10 Down

Germany is very cold. The sun is sorry and don’t be deceived when it manages to break through the grey.

Lots of traveling these days, but also staying put and receiving visitors. I try to make the most of plane time, reading or napping or listening to a podcast. On the last trip I listened to a Mary Gaitskill story called “A Dream of Men,” which was terrific. It made me regret not having read Mary Gaitskill yet.

I entertained the idea of doing a reading challenge this year and checked out a few popular ones. Understandably most of them encourage you to try genre fiction and, while I’m open to sci-fi and horror and even westerns, there is no way I’ll read romance fiction, and that’s what the two most promising challenges asked for. Why even begin? Then I thought it might be fun to put together my own challenge so I started composing a list until it began to roll its many eyes...

Read a book that came out the month you were born
Read a book about disgrace

Read a novel set outdoors
Read a trilogy backwards
Read a thriller by a person with a rare disease

I dropped this pursuit and simply set a goal of reading 60 books. 10 down. 

Misery catalog

I’ve been able to finish some new Misery poems this past week, though I am facing a disheartening glue conundrum. The stick doesn’t hold forever, and wet glues eat the thin pages. I’ve spent more than 50 euros trying different glues, to no avail. I ordered extra-strong glue sticks a couple days ago, and hope that brings a solution. Glue sticks are super because they don’t warp and well and they don’t weaken the paper. But they’re not lasting.

I had success with the Misery poems last year, with 35 published in 13 different journals. Including Misery 31, published at the tail-end of 2016 in concis, that makes 36. Below is a catalog with assorted links. 

For 2018, seven more Misery poems have been accepted by Diagram, Passages North, Poetry Northwest and Tinderbox. I have others submitted. My semi-move to Spain this past summer ate a lot of time and continues to do so, but it was a good move, and enriching.

Sixth Finch: The Wreck

Diagram: The Republic 

A Bad Penny: Champagne, Hot Temper, Night Flowers, My Ship, Empty Talk
One Sentence Poems: In Flowers 

The Journal: Infant Taint, Frostbite, I’m going up ace 

Escape into Life: The Far Woods, Very Grave/Very Reasonable, All the World, Impossible Flowers

Pith: O my lady, Moonscape 

Permafrost: Noonlight, Mirth, Doubt, Ice, The Upper Hand 

Concis: The Proper Thing 

Collapsar: Past Life, The Itch 

Thrush: Parlor, This Pale Furrow, Straddler, Blacktop, Interior Editor

Shuf: Searchlight, Squall, Eureka (no direct link)

Roanoke: Review: Spoon, The Rains (plus 8 reprints)

2017 Booklist

I squeaked over the 50-book barrier last year, despite a lot of work and tumult. I read less poetry than usual, but I'm not scolding myself. I won't lie and say, oh but I read so much poetry online, because it's not true.  Because I spent much time on airplanes, I listened to a number of story podcasts. Perhaps I'll try to remember them all for a separate list. 

My favorite book this year was War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans, a somewhat hybrid memoiry-fiction about WWI that was very affecting. 

There were books that disappointed, like Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. I also listened to a podcast of one of his stories, which I also disliked. I quite wanted to like Calvino, him being a legend and all, but there you have it. I found Invisible Cities a bit of a yawn, and the story, whose title I forget, sexist and ridiculous. 

I likewise disliked A Little Life by Hanya Yanaghihara, with its bad writing decisions, emotional-disaster tourism and sappy shot at "affirmation." I put this in a category with Bel Canto, which I also dislike, of books that try above all to say oh yes life can be awful but we're alive and did our best and love triumphs over death etc etc and here are some sunrises to prove it, which turns my stomach. 

I did back-to-back Dickens, which was fun. Dombey and Son beat out Our Mutual Friend, which has a fatal flaw, in my opinion, though it was still enjoyable. 

I also read two Brenda Hillman poetry collections and am happy to say she's wonderful. 

I read Clarice Lispector for the first time this year, both The Hour of the Star and The Passion According to G.H. I admired her writing a lot and hope to read more this year. 

I sought out dystopian & apocalyptic novels but was underwhelmed. The best of them was Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake and The Year of the Flood, which were imaginative and, most importantly, well written. I skipped the last of the trilogy out of fear of disappointment. 

