it will not be a pansy heaven

I called my mom. She wasn't home. We'll survive. I sent her a book as a gift that she got in the mail a few days ago. Of course it's one I want to read, too. As for me, my daughter also got me a book, and my son, well, he was completely oblivious, which we will also survive. It worked for me, since I guilted him in taking the dog out although it was my turn. What are mothers for.

Becoming a mother changed my relationship with the whole world. My ability to empathize exploded, as did my concerns about “the future” of just about everything.

Unlike women who say motherhood gave them something to live for, for me having children gave me something to die for. Not only in that I would jump between them and a hail of bullets, but also in that if they were to die, I would want to die, too. This is clear to me every time they ride the rollercoaster. I don’t want to, but when they get on, I get on. Like I'm going to cushion the crash. Sometimes, though, in a glitch of logic, I send their father.

Here's a poem ee cummings wrote for his mother, read in a not entirely serious way and accompanied by some very low-tech effects. Enjoy.

Tonic observations

I do not live in my dream house.
I do not live in my favorite town.
I do not have the job I once imagined in fantasies.
I did not marry my soulmate.
Surely I would hate my soulmate.
In my inner life I tend to come down on the negative side.
And this has done me a lot of good.

Money talks

One day my friend's car battery dried up, so she approached a man in the parking lot to ask if he could jump the battery. She had cables in the trunk. He said yes, but when he opened his hood he said he'd just bought the car and wasn't sure he would do it right. So he went over to two house painters eating lunch in a nearby van, and asked them if they could lend a hand, which they did. When they were done, the first man asked if they wanted to be paid, and they said no, and left. He, however, told my friend that he wanted to be paid for helping her, as he'd worked as an agent. She gave him $10.

There was a lawyer who worked at my friend's office, who specialized in estates. He was very well off and brought a lot of money into the firm but didn't work there long. While he did, once a week he could be seen throwing bags of trash out in the dumpster behind the office. This let him avoid paying for garbage service at his home.

Another lawyer at my friend's office, another successful and wealthy man in his late 40s/early 50s, one day complained to his father that the family had spent more money on his sister's college education, who'd attended an Ivy League school. He calculated that his mother and father had spent $39,000 more on her education than his, as he'd gone to a school with a lower profile. He felt he was owed that money and told his father as much. The father gave it to him. My friend knows this because the father, who frequently drops by the office, whispered it all down for her.

Giveaway

I don't know what happened to this week. Here we are at the end of National Poetry Month, and I only managed to write anything within the last week, like a reluctant IV drip. Because of my trip over the ocean, I also didn't participate in any giveaways and wish I did. So here, with my last opportunity, I'm offering a couple of copies of my chapbooks (=2 altogether) to whoever is interested. Just tell me if you have one or the other and leave your snail mail and I'll choose at random, provided someone answers....

On that topic, Dave Bonta the other day reviewed Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair. Thanks Dave. Elsewhere earlier this month, a poet talked about my Book of Hours Ghazal at her blog. Thanks to her too!

Tomorrow is May Day in Germany, which is labor day, and I look forward now to a long sleep.

Mileage

So where wasn't I? Montana, for one, and also Maine. But I did all the states that start with 'New,' including the southwestern one, and some one-word states, too. What did I learn on my traipse through the states? Mostly that crazy is given way too much air time. And that air time in general, even the supposedly serious talk shows, are against the serious.

On the upside, Americans love to interact. They gladly enter conversation. They stop your daughter on the street to say they like her hair, or lack of it. They ask you where you got your shirt. They call you darling and honey. Sometimes their zeal gets the better of them, as with the man who woke me up on the flight from Albuquerque to Houston to ask if I'd ever flown United. Well intentioned, I am sure. Even headphones could not stop his heart surgery. On another flight, after a guy across from me complained to the stewardess for the fourth time about the way she phrased something(!), the guy behind me told him politely to shut up.

I have been away. So long! I didn't get a chance until now to mention that I have three poems in the spring issue of Menacing Hedge: 'Snow Globe Shepherd,' 'Village' and 'Crepe Paper Body.' Like the label on the bottle in Alice in Wonderland might as well have said, "Read Me."

Set your monkey free

1. I always sleep alphabetically but last night God forgot and removed the W. I was sent back to sleep twice through the V.

2. In some parts of the world, the clocks are set back an hour at three in the afternoon rather than three in the morning. People sit back down to tea, and all the children who finished school at 2.30 are required to come back.

3. It’s an old story. I was in love but found the object of my desire terribly fickle – one hour cool, one hour on fire. Only at the bullring did it become clear that the matador with the floppy bangs had a twin brother.

4. As Chuang Tzu says: ‘To wear out your brain trying to make things into one without realizing they are all the same – this is called “three in the morning.” What do I mean by “three in the morning?” When the monkey trainer was handing out acorns, he said, “You get three in the morning and four and night.” This made all the monkeys furious. “Well, then,” he said, “you get four in the morning and three at night.” The monkeys were all delighted. There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger. Let them, if they want to.’

5. The year I spent in China was more like three years. At first the days were all equal, but soon moved unevenly as wheelbarrows pushed by a child. Pollution and endless exertion aged me threefold. The only way to offset this effect was to sleep all day, one brushstroke at a time. But once the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, time had spun out of control. When I set off for home it was as if one year were three. But three that flew by.

Tears, who needs them

Cedar smells better than lilies, and does not sicken the audience as it fades.

Camus suffered from tuberculosis for years on end, an ailment compounded by heavy smoking, but a car accident killed him within seconds.

Exercising one's willpower over a bad habit just for the sake of saying so is exchanging one weakness for another.

