Let's get small

In honor of summer’s dog days, Escape into Life is running a feature of poems with dogs. I was lucky to have one included called Song of the Small Dog. It’s not a long poem, aptly, so please read to the end.

I’m not a fan of small dogs, small being anything more diminutive than the beagle. Nevertheless, I once had a toy poodle, and I’m open-minded, I hope. A small dog is easier than a big one. When I am old and unable to walk the dog (I’ve already arrived at unwilling), perhaps I’ll have a small dog. A bulldog, for example, is a small dog I could live with. 

I haven’t mentioned this here, though I did on Facebook, but the most exciting literary experience I had in the past couple weeks was listening to David Sedaris read Miranda July’s Roy Spivey. I think it’s worth the time. For some reason I'd been avoiding Miranda July, and I was wrong. 

& the most upstanding character in Moby Dick

My step-mother, or maybe my father, once said, “People disdain Starbucks as commercial imperialism, but as for me, I love Starbucks. I know exactly what I’m getting. There’s no guesswork, no chance of disappointment.”

I must agree. It’s a little pricey, but this morning for example, after I got up at 5.30 to get to the airport for an 8 o’clock flight that didn’t take off, and to find there was no ersatz plane, and to suffer other disgruntled customers who were disappointed by choosing Air Berlin, whose flights are obviously fraught with risk and undependable, unlike a Latte Macchiato (tall), it was comforting to find a Starbucks in Terminal 1. That bursting logo of the regal mermaid with two tails - it flashes like a flare to the shipwrecked: “Here’s your stuff!” 

The server asked my name, which he rendered as “Sera” on my cup. And I thought, yes, this hour will be like a routine evening, a non-working hour, just the same old/same old without the iffiness of risk.

Armed

On the train to Amsterdam, my daughter wants to know if I have a pen. I am sure I do. I try to remember always to have one, better two, in case the first one runs out of ink. Or clogs. Or fails to glide nicely. 

On trains and planes, the worst thing is to have no pen. It's worse than not having a book.

It is as if you were ill and the cure was locked up in a closet you’d only get open when your suffering was over. It is as if you’d lost your country. 

While any one pen carries a risk, the iffier bet is the pencil. The point breaks off in your purse, or grows knob-like and dull, so that in addition to having a pencil, you must make sure to have a pocket knife. We know a pocket knife isn’t welcome everywhere. 

In any case, on the train my daughter asks if I have a pen. Sometimes even though I’m certain I do, I don’t. But on the train I do.

Lose Weight with Vodka

The workers went on strike for better conditions and extra overtime joy. - (pay)

Hamburger with a nazi-portion of fries - (maxi) 

Lose weight with vodka - (yoga) 

Awkward should be submitted separately. - (artwork) 

Two men face fart, reptile breeding cruelty charges. - (rat) 

New Poll Islams Congress. - (slams) 

A wind tears the last leaves from the goblets along the road. - (poplars) 

I hate douche. - (quiche)

The Silent Treatment

To hell with it. My tongue’s gone under, 

curbed like an excess. No more 

wagging in the shallows, it’s plunged 

in a tunnel to the underworld where 

they stump in a strange dialect. 

Eat your heart out, it might say. Eat 

your pilaf, your side vegetable 

and the pox upon your crops. 

It might say anything, were it not 

lounging around a lower hemisphere. 

Laid back at some southern spa, mud-

bathing, overdosing on motionlessness. 

Enjoy the quiet. Fleshy puddle, pond 

pummeled by too much rain. Make pretty 

like a lake today: hold yourself in.

Like a Novel

I’m reading a non-fiction book with a blurb on the back proclaiming that it reads “like a novel.” This comparison, drawn jillions of times, is considered the height of praise for non-fiction. There’s even a list at GoodReads of dozens of books recommended because they “read like a novel.” 

The book I’m reading is not on that list. I’m thinking of starting a list “Non-Fiction Books with a Blurb Claiming They Read Like a Novel.” Or “Novels that Read Like Non-Fiction.” 

Anyway, regarding non-fiction that reads “like a novel,” what the blurber generally ignores that bad novels enormously outweigh good novels. The blurber never says which novel - “Mrs. Dalloway” or “We Need to Talk about Kevin.”

In that spirit, potential novelesque experiences: 

The shower I took this morning was like a novel, a novel with neither discernible plot nor one 3-dimensional character, delivered to the wrong house. 

Our brainstorming session was like a novel, that novel about some kids somewhere that I forgot the title of because I drank too much grain alcohol in college. 

Lunch with the in-laws was like a novel, an allegorical novel by a contemporary Jewish author from Florida with a graduate degree in esoteric poultry management from an Ivy League university. 

The weekend with Aunt Alexis read like a novel, namely a horror novel. 

Having sex with Geoff was like reading a novel, a lengthy, moralistic novel by a much-lauded Spanish author whose supposed talents get lost in translation. 

Brushing my teeth after dinner was like a novel about a black woman who marries an older, white politician who witnesses a murder on the way home from work that he decides, with fateful consequences, not to report.

Creatures

Back from Tuscany, and glad to report there are very few mosquitoes in the Chianti region. Forget those nights tossing and slapping in southern Italy and even Lombardia, fighting off blood-hungry mosquitoes and bemoaning the great European stupidity of not installing window screens. I didn’t get one bite. Kind of surreal, come to think of it.

Speaking of creatures, though we left our dog with friends, our vacation home came with a pool, and an endearing local dog named Toby. He visited us frequently, slept on our front stoop at night, and was a generally charming character, despite his flea-bag coat of fur and all the prickers he collected there. A mutt and a gentleman. 

