my tortured attention

On the first couple pages the scene is set - intellectual Warsaw during the war and what the thinkers discussed but I was thinking of the friend I'd just run into in the lobby who'd made a question of the sentence, "You knew I separated from B (?)." I'd answered "yes," censoring the pressing questions why and when and what else and the thinkers on page 2 were smoking heavily and debating God, art and the proletariat and I was wondering about the moment I'd run into this old friend, wondering whether you could call our embrace warm or spontaneous or perfunctory. I was uncertain about everything, including what arrangements would be made for the evening when a new character was introduced whose name I didn't catch though it didn't escape my notice that he'd come with four rabbit pelts (for what purpose?) and the sole of a shoe, and yet simultaneously I was wondering about my friend, who'd gone to her room to change. I was wondering what she was going to wear, whether she's dress up and if I were underdressed and suddenly I was on page 3, where the narrator and the rabbit pelt peddler (?) entered into a small and shady business which was to be short-lived and I was wondering if I, too, just by saying so could change into something else, something more comfortable, like clouds, say, or heavy smoke.

rhymes with savage

It's been a couple weeks at least since I was truly devastated so here I am in America about to attend my college reunion. I'll be wearing my shock suit, and plan to appear in black&white. It's an unbelievable 30 degrees hotter in NJ than in Frankfurt, so I won't even have to use make-up to highlight the impression of complete ravagement.

As a warm-up, last night I watched "The Road" with my mother. I read the book last year and like many people went completely gaga. Unfortunately, since I'm hell-bent on the negative this week, I found the movie woefully inadequate. It's a textbook case of how the depth and beauty of a book can get lost in the translation into film. My mother kept asking, "did this happen in the book?" And how could I explain that, yes, it did, but the book somehow didn't come off like a sluggish zombie movie. Why didn't it? Because of language! About 15 minutes into it my mother asked, "Why didn't you tell me this was a comedy?" She's a card.

Tomorrow, my alma mater is hosting a lecture on Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian." I read this recently, too, and must admit that although McCarthy writes like an angel on LSD, the gore became somewhat tedious. I'll be attending the lecture anyway because, you know, I just can't get enough.

This morning I'm off to my favorite museum, MOMA. The last couple years something or other has always gotten in the way, and there was that year or more when they were renovating. But thanks to jetlag, today I am up very early and ready to go.

Camus, A Romance

Say you’re a college student studying philosophy and you spend hours trawling through Kant and Heidegger and Plato and even Sartre and maybe a female philosopher now and then and then you hit upon Camus with his melty good looks, his melancholy expression and his cute out-of-proportion ear. You are going to sit up and pay attention. He looks approachable, modern, if a bit retro. There’s no denying Albert Camus was an attractive man, a writer who was also a philosopher and moralist and who was fated to be an intellectual sex symbol. If he’d been American, Marilyn Monroe would have eaten him whole.

Elizabeth Hawes was writing her thesis on Camus when he died in a car crash. In college, she developed an obsession for him that lapsed, but never died out. Later in life, it was rekindled when she read the posthumous “The First Man.” She resolved to write a biography, but one that would allow her to actually befriend him, even find intimacy with him. Her own motives figure in the book, and I couldn’t help but ask– is Hawes a stalker? It is a bit off-kilter how she goes off in search of Camus “the man,” how she sometimes feels they’re walking along together, or she remembers one of his jokes and laughs. It’s only her professed admiration for Camus that makes sleuthing seem occasionally like stalking. Many biographers are motivated by a desire to get closer to their subject, they just don’t come out and say it.

Despite her confessed idolization, she’s not a gusher. She gives the reader enough distance, and a number of times when she entered the book I was HAPPY to see her. I admired her devotion and scholarship, and although I'd recommend this book above all to people who have an interest in Camus, existentialism or French Algeria, it is an accessible portrait of the times. While I was interested in Camus, I was more interested in experiencing postwar Europe from "his" perspective, socially and philosophically.

For all the warmth she brings her subject, Hawes’ obsession wasn’t contagious. I didn’t feel smitten. I thought Camus’ philandering, for example, was a huge weakness. I didn’t want to mother him through his tubercular suffering. When the big blowout between Sartre and Camus went down, I don’t think he handled it well, even though I sided with him. (Sartre, what an asshole! And with time Camus is vindicated, a major part of the conflict having centered on Sartre’s support of Stalin(ism). As it’s revealed what a monster Stalin is, Sartre defends himself by saying he was “right to be wrong.” Gawd, as my 10-grade English teacher would say: ship him off to 1950’s Russia and we’ll see how he feels about it then!)

