elongated aquariums

I left my book on the plane last week. “Astonishing Splashes of Color.” Nicole recommended it, and I wouldn’t have pursued the book but it was at the register of a store I was at in NJ for some crazy price like $2.49, so I said what the hell. I got to p. 135 then put it under the seat in front of me before nodding off, only to leave the plane next morning without it. It wasn’t bad. It was getting good, and I hoped it would show up somewhere. It didn’t.

So I went to a bookstore with a decent selection in English. I figured “Astonishing Splashes” would be stocked since it was short-listed for the Booker prize, but it wasn't. Not that I wanted to buy the book again. I considered it. But more likely I would have read it on a chair in the store. Anyway, the point was moot. The author’s last name is Morrell, and there I was, dead-suspended at the M shelf wondering what the hell to do with my life. (I am reading a book of short stories, but I don't count that. Unfair, I know. Escapes, by Joy Williams. Very Good.)

A woman next to me was looking into Ian McEwan, but I’ve read all the McEwan I ever want to read (Cement Garden, Comfort of Strangers, Black Dogs, Amsterdam, Saturday, First Love, Last Rites), and I was just talking to a friend the other day about the dead end of him. There was a long line of Haruki Murakami books, whom I do want to read but feared I might not be prepared for. A few shelves higher was Cormac McCarthy. Since seeing No Country for Old Men I have considered reading that. The store had it but the cover was one of those Hollywood covers with a still from the movie. I hate that. So I looked at The Road. Of the Murakami, I looked at The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. I kept rotating the McCarthy and the two Murakimis in my hands until it occurred to me I’d better decide, then go home to make dinner. But I couldn’t decide. So I got them all. May they be marvelous.

foto: sabine rothe

visit to a place that doesn't exist

When I went to Dachau, I didn’t feel much of anything. The experience was purely intellectual – and even that required striving. I felt more vividly about Dachau when I was reading about Dachau, when I looked at photographs of it, when I conjured that apocalypse, working myself into the place with imagination and the memory of all I’d learned. The reality was a failure. There is no Dachau anymore; it’s just tidy rows of sterile geometry, all swept up. No need to leave the small museum. I know that there being no Dachau should be a good thing, but there really is no Dachau. None at all. When I went to Dachau, I didn’t feel much of anything. When I went to Dachau, mostly I was waiting to go home.

cosmonauts

forget-me-nots
pick-me-nots
drop-me-nots
trod-me-nots
sob-me-nots
sniff-me-nots
abscond-me-nots
cause-me-nots

sad little round of life

I have a ghazal up today in the new issue of Unsplendid, a sleek ezine of formal poetry.

luckless pilgrim

We were sitting on the screen porch. My step-mother was telling us how much she had enjoyed visiting Colonial Williamsburg, how it took her a week to work through it whereas her friend Sally boasted it could be done in 45 minutes. Women cooked at a stove; men fired up the forge; everyone meandered around in full costume speaking a seemingly affected style of English. My step-mother's eyes lit up - she wanted it to be real, she imagined it was real, and she could join it. That's how I feel when I visit America: everyone is dressed up for it, including me. I"m tuned in. I talk the talk. I play that I'm part of it, but really I'm not. It's a reenactment. As my step-mother says, it's living history.

a room with one cot can be world enough

I found out yesterday that Tilt Press will publish my chapbook In the Voice of a Minor Saint. I couldn't be happier. Thanks to the folks who have already congratulated me.

I chose the poems very carefully but since I'm traveling and without my files, I can't recall what they all are... mind of cheesecloth, folks. I'll update on that.

Moreover, instead of publishing three chapbooks as planned, the editors have decided to publish five. I think that's great since we all know how hard it is to get published, how limited the options often seem. So in addition to mine, here are the other four:

a / long / division by Hanna Andrews
Leaf Weather by Shira Dentz
In the Kingdom of My Familiar by Julie Platt
Handle This Bludgeon and Run Me Through by Andrew Terhune

I'll be making more noise about this later.

dein goldenes Haar Margarete

I was at the funnel cake stand in Dorney Park and their menu of beverages included "white milk."

It was the only milk on the menu.

I asked the guy what other kind of milk there might be. He suggested low-fat, 2%, and skim. They're all white, too, of course, and none of them were on the menu.

