Spring Break!

Yes, almost two whole weeks before I have to deal with it again. Delightful! That is all I will allow myself to say. (And actually, there are some loose ends to tie up, despite my freedom.)

I'm still waiting on some editing work that is supposed to come in today. Meanwhile, I've been revising my Picasso women poems, which I may send out as a chapbook. It's a very rich repast -- revising one poem after another -- so writing this post is sort of cleansing my palate. (I've revised 6 out of the 20 pages, the first four women, since Tuesday.)

I find that time is the best tool for revision. If I can put something away wholly for six months to a year, I can hear it with new ears and see it with new eyes.

The good news is I think it isn't bad. I've been pretty discouraged lately re po biz. Look, I'm not going to be the next new new thing. But I can write. Still.

Tying in this post with Robert's post that came before it and with the mini-brouhaha that has arisen about David Sedaris's making a story out of his life, I have always asserted that there's a very porous membrane separating truth and fiction (or truth and poetry, as in my Picasso poems). Of course I'm putting words in these women's mouths and what "actually" happened was different, but so is any recounting of one's life or another's. As soon as you write it, you put a frame around it, much as a photographer takes what he sees and frames it. This idea was the "subject" of my Master's thesis, way back in the last century.

This Actually Happened!

Slate has an interesting dialogue this week between poets Dan Chiasson and Meghan O’Rourke on autobiography and poetry, as part of a “Memoir Week.” What most interests me is not really the issue of autobiography and memoir, but what Dan Chiasson calls “the reality guarantee”:

But what about when writers play to the readerly preference for facts? Here we are on riskier grounds. “This actually happened!” writes Allen Ginsberg at the end of “Howl,” of a story so fantastical—a man jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge and walks away unharmed—that we might otherwise categorize it as “surreal.” But if we DID categorize it that way, it would be just another one of the marvelous, incandescent, surreal details in “Howl”—nice but forgettable. Because Ginsberg underwrites it with this remarkable assertion—”this actually happened”—(and because, importantly, he says that only ONCE in the whole poem) the bridge-jumping episode becomes, for me, the most powerful thing in the poem. It’s as though the curtain parted and the “real” Ginsberg, suddenly playing by the ordinary rules of “factual” depiction, addressed the “real” reader.

This move—let’s call it the “reality guarantee”—needn’t be so explicit as saying, “This actually happened.” There are other ways to cue a documentary response in readers, other terms of the documentary contract. The visually ingenious detail, so real it feels like a snapshot (the doilies, for example, in Elizabeth Bishop’s “Filling Station”) or the affective detail so open and attractive as to feel “artless” (as when Frank O’Hara says “fun” in the first line of “Having a Coke with You”). And there are acts of strong intimacy, like Hopkins when he tells God, “I am gall, I am heartburn,” or like Herbert’s when (in “The Flower”) he exclaims, “Who would have thought my shriveled heart / Could have recovered greenness.” Or take it further back: you mention Sappho. When Sappho describes turning “greener than grass” at the sight of her beloved in the presence of a man, or when the anonymous poets of the Greek Anthology proclaim across the millennia, “I press my lips to yours.” These moments read as “real,” no matter what cultural or historical distance intervenes, and I must say, these moments are more or less what I look for in poems.

Whine Glass--Half Empty

I know it's because I had a lousy night -- awoken at least four times by my own internals, by the cat outside, by the tightening and tightening of the chains of our quotidian constraints -- but I'm having an awful hard time doing what I need to do today. I don't need anyone to remind me that I am in the larger existential sense lucky. And I don't really think there's any cosmic force weighing things, allowing this much angst for that much fortune. But I'm worried. I'm worried that at this stage of life we haven't figured out how to play the game well enough to win more than we lose. I'm worried because my strength is failing me. It's not even that I don't want to fight any more, but that the wear and tear is killing me. Three steps up and two down, two steps up and three down. How long can one bear this?

I'll stop, I promise. The day is lovely. Maybe later on today I will be able to nap and probably the world will then improve. Maybe there will be a letter, a phone call, an email that will help me see it.

Just Musing

I know, it's been forever since I've posted anything here, but I couldn't resist responding to a message about poetry and muses on the Warren Wilson listserv so I'll post it here too.

Hey, Carlen, sometime last week you asked, “If any of you believe in a Muse (or muses), what is it you believe?” I’ve been thinking about this, as I really do believe in a muse. I suppose I believe in an inner figure who is not me and who I’d damn well better treat as real if I care about my writing. It’s rather corny but (like Greg, as I recall) I’ve been influenced by James Hillman. It may be corny but I think it works. When I’ve felt stuck in my writing it’s really helped me to sit and write a dialogue with my muse. In fact I think the corniness and the shallowness and the whole intellectual shamefulness of it is part of its essence. I think we’ve got to be willing to look stupid in order to be creative. I think we need less Derrida and more Mary had a little lamb.

Anyway, if you’re interested in reading further, here’s a short excerpt from Hillman’s Healing Fiction:

The next example is from an elderly man, well past sixty, who came from abroad after his wife had died. He had no children. He came to Zurich, took a little room, and began studying everything psychological that he could lay his hands on. He kept a journal. Here is an entry from the journal:

“August 27. Still so cold, I cooked a hot lunch, then back to Neumann. After a while my attention wandered and I heard a clear young voice say, “Where have you been staying, Father?” It could have been the voice of a boy or a girl. If I jump to the conclusion that because of the letter from B, the dream father is dead, then I can now take the father role. I am becoming a father. If it was a boy talking, then is he the divine child in me? Or what? If it was a girl, then presumably she will be an anima figure? But why do I become her father? I am lost ... Later: Since the above, I tried to contact the voice with all the most inviting phrases I could summon, but to no avail. Just sit back and love the voice, you old fool. Relax.”

I do believe you have felt this man’s simple and rather tragic mistake. It is simple because all he would have had to do was hear the child’s question—where has he been?—and try to respond to it. And it is tragic in that he answered the voice by psychologisms and interpretations, that is, he used psychology against the soul. ... The child did not say ‘love me.’ It asked him, loud and clear, where have you been staying, father. He missed the moment. All his beseeching and cajoling could not bring it back ....

Other echoes / Inhabit the garden

… shall we follow them? A lovely lamb-like March day, almost 60° -- not as warm as the next few days are forecast. I opened the shades in my office that I need to keep closed in the morning to see the monitor and looked out at the garden. One of the Douglas irises was in bloom, so I went out to look at it. Outside, I saw that another had bloomed and gone already, without my seeing it. Hopefully, John saw it, and the Greta sniffed at it. But it made me sad that my life is so busy and in turmoil that I'd missed it entirely. Maybe this weekend we can put in some time out back.

Elsewhere in the garden is a volcanic-type rock with a hole in it. A calla lily is blooming straight through the hole. Well, okay, I suspect John set that up to happen but still, it's neat, isn't it?

Here's a question that needs to be asked: If you have submitted a ms. to a competition one year, is it worth resubmitting it the next year if it's unchanged or hardly changed?

Stay-at-home Cinderella

Well, I wish I'd been to AWP, though I would probably be a hundred times green with envy and consumed by desire to be read and admired. But I would rather be anywhere than in my little life right now, for reasons I'm not at liberty … Though I love my John, my son and his sweetie, and my dog.

If I can drum up any excuse, I'll be at the next one in NYC, the city that is like someone I sort of knew a long time ago. And I will see if the old haunts are still haunted -- or there.

Dorset Update

Received notice this a.m. that Sandra Meek of Mt. Berry, GA is the winner of this year's Dorset Prize (Tupelo Press). I'll bet she has fun at AWP.

My ms., Demimonde, was one of 23 semifinalists out of 1,200 submissions. Oh well.

Sunday bit

We now have a decorous, little, yellow No Through Street sign on the corner, where the huge rude red Dead End sign was for a short time, only a little while ago. Still, you would be surprised at how many people drive up this hill, only to have to do a U-turn on top. Once, there was even a police pursuit up here, just like the movies. You used to be able to walk over the top of the hill, part of the Orizaba bump, a huge rock that is city owned, but the houses up there encroached, and they say possession is 9/10 of the law. So now it's No Through Street for people too, and when I walk the dog over the hill, we have to come down Orizaba or Jules and walk back up ours.

I'm sure that was fascinating. Not much poetry happening here. As usual, lines pass through my brain, but I don't feel at liberty these days to grab them and write them down.

We may get the house painted, adding another huge bit to what we owe the banks. Well, we've been driving around and looking at colors.

Rain was fierce last night, or so John tells me. I've been sleeping poorly for days and last night was so far gone, I slept right through it. In this caesura of sun I should take out the dog.

Waazat?

Two loud explosive noises that startled me, and then, even louder, a third. But I don't hear any sirens, so I guess it's nothing. There is construction on Grafton, our cross street (all morning the jackhammers were hammering; now it is quiet). I suspect they were just unloading some large delivery there.

The sky is gray and blue, a serious pretty. The way the light is hitting the ocean -- the closer portion a pearly white, the farther part a deeper pewter -- it looks like the container ship that's out there is defying gravity, floating. Yes, I know it is floating, but it looks to be floating on a cloud.

I was at SF State today for a meeting with a student. When I finished my miscellaneous business, the one-way street I was parked on was blocked by a delivery truck. About 15 or so cars were stuck, everyone just waiting. We could see that the shuttle driver behind the truck had called someone, and everyone, like me, must have just figured what is there to do? People were bored, but relatively resigned. No one leaned on a horn.

Speaking of resigned, I got notice in the mail today of another competition where I am a semifinalist.

I'm reading Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows, Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. I love her writing, how she ties things together, makes you experience the shifts of consciousness that happen, takes you into the mind of an earlier time. I'd like to do as much in my poetry somehow.