Other books I'd recommend are Édouard Levé's Autoportrait and How to Be Both by Ali Smith, one of my favorite writers. 

1. Pieces of Air in the Epic by Brenda Hillman (Jan 2) USA
2. War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans (Jan 13) Netherlands
3. The Best American Mystery Stories, ed. Carl Hiaasen (Jan 17) USA
4. Eventide by Kent Haruf (Jan 21) USA
5. The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson (Jan 22) USA
6. A Little Life by Hanya Yanaghihara (Feb 4) USA
7. The Old Cities by Marcel Brouwers (Feb 11) USA
8. I Love Dick by Chris Kraus (Feb 17) USA
9. The Ground I Stand on Is Not My Ground (Feb 25) USA
10. The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink (Feb 26) USA
11. Ice Mountain by Dave Bonta (Mar 9) USA
12. Loose Sugar by Brenda Hillman (winter) USA
13. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens (Mar 26)* UK
14. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (Apr 30) UK
15. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (May 6) UK
16. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (May 10) USA
17. Fortune Cookies by Andrew Cox (May 14) USA
18. How to Be Both by Ali Smith (May 21) UK
19. The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes (May 27) UK
20. Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors (May 31) Denmark
21. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (May 31) - gave up USA
22. I am Legend by Richard Matheson (Jun 1) USA
23. Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (Jun 3) Argentina
24. The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Lhosa (June 18) Peru
25. The Indifferent World by Ken Craft (Jun 18) USA
26. The Summer Book by Tove Jannson (June 21) Finland
27. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller (July 4) USA
28. Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden (July 15) USA
29. The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier (July 21) USA
30. The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh (July 28) UK
31. What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe (Aug 9) UK
32. Night Fever: Interior Design for Bars and Clubs, ed. Frame Magazine (Aug 9)
33. Animals by Simon Beckett (Aug 10) UK
34. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (Aug 13) Canada
35. Recyclopedia by Harryette Mullen (Aug 13) USA
36. The Calling of the Grave by Simon Beckett (Aug 15) UK
37. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (Aug 22) Canada
38. Tinkers by Paul Harding (Aug 27) USA
39. Dark Blonde by Belle Waring (autumn) USA
40. Anna Édes by Dezso Kosztolányi (Sep 3) Hungary
41. Artless: Art by Simple Means by Marc Valli (Oct 15)
42. The Book of the Bird: Birds in Art by Angus Hyland (Oct 17)
43. Experimental Film by Gemma Files (Oct 27) USA
44. Underground Fugue by Margot Singer (Nov) UK
45. Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (Nov 11) USA
46. The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay (Dec 10) USA
47. Autoportrait by Edouard Leve (Dec 11) France
48. Paintings in Proust by Eric Karpeles (Dec 15) USA
49. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (Dec 16) Italy
50. The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector (Dec 27) Brazil
51. Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions by Maurice Manning (Dec 27) USA

Mid-year book list

Here's my half-year book list. I double-Dickensed in the spring!

My favorite fiction was Clarice Lispector's "Hour of the Star" because I loved the writing.

1. Pieces of Air in the Epic by Brenda Hillman (Jan 2) USA
2. War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans (Jan 13) Netherlands
3. The Best American Mystery Stories 2007, ed. Carl Hiaasen (Jan 17) USA
4. Eventide by Kent Haruf (Jan 21) USA
5. The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson (Jan 22) USA
6. A Little Life by Hanya Yanaghihara (Feb 4) USA
7. The Old Cities by Marcel Brouwers (Feb 11) USA
8. I Love Dick by Chris Kraus (Feb 17) USA
9. The Ground I Stand on Is Not My Ground (Feb 25) USA
10. The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink (Feb 26) USA
11. Ice Mountain by Dave Bonta (Mar 9) USA
12. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens (Mar 26) UK
13. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (Apr 30) UK
14. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (May 6) UK
15. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (May 10) USA
16. Fortune Cookies by Andrew Cox (May 14) USA
17. How to Be Both by Ali Smith (May 21) UK
18. The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes (May 27) UK
19. Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors (May 31) Denmark
20. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (May 31) - gave up USA
21. I am Legend by Richard Matheson (Jun 1) USA
22. Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (Jun 3) Argentina
23. The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Lhosa (June 18) Peru
24. The Indifferent World by Ken Craft (Jun 18) USA
25. The Summer Book by Tove Jannson (June 21) Finland

