“next to of course god america i / love

Since I got here,
the shutdown ended,
NJ governor Christie dropped his appeal against gay marriage,
a school shooting in Nevada left two dead,
German Chancellor Merkel found out the NSA was tapping her phone,
a 13-year old carrying a toy gun was shot dead by police in CA,
a teenager committed suicide by driving head-on into another car on Rt. 27 (NJ), taking two innocents with him,
and I got a Macy’s credit card.

It's the slow city you built in a bottle that makes these blossoms possible

We've been in the states for a week and are enjoying the fall. Today we went to the deserted village in Watchung Reservation and took a short walk among the collapsing houses. There's a very small graveyard with five stones or so, though 24 people are supposedly buried there. This is the only original stone.They'll be having some Halloween events here after we leave, which I'm not unhappy to miss.

I've got three poem-like pieces in the new Menacing Hedge: Miniature City, Cabin and Die Taube. For a real fright, I read them, too.

Tomorrow we're off to New York for four days with some family. My dad and step-mother are taking the kids to a show on Saturday night, giving me a free night. My daughter insists I stay in the apartment. Laugh. If you see me out and about, wave.

Odds

I've been checking the odds over the past few day on who might win the Nobel Prize for Literature. According to betting site Ladbrokes, for days Haruki Murakami had the best odds, followed by Joyce Carol Oates. Far down the list was Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian journalist, with 50/1 odds.

But this morning before the winner was announced, I saw she'd shot out ahead of Murakami to top the list. As with Herta Müller, I'd never heard her name, and it wasn't all that easy to find information about her. But what I found (mostly in German) was interesting - she writes about people's lives after the break-up of the Soviet Union, their dashed expectations, about Chernobyl, the Soviet/Afghanistan war, and other eastern European issues.

We all know now that Alice Munro won, and I'm glad. I've read her stories and think she's excellent, but can't help but feel lucky I stumbled on Alekievich, who sounds even more worthwhile. 

Otherwhere, earlier this week I put myself on a diet of 50 pages a day of Unbroken to ensure I'd finish before leaving for the US tomorrow. The world conspired against me, first through my own fault (i.e. forgetting to take it on my commute one day, minus 50), then through the chatty neighbor I met on the train this morning, who chewed my ear off during my reading time. Anyway, you'll be glad to know I finished the book anyway. Very moving story.

And now to pick out something for the 9-hour plane trip. Something (I hope) I won't mind leaving behind. 

If not, overweight fee

I leave for the states Friday, and am embroiled in the pre-transatlantic drama that seems to strike whenever I take such a trip: I’m a good clip through a big book that it will be a trick to finish before I leave. So,

1. Do I stop reading, and resume when I come back? Not a good idea. 

2. Do I take it with me, finish at my mother’s and leave it there? Could do, but she's read it and I promised to lend it to a colleague. 

3. Do I take it, finish it, and lug its heavy ass back in my suitcase, in a pocket better left to a likewise large but unread book? Ugh. Worst-case scenario. 

4. Do I cram the whole book in before Friday morning? Yes, or go blind trying. The book is Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, and it is an exciting read, so at least the book is cooperating. This is my best option, since today I ordered seven books to be sent to my mother’s house, all of which I’ll be lugging back, surely among others. Here they are: 

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch

Seriously Funny: Poems about Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex and Everything Else - Barbara Hamby, David Kirby, eds. 

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July 

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho - Anne Carson, trans. 

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning 

Night of Stone: Death and Memory in 20th Century Russia by Catherine Merridale 

Sum of Every Lost Ship by Allison Titus 

A plaque won’t give you your life back

 

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

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

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

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

la bella figura

The Italians put photographs of the dead on graves.

The Italians sleep through the warm hours after lunch. 

They tile their floors. 

They are not in a hurry. 

They are not always punctual. 

The Italians do not eat while walking. Eating is done sitting down. 

(Usually while watching TV.) 

The Italians touch you when they are talking, and this is also information.

Midweek

Sunny and cold enough to see your breath this morning. First turtleneck of the year: teal green. Found a moth hole later, not too difficult to conceal. 

Yesterday I forgot my book on my desk when I left work and have now done the work-->home & home-->work commute without it. I know the emptiness of trains, and the anxiety of not knowing what to do with myself. 

“Feel? Let those who read feel,” wrote Fernando Pessoa.

duende

I've been taking a workshop at The Rooster Moans on duende, the dark spirit. In poetry, Federico Garcia Lorca is this spirit's real champion, and though I've been familiar with the concept for some time, I am glad to finally have some space and time to find out what it is. And what it isn't.

I took a stab earlier this year at writing a gacela, a loose non-form Lorca used. The poem, "Gacela of Ash," is up in the new issue of DMQ Review today. My dusty poem "Spark" is there with it.

The zine of short poetry Right Hand Pointing also recently published a poem of mine called "Microbrew," about a small beer. 

Thanks for reading.