Besides getting pretty darn close to the breathing&eating Camus, I liked how the book evoked the postwar atmosphere. I also never knew Camus was a bosom buddy of the poet René Char, a favorite of mine, or that the fallout with Sartre had so much to do with Russia. For all the warmth Hawes’ book brings to Camus, however, nothing brings him to life like his work. Two-thirds through this I picked up “The Stranger” and remembered what made Camus marvelous. Not his ear or his tuberculosis or the sultry cigarette dangling from his mug, but his writings.

(Full disclosure: I gladly read and reviewed this book on request!)

rumpelstiltskin

In bed I like to sleep on my stomach with my left foot/calf extended off the side, blanketless. For the fresh air. I call this snorkeling.

At work I get lunch vouchers worth 5.50 euros each and when I use one to buy a 2 euro sandwich I get 3.50 back in cash from the sandwich man. I call this spinning straw into gold.

At my desk I chew my nails, crack the sides with my incisor then peel them free in a nice, clean curve. This is known as mulling the great horizon

and it reminds me how yesterday I was going through the automatic revolving door that I hate and it occurred to me that teething and seething have more to do with each other than just a lot of phonemes.

Getting Fondled at the Country Fair

Here’s an amusing site that promises it will “cut through all the cryptic crap, and give you the meat of the story in one condensed image. Now you can read the greatest literary works of all time in mere seconds!”

What it does is rename the book with a title meant to reveal something about the story.

One of my favorites is Mrs. Dalloway, which is renamed “A Quaint, Mid-Afternoon Panic Attack.” Another funny one is Charles Bukowski’s Post Office (aka Factotum), which is called “Drunk Sex with Poor People.” That surely does reveal a lot more about the plot.

Bleak House is renamed “Lolita Gets Smallpox.” That made me laugh, too, disregarding that there was no 'Lolita' to refer to in 1852, which may be why Dickens didn't come up with the idea himself. Still, what a case of smallpox she had.

I was interested to learn that The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier and Clay would be better called “Gay Jewish Magicians Kill Nazis.” This did persuade me, though, that I don’t have to read the book. I also took Super Sad Love Story off my to-read list, finding out it’d be more aptly named “1984 in AOL Speak.” No thanks, especially since I never bothered to read 1984.

It’s funny but it doesn’t completely live up to its mission. Sometimes it simply takes a shot at the author or book. Nothing of the plot or content of Infinite Jest, for example, comes across in “Too Long.” And the title “I’m Only Reading This So My Friends Will Stop Telling Me To Read This Book” could be slapped on a number of books, not just The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Still the layout it great, and they put up a new book every day.

Char steps back from the phone

What a harangue of a day. And how nice to come to my room at home, the lamp lighting the wooden table, the book still open to the poem I left this morning: “To Drink to Friends,” André Frenaud (I will drink in remembrance of the whiteness of mountains. / I will draw wine from the bubbling of the spring / beyond the frozen high places . . .)

I’d taken the book (The Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry! Highly recommended) out last night to look up René Char, bosom friend of Albert Camus. On p. 209 of the bio I’m reading, Char receives the bad news:

"Henri was with his parents and Char at Les Camphoux the next day when the call came telling him about the crash (that killed Camus). Char had stepped back from the phone and let out a heartrending cry, (Henri) said."

I’m almost done reading the Camus bio and serendipitously two days ago I found a copy of The Stranger in the basement. It’s always been there, I’d just never noticed it. I think I am now re-reading it, although my lack of recall suggests I’ve never read it at all. It has one of the best openings ever:

Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.

Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I don’t know.


Song of the day: I want to hold your hand (auf deutsch)

valentines

The Red Sox fan.
The woman who carved her heart in a tree.
The baboon who nursed lions.
The lioness who nursed deer.
Your brain on 2002 Chenin Blanc.
The man who really loved dancing.
Pineapple & cottage cheese.

the burdens put on furniture

Nic Sebastian has read another of my poems, and she does it beautifully. Here it is - Feng Shui.

eat, pray, love, an alternative

EAT: I read a cookbook review on Good Reads some months ago by a reader who complained about how the “foodie douchebags” had hijacked cooking. I thought that was a funny, wonderful expression, mostly for the /ooo/ of it. Yesterday I bought some “caffe latte almonds,” and while I was walking back to the office eating those fat beauties the expression came to me and I had the urge to say it out loud. I did, exactly at the moment someone I knew came up behind me. Should I act as if I’d said nothing, or explain I’d said something else? "Loopy duped hags?" "Pooperscoop fangs?"