The last creature story comes from Switzerland, where we overnighted. I complain about Switzerland, stuck in the middle of everything, expensive as hell, forcing travelers to change euros into that obscure little overvalued currency - the franc. But I digress. We stayed at a hotel in Amsteg, which turned out to have a gourmet restaurant. Weary, we ate there despite the prices, and had an amazing dinner. Yet when we asked what the crème brûlée bread spread was, we were told it was foie gras. I had never eaten fois gras, and it was exquisite, but there’s a first and last time for everything and I had them both at once. I eat meat and animal products, but fois gras I can’t abide. The kids also swore it off.

Chianti

Off to Italy. I put on a sleeveless dress and sandals for the long drive, but that was asking too much of the German July. So I’m back to long pants.

We’re staying in a village named Gaiole, though if it’s a village I don’t even know. It appears to be more a piece of land between other villages in the Chianti region. 

The things I carry: The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, Almost No Memory by Lydia Davis, Tenth of December by George Saunders, Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, Selected Poems by Francis Ponge, and the manuscripts of two poet acquaintances. 

I admit I am happy we are not taking the dog. I’m one of those spiritually impoverished people who can’t really relax in the evening knowing I still have to take the dog out, which of course is every night. She’s going “on vacation” to friends!

Half up

I finished reading The Piano Teacher this morning, a dark and very intense book that I thought was great. Coincidentally, the year's half up, so here's my list of books read so far in 2013. I didn't read any real clunkers - my least favorite, surprisingly, was In Watermelon Sugar. My favorite is hard to say, but here I highlight those I would particularly recommend.

1. Of Lamb by Matthea Harvey (Jan. 18)
2. The Best of Fence, ed. Rebecca Wolff (Jan)
3. Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson (Jan. 21)
4. Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal (Jan. 26)
5. Sestets by Charles Wright (Feb 6)
6. The Infinities by John Banville (Feb 7)
7. Almanac of the Sleepless by Karin Gottshall (Feb 7)
8. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman (Feb. 8)
9. The Quiet Winter by Carrie Bennett (Feb. 9)
10. Talking doll by J. Hope Stein (Feb 15)
11. Corner Office by J. Hope Stein (Feb 18)
12. Sex with Buildings by Stephanie Barbe Hammer (Feb 19)
13. Group Portrait with Lady by Heinrich Böll (Feb 26)
14. Old Filth by Jane Gardam (Mar 12)
15. In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan (Mar 15)
16. The Complete Perfectionist by Juan Ramón Jimenéz (Mar 15)
17. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (March 19)
18. The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (April 5)
19. After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey (April 9)
20. The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd (April 9)
21. Dog Ear by Erica Baum (April 12)
22. Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes (April 20)
23. Nets by Jen Bervin (April 20)
24. The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa (April 21)
25. Lamb by Bonnie Nadzam (April 25)
26. Under the Skin by Michel Faber (April 29)
27. This is Not a Novel by David Markson (May 4)
28. Morte D’Urban by JF Powers (May 25)
29. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas (June 21)
30. Ophelia Unraveling by Carol Berg (June)
31. The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek (June 30)

Oh my Darling

The new issue of Prick of the Spindle includes my poem “Clementine.” It’s an object poem, and about the fruit rather than the miner’s daughter. The fruit in a state of decay. Advanced state of decay. Like ready to take off.

It only occurred to me after writing the poem that maybe we don’t call this fruit clementine in English (though I checked now and we do). What the difference is between clementines, mandarins, tangerines, and tangelos is, I don’t know. 

Poet friends Kathleen Kirk and Dana Martin Guthrie also have poems in this issue, so please proceed directly to GO and collect $200.

Snowstorms defy interpretation

I often struggle to differentiate plague from plaque - orthographically, of course. I do abhor poor dental hygiene. I do joke about ‘bubonic plaque’ to get my kids to brush conscientiously. Still, while bad dental care may be epidemic, it never wiped out millions of lives. Nor does it have to be contagious.

Misreadings sometimes come from skimming a text, instead of actually reading. Or they can be a kind of Freudian slip - the mind insists it sees something that the eyes, on second look, prove to be something else. Or sometimes you expect to see a certain word, so you do. The brain won't have it otherwise. 

Scanning my blog the other day I read “Unbelievable in Stores,” even though I’d written the post myself and knew it was “Unavailable in Stores.” Unbelievable and Unavailable have such similar architecture. And it's true that mistakes make life more interesting. Here are some other misreadings of the past weeks: 

How rodent the artist remained despite basking in adulation. 

(modest) 

The bakery was well known for its French parasites. 

(pastries) 

February saw uninterpreted snowstorms. 

(uninterrupted) 

Gutsy winds fanned the wildfire. 

(gusty) 

France condoms attacks on wine students. 

(condemns) 

The plane had to make a memory landing due to engine trouble. 

(emergency) 

Leaders voweled to defend the euro. 

(vowed) 

She touches up her blush and apples lipstick. 

(applies) 

Authorities say at least 25,000 humble bees have died in the lot. 

(bumble)

There's a trick with a knife

I’m engaged in some magical thinking. If I stop here on page 518 of the Bonhoeffer biography, with 24 pages to go, he will not be killed by the Nazis. That’s all there is to it. The American troops are very close. The camp guards are unstable. Bonhoeffer is still alive and he will stay alive as long as I prevent his death by not reading about it. 

It’s funny how when reading a history book/novel or biography you might still feel a sense of suspense, even though you know at the outset what goes down. I knew in Wolf Hall, for example, that Henry VIII casts off Katherine and wins Anne Boleyn. And I knew before I started Bring Up the Bodies that Anne Boleyn would be a goner. Everybody knows that! But if a book is written well and the reader cares, the development still fills you with dread or anticipation. 