In the right light, milk fresh from the cow can appear slightly blue. And Paul Celan had his "black milk of daybreak." Matthew Sweeney also has a poem called "Pink Milk," which, if I remember right, is about milk from goats fed red carnations.

But I've never seen blue or black milk on a menu. If I did, I wouldn't order it. I also wouldn't order spilt milk or mother's milk or grey, or green eggs and ham.

Maybe in the age of obesity white milk is spelled out as an alternative to chocolate milk? Or maybe somebody just mixed "white" up with "whole."

jane's krazy mixed-up salt

A slum can be a ghetto and a ghetto can be a slum but these are not the same thing.

Sometimes a slum is just a slum. And a ghetto isn't necessarily plagued by crime or, even, poverty.

I read a book review recently that called slums ghettos, and I wanted to get that off my chest.

Just so you know.

swat team

My mother took us on the gospel cruise. You weren't supposed to be on this cruise unless you were prepared to party for the Lord. We found this out after leaving port. I asked my son not to betray me. I asked my mother to please confirm this cruise was only two hours.

dear newark

Three hours in now on planet palin. I was just kidding about watching the debate, since 9 pm EST is my 3 o'clock in the morning. But who knows, maybe I'll make it.

Read "The Slaves of Solitude" and Tomas Transtromer on the plane. Both recommended.

Funniest is watching my 12-year old watch American tv commercials in complete disbelief. The OTT of it all.

"You'll never have droopy houseplants again!"

Surprise Party

How come every European city has a bar called Café Kafka? Do drinkers especially like Kafka? Do they like a disorienting kind of drunkenness, serviced by menacing bureaucrats? Do bartenders like Kafka, or waitresses? Are European drunks so literate? Of course, Frankfurt has a Café Kafka. I’ve been there. There’s nothing kafkaesque about it. Not that I noticed. Are we all talking about the same Kafka? Part down the middle, big ears? Do all these cafés confiscate your passport as security when you enter? Are they all connected to each other by some hidden door in the broom closet?

the faucet is the saddest instrument

I have a couple poems up at Prick of the Spindle – Rioja and Faucet Song. Rioja is an older poem and the latter is part of my never-ending series of household obsession poems.

Both my husband and our aupair leave the faucet running frequently. They turn it on full blast and leave the room. They say they aren’t “leaving it on,” they’re coming back. It makes me want to scream. Sometimes I do scream, or writhe. It’s really not just plain old vanilla neurosis on my part – it’s blatant waaaaaaaste.

In response to recent submissions, I got a rejection a couple days back from Redactions, but also an acceptance for two poems from Main Street Rag – The Conservationist (“… all the ooze and diamonds of the poor …”) and I Have the Feeling You Enjoy Stress (“…slosh some vodka across the stovetop…”).

On Thursday the kids and I leave for the states for the annual U.S. vacation touching points northeast. I’m scheduled up the wazoo, which I don’t usually prefer, but it’s okay – the kids dig it. I think I’m going to have to skip Philadelphia this time and the used bookstore I love. I will try to squeeze in the Strand in NY, though. I hope.

to hell with everything but brazil

dear manufacturer trying to sell my 12-year old a push-up bra

Man opens fire, robs bank, cheats welfare
Man threatens teller, resists arrest, blows up bridge
Man insults officer, shoots three, kills one
Man runs red light, poisons neighbor, solicits prostitute
Man loots booty, lights self on fire, throws wife from car
Man drives into crowd, goes insane, defrauds authorities
Man stalks actress, runs amok, kills self

zombie haiku

I've been tagged by Laurel to disclose six unspectacular things about myself. And here they are!

1. I have a mortgage I very much hope to pay off someday.

2. I have devoted hours of my life watching the Lord of the Rings movies largely because of Legolas. I have even considered reading the books, but understand Legolas is not that prominent a character. What can I say? Orlando Bloom makes a great long-haired blond elf, and that is unfortunately about it.

3. “supposing i dreamed this” is one of my favorite ee cummings poems.

4. Now that suicide has pushed David Foster Wallace to the foreground of my consciousness, I really want to read him. Like millions of other people probably. Except I probably will read him.

5. We just traded our used used Volvo (plus cash) for a new used Volvo. When I said to my husband that I would have prefered to shell out the money for something more exciting, he said “Sometimes I don’t understand you.” I’m sure this is playing out in countless used car lots.