PRAY: I’m no foodie, and caffe latte almonds will ever do much to shape my perception of place, but no one’s immune to flavor memories, which often begin when you’re away from home eating something you wouldn’t usually eat. My favorite comes from the town of Shanhaiguan in China, which I visited with my friend Sandy. We found a clean restaurant, where I ordered a fish soup that was little more than a fish flank floating in a bowl of broth with a few leaves of cilantro. In Chinese, cilantro is called “fragrant grass” and it’s sold in lovely bundles. In Chinese, you drink soup, you don’t eat it. In Chinese lore, cilantro was associated with immortality. In Shanhaiguan, there’s the ocean and the Great Wall and I’m surprised that also this soup is still going on.

LOVE: My step-father was always one of those people who remembered his vacations by what he’d eaten. My mother would say, ‘remember the year we stayed at the Watergate in DC,’ and he’d say, ‘oh yeah, that was where I ate the butter-crumb stuffed wild mushrooms in marsala sauce.’ There were those of us who thought he’d missed the point of the trip completely, and others who felt he’d hit the nail on the head. My step-father turns 86 next week. He was a good father to me. Although his short-term memory is shot and his overall awareness is ebbing I do hope he will again experience much deliciousness.

Whale Sound

Nic Sebastian of Very Like a Whale fame has a new project called Whale Sound, a website where she records selected poems. I'm very glad to have provided one of the inaugural pieces for this project, "Vestment." Click here to go to the page. There are two other poems up, one from Cati Porter and another from Patricia Fargnoli.

Nic did a series on poets & technology at her blog, and Whale Sound grew out of a question from Amy King. Asked what technology can still do for poetry, Amy said: “If every poet were to record just one book of poems that they loved for the rest of us to listen to, and not just their own poems, how excellent would that be?”

Kind of like Fahrenheit 451, no? Nic is not doing a single book, though, but collecting her favorites in a sound anthology. She reads beautifully, and Whale Sound is a generous project, so please visit and applaud her.

In other poetry news, my Ghazal of the Sharp Knife, recently up at DMQ , is the Web feature this week at Verse Daily!

All this happened yesterday, when I stayed home from work with a sore throat. Maybe I should do that more often. Good jinxes to all.

back to school doom

I remember my first day of third grade. I was standing in line to enter to school and two third-grade wiseguys asked me, “Hey, did you ever fart?,” and while I was thinking it over I knew either way I was going to give the wrong answer.

what could be better than visiting the fascist mansion

some words which have long seemed poetically forbidding

You can find the tambourine on ebay and I avoid it because it’s noisy.

The word crochet reminds me of a decrepit and inexpert case of choking.

I hate projection like the plague and I’ve no explanation.

My high school sweetheart’s brother’s ex-girlfriend ran an all-things-brass shop in an upscale strip mall and we laughed a lot at her which is now painful to me so you won’t find cheap metals.

It’s good to get this all out there into the sunshine, which I shun because I never get the sky right.

The word absent should be kept in the classroom with its pretentious emptiness.

Frankly I’ve never known what ballywick means, and Peking went out with the old, however sadly.

Mortal and sublime and Übermensch and fairy inferno pristine incredible limpid shithead snot-nosed patriot exact binocular frigid gelatinous hot tub and perhaps it’s time I spoke to my analyst about all this avoidance.

galore

My poem “Ghazal of the Sharp Knife” is up in the summer issue of DMQ Review.

As a draft, this ghazal was called "Ghazal of the Honed Knife," but that was unnecessary. And the end-phrase was originally “of her,” but with all that -oom going on, “of him” worked better. And in the end the knife as a man in the kitchen is an interesting man.

But does he resent it?

land raft

This raft is not a toy.
This raft is not a life-saving device.
Do not jump directly onto this raft.
If children jump directly onto this raft, they must be accompanied by an adult.
No one should be alone with this raft.
This raft should not be operated in the vicinity of teenagers.
This raft is not safe near pregnant women or people with heart conditions, known or unknown.
Do not use alcohol while operating this raft.
This raft is only operable when inflated fully.
Do not overinflate. (the raft)

stray thoughts surrounding blue capellini

Everyone knows that in English we translate capellini as angelhair pasta but in Italian it simply means hair and doesn’t belong to anybody. Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti day but on Thursday I am often alone, making it a good opportunity for a steaming bowl of Blue Capellini. The blue refers not to the pasta but the sauce which is a secret and marvelous with whole peppercorns. Italians tend to talk a lot as if they were allergic to quiet, no matter if their mouths are full of noodles. But I eat my capellini silently. I don’t suck that one strand into my mouth like a retractable vacuum cleaner cord. I chew very slowly with my mouth sealed as if it were a recording studio sound chamber. I’ve never had a need to do qualudes but when the Italians come to dinner I sometimes grate a couple into the parmesan and make the sauce an extra soothing blue for the sake of white blouses and international peace and quiet.