And, boy, do I care. I cannot let Bonhoeffer die. The world requires this small sacrifice of me - skipping his stupid, useless and deeply regrettable death for the sake of the greater good.

Hotshot Realtor

I enjoy going into people’s rooms
and nosing around their groans

when I ride my small hot dog
in the Parade of Homes.



(from "Independence Day", p. 116)

A stranger to oneself

A woman came up to me on the street today, an apparently sane woman, and asked, “What color is your hair? Is it brunette?” She then asked, “What is brunette? Is your hair ash blonde?” It occurred to me that I could not answer these questions. First off, what color is my hair, and then, what brunette precisely means.

It occurred to me that I should ask her what color she thinks my hair is. She was looking at it. I don’t give it much thought, except for the grey wiry bits that jump out in fluorescent light, which I enjoy for their bold acrobatics and clear identity. 

It’s like the other day when the doctor asked me how much I weigh and how tall I am. I was unable to say. “Tell me in English,” she said, but language was not the problem. Surely these numbers were in my file? 

Along with my wrist-slash burn mark, I grow concerned that there’s an undertaker somewhere taking my measurements. It really is time to shred those old journals that give me so much concern.

Unavailable in stores

I have this great burn on my wrist. I got it on the weekend, and, as often happens, when my wrist touched the hot grill, I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t realize at first the damage I’d done. Too late I went to the sink to run cold water over it.

The burn festered overnight Sunday into a glorious slash-like mark, and because I didn’t bandage it, the wound has since then been functioning as a kind of second wristwatch. On the right arm, the red gash, on the left, the watch. Throughout the day, I look at both of them. They tell two different kinds of time.

As you can see, the burn saved my outfit today. I went to work all in black, which I regretted on the way to the train, also because it’s warm. But when I turned up my cuffs, I had this colorful, hard-won accessory.

Multitasking

Many thanks to Kathleen Kirk, who reviewed my chapbook Inksuite over at Escape into Life this past week. You can read it here.

One of the poems in the book is “Reading While Walking.” I won’t claim that I read & walk terribly often, but I certainly do, as long as it’s daytime and there are few people about. Just as with texting & driving, this could be dangerous, but I only practice it on familiar routes. For me the hardest thing about reading & walking comes after I look up to check I'm not headed for a stack of horse manure and I have to find my place back on the page. 

Though I’m comfortable reading & walking, only recently did I get the nerve to read in the bathtub. Despite my worry about waterwarp, it can be done, though even the most careful bather will splatter at least a little water on the pages. The real problem is where to put the book when you want to soap up or refresh the hot water. You can’t put it on the tub edge and in my case the floor isn’t a good option either. My book emerged whole, but my preoccupation with splash-damage didn't make the experience as pleasurable as it should be. So it gave me a laugh when I found this picture on the internet. 

Morning becomes electric

No offense but if there are more than enough people in the elevator, I’m not getting in. I will wait for it to return empty. Especially if it’s 80F degrees out. Like now.

I still can’t make the celsius/fahrenheit calculation. I can navigate either system and know what the temperatures imply, but ne’er the twain shall meet. 

Speaking of which, I was at the doctor the other day and she asked how tall I was. I said I didn’t know. She asked how much I weighed. I said, “you’re asking me?” It’s not that I don’t know, it’s that I don’t know in meters and kilos. I STILL don’t know after 20 years in Germany. I have failed to dovetail.

Which brings me to the crossroad of lamplight and frost, the opening image of my poem, "Crossroad Ghazal," now up now at Fugue. 

At the crossroad of lamplight and frost, my compass fails. 

Let the chasm lull; let the landscape adjourn for sleep. 

Later the poem says “a hot wind becomes me.” It’s not for me to decide, but I’d like this to mean “become” in both the transformational (turn into) and the flattering sense (to suit). I’d like to jump that chasm. 

When I was young one of the books prominently displayed (for my unknown height at the time) on my parents’ shelves was Eugene O’Neill’s “Mourning Becomes Electra.” I long thought “becomes” was used in the transformational sense, as in ice becomes water. Later I realized it could mean black suited Electra’s complexion (or Lavinia’s, in the play). 

In fact mourning does transform Electra; it engulfs her and she is inseparable from it. 

I played with that book spine a lot when I was a kid. When I thought of the title - which was one of the phrases that stuck to me and popped up in my mind at odd times - I made the mental shift to “morning” and changed “electra” to “electric.” 

You can actually watch the whole play here, if you don't mind bad lip-sync and commercials. 

Anatomy

All these years keeping fairly skinny from carrying big books around.

Now my ribs called. They want to break up.

Just 40 minutes on the train total every day, and the back must bear a fat library & a notebook, pens & documents. 

And sometimes the ears never remove the earphones, meaning paper is not engaged.

The right elbow wants answers. 

The neck and shoulders cannot offer boundless hospitality. 

Still, there’s a lot to be said. About being prepared. Say for example I was stuck in a tunnel for two hours.

Would two big books sustain me? Very probably. 

Would you choose between these two? Not happily.

Shades of grey

sea salt grey - city shadow - porpoise - smoked truffle - 

wool peacoat grey - vintage pewter - gothic arch grey - 

wall street grey - ozone - off grey - smoke & mirrors grey - 

street chic grey - arctic seal - museum piece grey - 

stone grey - spalding grey - tinsmith - aloof grey - zircon - 

grey heather - antler - Irish mist - sparrow - slate - 

urban grey - grey pearl - contemplation grey - salt glaze - 

timber wolf - full moon - cool granite - foggy morn - 

pussywillow - cloudy - Earl Grey - plush grey - deep grey - 

antique grey - steelwool - lint grey -  greyhound 

Sad Day

The German poet Sarah Kirsch died earlier this month, all of Germany just found out today. I liked her work, and when my daughter became interested in reading poetry, I gave her one of Kirsch’s books (Erlkönig). When I started writing poetry, I received a kind rejection from some journal or other with a note from the editor saying I should send them more work when I’d written a poem as “edgy” (their word) as Kirsch’s poem “Sad Day,” her best-known poem. 

