Hache

Having just finished the book about the Heydrich assassination, I started HHhH, a "nonfiction novel" about the same thing, which so begins fabulously it reminds you why people write, why people read, and why some people bother to live at all.

In English, of course, the title is pronounced 'aitch aitch aitch aitch.' In German, however, it's 'ha ha ha ha.'

I find that kind of eerie.

The Hs stand for 'Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich,' meaning 'Himmler's brain is named Heydrich.'

at dawn how much i hate myself

It's not raining where I am. It's not snowing where I am. There's little wind and it's dark, and has gotten warmer since this morning, when frost encased the park I smashed through. In the book I'm reading I am still waiting for Heydrich to be killed (see previous post) but on the train home I got to the chapter called "Assassination," so hey it can't be long now. Also just around the corner is November, my birth month, with its own dark weather.

The November issue of Thrush came out today, and I have three poems in it, along with a number of fellow poets, including Margaret Bashaar and Sandy Longhorn. The first of my poems, Palisades, is a sea poem. The second, Ceraunoscope, is a self-hate poem, and the third, Self-Portrait with Lava Lamp, is exactly that. 

I'm off now to walk the dog, who can hardly wait.

Passive Aggressive Anticipatory Schadenfreude Post

I’m reading a book about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the blond SS monster with his hook nose and disturbingly feminine hips, who strove to be one of Hitler’s inner circle, if not Hitler himself, and maneuvered to become the Führer of Czechoslovakia, plotting the deaths of many, mass deaths and slavery, and squelching the culture and national identity, and this reading is a prelude to reading another book about the same assassination, meta-fictionalized (HHhH, it’s called), that I picked up at the book fair, and the more I read about the vanity and self-promotion and political posturing, the bragging, the putdowns, the boasts and merciless determination the more I realize if you want prestige it is best to find a way to get invited to events attended by those with power and to continually TALK ABOUT YOURSELF IN CAPITAL LETTERS & bring the conversation back to your supposed accomplishments and ambitions whenever possible, and I think of some people I have known, and I look forward to (twice experiencing through reading) Heydrich’s assassination.

a star nailed the evening

It was a misty, cool day. Just before leaving for work I remembered a colleague asked me to bring her something to read, so I spent an extra 15 minutes choosing some books for her. I'm glad I seized on that short leisure since it turned into an overlong workday. I took her Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre, which Werner Herzog is making into a film, No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, The Bell by Iris Murdoch, one of my all-time favorites, and Skylark by Dezso Kosztolanyi. My colleague was happy, and so was I. Picking out something I thought she’d like was a pleasure, but even better was coming home this evening and finding a short review of my chapbook at the beautiful Escape into Life. Thanks, Kathleen Kirk! I'm glad Kathleen found some of my poems 'hilarious' because - stuck in a foreign country - I often feel I'm laughing at my jokes alone.

Believers

As a nonbeliever, I never wanted to have a Thai massage but somehow there I was. The room was darkened and smelled of warm peppermint. I was told to remove my clothes and put on a pair of baggy knee-length pants that, in my Puritan discomfort, I had to make fun of alone. I lay down on the massage table, heated from beneath. A lady no bigger than a cat came in and crouched beside me. I was belly-down and as good as blind. I said the woman was small but did I mention she had two enormous hands and something like 16 or 17 fingers? And she was not a cat but a kind of demon weaver. My skeleton was her loom, my muscles threads, and she went to work to make my backside into an unimaginable tapestry.

Mica

The eyelid browses down 

like a tunnel wall collapsing 

in a mudslide and all 

the automobiles and spitfire drivers 

slam softly into 

the crucified for slumber’s sake one man 

no other way around this 

brown blur with black in it 

litter of nickels, 

and dimes

nada

I read through the work email that piled in during the couple hours I was tied up. It wasn’t much. Mostly I just hit ‘delete.’

A little later I was trying to recall why I felt buoyed by a vaguely positive feeling. Wasn’t there something good in my email? I went back in and poked around. 

There was nothing bad in my email. That was the good thing in my email.

What we can learn from machines

I fought with a machine today. It was the automatic door of a small shuttlebus taking visitors around the Frankfurt Book Fair.

It was raining gently and crystal and the air was cool October. I was wet and tired.

I’ve known many ferocious machines in my life, better left unchallenged. My fight with the shuttlebus door was more like wrestling a child. I knew it wasn’t going to hurt me; I felt the give in its shoulder.

The door resisted for a second, then understood, and let me inside.

Moving Sidewalks

Busy two weeks. First I took a Bildungsurlaub, a German institution that allows employees to take an extra week of paid vacation studying something for their personal or professional development. An industry has grown up around it with all kinds of this and that, most with a shiny certificate at the end. It does have to be approved by one’s employer, but they also need a reason to say no. Anyway, long story short, I did a week of online journalism courses - at my mother’s house in NJ. 

I came back and did some coverage of the Frankfurt book fair, which was fun but also time consuming without too much yield. I’ll have to think it over better next time. One thing I did was put together a slide show of the best book covers I saw. Like any reporter I did a lot in advance - in fact I had a list of books I hoped to find, and wrote blurbs in anticipation. But not one of those books was there! I had to start from scratch, navigating acres and acres of space. 