Every night my heart comes home kicking my ass

The literary critic I mentioned last week, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, has been buried down the street from me in Frankfurt's main cemetery. It is truly the most beautiful place in town. That now makes four luminaries for me there: Reich-Ranicki, Schopenhauer, Alzheimer, and Adorno.

I would visit anyway. There is one bench I have kept warm for many hours beside an unknown Gustav and Erna. But the bench has since been removed, as have Gustav and Erna's bones and joint gravestone. That's one drawback about the cemetery - unless you are a millionaire or cultural celebrity, you are pretty much renting the space. 

My poem "In Frankfurt Cemetery" also found refugee for only a limited time at Opium, a literary ezine now defunct. I've had it exhumed, and replant it here. It even mentions the sad warning notice they slap on the gravestones when the lease is about to expire. 

In Frankfurt Cemetery 

Trees droop among immovables. 

The rain thinks twice about landing, 

stopped at the leaves. 

Some procure plots with a woodrot cross, 

some a whole hillside, shaky with underground 

chambers, sculpture behind bars. 

Beyond the wall, the traffic brakes and hastens. 

Leave your message after the beep. 

Not the past, but the present makes me sad. 

The eviction notice on the headstone.

Now what? 

Every night my heart comes home kicking my ass. 

What are the oceans up to?

So far apart, do they have the chance to talk?

Chance Readings

"It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning which gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the first time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless sky overhead.” 

The literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki died this week, a looming figure in German contemporary culture. His life story is fascinating. A Jew, he was deported to Poland and just escaped concentration camp, being hidden with his wife in rural Poland by sympathetic people. One thing that really got me about his story was this: 

“When I was arrested in Berlin and deported from Germany in 1938, I was not permitted to take any luggage. All I had in my briefcase was an extra handkerchief and a book. It was a novel I was reading just then - Balzac’s A Woman of Thirty.” 

I love how the detail, so incidental, the book so seemingly random, yet well-remembered as a companion at a fateful moment. In hindsight, he also remarks A Woman of Thirty is "not one of Balzac’s best.” 

The detail of Into the Wild that stands out for me - both at the time I read it and now, years later, when I’ve forgotten most of the story - is that the main figure (whose name escapes me) was reading Dr. Zhivago when he died. I was struck by the romantic coincidence, the stark landscapes of both stories and how they fatefully crossed. 

On Monday my daughter left for a class trip to London. A couple days beforehand she told me which books she would take and asked if I'd pick out a poetry book for her. I didn’t get around to it, and apologizing at the airport I realized I happened to have Federico Garcia Lorca’s Poem of the Deep Song in my purse, which I gave that to her. I can’t imagine I could have picked a better book even with hours of generous deliberation. A class trip isn't as grave an occasion as those above, thank god, but reading Lorca can surely make it more memorable. 

Stargazing in the Library

I was thrilled last week when Passages North accepted The Inner Rodent, an essay I wrote based on my misreadings. I’d never submitted non-fiction before, and the essay was accepted within a day. It’s up on the site as part of their “Writers on Writing” series.

I should be braver. But I am tired. I should write more. But I don’t have a lot of time. 

If you click on the link you’ll see the squirrel is my mascot. Which is cool, because the squirrel is my mascot. 

Fall has descended, and today we had a table at a kids’ flea market, where we sold piles of action figures, jeans, some t-shirts and books. Carlo and I played good cop/bad cop, him being the kindly negotiator and me being the take-it-or-leave-it guy. We made 155 euros, enough to pay for groceries and the kids’ allowance.

From the tip of an island since pulled away

I have a few poems out this week. 

“Stamp Album of the Suicides” is at Dialogist. The inspirations were 1) stamps & stamp albums, which I learned to love in China; 2) respect for suicides, often disparaged for being weak and selfish; and 3) a plain old love of order. Check out the art in this issue - very good. 

A newer ezine, Bitterzoet, has three other poems: “A Hawaii Postcard Arrives in Winter 12 Years Late,” “Breaking News” and “Standing in Line Alone.” They also have a print issue, for which they took two other poems. 

Booze & Meringue

In June I participated in a writer's regimen conducted by the Southeast Review. Basically, it was a program of ideas and quotes and riff words aimed at giving writers a daily prompt. I admit I didn't get to it every day, but if the prompt appealed to me I gave it a shot. One of the prompts was about foreign landscapes, and because I was at the time both reading a book (Elfriede Jelinek's "The Pianist") that mentions cake and receiving emails that included pictures of cake from a typographer acquaintance who was visiting Vienna, I made cake my landscape. 

It was fun to do, and the Southeast Review chose to feature the piece - Booze, Sugar & Meringue - on their site. As a kind of poem-a-day, it's not polished, but cake is also a messy affair, porous, and often full of nuts.

Salesbug

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous bug.” 

"One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug."

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect-like creature." 

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning after disturbing dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous cockroach." 

"As Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself in bed, transformed into a horrible vermin."

"One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin." 

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."

