Do-Re-Meme

1. Total number of books I own:

More than the Fulton County Public Library (Kentucky, not Atlanta) but fewer than Anne Haines!

Seriously, we own several thousand books. My husband has books at school, in his office, and in a storage building he uses as a studio. My daughter has over 500 books--she is cataloguing them. We could use another room for just books (and we have a library). Reading is our drug of choice, followed closely by caffeine.

2. Last book I bought:

James Galvin: X (to replace a copy I gave away).

3. Last book I read:

It was a re-read: American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. This is a great book and bears multiple readings. I live very near Cairo, Illinois, which is featured prominently.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me:

The Bible (best stories ever)
Robert Louis Stevenson--A Child's Garden of Verse (I am still in awe of "The Swing")
Andre Dubus: Stories (thank-you gift from a teacher)
Vladimir Nabokov--Lolita (everything a book should be)
Henry James--The Ambassadors (reminds me that life begins at the age I am now)

OK, cheating and adding numbers 6 and 7--Daniel and the Dragon and The Misadventures of Jonathan Rabbit, written by my husband and me and illustrated with great charm by my husband. Very limited edition of one per child in our family.

Twined

http://www.carolynsandstrom.com/sisters%20holding%20hands.jpg

There is a poem here about sisters and tangled hair and moonflowers and twined hands...

I love this photograph. I wish that I could purchase a copy. I found it via Alison Stine's An Awfully Serious Girl.

Walt and Al's Excellent Adventure

Happy Birthday, Walt Whitman!

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel? I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.

We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?...

— from "A Supermarket in California," by Allen Ginsberg

I was surprised to learn the following, a quote from Today in Literature:

For all their poetic differences, Whitman and Tennyson were not only contemporaries — they died just six months apart in 1892 — but correspondents and friends, to a degree.

Whitman praised Tennyson for reflecting “the upper crust of his time,” and Tennyson acknowledged Whitman’s own unique stature: “He is a great big something. I do not know what.”

Never was a better description written of Whitman. I'll be laughing at Walt and Al's Excellent Adventure all day.

In Poker, A Pair in Hand; Here, a Pair of Hands

Here are two poems that, for some reason, I have twined in my head.

So Long--by James Galvin (in Agni 56)

I look down at my hand and there’s a wrinkling ocean in it.
A halcyon nest rocks on careless waves.
Small in the bottom of the nest, fledgling, my father curls.
He doesn’t look so good.
What I say, what he says, what does it matter?
I’ve got this ocean in my hand, and there’s no cure for that.


This Living Hand--by John Keats

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

Sarcas-Meme--Taken from Another Blog

Have you ever stolen a book? Which book was it? Why did you steal it? Do you still have it?

I swiped Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book from a real-life hippie when I was 12 years old. I stole it because, well, it asked. I still have it. The pages are crumbling, but if you need a template for tire-tread sandals, I'm your girl.

Do you consider your life as a poet punishment for this and other thefts?

Not the comfy chair! Not the fluffy pillows ! I'm a fiction writer, mainly.

Do you often recite lines from old love letters to yourself, the ones you wrote to yourself instead of that person you were pretending to love all those years ago? Do you charm yourself? Are you seduced?

I am easily charmed but rarely self-seduced. I don't recite from love letters, but I can say the alphabet backwards, quickly.

Have you ever read a Hemingway story about catching VD from a hooker in a taxicab to your family at dinner? Which Hemingway story? Why? Did your family appreciate your point?

Nope, not Hemingway, but I have bored them with Absalom, Absalom before. And will again.

Can you admit you do not have a favorite poem? Why do you enjoy this lie?

I have a favorite poem--"I Knew a Woman," by Roethke. Occasionally, I cheat on it with "Crusoe in England." (My only monogamous committments are to my husband and Milky Way candy bars.)

When you read The Chronicles of Narnia back in grade school did you find the kids to be insufferable, especially that twit who ate all the Turkish Delight? Or did you just care about Jesus?

They were all insufferable, but I didn't read C.S. Lewis till I had a child of my own. I thought Turkish Delight was hashish till I read that book.

Do you dream of book tours during which you also sell meat and solve crime?

I do occasionally dream of solving crimes but am vetoing the butcher-book tour.

Which vegetal aroma first comes to mind when you read each the following words (be specific): library? textbook? classroom? bookstore?

One potato, two potato, three potato, four--so much starch!

If you answered any of these questions, do you realize what you have done? Are you proud of it?

If I had answered any of these questions seriously, I'd be very afraid.

Do you believe you will be remembered after you are gone? Do you believe you will be forgotten?

I believe I will be remembered, if only for my boiled omelets.

Thank you for taking the time to consider these topics. Your participation in this study enables or stymies the researchers, depending.