I hope my routine returns to normal now. I did go back to the fair for pleasure. One of the highlights was seeing Richard Ford, whose “Canada” I just finished. I met a woman born in the same hospital as me. I talked to various people and came away with seven great books. Six of those books were handed to me free, including two Fence books, put into my hands by Rebecca Wolff herself. Fence shared a stand for 4-5 other poetry/literary presses, including Red Hen, and the funny detail was that, unlike most other stands, instead of a bottle of water there was a bottle of Jack Daniels on their table.

Sleep struggle

I thought "I am a rippled strip of bacon, undercooked."

I thought, "there are two small dogs yapping in my kneecaps."

When I pressed the alarm clock button to light the clock face and see the time I noticed how soothing the pattern of the adjacent tissue box was.

A few minutes later I pushed the button to figure out why.

(Because the pattern of leaves is very like decorative Matisse.)

I thought about Abraham Lincoln's melancholy.

I thought about how it's nearly impossible to find a book concerning Abraham Lincoln that doesn't include his picture on the cover, or at least his silhouette. Or hat. 

I thought, "those are pearls that were his eyes?"

I thought about trichinosis, more the word than the disease.

I thought I would never remember some of the things I thought so I got up to write them down.

I wondered if Happiness really is the best Revenge.

Haven

I spent $78.30 on books today at Bookhaven, my favorite used book store. I like used book stores because even though I go with a list, something great always jumps out at me, or something apparently great since I don’t know until I’ve read it. I found books from my list that made the last cut. I found books on my list that went to the 'no' pile (this time), like Samuel Beckett’s I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On. I found books I didn’t know I wanted but it turned out I did. Of course some books on my list weren’t there, like Liz Jensen’s Ark Baby and Richard Ford’s Canada, which, yes, I left behind in Frankfurt. Here’s what I left the bookstore with:

Old Filth by Jane Gardam. This has been on my list a long time, and last trip I didn’t find it at the Strand in NYC. This is a novel about an 80-year old character Sir Edward Feathers, nicknamed Old Filth, Filth being an acronym for Failed in London Try Hong Kong. I must admit part of the charm of this book is the title.

The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek. I also looked for this at the Strand last trip but no dice, so I left with Wonderful Wonderful Times instead, which was intense. This is about a piano teacher who becomes entangled in crazy sexual relations with a student. I don’t hope everyone dies at the end but they probably do.

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. Another one from the list. About Al-Qaeda in the run-up to 9/11. Won the Pulitzer for non-fiction.

Recyclopedia by Harryette Mullen. Poetry. Not on the list, just found it on the shelf and browsing proved promising so voila.

In a Landscape of Having to Repeat by Martha Ronk. Ditto above. Never heard of her until today.

Little, Big by John Crowley. From the list. Off the beaten track. Has the potential to disappoint. Fantasy fiction. Here’s hoping.

What a Carve-Up! by Jonathan Coe. From the list. I’ve heard this political novel is very funny. I need that.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf. From the list. I’ve seen some rave reviews. It has the potential to be a goody-two-shoes community novel but maybe that’s ok?

Morte D’Urban by J.F. Powers. Another from the list that I wanted because of the strength of various reviews. It’s a comic novel about a priest, but the priesthood is comic to begin with. Won the National Book Award for fiction the year I was born.

The Stories of J.F. Powers. Not from the list, just saw it, loved the cover, decided I haven’t done enough stories this year, paid my money and left.

Temp

As it falters the elderly brain switches into a kind of dreamlife where scraps of memory are repurposed, elaborated and reinvented. Haunting, repressed events and experiences from the past resurface in a different guise, people are assigned new motives or confused with other people, and time springs its linear lock.

My stepfather, who turned 87 this month, increasingly engages in reminiscence, reconstructing the past and floating his versions of it. When I saw him in April he asked if I remembered the summer I temped as a receptionist at his office, and how on one day we put my desk out onto the front lawn so I could work in the sunshine. Try as I do I can't remember this, and it is unlikely it ever happened. A receptionist needs above all to answer the phone, and in those days, before the cordless and cell phone, it would have been impracticable. And yet the power of suggestion is strong and I strain to remember what he seems so sure of. Maybe we got the desk out the front door near the entrance and were happy with that? I am kidding myself.

Now five months later, he continues the story and takes it further. Now the desk is not on the lawn but we've dragged it up into the sparse, hilly woods across the road. With the building on Rt. 206 near Somerville, I'm basically ensconced in the peaceful green of the Duke Estate, which was private in those days. This is an impossible and lovely story I wish were true, only better, not the story of a summer temp but a permanent position, that I could go to such a job every day, typing and answering the phone, and didn't have to leave the woods for the world.

long days

The best thing about my mother's apartment is the setting, butt-up against a small stretch of woods. The deer come to the edge with their gestures of the feminine. The crickets are so many they seem to roar. In my jetlag I'm awake before dawn. I sit at the back window and have this all to myself, this enormous throbbing that has no end-point or goal.
*
A lot of experiences find no real end.
*
As a small child my best friend was the daughter of my mother's friend Louise. We spent days together, slept in cribs and cots together, tumbled around in the backseats in the days before car seats. When her family moved to Pennsylvania I was sure she would remain my dearest friend. But I saw her only once or twice again, and she'd begun a separate life, playing sports I didn't play, making friends with strangers, and my feelings of affection for her became an onus and embarrassment I still can feel.
*
We are much more comfortable with the 'clean break,' not the ragged thread that seems to disappear only to stitch back up into the fabric somewhere far off.
*
My mother mentions the time your sister went to live with your father. When was this, I say, because she is making it up, or exaggerating. When she was about 15. I don't remember that, I say. That must have lasted all of three days. It was a long three days, my mother says.

