you went the wrong way old king louie

7/2/2007 -- Senator John Edwards released the following statement today about President Bush commuting Scooter Libby's prison sentence:

"Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today. President Bush has just sent exactly the wrong signal to the country and the world. In George Bush's America, it is apparently okay to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI. George Bush and his cronies think they are above the law and the rest of us live with the consequences. The cause of equal justice in America took a serious blow today."

7/2/2007 -- Senator Hillary Clinton issued the following statement on President Bush’s decision to commute the sentence of Scooter Libby:

"Today's decision is yet another example that this Administration simply considers itself above the law. This case arose from the Administration's politicization of national security intelligence and its efforts to punish those who spoke out against its policies. Four years into the Iraq war, Americans are still living with the consequences of this White House's efforts to quell dissent. This commutation sends the clear signal that in this Administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice."

7/2/2007 -- Barack Obama today released the following statement on President Bush's decision to commute the sentence of Scooter Libby:

"This decision to commute the sentence of a man who compromised our national security cements the legacy of an Administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division, one that has consistently placed itself and its ideology above the law. This is exactly the kind of politics we must change so we can begin restoring the American people's faith in a government that puts the country's progress ahead of the bitter partisanship of recent years."

snack lunch in the hall

We leave for vacation Saturday. Don’t ask me why we’re going to Denmark. It seems more absurd to me every day. I keep hearing Monty Python’s “Finland” song in my head, except of course with Denmark substituting Finland. Add to that it’s only about 70F degrees so what we’ll be doing at the Danish beach besides listening to our teeth chatter I don’t know.

Carlo is nagging us not to pack too much since Stella will be lying down in back. He said I shouldn’t bring 20 books “this time,” which is of course hyperbole, but I’ll take advantage of it and bring ten or so, citing his exaggeration. I usually bring a novel or two, short stories and 3-5 books or journals of poetry. If nothing else, I'm looking forward to reading.

Here’s my list so far:
Novels: 1) Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky 2) Elizabeth Costello by JM Coetzee and maybe 3) Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie.

Short stories: 1) The Best Amercian Short Stories of 2005, and maybe 2) Lydia Davis’ Break it Down and maybe 3) Alice Munro’s Open Secrets. I’ve read much of the latter two so may be budgeting them out.

Poetry: 1) Yemuda Amichai’s Selected Poems, 2) Gerald Stern’s Everything is Burning, & ? ?

friday confession

sometimes if a poem has an unusual layout, i am at first afraid of it.
i voted today, for example, in Andrew's daily poem finalé,
and when I plugged into Inside the Maze, my initial reaction
was the silent groan my face made without my consent.
But Inside the Maze was a wonderful read;
i almost voted for it...

two more days to vote, by the way

haunts and wishes

Sam tagged me with "Reveal 8 Things About Yourself." Here they are - one recycled from a similar tag some months ago.

1. I recently began buying my shirts at children’s clothes stores. The sizes for 14 and/or 16-year old girls fit well. You can find nice things that cost less than at most grown-up shops. Also boys t-shirts from the US are roomy - my son's Old Navy size 8s fit me, and they're nice cotton. I am not a big person, nor am I a dwarf. I suspect some weird thing is going on with sizes to accommodate the obese.

2. When I go past the cellar pantry, I involuntarily do a quick calculation on how long we could survive on our supplies.

3. When I interview someone young for a job, I sometimes suppress motherly feelings for them, especially if they express themselves in clichés like "my dream job."

4. The most I ever spent on a piece of jewellery was about $490 for a necklace. With the exception of my wedding ring, no other jewellery I ever bought came close to that, even by half. I’m wearing it today, which is why it occurs to me.

5. As a kid I assigned values to letters, thus giving words certain scores. The small “l” was a valuable letter because it could be spliced into many ls, and most any other letter with an l-shaped post was similarly valuable, though it could lose points for rickety extra and unwieldy equipment that could not be bent into other letters, like the top of the T.

