I hope you go read the interview.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, houseguests have come and gone. We've returned to applying for jobs, keeping our fingers crossed, and fixing up the house in case we have to sell it — what passes for normal these days, chez nous.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-90110814532420542072011-05-07T08:17:00.000-07:002011-05-07T08:17:29.965-07:00Mom Poem<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="mstitle"><a href="" name="_Toc32219459"></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Mom Poem</i></span></span></div><div class="mstitle"><a href="" name="_Toc123789939"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Toc32219459;"><br />
</span></a></div><div class="epigraph"><i>“I read poetry to save time.” — Marilyn Monroe</i></div><div class="epigraph"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="msbodyHead"><b>Mom and Marilyn</b></div><div class="msbodyHead"><b><br />
</b></div><div class="msbody">My mother and the Argentines loved Marilyn,</div><div class="msbody">the kitten smile, the take-me glamour.</div><div class="msbody">In Buenos Aires they stand in line for hours</div><div class="msbody">to get to touch the shimmering green gown</div><div class="msbody">beaded with six thousand rhinestones</div><div class="msbody">that Marilyn wore the night she sang</div><div class="msbody">her breathy happy</div><div class="msbody">birthday to Kennedy.</div><div class="msbody"><br />
</div><div class="msbody">Mom treasured a recipe from ’54 —</div><div class="msbody">a pineapple upside down cake —</div><div class="msbody">because on the reverse of the yellowed clip</div><div class="msbody">Joe DiMaggio bestows a wedding kiss</div><div class="msbody">on Marilyn’s inspiring lips</div><div class="msbody">and on her hand, an eternity band</div><div class="msbody">of 35 diamonds. </div><div class="msbodyHead">Mom Sets Foot In Another Country</div><div class="msbody">Here and here, she’s not allowed,</div><div class="msbody">although she can just see in,</div><div class="msbody">as through the windows of a house</div><div class="msbody">she once lived in, in another country</div><div class="msbody"><o:p> </o:p>where she made coffee first thing in the morning</div><div class="msbody">for sixty years, and now this thing called coffee</div><div class="msbody">is bird tracks on the beach, the birds themselves</div><div class="msbody">departing skyward, eroding sand.</div><div class="msbody"><br />
</div><div class="msbody">Archaeologist, she figures</div><div class="msbody">how the woman in yesterday’s kitchen</div><div class="msbody">would stand, where she would put</div><div class="msbody">the dirt-brown dust in the pot</div><div class="msbody"><o:p> </o:p>and where the water. How</div><div class="msbody">new the world is!</div><div class="msbody">She tosses out the cups and saucers </div><div class="msbody">after breakfast because they are used.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="ALL" style="page-break-before: always;" /> </span></b> <div class="msbodyHead"><b>Mom at Sea</b></div><div class="msbodyHead"><br />
</div><div class="msbody">Mom sits on the couch where we put her,</div><div class="msbody">small boat moored on a brocade ocean.</div><div class="msbody">A cloud settles; each day it covers more of her face.</div><div class="msbody"><br />
</div><div class="msbodyHead"><b>Mom Comes to Me in a Dream</b></div><div class="msbodyHead"><br />
</div><div class="msbody"><a href="" name="OLE_LINK25"></a><span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK25;">Naugahyde </span>on a balsa wood frame,</div><div class="msbody">face down on the carpet. It’s Mom,</div><div class="msbody">complaining about being left in that state.</div><div class="msbody">I start over to her. Yes, </div><div class="msbody">it’s one of those dreams</div><div class="msbody">where you need a thumb’s perspective</div><div class="msbody">on interstellar space.</div><div class="msbody"><o:p> </o:p>Michelangelo’s God gestures toward Adam:</div><div class="msbody">There they are, on the ceiling,</div><div class="msbody">fingers drawing further apart—</div><div class="msbody">at arm’s length, so to speak,</div><div class="msbody">though face to face.</div><div class="msbody"><o:p> </o:p>Quite the gap to spark. Time</div><div class="msbody">for Noah’s flood and his ark,</div><div class="msbody">for the multitudes in twos, and the dove</div><div class="msbody">bringing back the olive. Not godforsaken,</div><div class="msbody">God help me. I sit her up. It’s morning.</div><div class="msbody"><br />
</div><div class="msbodyHead"><b>Mom Comes to me From Past and Future</b></div><div class="msbodyHead"><br />
</div><div class="msbody">East on 580, south I-5 and 99, I drive</div><div class="msbody">The Valley, past growers’ billboards </div><div class="msbody">for nuts and fruit. Twenty years from now</div><div class="msbody">I will see a pistachio</div><div class="msbody">and think: My mother is dead.</div><div class="msbody">Among rows of irrigated almonds</div><div class="msbody">an old Ohlone pounding acorns on a rock</div><div class="msbody">looks up across centuries</div><div class="msbody">to where I pass on the Interstate.</div><div class="msbody"><br />
</div><div class="msbodyHead"><b>Mom Unpacked</b></div><div class="msbodyHead"><br />