Gosh

So I'm filling out an application for a scholarship -- yeah, you can guess, I'm sure. And I swear that I read that you need to provide the names and addresses of two people in the writing field who can provide references. This isn't easy for people like me who got their graduate degrees decades ago and who aren't that good at schmoozing. But I got my courage together to write to two people who have been kind to me in the past. One answered immediately; the other took some tracking down. But both said v. nice things, agreed to be references. Okay, now I go to fill out my application and only one name is needed! I have half a mind to put down both anyway! I can't decide. And what could be the harm?

Well, I don't know, but I'm thinking about it.

I'm in a decent frame of mind this morning -- class over and almost a week before the next. I need to start preparing for my other class, my poetry workshop, if indeed there are enough registered for it to happen. And I actually have some editing work coming in tomorrow.

Valentine's Day was good. Lovely lavender roses, champagne, smoked salmon and marscarpone on sourdough toast for dinner, Jon Stewart and old SNL on the TV.

Signs and Wonders

Out this morning with the dog a little later, around 7:00. Clouds a pale pink with underside of taupe, the frivolous and the solemn. As we walked -- without my noticing the transition -- the sky turned a steadfast blue. John's fleece-lined yellow jacket I had borrowed became a redundancy, as did my gloves and white wool beret.

Now it's mid morning, breakfast of sourdough cracked wheat toast with peanut butter, grapefruit juice, and black coffee over, John and dog gone to the studio, I pulled out the yoga mat. I think it's been months since I've done yoga -- I've been so stressed -- and it's stupid, stupid, stupid not to, because it always makes me feel less stressed, optimistic, not yet cured of my winter soul, but better.

Oh yeah, I checked the flower boxes in front of the house. Tulips beginning to push up beneath the violas.

California Gothic

It's a nice quiet rainy weekend in San Francisco -- well, at least, for me. I've been very involved with the class I'm teaching at SF State in the TPW program. It takes almost all of my time and energy. In between, I try to keep up with po biz -- submitting, applying, and so forth.

We got a lot done today, a lot of little things, like putting up paintings in my office. And, of course we spent quality time with Greta la pooch. We cleaned, we got groceries. What? You want something more exciting here? You want poetry?

Here's an old poem, an old, old poem. How old? It was written when I lived at my first San Francisco address (a totally cool address: 789 Tenth Avenue). We moved from there in 1982. The poem was in my Master's thesis. But it was written on a rainy day, like this.

California Gothic

More rain comes down on streets already slick --
    purple liquids  iridescent greens
ooze, effulgent
    scum, jewels -- cool, radiant, evil ...

Two doors away, medics remove a small white parcel,
    the elderly lady who lived there
who, bird-boned, beak-nosed
    neither spoke or smiled
but only, over and over
    swept her piece of sidewalk.

Sick or dead? you ask, as I enter.
    I don't know, I tell you.
I want to forget her, now that I'm next to
   your dry, warm skin
but the palm fronds sway,
    retreat and beckon --
shadow of a hand trying to get in.

A good evening

Last night was a really good evening here on my high, gray hill. (BTW, someone stole the new and enormous red "Dead End" sign, recently at the foot of the hill. I imagine the sign is decorating some dorm room somewhere.) Well, I came back from class, survivor that I am, and John was home about five minutes later. Over a bottle of 2-Buck-Chuck Shiraz and a baked frozen Trader Joe's pizza, John told me the good news. The SF Opera director, David Gockley is pushing for John's photography, has told "his people" to make the show happen. Oh, it won't happen right away. They need more of the divas represented, they want every opera photographed. (John has photographed principals, chorus, and supers in costume -- gorgeous and unusual detailed portraits that knock you out.) But he's got a virtual guarantee now that it will happen. John has been working on this so long and so hard. It is just wonderful news.

As for me, I've got a bad cold, have used up enough tissues to deforest a small forest. I very rarely get sick, and I'm fairly annoyed that I have. I was planning on going out this morning to distribute fliers for my City College C.E. poetry workshop that starts in March, but I'm probably going to stay in with my green tea and my space heater, the fog outside in the city and inside my head.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's an article from the Boston Globe about what eleven poets are reading. What are you reading?



*****

In the mind of the beholder

Oh, tired. That second cup of coffee better do it for me. It's bad enough to get up in the six o'clock dark to walk the dog, but when you wake up an hour earlier -- I heard John's "grandfather clock" chime and could swear it chimed six times, but it must have been five -- well, I lay there wondering if I hadn't set the alarm. I am too nearsighted to see a clock without my glasses, and putting on my glasses … Okay, enough of this.

Yesterday was my first class (teaching) at SF State. I'm teaching not poetry, but a course in the Technical and Professional Writers Program. The first hurdles were tough: getting an ID card and email account and so forth -- and getting this all in the name I use now vs. the name I used as a graduate student. But I've cleared most of those hurdles, and yesterday was the class. Hooboy. I won't say I was awful, but, if I had a buck for every time I said "uh," I could retire and write. So, okay, I guess it will get easier, and I do have a lot of real world experience to impart, but let me say that last night, when I was back home to John's hug and a large glass of wine, it was an immense relief. And now there are just fifteen more classes to go.

Meantime, my contract writing job has gone dormant, which means ouch …

The other day, I sat in my car, eating a tuna sandwich and listening to the public radio while waiting until it was time for my appointment with the TPW director. I was listening to a program discussing the death of -- no, not poetry! -- classical music. The whole discussion was word-for-word identical to those we've all heard bemoaning the lack of audience and respect for poetry. They even had Dana Gioia there (who, by the way, never brought up poetry, though he talked about the necessity of maintaining public school programs for music, journalism, and theatre). Well, they also brought on the prize-winning composer John Corigliano. And he changed the tack of the discussion a bit.

He started talking about how necessary it was for radio to broadcast and people to attend concerts for new music, "classical" compositions by modern composers. This was because of the important "adventure of of learning what you think of what you are listening to." (I hope I got that quote right.) By making critical judgments for oneself, he maintained, one particpated in the art experience. He said he wasn't saying not to listen to the old masters, but that you lacked this experience when listening to a performance of their work. You could listen for all sorts of things in the performance, but you accept that Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and so forth are great.

This rang all sorts of bells with me. For one thing, I remember growing up in NYC and attending fine arts films when I was a teenager. (Yeah, I actually watched movies then, before I was hypersensitive to them.) And I remember once or twice leaving the movie with my friends who would like something and I wouldn't or I would like something that they wouldn't, and what a thrill it was, to think about the reasons and to have an opinion. It was all new then!

I love this part of reading new poetry too, of reading something -- one reason I like tackling poems one at a time, instead of book-wise too -- and savoring it in my mouth and hearing it in my mind and deciding for myself what I think ot it. It brings up that whole idea of different people being ready for art at different times too. But the experience of art for oneself. Think about it.

From the Spaceship

I switched over to the new Blogger and am trying to post again. As I said in my comment below, I’ve been combing through old stuff in my mother’s house, including some of my old records from high school. Surrealistic Pillow, Cheap Thrills, Blonde on Blonde. One that brought back memories was Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. I actually saw Miles play several of the pieces from Bitches Brew at the Monterey Jazz Festival (in 1969?), and, unbelievably, I saw him with my mother.

All this music and recording also reminded me of the wonderful Ralph J. Gleason, jazz (and later rock) critic for the San Francisco Chronicle for many years. I found Gleason’s liner notes for the original Bitches Brew. Here’s an excerpt:

it will never be the same again now, after in a silent way and after BITCHES BREW. listen to this. how can it ever be the same? i don’t mean you can’t listen to ben. how silly. we can always listen to ben play funny valentine, until the end of the world it will be beautiful and how can anything be more beautiful than hodges playing passion flower? he never made a mistake in 40 years. it’s not more beautiful, just different. a new beauty. a different beauty. the other beauty is still beauty. this is new and right now it has the edge of newness and that snapping fire you sense when you go out there from the spaceship where nobody has ever gone before.

Today this attitude feels to me like a breath of fresh air: celebrating the electricity of new art without denying the beauty of the old. Isn’t this the only honest attitude to have? I would love to hear someone praise cutting-edge experimental poetry and at the same time say, “How can anything be more beautiful than Keats’ ‘To Autumn’?” I would love to hear someone praise James Wright and at the same time praise the snapping fire of contemporary experiments with language. Isn’t anything else just posturing and hypocrisy?

Post post

I'll be brief: I went through with the dental torture that I've put off since November. I guess my dentist is very persuasive. She let me know that the choice was: bad now or really bad some time down the road. I'm a real wuss, though, and even having a good excuse for ice cream this evening did not remotely make this fun.

Well, back to the ice pack -- peas and carrots, carrots and peas. Wish the ibuprofren would kick in.

Just noticed

Um, so we're on the new Blogger now, and it's just like the old Blogger. Little different, but not much. But I just realized we've lost our team list on the right here ----> and instead, my picture is smilin' at you. But only until I figure out how to get our team list back. So don't worry.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the scoop: "Team members who have not yet switched to the new version will still see the blog on their dashboards, but it will be grayed out and inaccessible. Once those members move their own accounts to the new version of Blogger, they will be able to access the blog as before."

Let's work on this ...

Whoohoo! We're back in business!

Yes, I haven't fallen off the planet, but was having publishing problems, as is evident below. I finally figured it out about ten minutes ago (will spare you the details).

And no, for all that, there's not much news. Maybe I'll think of something by the time I get back from walking the dog.

Testing (again)

Been trying to publish, without success, for about 5 days now. Will this work?

Let's see if this works ...

Been having a lot of trouble republishing the blog. Last night, I switched to the new Blogger in hopes it would help, and well it didn't. But let's try it this morning.