Some things I hate like the plague

Liza Minelli singing 'Cabaret.'
Anyone with a real or fake German accent singing 'Cabaret.'
Pretty much anyone singing 'Cabaret.'

fob & socket

An AP article this morning about the incoming class of college freshman says many of them have never worn a wristwatch. In fact it’s a pretty crappy article that never explains this. I don’t suppose they’re all pretentious pocket-watch types, but rather rely on the clock in their cell phones. Or is there some other new-fangled way to tell time that I’ve missed? Do they maybe wear those neato “ring watches?”

As for me, if there were an item of apparel I would choose to marry, it would be my watch. I’m never without it. It’s heartbreakingly handsome. I wear it to bed. It’s mechanical, and must be faithfully wound. I love that. I treated myself to it just before my son was born. If I lost it, or broke it (lord forbid), I would replace it with the very same model.

This is something I’ve never quite gotten about “the digital age.” Why would you choose to fumble around for your ugly cell phone to check the time rather than simply swivel your wrist facewards and find out instantly? Why do people keep their address books on their computers? My husband, who preceded the beloved wristwatch, has to turn on his laptop, locate the file and do a CTRL-F search to find a phone number. I have an address book in my purse, and a spinning rolodex next to the phone, which plugs into the wall. Where I can find it.

in which the soul selects

Lago di Garda is a beautiful lake, surprisingly beautiful. We stayed on the somewhat wilder west side – wilder because the hills and cliffs lay closer to the water, making the coast in general less habitable and necessitating dozens of tunnels, some brief, some drawn out and dark. Years of trickling rain and exhaust make the walls and roofs look like they've been stamped with Mark Rothko paintings, with their abstract, coffinesque, repetitive shapes.

It being August, I read a lot of Wallace Stevens. He fit in perfectly with the weather and the landscape. His Florida, my Italy. His palm and mine. I didn’t even get around to looking at the four other poetry books I’d brought with me. Why fool around?

My Italian did improve as the days went by. The truth is I was selective, as people often are when it comes to foreign languages, i.e. if I didn’t want to talk to someone, I played dumb. If I did want to, or I needed something, those great clumps of earth under which my Italian was buried sloughed over, and I became resourceful and inventive.

I didn’t miss the oil spill, nor the celebrity news. I didn’t miss work or Starbucks or my brand of chewing gum or my iPod or public transportation or Facebook. I didn’t even miss the neighborhood church bells or well-stocked supermarket. I did miss my room a little, with the wisteria growing into the window.

and welcome to it

The most prevalent supermarket in this part of Italy is called Despar.
It's everywhere, sometimes twice to a town.
Of course as an English speaker I can't help reading it as Despair.
Ubiquitous! Bring the family, and roll that cart on in.

zanzara

It pains me to confront how much my Italian has faded. While I was busy sharpening my German, or reading poetry in French, this vowely language that I once had a good grasp of began ebbing away. I went to the post office today and drew a blank at the word for stamp! I made my way around it. But later I was buying cheese and couldn't remember the word for goat. That was nearly too much for me.

I'm putting this little chapter down in my big book of defeat.

There is a word that is hard to forget, however: zanzara.
It has sting and speed. It has zing. It has zap and alacrity.
The mosquito is pendulous and slow, a smoky hovering presence you only know when it's gone.
But the zanzara puts itself plainly in sight as an adversary.
Like a good student of geometry, it knows the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
And it knows that evading the slap requires zig and zag.
Zanzara is a perfect Italian word, exact and very accurate.
It rides the air like the intonation of your best Italian sentence.

murdstone

Soon we leave for the Italian lakeside town of Tignale for vacation. I've been practicing my Italian curse words and most importantly deciding which books to take along. After all, it's pretty easy to pick out seven pairs of underwear, but which seven (?) books to bring is a decision that should be guided in part by deep consideration and in part by instinct.
Things are looking good, though, because I've finally gotten to work on my New Year's resolution, which was to read David Copperfield. For months I've been looking at it on the shelf and groaning nooooo. But, now at page 81 (of about 900) I have to admit it is a wonderful book, sad in its melodramatic dickensian way and also very funny. Of course it is not a difficult book, just huge. But my fear that is would be a musty old eye-roller was wrong. I love orphans and plump, sentimental maids whose buttons pop when they hug you. I feel just like this guy in The Twilight Zone.
Since it's the size of three books, it should keep me fed for a while. But I'll also take some short stories, and a couple back-up novels, including Cloud Atlas. Also Sebastian Junger's War, and Dorothea Lasky's Awe. This much is sure.