Fall reading

At the turn to autumn I finished Elfriede Jelinek’s Wonderful Wonderful Times and began Richard Ford’s Canada. You couldn’t find two more different worlds, though they take place at nearly the same time in history.

Set in post-war Austria, what struck me about Jelinek’s book was the down-spiraling dynamic and the feeling no one's in control. As if there weren't even a narrator. The manic title, Wonderful Wonderful Times, with its exaggeration and sarcasm, heightens that impression. (The German title is the more sober Die Ausgesperrten, meaning 'the outsiders,' or 'the barred,' and is in part a reference to Camus' The Stranger, alluded to many times.) 

Canada is controlled. The past tense helps. The narrator lets you know ahead of time what is going to happen. He is sane. He establishes his trustworthiness. He downplays and explains, or at least seeks explanation. 

Jelinek does none of that. Disgust, hopelessness, delusion all tumble across the pages. And despite the lack of humanity, things still turned out worse than I expected! (Thank you, realism.) A good book to end a summer of rain, atomic sunshine and temperature swings.

I got interested in Canada after some online friends read it. Years ago I enjoyed Independence Day, but decided Ford was another white American suburban guy I didn’t need to do more of. Then about 5 years ago I read a short story of his that was so fabulous I felt like a snake that shed its skin. 

I didn’t have a compelling reason to read Canada now except a colleague offered to lend me her copy. Then I noticed Ford would read in Frankfurt in October so my colleague and I got a bit excited and bought tickets and I knew I had to read it before that, and I knew I was going to the states for a week any minute now and I really didn’t want to lug the book back and forth (since it’s my colleague’s). 

I gave up today on finishing before I leave. I will be lugging it. Over Canada.

 * *

From a Guardian interview:
In the book, Canada becomes a sort of promised land. There is a line: "Canada was better than America and everyone knew that - except Americans." Is that how it feels to you?
"I never had much conceptual idea of Canada being better. But whenever I go there, I feel this fierce sense of American exigence just relent. America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummelled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism. So the American's experience of going to Canada, or at least my experience, is that you throw all that clamour off. Which is a relief sometimes."

Pop quiz for autumn

Is it okay to water plants with seltzer?

What smells better - lavender or bacon? 

Implications aside, do you like watching forest fires? 

What is a good book to read in autumn? 

Earth, wind, fire, water. What’s your suggestion for a fifth element? 

What do you hate about umbrellas?

The home country

The home country was getting comfortable on the couch.

After the commercials, it switched to the recliner because of the end table for its drink. 

“What’s for dinner?,” the home country wanted to know. 

“Sauerbraten mit Bratkartoffeln,” I said, wearing my irritable checked apron. 

There was no acknowledgement. The home country gets pretty wrapped up in its shows. 

“I’m thinking of taking tomorrow off,” it yelled into the kitchen. “Or maybe just calling in and pretending to be sick. Whaddya think?”

Groan, I intoned into the oven. 

The home country had no concept of “fair warning.” It just blurted out decisions and ideas and expected the world to be happy about it.

Q: Describe what you publish in 25 words or less

A: Tweetable humanity.

Joanne Merriam, Editor of 7x20 (Seven By Twenty)

A: words and sometimes dots
Shannon Peil, Editor of amphibi.us 

A: crushing, blissful snark 

Andrew Toskin, Arts & Letters director of Autumn Letters

A: Literary mutinies 

Laura Roberts, Editor Black Heart Magazine

A: Odd & cranky writing 

Frederick Barthelme, Editor of Blip Magazine

A: Things that boil nerves. 

Sebastian, Editor-in-Chief of The Boiler

A: Spiny, sharp & succulent. 

Sara Rauch, Founder & Editor of Cactus Heart 

A: Top shelf stuff, 90 proof 

Russell Streur, Barkeep of The Camel Saloon 

A: Almost dark/almost light. 