New post, same as the old post

Anyone know where I got that title from? No matter. It would only prove how old I am. My point is, I don't really have much to say, but it's been more than a week since someone posted here, and there's nothing as boring as a stagnant blog.

I thought seriously of changing to the new Blogger template, but I thought better of it. I will, eventually, just have too many things on my mind right now. Not that I'm very busy ... Okay, FedEx just delivered a template I needed, so I actually have something to do. Sort of. But mostly, two jobs on hold (bills not on hold, unfortunately). My teaching job at SFSU to start in two weeks. My other teaching job at CCCE to start in two months. Lots of po biz deadlines coming up. I NEED TO GET ORGANIZED!

But where to start? When my son used to freak out about disorganization, I would tell him it doesn't matter where you start. Start anywhere. I also would say not to get overwhelmed about the magnitude of the problem. I need a mom, that's what! Alas.

What I really need is not nagging but to stop the nagging feeling that it doesn't matter. I need something good to happen. I've been holding myself up, like a suspension bridge, too long.

Parties are over, new year's begun

Must remember to go out and get New Year's cards. It's not premeditated, my sending cards so late, but it's happened for years now. There's just all this other crap to do by a certain date and now, well, theoretically, I have 363 days to write and send them. Okay, I've also been waiting to do a family photo for the cards. With a family of *3* -- now 4 -- and a photographer in the family, you'd think that wouldn't be a problem, but then you don't know how things happen around here. If I'm going to insist on the photos, I may need 363 days ....

It was hard getting up this morning in the dark, hard getting back into my typical weekday routine of throwing on my clothes and taking the dog out, continuing my dreams while I sleepwalk, just as long as I don't get doggie or self run over. But I'm not sorry the holiday routine is over. I'm tired of parties. My body is tired of living on cheese and crackers; I need to get back to my three times a week working out; I have a mountain of laundry, an empty bank account, and anxiety dreams. And I'm all out of small talk.

Yesterday, at a party, a probably very well-meaning person asked me what kind of poetry I wrote. Well, Robert was at the same party and he introduced us as poets. I had to assure the questioner that no, we didn't make our livings writing sonnets. But to the question of kind, I had no answer. Robert started to answer for me, and I didn't agree with his taxonomy. I went off in search of wine to help my answer. But then it seemed easier to avoid the question entirely, to stick to the easier party topics like neighborhoods and schools and college applications -- for which everyone has opinions.

Well, then, hoping that Robert isn't mad at me for copping out, I thought I would post the question here. I'm hoping it's at least a few months before I'm in party mode again and have to have an answer. But what answers do you have for that question (what kind of poetry do you write?)? How much do assume your questioner knows or doesn't know? Do they just want to hear whether you use rhyme? Would you give the same answer to all questioners, or do you tailor it? I often give the short, snotty answer, "my kind." But I know that doesn't mean anything. Is that insulting to the questioner? Tell me what you think!

BTW, I never kept last year's resolution to read through my entire poetry shelves from A-Z. In fact, I never got out of the Bs. So this year, like the perpetual dieter who always swears to lose X number of pounds and can't keep to it, I'm going to generalize my goals. So, I will read more (poetry). And God help me, this year, I'm going to have my book accepted.

Gneiss going!

Robert Thomas will read as part of the Gneiss Poetry Series (with Gayle Brandeis) on Tuesday, January 9, 7:00 pm at:

Auditorium - Room B-100, UCR - Palm Desert Campus
At the corner of Cook St. & Frank Sinatra Dr.
In the building closest to the parking lot.
 
See University of California Riverside for directions.

Wish I could go and hear Robert and maybe get some warm weather!
 

End and beginning

Merry, happy everything to all of you out there. Our Christmas was quiet, the only less-than-perfect was Nathaniel waking up at 4:00 in the morning with food poisoning from the party the night before. (John, Jen, and I had been at the same party and were fine, but none of us ate the sushi.) N's being off put a crimp in our Christmas -- and meant that John ate all the bacon himself. But after a bit, N. was not exactly fine but in good enough shape to have some of the maple pecan wreath bread that I make every year.

We had a quiet day -- eating and sitting by the fire and watching SNL from the first season (John and I just going out and were living together in Manhattan back then and, boy, those shows bring back memories. We had in-jokes about the Great Fabod and ...). But still it fell to me to do all the cooking and more of the cleaning than I would have liked, and so I am not too sorry that I'm stuck today at the Superior Court for jury duty and forced to sit. John probably doesn't mind too much either, since his plan for today was to do nothing and I'm not sure I could have allowed that :)

But it's raining, I've got Internet access. So far, a room full of people is just waiting and waiting. The dog -- she liked her presents, esp. the dried chicken breasts, and she lost no time burying her new bone in the back yard -- will miss me today.

We did hear sobering news of two deaths -- three if you count James Brown, and you really gotta. One of these was one of John's poker buddies who was part of the group we had dinner with last New Year's Eve. He wasn't exactly a friend of mine, for reasons I don't want to go into here, but still. Hella difference a year makes ... .

May be my last post before the big night, so best to you and may life be good to you in 2007.

Christmas Eve Miscellany

Sunny, chilly weather (chilly meaning 50, not 35 degrees), a perfect California Christmas Eve. We got the last of the decorating done (lights on the big schiffelera plant on the front porch). Annie did the tree and stashed greenery around the living room, quite artfully. I didn't have to do much this year.

We have various social plans but the real holiday means no one getting up early, no shopping, no work, just music, reading and the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and Clark Cable (I actually typed Clark Bagel first--time for breakfast) on the dining room table now that the wrapping apparatus has been cleared. We don't have to cook Christmas dinner, we're eating with friends tomorrow. I'm making a persimmon cake though (with the most fabulous ginger-lemon whipped cream). I think I have a poem brewing. At last.

Happy Holidays!

And so it goes ...

I don't know how I knew, but I did, that Demimonde would not make the cut at Tupelo. The story so far: I submitted my ms. to Tupelo for their July open submissions last year, in 2005. We were supposed to be informed by the end of October. Finally, I emailed at the end of the year to find out that my manuscript came close but was not chosen. As a booby prize, Jeffrey Levine entered it in the Dorset Prize for me, even though the deadline had already passed. And Demimonde was a finalist.

I submitted it to the Tupelo Prize, which was first books only, and it was not only a finalist, but one of five runners up.

I submitted Demimonde to the July open submissions again this year, along with 999 others, or thereabouts. I was told it was one of 25 that would be considered -- four would be taken.

Earlier this week I learned that it was one of nine still on the table, but I didn't have a good feeling about it. A few minutes ago, I got the following email:

Dear Diane,

We have made our final decisions. Your book was on the table until the very end, but . . .

I know it must be off-the-charts frustrating to keep coming so close. I wish I could offer something more helpful than it's a great manuscript (which it is), and that it WILL get taken -- here or elsewhere.

Best,
Jeffrey

I'm grateful for the closure. The waiting and hoping was driving me crazy. And so, in less than 2 weeks, we start another year.

Red-haired poets, etc.

Did anyone hear the live Prairie Home Companion from NYC today? We were on our way to Funston to walk the pooch and heard it on KQED. Guy Noir was hired to help? cheer up? someone's daughter who had moved to NY, dyed her hair red (!), adopted an all-black wardrobe, and become a poet. Regardless of what one thinks of Keillor's avuncular approach to poetry or his perhaps ill-advised anthology, this was very funny! A "former poet laureate," played, I think by Billy Collins, reviewed this poet's first collection in the Times and said its major mistake was that it was legible. He, the PL, is revealed to be the person who invented MFAs, wherein a poet is put in a room for 2 years, made to write, and charged $20,000 -- and at the end of two years is awarded an MFA. Ah well, maybe you had to be there -- there being listening to the radio -- but it was quite amusing, if you can find it to listen to on a podcast.

And believe me, if I can be amused these days, you can be amused. Though I have no information of any sort, I'm pretty sure the news I'm waiting is not good. I'm so tired of hoping.

My life is getting busy, busy, busy. I will be juggling two different contracts soon, a writing and an editing one. As of the end of January, I should be teaching writing (not poetry, alas) at SF State. In March I'm doing another Poetry Workshop for City College CE.

But all I want for Christmas is for my manuscript to get picked up by somebody. How can all these people like it but not enough to publish it?

Oh, I also want Santa to bring me some new reading glasses, because I lose the damn things all the time.

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Can anyone out there help us with our updating problem in BlogRolling? It was working fine for ages but now doesn't seem to work at all (doesn't show blogs as updated when they have been)? I haven't been able to get any help from them, though I'm still trying. Thanks,
-d

Grease

Hard to believe we're going to the Sing-Along Grease today at the Castro theater. Annie and three of her friends, Linda and I and two of our friends. Love that movie but I'm not sure about this. Also hard to believe I'm going to wear a little knee-length pleated skirt and a fuchsia-colored boat-neck sweater. Linda's wearing a leather jacket and white T-shirt and plans to do something icky with her hair. I'm sure we won't be the only grey-haired Greasers there. The audience will be as entertaining as the show. Annie is being very tolerant. At 14 I wouldn't have gone out in public with my parents dressed like their high school days.

Will report back later.

Malaise

Malaise is a nicer word, I think, than dis-ease, though they have the same root meaning. I've been suffering from mal-ease for weeks (mais je ne suis pas malade), not a consequence of the holidays, nor the weather, nor my girlfriend spending too much time watching football nor my daughter barely touching ground at home, these being explanations I've been tried on. Besides, Linda (girlfriend) is who she's always been, Annie (daughter) is having a great time being a freshman in high school, a remarkable accomplishment, I like Christmas this year for no good reason and the weather has only been dreary for a week or so (should change on Sunday anyway).