()

(I’m spending a lot of time in parentheses these days.)
(It’s nice in here, and sheltered. Fendered.)
(Kind of noncommittal.)
(Like everything is just an aside.)
(What? This?! Not really that important.)
(Surely there are more important things.)
(Don’t mind me.) (Someone just dropped me here poolside.)
(This isn’t even a speech bubble. Just a (thought) bubble.)
(Don’t pay it much attention.)

letting the sun settle everything

While I was dragging through a 13-hour day at work on Friday, a frazzled dandelion was blooming through the sidewalk crack ... errr, no, don't think so.

While I was pounding through a 13-hour day at work, they were crafting a glass menagerie where once there was just a resinous thought of death ... uh, also no.

While I was slaving out a 13-hour workday yesterday, a beard was being smoked from its follicular cave into the open like so much play-doh ... hmmm, getting warmer?

While I was at work yesterday, wearing my horse blinders and conducting the keyboard orchestra, little did I know that crows were crushing the House of Usher.

Swedish meatballs were seizing the House of Pancakes.

1-Adam-12: an enormous sneeze was threatening to blow up the White House.

And some of my poems became scrollable under grey skirts at Escape into Life.

Welcome you read.

the glasses one wears in dreams

I have a tiny ode to a major classic up a quarrtsiluni today.
Please to enjoy!

That reminds me - before my right hand started hurting, and it still does a bit although it's better and I'm trying not to burden it too much or my right eye, either, which sometimes starts twitching in sympathy - I began a meme that qarrtsiluni editor Dave Bonta tagged me on. I'm supposed to tag 8 people, but I'm pretty chicken, although I will tag Ron Hardy if he's game because he knows and I know that he's way way better at this than me. Before I bail completely, here's what I'd done:

Is half a stone still a whole stone?
As much as I don’t like to go into it, it would be politically incorrect to keep half a stone from being considered a whole stone. Is a man who comes home from war without his arms and legs half a man? Is Eric the half a bee no longer an entity? Don’t listen to the ads – in many cases, size does not matter.

Do grains of sand get tired of being recycled into mountains?
Sand has to do its bit just like the rest of us and unlike the rest of us does so without whining. Most sand is made into glass, bottles and the goblet that made Harry Potter possible. The sand that skips that and gets to make the mountains is called sandecstatic.

If you crossed a bat with a mushroom, would you get an umbrella?
No, you’d get a Flederpilzmaus, at least in German.

Do the glasses one wears in a dream require a prescription?
According to Freud, the glasses one wears in a dream are custom made, individually shrinkwrapped and a byproduct of the day’s residues and displacement. Say one day you see a pancake being flipped in a restaurant window and that pancake later shows up in your dream as a beige car flipping off a cliff, killing someone you didn’t even know you didn’t like. Glasses symbolize our inability to perceive things as they are. The dream is the glasses, prescribed special for you.

What songs do they sing in a school without windows?
A school without windows may have Dutch doors, which are just as good and extemely practical. Thus it is meet and right and our bounden duty to sing The Double Dutch Bus in school. Fee fi fo fum. Well I’ll be darned here it comes.

Do the daisies love us or not?
The oil is still spewing. The daisies hate our guts.

Is there any reason to believe that we’ll have working mouthparts in the next life?
In my next life I would be happy to have even non-working mouthparts. I’m not a big fan of either talking or eating, both of which everyone tends to overdo. And talking is not as important as writing anyway.

What kind of cartilage connects us to the stars?
There are some stars you don’t want to have a connection with at all. There are whole neighborhoods of Beverly Hills that make me want to take that secret dog pill that turns you into a mutt well away from the homo saps. But because of fossils and chimps, DNA, and the sad, fragile smile of Sissy Spacek, we are linked to the stars, by far more than cartilage.

my daughter returns from camp

There was a mouse in our room! And the beds were dirty. We ate breakfast too early, and then two hours later we had lunch and that was too early. And then we had to wait six hours for dinner! We were so hungry! And there was a pissoir in our room! And it stunk in there because there was some problem with the drainage.

carpal

i must be quiet now. i've broken up with my wrists.
hope to patch things up. soon.

i'll just get off up a ways

I was thinking this morning, when was the last time I had a Bloody Mary? I was probably in my twenties. I think it was at my friend Amy's (first) wedding, where I wore pale pink and stood under the chuppah with her. When I see a picture of a Bloody Mary, I think, wow, those are delicious. But in fact they are not delicious, and wine is my swami. Actually I don't care about Bloody Marys and don't want to see pictures of them. I want to move to Copenhagen and live under a canopy made of intricately cut paper, open on all four sides to symbolize, as Abraham and Sarah's tent did, boundless hospitality.