Here’s a short poem of hers I like with my translation.

Alleine 

Die alten Frauen vor roten Häusern 

Roten Hortensien verkrüppelten Bäumen 

Brachten mir Tee. Würdevoll 

Trugen sie die Tabletts zurück, bezogen 

Horch- und Beobachtungsposten 

Hinter Schnickschnackschnörkel-Gardinen. 

Alone 

The old women in front of red houses 

red hydrangeas crippled trees 

served me tea. With dignity 

they carried back the trays, resuming 

their posts for eavesdropping and observation 

behind frilled, flourishing curtains.

Fees

I figure if I have been turned down by a journal two or three or more times, I am going to have a slender chance of winning its poetry contest. I appreciate journals get revenue from charging a fee for their contests, and that’s fine. One could also subscribe. But to enter a contest in which you have little chance of winning and lots of chance of tying up some of your best poems for months seems a waste of time and money.

Elsewhere in $poetry$ land, I have given in and subscribed to Duotrope. I stopped when they began charging, but find that it’s motivating to see which journals are answering submissions, who’s got a call out on a theme, where “people who submitted to this journal also submitted to.” Until two days ago I hadn’t submitted anything for going on 90 days. 

This was a very boring post. To spark up the experience, listen to my brother read about bikes in this short animation.

Bookbomb

I’ve looked with longing at those bath bombs of dissolving soap you dump in a tub of hot water. They fizz into a scented, soothing foam that must be really pleasant to surrender one's nakedness to. Too bad I invariably lose interest before purchasing one. I don’t know - the perishable pleasure, so what? My inner protestant is like, $6, for one bath? Uh, no. And the ring around the bath tub.

Sadly, my son recently gave up piano. 

The blank wall where the upright used to stand made me frown, exposing the promise wrenched rudely from my life. There was only a faint dust-line along the wall at the height of the absent instrument. Then I had an idea that exploded like a bath bomb on the brain: bookshelf. I know this appears a pretty obvious idea. It is. But like time-released pain reliever it took a while to dawn on me what my son’s giving up piano might mean. Getting some empty shelves was like the swooniest jasmine bath I’ve ever had. And they’re all mine. Don’t tell my husband but I arranged the books so the shelves look full, when actually there’s room for 10-14 more, depending on which books my new books turn out to be.

The Automatic Friend

I remember various times being abroad and resenting “the automatic friend.” The automatic friend is a person who, for reason of origin or language, is just assumed to be your close buddy. For example, you are both Americans at a hostel in Sichuan. Or you both are native English speakers and find yourselves, separately/together, in Tical. Or, in extreme cases, you are just two white (black) faces on an unfriendly street in Ghana (Norway). In the best-case scenario it isn’t the automatic friend making the assumption you’re best pals, but everyone else, who abandons you to each other.

You two must have a lot to talk about! 

The imaginary friend is much better. And even better than the traditional “imaginary friend” who’s a companion to the lonely is the imaginary imaginary friend, who’s completely fictional and gets you out of awkward time with people you don’t want to be with, i.e. who delivers you back to your loneliness, or rather, your solitude. 

“I’m sorry I can’t come to the cocktail reception but my friend K. from Novosibirsk is coming through town and we'll be having cocktails in my apartment with the door locked!” 

Your Mother Should Know

Rainy Night House (we took a taxi to your mother’s home / she went to Florida and left you with your father’s gun alone) 

Joni Mitchell, in a song supposedly about Leonard Cohen 

Your Mother Should Know (though she was born a long long time ago) 

The Beatles, a Paul song, obviously 

It’s Alright Ma (I’m only bleeding)
Bob Dylan 

Mother and Child Reunion (only a motion away) 

Paul Simon, supposedly the name of a dish at a Chinese Restaurant, I imagine with eggs & chicken (yuck) 

Mother’s Little Helper (what a drag it is getting old) 

The Rolling Stones 

Mama Said (there’d be days like these)
The Shirelles 

Sweet Jane (and there’s even some evil mothers / well they’re gonna tell you that everything is just dirt) 

Velvet Underground, in a song probably not referencing the relevant mothers here

Sylvia’s Mother (says, Sylvia’s busy, too busy to come to the phone) 

Dr. Hook 

Little Green (you’re sad and you’re sorry but you’re not ashamed) 

Joni Mitchell, in a song about giving her baby up for adoption 

Wayfaring Stranger (I’m going there to see my mother) 

Traditional

All my brave arrangements

My poem Kansas is up this week at Heron Tree. I lived in Kansas in the late 80s. That's me, driving my tin can past some vast nothingness eons ago.

With the Pulitzer Remix occupying so much of my time over the past weeks, I haven't submitted anything, or really even written much of anything, excepting the 30 found poems I wrote for the project. I know they count as writing, and yet often they felt like busy-ness...

So it was good to have a poem accepted yesterday to Prick of the Spindle, too. Clementine. The fruit, rather than the miner's daughter. I'll tell you when it's up.

Before I read a book

I ask myself, am I in the mood for this book? 

Is this book in the mood for me? 

Are there any indications I might hate this book? 

Will I hate myself if I hate this book? 

Does this book have too much in common with the book I just finished? 