6. I really do have more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin.

Meme terms & conditions!
1. link the person who tagged you: Laurel
2. mention the rules on your blog: (these are them)
3. list 6 unspectacular things about you: (see above)
4. tag 6 other bloggers by linking them: Laura, Talia, Charmi, Andrew, Dave, Michi, John

the day arrives like a shipwreck

Yes, I remember. It was more than shock, and more than pain. It was horror.

To me a peculiar thing about it was that at no point on that day did I say “I don’t believe this is happening.” It was completely believable.

As much as it seems like yesterday it also seems it could have happened 100 years ago. Like the Civil War.

Okay, that’s closer to 150 years ago.

Why does that memorial take so long? Was it supposed to take this long? Like, let’s have a memorial ten years later when we’re a little less emotional?

Is it some kind of behind-the-scenes struggle about the depiction of death, or what it is to feel the menace of death?

We all felt it. Every time an airplane passed over. Too close. Too powerful.

I guess the Vietnam Memorial was a long time coming, too. And it’s flabbergasting – low-key and devastating. Go there if you haven’t. Cuts right through the bullshit.

Anything but a light show, a PR event.

Over the years, I've read many vignettes and stories about people who lost loved ones, and of course it’s sad. I'll never erase the pictures of people with their "Looking For:" notices. But what I feel more is anger. It’s terrible, I suppose, but even more I feel hate.

Which is unfortunate, because that was probably part of the point – getting everyone all hot-headed and vengeful.

Which worked.

I keep it in check. I'm able to be reasonable. I don't run for public office.

Sure I’m mad at our administration for not preventing it, but not that much. I’m also not mad at a relative of mine for getting raped. In broad daylight. In the company of friends.

Of course I am mad at the administration now. I would like to say "disappointed," but that would suggest having had expectations.

I hate to be cynical. But folks, the chance is coming.

I don't know what to say in the face of it all. That horror.

May it never come again.

thx to erin tyner for the photo.

bananas

"Go, balloons. I don't see anything happening. Go, balloons. Go, balloons. Go, balloons. Stand by, confetti. Keep coming, balloons. More balloons. Bring them. Balloons, balloons, balloons! More balloons. Tons of them. Bring them down. Let them all come. No confetti. No confetti yet. No confetti. All right. Go, balloons. Go, balloons. We're getting more balloons. All balloons. All balloons should be going. Come on, guys! Let's move it. Jesus! We need more balloons. I want all balloons to go. Go, confetti. Go, confetti. Go, confetti. I want more balloons. What's happening to the balloons? We need more balloons. We need all of them coming down. Go, balloons. Balloons. What's happening balloons? There's not enough coming down. All balloons! Why the hell is nothing falling? What the f--- are you guys doing up there? We want more balloons coming down. More balloons. - — Don Mischer, 2004 Democratic Convention Producer

tired of this particular hypothesis

If this were France we’d all walk around half-naked and take drugs
If this were France we’d have better taste and spend all our money on art
If this were France we’d laugh through adultery and fraud
If this were France we’d be on strike
If this were France we’d shower occasionally and smoke all day long
If this were France we’d drink our coke without ice cubes
If this were France we’d speak French and not have the faintest what we were talking about

conversation with a backdoor draught

weird revelation
a few days after I arrived to teach in china way back when I saw a group of retarded people cleaning one of the little city squares. It had never occurred to me there were retarded chinese people. All the chinese people I’d ever seen or heard about or read about were not retarded.

making an assessment
first, are there books in the house. Two, which books. Three, what is hanging on the walls. Next, the layout on the floor. Maybe this is in the wrong order?

no, surely not.

der Mensch ist kein Tier
I read an article the other day in which the writer talked about meeting a certain dog in person.
Recently a number of mosquitos have met me in person, but not the other way around.

the screaming man
camped outside my office building is a guy we call the screaming man. He has a beard. His rage won’t let up but as time goes on he gets less scary. Now you know as much about him as I do.

encore

it was the third of september, new and improved

Sherman also came upon the rebel pickets

My au pair is a lunking sweetheart and you'll be glad to know that, while there is no McDonalds in his Siberian city, his mother was fond of Hawaii pizza. He says he's keeping a record of my recipes. I must roll my eyes. I hate to cook, and rather than a cookbook I use whatever I’m reading at the moment in the kitchen, which at this moment is Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs.