This land is my land

Things that kept me awake: whether my alarm clock would work, whether my back-up alarm clock would work, a lie my husband may be telling me, my daughter's education and future, my son's education and future, my doctor's appointment, the dog's broken claw, a story I'd edited perhaps with an error, the source of certain information (I got out of bed to check this), the story I had to write the next morning, dry skin, my son's sleeping hours, whether I should go to the bathroom (I did), whether I was warm enough (I got a sweater), or too warm (I took off the sweater), my lung capacity, why must I have a body, why must I have a mind, one or both of these are keeping me awake, the disaster administration, the glow of the energy saver strip, electromagnetic-wave pollution in the home, the earth, how miserable I'd be in the morning, the future of public lands.

(erasers by Anu Tuominen) 

2016 books

I had a good year of reading, with a number of terrific books rolling through in December alone. I've been putting off making my list with the notion I might be able to stuff just one more in, but with 14 hours of 2016 left, it's not going to happen.

It wasn't a great year as politics goes, but Bob Dylan did win the Nobel Prize and I will never forget sitting at my desk flushed with surprise and delight, then spending days rebutting the naysayers. I found out I don't like Elena Ferrante, nor do I care who she is *in real life.* There were a number of books that underwhelmed, including Half a Life and Blood Will Out, which was very disappointing. Where did I get that book? 

Here are my favorite reads pretty much, though it is terribly difficult to make choices. I bolded 10 highlights below, but there are some others of course that almost made it.  

Best fiction: So Much For That Winter by Dorthe Nors, A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

Best poetry: Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon, The End of the West by Michael Dickman, Death Tractates by Brenda Hillman 

Best non-fiction: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach

Other: The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano

1. The Dinner by Herman Koch (Jan 3)

2. The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (Jan 7)
3. What the Truth Tastes Like by Martha Silano (Jan 16)
4. Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien (Jan)
5. Zinky Boys by Svetlana Alexievich (Jan 27)
6. Chocky by John Wyndham (Jan 29)
7. Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon (Feb 6)
8. Hotel World by Ali Smith (Feb 7)
9. The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (Feb 18)
10. Swoop by Hailey Leithauser (Feb 20)
11. Shockwave by Stephen Walker (Feb 22)
12. The Scented Fox by Laynie Browne (Feb 29)
13. The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach (Feb 29)
14. Blood Will Out by Walter Kirn (Mar 3)
15. Kindred by Octavia Butler (Mar 17)
16. The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart by Deborah Digges (Mar 19)
17. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (Mar 27)
18. Heartsnatcher by Boris Vian (April 6)
19. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra (April 21)
20. There Was An Old Woman by Jessy Randall (May 2)
21. Five Days At Memorial by Sherry Fink (May 17)
22. Selected Translations by WS Merwin (May 28)
23. Universal Themes in Literature by Howie Good (online chap, May 29)
24. The Vegetarian by Kang Han (June 3)
25. The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano (June)
26. The Possessed by Elif Batuman (June 25)
27. Half a Life by Darin Strauss (Jul 1)
28. The End of the West by Michael Dickman (Jul 3)
29. Small Boat by Lesle Lewis (Jul 5)
30. Sight Lines by Sandra Marchetti (online chap, Jul 5)
31. drip, drip by Lizi Gilad (online chap, Aug 1)
32. Stone Bruises by Simon Beckett (Aug 11)
33. Death Tractates by Brenda Hillman (Aug 11)
34. Where There’s Smoke by Simon Beckett (Aug 13)
35. It Is Such a Good Thing to Be in Love With You by David Welch (Sep 2)
36. A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (Sep 16)
37. Ochre by Gla4 (online chap, Sep 18)
38. 102 Minutes: Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers - Jim Dwyer (Sep 27)
39. Misery by Stephen King (Sep 29)
40. It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be by Paul Arden (Oct 25)
41. Seven Years by Peter Stamm (Oct 17)
42. Crash by JG Ballard (Nov 1)
43. Chinoiserie by Karen Rigby (Nov 1)
44. The hows and why of my failures by Dan Nowak (chapbook, Nov 5)
45. Lovely Green Eyes by Arnost Lustig (Nov 12)
46. Pigeons in the Grass by Wolfgang Koeppen (Nov 23)
47. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (Nov 27)
48. Mislaid by Nell Zink (Dec 5)
49. So Much For That Winter by Dorthe Nors (Dec 9)
50. Arthur and George by Julian Barnes (Dec 16)
51. The Immortality of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Dec 25)
52. A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett (Dec 27)

Stats-n-stuff

So, here they are - my end of the year ‘stats.’