Song of the day: Coyote

I read. I spread joy.

I don’t know anymore what “frequently” means but I frequently review books over at Good Reads. I usually don’t post the reviews here because why should I. But I bought a chapbook recently on a whim and because I liked it so much, I thought why not. It’s Frank Montesonti’s A Civic Pageant.

To be honest when the chapbook arrived I feared I was about to add it to the buyer’s remorse blob I’ve been working on in my garage. The title struck me suddenly as pompous, and the cover design gave me a “huh?” moment (a rudimentary dinosaur in a tie and hat smoking a cigarette. Maybe it’s a joint. I don’t get the cover.). But the poems are great – sad and funny, heavy in a sneaky, casual way. More than once I was brought to tears. This may have been hormones.

When I got to the poem “Faking It” I realized I’d read the poem years ago in an issue of Barrow Street and had even written the poet to say how much I liked it. (Other than that I swear I am not related to Frank Montesonti, nor have I ever met him, nor is he in any position I'm aware of that would make my own poetry better or more marketable even.) Many of the poems in this chapbook were even better than “Faking It,” which begins –

“My girlfriend has multiple orgasms. I’m not sure who is giving her these orgasms, but she’ll come home with a grocery sack and drop them on the table –

they look like tiny doorknobs made of bronze.”

Some of the poems have line breaks and stanzas but many of them appear on the page more like prose poems. “Faking It,” for example, starts off “shaped like prose” but then becomes poem. None of this bothered me. All the poems were inviting. The only poem “formats” that bother me are those where the poet throws two words on one page, two more words on the next page and instructs readers to slacken their jaws and say “wow.” I fail at this. But Mr. Montesonti doesn’t use that tricky format.

Among my favorites was “Redundancy of Light,” which starts seemingly seriously and turns funny –

“Outside this hotel room
rain falls as pure as its definition.
Call the French, tell them

there should be a word
for shadows of raindrops
on a hotel window.”

Many of the poems, and there are only 17 in the chapbook, refer to film or particular films. One starts with George Bailey from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and another one of my favorites is “Quitclaim of the Wizard of Oz,” even though it has been dawning on me for years that I really don’t like “The Wizard of Oz.” I've never admitted this in public, or to myself, until now. There’s another called “Film Noir” and another with the long long title “Gratuitous Voice-Over at the End of a Film Reflecting on the Tribulations of the Plot and Coming Finally to an Epiphany.”

This is one of the best –if not the best- poetry collection I’ve read this year. It’s one of those in which everything in me says “yes, that’s right.”

Here’s a link to a poem (the George Bailey one) at 42Opus and a second one also from the book published at Diagram.

I thought Frank Montesonti was my secret discovery but I looked him up on Facebook and would you believe there’s a group called “Frank Montesonti is a Poetic God?” There is, and I joined it.

buttondown

The voice of reason dropped by.
I wasn’t glad to see him.

the night of the shirts

So, as you probably know, W.S. Merwin is the new poet laureate. I’m not surprised. He’s won everything else but the Nobel Prize (which he should also win, as soon as possible). Making him poet laureate seems kind of superfluous. The first thing that came to my mind was that scene in "The Shining," where Jack Nicholson is told he’s always been the caretaker. In my mind, W.S. Merwin, too, has always been the caretaker. I'm a big Merwin admirer. He is a very serious man and a beautiful poet. (Jack Nicholson, on the other hand....)

Inside the Little Picture

In the kitchen, I’m fishing pieces of cork rot from the bottle’s throat
as if a little care and precision could cure the world of its decreptitude.

When the temperature hits 80, I switch to white because
while I have two rivers running in me, in summer I need three.

The third flows, as da Vinci says, like hair. Mine plaits, glacial,
blonde as Sauvignon, braid traipsing into whisker, turning drip to lurk.

White alleviates the heat, strikes a fire the size of a pearl,
summons slumber sweet as an infant’s arm, and that long.

Summer demands drastic measures.Heat on, I switch to diminish,
maneuvering a sieve to excavate the last cork bits, my rivers dwindling.

The bigger bits of world crumble outside without me, ice caps I can’t trap
in glass, in retreat beneath a ceiling fan invoking scope scope scope.