When I’m wondering if I’ve put enough salt in the sauce, General Grant notes, “While a battle is raging one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousand, or ten thousand, with great composure; but after the battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturallly disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy as a friend.” And then I add more salt.

When I’m wondering, though not with total attention, if the pasta's done, General Grant says, “There was about two feet of water in this swamp at the time. To get through it, even with vessels of the lightest draft, it was necessary to clear off a belt of heavy timber wide enough to make a passage way. As the trees would have to be cut close to the bottom – under water – it was an undertaking of great magnitude.” Then I figure the pasta is al dente.

Mr. Grant, I ask, is it better to use sage in this dish, or thyme? And General Grant, later President Grant, says “The Mexicans were very kind to us, and threw no obstacles in the way of our landing except an occasional shot from their nearest fort. During the debarkation one shot took off the head of Major Albertis. No other, I believe, reached anywhere near the same distance.” So I use sage.

tell me something good

I had two poems accepted today, which was startling since it seems a coon's age since I submitted anything. So I worked up the mental wherewithal to send a batch of poems out, too. I figured it was the end of August - I hadn't done anything all month and longer, and I do have a couple poems I like just slouching around the watercooler.

Sometimes I get so discouraged about submitting. Is anyone really going to read these poems, I think. I look at online journals and ask, do people really visit this site and read the poems, except for the poets who are in the issue? Or I go to a journal where I've been published and find they've got some real clunkers in their new issue, and I ask, why are they doing this? To meeeee? No, to themselves!

But there are journals I read frequently, a whole bunch of them ones I'd never submit to. Some of the online zines I bookmark are 2River, 42Opus, Blood Orange, Boxcar, Wicked Alice, Caffeine Destiny, Dirty Napkin, Fou, Green Hills, Juked, At Large, Linebreak, Opium, Swink, diode, Unsplendid, DMQ, Word for Word ... et cetera et cetera. I've linked randomly because I'm lazy.

Please do me a favor and add something good to my list.

three faces of eve ascending

sickorich
stinking/filthy rich
rich as Croesus
loaded
money to burn
well heeled
well to do
affluent
well off
>middle class<
working class
making ends meet
down at the heels
broke
down and out
church mice/not a bean to rub together
po
wolf at the door
dirt poor

peaks and valleys

and Valleys and Valleys and Valleys

the dewiest decimals

I finished The Glass Castle the other day and since then my evenings have lacked luster. I come home and feel I'm mourning for a lost world. My mother said I’d like the book, which meant I needed to think it over carefully, but she was right. It was hugely entertaining. Even at the end when we weren’t toughing out some horrendous circumstances anymore it remained interesting, mostly because of the whacky parents. All those years of bad hygiene, squalor, pluck and borderline criminality had my imagination swirling. I like that.

Yesterday I finished The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. After the ubiquitous hoopla, I found it a bit of a let-down. Yes, it is amazing that this book got written, but what was written in the book didn’t seem that amazing. I have the feeling this is one of those cases where the movie, the dramatization, is better than the book.

So, at the moment I’m reading Mothers of Invention. I am also still reading Personal Memoirs by Ulysses S. Grant, which I expect to finish sometime in 2011. And not that I don’t have enough unread books around to besiege, but I ordered more from Amazon today, mostly used:

The Door in the Mountain by Jean Valentine
The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Somebody
Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag
The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry
A Passion for Books by Harold Rabinowitz (?)
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson

The shipping costs add up, and I was going to cancel A Passion for Books, but a used hardcover cost $2.50, and I’ve seen many enthusiastic reviews. Ok, I’ve seen even more enthusiastic reviews of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. So who knows? If it’s a miss, my inner materialist says at least I’ll have a nice hardcover.

landscape of cake

I’ve always disliked cake. It’s the sameness – every bite just like the last. Icing never alleviated this. Icing seemed only to be added for its moist otherness; it never actually tasted good. Sweet, yes, but not good. And when you start varying cake's textures by adding things (think fruitcake), the situation further deteriorates. Even the word “cake” is kind of gross – like “ache” with choking attached. Not to mention that a piece of cake is as filling as a meal, and twice as caloric. I guess I’m lucky I never liked cake. I feel that way now, especially after finding this blog.