Lisa Marie Basile, Caper Literary Journal

A: Cleanliness and craft 

Anthony Blake, Executive Editor of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

A: Philosophical time bombs
Christine Gosnay, Editor of The Cossack Review 

A: Poems, Feral & True
Marc Beaudin, poetry editor of CounterPunch Poets' Basement

A: Noir coloratura letters
Adam Henry Carrière, Publisher/Editor of Danse Macabre

A: soul balm
Catherine Keefe, Managing Editor dirtcakes

A: Writing that pops
Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Editor Eleven Eleven

A: A literary peepshow.
Travis A. Everett, Founding editor of escarp

A: eggs cracking open
Mel Bosworth, Managing Editor of Flash Fire 500

A: Waffle-rocking Lit
Danny Goodman, Editor-in-Chief of fwriction : review

A: Pure, shiny awesomeness
Barrett Bowlin, Associate Editor of Harpur Palate

A: Idle hands plus pencils.
Mike Miller, Editor-in-Chief of High Coup Journal

A: Grit, blossoms & sparks.
Chris Hutchcroft, Editor of Misjudge Your Limits

A: dead things, live things
Michael Quinti, Editor-in-Chief of MOLT

A: Rich sound, wild skill
C.J. Sage, Editor-in-chief of The National Poetry Review

A: Love/Death/Evil
Rusty Barnes, Editor of Night Train

A: Crapht.
Editor of NOTHE, Editor of NOTHE

A: Bite and Fizzy-Pop
Jack Little, The Ofi Press Online Literary Magazine

A: fine words on real paper
Greg Lamer and Robin Sontheimer, Rabbit Catastrophe Review

A: Brevity. Word Daggers.
Joseph A. W. Quintela, Editor of Short, Fast, and Deadly

A: Trapdoors to inner worlds
Carli Castellani, Artistic Director of Status Hat Artzine

A: Antinews
Khakjaan Wessington, Supreme Overlord of Toylit

20-minute story

This takes 20 minutes, a long time on the internet, but is very enjoyable and engaging, especially if you've read Paul Bowles' "The Sheltering Sky." I read it last year and admired but also hated it, and I appreciated this storyteller, Edgar Oliver, recounting his trip to Morocco to Paul Bowles' bedside.

Royal Pain

Well, it's news to me but it's National Read a Book Day. That makes it a good opportunity to mention how much I'm enjoying Bring Up the Bodies, the sequel to Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I think most people know these are novels about Thomas Cromwell, Chief Everything to Henry the VIII. I have never read much about English royalty, but these are great, and I found the prose a good antidote to much of the overwritten, stylish stuff I read this summer. My only complaint is I'm reading a borrowed copy and have to slap my hand when I pick up a pen to mark something or underline. 

Other good books I read this summer were David Markson's Vanishing Point and David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. With the latter I did complain about the writing sometimes, though, despite the strength of the story. I mean you must take offense at sentences like, “Warm snowflakes settle over Orito’s skin, whispering as they melt.” You must. 

When I bought my computer, it came with a free Kindle app. I've been loading that up with freebies, I admit, but at the same time nothing compares to an actual book, and besides the intimate relationship the reader can have with each, real books are the best way to make a room inviting and interesting. Whether they're lined up nicely on shelves, or stacked at the edge of a table, or traveling from room to bedside, or whatever. Just like I sometimes need a pen in my hand to think with, I need a book in the room to stave off an empty panic. 

Inebriate

It was September, cool oozing from the wildflowers.

To be kind, you wished the leaves would fall in water. 

A little absinthe, and I felt like one of those roses revived with aspirin. 

***

thanks to Fleurografie for the two-headed bird.

Delta of Venus

Our neighbors were an older couple, Herr and Frau Hierse. He had Parkinsons and a troop of carepeople. She was stalwart and fit and made sure he got out every day. At first he could walk, slowly and with help. Then with help, and shuffling with a cane. Then with a caretaker on each arm, his wife supervising. Finally in a wheelchair. Through the wall, I heard how well she played piano. She was kind to our kids. One day over the fence she told me they hadn’t had children because she found out after they married that she had kidney problems and needed dialysis. The shocker came when she died of an aneurism, and he was left with the carepeople, and no longer came outside. Eventually he moved to a nursing home and a year ago he died, leaving no heirs. The house stood empty until this week when all the furniture, rugs, lamps and knick-knacks found themselves on the curb, to be picked through by scavengers. I was one. I found a box of books, and learned more about them in a half hour than in 8 years of being their neighbor.

Akimbo

I have two poems up at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. The first is "Thrall," a poem that languished in my unfinished file for a long time. To end it, I changed the word in the first line that was irksome and replaced it with "thrall," and made that the title.

The second is "Bud," which in contrast is a poem I wrote quickly and was happy with early on. I  was glad, too, because I'm not really known for nature poems. OK, I'm not really known. Useful expression, though, and democratic, and as fitting for an artist known for her brush stroke as for a neighbor known for his philandering.

qwerty

The other day I was getting ready to go home and asked myself if I'd learned anything that day and the truth was I hadn't. In the nick of time, a colleague came over and starting telling me about a guy with a fliehendes Kinn, which is literally a fleeing chin. I'd never heard the expression and thought it must be a pronounced chin that looks about to leap off someone's face. Wrong. It's the opposite, what we'd call a weak or receding chin, a chin practically swallowed by the neck.

In my 20 years of "learning German" the fun never seems to end.

One of my recent favorites was Katzentisch, or cat's table, which I learned literally about 2 weeks before I heard of Michael Ondaatje's book, "The Cat's Table." In German the Katzentisch was a table for cats to eat from, but eventually came to mean a separate table away from the main action, including a kids' table like those installed at family holidays. We have a desk at the office for reporters visiting from other bureaus we call the Katzentisch. How I've often longed to sit there, and be transformed.

