what do i have to do

to get a goddamned pack of matches in this country? They don’t sell them at the supermarket (like they’re goddamned contraband or something). I have to go to the tobacco shop. So I go to the tobacco shop, and the guy says he doesn’t have any “today.” Today, my ass! Where are the matches?

bombproof your horse

Last week the shortlist of contestants in the Oddest Book Title of the Year award came out. The books are a) How Green Were the Nazis?; b) Di Mascio’s Delicious Ice Cream: Di Mascio of Coventry: An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans; c) The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification; c) Tatooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan; e) Proceedings of the 18th Annual Seaweed Symposium; and e) Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.

You can vote in a poll for your favorite here.

Here are the previous winners. You got a favourite? I think mine is “Living with Crazy Buttocks,” but “The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling” seems an essential read.

Diagram Prize Winners
• 2005 People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It
• 2004 Bombproof Your Horse
• 2003 The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories
• 2002 Living with Crazy Buttocks
• 2001 Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service
• 2000 High Performance Stiffened Structures
• 1999 Weeds in a Changing World
• 1998 Development in Dairy Cow Breeding and Management: and New Opportunities to Widen the Uses of Straw
• 1997 The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition
• 1996 Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers
• 1995 Reusing Old Graves
• 1994 Highlights in the History of Concrete
• 1993 American Bottom Archaeology
• 1992 How to Avoid Huge Ships
• 1990 Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual
• 1989 How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art
• 1988 Versailles: The View from Sweden
• 1986 Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality
• 1985 Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts
• 1984 The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today
• 1983 The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling

From the lake came the increasingly terrific sound of wrenching and ramming and slamming

When I got sick last week and spent a lot of time in bed I started reading Housekeeping. It’s very good – good prose, good plot. I love the sense of place and the atmosphere of the book – the house, the town and the lake.

Robinson is wonderful with onomatopoeia. You’d be surprised at all the sounds a lake can make, or at least evoke. She also makes a character of water, which floods the town and the characters’ house. Interesting is how the water can express something of the characters.

Sylvie pushed at the water with the side of her foot. A ribbed circle spread to the four walls and the curves of its four sides rebounded, interpenetrating, and the orderly ranks of light swept and swung about the room. Lucille stomped with her feet until the water sloshed against the walls like water carried in a bucket. There were sounds of dull consussion from the kitchen….

One thing that doesn’t sit right is the cover. It’s an airy shot of an elevated railroad trestle heading into bright foggy sky. It’s a nice photograph, but I don’t feel it goes well with this book, which is sodden, earthly and leaf brown. I looked back at the previous covers of the book and saw some I thought more appropriate – one with a rocker on a porch, another of a heavy framed window, one simply with a dark house. It’s funny how we sometimes feel about the covers of books. Good skin, bad skin.

Cletus loves Donatella

Love the surprise and humor of this poem.

a bit stupified

What do you think when a publication includes poems and/or stories by its own editors? I saw this today an online zine I like (which has rejected me twice). It surprised me. I think it’s a way bad policy. What are they thinking? Can there be a good reason?

In 2004, when I first started submitting, I had four poems accepted at an ezine. Months went by, along with two new issues, and my poems didn’t appear. I wrote to the editor to ask if something was wrong and he’d misplaced the poems – could I re-send them. So I did. I began waiting again and what do you know but the new issue comes out, without my poems, but with his. It was too much a mix of insult with bravado for me, so I withdrew them. It would be one thing to say, jeepers! sorry, there wasn’t room in the issue. But when the editor’s own poems show up, it’s slightly outrageous.

I love mixing strong adjectives with alleviating adverbs.

Somewhat magnificent.
Kind of great.
Slightly outrageous.
Rather comatose.
A bit stupified.

Mei capilli sunt flagrantes

After the talk about Latin vs. French last night, I came out in favor of Latin. I mean, if I were going into the sixth grade and had to choose, I would choose Latin.

I kind of wish I were going into the sixth grade.

I have had the worst couple mornings at work. Stress until my chest burns. That can’t be good. This morning I nearly signed up for the Daily Om. I went to the site and tried to calm down. I appreciate the spirit of the place, but don’t think I could take it on a daily basis. Then I took half a Xanax. laugh.