It's a writing malaise, or a not-writing malaise. I'm not writing and so I'm not all right. That simple. I can't get in the writing gear, my few efforts go bad. No disease, just a case of going nowhere now. A comment from Richard Powers (who just won a National Book Award) on NPR yesterday made it clear to me. He said "If you're a writer and you haven't been writing for a couple of days, everyone around you will see you're out of sorts." Or something like that. And if you haven't been writing for weeks and weeks? I guess you're ready for the recycling bin.

I don't suppose writing a blog entry counts.

'Tis the Season

I go about in my own little world, up here in the grayness that is San Francisco. I just jumped about a foot at a knock at the door -- the postman leaving a package I ordered (books for my son, AI and programming). Very heavy scent of cologne when I opened the door, even though the postman was already down the steps and jumping into his truck. Anyway, the books -- not the postman or his cologne -- reminded me of a conversation at a party yesterday. I was conversing with a physicist. He asked me what I did and I could have said, should have said, maybe, that I'm a technical writer and editor, but I said I was a poet. The next question is usually, "What kind of poetry do you write?" But this time, it was whether I was published. I said yes, and he asked me if I was in any publication he had heard of, like the New Yorker. Once we established that I was not in any publication he had heard of, he said he doesn't read poetry. He tried once or twice. He tried to read "The Wasteland" and couldn't get it.

I really want a good answer when some stranger puts me in the position of defending poetry, especially when they use Eliot as a weapon. I tried asking if he gets all the music he might listen to. I said if he just experienced the poetry he would get something out of it -- and why worry about "getting" everything. I said I thought part of the problem was one's high school teacher and all those papers that had you discuss three metaphors in XYZ and how they relate to the theme of death and resurrection in ... Oh, then he asked what my poetry was about. But we didn't get much further than that in the conversation. I joined a friendly group discussing photography, jazz, Hawaii, and various hilarious episodes about marijuana and flying.

Well, the season is in full swing (plugged in and running on its own momentum, as I said to someone in email). I'm both oddly calm and very tense (see above, jumping a foot) at the same time. Still waiting to hear about my manuscript in "early December." But I've already accepted that it will be a no go, so why should I be tense?

John's photography got a wonderful reception from the Opera hierarchy, but no date for a show yet.

Tomorrow is the twelfth day of the twelfth month. What does that mean? Haven't the faintest, but I'd be careful around noon, if I were you.

Some Like It Hot

I’ve been interested in the discussion among Mark, Eric, Josh and others about immersive vs. anti-absorptive literature. I think those terms originated in Charles Bernstein’s essay “Artifice of Absorption,” where he defines the terms this way:

By absorption I mean engrossing, engulfing
completely, engaging, arresting attention, reverie,
attention intensification, rhapsodic, spellbinding,
mesmerizing, hypnotic, total, riveting,
enthralling: belief, conviction, silence.

Impermeability suggests artifice, boredom,
exaggeration, attention scattering, distraction,
digression, interruptive, transgressive,
undecorous, anticonventional, unintegrated, fractured,
etc.

In other words, “absorptive” literature values all those qualities “prized” in “mainstream” “art”: “What a spellbinding novel!” As Susan Schultz says in her essay “Postmodern Promos,” “one cannot ‘get lost’ in a Language poem the way one can get lost in a Harlequin romance.”

The terms immersive and anti-absorptive capture just what I’ve been trying to articulate in a couple of earlier posts here, e.g., “I think there’s a difference between poetry that makes the commitment of entering its own world—whatever that world may be—and poetry that keeps its distance.” Obviously I have a different perspective, though, as I am praising the very immersion that others criticize. Of course it’s easy to see the point of the criticism, the value of writing that forces us out of our comfort zone (as opposed to a mystery or romance we immerse ourselves in like a warm bath). And yet, and yet … I can’t help feeling that criticism of immersion conceals a fear of immersing oneself in life itself, a fear of commitment. Not to mention fear of sexuality, fear of eros, fear of romance, Harlequin or not. Sure, when you take your kids to the park to play on the swings, it’s good to be meta-aware of all the sociological and class implications of what you’re doing. On the other hand, at a certain point doesn’t all that awareness become an excuse to maintain a safe and ironic distance from your own children?

The distinction between immersive and anti-absorptive may be post-postmodern, but it goes back all the way to Plato, the sort of smugness Plato seemed to have—all the time he was praising Socrates he was quietly arguing the superiority of his writing to Socrates’ speaking, the superiority of written literature to oral poetry, for precisely the reasons that writers now criticize immersive work: it encourages the listener to be passively entertained rather than an active and critical participant in the work.

Mark et al. talk about Roland Barthes’ distinction between the “readerly” and the “writerly,” and that seems exactly to the point: immersive literature is readerly and anti-absorptive is writerly. I wish I could remember what poet I was reading recently who talked about the crucial turning point in his writing that came when he realized he was not even writing the sort of poems he wanted to read. Isn't there something very curious about this fear of the terrible bourgeois corruption that will result if the writer ever dares to get into bed with the reader and share some pleasure? It seems to hide a writer’s contempt for the reader within himself, or within herself, as well as for the readers in the world.

God's Chatter

That’s the title of William Logan’s latest review in The New Criterion. But wait! Before you read it, take the quiz.

Match each of the six poets Logan reviews:

A. R. Ammons
Louise Glück
Paul Muldoon
Mark Strand
Natasha Trethewey
Franz Wright

with the line from the review that refers to their work:

Even if you paid through the nose to get a vanity press to publish this, you’d have to bribe the typesetter not to cut his own throat.

__________ writes of his/her parents with no fury or sympathy or even regret, just the blank courtesy of a barista at Starbucks.

These poems rely too heavily on props left over from the 1970s—night and moon and stars, all available by mail order.

The pleasure the poet takes in the senses lies partly in the gratification of disgust.

__________ writes so many poems about a blinding light, I wanted to buy stock in Sylvania

__________ never runs out of things to say, only things worth saying.

Snowman and bougainvillea

Walked the pooch this morning a little late, in the clear light of day. When she's in a good mood (she was), Greta likes to abandon our usual routes and explore. It was a fine morning for that for both of us.

The good burnt toast smell of D'Melanio's coffee roasting filled the neighborhood. The sun was shining. I past a house with a not-yet-inflated snowman and a Santa, then another snowman, then another -- all ghostly empty on square handkerchief-size lawns -- then a hollow plastic 3-D snowman, then a wicker snowman, then another empty one waiting to be pumped. Was there a sale on these things? Did I miss the memo?

I know why the snowman is pervasive, of course. After all, I brought up a kid in a mixed cultural family. For him Christmas was not about a baby Jesus at all. It was about Santa and presents, and he had a hard time giving up the reality of St. Nick! And a snowman is even less freighted with significance than the Santa; it's safe.

Still, it's an odd sign of the pervasiveness of the "dominant paradigm," isn't it? And funny, the snowman next to the bougainvillea.

A conversation about poems

I don't live where I grew up. I don't have to worry about bumping into someone from my past by the avocados in the supermarket (although this actually happened to John here on this other end of the continent). But seeing some people I knew from "back then" this fall, with thoughts of my manuscript actually (oh please) getting published before too long made me feel weird. I gave the manuscript to a few people to read. Tonight I heard from one old dear friend:

"If one purpose of poetry is to allow a reader to see things from a wholly new perspective, it worked …" he said first. That's a good thing, I think. If there can be one purpose of art it must be to change the way one person, maybe, views the world. I would never presume to say to see another reality. Who says my views are real? I do think we go here, go there, then later look back and connect the dots. Any actual cause and effect is fiction. Or we take A and add it to B and come up with an equation that works -- but is it reality? This may be what Charles was talking about recently … Was it?

My friend also asked, "Where DO you get all of your ideas from???" To this I answered: "It's really not a question of ideas. W.C. Williams said, in an injunction to poets of his day: "No ideas but in things."

A SORT OF A SONG

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
---through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

And I continued: "I'll go further than that, in a way. Some ideas come from things -- in those cases, it's a question of how much to reveal, explain, clarify, and how much to evoke and leave mysterious. ('---through metaphor to reconcile / the people and the stones.') But often my ideas come from words, rather than the other way around … The [poem we were talking about] is a poem about language -- at least as much as it is about anything else. (Okay, it's also about loss of innocence or whatever.) But the whole poem involves the way people spoke in Yonkers back then … though I have no idea if young people speak that way now. I'm hyper aware of how people speak. A lot of the poem was intent on capturing that."

He also said: "I admire your courage - I could never be so honest." To which I said, "It's not autobiography. I can be honest because: it's a poem, it's words, it's art." But also, what would be the purpose of being dishonest. It's not as if I'm going to get rich from this stuff.

As in Orwell, the rats ...

That line's from one of my own poems, so I can steal it. This is the story: It became obvious that the smell in the basement was more/other than just the turkey carcass in the compost. It came from under the basement stairs, where we have stored the wooden cradle, rocking horse, high chair. Recently, Greta set to barking, and I heard a rustling there. I asked John to check; he poked around and then, after a bit, the rustling quieted down.

I figured he'd scared away the mom rat, and, well, see below, the process of orphanization (but it won't help). Somebody had to check again, and my hero did so while I was showering this morning. All that was left for me to do was vacuum the dust and cobwebs with the shop vac before putting everything back. Anyway, I was right about the scenario. You want your movie plots ruined, I'll be happy to help.

In other news: In case anyone is keeping track, the reason I haven't posted about the outcome of John's meeting with the Opera personnel is it hasn't happened yet, has been put off until December 7. So we are both waiting on pins to hear news this first part of December. It's either going to be a very good Christmas … or it isn't.

News this morning that the documentary of the making of the Dr. Atomic opera (that my John was a top scientist in) is going to be at Sundance.

The Process of De-Orphanization

I just found online the Library of Congress description of my book. The Library of Congress reviewer must either be drunk or else have a very post-postmodern perspective.