Anyway, what I learned today has nothing to do with specific words. Rather, I read that the first typewriters placed the letters in alphabetical order, "causing the keys to jam easily." It was unclear why alphabetically-arranged keys would jam. I found out it was because letters that are frequently paired, like S/T, or G/H, were near or neighboring, and the bars would get tangled in the carriage. Thus the letters were rearranged into the QWERTY pattern, and so they remain though few people use typewriters anymore, and those swinging typebars were eventually replaced in electric typewriters by a typeball. Even my Blackberry uses QWERTY, though I don't see the practical purpose anymore. I guess we veterans of typing class refuse to give it up, rather like yards, feet and inches.

Pet shop

long day. after work I dropped in to buy something for stella at the pet shop but the line was long and the lady at the front had many jackrabbit questions so i ducked back to watch the mice trot the wheel, and to stand in front of the aquarium wall for a while, communing with the fishes, and the fish despite their very unpresumptuousness all had long german names, like Schneckenbarsch, and their eyes caught the lamplight, and they swam slow, wondering, teeming, and it was the best thing that ever happened.

Lodgings to remember

A tidy room in the soot and collapsing labyrinth of Naples where I sang “On the Street Where You Live” in the marble bathroom because I was infatuated.

A powdery flowery hotel room in Paris with two double beds and a TV on the bureau where my friend Carle and I watched Saddam Hussein crawl out of his hole.

The Silver Saddle motel in Santa Fe where I stayed twice - first on my maiden voyage to NM where I met a rancher from Telluride who asked to come in, and second with my friend Amy on a road trip from eastern Kansas to Taos.

The Hotel Manin in Milan where I lived with my husband and two toddlers for six weeks in utter misery while we looked for permanent quarters.

Stranded in Japan in the smallest room imaginable where you could touch the opposite walls with your arms outstretched and the only place to keep your suitcase was with you on the bed.

In Vienna in an attic room of the Hotel Regina, a dim room like a maid’s quarters with a slanted roof but very pleasant in the grey rain all quilted and muffled and far away.

The beautiful Hotel Bad Schachen on Lake Constance where I was for work, unfortunately. I attempted writing a poem, which failed, and didn’t try again for more than 10 years. 

The Beijing dormitory I had to walk 3-4 miles to get to in the bitter cold in shoes too small in a relationship of unreciprocated love which my superhuman efforts failed to change. 

The Presidential Suite of the Watergate Hotel where due to a hotel flub we were upgraded to expansive living quarters and a panoramic view and what struck me most at the time (I was 11 or 12) was the phone installed next to the toilet. 

A motel on the Canadian border on the way to Montreal where I stayed with a boyfriend I didn’t love anymore and indeed he too appeared very weary.

Get your kicks on Autobahn 6

Saxony was a surprisingly interesting place to visit. We stayed in an area called “Saxon Switzerland,” which is hilly and full of impressive rock structures, as well as the Elbe river, which famously flooded ten years ago. We saw some great sites I didn’t know existed, including the Bastei and the Königstein Fortress.

I cock an eyebrow whenever someplace claims the fame of another, e.g. “the Florence of the north” (Dresden), or “Little Venice” (London has one, so does Sweden, not to mention the cities of Treviso, Chiogga, Vrobska, etc.), or the personally painful “Mainhattan,” the New York-wannabe nickname for Frankfurt (am Main). It’s lame to rely on resemblance to make a place sound worthwhile. Without exception, the area making the claim is not going to measure up. 

Why the area we visited is called Saxon Switzerland I do not know, and not to ruin the experience I will not inquire further. I’ve been to Switzerland. It’s mountainous! Stunning! Expensive! And riddled with kitsch.

Homebodies

Having happily made it to Saxony, largely offline, I missed the chance to say my chapbook, "Homebodies," was out at the very moment it happened.

Yup, it's out, and at $5 very inexpensive for 20-something poems, including 'Steam' and 'Ambien,' and prose poems about wines, teas and Monopoly tokens. There is also a ghazal and a homage to Francis Ponge.

I consider myself a homebody, something I was convinced of again today when I returned from a short vacation and was relieved to find I had not been robbed of my books or computer or silverware! Like police homicide outlines, all the crap I left on the floor was just where I left it, and the papers lying around because I don't know where they should go were still lying around, thank God. 

Anyway, the little totems and other subjects of this chapbook revolve around the home, whether it's a horror of a toothbrush standing up in its cup, or the transformation promised by the toaster. You can order it here from Hyacinth Girl Press.

The cover art is by a Chattanooga-based collagist named Hollie Chastain. 

vacation bookbag

People Are Tiny in Pictures of China - Cynthia Arrieu-King
Selected Poems - WS Merwin
The Ninth Life of Louis Drax - Liz Jensen
The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
Charles Dickens - Jane Smiley
What Narcissism Means to Me - Tony Hoagland
Atlantis - Mark Doty
Foe - JM Coetzee
The Wind Blows through the Doors of my Heart - Deborah Digges
One Hundred Poems from the Chinese - Kenneth Rexroth (ed.)