To balance things out, I had some good news poetry wise over the past days. First, my poem “Vestment” (on the morning of my ruin) was accepted at Blood Orange.

Then “Infirmary” (the glass holding rose water is tinged pink) was accepted for In Posse’s “Poetry and the Body” issue.

Then Caffeine Destiny took “Feng Shui” (when the bridge between east and evening/lies down to die). Turned out it was accepted in November, but I never got word. When I wrote to withdraw a poem and ask after the others, the editor, Susan Denning, wrote back saying she’d sent an email months ago. And all this time & I didn’t know how lucky I was. I will think of this when I am ready to jump out the window.

I also got a rejection from upstreet, but oh well.

Tonight I attend a talk at my daughter’s school on the “second foreign language.” In the fifth grade, everyone has to learn English (“1st foreign language”). Next year they start another – either Latin or French. I would rather Luisa took French, but she and her father want Latin. So it looks like I will soon be learning Latin.

tetchy

I was reading about the tornado that hit Georgia and Alabama and the headline read "Tornado Terrorizes Alabama Town." I hate that headline. It sounds like a gunman, a rabid dog, or a terrorist. To me, to "terrorize" implies volition. And I don’t think that works with a storm (except in poetry & then you’d better be very talented).

Not to downplay the graveness of the story. I was as sorry as anyone to learn of it. I just cringe at the verb. To terrorize and to terrify are not the same thing. “Slam," “pound” or “rip through,” though hardly original, all work better, leaving the offensive personification out.

in case you weren't

March is National Caffeine Awareness Month
National Collision Awareness Month
National Ethics Awareness Month
National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month
National Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Awareness Month
National Poison Prevention Awareness Month
National Vulvar Health Awareness Month

february made me shiver

Hoped to submit some poems today but too little time to mull it over.
* * *

Dinner with company folks tonight. A rare thing though I guess not rare enough.
* * *

Of course I want to write better poems. I also want to read better poems.
* * *

Embrace the marvelous, folks!
* * *

drum roll

I’d like to thank bedthings.
I’d like to thank good manners.
I’d like to thank pasta with approximate cooking times.
I’d like to thank law.
I’d like to thank the IBEW.
I’d like to thank ee cummings.
I’d like to thank drinks on the house.
I’d like to thank my sister's early fashion advice.
I’d like to thank the biggest dictionary.
I’d like to thank Volvo.
I’d like to thank winter for Christmas.
I’d like to thank these scissors.
I’d like to thank pizza delivery.
I’d like to thank free public restrooms.
I’d like to thank eat your heart out.
I’d like to thank toys without batteries.
I’d like to thank Robert Mondavi.
My mom, too. My God!

i love the great indoors

I think I got too much fresh air today. We went to the Nidda river which has a big park area mostly for dogs. It was wet and windy, kind of nice but also a bit insane. I slipped on my ass and it still hurts. I sang a Yoko Ono song for Luisa and we agreed it was bad. But worse is this fresh-air headache. When we got home I took a shower with my pants under me in the tub since the back was mud-crusted from hem to waistband and Carlo starts calling what’s wrong with the dog what’s wrong with the dog and the dog is going crazy gnawing at her paws spinning in circles scratching at rugs rags couches and blankets. So with my hair soaking wet I take her out to see if maybe she has to shit or croak or whatever but no she just wants to lose her mind and I don't think it's my Yoko Ono imitation.

sitting in the kitchen

this morning shortly after 9.30, I finished The Gulag Archipelago!

And it is a horrific story, full of despair and disgust. Still, there are moments of nobility and brotherhood that assure you the human race is sometimes capable of heroism, and doesn't always collapse with fear, denial of the conscience, power mongering and greed.

in case you forgot.

Did you ever get a rejection you were so sorry to get that you hardly got beyond the second sentence (which couched the news)? Then you flew over the rest, and rapidly scratched the submission from your list of those outstanding?

Then, maybe four months later, or five, or a whole year, you went back and read the letter again, and realized it was in no way harsh, and maybe even kind?

And did you feel like an oaf, or an egomaniac, or a pair of idiot mittens?