I submitted a lot last year, but didn’t feel particularly productive. Positive was taking part in Found Poetry’s PoMoSco project in April, which got me writing and yielded two poems that I’ve since published.

I started an online workshop 3 weeks ago hoping again it would motivate me, but the truth is all you have to do out is turn off your distractions and concentrate and write. Even if you write crap, just go. You can throw the crap away. The workshop aspect is a plus because it’s like running with a partner. They show up, so you have to, too. 

I sent out more submissions last year compared with 2014, 85 vs 74. 

In two cases I had a poem accepted that I’d submitted more than 40 times. In one of those I rethought the poem with the criticism of an interested editor and ended up (surprise!) with a better poem. 

In two other cases, a poem was taken by the one place I sent it to.

Altogether I had 25 poems accepted, and 20 published, a good number for me, even if it sounds miserable! 

I also published four prose or hybrid pieces, so I'm part of the creative non-fiction crowd now, too. 

There were journals I finally got into after at least three tries: Rust + Moth, Radar (forthcoming)

And journals I’ve yet to get into & maybe never will: Adroit, Boaat, AGNI

One ordeal was, after a wait of nearly 3 years, I pulled a poem from a publication that had been promising to publish it. It was a good publication, newish, and I hesitated because I wanted to be in it. But it seemed they were winding up to go out with a whimper, and ignoring my polite and infrequent requests for an update. Anyway, I pulled the poem and it was accepted very quickly by Whiskey Island. And that was even better. 

I received a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net nomination for my poem "Newlyweds, Ukraine" from DMQ Review, where I have published 16 poems over the years. Thank you DMQ!

This year, DoubleBack Press will reprint my first chapbook, “In The Voice Of A Minor Saint.” And I expect my chapbook, “Heiress to a Small Ruin” to come out from Dancing Girl Press. 

On the submission front, after not submitting for about two months I sent out three batches of poems on January 1, and had a poem accepted by a publication I’ve been trying to crack within five hours. 

So take that, crappy stats.

Poems
Crab Creek: Bloodshot Cartography
DMQ: Newlyweds, Almost Pain
Whiskey Island: Airstrip Heart
Gravel: Nothing Fits Me Anymore
Bird’s Thumb: Reader’s Block
Cleaver: Medieval Photographer
RHINO: Electric Singer
One Sentence Poems: Separate Bed
Petite Hound: The New Me
Sundog Lit: Flush Sky, Whittler
Hermeneutic Chaos: The If Horse
Stoneboat: Keyhole Confessor
Citron: Nightlight Ghazal
concis: Inebriate of Air
Literary Bohemian: Outer Space, Oarsman Ghazal
Right Hand Pointing: Single Brick 
Rust+Moth: Seven Shaved Bald in One Room

Prose & prose-like
Lunch: Overlapping Landscapes
Matchbook: Buchenwald
The Offing: See Also Fire
The Offing: Changeling , a collaboration with Anu Tuominen, whose image is above. 

Book list

This past year I read fewer books than usual, mostly because of work but also because of a creeping creative laziness that seems to have extended to reading. I don’t have any resolutions, but hope to shake that off. 

Below are my favorites. In fiction I suspect I may have picked The Accidental not only because it's fresh but because it’s fresh in my mind. I read a handful of excellent novels, including The Corrections, Station Eleven and The Last Samurai. The disappointment was All the Light We Cannot See, which failed in a number of ways and again persuaded me the Pulitzer Prize is full of crap. (My review on GoodReads is here.) In graphic novels, Tom Gauld's You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack was a close second.