In the barracks of Russian labor camps, those who had memorized stories were the most prized inmates.

What could ever be objective about choosing between the last names Motherwell and Frankenthaler?

I considered learning Spanish to read Garcia Lorca, but if I pursued that line with consistency I'd also have to learn Portuguese to read Pessoa, Polish to read Szymborska, Serbo-Croatian to read Vasko Popa, Russian to read Akhmatova, etc. etc. und so weiter.

The bulb throwing its dim light down the steps like grey fur.

Misread "abominable teeth" as "abdominal teeth."

spoils

I went to the Strand bookstore yesterday equipped with a notebook page of 55 writers' names - from Samuel Beckett to Marguerite Yourcenar - all from my Good Reads to-read list. For some of them I noted a particular book, but mostly I was going for anything. Due to time constraints, and various family members pursuing me, I made it only to fiction and poetry. 19 of the authors I looked for weren't there; another seven I found and decided against.

I came home with seven books, each the first I've bought by the respective writer. 

1. Wonderful Wonderful Times by Elfriede Jelinek. "It is the late 1950s. A man is walking in a park in Vienna. He will be beaten..." (I would have preferred The Piano Teacher, but they had this and Greed.)

2. The Nervous Filaments by David Dodd Lee. "Imagistic, passionate and uncompromising ... transforms the harsh realities we experience as brutal and permanent into transient informative moments of release." (The volume I wanted.)

3. The Ninth Life of Louis Drax by Liz Jensen. "Louis Drax is a boy like no other. He is brilliant and strange, and every year something violent seems to happen to him. On his ninth birthday, Louis goes to a picnic..." (I wanted The Ark Baby, but happy to give this a shot.)

4. Reader's Block by David Markson. "In this spellbinding, utterly unconventional fiction, an aging author who is identified only as Reader contemplates the writing of a novel. As he does, other matters insistently crowd his mind -literary and cultural anecdotes, endless quotations attributed and not, scholarly curiosities- the residue of a life's reading, which is apparently all he has to show for his decades on earth." (I wanted Vanishing Point, but no go.)

5. The Tanners by Robert Walser. "(Walser is) the dreamy, confectionary snowflake of German-language fiction." (I would have taken anything.)

6. The Garden Going On Without Us by Lorna Crozier. The poem 'Onions.' (Exactly the book I wanted.)

7. The Quincunx by Charles Pallier. "A remarkable book ... in mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated. It is an immersing experience." (The book I wanted.)

from The Catalog of Swallowed Objects

Padlock
Safety pins
Straight pins
Toy opera glasses
A quarter
Radiator key
Buttons
Wool
Wire
Tin steering wheel
Umbrella tips
Nails
Chains
Toy dog
Sticks
Burnt matches
The letter Z
A half-dollar
Beaded crucifix
Toy goat
A medallion that says 'Carry Me for Good Luck'

a book about the man who removed the objects

tiny kingdoms

A tree is considered too huge and unruly to bring indoors, unless you choose the docile bonsai. We have four bonsais in the house, in various stages of surrender. Tending them is an exercise in patience, but also a show of power. We love them because they’re beautiful. We love them because they make us giants.

off we go

We leave for America tomorrow and I have not packed any snacks. Despite airplane food, I have not packed any wheat bread or fishes and I don’t consider it my business to make money exporting the dirt around Schopenhauer’s tombstone. Dear suitcase that comes smashing down my mottled halls, things go better with clean underwear. Things go better with a change of socks and soap and jewel-like jars of eye moisturizer. Tonight I will lie conscious of the long bodies of airplanes, their cool wings waiting, their tailflukes and inner chambers that explode with headphoned entertainment. Like any man I will refuse a blanket that’s become a sack of static. Like any man I may drink a tomato juice once we have reached cruising altitude, and I won’t take Manhattan but will accept a moist towelette expertly folded and packed tight with a hint of lemon.

thanks to catherine mellinger for the collage.

death & vegetables

Nothing much happened. I woke up. I made coffee. I washed my hair, and in the elevator later in the day I noticed how very grey it's growing. I had my mozzarella sandwich and worked non-stop all day long. I gave up on a crappy book set in NYC in favor of a promising one set in Poland.

I also had a prose poem up at Juked called "Mist," which involves death and vegetables.

Another reason to love Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

I have dueling versions of Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands on my iPod, Bob Dylan’s and Joan Baez’s. For a long time I only listened to hers, but in fact I prefer his. She has a distinctive, beautiful voice, whereas he just has a distinctive voice. But he’s also got personality, and that piercingly sad harmonica!

Ok, so what's another reason to love the song? Because it is a list poem that reminds me of the French surrealists, that’s why.

Take this, from the song:
With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace,
And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace,
And your basement clothes and your hollow face,
Who among them can think he could outguess you?
With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,
And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns (etc)

Then this, from Benjamin Peret’s “Here:”
my ghetto of black iris my crystal ear
my opal snail my mosquito made out of air
my bird-of-paradise mattress my hair of black foam
my exploded grave my rain of red grasshoppers
my flying island my turquoise grape (etc)

Then this, from André Breton’s “Free Union:”
My wife whose hair is a brush fire
Whose thoughts are summer lightning
Whose waist is an hourglass
Whose waist is the waist of an otter caught in the teeth of a tiger
Whose mouth is a bright cockade with the fragrance of a star of the first magnitude
Whose teeth leave prints like the tracks of white mice over snow
Whose tongue is made out of amber and polished glass
Whose tongue is a stabbed wafer (etc)

See! I told you.
Listen to André Breton read his luscious poem.