</div><div class="msbody">How my arms upraised to pull back my hair</div><div class="msbody">look like my mother’s. How I fold</div><div class="msbody">one glove into the other so they are holding hands</div><div class="msbody">and tuck the tidy package in the jacket pocket<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div><div class="msbody">as she would do. How when Scott says,<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div><div class="msbody"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inoperable brain cancer </i>this afternoon</div><div class="msbody">it’s Mom I see announcing at the pool<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div><div class="msbody">that she’d an illness to trump her friends’<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div><div class="msbody">arthritis, hip replacements, and cardiac infarcts.</div><div class="msbody">She said it the same way she’d tell you she</div><div class="msbody">was first in her class in Walton Girls Latin.</div><div class="msbody">Then she tripped on the beach chair</div><div class="msbody">and glared at me as I helped her up.</div><div class="msbody"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s the illness,</i> I tell myself, and the next day</div><div class="msbody">at Henri’s buying tomatoes: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">When I want tomatoes,<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="msbody"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I want tomatoes,</i> grabbing the bag from me, packing</div><div class="msbody">tomatoes to outlast her. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Can’t you do anything?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="msbody">They would have cried if they’d been animal. </div><div class="msbody"><br />
</div><div class="msbodyHead"><b>Mom Sees a Lake</b></div><div class="msbodyHead"><br />
</div><div class="msbody">What does it look like</div><div class="msbody">from there, Mom? You have</div><div class="msbody">no god, no taste for fiction,</div><div class="msbody">no mortar to brick immortal story. </div><div class="msbody">We hang on to your words,</div><div class="msbody">to any indication of soaring </div><div class="msbody">above this bed. </div><div class="msbody"><br />
</div><div class="msbodyHead"><b>Mom Asks, Doves Assent</b></div><div class="msbodyHead"><br />
</div><div class="msbody">After a while, there’s nothing to say. </div><div class="msbody">Mourning doves have built a nest</div><div class="msbody">in the locust at the end of the terrace</div><div class="msbody">after a short courtship. You wait on your back </div><div class="msbody">in the small bed of your marriage, </div><div class="msbody">propped on pillows, for instructions.</div><div class="msbody">How does one die? — bit by bit,</div><div class="msbody">but it takes practice. Your whole life</div><div class="msbody">you sharpened your pencils, did your lessons.</div><div class="msbody"><span style="font-family: "Garamond Premr Pro Med It";">Good,</span> say the doves,</div><div class="msbody">good, good, good, good girl.</div><div class="msbody"><br />
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</div><div class="msbody">Second place in the <i>Nimrod</i> / Hardiman in 2004, published in <i>Best New Poets 2005,</i> also in <i>Conjugated Visits,</i> published by Dream Horse Press</div><!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-25464942537679604892011-04-15T22:09:00.000-07:002011-04-16T15:04:14.319-07:00"Better"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y-jlgwU5f7w/TaoRlyQ_1UI/AAAAAAAAAEw/-zTgyTd3-3w/s1600/diane_reading.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y-jlgwU5f7w/TaoRlyQ_1UI/AAAAAAAAAEw/-zTgyTd3-3w/s320/diane_reading.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I read twice in one week — unusual for me. The Monday reading was in Village Books, in Pacific Palisades. It meant flying down to LA (Long Beach, actually) and staying with my sister in LA, in mid-city. That was the good part, because she's a real sweetheart and I'm totally comfortable with her. She chauffeured me around, took me and her beautiful daughter, my niece, Veronika, to Huntington Gardens. (We saw a haunting exhibit of the work of John Frame), and came to my reading at "Moonday in the Village." I wish I had something better to say about this reading. Not knowing many in LA, I thought it would be fine to have a co-featured reader (it was; Carol V. Davis is a wonderful poet) and to share the night with an open mike (it wasn't). The open mike was before </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">and</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> after the features; the readers, nearly all apparently regulars who come to hear themselves, are allowed to read two poems each, and, well best not to go on or I'll get in trouble, but there were a lot of poems about springtime … The worst was that no one really connected with my work. I heard someone later mumbling about how I wrote about science. Well, my images are sometimes unusual and complicated, but I don't usually stump the audience.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Thursday, last night, back in the Bay Area, I read at Peg Pursell's </span></span><a href="http://whytherearewords.wordpress.