Does this book suffer insufferable blurbs? 

Am I simply in it for the plot?

If it requires a long list of characters at the start, am I up for such a book? 

Where did I get this book? 

How & why did it get into my to-read pile? 

Whom do I know who dis/liked this book? 

Are there Nazis in this book? 

Is this a miserable old Europe book? 

Is this a smarmy America book? 

Is this book too huge to take back and forth to work? 

Does this book have a cover I can live with? 

If the cover were translated into an outfit, what would it be?

We now resume our regularly scheduled programming

To the people who think poetry month is a can of crap, and complain it’s a way for people to get attention, or atone for not writing poetry the rest of the year, or for people who don’t really care about poetry (reading or writing) to pretend they’re literate, I would say when I was a kid I went to Quaker meeting with my family and I remember being told that in “the olden days” Quakers didn’t celebrate Christmas because one should honor God every day, in all humility, without singling out one day to be especially pious and boy was I glad to find out that the Quakers had since given that up.

Also, when it’s talk-like-a pirate-day I don’t get teed off about people talking like pirates, or complain that they’re neglecting to talk like pirates all the other days. I have no desire to talk like a pirate on any day but I don’t begrudge those who do as long as they aren’t harming anyone else and are considerate of those who prefer not to participate. 

I now go back to my slow ghazaling. 

Recent Misreadings

"Mexican Vulgarities Take Over Town" (vigilantes)

"Global Dictionaries Gather for Thatcher Funeral" (dignitaries) 

I also read “School using bulletproof whiteboards” as “School using waterproof bullets.” 

It took a second even to identify the direct objects. 

"Stellar cast rescues ministries" (miniseries) 

Reading a book about Flaubert that was peppered with French, I read this sentence:

“Honours dishonour, titles degrade, employment stupifies” 

and thought, wow, it’s great that I understood that whole French sentence, only to do a double-take and realize I’d understood it because it was in English.

"Clinical studies show bleeding rats slow after treatment" (rates) 

"Our prompt for today: let’s try writing toilets" (triolets)  

And a glance at the World Wildlife Fund logo yielded

 WTF 

Landscape with moonlight

The #5 tram brings me to the train station but my writing delivers me only to a place bright and desolate.

In late April the sun is still struggling, feeble, and usually it gives up by noon, sailing for southern France. And who wouldn’t? Those whom duty tortures and those who thought German superior to French. Those are the same people. 

We looked at a painting that expressed it well. I said to Luisa, it’s beautiful not because it’s pretty but because it’s true.

(Carl Blechen: Landschaft im Winter bei Mondschein)

Nets

Being in the middle of my own enormous erasure project, it was wonderful to read Jen Bervin’s book Nets from 2004. It’s a milestone in erasure poetry, taking some of Shakespeare’s sonnets and unearthing new poems inside them. 

In erasure there must be revelation, and the presentation of these fine little poems emphasizes that - black words plucked from the pale source, the sonnets set upon the creamy page with nothing placed opposite to distract the reader. 

Many of these poems stand strongly on their own, but it’s not possible for me to divorce the poems themselves from the concept and the presentation. So even where some of the poems would not travel so boldly alone, I open my eyes wider and take in the full text engulfing the poem found inside it, and all I can say is “wow.” I really loved these - even the paper it’s printed on is sumptuous. 

I don’t buy the oft-touted view that one must find something totally new in erasure poetry, that the found poem should be completely independent of the source text. If that’s the case then why do erasure at all? The source is going to offer possibilities and choices. The source is at the poet’s disposal, and will set limits. The source is not going to predetermine, but it is going to influence. 

I love Bervin’s note at the end of the book: “When we write poems, the history of poetry is with us, pre-inscribed in the white of the page.” 

Here is an excerpt that should help you decide if you are interested in owning this book, which I obviously recommend.

darling buds

Trees and bushes are budding here, and the sun, as always, is struggling to shine. ‘A’ for effort, folks.

Speaking of darling buds, my daughter had to explain Shakespeare’s sonnets 18 & 73 for homework last night, so looks like I came back on the right day. I got to explain the difference between “perceive” and “behold,” who “thou” and “thee” are, “doth,” verb endings, and also that “bare, ruined choirs” aren’t bankrupt, naked singing groups, but desolate places. 

My daughter asks a logical question. Shakespeare faults the summer for its imperfections, yet says his beloved has an eternal summer within her. So isn't that internal, eternal summer imperfect, too? Stumped me.

When we got to the eternal summer line, I couldn’t help but think of Camus’ invincible summer, which was also internal, and the Beach Boys’ endless one, which was going on outside, somewhere in California. Only one of these summers involved surfing. 

Having been away, I didn’t update the links to my poems for the Pulitzer Remix, where I’ve just posted for day 17.

April 17 Charged Months * April 16 Sally
April 15 Antique Telescope * April 14 Darting to an Aim
April 13 Fool's Route * April 12 Camp Unhappy Catalog
April 11 Mother Frenzy * April 10 Daily Rounds
April 9 Dear Goatee * April 8 The Tinkling Glass
April 7 Hotshot Realtor * April 6 Scarlet Freight

For your pleasure, here's a picture of a serendipitous pairing I found in the dictionary - Overabundance Overalls. Could use some of those. 

long hand

At the Pierpont Morgan museum there’s a display case in the library showing original documents from writers, composers and historical figures. In this day and age, what is more surprising than someone’s handwriting? It's so expressive, and evokes the same intimacy as a lock of hair, or pair of slippers, would.

The first document on the inner side of the case is a short letter from Ludovico Buonarroti to his son Michelangelo, written while the father was ailing. It is a squat, orderly handwriting with squiggly tails. It says, in short, “don’t worry about me; I will be fine.” He dies soon afterwards. 