6. I starred in a Chinese television commercial for a hotel in Dalian, where I lived for a year nearly 20 years ago.

7. I have driven drunk, and it is a mistake. (Now this was long ago, and nothing happened, but really, do not go here.)

8. I have wishes.

I tag Andrew, Valerie, Liz, Michi , Rachel and Jalina, who just came back to blogging. If y'all do not want to play, I promise I will not put one of those chain-letter curses on you.

mule & deer

After reading some of Anne Boyer’s poems on Amy King’s blog, I ordered The Good Apocalypse from effing press. Since I was going to the trouble (and I hate paypal like the dental plaque, and it hates me back), I asked the editor to recommend two other books, which he did, and he threw in a freebie for good measure, which was kind, but was also because he seems genuinely excited about poetry and was doing what editors should do, ie spreading the word.

So I ended up with –
Anne Boyer’s The Good Apocalypse
Hoa Nguyen’s Red Juice
Clayton Couch’s Artificial Lure
Farid Matuk’s Is it the King?

That last one is my favorite. Unless the poet or effing press comes along to kvetch, here’s the first poem from Is it the King? Those dots at the end shouldn't be there, but i suck so they are.

Of Mule and Deer

Out of a tin-cold, murmuring black wood
Lightly you lope, pale deer, lifting
A story from pages of snow

Nothing turns in your eye they say

Toward the tin-cold and murmuring black wood
I bear a display case of blue light
Say it was the sky

Say all you want . . . . . . it was the sky

friday confession

talked to my dog on the phone.

*footnote: either I started a trend, or I'm riding one. surfing around, i found two other folks making friday confesssions...

slosh

It is raining sheetcakes here. I got to the Hauptbahnhof and headed toward the stairs to find a small crowd starting up the stairwell. I thought maybe someone had od’ed or upchucked or something but no, it was just that no one dared walk up into the downpour. Apparently some people have the option of being late for work. There is much rain in my purse this morning, and also in the pages of my book, my shoes and the pockets of my jacket. The peanut m&ms I threw in my tote bag before leaving the house have disintegrated, and I love the word “lightninging.”

Resumed the 30:30 poem-a-day forum this morning with a poem called “With All Due Respect.” It begins… “Someone felt sorry for a half-eaten apple.” I am sorry I will only finish half the forum, since I’ll be leaving for vacation in a couple weeks.

Weirdly beautiful idea for today: Although I swore off running long ago (after having been a dedicated runner), I think I will stop walking my dog after work and start running her. No more sniffsniff here sniffsniff there, just zoom. Inspiration here (subscription may be necessary!).

this headline niggles me

"Tiger woods’ wife gives birth to healthy baby"

Why include the "healthy" unless it wasn't expected to be healthy? And why not say boy or girl instead of baby? I mean, what else would it be?! An afro? A five-faced maggot?

To healthy tiger baby, wife gives woods birth
Baby tiger gives healthy birth wife to woods
Healthy birth baby gives woods to tiger wife
Tiger Woods gives birth to healthy wife baby
Woods wife gives birth to healthy tiger, baby!

i am in competition with my colleague

my colleague comes in
he is wearing a nice suit and dark tie
i am not wearing a suit or tie
i am not even wearing a shirt with buttons
the editor asks if i remember a candidate comes today
is he asking me because of my shirt, have i worn the wrong shirt
my colleague has new glasses
i wear glasses, too, but they are not silver
they do not make me look like a spaceman
i will put my glasses on now
i win

i am in competition with myself

I was up at 5.22 last Monday it was 5.26.
I took the dog out at 5.45 last Monday I was back about then.
I ironed a shirt last week I couldn’t be bothered.
It’s raining this morning it was raining last Monday too I know because it rained all week.
I’m tired I’m calling this even.
It’s going to be 24C today where I’m from it’ll be 91F which is more but how much.
I still hate nutrition and helping with homework and I can’t end poems properly.
I am not ambitious enough am I less ambitious?
My victories increasingly seem accidental I don’t know if I’m going to win by a landslide

vidalia

This week, which was otherwise determined by hormones, I got a nice acceptance from Barn Owl Review for my poem Newly Wed. That was a bright spot, after watching news all week about militancy, and politically or religiously motivated killings!

Sorry. Newly Wed is indeed a poem about someone newly wed, but it is also about vidalia onions.