the joneses

Our new aupair is here. He came in on a bus from siberia. It took 5 days. I always worry we won't find the aupair at the station when s/he arrives. And if i get in the bus and yell "Dmitriy!," half the males answer. Anyway, he's really tall. So riding my bike is out. Also the bed in his room may have to be chopped for firewood. I don't even know how tall he is. But it's no problem because my husband is a gigantic talker. The good thing is he can help us spy on the neighbors' gardens. We've needed some help with that.

it is so easy not to write a libretto

it is easy not to be interested in German shepherds
it is so easy not to believe in palm reading
not to think about asphalt
not to see secret messages in the coke fizz
if you don't buy a house on Kaiserstrasse, that's not so hard
it is also easy not to buy a sketchbook
when you have a sketchbook

shrug and frump

I have three poems in the new issue of Whiskey Island: "God Have Pity on the Smell of Gasoline," "Curtains" and "Ingrid Wears Bangs." I’m looking forward to getting my copy – it’s a double issue. Follow this link, click on Current Issue, and you can read "Curtains" online. It seems my stanzas have been ignored, or maybe it’s just my browser. Ach, the troubles.

emotional gold

It was just a moment, and I wasn't dressed for it.
That's not true - I was dressed. But not for it.
The thing was I had briefly forgotten my mission.
The thing was that left me at most seven minutes
to do something for which normal mortals need nine or 10.
Me being normal. Being mortal. Being hormonal.
I threw my coffee cup in the sink and was out the door running.
I was fast. Before a minute was up I knew
I'd have to set my whoop up to holler.

that was the day of the mistral

daughter of a norwegian oil tycoon, born again yesterday

I got an email from a zine that recently accepted some poems, asking if I would like to send along "a new bio." You know, change the little thumbnail of my life. Well, sure. Is that allowed? Can I call a do-over? Can I be from Detroit? Could I be a guy? Might I draw a very large salary, say, in the Cayman Islands? Perhaps I'll push rewind and be raised by wolves. Could I skip having gone out with Keith Wassil, against the advice of everyone? Maybe I could just have continued those clarinet lessons . . .

rochet embroidered with orphreys

Sometimes when I want to vegetate inconspicuously I browse the dictionary illustrations, the pages full of fish and obscure instruments and all the ducks that look much the same. I’m shown the oriel window and the lobate foot of the grebe. The reindeer looks tame and boxy on paper with its gigantic antlers. When domesticated, the text says it can be a good source of milk, meat and perhaps hides. Nostalgic illustrators like helmets and armor, like the pauldron, gauntlet and lamboy (from old French lambeau). Since they don't do verbs, for zip there’s a sampling of fencing positions. On opposite pages (1634-1635), the seahorse floats beyond the reach of the scythe. Here and there I’ve spotted the occasional marsupial, frozen and -with its offspring- immortalized. Pen-and-ink pictures break up the columns like little windows. They’re big on the shapes of leaves, which indeed can be hard to describe.

embedded in my name

Alas, Torahs
Has La Roast
As A Harlot’s
Aloha Tsars
Aha! Lass Rot


Your name here.

friday confession: sort-of shotgun

We watched No Country for Old Men last week and it was great. I swore off violent movies some time ago, but I make an exception sometimes, at least when renting. Anyway, it wasn't until a couple days ago that I realized a sawed-off shotgun really is sawed off. It never occurred to me to consider the phrase. Guess I move, thankfully, in the wrong circles.

Anyway, it was a great movie, insinuatingly quiet, long landscaped, slow and taciturn. When the violence happens, it's focused. There aren't big bust-em-ups, rains of bullets or car chases. But the overall quiet of the movie makes the violence that does happen all the more potent.

he lit up the room by leaving

The funniest thing I saw in London was in a book shop. I walked in, and directly to the left was a shelf dedicated to "Horrible Childhoods." Yessiree, a long row of abuse physical, sexual and psychological, neglect, forced prostitution, incest, chips for dinner and long overdue diaper changes for you to enjoy in your leisure time. I found the label funny, of course, not the childhoods, which I didn't stop to learn much about.

I proceeded to the mark-down bin, where I found "The Wicked Wit of Insults." I actually bought this book, although it's not very good, because one of the insults on the cover was so funny:

"I'm going to memorize your name and throw my head away."