“As Gregor Samsa awoke from unsettling dreams one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” 

Cloudpump

I was back at the Hans Arp museum on the Rhine today. We took a ferry across from Bad Honnef to Remagen, where they built the museum in 2007, joining the new modern building to a renovated train station. I’ve been before and had the same feeling, i.e. that this was the most beautiful museum I’ve ever been in.

This time I had to ask myself more directly: ‘Hey, is this the most beautiful museum I’ve ever been in?’ The answer was a Molly Bloom-like cascade of yeses, all down the hillside and into the river. 

It’s not beautiful because of the artwork, although I love Arp. It’s beautiful because of the way it sits in the hills, a sprawling, wide-windowed structure that for all its alien whiteness seems to belong there. It is embracing/embraced by the grass. I could sing praises of the upshooting elevator all the day long. And the tunnel! Of course it also has the wonderful Rhine flowing below it. 

The only bummer is all the walltexts relating to artwork and exhibitions are only in German, so it would frustrate most non-German speakers, and I wouldn't drive my parents out there. As I often do, I wonder if I should volunteer to translate it all for the good of humanity, but 1) I don’t have time and 2) Ach, the bureaucracy. Nevertheless, I think Arp would be happy to find this building spilling down the hills, and some texts from his "Wolkenpumpe" (Cloudpump) poems way up on the uppermost walls. 

Apocalypse Oil

Today’s misreading is brought to you by Braun, the maker of electric razors, coffee crushers and hand vacuums.

This morning as I was reaching for something in the bathroom cabinet, my eyes scanned a small plastic vial of liquid. Because I was not really looking at it, and because I did not really care, and because the mind will always rush to fill in the blanks, what I saw there was a bottle of Apocalypse Oil.

Right there in the bathroom cabinet. Apocalypse Oil! The apocalypse couldn’t go on without it. All brought to you by Braun, maker of appliances for small household chores such as ending the world.

Some Paintings from The Map and the Territory

The Journalist Jean-Pierre Pernaut Chairing an Editorial Meeting: The expressions of Pernaut’s staff, listening to the directives of their charismatic leader with a curious mixture of veneration and disgust, had not been easy to render.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology: The Conversation at Palo Alto: Jobs ... seemed paradoxically an embodiment of austerity, or the Sorge traditionally associated with Protestant capitalism. There was nothing Californian in the way his hand clutched his jaw as if to help him some difficult reflection. 

The Stock Exchange Flotation of Shares in Beate Uhse: Reminiscent of the expressionist period, we are very far from the scathing, caustic treatment of a George Grosz or an Otto Dix...His traders in running shoes and hooded sweatshirts, who acclaim with blasé world-weariness the great German porn businesswoman, are the direct descendants of the suited bourgeois who meet endlessly in the receptions directed by Fritz Lang. 

Ferdinand Desroches, Horse Butcher and Claude Vorilhon, Bar-Tabac Manager: if Martin began by looking at two washed-up professions, it was in no way because he wanted to encourage lamentations on their probable disappearance; it was simply that they were indeed going to disappear soon, and it was important to fix their images on canvas. 

Aimée, Escort Girl: A fulfilled young woman, both sensual and intelligent ... treated with an exceptionally warm palette based on umber, Indian orange, and Naples yellow. 

The Engineer Ferdinand Piech Visiting the Production Workshops at Molsheim: The wide V-shaped formation of the small group of engineers and mechanics following Piech on his visit to the workshops recalled very precisely ... the group of agronomists and middle-poor peasants accompanying President Mao Zedong in a watercolor reproduced in issue 122 of China in Construction, entitled Forward to Irrigated Rice Growing in the Province of Hunan! 

Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons Dividing Up the Art Market: The night itself wasn't right: it didn't have that sumptuousness, that mystery one associates with nights on the Arabian Peninsula; he should have used a deep blue, not ultramarine. He was making a truly shitty painting. He seized a palette knife, cut open Damien Hirst's eye, and forced the gash wider; it was a canvas of tight linen fibers, and therefore very tough. 

Michel Houellebecq, Writer: Martin probably chose to portray him in the middle of a universe of paper neither to make a statement about realism in literature nor to bring Houellebecq closer to a formalist position ... Without doubt, more simply, he was taken by a purely plastic fascination with the image of these branching blocks of text, engendering one another like some gigantic octopus.

Same old busyness

The war is scheduled for next week.
It will be a short war, possibly bloodless.
And on the weekend
there will be dancing.

summertime

The school summer vacation ends next week. In Germany, summer break time is kinder than in the US, clocking in at just six weeks, a manageable amount of leisure. The 12 weeks I had as kid in NJ wasn’t only enough for my parents, but also for me, pining away for my friends and frenemies at the end of August.

Just before school resumed I always went back-to-school shopping with my mother. What I wanted most was sweaters and a pair of corduroys, even though September was still too hot for them, even though you could still go sleeveless. 

I mentioned this annual event to my mother the other day, who revealed she’d disliked it. She put an advance cap on spending, a good move. I never do that with my kids - I just expect reason to kick in. But then again we don’t really go back-to-school shopping, summer being rather short, not long enough to grow out of your clothes.

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.