I also received my contributor's copies of Barrelhouse 4, which is terrific. Those very funny editors even slipped in a CD of music they enjoy. (And I enjoyed.) Which was very nice and interesting and in its way a trusting gesture. Thank you.

friday confession

my confession is this -
i had an anger attack.
i found out all the funtime
goodold wholesome crap activities
i'd spent ages signing the kids up for
in the summer were not going to run!
i was piping mad. piss mad.
mad as all goddamn.
mad as a hothouse flowah!














you will be glad to know
no one was injurious.
& i am no one if not a man
of action who spent what
would have been a dull day
phoning museums to sign
those children up for film class,
architecture class and general
i-know-where-you-are and what-
you-are-doing-not-watching-
sponge-bob activities.

mushmouth

I don’t know exactly when but at some point about twenty years ago, fruit began scaring the hell out of me. That is, it stopped tasting like fruit but became some kind of polyurethane, styrofoamy fake slobber that was mostly water and texture. Bad texture. Mealy apples. Rough and porous peaches. Cantaloupes like rubber. And dry oranges that fell apart in my mouth. Like most people, I always loved fruit – real fruit. Flavorful, in-season fruit. Now, anticipating some horrible surprise. I’m afraid to even buy it. You really can’t tell by looking anymore. Everything looks perfect. This applies to vegetables, too, for example, hothouse tomatoes, which exist just to give your greens some red contrast. If I were a photographer who ate cardboard, things would be fine. The only vegetable that seems to have fallen off agri-science’s radar screen is the lowly and unsexy radish. They’re still crunchy, and now inconsolably lonely.

generosity

no emotional gushing
nothing evoking despair
no sing-song
no work in the style of Ogden Nash
length can be a problem
no last bastions of rhyme
nothing didactic
no egotistical rantings
no sage brush
accpets poetry from children
if they are subscribers

word polyamory

I was reading about undoubtedly/undoubtably at Rob's blog, and it made me wonder what kind of words are making it into dictionaries these days. I found a number of them from a couple dictionaries. Some entries were predictable, like agritourism, google (v), dot-com, and biodiesel; others were humorous, like lamestream and tanorexic; and some you might not want to think about, like camel toe and cankle. (Those must be a joke. Article here.)

I enjoyed a bunch of other new entries, too, like qigong, fashionista, bling, and supersize. Some I'd never heard before, for example, himbo, unibrow and soul patch.

The online "fringe" dictionary Double Tongued has a thread of vogue words that seems to grow every day. Yesterday's was le sigh.

And here are the words that were new in 1806.

#10 finito

"All poetry is experimental poetry."
Wallace Stevens

friday confession

sometimes i am having a tiny crisis at my desk.
sometimes i am doodling at my desk.
mostly i am working at my desk.
i steer the whole hulking rig.
i haul. i summon and heave.
sometimes i am reading newspapers at my desk
(which is part of my job).
sometimes suddenly i laugh at my desk.
i try to hide it
by pretending
i am gasping for air.

unctuous

If you enjoy words, check the link added at the side called “Beauties.” It’s a site that asks people for their favorite words, which the folks there are going to compile as a book. What’s interesting about it is people give the reasons they like their chosen word. You can send your word in, too. James Joyce's favorite, they say, was cuspidor, which indeed is nice to my ear. It means spitoon, by the way (another wonderful-sounding word, actually).

I’ve also been thinking more about words people hate. I found a person who hates cake. My sympathies there. I also don’t particularly like cake. And it does sound like it was designed to make you choke. I also don’t like wedge, probably due to association. Still, don’t wedge shoes sound unattractive? And don’t ever offer me a wedge of cake.

Another word that came up was weepy, as in weepy sore. Ugh. That wouldn’t usually occur to me, but here it’s the idea and not the word that disturbs.

And moist comes up over and over. I found another one close to moist in both sense and sound: ointment! I have to laugh when I hear it. People really dislike words suggesting anything slightly wet, and the /oi/ diphthong appears to heighten their distaste.

As for me, I like both moist and ointment, and that diphthong has never offended me. I’m neutral on lubricant, but dislike lube like the devil. Jiffy lube makes me laugh and scream at the same time.

After I graduated from college I lived for a brief spell in Philadelphia near my sister. She worked in a bar/restaurant in the art museum neighbourhood, and the bartender had a crush on me. He was a nice guy, and a painter, but also an alcoholic (non-practising), and 20 years older than me. In any case, I remember telling my sister’s boyfriend about how I always got free drinks at the bar and him saying, “Oh, Mitch is only trying to lube you up.” And that was the end of that.

I got a rejection today from Crab Creek - nicely worded in its way. At the bottom, however, there was quote from Saul Bellow, which read,

"I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'"

I enjoyed that.

