It's Only Rock n' Roll ...

... but I like it! In fact, I loved it, really, the Rolling Stones move, "Shine A Light" that I saw last night on DVD. I was dancing around the living room, despite the fact that it embarrassed John and the dog. I want to see it again!

But I was up too late on a work day, and now I'm fighting off sleep.

Works for me

Greg and Leslie have written about their poetry "rules." I liked reading theirs. I'm not sure I really have rules, though I can generalize, somewhat, about what works or doesn't work for me.

First: endings. I rarely, if ever, know where a poem will end, which may be why so many of my poems end not with bangs but whimpers. Sometimes they don't end as much as they stop. But I confess that I think that's okay. If, in a sense, my poem takes the reader somewhere, I prefer not to announce that we've arrived.

Sound is important to me, as I've said here before. And texture. I like to use the syntax of the English sentence, working with breath and line endings for tension. So, an easy, colloquial speech, but not flatness. A mix of diction -- good crunchy words, but not arcane or archaic usage.

I lean to the lyric. Narrative elements are often present, but in most poems, they are subjugated to the lyrical impulse. The experience or the experiment is more important than the story.

I am very much one of the humankind of whom Eliot noted cannot bear too much reality.

Red-Headed Stepchild Endorses Tuscan Whole Milk

So yeah, I'm still in a friggin' bad mood, but this website is a hoot. Okay, it's two years old and probably everybody has seen it already. Well, it made me laugh, and that's something.

Highs and Lows

It was cold as usual, this morning, in the Ingleside neighborhood of San Francisco, but the sun was shining, and Greta was pretty perky, the Rimadyl having worked its medicine on her hips. I plugged into my iPhone (my son's gift for last Xmas, birthday, and mother's day). I'm still learning how to use it.

I've got Pandora Radio, a free app that transmits your own personal mix of music -- I mean it comes up with a steady stream of songs that it thinks you will like after you give it a few indications as to your faves. I had some reservations about joining the white earbud pack -- after all, I wouldn't be able to hear the birds, not to mention the cars that were going to run us over. But pretty soon, I was bopping down the street to Dylan and Joe Lovano and Sonny Rollins and Johnny Cash and The Who and …

But I turned a corner and lost the connection. So I checked my email instead. Seventy-five new messages since yesterday, including another rejection.

So what is it with my karma lately? I've been on a bad luck streak, drought, jinx, whatever for so long I want to scream and smash things, maybe myself included. People used to like my poems. Have I started writing bad poems? I never was Miss Popularity, but is the muse just not into me? Is it because I'm not young or not MFA'd or "the red-headed stepchild" as I read on somebody's blog this morning?

Another request

And again, it's not for me. They're putting together a catalog for John's gallery show (in less than a month) of those great opera portraits (see below). They need some words, a quote, something in front of the catalog. I would love him to use Matthews's "Night at the Opera," because I love that poem and I love Matthews. But I wonder if it's right-- its point being about the perfect note and John's shots are about costume and character. However, it's all opera. I dunno. What do you think?

Or do you have anything to suggest? Naturally I'd rather he used a poem -- not just some quote about opera. Let us know what you think.

Meantime my book is being considered somewhere. I get sick to my stomach when I think about it, I'm so anxious. Probably will bomb out once again.

Looking for Super Men

Not what you think! My husband, a super man for sure, sent me this, from the SF Opera. FWIW, it takes a real time commitment, but they seem to have a lot of fun.


SUPERNUMERARY CASTING CALL
July 22, 2008 from 6:30pm – 8:30 p.m.
Zellerbach B Rehearsal Hall
Located at the corner of Hayes and Franklin Streets in San Francisco CASTING MEN ONLY FOR THE 2008 – 2009 SEASON
We are looking for men of all ages to be supernumeraries. Referred to as “supers,” these are the people who volunteer their time in non-speaking roles on stage. While non-speaking and non-singing and often seen in crowd scenes, as soldiers, or in a variety of service roles such as maids, butlers, and ladies-in-waiting, they are essential to the production.
Requirements:
• Flexible schedule – planned rehearsals change frequently and often take place during daytime working hours
• Acting/performing arts experience preferred but not essential
• Children under age 18 require work permit

If you are interested in auditioning, please call 415-565-3200 and leave your name and phone number. You will not receive a return phone call unless there is some change to the audition schedule.
Please be aware that super roles are limited and are cast at the discretion of the stage directors. San Francisco Opera will not be able to use all people who apply.
Time commitment varies per production.

Operas in the 2008 Season with available male super roles include:

Simon Boccanegra
Die Tote Stadt
Idomeneo
Boris Godunov
The Elixir of Love
La Boheme

Got my goat(s)

So there I was, walking Greta Garbo near the old reservoir by City College, and lo and behold! Goats. I attempted a cameraphone pic, but as I'm extremely stupid at such things, I assumed it didn't work. But I guess I got something.