Vialence

I put on Shalimar this morning.
It takes a lot of nerve to put on Shalimar before going to work.
In the morning!
But I did. A drop here, a drop there. Ping, ping.
As far as I'm concerned there's nothing more I have to do.

bundle up

Last week of school!
Is this good? I think it’s good. It means no more schoolwork, i.e. a six-week respite from striving, nagging, reminding and helping kids study for tests with generally little payoff. No more going upstairs to wake everybody up, then waking them up again, making them coffee and/or cereal and looking for their books, jeans, notebooks, plastic jesus, shoes, keys, etc. No more needling them to brush their teeth and having to police that action. No more 2 euros for this, 4 euros for that, 12 euros for the class trip to whatever, and writing “please excuse” notes for whoever was poorly or late or forgetful. No more strict bedtimes complete with nagging about brushing their teeth, preparing their backpacks, getting off the horn, brushing their teeth, putting rubber bands on their braces, getting in bed n-o-w. Did I mention toothbrushing? IT IS THE LIFELONG MOST IMPORTANT THING!

Plato's

Try to understand me.
It’s because I just gave up smoking.
I suffer from blackouts.
It was the booze talking.
I was prescribed the wrong meds.
I was abused by my mother/priest/other children.
I was raised by celebrities.

the gradual nap

On the couch I embarked on a gradual nap.
It began with the typical resistance of struggling to reopen the eyes.
The book I was reading was interesting, but not unsleepably interesting.
So I decided to go ahead and comply.
The eyes get tired you know, doing that reality check all day.
But first I put the bookmark in and put down the book.
I felt good, but soon got more serious.
I pulled the throw blanket over me and tucked it in, thinking,
as I always do at such moments, of that scene in The Naked and The Dead
where a soldier with bad kidneys has to sleep on the cold ground.
(This makes me thankful for the blanket.)
Then I moved the pillows from behind to the side of me,
being careful not to wake myself up as I keeled over.

The river was getting ahead of itself

The new Prick of the Spindle is up and includes four of my poems: Clothespin, Dance Machine, For a Woman Who Hates the Word 'Moist' and Chowder.

Kathleen Kirk also reviews my chapbook in this issue! Click here and scroll down. I was very relieved that she liked it. She asks me some questions about the poems, too, over at her blog. Thanks, Kathleen.

Prick of the Spindle has a bunch of books available for review, mostly poetry. They’ll mail a copy to you – check out their list.

Elsewhere, Bateau has accepted my poem Dictionary Illustrations, a topic I’ve blogged about. And I have received rejections recently from 32 Poems, Front Porch and Cerise! Back to the drawing board.

I've failed at triumph

I thought The Diary of a Country Priest was one of those books that comes with a “guarantee.” But of course no book comes with a blanket guarantee. Still, I’d read only glowing reviews and boy was I ready for a “triumphant experience.” But on p. 26 I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was really reading about. On p. 54 the voice of the innocent and well-meaning young priest began to irk the shit out of me. On p. 55 I skipped ahead to see if anything would ever actually happen to dilute all the fluffy introspection and it didn’t look promising. On p. 64 I took the kitty to the well and drowned it.

Ach! If only I lived near a (English) library I’d run so much less risk of wasting money on books. The back cover says $15.95! I checked my order though, and thanks to Amazon, I paid “just” $11.48 for The Diary of a Country Priest, so I feel a few dollars better already. Plus I ordered it along with The Shadow of Sirius and Blood Meridian, both of which paid off. Sirius cost $10.88 but was really worth about $17.89, and Blood Meridian cost $10.20 but was easily worth $13.86. So actually I only lost 81 cents in this deal, which I guess I could toss in without regret for shipping and handling, making this personal failure easier to swallow.

I’m returning to this century now. Nice to see you.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water

I am stumped by Rep. Barton's statement yesterday in which he apologized to BP:

“I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown — in this case a $20 billion shakedown.”

I know I've been away a long time. I'm practically Rip Van Winkle, but what is "the first proportion?" Is there also a last proportion?

I had another "whaaa?" moment today reading a CNN opinion piece:

"Just when you thought Arizona lawmakers couldn't stoop any lower, these cowardly and shameful politicians grab a shovel and put in a basement."

Okay. They get a shovel and put it in the basement.

Are they stooping while they do this?

ye rosebuds

My poem In Frankfurt Cemetery is up at Opium. I love cemeteries, and Frankfurt's is a beauty. Best park in town, really, and no annoying frisbee chuckers. The bad thing about this cemetery, however, is you basically "rent" your plot. That means that 10 years or so after you've been buried, you need to renew your lease. But of course you are dead! They smack these awful "expiry" stickers on the gravestone saying you should visit the admistration. But of course you have already expired! I do suppose there is an eternal deal available, but probably only for the very rich.

Although I didn't submit it that way, somehow my middle name slipped in whole alongside the poem. I kind of like it like that.

My Cup Runneth Over

I am not a sports buff but I do enjoy the World Cup because it takes my husband and kids off my hands. In fact it takes the whole world off my hands. Despite being a news agency, for example, my office has made arrangements so folks can watch during work hours if it’s an important game (read: Germany is playing).