#9: brinkmanship

"if you are not risking sentimentality, you are not close to your inner self." -Richard Hugo

As in swooning, expecting, dancing and dead center.

#8: magnify

"Imagination applied to the whole world is vapid in comparison with imagination applied to a detail." - Wallace Stevens

Consider the fork, and the teeth.

miles primo

Happy birthday to Miles,
who turns 9 today.
He neither smokes nor
plays guitar, and I hope
he'll skip the former.

Before he was born I considered naming him Jack, but Carlo didn't like Jack and it turned out that half the boys born in 1998 were named Jack. I also liked Dexter, but the Italian in-laws said that sounded like a robot name. I liked Quinn, too, but the Italian in-laws could only pronounce "queen," so that was out. Fletcher was briefly considered, but my brother Thatcher said he'd never survive the playground (I still like Fletcher). Morgan was a last-minute contender, but it disturbed my father as a preppy name for a beauty-pageant-type girl. I don't live in the US so some of this cultural nuance was lost on me. My father even called the night before Miles was born to "discuss" it, which I found rather touching, to be honest, that he cared that much. But it didn't matter because we'd already decided on Miles, middle name Primo after his paternal grandfather. Of course Miles would way rather be named Jack. What can I reply except "if only my parents had named me Maybelline!" Whatever, he is such a crazy wonderful boy that I always say I wish he'd been twins.

#7 Experience Preferred

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. - Walt Whitman

3-5 Wash Rinse Repeat

I'm in charge of a slumber party, so I'll let these explain themselves.

#3 The most corrected copies are commonly the least correct.
- Francis Bacon

#4 The waste basket is the writer's best friend.
- Issac Bashevis Singer

#5 Braid your hair, my boys, with greener leaves.
- Adonis

Quote #2: Superfresh

"A poem is a form of refrigeration that stops language going bad." – Peter Porter

Well, this is a kind of comic quote, but it’s a good response to those who say poetry should avoid big words, unusual words, obscure and archaic words, and words you wouldn’t use in conversation. There are no “off-limit” words, and even words that some consider overused or “too poetic,” like shards or palm fronds, have their place in some poems. A good poem has its own integrity, and decides which words it needs, and makes those words feel at home, and still wanted in the world.

For example: How can it be ... and ... Crushed Cargo ... and ... Copperopolis ... and ... Dear Departed ... and ... Light Outside This Window ... and ... Simile, Analogy

Sharing a birthday with Walt Whitman

is my daughter
Lulu, who's 11 today.

She's getting books,
heelys and converse
all-stars. I'm sure
mr. whitman would
enjoy the same.








A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands; / How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.

1st Quote: Valéry

"Sometimes something wants to be said, sometimes a way of saying wants to be used." - Paul Valéry

Rachel tagged me, asking for 10 quotes that jibe with my ideas about writing poetry. I'm going to do them one or two at a time, bitesize, for better digestion all around.

The Valéry quote above is one of my very favorites. In poetry there are poems that tell stories, convey emotion, rant or pack a moral. Sometimes they leave us reeling, mostly because of how the poet delivers the content. Then there are poems that are, let's say, lighter on message and more intent on bringing over the joy of language. They don't have to use verbal pyrotechnics, they may just be expert at turning a phrase. (Of course a poem can also do both.)

Poems -somewhat rashly and randomly chosen- in which I like the "way of saying:"
*end of the tan
*My Translation
*Gargoyle
*Freeze Frame
*Miss Peach is a Cross Between

Infirmary

The new issue of In Posse is up on the theme "Poetry and the Body." There are some terrific poems in there. I started to make a list, but it became unwieldy.
My poem "Infirmary" is in the section "The Medical Body."

two rivers

I'm trying to remember the name of a book featured at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year about a woman who was deaf all her life, but becomes able to hear as an adult. When asked what she thought the most beautiful sound was, she said birdsong. Asked what was the worst, she said a crying baby. The baby is interesting, because although there are other louder and more grating sounds -airplanes, jackhammers, techno music blaring from some idiot's car- the baby's crying throws us into the whole why of it, and fingers our sympathies.

I always thought the most beautiful sound was water flowing in a stream or river. On the other hand, listening to the faucet run makes my skin crawl. That's why I say I have two rivers in me.