Word Thursday

The word mellow acquired a dubious reputation in the 60s with that goofy Donovan song and later with the antics of Cheech and Chong. If it didn't reek of marijuana, it would be a useful member of worddom.
Sometimes it manages, for example in talking about wine and dogs that lose the desire to bite, or in this odd sentence from Wolf Hall:

"The mellow brick frontage is smaller than he remembers, but that is what memory does."

I had to wonder when I read it how on earth mellow was being used. I imagine the red bricks have faded with age? They've gone soft and chalky, and are possibly intoxicated?
The proximity of mellow to brick also evoked Oz's yellow brick road, and I wondered what on earth kind of bricks those could have been. Gold, I guess. I'd never asked myself.
Though mellow and the prefix melo- have no known ties, there is a hidden affinity between mellow and melodrama, that which makes the eyes well stupidly with tears and softens the grey matter to a mushy pulp.
I guarantee none of this happens in Wolf Hall, however. The stiff upper lip prevails.
It has been a busy morning on page 510!

Song of the day: Factory, Martha Wainwright

legs too short

It's the first day of spring, and our transport union celebrated with a strike. This is the second time in two weeks, and after a grueling, pointlessly long taxi ride last go-round --at one hour I could have walked it in the same time, less expensively-- I took my neighbor up on the offer of borrowing her bike. It was a bit too high for me, at least so says my sore crotch. It took about the same amount of time as the UBahn, maybe less, and indeed there was fresh spring air, but cycling would never be my preferred way to and from work. I don't know if you've noticed, but it is impossible to read a book while commuting by bicycle, even if it's Wolf Hall. Make mine the UBahn, even if it can be rough company.

I celebrated spring with a poem in the new issue of Birdfeast, their second issue. It's one of my short poems with long titles: "Lines written in a Japanese noodle shop watching a building being demolished." I hope you will enjoy it, and celebrate by liking spring on Facebook.

spring&all

the chest
the pretty chest
the pretty chestnut
tree

The zone

I was downtown today, and noticed I have officially entered the mental “near-home zone.” This occurs every year before I visit the states. I go into a store, see something I like, then turn up my nose and snort:

“I can get something better in America.” (tough luck, potholders)
Or “I can get this much cheaper in America.” (hope to see you in 3 weeks, Calvin Klein tote)
Or “I don’t like this enough not to covert the 30 euros I would have spent on it into $40 I can spend in America.” (good try, pillow covers)

This is really a great money-saving psychological device, also because there's often no follow-up. I don't go LOOKING for potholders, for example....

My retail dreams of America are no longer wholly realizable since the airlines started charging for overweight baggage, rather than just threatening to. Last April when I came back they told me I had to pay $200 for overweight, or $50 for a second bag. Needless to say, I whipped out a second bag and transferred the 50 books I’d bought from my suitcase into it, mentally adding $1 to the price of each book (which was still kind of a bargain).

snakes and birds

sometimes it's as if i lived my sister's life / or i am inside it / i inhabit her gestures / my sister had a clique of friends in college / ages ago / they claimed all people resembled either birds or snakes / there were no hybrids / there were no cats no horses no starfish / they went around categorizing whole populations / they did their best to be outrageous / one threw up in my room / though i would not admit it to them / i have been surveying the data / 30 years later i can report back / the split is not even

The N words

I was out today and two young guys were behind me, friends obviously and goofing around, and one suddenly called the other a Nazi. “Get lost, Nazi,” he said, laughing and pushing his friend. They were two completely decent looking 18- or 19-year olds and I was stunned that they broke this tabu. Of course the term is used often by non-Germans as the ultimate insult. It’s thrown around lightly these days, too, with Greeks calling Germans Nazis, or calling Angela Merkel a Nazi, or whomever.

But for Germans, outside of historical context, it’s a no-fly zone. When these two used it, it was so unexpected I had to laugh, and they were laughing, too, knowing they were stepping over a well-patrolled boundary.

It reminded me, oddly, of two black people fooling around call each other 'nigger' - that frowned-upon put-down, made innocuous for some as insider banter. There are worlds between the words, it goes without saying: one being a criminal, the other a victim, one having once been an official moniker, the other a condescending insult. And I surely don’t think Germans calling each other Nazis is going to gain any currency. Still, hearing it used was a kind of relief, like acknowledging the elephant in the room, and the laugh was the relief of tension.

song of the day: two little hitlers

right-height trees

Though not a Romney fan, my father enjoyed his quote about trees being the right height. He likes the idea - says it's a kind of found poetry. But it's a bit short for poetry, even for haiku, so I looked up the quote and found more, out of which came this found poem.

Michigan

I come back to Michigan.
I like seeing the lakes. Something special,
the Great Lakes, but also all the little inland lakes
that dot the parts of Michigan.
I come back to Michigan: the trees
are the right height.
I love the lakes. Brownish-green,
the grass is the right color.
I love being in Michigan.
Everything seems right.

Politicians seem to be masters of the deeply inane. Who knows what the right height is for trees? Romney, the sage, accidental poet, does. On the way home from work I sized up the trees. Some of them seemed insecure about their height. Others were too loose, too tight, or too symmetrical. Some had a freakish branch jutting out at an uncomfortable angle without a proper counterweight.

Grotesquerie

It's carnival time in Germany, with its parades and absurdity. There are costumes and floats, beer and huge paper maché heads. I imagine carnival is nice in Rio, but in Germany it is cold, damp and plain weird. It invariably drizzles, or just rains. Today is the height of it, Rosenmontag, but it continues tomorrow with Fat Tuesday. My boss takes three days off, and he’s not alone. The train station this morning was empty.