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Why There Are Words</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> reading in Sausalito. You may know that this series features prose, and I didn't have a lot to chose from, so don't know that I fulfilled my mission of reading about the theme "Better." I read my "81" piece, in the voice of a Hell's Angels guy I met walking the dog, a piece called "Good Luck Bad Luck Laundry," that went back to stories I'd heard in Camp Mather about 15 years ago, and finally, I read "La Vie (en Rose)," a published prose poem that will be in my next collection. Who knows if they loved me? Who cares? They listened! I felt my energy communicate with them. It was what is supposed to happen. I really enjoyed (and listened to) the other readers too: Seth Fischer, Molly Fisk, Leah Griesmann, David Lukas, and Tracy Seeley, so, it's </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">not</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> all about me. I totally encourage you to check out this reading series that occurs every second Thursday </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; line-height: 25px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">at</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; line-height: 25px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> Studio 33</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; line-height: 25px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; line-height: 25px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">on Caledonia Street in Sausalito, CA at 7 PM.</span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-15581783640332664502011-03-22T15:27:00.000-07:002011-03-22T15:27:22.576-07:00Is Anybody Home?It seems as if I don't exist, or at least if my email were proof of my existence, it would be very sad. Okay, I'm not getting offered any jobs. I haven't gotten any good po biz mail since early December. But what about simple informational emails? Are my recommendations up to date for such and such? Is the April reading happening there? Somebody answer me!<br />
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Of course, I'm exaggerating, but not that much. I thought I would babble on about this strange way I write poems, sometimes. If nobody's reading anyway, well …<br />
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I play games with the poem. I don't look at it for hours, sweating bullets. I don't look at it for hours at all. I may work on it for days or weeks or even longer, but it's in five minute snatches, where I pretend I'm not working at all. I look at it. I'll notice, for instance, a predominance of certain sounds at the end of a line, so I cut and paste to accentuate that. Then I turn away, do something else, check FB. Later, I sneak a peek. Do I like that? Does it work? Maybe not.<br />
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I switch to something else, something that's sat in my computer for years, or something scribbled in half sleep the night before. I work on that for five ten minutes, put it down, make a cup of tea. Sometimes I'm working on four poems at a time, maybe more. This method may have evolved when I was busier raising my son and running to work, but I don't remember if I used it then. I wrote a few stories and essays, recently, and enjoyed the ongoingness of the process. I like having something simmering on the back burner. I like lying in bed at night trying to find the one word that will fix a certain problem line (though I admit it's more often than not a recipe for insomnia).<br />
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Each time I go back to the poem, in those five-minute snatches, I see/hear different things. Sometimes the poem seems entirely new! I'm having fun with it, and yeah, that's a good thing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-72724511058476676922011-03-10T14:33:00.000-08:002011-03-10T14:33:04.111-08:00My two cents<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Greta is having a hard time with J. away. As a consequence, she kept me up a good part of the night, whining to get up, to get out, to come in, to get back down in/on her bed, to be rearranged in a more comfy position — none of which she can do without help. I LOVE my dog, but I had to keep telling myself that each time she woke me up …</div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">And I was having trouble sleeping, anyway. I was thinking about the Rankine / Hoagland debate, kind of retroactively, yes. It was reminding me of something, and I finally placed it. To those who are unfamiliar with the subject, please just google those names and perhaps the word "race." I just did and got 140,000 results. I'm too lazy to link to any. </div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The thing was, all of a sudden, I remembered a conversation with my father-in-law. I'd been married to his son for decades. We were out doing the tourist thing in Boston, the four of us, and we stopped somewhere for coffee. That was when my father-in-law took it into his head to tell me that his mother had hated Jews, considered them greedy, money-grubbing, and filthy, wouldn't do business in a Jew-owned store, and wouldn't let a Jew in her house. I'd known my husband's family for more than a decade before we were married; the fact that I'm from a Jewish family is very old news, and I didn't know where this came from. Eventually I realized that my father-in-law was congratulating himself for being open minded enough to drink coffee with me. He didn't seem to care that what he was telling me (though I never knew the woman and she was no longer alive) was hurtful, that these words once put in the air would stay there, contaminating everything. He just wanted to pat himself on the back for being a good liberal. It wasn't even about me (or Jews).