The Itch

Two more of my Misery poems are up at The Collapsar, "The Itch" and "Past Life." 

"The Itch" reads:

If you turned the thing over 

to take a look at the works, 

you saw the itch let herself in 

dragging something heavy, 

a cross of soft skin.

"Past Life"

O maddening serene thing

in a previous life

such a rain began to fall

A couple more from this series are due out shortly, and at some point I'll make a linked index of them and post it here.

Due to a long-term subway service interruption, I have begun commuting by bike

On the upside it is invigorating. On the downside it is exhausting.

On the upside it is efficient exercise with no gym costs. On the downside you compete with cars. 

On the upside it is faster than public transportation. On the downside you cannot read. 

On the upside you see the world differently. On the downside it could rain. 

On the upside it demands focus and concentration. On the downside it requires focus and concentration.

Things I Love (v-day, a day late)

Fontina cheese. Talking Heads. Kurt Schwitters. Kalamata olives. David Markson. Peonies. Santa Fe. The Greatest. The oceans. Bidú Sayao. Villette. Rioja. Gingham. Good Reads. Paul Klee. Almonds. Dusk Litany. Black-eyed Susans. Titled. Lichtenberg. Brown paper. Brattleboro. Mairead Byrne. 72 Fahrenheit. Candles. Babies. Dachshunds. My Dead Friends. Fernando Pessoa. Fondue. Rucola. BWV 82. Norman Dubie. Teal. Marimekko. Fireplaces. Affentor. Tapioca pudding. Brittany. Chanel 5. Garamond. Meryl Streep. German. Acorns. Daunt Books. Lavender. Bath bombs. Barrister bookcases. MoMA. Collage. Garlic. Satie. Street cars. Tidiness. The glottal stop. Book art. Complex plots. Warm washcloths on airplanes. Adjectives. Szymborska. Steak. Alexievich. The Jackson 5. Birdsong. Kimonos. Wooden matches. Emily Dickinson. Naples. Calligraphy. Upscale hotels. Aspirin. Lake Constance. Breast feeding. Spoons. Pocket knives. WS Merwin. Snow. Persimmons. Apollinaire. Burt Bacharach. Camper shoes. The Owl and the Pussycat. Pipe tobacco. Bright Pittsburgh Morning. Licorice. Wattwandern. Popcorn. Aprons. Hans Arp. Swann’s Way. Dark blue velvet. Chai latte. Chuang Tzu. Lord of the Rings. Pocket watches. Clouds.

Snow blowing into the mouth of amen

After so much wishing we finally woke up to snow this morning. The snow rarely sticks in Frankfurt, so we're lucky. I only hope my kids, wherever they are this morning, are up in time to see it before it goes. They wished with me for all this aspirin.

Anu Tuominen

I have a poem up today in Word Riot called Deluxe Moments, one of what I call my sentence poems. The inspiration for at least one of the lines comes from my idol Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, whose "The Waste Books" is one of my bedside favorites. In Notebook F, number 121, he writes simply: "An amen face." 

I love the idea and image of "an amen face."

3-5-3

scorching sun,
the corner winos
switch to white

Nothing fits me anymore

It reached 90 degrees today, unusual for early June. I dislike hot weather and such strong sun. I had jeans and a long sleeve shirt on and that was a mistake. After work I stopped by the café where my daughter works and she brought me a coffee. My daughter is a beautiful girl who is having a hard time now. I didn’t want to disappoint her by not drinking it. A couple sips and I broke a sweat. 

Anyway, all this is an excuse to say I have a couple of poems out this month.

Nothing Fits Me Anymore is in Gravel
and Reader’s Block is in Bird’s Thumb.

I also have a poem, Electric Singer, in RHINO, which I got in the mail today. It’s a print publication so I can’t link to the poem unless they post in online, which I expect they will eventually. Still, if you like a good, eclectic annual, buy a copy of RHINO. There’s always something marvelous in there.

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.

Fresh supply of rainwater

It's warm and overcast here, and breezy. If you look outside it doesn't look inviting, but the temperature is so pleasant, it's like wading into a sudsy bath. It may rain, may not. Germany is not California. 