Nice weekend. Did some po biz, went to dinner at friends' up in San Anselmo, worked in the garden.

Fog is back.

Request

Back from the park and ready to get to work (despite little glitch in Internet connection, now resolved.) Oh, but I'm feeling good, having got a full 8 hours of sleep. Yes!

Sun is fighting to break through the fog this morning, but earlier, at Pine Lake, the mist was rising from the lake. A cormorant glided toward the edge and disappeared. A large turtle swam just under the surface. Later, the cormorant could be seen drying its wings, as is its wont, on the float in the middle of the lake.

Yesterday, I wanted to post about all the metaphors newscasters (on NPR) use to discuss the news: the fire metastasized. There was a seismic shift in public opinion. I never got around to post yesterday and have now forgotten the other examples I heard. Feel free to add others you've heard in a comment.

I know the posts have been few and far between on this blog of late. Robert has been busy moving and I have just been busy. (And no one else in the group seems to want to post.)

But I have a favor to ask the blogosphere. John (husband) attended a portfolio review (photography) in Santa Fe last week: big deal juried conference. Despite the fact that he was maybe the oldest there and everyone else seemed to know one another from graduate school, he, or rather, his work, got a fantastic reception. A major SF gallery is interested, and a well-known New York (name withheld) art publisher wants to do his book. This book will be his photos of principals, chorus, and supernumeraries in the SF Opera, in costume and in character. But he needs someone to write text to accompany the photos. I know zilch about opera, and the publisher wants someone, preferably, not only knowledgeable, but "with clout." So, if you or someone you know is this person, could you contact us? His website , which usually shows his commercial work, has been refurbished with some of these portraits (even more impressive as large prints). There you will find contact info as well.

Back home

Back home again, since about midnight last night. Totally jetlagged but pleased to be back. The flight was very long, especially since we spent an hour on the tarmac in NYC.

It was a beautiful, eventful, trip — but it was not relaxing. I must have been out of my mind to think that it would be relaxing. It's never relaxing when we're with John's family. We were all in Maine — from Texas, from NYC, from Boston, from SF (our contingent), from Ireland — and there was antiquing and pingpong and cards and art galleries and a boatride to Monhegan and lots of eating and a whole lot of drinking, but it was not relaxing. Although I did spend some time in the Adirondack chair pictured here reading John's Dublin cousin's novel manuscript.

And there was the wedding of course. "Your typical Maine Irish-Hindu wedding overlooking the ocean" as the minister said. Dramatic clouds and wind, but the rain held off. The bride and groom did a great Argentine tango!

Maine chance

Yeah, I'm sure that's the first time that pun was used. Anyway, if all goes well, we'll shortly be off on the red-eye to Maine, for our lovely niece's wedding and a week in Port Clyde of Doing Nothing. Of course my version of doing nothing means: reading, writing, long walks. We're sharing a house with my brother-in-law and his wife and a cousin from Ireland.

I'm excited about the whole deal -- well, not the flight; that sucks. Tomorrow morning we'll have breakfast with my son on his 26th birthday -- in Boston. He and his wife are doing a baseball vacation Back East, and are all set to go to Fenway at noon. Then we drive up to Maine with her sister, our other niece.

The bride is marrying a Indian-Canadian and will be wearing a green sari. There is to be Indian food and music and events all weekend -- clambake on the beach on Memorial day.

I'm trying to deal with leaving my pooch. Someone is coming to look after her, but leaving her is so hard. Your should see her poor pathetic pooch face.

Islands Apart

I’ve been terrible about blogging. Blame the fact that, as Eavan Boland puts it in an essay I loved in the current Poetry, “Whether we like it or not, the contemporary poet is increasingly skill-based. Or expected to be. He or she can — or should — lecture, lead a workshop, run an introductory class, teach composition, write a review, give a conference paper [and blog!]. But there is always a fraction — even if it’s just a small minority — of poets out in the world who don’t want to do any of these things. If there’s a conversation, they’re having it with themselves, with their own poems. They don’t want to extend it, share it, structure it. They are private, inward, and dissociated from the skills on offer or in demand. Once I thought there was a broad tolerance for this. Now I’m not so sure.”

Meanwhile, we’re finally moving next week to our “new” home across the Bay! “New” is in quotes because it’s the home where I grew up. You can see the booties we’ve been ordered to wear to protect the newly refinished floors. Just wait till our cats move in, though: you won’t catch them in no damn booties!

Sunset on daffodils = yellow

Greta in the tall grass (Brooks Park)

Squirrels and Turtles and Ducks ...

Oh my! Well, sorry bout that. Not much profundity lurking in this noggin of late. Yeah, I'm depressed, and yeah, what else is new. Didn't sleep very well last night, but this morning, as it's Friday and my day to work at home (instead of commuting an hour+ to Mountain View), I didn't get up in the dark to walk pooch, but took her by car to Stern Grove-Pine Lake.