</div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I think that TH's poem "The Change" is at best self serving and, at worst, racist, though it <i>is</i> a poem that passes one of my tests for art, which is that it makes you see/think/perceive differently from before coming across it. Its assumption is that for the poet or persona to have his epiphany (to win it is no longer enough to be white?) it is worth exhuming attitudes that were better (because untrue, ugly, and hurtful) buried, attitudes that are so baroque as to seem to arise not in the 21st century but from the thought patterns of a slave-owning society. (To think that some of us already thought this "change" had long since come!)</div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">So now those descriptions will hang there, affecting, infecting: the racists among us feeling supported because they're not the only ones to think those ugly thoughts, and, what? should African American women feel apologetic because one of them, in this poem, had the gall to win?</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-15661726484215004252011-02-23T22:17:00.000-08:002011-02-23T22:17:08.976-08:00This n' That<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CFklKLImB7Q/TWX2zF4CCcI/AAAAAAAAAEs/FEZ0q96XwW0/s1600/valentinesRoses2011.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CFklKLImB7Q/TWX2zF4CCcI/AAAAAAAAAEs/FEZ0q96XwW0/s320/valentinesRoses2011.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>So we're going to have snow — maybe — this Friday or Saturday. Exciting to speculate about, but I'll believe it when I see it. I've seen actual snow, that is, not hail, once since we moved here 35 years ago. I was working on Sansome, downtown, the 19th floor or something like that. Standing at the window, I could see fat flakes, big and moist as kisses go by the plate glass, but their love was gone before they hit the ground.<br />
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Funny writing here. I'm beginning to believe I have no readers, or almost none. Ever since Robert stopped posting, all his fans stopped coming by. I know I'm not as erudite as he is. I see things from my own narrow view. But not having to worry about people reading this is also a sort of freedom. Who cares what I say here?<br />
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So here goes: Why do people crow about Pushcart nominations? They're nice, but unless they actually turn into a prize, who cares? Don't most of us get nominated year after year?<br />
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This is a photo of my Valentine's Day roses. I took it a day or so ago, but they are still lovely and give me a lot of pleasure.<br />
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Yes, I am running out of steam. Maybe I'll write more later.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-68762295340893721082011-02-11T20:08:00.000-08:002011-02-11T21:31:49.227-08:00Late Night Thoughts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WgyUN1Wx0OA/TVYHHQFBJ0I/AAAAAAAAAEo/DwTqhKADt3U/s1600/pears.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WgyUN1Wx0OA/TVYHHQFBJ0I/AAAAAAAAAEo/DwTqhKADt3U/s320/pears.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>It's no secret that I've been reading a lot of fiction lately, finding genre fiction (detective stories) freeing in a way that television fails at, and good fiction, the likes of Munroe, Stroud, Baker, Moore, to be almost as skin-tinglingy perfect as poetry. I read mostly at night. Though I'm unemployed and my day is embarrassingly free, I try to fill it with purposeful actions: looking at job postings, sending out résumés and submissions — okay, and Facebook. But reading in bed has its drawbacks. Sometimes I'm so excited by what I read, I enter into a mental conversation with the writer that keeps me awake. The conversation may take the form of phrases to post here. At least three times lately, I've written volumes of such pillowtalk in my head.<br />
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Last night, reading the <i>Birds of America</i> story by Lorrie Moore called "Agnes of Iowa," I came upon this: "Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else …" and I thought, that's why she writes stories, that's the reason to be a writer! To not have to choose — or anyway, to have, in some measure the arrangement and the something else as well. Maybe that isn't what she meant, but it works for me.<br />
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Oh yes: found a newspaper cutout — not even a coupon, just a picture — of BumbleBee Chunk Light Tuna In Water — stuck in my Lorrie Moore book, from the library. How perfect!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-46876446211139712442011-01-24T12:25:00.000-08:002011-01-24T12:25:15.233-08:00Not really new<a href="http://www.connotationpress.com/poetry/445-diane-k-martin-poetry-">Connotation Press</a> republished the interview they did and pieces they took last year. I thought I'd seen them before, and I had. Of course, that makes the bio of me one year old, but that's okay. It's good to maybe get a few more people to read these.<br />
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Loving Nicholson Baker's <i>The Anthologist.</i> It's so much fun, I'm forcing John to listen to bits read aloud.<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">BTW, walking more than a mile, with a steep uphill finish, then hot bath and a glass of port before bed = a very good night's sleep. That and the great weather (yeah I know you Back Easterners are suffering, but it's positively spring here), has impelled me into a decent mood, for a change. But it's tenuous. Okay, I expected that rejection, but still.</div><br />
Something good needed here, poetry gods. Small, but good.<br />