Publisher Description for Dragging the Lake / Robert Thomas

With more than half of drug targets based on GPCRs, translating into billions in worldwide sales, there is great interest in finding high-resolution structures for recombinantly expressed GPCRs, discovering novel drug interactions, and designing tailor-made, structure-based drug therapies that display improved efficacy and selectivity with lesser side effects. This book describes the physiological role of GPCRs and their involvement in various human diseases. Chapters present current approaches in drug discovery that include target selection, establishment of screening, functional assays for GPCRs, and the continuous de-orphanization process of orphan GPCRs. The book also covers recombinant GPCR expression for drug screening and structural biology, different methods to obtain structural information on GPCRs, and the importance of bioinformatics.

Crystal clear

Cold and windy in The City. Of course, it doesn't get that cold here, not Minnesota cold or Canada cold, but houses here are not constructed for cold. Closets aren't either. Walking the dog at dawn, I threw on, above my yoga pants, a cotton camisole, a long underwear shirt, a cotton jersey, a fleece vest, and John's hooded jacket, warmer than anything I own. I also wore a wool beret and scarf. And I was cold! No gloves--I've lost both pairs. That's something for my Xmas list…


I would have liked to walk fast to warm up, but Greta cannot be rushed. What does she care! She's got her Akita double coat.

But then the light was beautiful -- a golden, hopeful light topping off the trees.

It is crystal clear as well; once again, you can see the cliffs of Pt. Reyes from here. John's got three pairs of binoculars on the bookshelf. He's such a voyeur -- not in a bad way. He hinted he would like one of those telescopes for our living room. Maybe…

The wind has quieted since I started this. I can hardly hear John's windchimes that were chiming like crazy earlier.

I have a new poem for Sunday. It's still raw, but better than nothing. Maybe I can sneak some time from work to cook it a bit today.

Hunter in an Arctic Midnight

A “secret informant” suggested that I check out the acknowledgments page of Norman Dubie’s latest book of poems, Ordinary Mornings of a Coliseum. Imagine my shock as I read down the page and suddenly see this: “‘Hunter in an Arctic Midnight’ is dedicated to the poet Robert Thomas”! My first thought is that he must mean another poet Robert Thomas. How would Dubie even have heard of me? As is obvious from two old posts of mine, The Poetic Idea and The Clouds of Magellan, Dubie is one of the handful of my favorite poets. I guess he must really have had me in mind, though, because of the connections between his “Arctic Midnight” and a poem of mine, “The Blizzard.” I just can’t say how much this means to me. Dubie is a generous human being.

Weather

We've got us some weather today, as they say. Wet, wet, wet. Greta only got a teeny little walk today. I was lazy, okay? Tired and cold and maybe a little down, the flip side of all my manic activity over the holiday.

I did get some competition submissions together. There's time to get them to the P.O. tomorrow. (I love the machine in my local Sloat Blvd. Post Office. While the line goes out the door, I stroll over to this thing, put in my debit card, and send all my packets. Voila!)

Well, John is up at the studio printing, will be back soon. Last night I cooked up the carcass of that poor dead turkey. Tonight I'll make soup. Poor skinny husband has to eat it all by himself this year, because I no longer eat meat. I'll cook it, but I won't eat it.

I've been helping with the pies though. I had pumpkin pie for lunch. There's still some left, along with half an apple pie and a piece of pecan.

Op-Ed Poets

I felt a little shock and awe when I opened the Times this morning to the Op-Ed page and found poets not pundits. Mary Ruefle, Phillip Levine, Jennifer Michael Hect, Billy Collins and James McMIchael over breakfast.

So poetry is not dead after all or at least not without influence. Maybe someone somewhere (e.g., The Poetry Foundation?) did a bit of arm-twisting. Whatever. I didn't really love the poems, except maybe Hecht's, but on Black Friday I could feel another day of thanks.

Poetry the Morning After

Diane and John outdid themselves yesterday with an incredible dinner for 12 lucky people. I have to get those recipes for brined turkey and cornbread/wild rice stuffing, plus 19 or 20 delicious side dishes, appetizers, and desserts. The conversation was great, although I did feel a bit out of it when it turned to the pros and cons of the Nintendo Wii (thumbs up) versus the PlayStation 3 (thumbs down).

Meanwhile, I got a message taking a survey on two questions: “Why, after all, do you write poems, and how do you make a living while you’re doing it?” This was my response:

I’ll start with the “easy” question of how I make a living. I work four days a week as a legal secretary. I’ve found it a pretty good way to make a decent living while still leaving time and energy to write, if you don’t mind not having anything very cool to tell people when you introduce yourself and they ask you what you do. I’ve found there’s a big difference between working four days a week and five days a week, and I also think it’s crucial to find a position (no matter what you do) that doesn’t drain you emotionally. I suspect the particulars of individual jobs are more important than the line of work. I’ve had horrendous jobs as a legal secretary that left me too exhausted to write. The job I’ve had for the past few years, however, has been great, even though the job descriptions for both jobs said pretty much the same thing. I suspect the same may be true of teaching and everything else. Teaching composition and literature at one community college may be a nightmare, but doing more or less the same thing at another school may turn out to be invigorating and inspiring. Most ways of making a living don’t seem to work very well for most poets I know, and they keep looking and experimenting until they find a small niche that does work for them. I taught high school for a year many years ago, but found it impossible to write while teaching. Maybe it would be different now.

Now for your harder question . . . I think of Kafka’s statement that “A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us.” Books have certainly had that effect on me. Strangely enough, the book I think of first is Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. My older sister gave it to me when I was 12, and I read it over and over until I almost knew it by heart. I think it let me know that there were people out there somewhere who had thoughts and feelings like mine even though I didn’t seem to find them in my home or my school or my neighborhood. I think that, like a lot of people, there were strange thoughts and intense emotions and bizarre imaginings inside of me that I didn’t find echoed in any of the conversations my family had at the dinner table or my teachers and friends had at school or on the playground or the families on TV had at their dinner tables, but I discovered they were echoed in books, whether Crime and Punishment or Catcher in the Rye or the little poem by Emily Dickinson I remember an otherwise utterly uninspiring teacher reciting:

I never lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod.
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!

Angels—twice descending
Reimbursed my store—
Burglar! Banker—Father!
I am poor once more!

I remember hearing that and the emotional force and complexity of it just hit me like Kafka’s axe, the extreme imagination of God as burglar and banker at the same time, the emotional intensity of that paradox, how taboo it was to talk about feelings like that and how true. It made me want to create something like that, something where “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears” would find a place where they could not be denied. And oh yeah, I also wanted to be Bob Dylan singing “Like a Rolling Stone.”

Happy Thanksgiving

Yes, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Savoring a moment of of blissful peace before turning in (and waiting for John to finish his computer game!). Some glitches here, but mostly all going well.

There was a downpour here earlier this evening, but it didn't last long. Nathaniel and Jen brought over Chinese food from Eric's in Noe Valley -- yum -- and we didn't have to cook. I made them take home the leftovers, 'cause there ain't no room in the refrigerator.

Just realized that today was November 22nd. If you are old enough, you will never forget where you were on November 22. I was thirteen when JFK died, and I remember it like a wound. At my class reunion last September someone told me remembers me on that day in 1963, how I was crying and how I said things would not just go on. I was too young to know that things always go on, one way or another.

I have many things to be thankful for and wish the same to you.

Calm Before the Storm

Tuesday: Heard on the car radio that Robert Altman died. I'm sad; he was one of my favorites. His movies were interesting, always interesting, in the way that people are interesting. Robert said, in email: "It's funny: I think everyone loves some Altman film. You can almost define your taste by which one." But I'm not sure I could pick one, and I also liked his failures and his little known films. I loved Gosford Park, but I also enjoyed The Company, Kansas City, Short Cuts, Pret a Porter -- lots of others. Oh, also The Player!

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Monday evening, and I'm feeling oddly calm. I even went over to the YMCA and worked out; I cooked salmon burgers and salad for dinner; and here I am blogging. Some of the calm is earned in that our Thanksgiving crowd has shrunk from a hefty 14 to a mere dozen. With my job, I'm back to writing instead of pretending to be a graphics artist. And John was let out early from Opera and came home around 3:00; he vacuumed and took Miss Greta on her second walk. We even had plumbers here to fix the drain on our bathroom sink …

But mostly, I know, I'm like this. I'll think it's a piece of cake. I'll mosey, I'll take my time. And then at some point, I freak. I know I'll freak. John knows I'll freak. It's only a matter of exactly when the tornado will hit. My mother was like this. The waking up in the middle of the night obsessed by things I have to do was just like her. I hope I'm not quite as obsessed as she was. She was like that day in and day out. Really.

But we'll get through. Tomorrow, early, we'll go over to Tower Market and get the turkey and the few remaining things Trader Joe's did not have. Wednesday morning we'll scoot over to the flower mart on 6th and Brannan and see if I can find some flowers that go with our tablecloths and maybe some chysanthemums for the front stairs. (I still have to work all day Tuesday. It's bad enough that as a contact worker there will be three days this week I can't bill for!) And Tuesday evening (very bad timing), I'm getting a haircut. (Oh, I don't like being fussed over in a hair salon and always put it off. But I do really like my stylist. He's an African American guy, and he knows curly hair. He does such a great job, I've been going to him since before my son was born, and that's forever. We've seen each other through a lot-we are nearly the same age--and we really get along.)

But now I have to revisit my lists and nag my husband …

Listening

How about listening to Robert Thomas's Nov. 7 reading/interview on Jan Beatty's Pittsburgh radio poetry show.

It's great!

