friday confession

Ages ago when I got a blackberry for work I used it only for email and occassionally for phoning. But since it's always in my purse and set to vibrate, if someone is calling me, I don't know until I check.
Anyway, my confession has nothing to do with that. It has to do with brick breaker. Like I said, ages ago, I had as little to do with my blackberry as possible. But about two weeks ago I started playing brick breaker. I don't know why. I had played it once or twice before and found it such a boring timesuck that I never gave it a second thought. But suddenly I was playing, and making such great leaps score-wise that my son called me a "freak" in a way he obviously considered a compliment.
But you know, I waste so much time already. In the time I spent ruining my eyesight aiming a blinking ball at some bricks, I could have finished one of the books I'm supposedly reading but actually very actively not reading.
Boy, I feel better already! I'm already on the road to recovery. This guy, however, is not.

and all the blackbirds

I had a freeing experience the other day. I heard about a woman who married the Eiffel Tower. She belongs to a small group of people in love – committed, romantic love - with objects. This interested me. I felt the whole world open up. I figured that although I’m married, I could enter into tantalizing, emotionally uncomplicated affairs. For example, there’s this green Mercedes sometimes parked around the corner that I adore. I say it offhand – love - but I don’t even like Mercedes and, usually, if you told me your car was leafgreen I’d say you’re a twit. I am also a lifelong lover of Chanel 5 and it occurs to me now that if I had married this fragrance instead of a man, I might have gone more lightly and confidently about life. There are a number of poetry books I’m secretly and repeatedly seeing on side, i.e. no matter what the main course is, one of these is tucked in my purse or bookbag or next to my bed. There’s a Syrah I could without qualms promise to love, honor and obey. The smell of gasoline. A certain watering can. Chagall’s “I and the Village.” The Great Wall of China. Seriously, I’ve found a new frame for these enriching relationships. It’s like I could live many times, or all over again.

red-headed godchild

I don’t know a poet who likes being compared to another poet. It suggests stealing and, worse, a lack of originality. I’m sure many women poets can recall at one point or other being likened to either Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton. Maybe because both expressed feelings about the self, statis, marriage, the urge to negate, entrapment, isolation, etc etc that most people have - from a woman’s point of view. But, style-wise, to have someone say “this seems a homage to Sexton” is like having your mouth plugged with sand, even if it’s meant as a compliment. And yet so many book jackets say, “Her poems evoke Plath . . .”

But perhaps more uncomfortable than being compared to a poet is being compared to two poets simultaneously, eg “It’s like Charles Simic making love to Syliva Plath over a place of oysters.” Or “His poems are a cross between Baudelaire and an Asian Jack Kerouac,” or “This is what Charles Bukowski would write if he were a ventriloquist for a drunken H.D.” That makes these unlikely pairs, and they're always unlikely, into the poet's parents! Not the best blurb, but often funny.

Wait until they start bringing in the siblings, cousins, stepparents and neighbors.

i arrived disheveled in my johnny cash pants

The Literary Bohemian has done a review of my chapbook, In the Voice of a Minor Saint. I do hope you'll tune in. The review includes a reprint of the shortest poem in the book, "Please Remove my Name." As always, based on a true story.
I mentioned a couple weeks back that The Literary Bohemian took two poems of mine for its April 1 issue. The editor has now taken some of my wine blurbs for the summer issue. I will be looking both ways when I cross that street today.

baby you're a rich man, too

Three poems I've enjoyed recently:
Certain Homes
Windshelf
The Pencil

the cheese stands alone

Can it really be that Friday will be another Friday the 13th? Didn’t we just have one of those?
Actually I’m not superstitious. But I have my tics.
Like if I get a certain number of points in a video game I will do well in my job. Or if I make it up the escalator before the song on my iPod ends, someone besides me will remember to buy milk. Or if ten cars make it through the light before it turns red, I’ll get the email I’m hoping for. If my right foot is first up the curb, “everything,” whatever that is, will be fine. But the stride must remain natural. It can’t look like I’m trying to get my right foot up the curb first. This requires some planning. If the cheese rinds are facing the outside of the cheeseplate, ie arranged as rounded petals, my home will be standing after the flood. Sometimes I’m writing a submission letter and I type a phrase and get the feeling if I use that phrase, my poems will be rejected. I try to fight this, but I usually lose. Voluntarily.
Anyway, superstitious I’m not. And the Friday part eqalizes the 13th part.

I wear fangs and drive a vespa

Yesterday I got up, brushed my teeth, fixed my hair, did my face, walked the dog, made coffee, drank coffee, punched my blackberry, ironed pants, got dressed, got to the door with my bag, my keys and my headache, turned around and sent my boss an email saying I was going back to bed, which I did, dressed, coiffed and caffeinated, taking a moment to remove my boots. Altogether this took about 50 minutes.

That apologetic email would have been the highlight of my day if Weave Magazine hadn’t posted a review of my chapbook. Thank you! Also my olde workshoppee poetess friend Brenda put some nice words about my chap up on her blog. Thanks again!

I feel better today.