I spent my free evening slumming in bookstores. I had expected to splurge, but bought just three: the insult book, Donna Tartt's "The Little Friend" (also a mark-down), and Blaise Cendrars' "Moravagine." There were jillions of books I wanted to buy, but couldn't stop thinking how I could get them used online for next to nothing.

having fun already

I crossed the street from my hotel to order some take-out and, waiting, found the only magazine they had was a British GQ. I’m sure this will become the cross-cultural experience of my trip.

The first thing that struck me was how many very handsome well-built men appear in the advertising, usually without shirts on. On two opposite pages were two cologne ads, both featuring young, shirtless men leaping into mid-air. At least the water around their feet suggest they have leaped. For all I know they are simply suspended there.

I soon arrived at a story about “enhanced breasts.” It begins “until a man has made love to a woman with fake breasts, he cannot really comprehend their true horror.”

A couple pages later there was a section on kitchen gadgets, all of which were very large and chrome. There was an imposing juicer, and a high-tech coffee machine. No Tupperware or piddly utensils here.

Soon I came to a short column called “How to look well read without reading anything.” It suggests five books GQ readers should have to make an impression. One of these is Pablo Neruda’s Selected Poems, which will suggest to the world that the owner is “well hung.”

Shortly before my order came I glanced through a column called “Cook Her Into Bed,” which included a recipe. I realized men’s glossy magazines are not so different from women’s. Only funnier. To me.

file signs/under wonders

I finished Divisadaro on the train into London. When I got to the long end-segment on the French writer I felt I’d really arrived in the book, like Ondaatje was speaking directly to me. I smiled when, on page 173, the writer receives a letter from someone who signs Sarah S.

My hotel room window looks out onto Ave Maria Lane.

Having not expected to finish Divisadero until tomorrow, I was glad to find my room equipped with A Traveller’s Guide to the History of London, as well as an Oxford Dictionary/Thesaurus. I opened to the page running from Ghoul to Gin.

Feeling right at home.

i've begun building a little city in my throat

This fledgling In the Mist looks interesting, even if I disagree with their punctuation. I will read it when it comes out but I often hesitate to submit to brand new publications. Who knows what their tastes are? If they solicit something then I generally think at least they think I’ll fit in, even if it’s sideways. Otherwise it’s probably better to wait for a look at the first issue. Still, “outdoor poems from women" sounds refreshing. I hope for a lot of froth and panting, like crashing mountain bikes and near-drownings in the ocean, and not just women weeding their quite contraries.

I had a few poems accepted recently.
Barn Owl Review took Etiquette, a low-key party poem that begins “I was doing my best at the friendly gesture…” It includes wine and song.

Weave, a new publication, took three poems: Ground Shadow (“I’m going out with the storm cloud”), Dear Scum (“Many mornings I’ve seen you…”), and To the Benevolent State (“Give me liberty”). Weave just overhauled its website, too, and looks great.

Linebreak accepted Ghazal with Heavenly Bodies, which I’m so glad about. I never trusted myself enough to even try submitting there, though I was invited.

I also got an email from an editor this week who said she “really really really” liked my poetry and did I have anything available, so I hope she still likes my poetry when she gets my return email.

ass-dragging

I changed the blog links at left to show when they were last updated, which is a cool feature, but now it seems to take forever for my blog to load. It hardly seems worth it. Think I'm going to have to switch back, cut, paste, cut, paste, cut, paste, blah blah or just blast the damned thing to hell. Has anyone tried the new link system and also found it slow? I also dislike how the links now pop up in a new window. I haven't found the button that stops that.

It's 57 degrees Fahrenheit here today. I'm sure they'll still tell me next month that it was the hottest July on record. Not that I mind. I hate hot weather, probably because I hated wearing shorts as a teenager, and I still do,
and I feel like I'm supposed to
because everyone did
when I was 14.

friday confession

I wrote nothing today except this.
I wrote nothing today, except this.
I wrote nothing today.
Except this.

reading while walking with the book up under his face

head like a pin mounted in a map
head like John the Baptist’s, delivered
head like the sack of stones I couldn’t drag any farther than the middle of the field

lucid steer

I dreamed that after work I was training to be a cardiologist. My mentor was a new doctor with long light wavy hair. I was to come in and take over from her a couple afternoons a week. On the second day of my assignment, I was late. I may have been an hour late but maybe more like five hours. That’s because I had to stop at my brother’s birthday party and deliver two pieces of salt water taffy and also consider stopping at the birthday party of my college boyfriend who had/has neglected me so long I considered killing him. The inner deliberation took time but soon I was in a taxi speeding to the hospital where I put on my white lab coat and stethoscope, hoping no one would experience any heart trouble on my watch since I knew as much about hearts as about the carnal ruse of the Buddha - nil. I put my life in the hands of a little plastic Jesus mounted on the windowsill. “Whatever you do, Lord, you’ll do because you’re doing it,” I said. My mentor came in, furious. Wouldn’t even look at me. It turned out she was the lady at the shoe store I’d been to Saturday who had brought me about five or seven pairs of shoes and then the next size and then the brown not the black and somehow she had found out I would be returning the shoes . . .