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Did yoga this morning and will tackle the back yard jungle this afternoon. It's very funny to do upward dog face to face with my doggie.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-41282341858866026132011-01-23T23:17:00.000-08:002011-01-23T23:17:17.405-08:00Interim postOkay, this isn't a real post, just an interim post to say that I know it's about time I write something here, and I plan to real soon. I've been on a reading binge, reading actual novels, some good stuff (Lorrie Moore: wow!), some jes' plain escapism (mystery novels). I haven't been able to read like this in years, and it's no doubt a measure of how much I need to escape my life that this means of travel is open to me once more. Well, it's better than booze and dope, no?<br />
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Though many would drool over my present situation: gorgeous weather, sunny and 60s, no bloomin' work, no prospect of any. Will do more revision tomorrow and work in the garden. Looks like hell back there. And read some more.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-10065913856280290812011-01-07T13:58:00.000-08:002011-01-07T13:58:34.387-08:00Not being objectiveAgain, I don't know what I'm going to blog about, will just go for it. Last night, I could not sleep. I thought, <i>my bones feel like lead, heavy and poisonous.</i> I was not dead tired, rather, alive. I felt the weight of gravity. Life sitting on my chest.<br />
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I've been thinking of my post below, on Art, and how stupid it must sound — earnest and trying, but stupid still. I'm terrible at argument. It always seemed to me outrageous that debates would be scored on how well the persons argued, not on merit, who was <i>right</i>.<br />
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When I was a girl, my brother and father used to goad me into argument. They would say such things as "no woman was ever a great artist." I would lose my argument (they said) by getting emotional. It was fun for them, watching me turn red and stomp away in tears (always tears).<br />
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In any case, if I really held to what I say, I would post a link to the blog post below on Facebook, so people would read the damn thing, and we could have a conversation. But I don't know. I'm afraid to.<br />
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Do you think that all art is subjective? A friend posts he is surprised when his work is turned down, because he likes it. I'm rather surprised when mine is picked up. I like mine too. A book catalog arrived in today's mail. Nicely done. One could definitely do worse than be in their stable. Do I think the samples they printed therein were heavenly, way out of reach? Not at all. They were okay.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-71736675333307245842011-01-02T20:41:00.000-08:002011-01-02T20:41:17.813-08:00Art or Not<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In this first post of the year, I want to respond to two recent conversations about Art. I've been thinking of doing this for a while, but have not really planned what I'm going to say, because the subject is so overwhelming. I'm no expert, no scholar. But I want to discuss this here because I find myself unable to, in conversation; the only way I know how to think this out is by writing it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both conversations, basically, argue for Art that is easy — not easy to create, oh no, but easy to comprehend, to understand. In one, the person making the claim said that what Jackson Pollock did is not Art. In the second conversation (we were talking about the pretensions of much of the art world and of a fun movie called "(Untitled)" that pokes fun at those pretensions) the claim was made that what Andy Warhol did is not Art. [Sidenote: for Robert Thomas's take on this subject and comparisons with poetry and its pretensions, see his post on an earlier incarnation of this blog at http://dianekmartin.blogspot.com/2005/05/jackson-pollock-vs-andy-warhol.html.]</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am, for the sake of this post, including, in my definition of Art, poetry and other literary genres, music, dance, photography, film, and so forth. It is my opinion that Art is nurtured in the thin air of the mountain at the tree line. Below this line, all the trees are green; the Art that everyone likes grows here. And above, the air is so thin that maybe only the gallery owners, the publishers, the gatekeepers asseverate that Art can live there. But at the tree line, well, it's where the strange twisted thoughts take root, some to live and some to perish. Beethoven's work was once considered abominable. The Impressionists, with their lovely light-enfused happily mass produced canvasses that are now dwell over the couch in your in-laws' living room — they were once considered ugly and strange, Not Art.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But I think by the time that piece is selected to match the color scheme of the in-laws' couch and walls, it's gone from Not Art through Art and back to Not Art again. It's pretty. It's decorative. It doesn't bother anyone. It's not Art.