You're quite welcome.

The Miraculous versus the Miracle Whip

Rachel Carson has it exactly right:

We lay and looked up at the sky and the millions of stars that blazed in darkness. The night was so still that we could hear the buoy on the ledges out beyond the mouth of the bay. Once or twice a word spoken by someone on the far shore was carried across the clear air. A few lights burned in the cottages. Otherwise, there was no reminder of other human life.... It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century or even once in a human generation, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night perhaps they will never see it. (The Sense of Wonder)

What's astounding right around me, and do I even notice it?

Do I ever see the miraculous or only the Miracle Whip?

Which brings this poem to mind:

A MIRACLE FOR BREAKFAST--Elizabeth Bishop

At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee,
waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony
—like kings of old, or like a miracle.
It was still dark. One foot of the sun
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.

The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river.
It was so cold we hoped that the coffee
would be very hot, seeing that the sun
was not going to warm us; and that the crumb
would be a loaf each, buttered, by a miracle.
At seven a man stepped out on the balcony.

He stood for a minute alone on the balcony
looking over our heads toward the river.
A servant handed him the makings of a miracle,
consisting of one lone cup of coffee
and one roll, which he proceeded to crumb,
his head, so to speak, in the clouds—along with the sun.

Was the man crazy? What under the sun
was he trying to do, up there on his balcony!
Each man received one rather hard crumb,
which some flicked scornfully into the river,
and, in a cup, one drop of the coffee.
Some of us stood around, waiting for the miracle.

I can tell what I saw next; it was not a miracle.
A beautiful villa stood in the sun
and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee.
In front, a baroque white plaster balcony
added by birds, who nest along the river,
—I saw it with one eye close to the crumb—

and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb
my mansion, made for me by a miracle,
through ages, by insects, birds, and the river
working the stone. Every day, in the sun,
at breakfast time I sit on my balcony
with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee.

We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee.
A window across the river caught the sun
as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.

Jared Carter--Work, For the Night is Coming

Jared Carter is one of my favorite poets. When I think of poetry's face, his eyes are the ones I imagine looking back at me. Back in my salad days in the early 1980s, after a reading and day-long workshop with our poetry class (when he critiqued a poem of mine with much kindness and even more tact), he asked us to tell him something about one of his poems. Everyone else was struggling to think of something to say about the musicality in his poetry, the symbolism, the narrative impulses...I was able to talk about "At the Sign Painter's." Because my first husband was a signpainter, I knew the stick that a painter rests on the canvas, to steady his hand and keep it out of the paint, is called a maulstick (from Dutch for bad spot, plus stick). I could also tell him the words of the hymn "Work, For the Night Is Coming." That's just like me: Fact finding, geek girl detective. The things I wanted to say I couldn't articulate. I return to his poems over and over. His narrative poems are lyric, his formal poems are effortless, and his range is astounding. (A whole book is nothing but villanelles).

Here's some Jared Carter:

Narrative: http://jaredcarter.com/poems/2/

Love Poem/Synesthesia: http://jaredcarter.com/poems/6/

One from his entire book of villanelles: http://jaredcarter.com/poems/8/

Check out his beautiful website where these are found. I am sure you'll be as gobsmacked as I am over his poems, stories, and essays.

Thanks, Jared Carter, for all the poems I've learned by heart over the years.

Fruit, Futons, and Little Women

Poesy Galore has a link to the debate over which is more poetic:

Fruit on the Futon VS Apples on the Sofa

Here's what I posted:

I'd vote for "apples on the sofa." There's Jo Marsh, curled up on the three-legged sofa in her garret, with six russets and a good book, and an ink-blotted story to worry over. Whether this is more poetic--I don't know. It certainly has more connotation.

I've tried several times to write about Jo March and her sisters. That might be a good poem. Four voices--maybe five.

__________
Update: I decided to take a survey:

I asked my husband: "Apples on the sofa."

I asked my son: "We don't have a futon."

I asked my daughter: "Fruit Roll-ups on the Futon." There's the clear winner.

Happy Birthday, Jamaica Kinkaid!

Annie John is excellent. Her short story "Girl" is great, too.

Here's a good quote, once again from Today in Literature.

I am not at all -- absolutely not at all -- interested in the pursuit of happiness. I am not interested in the pursuit of positivity.... I feel it's my duty to make everyone a little less happy. You know that line in the Declaration of Independence, "the pursuit of happiness"? I've come to think that it has no meaning at all. You cannot pursue happiness. And to think that this bad little sentence has determined our lives."

— Jamaica Kincaid, in response to an interviewer's observation that her novels never had happy endings and her outlook always seemed bleak; Kincaid was born (as Elaine Richardson) in Antigua on this day in 1949

Blogoview

QUESTION: If you could turn any room or building in the world into your writing studio, what would you choose and why?