I knocked on the tin roof of the fish

On vacation, I finished the Booker Challenge I began in January. It was easy - just read six Booker prize winners or short- or long-list nominees in 2008. My sixth book was Anne Enright’s The Gathering, a novel about a woman whose older brother commits suicide. The book has a strong negative charge that I enjoyed, but to be honest, although the writing is good, I found the first 2/3rds of it pretty humdrum. Nearer the end, the writer revs things up emotionally and psychologically, but it still didn’t make the book all that remarkable.

I hadn’t been planning to read The Gathering, but when we flew to Italy, Alitalia lost our luggage and I sent a desperate email to my mother, who was coming to join us, asking her to bring along something for me since I was nearly done with what I was reading.

I also read Machado de Assis’s Epitaph of a Small Winner, written from the perspective of a dead man. It was original and very entertaining. It’s considered an obscure classic, but I found it more prosecco than champagne, and not a must-read.

I also read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, a long novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in the early ‘70’s. It’s about a man confined to a wheelchair who writes about the lives of his grandmother and grandfather in the West, interweaving it with his own biography. The story was engaging and very good. I really hate the ‘70’s though. There’s something grotesque about them.

The best book I read on vacation was Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost, about the author’s great-uncle and his family who are killed in Poland in the Holocaust. It’s probably a prerequisite to be at least slightly interested in the Holocaust to enjoy this book, but if you are, it’s a fascinating, terrible and beautiful story. The story itself isn’t brilliant since unfortunately it’s similar to what befell millions of terrorized European Jews. What’s brilliant is the way the author uncovers the story, the riveting discovery of the story. He pursues it with such loving care and tells it almost unbearably well. I cried all over it.

I also read 12 of the 20 stories in The Best American Short Stories of 2002, which all in all were quite good. There are a couple more stories I want to read before putting this back of the shelf. So far my favorite story in the collection was Richard Ford’s “Puppy,” which you can read here.

Here are the books I’ve read so far this year, excepting poetry:

Schindler’s List – Thomas Keneally (Booker Challenge)
The Color of Blood – Brian Moore (Booker Challenge)
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
When We Were Orphans – Kazuo Ishiguro (Booker Challenge)
Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro (Booker Challenge)
Rule of the Bone – Russell Banks
Last Orders – Graham Swift (Booker Challenge)
The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
Eclipse – John Banville
A Dangerous Friend – Ward Just
This Republic Of Suffering – Drew Gilpin Faust
The Kiss – Kathryn Harrison
Stoner – John Williams
Epitaph of a Small Winner – Machado de Assis
The Lost – Daniel Mendelsohn
The Gathering – Anne Enright
Angle of Repose – Wallace Stegner

friday confession: leaky

I went through airport security with four different liquids on my person: a vial of perfume, a bottle of hair detangler, a juice box and some patchouli body lotion. Is security sleeping on the job or what? I actually didn’t mean to smuggle these over the border. But since I don’t associate any of these liquids with potential hazard, I forgot. At check-in they even asked me if I had any liquids in my hand luggage. Since I wasn’t planning to bring down the plane, I guess it just slipped my mind.

I do love the expression “on my person.” It rejects all slavery.

-Do you have any liquids on your person, ma’am?
-I carry most of them inside, thank you.

I do wonder how much good it does making everyone throw away their liquids and fluids at airports. Aren’t there other ways to screen for danger without trashing everything wholesale? We must be talking mountains of (wet) plastic garbage. We could start a new ocean.

toast

I'm still in Sardinia, but dropping in to say I have a poem in the new issue of Green Hills Literary Lantern.

I've read a bunch of books I may blog about later, but mostly I've just been sitting on the beach. Every blue day is a carbon copy of the last, cloudless, blazingly sunny and hot.