The holiday this year coincides with my reading of The Tin Drum. Like carnival, The Tin Drum in shocking in places with its dwarves, eels, onions & potatoes, horseheads as fishing tools, incest and invading armies, and also outrageous, and very engaging. Along with the story, I like the particularly German things that come up, like school-going "cornucopias" (Schultüten), which I wouldn't have understood if I hadn't had children here, and the famous fizz powder sweet, a stand-in for sexual climax in the book.

Anyone who knows anything about The Tin Drum knows it is about the rise of the Nazis, and the post-war years in Germany. The protagonist is a supposedly insane dwarf, who decided at three to stop growing and remain a child, and there of course are all the Germans who had no responsibility for anything in their society.

This is the year I penciled in to read more German/ic and Germany-related literature, and this seems a good start. Here's part of the first chapter, the creation scene, which leads us right into the distorted grotesque: My grandmother had on not just one skirt, but four, one over the other. It should not be supposed that she wore one skirt and three petticoats; no, she wore four skirts; one supported the next, and she wore the lot of them in accordance with a definite system, that is, the order of the skirts was changed from day to day. The one that was on top yesterday was today in second place; the second became the third. The one that was third yesterday was text o her skin today. The one that was closest to her yesterday clearly disclosed its pattern today, or rather its lack of pattern: all my grandmother Anna Bronski's skirts favored the same potato color. It must have been becoming to her.

plans, schemes

someday i will write it all down in greater detail

someday i will write it all down in greater detail

someday i will write it all down in greater detail

someday i will write it all down in greater detail

someday i will write it all down in greater detail

Thumb Theater

I treated myself to a mac, and it is a lovely machine, clean and easy. But I am having a terrible time without Word. Apple has many programs for writers (too many) - Pages, iA Writer, Ommwriter, Text Edit etc - but it is difficult to make the transition. I almost gave in and bought Word yesterday, and even now I wonder why didn't I, but the Apple store convinced me to come in for a Pages class. It is not hard to use, but I want to save things in Word, or send them in Word, and I have run into one obstacle after another. For example, the computer accepts my password for some applications, but not others, so I can't set up my mail account. I only have one password! Then there's the question of where the hell are my files when I save them. MUST FIGURE OUT.

I was hoping to write more, not spend the evenings feeling defeated.

So, ironically, for now I am back to writing poems exclusively on paper. Page after page of the same poem with a slight change in each new version, like those flipbooks you hold in one hand while flipping through the pages with the thumb of the other to see a horse run, a head turn, or a star explode.
Kind of defeated the purpose of the new computer.

Happy Valentine's Day. I heart Word.

More flipbooks:
Break dance
Close up
Louis Vuitton

Unseen

Despite my choice of the kind sepia tone in the video below, I'm trying to modernize. Over the past couple days I've learned how to make audio files, convert photo files, use iTunes for more than music, and here's my first (fidgety) iPhoto video. Primitive! I'll take it down in a couple days to protect my secret identity. Ironically enough, this is my poem "Unseen," from my chapbook.

more fan love

Of Wislawa Szymborska’s poems, most American poetry readers are familiar with the one called “Could Have,” sometimes titled “Any Case,” which for some became almost an allegory of the 9/11 tragedy. If I’m not wrong, the New Yorker (?) printed the poem over a picture of the WTC, sealing its fate as a 9/11 poem. It’s an excellent poem, though its writing predates the terrorist attack and refers to the Holocaust, a tragedy of a much larger scale. (She later DID write a 9/11 poem, “Photograph from September 11.”) But the good thing about Szymborska’s poems is their seeming simplicity makes them like Colorforms, peel them off one situation and stick them on another. They leave lots of room. She ignores poetry workshop directives like, “Get all the senses in there! Did it smell like nutmeg?! Was the sky slateblue or greengrey!”

When Szymborska died last week, I didn't blog about her, though she’s a favorite of mine. I didn’t feel I had anything to add besides more fan love. Then I read this blog at Slate this morning, clicking in when I saw “the Szymborska poem above my desk,” fully expecting to see “Could Have” and finding instead “ABC!” That was refreshing.
 
All this is leading up to the fan love I promised and my favorite Szymborska poem – "Contribution to Statistics". This was the first Szymborska I ever read. It appeared years ago, before she won the Nobel Prize, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a newspaper that sometimes prints poems. Of course it was in German, as “Beitrag zur Statistik,” and because I first read the poem in German, it remains for me far superior to the two English translations I’ve since read. (One even uses a baseball metaphor – “not even in the ballpark” – which makes me groan in dismay. Sport metaphors!)

Anyway, I liked the Slate blog about the Szymborska poem that enjoys a “place of honor” hanging above the writer's desk, because “Contribution to Statistics/Beitrag zur Statistik” has a shrine in my home, too. However many years ago I cut it out of the paper, plonked it into a frame and hung it next to the mirror in my bedroom, or in all four bedrooms I’ve had since then.

Crush

As if writing a poem weren't hard enough, then comes submitting. Sometimes, despite having some favorite zines, I don't know where to begin. A good way out of the 'where to?' question can be to find a poet you like, find out where their new poems are, and try there, too. I do this!

I find Duotrope also a big help. I look at "recent responses" for new publications and also to refresh my memory. Recently I saw Birdfeast start up, and I thought, oh, not another zine with a bird name. But I checked it out and the 'bird' referred to 'flipping the bird,' and it just seemed a desirable home for a poem, and I was lucky to have one accepted. Funny enough, I also checked out Thrush, yet another bird name, and thought it would be girly love and nature poetry but looks (and names) deceive and it is full of terrific poems. They rejected me, but I will try again.