Image from Lichtenberg-Gesellschaft 

If you read this blog you know that George Christoph Lichtenberg is my idol. He lived north of here in Göttingen, which doesn't have much to offer except that he lived there. Lichtenberg said of it:

If you want to take the rainwater cure you should come to Göttingen, where there is a fresh supply at all times. 

I wrote a short review of his marvelous book "The Waste Books" for Escape into Life. Go over and read it. If he were alive I would be his agent.

Had the Day off

Pruned the roses and cut back the ropey, dead clematis
Kissed the Rome-bound husband & son goodbye
Delivered wonderdog to her vacation
Took a stab at some found poems before PoMoSco
Went grocery shopping
Read Emily Dickinson’s #420 (There are two Ripenings)
Ate a salad of rucola, tomatoes & mozzarella, like an Italian flag
Bought a song on iTunes
Basked in the sunshine on the terrace
Shook three men’s hands
Posted a Throwback Thursday photo
Learned a childhood friend’s sad fate

A week of limited daylight

Read: Walter Benjamin radio broadcast on dogs. I enjoyed the stories, but objected to how Linneas’ description takes the male as the norm and sets the female aside as a special category of dog.  

Listened to: Sharkey’s Day

Laughed:  Loud eating in the library

Learned: Pigeons, through a genetic glitch, can breed all year round.

Failed: Photography. I need to photograph a stationary, outdoor object for a piece I wrote and I can’t seem to get it right. Limited daylight has not helped.

Triumphed: Guided two well-coiffed Swiss ladies from the Hauptbahnhof to the Chrismas market via the UBahn 

Watched: A typeface video using part of Borges’ poem “Break of Day” (below)

Observed: It is too warm for December. 

Started: Keeping a dream journal

Dreamed: (Dec. 7) "I wanted to become a detective in a seaside town, and as part of the application I had to write a poem. As a prelude, the police department required I sleep with a young man, then write the poem. I was anxious about this, also because I’m married. I had to really consider how much I wanted to be a detective. I was worried the poem would be worse than the sex. I was worried the sex would be worse than the poem. The police department was populated by nicely dressed middle-aged people, polite, but not particularly sympathetic. They did not look like poets."

Discarded: A scarf I never wore. Threw it away once before, then rescued it. For real this time. 

Acquired: A tablecloth. This may seem trivial, but since our kitchen tablecloths serve anywhere from one to three years, it’s revolutionary. 

Received: A Pushcart nomination for my poem “Smoking Jacket” 

Ate: Braised carrots with honey and thyme

Drank: Glühwein without alcohol, though I’m not sure how that’s possible

Visited: Drawn by the children’s books in the window, the bookstore Weltenleser

Realized: No matter how many ads you ‘hide’ on FB, there are more. 

Word of the week: Skirmish. A quirky-sounding word related to scrimmage, probably from old German skirmen, to defend. 

Pithiness of the week: Tradition is the most sublime form of necrophilia. - Hans Kudszus

Montserrat from Fernando Lazzari on Vimeo.

I interview myself about some of the books I read this year

Reading is elemental. Which book would you associate with earth?

My favorite, Villette by Charlotte Brontë, because it is tied to the ground and intent on the hearth. Our English heroine is planted on French soil, where she does some serious suffering. 

“I too felt those autumn suns and saw those harvest moons, and I almost wished to be covered in with earth and turf, deep out of their influence; for I could not live in their light, nor make them comrades, nor yield them affection.”

Which book would you associate with fire?

That’s easy: Carol Shields’ Unless. And also with fury. 

“At certain moments, for no reason -the smell of apple wood burning in the fireplace- I become convinced that everything is going to be alright.”

And, skip the water, which book makes you think of ice?

Obviously Virginia Woolf's Orlando, for its skating scene. As a whole, the book moved slowly, but the love affair with Sasha was magic. Where did she disappear to? Sasha, you minx. 