Elastic language

Who knows if we’ll make it to Dresden. First Carlo broke his arm, so he can’t drive. Then one of the friends we’re going with offered to drive our car. Then the doctor wanted Carlo to stick around for physical therapy, which he was able to delay. Then our car ended up unrepaired in a locked lot after the mechanic came home to find his wife dead, and himself, not unexpectedly, incapacitated. 

Will we, in 2-3 days time, get our car repaired? Or will we pay for a vacation rental we never see? I’m considering asking the hospital to induce me into a coma for a week instead. I might come out more refreshed. 

On the upside, I have some dynamic poems out today in the new issue of Glasschord. Dynamic because that’s the theme of the issue, and submissions were in some way supposed to embody “dynamics.” I have a prose poem about the piano called Counterpoint, and two poems about the imaginary typefaces Cascade and Abbing. The poems are going places, even if I’m not.

If you are a writer or artist, check out the themes of Glasschord’s upcoming issues - funk, for example, and commerce. The thing about themes is thinking “outside the box.” Still, the guidelines leave plenty of room: 

FUNK 1) a style of music perfected by James Brown 2) a dejected or fearful mood 3) a musty, overwhelming odor of organic origin 4) that sweet that nasty that gushy stuff

Dog days

It was a slow week. My husband broke his arm. I struggled like an ox with a poem. At about 91F on Friday, we had the hottest day of the year, alleviated by rain. Germany's circumcision debate continued to brew, the Olympics started, and my daughter returned from a camping trip in the south of France.

Yesterday I won the GoodReads poetry contest with Dictionary Illustrations. Every month the site's largest poetry group holds a contest that gets about 200 entries. This was the seventh time I entered and the fourth time I won (over about 4 years). I thought I'd had this poem up on the blog before, but I guess I only posted about it. The seed of it is here. It's also in Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair.

Dictionary Illustrations 

Searching for a word I set off
browsing the dictionary illustrations,
pages flush with fish

and obscure instruments and myriad
breeds of duck, which, colorless,
end up looking much the same.

These artists don’t dawdle
amongst the obvious; they illuminate
the oriel window; they trace

the lobate foot of the grebe.
The reindeer appears tame and boxy
on paper, gigantic antlers bearing

the weight of reincarnation.
On page 1291, drawings disambiguate
the difference between paly

and paly-bendy, two patterns of heraldry:
think roadblock versus barbershop, TV
off-air image versus LSD.

They don’t do verbs in dictionary pictures,
so for zip here’s an inch-wide depiction
of two men intent on fencing.

In one two-page arrangement,
the seahorse floats peacefully beyond
the reach of the scythe. Pen-and-ink

sketches break the columns up
like little windows opening
from one side of the brain

to the other. Tiptoe through, and pay
attention to the shapes of leaves,
which can be hard to describe.

Sleepless Fragments

At two, I trace the lamp from base to switch, 

wide awake, circling an urge for hours. 

Like holding a telescope to the bones – 

the cat’s purr, gurgling a dirge for hours. 

To revive the blooms of cut hydrangeas, 

lay them in cool water, submerge for hours.

Reaching the undulating area

I am vaguely afraid of revolving doors. Especially the automatic ones, like those at my office, make me uneasy, since they are out of my control. If I must enter them while they’re in motion, I can’t help but think of joining a game of jumprope. Two people stand at each end, turning the rope, and you have to plunge in, and overcome the fear of getting thwacked. 

Or better, I think of swimming in the ocean. Some people just throw themselves in without worrying. But when the surf is churning, some stand at the edge and calculate when to enter. You don’t want to get stuck at the shoreline when a big wave comes plowing in. You need energy and good timing to make it out past the crashy part, with its shells and stones, to the undulating area. Once in, it’s fun, the peril abates, until it's time to get back out.

There's a word for the fear of waves and wave-like motion: kymophobia. 

Thx to Shannon Rankin for the collage image

Tearjerky

I finished Little Dorrit. It took me over a month, but it is long, and I had a couple projects going. It never struck me as one of Dickens’ most famous, and I was thinking it might be so-so, but it was wonderful. Everything you want from Dickens - humor, well-drawn settings, colorful characters, orphans, villians, penalties to the bad and rewards to the deserving. And, man, there is a lot of deserving going on. I cried all over it.

To my surprise, Time Magazine rated Little Dorrit as Dickens’ 3rd best book. I don’t know the judge’s credentials, but I am glad to see there are some on the list I’ve yet to read. Before I’d ever read Dickens my favorite was Oliver Twist because of the 1968 movie, which I saw as a small child and adored. It surprised me that the book is only #10. Bleak House, #1, made me roll my eyes occasionally, but I read it in 2000, a year I spent in a very bad mood. Great Expectations, #2, was the first Dickens I ever read (9th grade), and I re-read it some years ago and do think it’s marvelous. I love that Dickens always has some mysterious secret going. Little Dorrit was not an exception.

Here’s the list, and the order. 1) Bleak House 2) Great Expectations 3) Little Dorrit 4) David Copperfield 5) Our Mutual Friend 6) A Tale of Two Cities 7) The Pickwick Papers 8) Hard Times 9) Dombey and Son 10) Oliver Twist.

swords & dagrrrls

The earth is not round; it is a geoid, larger around the equator than from pole to pole. As it should be.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance, said Socrates. 

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes, said Czeslaw Milosz. 