Then come the cases of cool-sounding zines that have sleek and savvy layouts, and are full of poetry you think is bad! Not 'not my thing' bad but downright weak. This is disappointing.

Considering all the time and thought that goes into submitting, beyond writing the poem, I think I'll just lie back and suck plastic grapes and wait until the publications come knocking at my door. Um, more plastic grapes please...

For those who celebrate, V-Day is a week or so away, and Poetry Crush has a feature up on erotic poems. They asked the writers who are publishing with Hyacinth Girl Press to choose a favorite and write a little intro. Mine is ee cummings, and there is a rich and varied selection of other poets too. Enjoy.

the balls off a brass monkey

It is -8C here or worse, which is about 17F to us Americans. Cold! The gypsies are nevertheless camped out across from the train station, sitting Indian style on their mattress with a blanket around them. At least until around 11 pm when the guy in the Mercedes comes to pick them up. He brings them back before the crack of dawn.

Anyway, yeah. Cold! Well-digger's ass! Witch's tit! Cold as hell. Cold as all get-out. Eskimo's chuff! Whatever that is.

My poem "Sidewalk Rage" is up in the new Snakeskin, which is all found poems. I admit Sidewalk Rage has also found me occasionally, most often when I'm behind the dope & her friend standing side-by-side on the escalator in the train station where I am trying to catch my train.

Injuns

When I first moved to Germany I was surprised when people told me they had visited or planned to go to New England for Indian Summer, as if it were a sure thing. How did they calculate, I wondered. I wondered aloud, and found out what they meant was 'foliage season,' when trees turned colorful as a headress full of feathers. It was easy to understand where the mistake was made.

Still, I tried to explain what Indian Summer really was - that time of year when the heat creeps back, although you thought autumn had started, a bout of hot weather usurping the season, unexpected and unwelcome. It was than that I first made the connection between Indian Summer and 'Indian giver.'

This backstory was more difficult to explain, and eventually I gave up. I know where the expression comes from, but I let the Germans keep their own, though the imprecision irks. Am I lazy, or just dismayed by the effort of explaining, or is it worse than that? Is Indian Summer = foliage season a semantic whitewash?

Safe Landings

Mark Wahlberg caused a ruckus recently when he claimed history would have been different had he been on the plane from Boston that crashed into the WTC on 9/11. He was supposed to be on one of the two, but rescheduled shortly before. He dreams frequently of his would-be heroism: If he’d been on board, he says, he’d have stormed the cockpit and kicked some terrorist ass.

While I appreciate the sentiment, how can anyone know the circumstances, assess the danger and opportunities, and above all know oneself –one's reactions, the thoughts that would go through your head, the power of fear– enough to judge what he’d do? In these days of easy heroism (local girl picks up baby sister at school!), I wouldn’t discourage the real thing, but how to make such claims hypothetically? Maybe because of your kids’ being on board, or the deal you’re about to close, or your crush on Tanya at your office, you wouldn’t dare anything at all? Most people hope for a best-case outcome. No one on the plane from Boston knew his fate.

(It’s interesting that Wahlberg has that German last name because if he’d been born, say, 90 years ago, we could have counted on him to take Hitler out. Too bad! ... but I’m having fun at his expense.) In his favor, he has since apologized. We all appreciate the sentiment, but we also benefit from hindsight. And the adrenaline of imagination. Still, there’s a lot of injustice out there, so he needn’t be disappointed he missed his chance to right wrongs. Opportunities abound.

Anyway, I heard all this and I'd have put it away in my mental clutter cabinet, except Wahlberg’s outburst coincided with the wreck of the Costa Concorida and its weasely captain. The wreck also brought up comparisons to the Titanic, and my colleague who covers the insurance industry and has a pet interest in cruises, sent me a link about second mate Lightoller, whom I’d never heard of and now ask myself why (boy walks dog for sick mom!). When the Titanic captain told him to get into one of the lifeboats, he refused. Instead when there was nothing left to stand on he dove into the ocean, after having packed as many women and children into the lifeboats as he could. Some think he misunderstood "women & children first" as "women & children only." Still, a hero in my book.

reading notes

Not long ago I finally finished Moby Dick. I admit there would have been an acute danger of failing to finish it if I hadn't been in an internet group dedicated to it, if I hadn't been one of the leaders of aforesaid group. Yup, "reading in public!" The pressure. I am very glad to have read it now; it was worth the while. When you're somehow involved with Melville, he seems to turn up everywhere - this, today, for example.

Afterwards, quite exhausted, I had a quick romp with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which had a good plot but which I found so-so. It was a fast read, though, which is often a plus point. To me it seemed like YA literature, though I understand that wasn't its original category. My take: skippable, unless you have an interest in Asperger's Syndrome.

Now I'm reading The Tin Drum and feeling underwhelmed after my high expectations. What I think of wistfully nearly every day is re-reading The French Lieutenant's Woman, which I loved last year. I even pulled it out this morning and re-read the first couple pages. Later in the day I talked to my mom who spent four hours in a doctor's waiting room today reading something I'd recommended, which turned out to be this! I could have cried. My only problem with my copy, I remembered this morning when I pulled it out, is the goofy cover with cutesy girlwoman playing peekaboo.

the what

“Thank you for sending us your poems; we are sorry to say they are not what we are looking for.”