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Roberta Smith, discussing her favorite paintings in the NY Times the other day (December 30, 2010) said it well: "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Paintings, like poetry or music, are essential nutrients that help people sustain healthy lives. They’re not recreational pleasures or sidelines. They are tools that help us grasp the diversity of the world and its history, and explore the emotional capacities with which we navigate that world. They illuminate, they humble, they nurture, they inspire. They teach us to use our eyes and to know ourselves by knowing others." Well, I agree with this. I agree with Picasso who said </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(paraphrased)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> that the artist must rouse you from your waking sleep.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's the same with poetry, with music. I do not </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">get</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> quite a lot, most, in fact, contemporary classical music or, on the other end of the spectrum, the work that's called hip-hop. But I know it can be Art. Does that mean I have to like it or listen to it? Or, in the case of poetry, practice Erasures or Flarf? As Matisse said (paraphrased) that is a country where I cannot go. But all the same, it is there.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do you trust your emotions? If it brings a tear, does that tell you it's the real thing? You're better than I, then, because the Olympic torch brings a tear to my eye and a lump to the throat. That doesn't make it Art. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I guess I'm willing to give the artist the benefit of the doubt. I know that that which grows on the tree line may be, eventually, the classic, the piece that will make someone nod and know, finally see or hear or understand. The Emperor's new clothes? Perhaps. But there is a difference between being close minded and being sheep. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I will have my opinions. But I know I've learned to like — to love — what I once turned my nose up at before.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BTW, I hope to get some comments here. Let's have a conversation!</span><br />
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I don't know where this blog fits in with the new year. I met a few who read it, this year. But I'm not sure it's contributing much to the universe or even this small planet.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-89748239208269268502010-12-27T21:23:00.000-08:002010-12-27T21:25:26.490-08:00Magpie Beauty<h4 style="font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">This morning we packed up all the Xmas candy and put it in the kitchen cabinets. That doesn't mean I haven't visited those cabinets today, but at least one is less likely to grab handfuls.</span></h4><div style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">This poem was in Poetry Daily, the poem from last year. I love the "magpie beauty" and the first stanza, especially. Gonna use that for a title. I'm going to try, anyway. Here's the poem, by Frank Bidart:</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 20px;">For an Unwritten Opera</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br />
<span id="poem">Once you had a secret love: seeing<br />
even his photo, a window is flung open<br />
high in the airless edifice that is you.</span><br />
<span id="poem"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><span id="poem">Though everything looks as if it is continuing<br />
just as before, it is not, it is continuing<br />
in a new way (sweet lingo O'Hara and Ashbery</span><br />
<span id="poem"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><span id="poem">teach). That's not how you naturally speak:<br />
you tell yourself, first, that he is not the air<br />
you need; second, that you loathe air.</span><br />
<span id="poem"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><span id="poem">As a boy you despised the world for replacing<br />
God with another addiction, love.<br />
Despised yourself. Was there no third thing?</span><br />
<span id="poem"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><span id="poem">But every blue moon the skeptical, the adamantly<br />
disabused find themselves, like you,<br />
returned to life by a secret: like him, in you.</span><br />
<span id="poem"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><span id="poem">Now you understand Janácek at<br />
seventy, in love with a much younger<br />
married woman, chastely writing her.</span><br />
<span id="poem"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><span id="poem">As in Mozart song remains no matter how<br />
ordinary, how flawed the personae. For us poor<br />
mortals: private accommodations. Magpie beauty.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br />
Frank Bidart <span id="byline"><br />
</span><span id="book_title"><em>The Threepenny Review </em></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div><br />
</div></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-54280359946124708872010-12-18T18:41:00.000-08:002010-12-18T18:41:45.894-08:00The Latest AdventureI suddenly (as in a few days ago) woke up to the concept of entering my book — and asking my publisher to enter my book in various contests for best poetry books of 2010. It's not that I really think I stand a chance (and I missed a lot of the biggies anyway), but why not try? You gotta be in it to win it, as my mother-in-law says, though she is probably talking about the lottery.<br />
<br />