There was another payoff this morning with a linguistic controversy. Following a goal by Miroslav Klose for the German team, a tv commentator said that for Klose the goal must be an “innere Reichsparteitag.” I thought, “Reichsparteitag? As in huge Nazi gathering in Nuremberg with hyperexcitement and populist adrenaline?”

Yup, the very one. It turns out that an inner Reichsparteitag is when this event seems to take place inside you. It’s a euphoric feeling, a good thing – as long as you don’t say so in public. Because any reference to anything Nazi is a no-no, especially in a way that could be construed as positive. Ok, I get it, but I do enjoy the image of having a crowd whoop it up inside you.

The unfortunate choice of expression was all over the papers and web this morning. I talked to a few colleagues about it, two of whom were shocked to hear it used on tv, another who herself wasn’t sure what it meant. I thought it was both funny ha-ha and funny peculiar, because of that image, and the phrase’s origin and construction.

But it doesn’t matter what I think. What did the Central Council of German Jews have to say? Although they said such expressions rightfully beg examination, they also advised those who were offended “against over-exaggeration and hysteria,” and suggested instead enjoying the German team’s win.

lunar rover

My prose poem "Can't we put them all there" is up today at Leveler. This site publishes a new poem every Sunday along with a short explication/appreciation of the poem called "levelheaded."

"Can't we put them all there" actually came about one day when I realized how many ladders I'd recently seen serving no obvious purpose. No wall being painted. No painting being hung. The climber, I supposed, might just be visiting the ceiling.

Welcome you enjoy.

Maple

Two nights ago we had a big thunderstorm. The whole night it seemed the sky was more often lit up with lightning than dark with night time. But most impressive was the thunder, the loudest I’ve ever heard. Like giant bones breaking. Like boulders hurled at concrete. But the next morning, all along the sparkling sidewalks, there was no real damage to speak of.

Last night we had another storm of strong wind and rain. It sounded like we were swooshing around in a washing machine. Not much thunder or lightning, and yet this morning when I took the dog out, fat branches were downed all over the park, and even trees. One that the dog and I visit often was wrenched out of the ground, its roots severed, leaving a soupy black grave. It was sad, I told the dog, and so improbable. I’m going to miss that tree.

song of the day: As

Barrel Vaulted Room

Most serious readers are likely familiar with the great list of books put out by NYRB – the New York Review of Books. Not only do they have an amazing selection, but their cover design is invariably gorgeous, practically a reason in itself to buy some of their titles. I loved the cover of Stoner and The Pilgrim Hawk and Novels in Three Lines, but the stark beauty of A Sorrow Beyond Dreams tops them all.

The cover is a photograph by James Casebere called "A Barrel Vaulted Room." I’m afraid you can’t appreciate it fully here but the tone is a chalky greenish grey, cool and institutionally atmospheric. It’s bare, monochromatic and somehow sumptuous in its austerity. Even the cot may be made of stone. It looks more like a painting than a photograph, not least because of its simplicity. And weirdly enough, the photograph looks even better with the black NYRB title square plunk in the middle, pulling the shadows in the photograph to the forefront.

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams itself is a memoir of Peter Handke’s mother, which he wrote after her she killed herself at the age of 51. For me, what the cover does in relation to the story is emphasize the solitude and loneliness each of us lives with, how permanent it is. Really a wonderful pairing.

there's so much sunday

I've got three poems in the new issue of Avatar Review:

On Waking I Think Of Winter
Aunt Bobbie's Almanac
There's So Much Sunday

Avatar, which existed well before the popular film that I've never seen, is an annual, an unusual thing for an online zine. But it is very FULL, so that you could break it up and spend the whole year reading it.

Which I suggest.

I also got word yesterday that Opium online took my poem In Frankfurt Cemetery, one of my favorites. Because I love the Frankfurt Cemetery. It also did a cameo in my poem Despair, sort of, being the eternal resting place of Mr. Schopenhauer.

Miles

My dear son turns 12 today. He was born in the morning, by wonderful c-section, like a real king. Due to doctorly screw-up I was completely knocked out, and when I woke up and they finally brought me this fat baby, I said he looked 'kind of blue.' Just another reason to name him Miles.

Miles loves dogs and skateboards and meat and potatoes. He can play piano. He is reading Rick Riordan's trilogy about Percy Jackson and the Greek gods. I'm very happy about that because I spent years trying to get him to WANT to read, including brute force. He falls asleep quickly. He likes to draw. He's into hoodies and watching bugs do their thing. He has just learned to swallow aspirin! I hope he will not have to do this too often in life.

photo compliments of Uncle Thatch