And was that worse than the humiliation you felt for being rejected in the first place?

bap

I spent yesterday evening finally reading some of Best American Poetry 2006, which I bought last fall. And this morning first thing I did was order two books by foreign poets. I guess it is kind of a statement, although I didn’t connect the two at first.

I don’t mean to be snarky – I enjoyed a number of poems in BAP. I read more today. Of those (about 40 of the 75), my favorites were, in order

Joy Katz’s “Just a Second Ago”
Mark Pawlak’s “The Sharper the Berry”
Christian Hawkey’s “Hour”
Megan Gannon’s “List of First Lines”
James Tate’s “The Loser”
Vijay Seshadri’s “Memoir”
Stephen Dobyns’ “Toward Some Bright Moment”

There were a number of poems I felt lukewarm about. For example, the Charles Simic and Franz Wright were in no way outstanding, though they are two of my favorite poets. Simic relies on image in his poetry, and I found the final image of “House of Cards” anti-climatic. I also felt that, though Franz Wright spends his life writing the same poem over and over (and I like that poem), the version in bap 2007 wasn’t that strong.

There were some that left me shaking my head like a pharisee. The “Briefcase of Sorrow” poem, for example, seemed gimmicky. And the Ilya Bernstein poem “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” didn’t do anything for me but give me a “so what?” kind of feeling.

I would really like to hear what folks thought about individual poems in this volume.

What I ordered:
Vanishing Lung Syndrome by Miroslav Holub
Night Mail by Novica Tadic

These are both part of the Field Translation Series, which is without exaggeration a service to mankind.

nuts

I’ve been reading about the controversy surrounding the children’s book “The Higher Power of Lucky,” which just won a Newbery Medal. Some librarians are upset about the use of the word “scrotum” on the first page, where the protagonist hears the word used when a character describes a snake biting his dog on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book says. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

Heck! I thought that was a great sound impression of the word. And scrotum isn’t a “bad word” – it’s the name of a body part. How can you not talk about parts of the body with kids? It’s not like the author chose “balls” or "the family jewels.” The book, by the way, is for grades 4-6, ie ages 9-11. I’m kinda thinking they can handle it.

More dangerous are those truly repulsive words like nostril, armpit or buttock. The word gland has also always grossed me out, and I insist we protect children from it. It threatens to destroy society.

go slow

photo sabrina rothe

your green apples leave me bitter

This weekend I had two poems accepted by Ghoti – Flight and From the Shelves of a French Supermarkets. Four others were taken by FriGG – The Persian’s Reach, From Train 21, Station Evangel and so what’s it like living in Germany.

I was glad of it. I wrote The Persian’s Reach some time ago and am fond of it (surprise!) but it is a cat poem and that’s a hard sell. At the same time it’s about longing for the unattainable, ending -
...will the dark, too,
fly over?

Also American Poetry Journal took Europa, which begins -
Johannes,
your green apples leave me bitter.

I had to pull Europa and French Supermarkets from Diner, which wrote back to decline the other three poems I'd submitted. I can’t complain, though I would have liked a free copy of Diner. Smile.

There's a poem in there somewhere

My favorite Bushism: Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.

I laugh every time. It's amazing.

book of right-on

it happened again. I'm listening to music and the husband asks "who's that, yoko ono?" And it's joanna newsom.

late-blooming resolutions

1. clobber the tyrants.
2. don't take any shit.
3. write what you want.

I woke in the gloaming, brooding

I must admit today is an especially big hate-myself day. Luckily my books arrived. I got Elaine Equi's Surface Tension & Martin Sorescu's Hands Tied Behind My Back. This was the Equi poem I opened to:

When The Moon Is Full
It's not unusual
for the face
to fill with liquid
or the hair
carelessly pinned
to grow wet.
When the moon is full
we often dream
that the dead
are back among us
and dying again.