Waterfall

I like to think in the end
there is no ice, no fire,
only the sound of water.

When day’s empty hand turns
over to dusk, again I hear it
as if it had moved closer -
the waterfall tossing itself
down like a rope, long,
loosely wound, dropping
to the foot of the mountain.

Somewhere far from here,
its stream is untangling.
Somewhere it travels
an unfinished road.

Every night against the silence,
I listen to it tumbling.
I let the sound empty me;
I feel it lower me, dreamless to sleep.
Every night it’s there
in my ear, leaving,
arriving.

Carlo took Luisa to see Le Nozze di Figaro the other evening at Frankfurt's opera house. It was her first opera, and Mozart was a good choice. Figaro was, coincidentally, also the first opera I ever saw - with my mother at the New York City Opera. Anyway, I made a big to-do about Luisa going, because she enjoys being fussed over. She wore this beautiful dress - unfortunately you can't see it's a dark dark plum, and I lent her my Chinese purse. Miles and I waved goodbye, and settled in to
watch Indiana Jones on video for the
umpteenth time, pyjamaramaed,
happy as clams.

is it really any wonder,

the love that a stranger might receive

that's the highway that goes to the building

This list is a result of my failure at the "5 songs that knock my socks off" tag.

I was in high school when I first heard Talking Heads. My sister came home from college with her punk friends and Talking Heads 77. We went down to the basement and put the record (vinyl!) on and they started to dance to Pulled Up. They danced as if invisible strings were lifting them up from where they bent over the floor. It was fresh and wonderful. I would never listen to Hall & Oates again.

The first time I heard Once in a Lifetime I was lying in bed listening to the radio. I'm sure my brow was knotted as a shoelace by the time David Byrne got to the "same as it ever was" refrain. At that point, I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because I was blown away.
10 Talking Heads Songs that Blow Me Away
1. Mind
2. The Book I Read
3. A Clean Break
4. The Great Curve
5. Once in a Lifetime
6. Don't Worry About the Government
7. Houses in Motion
8. Take me to the River
9. Cities
10. Love Goes To Building on Fire

soon to be up to my eyeballs

I won a $10 Amazon gift certificate for a poem a few weeks ago, and turned it into three poetry books. Of course the gift certificate covered only one book, but you know how it is, after $25, shipping is free, which is a trick to get you to buy more. A trick that works. Since my mother comes this weekend, I figured I’d take advantage.

The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart: Poems by Gabrielle Calvocoressi: Not familiar with this poet beyond a few poems, but I liked those enough to try the book. Here’s a link to some of her work.

The Selected Poetry Of Yehuda Amichai: I’m also not terribly familiar with Amichai. I know he’s the most popular Israeli poet, and his focus is “humanity” in a broad and social sense, and I sometimes need to read that. Here’s a link to some of his poems. I will admit that none of these turned me on A LOT, but I have read others in print that have.

Everything is Burning by Gerald Stern: As for Gerald Stern, whenever I read him I feel I’ve been invited to a feast. And all I can say is feed me more. Here's a poem of his that I've photocopied and taped into my little favorite poem notebook.

headline in today's nytimes

What's furry and thirsty and loves the dark?
(answer below)

The AP also has a story that says: Artillery ... echoed around a crowded Palestinian refugee camp as fighting resumed between besieging Lebanese troops and Islamic militants holed up inside, ending a nighttime lull.

It's unusual to see the verb besiege in the active - usually it's "besieged." I wondered for a second if there'd been a mistake, but of course there wasn't. The next sentence misspelled "pounded" as "punded," though, which seemed less damaging.

10:10

I recently finished the 10 day-10 poem forum at Inside the Writer's Studio, but started again 5 days back. I like the format. Sure you'll be pressed but it's not as bad as the 30-day forum. There's space to breathe if a poem comes up you need time with. I also like ITWS because it's a closed board. It's easy to join but you can't just flip through posts if you aren't a member. It's good doing 10:10 again now, also because Michi and Liz are in.