What: substansive
What: a question word demanding definition
What: “that which”
What: (adv.) in a great or surprising manner, e.g. what a poem!
What: a thing inherently unspecified

(for further reference: whatever, whatsoever, whosiewhat, whatchamacallit)

Do you remember the riddle about the fisherman’s daughter, who was to come both dressed and undressed? In what was she un/dressed?

“When you have what we are looking for, please let us know.“

(it has yet to be fingerprinted)

Why you cannot sing 'Dem Bones' in German

The Scheitelbein's connected to the Hinterhauptbein
The Hinterhaupbein's connected to the Schläfenbein
The Schläfenbein's connected to the Unterkiefer
The Unterkiefer's connected to the Zwischenkieferbein
The Zwischekieferbein's connected to the Gesichtsschädel

ach nein, it just don't flow...

Word Thursday

The little figure of the die is one of my favorites.
It is so neat and dotted, intact and self-contained, and yet with so many tentacled implications.

It's a loaded word, too, as dice can be loaded, hiding the fatal verb in it. I also like that die’s plural is dice. There’s nothing like the die-dice pair.

The mice don’t have their mie.

Advice has no advie, and rice must walk this world alone, or at least as a collective singular.

Another word I like is stacks, as in library stacks, which has no singular. Such stacks in fact are not stacked at all, ideally, but lined up in rows. For stacking stacks you need a used book shop or a plate of pancakes.

But what brought all this up was another word that I read today and meant to take note of, but now slips my mind. It’s like this morning, I put a pan of milk on the stove to warm and when I came back to get it the pan was nice and warm but there was no milk in it.

And now I remember the word: absentminded. It struck me funny. I wanted to give it a hyphen, but the dictionary says no. Perhaps I knew that.

One of the Tea Leaf fragments

Prince Igor

Let’s lay a cloth under our clutter,
acclaim the sanity of teapots
and backs of chairs, swans
curving into morning.

And though we’ve run out of sugar
and though time, too, runs out
to its grey and empty chamber

you fill a vase with grass
saying, “if there are no roses”
*

less usual delusions

A variation of delusions of grandeur are delusions of grammar, that is, the fixed belief that one’s language abilities are far superior than other people's, even infallible. In addition to grammar, the deluded person believes his spelling and punctuation are irreproachable. Dressing in robes or crowns is a symptom, as the patient may consider himself “the king” or “Jesus” of grammar, or chief of the grammar police. Patients obsess about perceived offenses in books, correspondence and newspapers, as well as in verbal interaction with others. This malady often leads to a complete loss of manners, as well as an obscure illness known as ‘denial of the dictionary.’

Elsewhere, closely related to delusions of persecution/paranoia are delusions of parsecution – the belief that other people – vaguely identified as "they" - are paying overly close attention to every word you say, that is, they are parsing your sentences. These parsecutory delusions often lead the sufferer to swear silence, or alternately, to use made-up words and bizarre syntactical twists to obscure the true meaning of their statements (e.g. "Withholding it stampedes, therewith spears taking tapwatery wonder," which means “Spanish agents are aggressively poisoning my tap water.”).

Happy even-numbered year

This music makes me glad to be alive.
I wish you a brilliant, beautiful new year.
The dragon is right behind.

Cabbages & Kings

One linguistic tic that seems pre-programmed to annoy is using the name of the person being addressed to punctuate a sentence, e.g. -
"I have a few questions about your report, Bill."
"There's something I don't understand, Joan."

Unlike placing a name at the start of the sentence, where it asks for someone's attention, using the name at the end seems patronizing, a mark of presumed superiority. With it the speaker takes a stance. It's even more pompous used in writing than in speaking, when it's completely clear to the reader that s/he is the person being addressed.
"There's one thing that sits oddly with me about your comment, Nathan."

A friend in the office says this linguistic device is taught in business school as a way of "establishing closeness with an employee." Gack. More like a way of demonstrating bossdom. To me it's the linguistic equivalent of someone poking you in the chest when talking to you.
I do admit there are times when it could be used simply for innocuous emphasis. But even in a positive sentence it seems weird, e.g. "I really like this cake you made, Bill."
Does that make it seem like the speaker was expecting not to like the cake?

I'd be interested to know what others think. I should take more time to read linguistics! Maybe I will.

Anyway, in a tenuous segue from linguistics, my poem Liaoning Snapshot is up at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Ages ago I taught and studied in Liaoning province in a city named Dalian, another huge Chinese city no one has ever heard of, whose cabbages inspired the poem.

Annual Limbo

In German the week from Christmas to New Year's is called "between the years" (zwischen den Jahren), a phrase evoking a no man's land of time, and it does seem like that - taking the train with hardly anyone in it, floating around the office while nearly everyone else has off, the kids home from school.

Here comes the new year. I remember being a little kid and trying to figure out if I'd be alive after the year 2000. I made it. As always, in the new year I
1.) plan to eat more broccoli. I failed this year with about 6-7 servings, tops.

I also
2.) plan to read more German/y-related literature - The Magic Mountain, more Heinrich Böll, Herta Müller's The Appointment, that Goldhagen book, and The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman.

Travelwise I
3.) hope to visit my dad and step-mother in Santa Fe, with or without appendages.

And, after some bad experiences, I will
4.) avoid delusions of grandeur, and just as importantly
5.) avoid people with delusions of grandeur, in real life and on the internet, where they are apparently legion.