“‘All ends in death,’ Orlando would say, sitting upright on the ice. But Sasha who after all had no English blood in her but was from Russia where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden, and sentences often left unfinished from doubt as to how best to end them--Sasha stared at him, perhaps sneered at him, for he must have seemed a child to her, and said nothing. But at length the ice grew cold beneath them, which she disliked, so pulling him to his feet again, she talked so enchantingly, so wittily, so wisely (but unfortunately always in French, which notoriously loses its flavor in translation) that he forgot the frozen waters or night coming or the old woman or whatever it was, and would try to tell her--plunging and splashing among a thousand images which had gone as stale as the women who inspired them--what she was like. Snow, cream, marble, cherries, alabaster, golden wire?”

And with air?

Can’t and Won’t by Lydia Davis, for its buoyant humor, and “Waiting for Takeoff,” one of my favorite stories in the book, which takes place in an airplane.

"We sit in the airplane so long, on the ground, waiting to take off, that one woman declares she will now write her novel, and another in a neighboring seat says she will be happy to edit it."

Two minutes of morning

Going to the UBahn I walk through a small park, too small really to earn the term, it’s more of a pathway with a bench or two, tall trees and what was once a sandbox, which nonetheless offers two minutes of relief from the apartment blocks and monotone of sky. I would call it a glade because of glide and because it’s leafy and keeps a cool temperature, but a glade, if I am not mistaken, intersects a thicker wood and is neither manmade nor even man-fashioned.

Along the walkway leaves have fallen in such a way that they resemble - also because sometimes they are in the midst of tumbling - sunbeams or patches of sunlight on the ground, and when I am close enough to apprehend what they are it’s both a disappointment and a consolation, a let-down because my expectations are dashed, and a consolation because they’re just as luminous as sunshine, and I have been beautifully fooled.

This morning amid the damp ambient of leaves and mud and cobblestone I see my new boots come slicing, the flat heels so comfortable I’d like launch into a run. I think of the saying “fit like a glove” which amuses because we’re talking shoes, and the German word for glove is ‘Handschuh,’ i.e. “hand shoe,” and somehow an item got mashed on backwards in translation, and it’s frosty and I don’t have gloves. 

When I’m walking in the cold thinking of running I remember the essential thing is to breathe. Have I mentioned how my face is falling apart?

Inhale, exhale.

Or had I rather say collapsing? The lengths, breadths and heights of it?

In, hale. Ex, hale. 

For months I have been considering a chin tuck. 

Inhale.

Abstractedly and noncommittally, now running past houses.

Exhale.

Not to Decide

The minute and a half waiting for the tram, pondering whether or not it’s raining enough to warrant opening my umbrella.

The raindrops are large but there are not many of them.

I think of the word ponder, which has a pond in it, and those four rounded letters take up more space than most on a line. (Except w.) You may only write the word so many times before exhausting the line.

The segment swollen like these aimless raindrops, which sometimes miss anyway. Most of the time they miss. 

They are large but there are not many of them, and an umbrella is such a bother.

I don't even know who this bitterness is for

The week in review

Disliked: The 30C heat 

Liked: The storm that snuffed it

Watched: Mud with Matthew McConaughey

Saw: A sharp #2 

Reading: The Hare with Amber Eyes

Listened to: Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinoise” 

Learned: The word moue

Forgot: Also unbroken glass can cut you

Bought: St. Peter’s B-List for my folks

Threw out: pounds of magazines, plundered for collage many times over

Realized: There are 2 kinds of weather - white & red wine weather

Dreamed: Went with my entire office on a working trip to Sardinia, where I had the obscure assignment of writing about a piece of coal that erases unpleasant odors.

Ate: Licorice

Drank: Tonic water 

Laughed at: Celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves

Cried about: The struggle to shed bitterness

Fail: Emptied the bio-garbage into the plastic recycling container

Victory: A set IKEA desk drawers (=3 hours)

A little smoking all night

After weeks of sunshine we finally got our rain and wind. With everything gone wet and green, the wind is like a big swirling and mixing. I love the sound and the blur. They mowed the grass at the park, too, without raking, so it’s a great mush over there, an olfactory munchie. 

Anyway, thank whatever it’s Friday. I’ve got some poems up at Right Hand Pointing in an issue of just three poets. Very happy to be included - I almost didn’t submit. On the last or second to last day I said oh just go ahead and was so lucky. 