Then I wrote that letter to the Academy of American Poets asking why Elaine Equi doesn't have her own page on the site. I tried hard not to sound like a dope. I think I avoided saying things like "Equi kicks ass," and "In a fight, she'd beat you bad." I'll let you know what they say, or don't.

waiting for ellen

locust –-> custard --> retard –-> ardvark --> art-card –-> cardomom
--> mommy –-> myannmar --> marvel –-> velcro --> crocus –-> locust

hypnosis

It bugs me when in one of the short bios that appear after a poem, the poet seems to list every journal and magazine that ever published them. I read a bio the other day where the poet listed 14 publishing credits. (Then also she listed her degrees, fellowships and awards.) This was an ezine, a good one, a monthly with five or six other poets in the issue. Still. It's not like you're applying for a job. Or accepting the Nobel prize. I felt she was daring me not to like her poem, which I didn't have any more time to read.

In other news, I'm still reading The Gulag Archipelago. It's long.

the sad thing

The sad thing eats an orange.
The sad thing takes a phone call.
The sad thing swears by long sleeps.
The sad thing is all lit up for Christmas.
The sad thing wears new underpants.
The sad thing knows the melancholy of dogs.
The sad thing knows no help for it.

excuse me while i wring this long swim out of my hair

blob

according to Siren, mine was a notable poetry blog of 2006. (which strikes me funny considering how many folks click in here looking for lipstick colors.) Definitely worth looking into the book and poetry recommendations in Siren's listings, too.

do you believe this

Lucille Clifton believes if you "have poetry in your heart," you'll be better at your chosen vocation. Read it here (thanks to Poetry Hut for the link). Nice idea, if idealized. I don't think being a lover of poetry is going to make you better at anything beyond being a better poet or reader (maybe). You're going to fall as hard on your nose as everyone else. Not that poetry won't enrich your life - it rivals being loved! But loving poetry won't keep students from flunking classes. It didn't make Sylvia Plath a better mother, or Bukowski a better postman, and plenty of poetry-breathing professors don't seem to care about their jobs. But I do think Lucille Clifton kicks ass.

yea, and ye shall go forth and grease the palms of the green baboon

It turned out Margin pays $10 per poem.
I was given the option of accepting the $10 or donating it to the site.
Funny how many days it took me to think about that $10.
It wasn’t just any $10.
It wasn’t $10 dollars withdrawn from my bank account.
It wasn’t $10 I got for participating in a marketing survey.
It wasn’t one of the $10 bundles in my monthly paycheck.
It was $10 for a poem.
So I took it.
Not that I didn’t want to donate it to Margin.
But I spent hundred of dollars on poetry books and journals last year.
And subscribed during the last year to three journals.
To say nothing of writing the poem, which Margin nominated for a Pushcart.
It’s not like I’m not greasing poetry’s palms.
So I took it.
And put it where my mouth is.

4 things about today

1. received rejection from Pebble Lake Review. A kind rejection, taken without alarm or prolonged moaning.
2. read 5-6 more pages of The Gulag Archipelago. can i finish this before february?
3. found a hair - my hair - in my chicken dinner.
4. going to hear a pianist at the alte oper with my husband.

waiting for the ubahn

Global. Local. Glocal. Lobal.
Leggings. Afghan. Legghan. Afgings.
Slowburn. Bespoke. Besburn. Slowpoke.
Krishna. Normal. Norna. Krishmal.
Bhopal. Payload. Bhoload. Paypal.
Vesper. Tonal. Tosper. Venal.
Ghazal. Haiga. Haizal. Ghaga.
Slumber. Warlord. Warber. Slumlord.

vagina monologues II

Got a sec
Buy OEM software
Penis Enlargement Breakthrough
75% Discount
Separate yourself from other men
Hows it going
It is a rare opportunity to save so much on generic meds
Re: See4 yourself
Amen. Thou shalt thou make a wise, king of their sakes saying, the
Tired with huge expenses?
Just save a pot of money
Penis Enlargement Breakthrough: 3
Lets go
16 ladies are online now
Thy bed ranks, by the wind driveth away.
No liability
Jearim, a serpent, said, unto the place. Why have no man which is

i am right

I featured this votive on my blog when I did the christmas gift thing. Still, I can't get over how much Edgar Allen resembles Bill Murray. I mean, don't you think? Bill with better skin and a mustache?

the post in which all my dreams come true

right. but at least one.
I've been thinking for weeks how great it would be if a journal would do an issue of rant poems. I just want to hear some hollering sometimes. So coincidentally I ran into this journal called pemmican today which features a bunch of rants. Some of them are, let's say, of questionable literary value, but hey, they're sincere. Try Tom Holmes' "Americaca" and "Notes on Why Everything has Gone Wrong," and "The Vice with the Money Vice: Go To Fucking Hell" by Angela Perry. Then go try writing your own.

books

Considering the lack of books under my Christmas tree I ordered two new ones yesterday. Acutally I ordered four and then got all neurotic and went back and cancelled two of them, one at a time. I don't know, last year I ended up with a couple dud books that I ordered on a whim. I would expect the two I cancelled, one by Bruce Smith and the other by Catherine Wing, to be good but I'm going to read more of both poets first.