ANSWER: The sitting room in my apartment in Ghent, which is a section of Norfolk where the townhouses are Victorian. It was paneled oak, and the woodwork was beautiful. I had no money at the time for furniture, so I sat in the window seat (using, as a desk, a plastic cafeteria tray I'd swiped from Old Dominion), wrote very bad poetry, and dreamed of the day I'd have a house and a book of stories. I loved that apartment so much that I gave it to one of the characters in a story I wrote, "Horses." I'd love to buy that townhouse and renovate it totally.

And I Swore I'd Never Be a Doctor...

You're John Keats! You were born poor, trained to
be a doctor, and then decided you wanted to be
a poet. You threw yourself into poetry with
great dedication. You're very nice and
extremely dedicated to your art. You write
great letters and sexy poetry. It's amazing
how much you got done in your short lifetime.

Which Major Romantic Poet Would You Be (if You Were a Major Romantic Poet)?
brought to you by

From the Dictionary of Urban Slang

Windows update: A method of legitimately abstaining from doing any form of productive work

Boss: Hows that report coming on?

Slacker: Just doing a quick Windows update....

There's a poem in here--I just know it.

05/19/1886: Rest in Peace--Hawthorne and Apples, Emily and Apples

Nathaniel Hawthorne died on this day in 1864. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow graduated from Bowdoin College with Hawthorne, and was a life-long friend; he describes the funeral day at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord — "white with apple-blooms," the dappled sunlight "shot through with golden thread."

The funeral of Emily Dickinson, held on this day in 1886, was held according to her wishes: a simple dress of white flannel, a white casket, only a few of her closest friends and family attending the home service, a bier of pine boughs and sand violets, the procession going out the back door and crossing the lawn "full of buttercups and violet & wild geraniums" (Thomas Wentworth Higginson's diary). As Longfellow's poem about Hawthorne noted apple blossom, so the memoirs of those present note the strong smell of apple on Dickinson’s funeral day. (from Today in Literature)

Apples, apples...Violets and pine boughs...a white flannel dress, a white casket ---the lawn full of flowers...

The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery--what a name...

This Is Freewritten and Unedited: Vital Statistics

I am 5 feet 3 and 3/4 inches tall. I'm 47 years old (will be 48 in July). I'm a mom to Daniel, 20, a musician and computer maven, and Raleigh, 7--she's a painter and a writer. I've been married to Harvey, who's 40, for nearly 2 decades. He's a sculptor, an illustrator, and an art teacher. He plays guitar and sings wonderfully. In his family tree are Edgar Allan Poe and the Carter family of Tennessee, (Mamma Carter and June Carter Cash). In my family tree are glassblowers from Russia, who moved to England and then to the Carolinas. My breath is caught in a small vase I keep in our parlor. Harvey and I were married after ten weeks' acquaintance. We live in an 1880s Queen Anne with gingerbread trim, in western Kentucky (a prominent notch in the Bible belt, rather than the South proper). My husband and I like antiques--collect what we can afford, covet what we can't. Right now we are in hot pursuit of Art Deco figurines and evil clown cookie jars. I went to 7 different elementary schools in 4 years. I went to a single college for 6 years. I studied history and literature in college--English history and American literature. I have a MA in English education. My first full-time job was in a medical examiner's office in Virginia, where I moonlighted in a new-wave band. (We were terrible, but I know all the words to every Blondie song). I then taught composition and research part-time at a local college before deciding I could not stand academia. I turned to medical transcription and am a nationally certified medical language specialist. This means I hear voices for a living and turn them into competent medical reports. This career allows me to work from home in my Pepe LePew pajamas and flipflops. I'm here when my daughter gets off the bus with her latest news about 2nd grade. That's important to me. My faith in God, in my family, and in the ACLU are central to my life. I support all three of them. I am addicted to coffee and crosswords, to Tennyson and Tuchman, and I'm writing again after 15 years. One of my best friends died of AIDS in the late 1980s. I miss him every day. My best friend from college has been missing for 20 years. I despair of finding her. I have 5 scars and a damaged larynx. It hurts sometimes to have a voice. I've titled every notebook I've ever kept "Pamela's Musings." My blog's named that, too, but I wanted to name it Chisenbop, because I count on my hands for everything. I have fast hands. I type 250 words a minute (no, I am not exaggerating). I have an octave plus 2 reach on the piano. I can pick your pocket. I can read your palm. I have a double lifeline and a single chin. I don't know if you'd like me. I'm way too boring.

Pamela

The One Am I This...

Yoda IS my favorite, but see the post below! I know this is sacrilege!