Fiction pick: The Accidental by Ali Smith
Non-Fiction: Going Clear by Lawrence Wright
Memoir: Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Poetry: Negative Blue by Charles Wright

Graphic/Comics: Girl Stories by Lauren Weinstein

Favorite Cover: After Midnight by Irmgard Keun

Full List

1. Wild by Cheryl Strayed (Jan 4)
2. The Fifth Woman by Henning Mankel (Jan 6)
3. Insomniac Circus by Amorak Huey (Jan 12)
4. Dina’s Book by Herbjorg Wassmo (Jan 15)
5. Ann Coulter’s Letter to the Young Poets by Sara Biggs Chaney (Jan 20)
6. According to Mark by Penelope Lively (Jan 21)
7. Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers (Jan 23)
8. The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt (Feb 5)
9. Deep Dark Down by Hector Tobar (Feb 11)
10. Girl Stories by Lauren Weinstein (Feb 12)
11. Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel (Feb 14)
12. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (Feb 14)
13. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Feb. 16)
14. After Midnight by Irmgard Keun (Feb 22)
15. Negative Blue by Charles Wright (March 12)
16. Novel Interiors by Lisa Borgnes Giramonti (Apr 3)
17. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust (June 14)
18. Monsieur Proust by Céleste Albaret (Jun 28)
19. Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross (Jul 8)
20. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (Jul 21)
21. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch (Aug 2)
22. The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell (Aug 11)
23. Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire by Brenda Hillman (Aug 18)
24. Late Wife by Claudia Emerson (Aug 19)
25. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake (Aug 19)
26. Auf eine Zigarette mit Helmut Schmidt (Sep 4)
27. Was ich noch sagen wollte by Helmut Schmidt (Sep 7)
28. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (Oct 11)
29. You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack by Tom Gauld (Oct 17)
30. The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke (Oct 17)
31. Going Clear by Lawrence Wright (Oct 21)
32. Remembering Satan by Lawrence Wright (Oct 23)
33. Blankets by Craig Thompson (Oct 24)
34. The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson (Oct 26)
35. Translations on Waking in an Italian Cemetery by Michael Keegan (Oct 27)
36. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (Nov 2)
37. Postmortem: Poems by Maurice Kilwein Guevara (Nov 17)
38. Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar (Nov 23)
39. The Secret Life of Hardware by Cheryl Lachowski (Dec 2)
40. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Dec 12)
41. The Accidental by Ali Smith (Dec 19)
42. Joie de Vivre by Lisa Jarnot (Dec 24)

First, identify

XYZ is a runic chant.
XIX is a fresh gust of wind.
XLX is a kind of claustrophobic flipbook.
XSY is a book of bridges.

XWZ is Joyce-like rabbit hole of loss.
XKY is a brave oddity.
XZC is an unusual specimen.
XCK is consistently smart.
XKC is a masterpiece of human hysterics.

(First lines of selected book reviews at the Pank blog.)

Summer reading, maybe

Summer’s here and I see reading lists. Though I’d love to order fresh books, this morning I looked at my shelves to see what’s languishing there unread. Found quite a few, some of which I’m glad to be reminded of, others that might not make it. I confess I bought a number of these neglected books, but some were foisted upon me by my mother and other well-meaning friends. Here’s how they stack up: 

Still on My List
What a Carve Up by Jonathan Coe
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Mr Peanut by Adam Ross
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
Crash by JG Ballard

Quite Possible
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Small Ceremonies by Carol Shields
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World by Haruki Murakami
The Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace
Down by The River by Edna O’Brien

Could Happen, Someday
Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
The Mill on The Floss by George Eliot
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Alison Hoover Bartlett
The Gift By Vladimir Nabokov

Not Ruling It Out Entirely
The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Mahfouz
City of Glass by Paul Auster
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson 

Suspended Animation by F. Gonzalez-Crussi

Snowball’s Chance
A Spy in the House of Love by Anais Nin
Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum
The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini

We Watch The Imitation Game with the Subtitles on

(quiet laughter)
(laughs) (phone ringing)
(mechanical whirring)
(rhythmic marching)
(music) (exhales)
(panting) (sonar pinging)
(indistinct chatter)
(children’s playful shouts in the distance)
(door opens) (panting)
(gasps) (birds chirping)
(chuckles, stammers)
(indistinct voices in the background)
(music) (sobbing)
(groans) (claps hands)
(alarm blaring)
(chuckles) (chuckles) (chuckles)
(music chatter fading)
(quiet sigh) (gunfire)
(rhythmic clacking)
(loud whirring) (deep whirring)
(whirring and clacking winding down)
(door closes)