Anyway, I did order Elaine Equi's Surface Tension and Marin Sorescu's Hands Behind my Back. I am a big Sorescu fan and look forward to having a whole book of just his poetry. Our friend Howard Miller reviewed his poetry in the Avatar Review last summer. I'm also a big Equi fan. This morning I was astonished to find there is no page for her over at the Academy of American Poets. What is that about? They've got all kinds of doodleschnackers over there and no Elaine Equi! I am going to be writing a letter to them. Here's an interview with her from 2004 in MiPo, which I understand is preparing to close shop.

try this at home

In reading The Gulag Archipelago I get the sense Solzhenitsyn is one of those who feels himself slapped with the duty to write it all down. It comes from how he refers to other prisoners and recounts their experiences. It’s as if he thinks it will all slip away. In a way it has - astounding to think 15-30 million people died in the Soviet prison camps! Isn’t that the biggest “engineered” mass killing ever?

“A district Party conference was under way in Moscow Province, presided over by a new secretary of the District Party Committee, replacing one recently arrested. At the end, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name.) The hall echoed with “stormy applause, rising to an ovation.” For three minutes, five minutes, the “stormy applause, rising to an ovation” continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming silly even to those who really adored Stalin. But who’d dare be the first to stop? The secretary of the District Committee could have done it. He was standing on the platform, and it was he who’d called the ovation. But he was a newcomer. He had taken the place of a man who’d been arrested. He was afraid! After all, men were in the hall applauding and watching to see who quit first! And in that obscure, small hall, unknown to the Leader, the applause went on – six, seven, eight minutes! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks. At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly – but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them? The director of the local paper factory, an independent, strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and impossibility of the situation, he still kept applauding! 9 minutes! 10! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! With make-believe enthusiasm, looking at each other with faint hope, the leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out on stretchers! And even then those who were left would not falter … then after 11 minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved! The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel.

But that was how they discovered who the independent people were. And how they went about eliminating them. That night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted 10 years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he signed his form, his interrogator reminded him: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”

This writer, Anne Applebaum, has an interesting site on the camps. Her book is also widely referenced. This is another interesting online site about the Gulag.

Kurzröderstraße

I ordered the Iowa Review by phone. I had to spell the name of my street five times. After the second time, the operator was still reading it back wrong. I was going to let it go by, I do love approximations, but wouldn’t that be like ripping 28 dollar bills in half in front of your rich uncle Henry minus the holier-than-thou of it? I made a little joke to show the operator I understood the trouble spelling, that I was not a stuck-up European, and she seemed reassured. Both of us laughed, ha, and began again. Again began and, ha, laughed us of both. I was growing unsure of my pronunciation of the letter K, the most comic letter in English, but entirely straight in German. I spared her the umlaut of the second syllable, but the extra E that created kept slipping back in line behind the D. And “Z as in zebra,” I said, “Z as in zebra, zebra, zig-zagged, stripey horselike mammal,” until soon I was googling above earth, over my street where I own a small patch of property, my street that slopes towards town but has to end somewhere.

all about my dainty wallet

I sent a submission to a US journal this week. The 7 pieces of paper (6 poems + cover letter) together with the SASE cost 4 euros to mail, or $5.20. Including the 83 US-cent stamp on the SASE, we’re over $6. I decided that was ridiculous. I could be using that for a subscription.

I like switching journals when my subscriptions run out. I’m not receiving any journals now, my subscriptions to 32 Poems and American Poetry Journal having recently expired. I would go for Ploughshares if it weren’t for the annoying “all fiction” issue once a year. I’m thinking Iowa Review this year, and/or Barrow Street.