Your ignorance is more scandalous than my promiscuity, said the Riot Grrrls. 

In the morning, for what it’s worth, I open my eyes.

The sword looks foolish beside the dagger. 

Asymmetry, too, has its own gorgeous order. 

(Not writing, but typing.)

Long stretches, and short

Study links cat litter box to increased suicide risk
Study links dust to glacial melting

Study links low IQ to racism, right-wing beliefs
Study links juvenile arthritis to pet store dogs

Study links motivation to finger length
Study links Hitler's genocidal tendencies to playing violent board games

Study links owning a dog to feminine appeal
Study links narcissism and Facebook activity

Study links bestiality to penile cancer
Study links flowers to increased productivity

Study links night shift to breast cancer risk
Study links flaming water to fracking

Study links masturbation to prostrate cancer
Study links rural suicides in China to stress

Study links hair relaxer to early puberty in girls
Study links smoking to hot flashes

The Cape

The wind is my little cape,

all smoke-ring theatrical. 

The cape is my wing, 

steering me onto 4th street, 

into weekends and kiosks. 

Once the clasp’s fastened, 

it’s a small leap to the catwalk, 

the bullfight, to knighting 

sidewalks with my footfall, 

or staging Dracula’s black madness. 

Out and about in it, shop windows 

reveal my inner magician. 

My cape is not much to look at. 

Some don’t even see it. 

I wear it walking 

to my day job, and when 

moonlighting as me. 

june '74

Why is the owl & pussycat's boat pea-green? Is it made of bamboo? Has moss grown on it?

What is a bong tree? Is it in the south pacific? Is it gong-like, or hollow like a hookah? 

Why honey? With what? 

If there’s plenty of money, why offer the piggy-wig just a shilling for the ring? There seems little else to spend it on.

Why did they sail for a year and a day, or 366 days? Is it because even numbers are more harmonious?

With the delightful picture of marriage portrayed in the owl and pussycat, why did Edward Lear never marry? Is it because he entertained a number of pet peeves, including noise, gaiety, and hens? "When I go to heaven, if indeed I go -and am surrounded by thousands of polite angels- I shall say courteously, 'please leave me alone.'"

sex, death

One regret I have about not having been born a man is never being called a gentleman. 

* 

I think of menopause as the end of biological usefulness. The dizzy faltering, the ache, the everything. 

* 

Cesar Vallejo expected to die on a Thursday, as he wrote in one of his poems. But he died on a Friday, Good Friday, “aching without explanation.” 

* 

Every year when my kids’ birthdays arrive I remember the German word for placenta is “Mutterkuchen,” literally ’mother cake.’ 

* 

If I were a man, my pants would be waiting for me when I woke up. Right where I left them. Rumpled on the floor. 

Forming a church. Maybe a steeple. 

*

My mother finds it a tragedy when a man goes bald. She never fails to comment - ‘Oh him, he went bald.’ An old boyfriend of mine, a client at her firm, has not escaped this fate, she tells me. Rather, she whispers it to me, as if I were in on a joke.

from the Varieties of Pain long list

in the right hands, the harmonica
in the wrong hands, the harmonica

Trove

Reading this book is like being waterboarded with truffle oil.

Reading this book is like seeing the ripples widen after a stone of great consequence has been cast into the waters of history.

Reading this book is like watching a bunch of self-absorbed narcissists trying to talk over each other about who the biggest drama queen of them all is.

Reading this book is like receiving a shamanic healing limpia over and over again.

Reading this book is like sitting down to a big round table full of the best food you ever put in your mouth.

Reading this book is like opening a folding table after closing a door.

Reading this book is like switching from a fuzzy, black and white television screen to a full color, HD portrayal of Jesus.

Reading this book is like eating good bonefish.

Reading this book is like listening to a personal CD, a compilation of songs (singing drives away sorrow, as they say in Spain), with music by the Ronettes.

Reading this book is like sipping hot cider in front of a crackling potbellied stove.

Reading this book is like watching a three-dimensional person gradually unfurl from a mouldy seed, almost the personal equivalent of the Big Bang.

Reading this book is like reading all 320 books that Dayna has read.

Reading this book is like witnessing a debate with the resolution that reads: Be it resolved, that men are descendants of monkeys.

Reading this book is like meeting each animal and getting the chance to ask them your most pressing questions.

Reading this book is like shaving with a cheese grater.

Reading this book is like traveling to an older culture and going to a village where women are not wearing miniskirts, for example.

Sunday arrives

I slept like shit, but so it goes. At least it is Sunday, and my blackberry is kaputt. I am the featured poet in the new issue of Avatar Review, meaning I’ve got a boatload of poems over there, and even videos. I wish I could make a video I didn’t have to be in, but I am not that learned yet. 

A couple days ago I had another poem, a fragment, up at Utter, a new online magazine. It looks good, so give them a try if you’ve got wares to peddle. My fragment is named ‘Grace,’ appropriate for Sunday.  