Leaping

Glorious day to be alive and living in San Francisco. A bright 75°, and one didn't need a jacket even at Funston -- though it's almost always windy and cold there. And once again, pods of dolphins swimming south, leaping in and out of the waves. They are becoming more frequent, but still, they are amazing.

Not half the stuff got done that needs to be done. I mailed out one envelope with an upcoming deadline. I ordered shades for the windows of my office. (Too expensive, but I can't work there most mornings with the sun in my eyes.)

We picked up some stuff at the Albertson's -- a thermometer, a new corkscrew, lightbulbs. I need to get a garlic press; I forgot that.

Then John had to exchange the portfolio he bought at Flax for his big presentation in two weeks, and now he's gone to Opera. I've got plenty I can do on my own -- pay bills, for one, start cleaning …. Maybe I'll turn on Singing in the Rain later and leap around with Gene Kelly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh what a gorgeous sunset, all bruised purples and orange pinks. From my window I can see the pinpoint lights of six fishing boats out there on the ocean, like a constellation.

Unwise

I'm not sure it's wise for me to be blogging now, after drinking a glass of wine, after driving an hour and a quarter back from Alameda … The thing is, it wasn't dark when I left, but it was going to get dark; I knew that. That's why I was so steering-wheel-clenched nervous, because I don't see in the dark. And because gnarly turned into insane as soon as I hit the bridge. But that's no excuse for not remembering to turn on my headlights until I was four blocks from my hill. O mi god.

Well, anyway, I survived, and don't believe I caused anyone else any accidents. I'm not a very good grownup. Although I could be worse. I'm skipping working out because, well because it means going out there. But until John and doggie get home, I'll not have any more wine.

The presentation at my (contract) job did nor go exceptionally well. I didn't think it would, but it really didn't.

And somehow, though it's rather daunting to have work that I have to fix sitting there waiting for me to fix it, I'm going to have to forget about that for now and try and wrap my mind around cooking Thanksgiving dinner for fourteen in my tiny house. And try to not wrap my mind around the dental torture coming up in the future.

I know this post has nothing to do with poetry. I'm getting some applications out. I'm sending out some manuscripts. I emailed an old friend a couple days ago to see if he had read my manuscript but he hadn't yet.

And so it goes.

I think maybe it's time for a list.

d-

Invisible Ink

Following Diane’s post below “About Seeing,” on Linda Gregg’s essay, I read Mary Ruefle’s essay from the same collection.

I was struck by this sentence: “There is a world which poets cannot seem to enter. It is the world everybody else lives in. And the only thing poets seem to have in common is their yearning to enter this world.”

And how can you resist an essay that includes this story: “In the 2001 Kentucky Derby, which I watched live on television, Keats ran against Invisible Ink. There was no way I was going to miss this race ....”

The Falcon Cannot Hear the Falconer

I watched The Maltese Falcon again last night for the nth time. What a movie: where is John Huston when we need him? Perhaps my great weakness as a poet is that my writing is more influenced by The Maltese Falcon and Bringing Up Baby than “Meditation at Lagunitas” or “Mock Orange” or “Howl,” more influenced by the voices of Peter Lorre and Rosalind Russell than Robert Pinsky or Adrienne Rich. Is there any news (other than the election) more exciting than the recent release of a restored version of Renoir’s Rules of the Game?

I’m exaggerating but I think one thing about these films that’s directly relevant to poetry is their rhythm and speed. How I love those fast-talking guys and gals! How I love them especially after going to one too many poetry readings in that slo-mo style we’re so familiar with: “So much depends [pause] upon [pause] a red wheel [pause] barrow [pause] glazed [pause] with rain [pause] water [pause] beside the white [pause] chickens.” Of course Williams himself (if you listen to the old recordings) did not read his poems this way at all—it’s a contemporary affectation. Do poets think the audience is too dumb to follow the poem unless they talk ... really ... slow?

I love to imagine Bogart reading the lines instead: “Yes, angel, I’m going to send you over. So much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.” The film even makes fun of its speed when Bogart fast-talks the cops and then says to the stenographer, “You getting this alright, son, or am I going too fast for you?” And the kid replies, along with us in the audience, “No sir, I’m getting it alright.”

About Seeing

Okay, this post could be called About Gloating -- one feels like gloating -- or About Celebrating, because one feels like celebrating too (and I'm happy to say I did my small part to help in the defeat of the Republicans) but, after all, this is a poetry blog, and this post is about poetry and about seeing.

i was just looking at Linda Gregg's essay on poets.org. Can't remember why I went to the site. I kind of left her essay up until I had time to read it. As usual, there were things I agreed with, things I didn't, but I was struck by this paragraph:

I am astonished in my teaching to find how many poets are nearly blind to the physical world. They have ideas, memories, and feelings, but when they write their poems they often see them as similes. To break this habit, I have my students keep a journal in which they must write, very briefly, six things they have seen each day—not beautiful or remarkable things, just things. This seemingly simple task usually is hard for them. At the beginning, they typically "see" things in one of three ways: artistically, deliberately, or not at all. Those who see artistically instantly decorate their descriptions, turning them into something poetic: the winter trees immediately become "old men with snow on their shoulders," or the lake looks like a "giant eye." The ones who see deliberately go on and on describing a brass lamp by the bed with painful exactness. And the ones who see only what is forced on their attention: the grandmother in a bikini riding on a skateboard, or a bloody car wreck. But with practice, they begin to see carelessly and learn a kind of active passivity until after a month nearly all of them have learned to be available to seeing—and the physical world pours in. Their journals fill up with lovely things like, "the mirror with nothing reflected in it." This way of seeing is important, even vital to the poet, since it is crucial that a poet see when she or he is not looking—just as she must write when she is not writing. To write just because the poet wants to write is natural, but to learn to see is a blessing. The art of finding in poetry is the art of marrying the sacred to the world, the invisible to the human.

I can remember many years ago when John and I lived in Manhattan -- no, even longer ago -- I lived in the Bronx and he lived in Manhattan, and I would take the subway down to visit him. I was going through a depressed period, and I couldn't write anything. John, who is and was a photographer would ask me, as one asks a child what she learned in school that day, what I saw on the subway on my way downtown. And I started looking, so I could see and tell him, and then I started seeing. And it saved me then, in a way.

About meaning

Should be working, but as always, there are better things to do. Really loved this quote by the curmudgeonly William Logan on today's Poetry Foundation blog:

" I don’t look to the poem’s content for the meanings of life, or for consolation in the losses life demands. I find solace in the language itself, in the way meaning plays through syntax and form, in the blink of wordplay or the cocked gesture of the well-turned phrase. I don’t say there isn’t meaning to be had… the life carries the language, not the other way around. The language doesn’t hold the meaning; the language is the meaning."

Hey, I would be terrified to have him review my book, but I totally agree with him here.

Very Bad Day Climate Patterns

Apparently, the weather is moving my way.

Anne says, on Rebecca's blog: "I had a Very Bad Day on Saturday. Apparently, bad days move from east to west, and took a few days to reach you. I'm sorry. If it helps, I had a pretty good day yesterday, so you can look forward to yours along about Sunday."

I hope that's a promise.

Damn.

Work in Progress

I was looking at my manuscript today, looking at it with others' eyes, I told myself (see below). Of course today, after recently getting a half dozen of the lot out, I see a glaring problem, something I can't believe I didn't see before. In my eagerness to put the most powerful poems up front, at least one poem of the first section doesn't belong at all in the first section. In another two poems, I wanted to change verb tense.

Do I make these changes now, before sending out the next batch -- or do I hope someone will take the book and I can make the changes before the book goes to print? I am weighing the pros and cons.

In the meantime, I'm feeling weary, generally discouraged about things, while just a short time ago all was bright and shiny.

Halloween (but not here)

Feeling a bit down, probably the letdown after all the excitement of one reunion and two weddings. Either that or the jetlag.

It's funny, I've given my manuscript to a few people of late, none of them poets. I feel like I have to wrap it in a plain brown wrapper -- or at least enclose a warning that it is not fact checkable -- it's poetry. But none of these people are poets and I don't know what they expect. Some of them know things about my life they will read into the poems. It's a strange vulnerable feeling.

On the other hand, I've found that it's way more important to me than it is to others. Poetry doesn't make a very loud thud when it is dropped in the real world. You can scarcely hear it.

Well, this is a throwaway post, but I thought I should check in now that I'm back from Back East.

Not much Halloween happening at my house. Young people can get free candy in far easier ways than struggling up my very steep hill.

Origins

Exploring the mountains of stuff at my mother's house yesterday, I found the first poem I wrote. I must have been all of six years old. I know I was too young to know how to write because my aunt wrote down the words for me. I guess I had a leaning toward the blues even then. Here it is:

Bees in the cupboard, cows in the corn
Bees in the cupboard, cows in the corn
I wonder where the dog was born

That's it. I could probably learn something from the economy of my early work. Obviously, I identified with the dog.

Madness in Method

I recently read Lee Strasberg’s classic book on Method acting, A Dream of Passion, and its relevance to poetry was striking. Well, its relevance to poetry was striking to Strasberg too, as he traces the roots of Method acting back to the Romantic poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and also to the great Modernist writers, Eliot, Proust, and Joyce. Writing in specific sensual imagery is rather out of fashion and has become almost a cliché, but Strasberg reminded me how emotion is in fact rooted in sensual particulars (Proust’s cookie). Strasberg talks about the acting process:

The correct process of inducing a response is through the senses. He [the actor] tries to remember where he was. Say he was in the yard. The actor cannot simply think in generalities. The yard is composed of many objects that he sees, hears, touches, and so forth, to which he assigns the word yard. Only by formulating the sensory concreteness of these objects can the emotions be stimulated. It is not sufficient to say, “It was hot.” Rather, the actor must define precisely in what area he experienced the particular heat he remembers; the actor localizes the concentration in that area to create not just a memory but a reliving of that particular moment. The actor remembers what he had on: the sight, texture, or sensation of that material on the body. The actor tries to remember the event that caused the emotion, not in terms of the sequence of the story, but in terms of the various senses that surrounded it.