Poetry Journal Subscription Prices on Amazon (to the US of course):
Tar River Poetry $12 ($6/issue)
Barrow Street $15 ($7.50/issue)
Beloit Poetry Journal $18 ($4.50/issue)
Spoon River Poetry Review $15 ($7.50/issue)
Poetry $35 ($2.92/issue)
Meridian $10 ($5/issue)
American Poetry Review $19 ($3.17/issue)
The Sow’s Ear $25 ($6.25/issue)
Iowa Review $24 ($8/issue)
Ploughshares $24 ($8/issue)
Asheville Poetry Review $32.50 ($16.25/issue)

From good to evil is one quaver

Frankfurt Jewish Cemetary

In the German trials an astonishing phe- nomenon takes place from time to time. The defendant clasps his head in his hands, refuses to make any defense, and from then on asks no concessions from the court. He says that the presentation of his crimes, revived and once again confronting him, had filled him with revulsion and he no longer wishes to live. That is the ultimate height a trial can attain.
--From a section of The Gulag Archipelago where Solzhenitsyn bemoans the Russians’ inability to purge themselves of the past. At the time it all went down, like the Russians, the normal Germans also did nothing. We all know that. I don’t think they did nothing because they didn’t care, or because they were rank anti-semites as Goldhagen says, but because they were afraid, and hoped to make it out alive.
Left, a German woman who died with her 2-year old son when a bomb hit their shelter in the Bornheim quarter of Frankfurt.

"Where did this wolf tribe appear from among our people? Does it really stem from our own roots? Our own blood? It is our own. And just so we don't go around flaunting too proudly the white mantle of the just, let everyone ask himself..." p. 73.

If you speak for the wolf

If you speak for the wolf, speak against him as well.

This proverb is cited by Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago. Anyone know what it means exactly?

Great book, by the way. Not only because it so horrible that it challenges the imagination, but also because it is wise. And very well written.

we still fritzing?

i'm listening to music and husband asks "is that your chinese music?" actually it's joanna newsom.

bookishwishes

I don't make resolutions but I hope to read more this year. I have all these at home, so the 1st obstacle is cleared. In no particular order, a tidy ten:

1. Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson (Bought this fall in massachusetts)
2. John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead (Present from brother couple years ago; he’s still waiting for my review)
3. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (My mother just left this at my house & loved it)
4. Cotton Mather by Kenneth Silverman (Began this biography last summer and liked it. Don’t know why I stopped. Written by the father of an ex-boyfriend)
5. Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Bought this 3-4 yrs ago during my all-about-Lincoln phase)
6. London Fields by Martin Amis (Left by my dad at the house. Started once, and ...?)
7. Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel (gift from my mother some yrs ago, has the potential to stink but will try)
8. The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Cary (Bought ages ago 2nd hand. Was the favorite book of my religion professor)
9. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (began & abandoned but will try again)
10. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Ok, I may be completely unrealistic but I have long wanted to read this)

what's in my snowglobe

flying fish
arrowheads
pine needles
sperm
alphabet soup noodles
meteorites
mexican bees

the most enjoyable poem i read this week

rhymes.

twice stirred

my poem "Do Tell" is in January's Stirring.

From a Worker Ant's Book of Hours

Happy New Year Bolivia!
Happy New Year Still Broken Stapler!
Happy New Year Top Hits of the 80’s!
Happy New Year Idiot Mittens!
Happy New Year Last Year’s Garbage!
Happy New Year Book of Job!
Happy New Year Continuing Victory!
Happy New Year Polyurethane!
Happy New Year Nic, Michi & Hollywood!
Happy New Year Victims of Domestic Violence!
Happy New Year Mondays & Wednesdays!
Happy New Year Stray Dog on Bergerstrasse!
Happy New Year Joyless Rejection!
Happy New Year Howard & Carl!
Happy New Year Cholesterol Level!
Happy New Year Meister Eckhart & Walt Whitman!
Happy New Year Words on p. 387 of the Dictionary!
Happy New Year Egomaniac I Met at the Party!
Happy New Year Frankfurt Fire Dept Hacking Branches off that Tree that Took a Chunk off the Neighbor's Roof this Morning!