I'm sure there are other, even more constructure ventures I could pursue, but these seem about doable.

happy trails

Since I'm doing a slow read of Moby-Dick, I doubt there will be more to add to this list before the year ends. So here are all the books I read in 2011, not counting some re-reads. Though many of these were worthwhile, I highlighted 'only' 15 of them as especially good, in whatever way. In January I wondered if I'd find anything as good as Mrs. Dalloway in the rest of the year - it such was a terrific novel. But without devoting too much thought to it, which sometimes leads to nothing but confusion, I'd say the book I liked most this year was The French Lieutenant's Woman. Having disliked the film, it's wonder I ever took it up.

1. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Jan)
2. Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison (Jan)
3. Among the Monarchs by Christine Garren (Jan)
4. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (Feb)
5. Dances With Snakes by Horacio Castellanos Moya (Feb)
6. Small Island by Andrea Levy (Feb)
7. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Mar)
8. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles (Mar)
9. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (Mar)
10. The Alphabetical Atheist by Andrew Rihn (Mar)
11. The Chameleon Couch by Yusef Komunyakaa (Mar)
12. Jejuri by Arun Kolatkar (Apr)
13. Mapping the World by Caroline Laffon (Apr)
14. Zirconia by Chelsey Minnis (Apr)
15. Oracle Night by Paul Auster (Apr)
16. The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien (Feb)
17. Chronicles I by Bob Dylan (Mar)
18. Moscow to the End of the Line by Venedikt Erofeev (apr)
19. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist (apr)
20. Call Me Ishmael Tonight by Agha Shahid Ali (Apr)
21. A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz (Apr)
22. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (May)
23. Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein (May)
24. Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin (May)
25. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (May)
26. Geography of the Forehead by Ron Koertge (May)
27. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson (Jun)
28. The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds (jun)
29. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (jun)
30. Laika by Nick Abadzis (June)
31. Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi (Jun)
32. The Redcoats by Ryan Murphy (spring)
33. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles (Jul)
34. The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (Jul)
35. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (jul)
36. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Jul)
37. Enduring Love by Ian McEwan (Jul)
38. Undertow by Anne Shaw (Jul)
39. The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster by Richard Brautigan (Jul)
40. Juan Luna’s Revolver by Luisa A. Igloria (Jul)
41. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie (Jul)
42. Vernon Little God by DPC Pierre (August)
43. Then We Came to the End (August)
44. Temper by Beth Bachmann (Sept)
45. Number 9 Dream by David Mitchell (Aug)
46. The Trees by Eugenio Montale (Sept)
47. Aphorisms by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (Aug)
48. Skylark by Dezso Kosztolanyi (Aug)
49. Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman (Aug)
50. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (Sep)
51. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan (Sept)
52. Maus I by Arthus Spiegelman (Oct)
53. Maus II (Oct)
54. Fantastic Women: 18 Tales from Tin House (Oct)
55. Twisted: Collected Stories by Jeffrey Deaver (Oct)
56. The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr
57. Selected Poems by René Char (Oct.
58. The Boom of a Small Cannon by Mary Ann Samyn (Oct)
59. The Children of Men by PD James (Oct)
60. Anthrolpology by Dan Rhodes (Nov)
61. Haywire by George Bilgere (Nov)
62. Surrealist Poetry in English, ed. Edward Germain (Dec)

It has snown.

I was browsing a Roz Chast book recently and one of the comics was "Kitsch in Nature." The three things singled out were peacocks, foliage season and snowfall shortly before Christmas. All true!

I woke up this morning and it was snowing copiously and beautifully. My son jumped for joy and I kind of did, too, but also felt unnerved because my mother and sister are scheduled to fly from the states tonight and if their trips get screwed up I will be unhappy. Last year my sister had to scrap her trip completely because of snow, and my mother only arrived on Dec. 26. PLEASE GOD! Save the snow for later.

Snow is nice, though (please stop!). And here's a nicer thing. The International Center of Photography in NY used a photo by my brother Thatcher for its Christmas card this year. Click on it to make it bigger.

The victim has yet to be identified.

This blog is operated by a human being

Just sayin.
*

We visited IKEA this weekend and I was surprised to find out they are banking on the death of the book. They're redesigning their Billy bookcases to be deeper, because they don't expect people to use them for books anymore. We recently bought a "bookshelf" from IKEA that's very deep, but I didn't appreciate the sinister warning in it. Now that I look I realize the depth is mostly unnecessary since we are using it for books, which we continue to accumulate. Maybe here the expression "like they're going out of style" would be appropriate?
I know many believe books are headed for extinction as just another outdated technology. But books have been around for thousands of years, like houses, like shoes, like earrings. I haven't seen those things fall by the wayside yet.
*

One thing in need of a serious update is the umbrella. When it is windy that contraption just does not work. Why is no one able to improve on this old technology?

All that barking

More poems. Last night Verdad published its new issue, which has two of my poems – Death Roster and Good Wife of Hunan. The first is a spontaneous European sidewalk poem from some other decade, the second is Chinese-American and concerns my obsession with the Dog Star.

I’m taking a class in writing short prose, which is sometimes a class in reading short prose, which is also good. I’ve read many things in small formats, including Dan Rhodes’ Anthropology and some of Lou Beach’s 420 Characters, both new to me. Though I’m not big on gimmick I preferred the latter to the former. As the class ends soon we went out last night for a drink. I was looking forward to it because I next-to-never have an evening out and I assumed we’d talk writing and books but instead a talk ensued about American television, which was supremely depressing. I never watch tv, I don’t care about tv, especially tv I would have to make an extra effort to watch on the freaking internet in my miniscule free time! Anyway, I didn’t say this because as soon as you say you don’t like tv you look like a snob. It was a deflating evening.

Back to reading and writing.

in which the bluebirds black out

It is becoming more difficult to write a letter
from the slow country of summer.
The light makes a mess of the trees.