Beside the Buonarroti letter is a letter from Niccolò Machiavelli, who has just had a close call on the battlefield. Perhaps I read too much into it, but there is a sense of tension in the script, as if he wants to do exercise control over his hand but is in a hurry. 

JRR Tolkien had lovely penmanship, small and ornate. Each letter is like a separate fruit hanging from a tree in an orderly orchard. In the letter he jokes about how little he has earned from “The Hobbit.” 

Though not scrawl, Shelly’s handwriting is less controlled. It most resembles an uneven thicket, where someone has hacked away in places with a scythe. 

I was aware before I visited the museum that Virginia Woolf usually wrote in violet ink on blue paper. Her letter lights up the display. Her handwriting seems the most free of the row. It slants upwards to the right, ascending. It comes out swinging. I could not find an image of the letter online, but here is a short note to her nephew, which gives a good idea, although it is less disciplined than the letter. 

Cowering in Place

I enjoy when someone invokes the German language as a sure source of the right word, as in, “I’m sure the Germans have a word for it.” Sometimes they do, and if they don’t, usually one can be manufactured handily.

Despite my job as a part-time German, I invoked the language today with the same hope when I experienced the fear I suffer once or twice daily: the fear of standing up - whether from throwing something away or picking something up - and bumping my head against an open cabinet door.

(Banging your head against an open cabinet or cupboard door, by the way, is one of the reasons people swear.)

Anyone who has stood up only to smash their head against the edge, or worse, the corner, of a cabinet door knows that this fear serves a protective purpose.

As far as I know there is no German word for this fear. But let’s create Dooferunfallangst, or Aufstehenderkopfstossangst. Actually, German asks too much of us here. Let’s go with Fear of Hitting Your Head against a Cabinet Door upon Resuming an Upright Position.

Tomato soup

“It’s always ourselves we find at the sea.” I inhaled a lot of ee cummings when I was a teenager, and this line comes back to me as I dig through Independence Day, finding poems. If you gave a group of poets the same page, they’d each come back with different poem. 

The shaky thing about this project is everyone’s daily poem is instantly published! Most of my Pulitzer Remix poems wouldn’t be poems I’d submit. They’re just there. In the time allotted to me, I found them. I wrote them down. I bow humbly to my limits.

Today at work, in a different but similar scenario, I repeated my favorite, widely applicable Andy Warhol quote (that I possibly made up): “This is a soup can. We must make do with what we have.” 

Here are my five poems so far: 

Suburban Ethers - Blue Gin - Scant Sleep - Wait for Me - The Father of Fireworks 

Time! is my theme these days, as in it's flying. At the moment(s) I am trying to get through The Finkler Question before traveling to NJ tomorrow. As always before a trip, I don’t want to board the plane with a book I’ve nearly finished. I prefer to arrive at the airport with FRESHBOOK. Besides, ahead of my trip, I ordered enough books, deliverable to my mother, for a suitcase library. She has begun reading one, which appeals to my inner thrift-monger.

Dilly dilly

I found out a couple days ago that my poem “In the Voice of a Minor Saint,” which was the title of my first chapbook, will be published in an anthology of poems about saints. The working title is The Lives We Seek: Contemporary Poems Inspired By the Saints, to be published by Ave Maria Press. I am by far the least famous poet in the table of contents, so my poem title is fitting. Among the luminaries are James Tate, Martha Silano, Dana Gioia, Edward Hirsch, Kelli Russell Agodon, and scads of others, while the saints include St. Anthony, St. Agnes, St. Peter, St. Rita, Big Sur Saints, the patron saint of lost & found, and St. Nick. It’s due out next April, and I can’t wait.

Otherwise, here it is Easter and the family males are en route for home. I’m roasting a chicken. Last year I mistook the lavender branches in the garden for rosemary and we had lavender chicken. In winter those plants look quite similar! The chicken was more whimsical, perhaps, but not as tasty. 

I’ll be leaving myself in a week for NJ to visit my mother for her birthday. In the meantime, the Pulitzer Remix kicks off tomorrow - 85 poets writing a found poem a day, each from their assigned text. I will post occasional reminders to read!

Easter weekend

I have spent many days alone, the family scattered north and south - Lulu in Berlin, and the boys in the boot heel of Italy visiting relatives. Even the dog spent the last week in the countryside with friends, since work kept me from walking her regularly. Lulu came back this evening, bearing souvenirs from Die Brücke museum and asking for sushi takeout. She brought me this notecard of a painting by Walter Gramatté, who died of at the age of 32 of tuberculosis.

I had a friend over last night who told me of her travails with online dating, and how the most promising of her beaus gave her a book that dealt a fatal blow to a budding relationship. He was otherwise a promising guy, but about three dates in her gave her a “relationship guidebook” for her birthday, which she was unable even to unwrap completely, so horrifying was the title. He knew she liked to read, and meant it as a nod to that, but fell very far off the map and was dismissed from the stage. 

My husband and I have many differences, being from different continents, religions and temperaments, but I cannot fault his taste in books. He did buy me a terrible book once, in ignorance, but later read it himself and admitted it was terrible. He also prefers David Copperfield to Great Expectations. Well, in moments of weakness even I prefer David Copperfield to Great Expectations.

Elsewhere, I've lived in Germany for 20 years and never knew it was forbidden to dance on Good Friday! It's interesting how atheist Europe sticks to these fossilized rules, like all retail stores being closed on Sundays, while the fundamentalist Christians in America stop at Sam's Club or whatever after church to pick up some booze. 