I'm having a really shitty day, and my eyes hurt, but I managed to write a few lines anyway, and that's the point. In fact, coming home I was looking forward to writing, but then found a guy in my bedroom fixing my windows for 350 euros. Carlo had already agreed on the price and repairs, so I was a bit shocked. So writing didn't turn out to be pleasant, with me in a crap mood and a guy in my bedroom. Anyway, here are the 5 poems I've done so far.
5. 1978: And my heart burns in my wrists / burns berserck....
4. Jellyfish: There are rooms underwater / we can't imagine, pellucid rooms...
3. Out of the Nowhere of Afternoon: Noon comes on blue to end the morning...
2. Maestro: The beggar who dregs / the tony avenue ...
1. The Woman who Hates the Word Moist: Because mosquitos skim...

conjuring gross and beautiful things

I've been writing a poem about a woman who hates a particular word, born of thinking about why people dislike certain words. Leaving language people-creative writers out, when people dislike words it's usually because of baggage - what the words mean or suggest, or sometimes how they look. It’s rare that people hate words simply for how they ride the air - the sound of them.

High on the list are words people hate that are parts of the body, like gland or urethra or cochlea. Some hate buttocks, or they hate lobe or nostril. I should note there are body words people love, too. But I’ll save those for another page.

Next come words that express bodily functions, like secrete, ooze and coagulate. People have physical reactions to those words. Their faces freeze up, or they take a long blink.

Many dislike what oozes from the body, like snot, vomit and fluid. I’m not trying to be gross, but words like these can have more of an effect than curses, also despised by many. Disembodied, the word pus, for example, is a perfectly nice word, and pustule, is even nicer with its deep /tshul/, reminiscent of jewel.

Some people also dislike words that are suggestive of the body if not specific to it, like pungent and moist. People hate moist, but have no reaction to mist, or hoist or joist.

People are also influenced by the look of a word, which means you’ll find people who hate the word kumquat. The –ph- combination strikes some as wimpy or fake, causing them to dislike the name Phil, but not think twice about fill. I include myself among those discomfitted by words deliberately misspelled, like kewt and kwik chek.

The real baggage words that people hate, and are hardly worth mentioning since they're usually political or highly idiosyncratic, are slogan type words that represent something, like green. Too bad for green with its lovely long /i/ and its traditional image of spring. Lorca will be along to haunt them! I knew a guy who hated the suffix –ish, and recall how he fussed when someone said they’d meet him around eightish. Other people hate diminutives. Americans dislike Britishisms and vice-versa. People also hate high-sounding words like hence or eschew, and foreign words like verboten, which are often considered snobbish, no matter how inherently beautiful.

What I find most interesting is disliking a word purely based on sound, forgetting how it looks, what it means or could mean. I dislike the harsh sound of drake, for example. To bring the baggage in, I guess it insinuates the rake and crane of tools and machinery. I believe drake is also a kind of duck, but I like ducks and duck, a word which begins and ends so tidily.

Of course you can also love a word simply based on sound. When I was around eightish, I remember my mother telling me how she liked sewer, and I went off saying it over and over, divorcing it from everything, fascinated by the idea of liking pure sound.

Last year I asked people for three of their favorite words. The answers were surprising and not surprising, but always interesting. Here are some of those:
coffee, succulent, toast, and marmalade, gravity, butterscotch, skin. Gestalt. rue, yes, great, thanks. slug, surf, engine, rauschenberg, phenomenon, onomatopoeia, facetious, tintinabulation, sunshine, smells, jiminy, honky-tonk, mosey, lunatic, madrugada, flabbergasted, strawberry, roustabout, snug, Caligula, bucket, Rorschach, osé, fathom, fossilized; marriage, dystopia, copralite, hawk, serendipitous, hogmanay, luscious, flibbertygibbet, bitch, squeek, ramp, skunk, nebula, light, travelling, chagrin, music, silk, friends, cerebral, myopic, discombobulate, erratic, lolling, certainly, ofcourse, Susquehanna, slip, strozzapreti, chartreuse, Volatile, Ravine, and Lucid, shoes, kids, apprehension. water, anthropomorphize, hi, nevertheless, circumspect, and wherwithal, ausgezeichnet, grin, tentative, elegance

about the threatened exodus

I can't really complain about blogger. I mean, it's free for starters, so I find it hard to get pissed off about the occassional breakdown. Also the blogger bar as "a word from our sponsor" doesn't bother me much. On the other hand, rupert murdoch owns myspace so i'd be happy to have a private fistfight with whomever thinks that's the lesser evil. And I have a friend with a yahoo blog and you can't comment on her blog unless you have a yahoo blog, too, which strikes me as a doomed and pathetic marketing ploy.
If you're into layout I understand going elsewhere, but if you're a writer of the mostly non-multimedia type, I don't see the problem. I've never been much of a complainer, though. And with the rest of my life going on I don't have the energy to pack up and migrate.
just thought i'd say.