(dog barking in the distance)

In The Unfinished Folder

image thanks to Anu Tuominen

Poems in which the end goes wrong.
Poems in which only the end works.
Poems that can’t take a joke.
Poems like a mob of disconnected sentences.
Poems that lean too sweet.
Poems in an induced coma.
Poems that made all the wrong choices in life.
Poems with one wow line surrounded by meh. 

Poems that remain just a 3-4 word germ.
Poems that trip predictable.
Poems like a hoarder’s wicked kitchen.

April into May

Listened to: Spiritual High Part II
Read: The End of Retirement by Jessica Bruder (Harper’s, Aug. 2014) 

Saw: A documentary on the Lodz ghetto
Watched: Interstellar 

Laughed: Amy Schumer
Cursed: Bad news from kid’s school

Nay: 4 rejections
Yeah: 1 acceptance, and an essay published at Lunch Review 

Acquired: Toiletries
Discarded: Moth-eaten clothes

Visited: Traiteur Jeanette café
Finished: PoMoSco, the April project of found poetry 

Ate: Tarte au Citron Meringuée
Drank: Spanish wine

Inside: Wiped down bathroom walls
Outside: Rode a bike, jogged, got rained on 

Word of the week: Wingless, disguised as wineglass

Pithiness: “I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wakeup letter.”  Steven Wright 

Last week

Listened to: Vogliatemi Bene, Un Bene Piccolino (Madame B)
Read: Paul Hostovsky’s poem “Man Praying in a Men’s Room”

Saw: Photography Forum exhibition ‘Augen auf!’
Watched: Dressed to Kill with Michael Caine & Angie Dickinson (Brian De Palma) 

Laughed: The End of the World news bit
Cursed: Long, unproductive conversations 

Nay: Overcrowded yoga class
Yeah: Poem accepted by Gravel Magazine

Acquired: It was a low-spend week. I bought a magazine.
Discarded: Uneaten food gone bad

Visited: The mountains
Learned: Most refrigerators are set at too low a temperature to keep meat until its ‘best by’ date

Ate: Blueberry pie
Drank: Coffee, coffee, coffee 

Word of the week: Small, as noun (the small of the back, the small of the valley, would you like to try a small)
Pithiness: Language most shows a man: Speak, that I may see thee. - Ben Jonson

Frisson

The morning walk to the tram.
Downhill. Sunshine.
The construction site. The chestnut tree lopped smaller.
But not dead!
Thank god.
The difficult corner, visibility-wise.
Tempting death, like everyday. Tempting being a verb or adjective.
The Doktor’s house, painted pale lilac.
His ivy, his wood deck, his miniature pond.
All pleasant for the patients.
And everyone else.
Fences, fences, dog feces.
Der kleine Park ist schön.
Nice spot for a smoke, if you smoke.
Pigeons. They call this a cluster flock!
Spring gives everything its own frisson.
Even the enormous white portal of the cemetery looks like a dollop of whipped cream.
The foot descending to meet its shadow, and pulling back again.

The past week in pleasure & pain

Listened to: Jolie Holland sing Pure Imagination
Read: Novel Interiors

Lorenza Guzman 

Saw: A man in pink pajamas smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone in an upstairs window along my streetcar route. 

Watched: The German movie Kriegerin, about neo-nazis in the northeast. An eye-opener.

Laughed: The drunken squirrel 

Cursed: Fate

Failed: Rejections
Succeeded: Finished a book review I’ve been promising 

Regretted: Offering someone a thank-you gift who proceeded to treat me like shit. At the end of the shit session, she held out her hand to receive the gift, which I changed my mind about (I regretted the offering, not the withholding). 

Realized: Spite is karma's handmaid. 

Visited: Frankfurt’s Palmengarten, the local botanical garden. 

Learned: There is a type of rose named ‘Aspirin.’