One rarely reads about one’s own voice in writing, so it was good to read the editor’s take: "(she) is wry; she tells it slant. Her poems are on their way somewhere. They will cast you a sidelong glance and a half-smile, before passing on."

the week

Watched: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - good actors, underwhelming film

Saw: My 15-year old off on a short trip with a friend to Munich (ah Europa!)

Liked: Blue weather

Disliked: Garden snails

Reading: The Siege at Krishnapur by JG Farrell, in some circles considered the best Booker winner ever 

Listened to: White Winter Hymnal, many times

Started: A membership for my son at Germany’s jillion youth hostels

Stopped: Trying to squeeze the last bit of shampoo out of the bottle

Gave: Three books to my husband (Ethan Fromm, Wolf Hall, Jane Eyre)

Received: Much-needed help from colleague

Ate: Pumpkin ravioli

Drank: Kiwi smoothie

Learned: How to pronounce ‘posthumous’

Bought: Bed linens 

Chore: Mowed the lawn

Leisure: Moth hunting 

Unhappy Campers

The sky today was imported from Holland, a nearly neon blue full of ship-sized white clouds that made me think the “Milky Way” moniker had been wasted on a phenomenon less worthy. 

I can’t complain about the German weather this spring. Yesterday was like a valentine - a warm breeze, buckets of sunshine, and everything budding. I had the day off, and headed off downtown in a pair of sandals I unearthed from the bottom of my closet. This was fairly daring for early April in Germany, I admit, and I was paid back by having them both self-destruct, pretty much simultaneously, as soon as I got off the UBahn. 

My daughter was coming to meet me anyway, so I asked her to bring socks and sneakers from home. Hell if I was going to pressure-buy shoes I didn’t want for the sake of not walking in the style of Marty Feldman’s Igor. She got a dress with the money I would have had to spend to continue perambulating in the style of myself, but I stopped at the blouse that looked like a paper towel.

The Week

Watched: American Hustle, & pleasantly surprised

Saw: An old man with head wounds being cared for by five people (ambulance soon arrived)

Received: New passport, in which I will look like I just woke up pissed off and unwashed for the next 10 years

Gave: Pen to a pen-less colleague. Really, gave. Did not lend. A big deal, pen-wise. 

Liked: The sunshine

Disliked: The sunshine

Read: All Quiet on the Western Front

Listened to: Soprano singing Donald Rumsfeld found poetry

Started: Planning a visit to friends in Switzerland

Stopped: Following a negative train of thought, at least temporarily 

Ate: Warm goat cheese with thyme and honey

Drank: Rioja

Learned: Emil Nolde was a nazi

Bought: New towels

Remembered: Abscam

Resolved: to tidy my desk (done!) 

the week past

Ate: Mushrooms with walnuts and gruyere

Bought: Tickets for Momix Botanica

Received: Joanna Newsom’s Ys from a colleague

Saw: A photo of an angry man that was also funny

Disliked: Poetry rejections

Read: “Girls, Look Out for Todd Bernstein” 

Watched: Raiders of the Lost Ark 

Rolled my eyes at: The short life of Frankfurt snow

Ordered: The Waste Books for my father

Cried over: The melodrama of The Pickwick Papers

Listened to: Le Nozze di Figaro

Drank: Nebbiolo 

Pithiness of the week: “Nothing can contribute more to a soul's peace than the lack of any opinion whatsoever.” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

A plaque won’t give you your life back

 

Boy, it’s cold and grey and raining here. One feels the urge to stay inside and drink tea. In this case, fennel-anise-caraway tea. But we went out anyway, and bought a new tea kettle. The rain makes the cobblestones shine and I like the sound car tires make going through puddles. Shhhhhööööjjj.

Walking back through the Nordend neighborhood we found some Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones.” There are dozens of these around Frankfurt; they mark the addresses where Jews who were deported during the holocaust lived. They’re subtle but also striking, with their minimal information. I keep an album of them on Facebook. 

These are for the Levi family, which lived on Oberweg. Issak, Katinka and their son Karl. They were deported to Majdenek concentration camp in Poland in 1942. According to the stones, the father and mother were murdered there, whereas their 17-year old son is simply described as having died (‘tot’). 

All the stories that must be behind those stones. I think it’s a good thing these are installed around the city. But a plaque won’t give you your life back.