Most of the contests I hadn't already missed had end-of-year or even end-of-January deadlines, so here I was entering information in an online form for one of them, not really pressed. And then I got stuck when they wanted my publisher's phone number, which I'd never used. So I emailed him, John and I had dinner, and we settled into our respective laptops in the living room. Not having that much else to do, I looked through old email and found my publisher's phone number, and entered it in the form and hit Send. At which point, I got a reply that the form went through and I should now see to it that six copies of my book were sent by a midnight December 17 postmark. This was at around 8:30 in the evening on December 17! I uttered a few choice words and thought that was that. But then I got an idea. Lo, Google told me that there was a San Francisco post office near the airport open until midnight.<br />
<br />
It was pouring rain. I don't drive at night, definitely don't drive at night in the rain (unless someone's life depends on it) and I'd had a glass and a half of 2-buck Chuck to boot. But thanks to John and our GPS, we made it. Hurray and then some! Not that it matters in the least, as I said, but small victories count for something in this dice-loaded-against-you world.<br />
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Yes, and I'm happy to celebrate the repeal of DADT from this "liberal bastion," though it seems to me that the right to fight in a war is a strange right indeed. On the personal side, yay for unemployment benefits extension, though I applied for a wonderful job the other day, and would like very much to be working again in 2011.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-40918229191805680872010-12-14T10:20:00.000-08:002010-12-14T10:20:33.282-08:00Hollow daysOkay, despite my cute and totally gloomy title here, things could be worse. We're hoping the extension of unemployment benefits doesn't get lost in the arguments about what should or should not be under the rich folks' Christmas trees. And a few job possibilities exist for me, of which the less said, the better.<br />
<br />
Some bank business to take care of today. Other than that, I hope we'll spend some quality, if damp, time with the pooch. She's been so pathetic each time we've left her lately. Last night, she wasn't hoarsely barking when we got back, as she was Saturday, just looking reproachful and putting her head up for a scritch. Greta is on her way to 16 now, and pretty blind, we think, and sad, and she can't get up without us. We walk her with the old red wagon, and when she stops and is totally outta gas, we plunk her in the wagon and give her a roll around the block. She still looks beautiful, her fur still lovely.<br />
<br />
It's been a very good year for acceptances for me — for individual poems — though one is never satisfied and I'd love to bring the grand total up to 25 before the year's end. As for <i>Hue and Cry,</i> it's out there, but I need to continue to work on it, make it better.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-47821571430679064152010-12-03T12:31:00.000-08:002010-12-05T18:30:32.661-08:00CrumbsOh, I'll take them. The fact that Congress has not voted to re-up Unemployment Benefits and we will probably be forced to sell our house is uppermost in my mind — things we counted on happening just haven't.<br />
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In the meantime, I'm working on revamping our second "bedroom," our office, to fit John's workstation and printers, so he won't have to work in the cold basement. See, I still hope for miracles.<br />
<br />
And other crumbs: an acceptance of three more poems, bringing my unbelievable total for 2010 to 24! And a nomination for the Pushcart from Smartish Pace. You know, I'll take these small pieces of hope. An old friend was shot dead the other day. How is such a thing possible? But we're still alive.<br />
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
N. helped us network the printers so that they can stay downstairs (one is large and the other is huge). We're still working things out so that we can continue here, continue working. Do we have our heads in the sand? Possibly.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-56456601993792412102010-11-27T17:01:00.000-08:002010-11-28T15:24:13.637-08:00Simple<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having experienced the amazing phenomenon of a full-night's sleep, I was a domestic whirlwind today. I made pumpkin muffins. I made lentil soup. The storm comes and goes: dark clouds, rain, and wind, then clearing, with a horizon that stretches out forever, blueish shadows in the underside of the clouds, and pink highlights above the cold, distant hills.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is peaceful here, post holiday. It is warm enough inside. We are hunkering down. It will be a simple Christmas here, simply because there is no money. We are hanging on by a thread. If the banks restructure our loans, we will be able to hang on longer, maybe, but we simply need more income: jobs, grants, miracles. Let us know if you hear of any.</span><br />
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</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-41088156940708170682010-11-22T11:29:00.000-08:002010-11-22T11:29:05.592-08:00OnwardRough night last night. Between the dog's tribulations and our financial worries, sleep just wouldn't arrive, no matter how tired I was. But I was also thinking about <i>Hue and Cry.</i> The first book took way too long to come out, with too goddamn many finalist notices. And the longer it took, the more problematic publishing became. I don't want this to happen with number two. But already, almost half the book has been taken by journals, and I'm confident that this time it will get some recognition (and <i>money;</i> I could really use some money!).<br />