Ate: Meatballs, rucola, mozzarella, peanuts, rolls, tomatoes, crackers, cookies, chocolate, octopus, fontina.
Enjoyed: Lorenza Guzman sculptures 

Word of the week: Mazurka, a dark dynamic word that means Polish folk song
Pithiness: The thoughts written on madhouse walls by their inmates might be worth publicizing. - Lichtenberg

i taste a liquor never brewed

Anne Sexton will be played by Lindsay Lohan.
Robert Frost will be played by Christoph Waltz.

ee cummings will be played by Jeff Goldblum.
Sappho will be played by Cate Blanchett.

Emily Dickinson will be played by Mia Wasikowska.
Guillaume Apollinaire will be played by Jack Nicholson. 

Derek Walcott will be played by George Clooney.
Sylvia Plath will be played by Sissy Spacek.

Ai will be played by Eartha Kitt.
John Donne will be played by Clint Eastwood.

Wallace Stevens will be played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. 

Sharon Olds will be played by Catherine Keener.

The week that was

On a 1-10 scale, the past week gets a weak 5. No one died or anything. Nor did a tree fall on my car, but I don’t drive. The week didn’t win an award for leading actress, or screenplay, or original score. And I banged my elbow. 

Listened to: Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro
Reading: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust

Saw: Birdman. I wasn’t crazy about it. And the popcorn sucked. 

Learned: To properly pronounce sangfroid 

Laughed: My own joke at work, which involved an English nursery rhyme peppered with German. That’s how desperate I was for humor.
Cursed: Being 5 minutes late for yoga, meaning I was locked out.

Failed: The moths are back.
Succeeded: Drafted a poem; received an acceptance

Regretted: My desk calendar. Every day there’s a new photo, and 55% of the time it seems to be a selfie, and god knows we’ve had enough of that.
Dreamed: My father was taking a bath in a shed in a rural setting. He got all contorted and was shouting for help. Luisa and I were nearby but I said he was just making noise and didn’t need help but Luisa went and helped him get out of the tub, exasperated with me.

Acquired: A rose-scented candle
Discarded: A purple poncho

Ate: Risotto Milanese
Ingested: A mouthful of exhaust smoke

Word of the week: Flummox, a well-built verb with an unconventional ending. 

Pithiness: "We spend our time envying people we wouldn’t like to be." - Jean Rostand

Customer grouch

With beer sales up, Germans said Proust! more often in 2014.
(prost)

On annihilation, raise your hands over your head.
(inhalation)

Things to do in Hilarious, Germany
(Saarlouis)

China will never follow the path of western colonists, the foreign mystery said.

(ministry)

Swiss tourism faces tongue challenge after bank abandons currency peg.
(tough)

The couple bought a 4-story townhouse where they’re ravishing their twins.
(raising)

Profitability will be hit by an investment in customer grouch.
(growth)

Jesus Charlie.
(Je suis).

Visiting America I decide to reconsider my disdain of scented candles

Blue Lavender
I’ve spent years overdosing on lavender in the form of soaps, sachets and lotions but this candle came with a wooden wick that promised to crackle. Open mind, I told myself, not every scented candle wants to strangle you with apple cinnamon. And unlike the ubiquitous pumpkin clogging the American esophagus, this was the scent of cottonballs and vaporous soufflés, of swans and a pale lilac sunset that glows for approximately 33 hours.

Mystery Collage by Valerie Roybal

Sandalwood
This wore a distinct masculine cast. Black wax and black glass, it purported to be aromatherapy and gullible woman that I was I bought it. It sat knobby in its chamber; the flame elicited beads of moisture, exuding an unctuous smell, like a mix of 1) burning tires and 2) sweat in a smoky, upholstered club that hasn’t been vacuumed since Adam. Womanly goodwill aside, I didn’t want such an atmosphere roasting my clothes and, dear reader, I tossed it. 

Wild Bluebells & Jasmine
When I had to whittle the cargo down for the sake of my suitcase this is the bouquet I almost manned overboard. Wild bluebells and jasmine, I said, how ridiculous. Do bluebells even smell? Is it just girlish, poetic marketing? But the candle was small, the color a robin’s egg blue, so I tucked it inside a sock in a side pocket. And in truth it became my favorite, because it said snow-capped mountains to me. It said bells of alpine goats who’ve been freshly shampooed.