A lawn chair broods in a corner way off the map.
*

I have two poems in the new issue of DMQ Review - Seven Postcards from Solitude and This tree requests dedication and patience. My lawn chair and bonsai are happy to be there.

Another thing I've meant to mention is my chapbook Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair made Jessy Randall's list of favorite (chap)books of 2011. Yeah!

Those end-of-year lists are rolling in. I enjoy them, although I rarely read a book the year it comes out. My favorite book this year was The French Lieutenant's Woman, fresh from 1969.

Thingdom

I am so disappointed in the French. One of our French managers visited the office today. He laughed at my joke and was generally charming. But when we retired to my desk to discuss "input queues," did he notice the book of Francis Ponge poems on my desk? Non! Or worse, he noticed and did not know Francis Ponge. It was truly disappointing.

Still, it's my week at Good Reads to pick the poems. My theme is THINGS. I've chosen poems that either take a close look at objects, or use them as a springboard. I include Ponge, and a bunch of others, including myself:

Monday: Fork by Charles Simic
Tuesday: Pity the Bathtub its Forced Embrace of the Human Form by Matthea Harvey
Wednesday: Oranges by Gary Soto
Thursday: The Frog by Francis Ponge
Friday: The Groundfall Pear by Jane Hirshfield
Saturday: Whisk by me
Sunday: Wick Effects by E.C. Belli

Below is Ponge's Frog, and maybe later this week I'll put up my Whisk, which also isn't online anywhere but will be in my chapbook Homebodies, due next year from Hyacinth Girl Press.

The Frog
When stabbing needlepoints of rain rebound from the sodden fields, an amphibious dwarf, an Ophelia with amputated arms, no bigger than a fist, springs up sometimes under the poet’s feet and hurls herself into the nearest pool.
Let the nervous creature flee. She has lovely legs. All her body is gloved in a waterproof skin. Barely flesh, her long muscles have an elegance neither fish nor fowl. But to escape your clutch the quality of fluidity in her combines with the efforts of a living thing.
Goitrous, she gasps . . . And that heart which throbs so heavily, whose wrinkled eyelids, that haggard mouth inspires such pity that I let her go.

La Grenouille
Lorsque la pluie en courtes aiguillettes rebondit aux prés saturés, une naine amphibie, une Ophélie manchote, grosse à peine comme le poing, jaillit parfois sou les pas du poète et se jette au prochain étang.
Laisson fuir la nerveuse. Elle a de jolies jambes. Tout son corps est ganté de peau imperméable. A peine viande ses muscles longs sont d’une elegance ni chair ni poisson. Mais pour quitter les doigts la vertu du fluide s’allie chez elle aux effort du vivant. Goitreuse, elle halite . . . Et ce cœur qui bat gros, ces paupières ridées, cette bouche hagarde m’apitoyent a la lâcher.

Owls and Kiwis

I've had to activate the "moderate comments" function after receiving a number of spam comments recently. As far as my blog goes, the spambots are posting with links to what I assume are shopping sites for purses. I don't know. I didn't click, and I wouldn't want anyone else to either.

The amount of offensive spam I get in my work email has also gone berserk. Even the subject lines are pornographic. Thinking of my kids receiving the same stuff makes me want to go out and arrest people. It's at the point where I see the words "long" and "hard," even in the most innocuous settings, and I cringe. I was at the store the other day fingering the kiwis. A man beside me was doing the same and he turned to me and said "they're all hard," and I was like, "you pig." It's sad.

Spam isn't as bad with my Yahoo! account, the trade-off being I have to look at celebrity stories on the homepage. I keep thinking there must be a way to 'personalize' my page, as the site promises. Block all Demi & Ashton. Block all Kardashan. Block reality tv "news." Bloooock!

It hit home (again) today when I read a story in the New York Times about how many wines now have in-your-face names, like "Sweet Bitch," "Royal Bitch," and "Sassy Bitch," as well as "Fat Bastard," "Ball Buster," and "Bigass Red." The wineries using these names claim they must separate themselves from "the herd on the shelf." To me it sounds more like getting down with the lowest common denominator. Or maybe I've lost my sense of humor. My house wine is La Cuvée Mythique, a dark, mysterious red with a charming non-sexual owl on the label.

dezember

The nice thing about December in Germany is it’s spelled with a z. Exotic, no?

December also brought the publication of YB and Umbrella, both of which include some of my poems. YB, in its Animals issue, has “Reindeer” from my chapbook, and Umbrella has “Our Lady of Busted Cutlery” and “Keeping my Cool.” Umbrella also has two poems by our lady of escape, Kathleen Kirk.

Some days ago The Medulla Review also went live, publishing my poem “Baseler Platz.” My office is on Baseler Platz. It’s an odd geography, encompassing a couple nice new offices and residential buildings, but also rundown store fronts, a chronic traffic snarl and the outskirts of the main train station. The poem, as always, is based on a true story.

On a side note, Diane Lockward a couple days ago blogged about guest editing for Adanna’s inaugural issue (which published my poem “Low Grass”) for anyone interested in the ins and outs of submissions.

While we’re on the subject of submissions - from a poet's point of view - yesterday was my birthday and I got a rejection. (You’d think in this age that your email would let you program what kind of mail you receive on your birthday.) It was funny because after letting me know they didn’t want my poems, they asked me to 1) follow them on Facebook; 2) subscribe to their updates; 3) take the time to register their response time on Duotrope (a lit magazine guide); and 4) reminded me to please take six months before submitting again.

It was my birthday. And I didn’t do a damned one of those things.

As my folks say, “Happy new month.”