<br />
So when the rejection came this morning, I was ready for it, and not all that upset. I'm thinking this book has better things in store for it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-85433442224241442472010-11-14T21:47:00.000-08:002010-11-18T19:12:59.024-08:00Words into Air<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_RYSeYZw9JRk/TOXq1x415AI/AAAAAAAAAEc/WtPFwjPYQxI/s1600/bishoplowellcropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_RYSeYZw9JRk/TOXq1x415AI/AAAAAAAAAEc/WtPFwjPYQxI/s320/bishoplowellcropped.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>Yesterday, I finished <i>Words Into Air, the Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. </i> A fascinating book, with more plot and suspense and more of history's pageant than any recently read novel. Beyond the history, the elections and coups and assassinations and protests, are the portraits of the writers of their day, from "that Catholic girl fiction writer," Flannery O'Conner, to Randall Jarrell, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, WC Williams, Allen Tate, Dylan Thomas, Mary McCarthy, Auden, Plath, Sexton, Bidart, Rexroth … and more. For shoptalk alone (criticism of each other's work) the book was wonderful. Okay, I didn't buy it; I have it from the library and renewed it three times — it's 800 pages! But well worth the time.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">In other news: dreamed last night I went downtown for a haircut and encountered a lingerie fashion show for brides — you know, all that naughty stuff. And I couldn't get the haircut because all the men who were there for the show were getting shaves and haircuts (2 bits) and nose hairs trimmed as well.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-85341852772827962172010-11-03T15:56:00.000-07:002010-11-04T14:17:05.327-07:00Texas is big, but California is GIANTS!Heh heh, stole that from a poster photographed at the Giants' celebration and parade today and posted at SFGate.com. Rather concentrate on this win than the election (but hey, goodbye Meg Whitman) and the rather negative subject of my recent job search. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_RYSeYZw9JRk/TNMiMOkCyYI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/cZgwWv3kIs8/s1600/giantsfans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="207" width="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_RYSeYZw9JRk/TNMiMOkCyYI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/cZgwWv3kIs8/s320/giantsfans.jpg"</img></a></div>Someone else pointed out on FB that it's rather standard for the party in power to lose the house in mid-term elections, but unusual to keep the Senate as we did. But that's as much politics as I want to offer.<br />
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Getting motivated (or trying to ) for my LA reading on Friday. If you are in the area, come hear me and Rick Bursky and Millicent Accardi. I think it will be fun.<br />
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Been reading the rather voluminous complete correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. It seems the whole of the literary world passes in front of them. It is amusing that the names we consider rock solid today were fresh faces then.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11779531.post-45684988423996937772010-10-22T13:51:00.000-07:002010-10-22T13:51:21.001-07:00Back to California / normalI am quite happy to be home and back in California. Since I grew up in the New York area and also spent some time in my youth in Boston, I couldn't help making comparisons, during my visit, wondering what it would be like to be living in those places. I <i>liked</i> my friend Dennis's neighborhood in Brooklyn as well as Manhattan, and I <i>liked</i> Belmont, Cambridge, Wellesley, Arlington, Somerville, and downtown Boston — all places I'm sure where I could live happily. But San Francisco definitely feels like home. Even on miserable wet days like today, the light is different; there's a sense of openness from the Pacific being out there. And people are more diverse here than anywhere, living more or less amicably, with some sense that we're all in this life business together.<br />
<br />
Maybe I'm crazy and imagining all this … But anyway, <i>GO GIANTS!</i> During yesterday's SF Opera dress rehearsal (standing room only because of the presence of Placido Domingo), there was an undercurrent of excitement about the game, and, during the intermission, people turning on their phones frantically to find out the score. Of course, the Giants did not clinch last last, but that's just typical Giants. Winning in a clean sweep would be too easy. They have to drag it out and make us sweat!<br />
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I should say the readings in NYC and Boston went well. Attendance was a little underwhelming, but then I'm hardly a headliner. Those who did come seemed to like what they heard.<br />
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Next reading is Beyond Baroque, Friday, November 5th, at 7:30 PM. We are more than broke right now; we are in deep debt, definitely up a creek though perhaps not yet without a paddle. But I'm flying down for this reading, because it was planned in the hopeful days of early summer. I'm reading with two fabulous poets, Millicent Accardi and Rick Bursky. So come on out!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0