Also inside me it is Sunday, the last day of the week or the first, depending on whose calendar you look at. Vague and blurred blue. I went back to the cemetery to read but first spent 15 minutes peeling moss off someone’s grave: Gustav Horwarth, 1905-1986. Didn’t fall in either war. Nice little plot he had, and his rent paid.

the dickens

Reading Little Dorrit is like having your own portable fireplace to cozy up to. It’s also huge, like a log or a brick. At 1,000 pages, if you set it on fire, it would burn for a long time. But I don’t mean it that way. I mean reading Little Dorrit makes you want to take off your shoes, don your housecoat and lean way the hell over the open pages, soaking up all that homey tenderness.

Reading Little Dorrit is like suffering the ritual of birthday cake. It’s also enormous like cake is enormous, heavy and sticky like children’s fingers. But with the ritual I mean watching the cake float towards you in the dark, luminous with spindly candles. You want to lean way the hell over it and, soaking up the glow, make your best wish, blow, and collapse into all that icing. 

Reading Little Dorrit is like being dragged off by your parents to a revival festival teeming with tents and strange people. By dragged I mean you used to like going but now think you’re too old for it. You wander around -it’s on the edge of a forest- and you like the smell of the pines and campfires but you stick to the parking lot where some other characters share their six-packs, and there’s a puddle of rain and spew and you lean way the hell over it and see your reflection.

Oratory

You think of a mouth as lips and tongue but it is just a vacant piece of real estate. You notice when the police talk about finding the body parts of some poor victim or other strewn about town they never mention finding the mouth.

If someone tells you that you have a dirty mouth don’t believe it. They need to be more specific. 

When it came to washing kids’ mouths out with soap, my nana’s choice was Ivory. ‘So clean it floats.’

She also liked to say, “He’s got a mouth on him.” But whose? His own mouth turned in. 

Orajel. Orafix. Orifice. 

The Chinese word for mouth is “kou,” which looks like a lopsided box. The German word for mouth is “Mund,” which I occasionally mispronounce as “Mond,” or “moon.” 

Shut your moon, for god's sake.

We 2 kings

May & June are peppered with Catholic holidays, and today was one. Bang Thursday and no work. I decided to take a walk and couldn’t think of a good park so I went down the road to the cemetery. It’s the best possible park, huge and fabulous with trees. Sometimes a person goes by; most of the time not. I chose a bench among the many insects and birdsong and sat reading for over an hour: Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, which says in section 404 -

To wrap the world around our fingers, like a thread or ribbon which a woman twiddles while daydreaming at the window...
Everything comes down to our trying to feel tedium in such a way that it doesn’t hurt.
It would be interesting to be two kings at the same time: not the one soul of them both, but two distinct, kingly beings. 

To be honest, though, I was on a relatively open path, and worse, I was looking at the back of headstones, and I hate that. It’s like sitting in a restaurant with your back toward the door. If you’ve ever seen a mafia movie you know that is a mistake. So I set out for a more sheltered bench and switched to Little Dorrit, in which Mr Clennam asks, 

“The name of Mr Tite Barnacle has been mentioned to me as representing some highly influential interest among (Dorrit’s) creditors. Am I correctly informed?”
It being one of the principles of the Circumlocution Office never, on any account whatever, to give a straightforward answer, Mr Barnacle said, “Possibly.” 

This was the funniest passage so far, not least because of that name. And so, though I am not truly able to be two kings at once, reading two good books on one afternoon in pleasant weather did give me the feeling I could be two distinct, kingly beings, both, at the same time.

3 good things

First, my poem “Everything is Taking Entirely Too Long” went up at the Coachella Review. I didn’t know the issue had been up for some days already, and when I went to check today, there it was. I wrote the poem last year in a hotel in New York, and remembering being there makes me as happy as having it published.

Second, I subscribed to Court Green and got my first issue, with its dossier of short poems. Love! Especially good are the poems by Elise Cowen, whom I’d never heard of, maybe because she killed herself before she was 30 and before I was born. Tony Trigilio is putting together a book of what little survived of her poems, set for 2014 publication. 

Third, soccer season is coming up and my colleague asked if I’d bring in some books to get her through since her family is into it but she is not. Suddenly I am the book dictator. I like that. I made a little pile to start with: Waiting by Ha Jin, A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro, John Dollar by Marianne Wiggins, Stoner by John Williams, Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, and some non-fiction.

Jealous of her, about to read some excellent books. Though I can't complain, being well into Little Dorrit myself. Little Dorrit's given name was Amy, in case you are asked. 

Much ado

Here’s a question that always fills me with dread: “Don’t we know each other from somewhere?”

Whenever I hear this, I expect a fleet of black-robed judges to spring from the wings, because surely this person recognizes me from my axe-murderer days, or my erstwhile job as a pole dancer, or saw me that time I threw up eggs and whiskey outside my house. 

Ok, it has yet to turn out so badly. But I was in a store the other day in my never-ending search for a decent white t-shirt, and the sales person asked me, “Kennen wir uns nicht?,” which of course means, “Don’t we know each other?,” which for me usually means, "I really hope not." 

You know, another difficult thing about this situation is, say we did know each other once and have no contact anymore - well there must be a reason for that, even if it’s not because we got drunk and slept together 20 years ago and you or maybe even I never called back.... 

Anyway, on the note of sleeping dogs and difficult goodbyes, here’s a funny typo I saw today: “without further adieu.”