I’ve nearly finished combing the white through my hair

In the name of confronting what makes you uncomfortable, I spent the night wrenched around myself, my pajama pants creeping to my knees to make my calves cold, my turtleneck too snug at the throat. I lay flat down on my belly because it is my favorite position although it makes it difficult to access fresh air and I wake with a kink in my neck and into my shoulder. Who said fresh air was free? Who suggested sleep should bring rest? And in the morning I woke a 5.55 am, although it is Saturday, to put my daughter on an uneasy bus to Berlin for a week because she said so.

A possible ending

I finished The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes on Monday. I had the day off, which I enjoyed gratefully, and read the last half or so sitting at my desk with all my papers, pens, mugs and other books strewn around as if I were the live participant in a vertical live burial.
Right after I finished I was so befuddled, I sat pressing my eyebrows with my fingertips, wondering if what I thought just happened happened, and came to the inescapable conclusion that it did. It was one of the most affecting reading experiences -story-wise- that I've had in a hugely long time.
One thing that makes The Sense of an Ending so effective is the easy pacing and sympathetic narrator.
You're ill-prepared for the shock.
My daughter walked in to my room right as I had accepted the hypothesis, and said something mundane like, 'I need some money,' then stopped and said, 'What's wrong with you?'
I made a sweeping gesture towards the bed, where the book lay.
'Oh my god,' I explained.
I know there is another very plausible theory about the plot of this book, but I'm not buying it.

Soares

Opening sentences of The Book of Disquiet

Installed on the upper floors of certain respectable taverns in Lisbon can be found a small number of restaurants or eating places, which have the stolid, homely look of those restaurants you see in towns that lack even a train station. Amongst the clientele of such places, which are rarely busy except on Sundays, one is as likely to encounter the eccentric as the nondescript, to find people who are but a series of parentheses in the book of life.
There was a period of my life when a combination of economic necessity and a desire for peace and quiet led me to frequent just such a restaurant. I would dine at around seven each night and, as chance would have it, I was almost always there at the same time as one particular man. (translated by Margaret Jull Costa & William Boyd)

Lisbon has a certain number of eating establishments in which, on top of a respectable-looking tavern, there’s a regular dining room with the solid and homey air of a restaurant in a small trainless town. In these first-floor dining rooms, fairly empty except on Sundays, one often comes across odd sorts, unremarkable faces, a series of asides in life.
There was a time in my life when a limited budget and the desire for quiet made me a regular patron of one of these first-floor restaurants. And it happened that whenever I ate dinner there around seven o’clock, I nearly always saw a certain man who didn’t interest me at first, but then began to. (translated by Richard Zenith)

Há em Lisboa um pequeno número de restaurantes ou casas de pasto [em] que, sobre uma loja com feitio de taberna decente se ergue uma sobreloja com uma feição pesada e caseira de restaurante de vila sem comboios. Nessas sobrelojas, salvo ao domingo pouco freqüentadas, é freqüente encontrarem-se tipos curiosos, caras sem interesse, uma série de apartes na vida.
O desejo de sossego e a conveniência de preços levaramme, em um período da minha vida, a ser freqüente em uma sobreloja dessas. Sucedia que quando calhava jantar pelas sete horas quase sempre encontrava um indivíduo cujo aspecto, não me interessando a princípio, pouco a pouco passou a interessar-me. (Fernando Pessoa)

Appendix II, footnotes

72 “Anywhere,” where Schopenhauer wished to be buried 

73 “the cellulose sky glows but cannot shine” (alt version the membrane unstretched let little light in) 

74 “it’s normal to go about crying in those towns,” thought to refer to Saxony 

75 dismal park, a stretch between the house and the tram peopled with juvenile delinquents 

76 “a gaze like time” (alt version quietness of time) 

77 (missing text) 

78 che cazzo, an Italian curse, expressing disgust 

79 “our motto” refers to the ashes motto, Fahrenheit 451: “Monday, we burn Miller; Tuesday, Tolstoy; Wednesday, Walt Whitman; Friday, Faulkner; and Saturday and Sunday, Schopenhauer and Sartre. We burn them to ashes and then burn the ashes. That's our official motto.” 

80 Kantstraße, a cobblestoned side street, languid, morose and antique 

81 11/22/63, JFK assassination 

82 “our age, overabundant rot” (alt version the era of Sturm und Dreck) 

83 Trinkhalle, a kiosk selling beer and snacks, ubiquitous city fixture 

84 McPherson, a small, church-pocked Kansas town 

85 Sor Ursula, mathematician and former Spanish nun who said, “I am sure only of doubt” 

86 “forgotten as the war, and gladly” - the Korean war, often called the forgotten war 

87 “9 o’clock underwater” refers to the painting Fish Magic (Philadelphia) 

88 I tend to loose friends, thought to mean “lose” 

89 Schiller’s rancid wallpaper refers to the chemically-treated wallpaper in Schiller’s Weimar rooms, thought to have hastened his death 

90 “the pompous sunset of the West” (alt version orange demise) 

91 In answer to JRJ, “if you ‘lived’ another year after your death you would see all your revision was pointless.” 

92 “I would go with my despair to an upstairs room” (previous version downstairs)

Bohemian

The review of my chapbook, Homebodies, gone missing some two weeks, has been located.

Extra Texture

It is Wednesday, the third day of the work week. And in Europe, work’s over. 

Starting now, I have three working days off. I have let the basking begin. 

I also have three poems in the new Otis Nebula: Mermaids, Box of Sneezing and Dead Headlights. 

Mermaids is composed largely of notes I took last year in New Mexico, where I visited the Oppenheimer nuclear museum at Los Alamos, and the folklore museum, where I found the quote about Columbus. The TB stuff is spun off Oppenheimer, and the Emma Goldman anecdote is something my father told me while I was there. He is an Emma Goldman scholar. 