manna

I gave up on John Henry Days . Things did improve, but near p. 100 one of the aging junketeer journalist characters launched into a rave about what it was like in the old days of covering the Stones, the youth, the nostalgia, the teen spirit, and it was a little too much for me. I had an inkling the passage was designed to be tedious to give the character some form but "supposed to be tedious" and "tedious" are too close to each other, so that was that. I gave up reluctantly. Because my step brother wanted me to read it. And he bought it for me, and he’s broke.

Anyway, as I was going out the door for the weekend I had book panic since there was nothing in my bag to read (as in a commitment-book – I did have two literary reviews) so I stood at the bookshelf quickly fingering the spines in search of something I hadn’t read that was at least mildly interesting and I found Don DeLillo’s White Noise. I don’t know where this book came from. I don’t remember buying it, and I thought I might never read DeLillo. I think this book fell from heaven. It is fantastic.

maybe it was worth rejection

Thank you for submitting to alice blue. We appreciate your continued support and patronage. Unfortunately we were unable to find a place for your work in this issue. Sometimes this happens. Monkeys press switches and little babies freak out & cry, “pick me!” “pick me!” but it’s all monkeys here so don’t despair. More opportunities skitter towards you with alice blue hypodermics, ice water, and The World’s record for rapid eye movement.
Much love, the editorial staff

Guidelines

Please read our guidelines with care, as they change.
We are quarterly, usually.
We do not accept simultaneous submissions.
We do not accept unsolicited submissions
during the –ary, –ber and summer months.
We do not accept submissions via email
or read out over the phone.
We prefer free verse informed by tradition, unless it rhymes.
We do not want sacred verse, saccharine verse or sweet-n-sour.
Submit up to but no fewer than four poems.
Poems must be at least five feet tall, or 14 words.
Poems must not go over 17 lines, except long poems.
Poems under 30 lbs cannot ride the cool rides.
Poems may not exceed 25 miles per hour, unless there
are at least three people in the vehicle.

nails america

Recently a shop
opened in the grey stretch I walk from
the train station to my office. It’s a storefront with a sign over the window that says
Nails America in script next to a waving American flag.
So while the periphery of my brain struggles with whether this is a verb-object situation, or if one word is modifying the other, the main station is asking “is America famous for its fingernails?”

boating

I had two poems accepted yesterday. This was the first time(s) I received an acceptance in which the email subject line was written to tip you off right away.
“Good News from Boxcar Poetry Review!”
“Bateau Accepts”

That was nice, and strange, and I was thrilled to be accepted both places. Boxcar took a poem called “Hive.” And Bateau, a new publication, took my praise poem “Used Books.”

I'm glad a never got a rejection with a clue-in subject line.

friday confession

got mad at elevator.

yonflammable

I was truly impressed by the NAACP’s plan to bury the N word. There are many offensive N words and I suggest we also bury them, removing any chance of confusion, insult or misunderstanding. Certainly we’ve done nazi to death, too.

Probably many of you remember the political aide who lost his job for calling the budget “niggardly.” There’s danger in N- words. We would do right to get rid of niggling, and Nigella Lawson, too, or at least to persuade them to change and stop making us uncomfortable.

I think the fairest route is to strip all N- words of their N- and move them elsewhere in the dictionary. Best would be to redistribute the N- words among the letters that are under-represented, namely Q, X, Y and Z. Q has just 7 pages in my Merriam-Webster. Y and Z have 5 each, and X has just 2, most of which were made up by science fiction writers.

I'm more comfortable with zuclear threat than its predecessor. And a quisance sounds kind of pleasant. Everything with the non- prefix will now carry the more musical yon-, keeping any chance of offence far far away.

May Day May Day

Yesterday I wrote a poem that was almost a duplicate of a poem I wrote last year. Aside from articles and such, it didn't have any of the same words. It didn't have the same structure, the same images or even the same tense. But it was otherwise surprisingly similar. I understand this happens to F Wright all the time.

There is good news! Caffeine Destiny is not dead. So send them your best poem.