This feels to me so much like the process of writing a poem! It’s all about imagining the texture of the fabric one is wearing, the feel of the wind on the only spot on one’s neck uncovered by the scarf, the color of the bench at the bus stop—and not just the important details but the unimportant, because, as Strasberg says, “In the midst of severe crisis, an individual’s attention will often register the smallest details related and unrelated to that crisis.”

Again, Strasberg makes the connection to writing and says the task is the same: “Affective memory is a decisive element in most artistic creation. The only difference is that in other art forms, the affective memory is created by the artist in the solitude of his own environment. … The link between affective memory and creativity has been a constant presence in poetry.”

The phrase “a dream of passion” is taken from Hamlet’s speech about acting, and it captures, I think perfectly, the artist’s balancing act: the need for art to be passionate, but it’s not exactly passion—rather, a dream of passion. A dream without passion is not poetry, but it must be a dream. As Hamlet says, “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?”

Cooling Time

Been reading C.D. Wright's Cooling time. I actually met C.D. Wright years ago, at SF State, when she and Forrest Gander were just getting together. (I doubt she remembers.) The Associated Students were trying to close the Poetry Center, so John and I attended the hearing, said the Poetry Center was one of the reasons we came to San Francisco. People, I'm sure wondered what was in it for us, why we bothered. I'm not sure I know.

In 2004, when I was at Squaw, C.D. was one of the faculty poets. She hadn't won the MacArthur yet. More than a few people were scared of her, bothered, bewildered. She did scare me a little, though I liked her. It's always been easier for me to relate to men than to strong women.

This book though knocks me out. I could quote almost anything. I'm going to quote all that I can before I lose patience with the typing:

"I believe in a hardheaded art, an unremitting, unrepentant practice of one's own faith in the word in one's own obstinate terms... I believe the word used wrongly distorts the world...Also I think that antithetical poetries can and should coexist without crippling one another. They not only serve to define their other to a much more exacting degree than would be possible in the absence of the one or the other; they insure the persistence of heterogeneous (albeit discouragingly small) constituencies... I am not sure of where I am going...

"We come from a country that has made a fetish if not a virtue out of proving it can live without art: high, low, old, new, fat, lean, and particularly the rarely visible, nocturnal art of poetry."

"An atmosphere of depression will arouse artists' attention over an atmosphere of prosperity nearly every time. Also true, ruins are beautiful to us; blues make us feel good; it is through the wound that we perceive the body alive alive-o."

"Poetry and advertising (the basest mode of which is propaganda) are in direct and total opposition. If you do not use language you are used by it. if you do not recognize the terms peacekeeper missile and preemptive strike as oxymorons, your hole has already been dug."

" 'I think poetry must / I think it must / Stay open all night / In beautiful cellars,' [Thomas] Merton insisted. And so do I..."

"Writing is a risk and a trust. the best of it lies yonder. My linguistic skills expand on the horizon. So does the horizon. my goals are higher-minded than they once were. Once you could say, I had ambition. I never could write any old way. And like many from my generation, I desire the integrated life."

Poets are mostly voters and taxpayers, but the alienation of the poet is a common theme. Among poets there are also probably higher than average rates of clutch burnout, job turnover, rooting about, sleep apnea, noncompliance, nervous leg syndrome, depression, litigation, black clothing and so forth, but this is where we live..."

I guess that's enough for now.

Yes, again

Today's mail brought notification that I am again -- this time one of three -- finalist in a manuscript competition. This is the 19th time Demimonde has been a finalist. It was called "emotionally engaging" and "marvelous." Will it ever just be good enough?

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A fine fall day in SF. Walked the dog in that pooch paradise, Funston. After I finish my Moroccan mint green tea, I'm going out again. The garden calls.

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Addendum: Monday is yet another anniversary of John Lennon's birthday. Well, I have this essay I wrote recounting my adventure meeting Lennon and working in his entourage for one weekend--his birthday weekend--in 1971. Does anybody out there know of a publication (online is fine) that would be interested in this?

Just for starters, don't anyone suggest Rolling Stone.

Mystic Word

Interesting piece about Hart Crane in The New Yorker by Adam Kirsch:

Once a poet calls his myth a myth, he prevents the reader from treating it as a reality; we use the word “myth” only for stories we ourselves cannot believe. That is why a poet cannot create myths; he can only employ and embellish the ones he has inherited. Homer could not have invented the Olympian gods, or Dante the cosmology of medieval Catholicism, and still have written as he did. By striving so effortfully to turn the Brooklyn Bridge into a religious symbol, Crane forces us to recognize that all he has really created is a vague and problematic metaphor.

Poetry Readings, NY & PA

I know I've been absent from the blog for while, but it's been a hard time. My mother passed away a couple weeks ago after a chock-full 89-year life, and next week Cheryl and I are going to Wisconsin to bury her ashes in her home town. I'd planned a small book tour, but because of these events, it's going to be even smaller. I'm keeping a couple commitments I'd already made, though, and would love to see some people at these readings!

Saturday, October 7, 2006, 2:00 p.m.
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (between Houston and Bleecker), New York City

Reading with Julie Sheehan, author of Orient Point (W.W. Norton, 2006), winner of the Barnard Women Poets' Prize, and Thaw (Fordham Univ. Press, 2001), winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006, 7:30 p.m.
Enrico’s Tazza D’Oro Café
1125 N. Highland Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA

Reading with Lori Wilson, winner of West Virginia Writers Poetry Award, and Arlene Weiner, author of Escape Velocity (Ragged Sky Press, 2006).

Wednesday, October 11, 2006, 7:00 p.m.
Milkboy Coffee Writers Workshop
2 East Lancaster Avenue, Ardmore, PA (outside of Philly)

Reading and discussion with Ken Kalfus, author of novels A Disorder Peculiar to the Country (Ecco, 2006) and New York Times Notable Book The Commissariat of Enlightenment (Harper, 2006).

What It Takes

I couldn't sleep last night (or this morning) -- again. Something about the change of seasons, being in between jobs, two upcoming trips Back East, and still, thoughts about the reunion.

So I answered my new/old friend's question:

I say I have many questions but really it is all one: how does one sit down and write a poem?

(He is a writer, but not a poet.) This is what I said to him:

There isn't one answer, of course. Get thirteen poets and you'd get thirteen ways of looking at that blackbird. But it's a good question, nevertheless. I'm going to be teaching a five-week class this spring, a poetry workshop; I ought to be able to answer it.

Picasso, when dared as a child to draw a donkey, drew a donkey with one stroke starting at the leg. You could start anywhere, and it wouldn't necessarily limit where you ended up.

I often have to sneak up on a poem. If I face it squarely, head on, it eludes me, it disappears. (That's why the poems I've been struggling with about the reunion aren't working. I tell myself I'm writing about the reunion and they're out of here. Maybe in six months I can pull them out, tell myself they're not about the reunion but about a Robert Altman movie -- and it might work.)

For me, sound is key. It's the best and worst aspect of my poems. I often start with a phrase that just comes to my head.

I take notes all the time. I make a note in a notebook about something intriguing and forget it. These notes can be sounds, reminders of something read or said, dream sequences, ideas I need to research and pursue -- or anything. Often the notes don't go anywhere at all, but sometimes they do. Sometimes, when looked at later, the mishmash of the scribble creates the poem. A misspelling, a shape suggests something to me. I wrote a poem after seeing Walk The Line, the Johnny Cash movie. I wrote it on a narrow sheet of paper. The poem is about crawling off into a cave to die, and the poem is narrow like the paper and cramped like a cave. It is, as you said associative. It's best not explained in the poem.

Sometimes, more rarely, the note is the poem. The poem Sonhar that is on my website was a reverie, some rather disorganized thoughts that came to me sitting in my garden and drinking a glass of wine and thinking about the one boy ever who cried for me, someone back in college. I hardly wrote it; it wrote itself. He'd grown up in Brazil, which is why the Brazilian / Portuguese references, but there would be no way one would know that.

But that's unusual. More often, I write whatever and in the clear light of day edit it, look for the form it contains, remove the dead matter. When my mom was dying of a brain tumor in 2000, I wrote dozens of poems to deal with it. They were 90 percent awful. I ended up taking all the lines I liked from those poems and putting them in one composite poem. The star image you liked in Fraught With Danger was cannibalized from a poem I wrote very long ago, in the seventies, imagining my own conception.

I don't necessarily have any idea where the poem is going when I start writing it. My latest accepted poem, Conjugated Visits, which will be published in Field in the spring, started with a note about a snail and a question about styles of love. It ended up as a sort of grammar of love: she, he, they, we and so forth.

Maybe writing a poem is like any other writing, but more so, taking more advantage of the serendipitous, not necessarily arriving at answers when it asks questions.

Okay, poets out there in the blogosphere, what does it take for you?

Hot

Hot in San Francisco today. I mean you can't wear a jacket or sweater hot. This is our summer. I'm sipping Peet's coffee over ice and enjoying the feeling of my bare feet on the cool wood floor. I opened the back door. I put on shorts.

Wood floors stay cool in hot weather. In the house I grew up in, my bedroom was on the top floor under the slanting roof. It got very hot. I don't know how many people had air conditioning in those days, but we just had one big ceiling fan in the middle of the house. On hot nights in summer, back then, I'd lie in the nude on my floor.

Once I put this interesting bit in a poem. It was years ago, at Squaw, in Sharon Olds's workshop. I remember she scolded me: If I wanted to talk about masturbation, I should just say it. This I found very funny, because I hadn't thought about that at all, neither back then nor when writing the poem. I just wanted the coolness of the floor.