Spring has sprung. Small birds zipped around. (For all I know, it was the same bird!) You could hear, though not see, an industrious woodpecker. The ducks were paired up, the turtles, a whole bunch of 'em, stretched their necks all the way out as they sunned on a log. Greta, whose squirrel-hunting days are over -- was very excited by their scent nevertheless.

It was really very lovely. Fluffy stuff, like snow, blew on the breeze.

Slut for Sound

Haven't had anything terribly profound to post -- but really, why should that stop me? Life has been, well, not very stressful for me (way less stressful than last year at this time), but somewhat difficult -- physical things, irksome things that are not worth talking about, but take up a great deal of time and brain space all the same.

But I want to talk about poetry. C. Dale asks "What makes us choose what we choose when we write?" My answer is definitely music. I don't think that's such a great answer, but it's my answer nonetheless. I play by ear, that's all. More than images, more than ideas, I'm a slut for sound -- and often the beat and vowel sounds will fill my ear even before the words are shaped. Strangely, this is not only what gets me writing poetry -- although it's a heightened experience for poetry. As I'm typing now, I hear the shape of the words before I know precisely what it is that I want to write.

Which is to say that it isn't necessarily gorgeous sounds that I seek -- no, that seek me. Rather, they are like chords that needs one note behind them that insists on being played. I think I may be a victim, more than most, of sound worms. A theme song I hear on the radio on the way to work will be in my mind for a week or more. More than that, in a compulsion almost like Tourette's, words take shape in my mouth and need to be uttered. These words are often names I hear: Moktada al-Sadr, Sylvia Poggioli, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- all, regardless of who they are, that are like candy in my mouth.

There's an answer.

Wild! Check This Out!

This is so wild! Take a look:

http://www.maniacworld.com/frozen-in-grand-central-station.html

There used to be a group in SF (called the Cacophony Society) that would do off-the-wall things. Don't know what happened to them. Maybe (sigh) they grew up. So half of what intrigues me here is that the people who did this did it in Grand Central Station in NYC. Very cool. And interesting how unnerved people got. This could almost be considered subversive, dangerous.

In other news: In a Salon article this evening, I came across the headline:

Headless Body in Topless Bar

It cracks me up. Okay, life hasn't been much fun lately. But Spring is coming, and I'm jazzed. Hehe. I want to write a poem with this title!

Vanishing Point

Hey, I've got a poem in Blackbird.

Weasels

And a happy Valentine's Day to you. This quote, by Matt Groening, was in this morning's Chronicle. "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."

I have the Fever -- Post-AWP Sick As Dog Post

Don't know where that expression came from, but my dog is in much better shape than I am right now -- except that loud coughs and sneezes spook her and she's keeping herself out back. I have the fever, sore throat, the works, and by now, even with the honey tea, my chest feels like it was scrubbed with a copper scrubbee. I've been like this since I woke up at home on Sunday.

Still, I'm hesitant to stay out of work another day. (I dragged myself in on Monday and Tuesday, but today I just couldn't.) John brought me home some Japanese vegetable udon (noodles) from the corner before he went to his Advanced Photoshop class.

Since it's been this long, don't know if it's worth posting my AWP impressions, but here goes: It was interesting to be in New York, and even though I've lived away from it longer than I lived there, I had all these atavistic memories, like the dried brown leaves along the roadway and the water seepage in the subways. Then there was the each-person-for-himself drivers, the body slam I got when I hesitated on a corner trying to decide which way was east -- apparently I was in her way -- the person declaiming to himself/the entire baggage carousel that if he heated his house that hot, his wife would beat him with a baseball bat. Ah, New York!

The conference itself was fun but might have been more fun if I had a home base, an organization where I belonged. Oh there were a few people/organizations who said come and see me, and there were the celebs whom it was fun to see -- Bly, CK Williams, Billy Collins, others. And hanging with Robert, as I said, I was made to feel at home where he was welcome. I saw Greg Rappleye, as he mentioned, and C. Dale, who I don't have to go that far to see. I saw Paul Guest from afar, but he was always surrounded by admirers, and I doubt he knows me. I wish I saw Eduardo. We could have talked about Upstate NY -- I went to school in Rochester. Snow anyone?

I'm happy I stayed in the Hilton. When it just got too much, I could always go up to my room and take a break. I think the rate I got was half price -- and anyway, I just stayed for two nights. That was okay -- I'm not much of a party girl, and the music was loud!

Aside from Robert and Greg's panel, I went to and enjoyed the Graywolf one and the one on UltraTalk Poetry. David Kirby is a blast, and he looks like Steve Martin. If his poetry were ultra-serious, that might be a problem, but as it was ...

On My Way Home

Will be boarding in five minutes. But it's going to take a long time to process everything that happened here in NYC at AWP. No big news, but a lot of encouragement. Mostly it was fun -- including, maybe especially, seeing my buddies Dennis and Billy from high school days and eating at an amazing Korean restaurant in the East Village. Robert and I hung out a lot, and that was great. I met a great many people. Oh, boarding.