The New Mexico connection is why I like the 2 of Hearts cactus card that is on my page so much. 

Box of Sneezing is about the texture and sensation of sneezing. 

Dead Headlights began from what was originally a line in a ghazal that I made into its own poem.

Somniloquism

When I woke up, the 12-word poem I wrote last night was still okay. And that was a good beginning. 

Yesterday the cold came back, along with the filing cabinet-grey sky. But today we awoke to snow, gobs and gobs of it, and still going. It is the best, biggest snow in a long time. 

This morning I crossed the park at dog hour, the time of morning when people make the rounds with their best friends. There was a lanky, loping woman with a lanky copper-colored dog. There was our squat neighbor in his woolen cap with his little dog. Squat, I thought, was just the word for him. It does not mean he is overweight, only indicates a certain circumference/height ratio. 

On the train, I read yet another review of George Saunders’ new collection of stories. The reviewer said some readers would already be familiar with Saunders' “gonzo ventriloquism,” and it struck me that I dislike the word gonzo a lot, and for me it doesn’t describe Saunders. I do like words that end in “-quism,” though. All two of them.

We saw “The Master” on Saturday and were underwhelmed. The cinematography was good. Each actor was impressive, but the chemistry between them and the story didn’t gel. It lacked the intensity you’d expect in a movie about a cult. The lost soul didn’t seem to need religion. It was unclear what the cult leader wanted in the lost soul, and he didn’t exercise real control over him. There were throwaway moments, like the party where the women were naked. To convey what? Lechery? Lasciviousness? Nowhere in sight! 

Add it to the list of big-promise underwhelmers we’ve seen lately: Les Miz, The Impossible, and, yes, Lincoln. Lincoln was the best of them, but dressed-up hokey celebrate America, if you ask me.

Mimeo

I have surely told this story before but it’s one that returns to me. When we were young, my step-brother would buy multiple copies of certain books to show how much he loved them. You’d find three copies of Catch 22 on his shelf, for example, and roll your eyes. But it was also endearing, and I remembered it again today when I got up the chutzpah to rip a page out of Independence Day to do an erasure I could scan and post, but then proceeded to botch the project. I taped the page back in the book, pathetically, black stripes and all, and began cruising Amazon for used copies since I’d like to have one whole. In fact it would be good to have three copies: one as a readable book, one to mark up and underline, and another to rip apart and black out.

It’s not a bad idea to have duplicates and triplicates of things you love. I know when a beloved pair of shoes bites the dust I kick myself for not having bought two pairs. I also think it would be nice to have three copies of certain books I depend on - one in the bedroom, one beside the kitchen table, one in my study. I could also be less lazy and better organized, but there's only so much time to improve one’s character, and the priority is sometimes to improve one's life. 

For remorse, there is no consolation

At the moment I find myself in the untypical situation of reading five books simultaneously: an English novel, a book of aphorisms, a fictional autobiography, a series of observations and essays by a French composer, and of course Richard Ford’s Independence Day.

The Pulitzer Remix has hijacked my time. The project has its own Facebook page and every time I check in I feel like I’m in Fahrenheit 451, charged with the care of a single book. “Hello, my name is S. Jane and I am Independence Day.” Or who/whatever. 

Though content with my choice, I do suffer book envy. I took Independence Day because I thought it would be interesting to revisit why I’d liked it so much, but it wasn’t my favorite book on the list. That would be the gorgeous and powerful The Confessions of Nat Turner. 

Nor is it the book that influenced my life most. That would be The Good Earth, which I read in junior HS and decided if I ever did anything I would someday live in China. There was one scene in it where I believe the mother or father of a newborn hides the child under their coat, proclaiming what a piece of crap baby it is, hardly worthy of ye gods’ attention. I identified with that very strongly and still do. The superstition against pride. 

I’m also reading the novel Old Filth, a novel I bought because of the crazy title and came to dread reading, but which is proving extremely worthwhile. And I’m reading The Complete Perfectionist, a collection of aphorisms and such by Juan Ramon Jiménez. It is also a worthwhile read for writers and poets and anyone who happens to be alive. 

“The only bad part of death must be the first night.” 

“When you’re working on one thing and start to yearn for another, imagine that this thing you’re working on would be the one you yearn for if you were working on the other.”

“For remorse, there is no consolation.”

Independence Remix

I’m participating in a project called Pulitzer Remix, hosted by the Found Poetry Review. You can see the blue swag swagging over there to the left on the blog. Poets taking part are assigned a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and set out to unearth 30 poems, whether through erasure or collage or dada. The poems will be posted throughout April.

Some poets steered away from books they’ve read, giving them the distance to find poems independent of plot and character. I didn’t choose that route because I can only use a book I have access to, meaning it’s here in my house, which in most cases means I’ve read it. 

My book is Richard Ford’s Independence Day. It won the Pulitzer the year my daughter was born, and I read it almost as long ago. I liked the book very much, but never pursued Ford’s other books. I read a story of his called “Puppy” a few years back that was exceptional, and after Canada came out I read that, too. At the time I was reading it in October, I ran into Richard Ford at the Frankfurt Book Fair, meandering among the French publishers. I looked at him so hard he couldn't avoid looking back at me. I had a “wow is he gorgeous” moment, then turned around walked the other way. 

Anyway, here I am getting intimately acquainted. Finding poems is not easy. You need to let go and shake the text up in your head so that it stops being part of something already well formed. Check out Dave Bonta's erasure project on Samuel Pepys' diaries at Via Negativa. He has taught me a thing or two.