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Bees are buzzing. Monarchs are migrating.

Criticizing the Critics

OK, what, really, is the function of criticism, or, specifically, of most of the literary criticizing that goes on, from Poetry magazine to attack-mode blogs? To teach and enlighten the reader? To impose one's own aesthetic? To suppress what you personally dislike or consider inferior (to suppress through intimidation)? To protect your own turf? It seems like that's what it's all about. I love someone's take on a poem or a poet that gives a new angle, a thought I never had before, something that enlarges the work. I hate reading criticism driven by some form of envy or threat, or worse, that's meant mostly to make the reader think the critic is pretty damn smart. Hubris seems to be high on the list here of what characterizes literary critics.

Brouhaha over BAP

I couldn't sleep last night. I was anxious about several situations that have arisen -- mostly the usual, jobs and money. No need to bore you with the details. But I was also thinking about the recent reunion I went to and a parallel to the brouhaha (an onomatopoeic word if there ever was one) over the BAP 2006.

Years ago, in the dawn of prehistory when I was in high school, I was first literary editor and then co-editor in chief of the literary magazine, called the Compendium. I was very serious about my responsibilities, worked hard to get submissions from all six grades (the school was 7-12), did my best to find unobjectionable if not stellar work, and put together a prize-winning magazine. Upon publication, however, there was a huge uproar. A certain faction accused me of elitism, nepotism, and probably a lot of other isms they wouldn't say to my face. A countercultural version of the magazine came out, called True -- no I'm not kidding. It seems that I had rejected the work of the guy who was considered the school bard -- oh, he was cool, he was. It didn't seem to matter to his fans that what he had submitted to the Compendium was word for word copied from the liner notes of a Dylan album. I also sinned and published my two sisters, the other editors, and myself. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you think I had a lot of other possibilities? Besides, if I didn't publish my sisters, my mother would have creamed me.

So why do I remember this many years later? Because the person who put out True was there at the reunion and still held a grudge. He still considers me to be a JAP, a person of privilege (if only he knew!), and evil to the core.

Well, why does this remind me of the BAP? The situation is different, but honestly, I don't think those editors are evil. I think, well, they must have had their reasons. I'm sure they felt and feel that the book they put out was the Best one they could under whatever circumstances they worked under. I don't think it's terrible that Lehman's assistants are published in the book. I don't even think it is so darn terrible if Lehman's wife is in the book. She is a poet. Her poem was published in a legitimate magazine. Maybe if she hadn't been Lehman's wife, her poem wouldn't have surfaced -- but there are an awful lot of ifs in the publishing world, in the art world. If Eliot hadn't known Pound, he wouldn't have been published in Poetry. If Ashbery hadn't been called to Auden's attention, he wouldn't have won the Yale Younger. The list is long.

So I don't mind that this book is out there as it is. I say that even acknowledging that I don't like a lot of what I've read of the current book so far. I say this even though I find Lehman's introduction to be inane and Collins's to be insulting. I find the BAPs interesting and usually buy them, if I can, even though I've only thought a couple through the years were really good books and sometimes find the contributors' notes the "best" part.

I agree with the bloggers who feel the fuss is way out of proportion -- and doesn't even help the situation. Honest, if you don't like the series, don't buy 'em, don't talk about 'em.

Poetic Genius?

The MacArthur "genius" awards were announced today. I noted the absence of a poet on the list. There's a fiction writer, a playwright, a sculptor, several musicians, some other artists, but not a poet in sight. Is this one more commentary on the sad state of poetry today? Seems like everywhere you look someone's musing on the stagnation of contemporary poetry, the harm done by the MFA proliferation, the remoteness of poets from readers/audiences (except for performance poetry). Could be just an off year--and there ARE many good poets around--yet...

Life is what happens...

Robert's mom died yesterday. I'm posting it here in case any of you want to send him your condolences. She was 90 years old and a difficult woman, but she raised Robert without his father; she was a doctor; she brought up a boy who grew up to be Robert, a wonderful poet and great friend.

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I have been back home since late Sunday night, after an awful flight. It's taken me a day or two to recover from the flight and the weekend, so I'm grateful I work at home. I so loved seeing old friends and catching up on the decades that have past, but I'm glad and grateful, too, to be back in San Francisco, for all those things I take for granted: my sweet patient husband, my pooch, just people walking, people of every type speaking every language living side by side (we're not all singing Kumbayah, but people get along and can usually find time for a Good Morning when I'm out with the dog); the different foods; the presence of ocean; oh, and the coffee (Peet's!).


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And this morning, after a long drought, I got a poem accepted, an email from David Young, by Field!

Blogging the Reunion, Part 2

My computer says 4:44 a.m., 'cause that's the time back home, making it the third morning in a row I've been up before 5:00. So it's 7:45 local time and was nearly 3:00 by the time I was in bed. My head hurts and my knee hurts; I was a dancing fool.

What a trip! That was what I I heard our class saludatarian say last night -- and I could be wrong, but I doubt she ever took one (acid, that is). It was a trip. On this trip, everyone was 56 years old. Everyone had aging or dead parents. Many of us live far, far away from where we knew each other, in high school.

Last night, in the grand ballroom of this grand place, we played who are you and told the same stories over and over. Amazing the people who looked the same--or better--than they had 38 years ago. And the people who looked, well, bad. No one who was there had nothing going for them though, it seemed. T'hose people stayed away.

Happily I fared pretty well, according to consensus. I do not look the way I did back in 1968, but plenty of people said so. Of course, people are funny. They also thought that my sister-in-law and I looked alike, just 'cause we both have chin-length curly hair -- though I'm a redhead and she's a blonde (now) and she's taller and thinner.

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Now it's Sunday at 5:15 and I'll be flying out in 45 minutes, with any luck. We spent the final afternoon at the park down the hill and a few blocks from where I lived. The house is smaller, of course, the trees bigger, and very lush. The park seems fairly well tended. There were geese and five swans. Caterers barbecued the usual. I had corn and cole slaw and chips and a piece of sorta cold, very greasy cheese pizza, Yonkers pizza.

I am so effing exhausted. But I had a fabulous time, a wonderful time. I told secrets, made connections, kissed and hugged (it seemed) a thousand people, and talked with folks who wouldn't have given me the time of day back in the day as if they were friends. The organizers of this bash (mostly one woman) threaten to do this again in two years -- this time a cruise off Florida. I don't know about that. I think this weekend could last me a long time, but it was great.

Blogging the Reunion

Hell, I know some of you out there in the blogosphere aren't even 38 years old -- you cannot fathom what it's like to be at a 38-year high school reunion. Well, I'm here, and I can't fathom it either. We're staying at a large estate on the Hudson, sort of what I imagine royalty would inhabit if kings and queens roamed Westchester County. Hey, we didn't go to school here! We went to school in Yonkers, a decidedly lower scale sort of place. Well, imagine acres of rolling green and tall trees and neo-classical (or should I say pseudo classical) statuary like an Edward Gorey stage set.

And everyone here talks like the Sopranos. Okay, there are people I know where I live in San Francisco who think *I* have a NY accent, but believe me, I don't; not like this. I'm sharing a room with my sister-in-law, Jeannette, who is John's sister and who was "most popular" or "most friendly," I don't remember which, 38 years ago. I was class Dove and "most idealistic." It was 1968.

Last night, we walked into a room with people we didn't know but were supposed to know. Actually, in a class of over 300, there were plenty of people I hadn't known even then. So you go up to someone and say, "Hi, I'm ...." and they say "Hi, I'm ..." and then you both stand there.

There are people I remember though, some (besides my sister-in-law) I've kept in touch with over the years. Not a lot, but a few.

Tonight's the Big Event, a dinner dance. So far it's just warm up.

Aargh!

UPDATE: Email from Tupelo Press:

7th Annual First Book Award Winner Announced
David St John has selected:

Cloisters by Kristin LaTour

as the winner of Tupelo Press's 7th Annual First Book Award.

Runners up:

Phebus Etienne, Montclair, NJ Chainstitching
Diane Kirsten Martin, San Francisco, CA Demimonde
Susan Settlemyre Williams, Richmond, VA Ashes in Midair
Pamela Sutton, Philadelphia, PA Bone House Broken
Angela Shaw, Swarthmore, PA The Beginning of the Fields
Eleanor Stanford, Philadelphia, PA The Book of Sleep

And (sigh) so it goes…
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So late last night I was printing out a submission from my manuscript, and I discovered a mistake. A prose poem of six paragraphs or sections is missing the last section. I'm pretty sure this happened when I moved the manuscript from FrameMaker to Word sometime last spring. Adobe doesn't support FrameMaker for Macintosh System X, so I was forced to do that. Yes, I intend to get a MacBook (hello, son!) when I can so I can run both operating systems, but I haven't been in the position to.

I don't know whether to email the press where my manuscript is being considered or not. I don't want to make a pest of myself. Surely, it doesn't matter that much, and yet it does. This poem leads the section it is in, the third of five sections. I wonder how many other mistakes have crept into my manuscript over time. I hate to think.

I'm generally feeling stressed out of late. I leave for the high school reunion the day after tomorrow. I'm working on finishing my contract by the last week of September and starting a new contract with a different company on October 2, my thirtieth wedding anniversary. I need to make reservations for a trip to NYC at the end of that month. We've got two weddings to attend on consecutive weekends in that neighborhood, so we'll be doing NYC for our anniversary. Anybody know some reasonably priced B&Bs or other places to stay there? We're both from there, but it's been years.

I wish I would get some good news to pack away and sustain me during this reunion trip. The kind of news that doesn't wrinkle.

3-Day Weekend

Woohoo! Check this out! (Maybe it's been out there forever, but you know...)

Warning: rather noisy.