A Prayer, Originally A Diary Entry

Prayer by Elie Wiesel (from One Generation After)

I no longer ask you for either happiness or paradise; all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aware of Your listening.

I no longer ask You to resolve my questions, only to receive them and make them part of You.

I no longer ask You for either rest or wisdom, I only ask You not to close me to gratitude, be it of the most trivial kind, or to surprise and friendship. Love? Love is not Yours to give.

As for my enemies, I do not ask You to punish them or even to enlighten them; I only ask You not to lend them Your mask and Your powers. If You must relinquish one or the other, give them Your powers. But not Your countenance.

They are modest, my requests, and humble. I ask You what I might ask a stranger met by chance at twilight in a barren land.

I ask you, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to enable me to pronounce these words without betraying the child that transmitted them to me: God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, enable me to forgive You and enable the child I once was to forgive me too.

I no longer ask You for the life of that child, nor even for his faith. I only beg You to listen to him and act in such a way that You and I can listen to him together.

A Long, Long Time ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

In 1977, I was working night and weekend shifts in a discount store, in the toy department. My primary responsibilities were to straighten the shelves and pegboard racks, keep the teenagers out of the model airplane glue, and discourage the opening of paint-by-number kits. When the Star War action figures (which I once incorrectly referred to as "dolls") were released that summer, my job was subject to pandemonium, pandelirium, and just plain panhandling. Ten-year-old boys with pleading eyes would beg us clerks for a dollar "for the Wookie." Han and Luke and R2D2 literally flew off the shelves, mainly to the cash registers, sometimes into other parts of the store (The Four Seasons Garden and Patio Shop was the next department). And it was my responsibility to gather up all the toys, patrol for pint-sized shoplifters, and order MORE STAR WARS toys. I ordered 10 times the normal amount of pegboard packets, and still we sold out (were stolen out). The manager didn't know what to think. "We've never had anything like this!" The parents were horrid, shoving and pushing--Why can't you put these back for me? I pay your salary... I dreamed night after night about wielding my trusty boxcutter and opening up case after case of these toys. When the fad was finally over and the kids were back in school, I was glad to return to my dusty shelves and rearrange the board games and bicycle parts. Little did I dream that the real invasion was only a few years away--Star Wars II. I did learn an important life lesson from Star Wars...I survived the Cabbage Patch doll riots unscathed by pulling seniority and transferring to the Refund Desk. After dealing with the Dark Side of the Force, handing out refund slips without sales receipts was a breeze!

I have to laugh at my teenaged self for not buying those toys! The 12-pack set, which I did buy for my boyfriend's little brother, is now worth $4500.00.

Stanley Kunitz Approaches Triple Digits!

Here's an example of why he's one of my heroes:

"The Round"

Light splashed this morning on the shell-pink anemones swaying on their tall stems; down blue-spiked veronica light flowed in rivulets over the humps of the honeybees; this morning I saw light kiss the silk of the roses in their second flowering, my late bloomers flushed with their brandy. A curious gladness shook me.

So I have shut the doors of my house, so I have trudged downstairs to my cell, so I am sitting in semi-dark hunched over my desk with nothing for a view to tempt me but a bloated compost heap, steamy old stinkpile, under my window; and I pick my notebook up and I start to read aloud the still-wet words I scribbled on the blotted page: "Light splashed ..."

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow when a new life begins for me, as it does each day, as it does each day.

Stanley Kunitz, The Wild Braid

Well, I Don't Know About the Cigar...

You scored as Soren Kierkegaard. You are Soren Kierkegaard. You are one of the few theistic existentialists, and therefore you believe in truth that you can live, but you are grounded by the Absolute, God. You are an original thinker that likes cigars and is sweet.

Which Existentialist Philosopher Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

Gauntlet

During this week, in 1921, T. S. Eliot began writing The Waste Land.

What am I going to write this week?

West is West...Nathanael,That Is...

This is from Ray McDaniel's review of Dancing in Odessa, as published in Constant Critic:

"I worship at the altar of Miss Lonelyhearts, because I think it articulates the challenge of having a soul, and I admire the force and candor with which the novel recognizes that challenge. But while I could appreciate the sentiment of that effort, I could not be transfigured by the experience of reading Miss Lonelyhearts if the language in which it is written were less transfixing. A beautiful language, that novel has: bitter, sharp, odd, and also intimate in the way vernacular must be, but bold and lucid when the time for lucidity finally comes.The point is that the intent to transfigure cannot be uncoupled from the ability to transfix. Attention to language is the step that cannot be skipped..."

Transfiguration and transfixation are coupled just as Miss Lonelyhearts (the transfigured--in many, many ways) and Shrike (literally the transfixer--note what the bird does to its prey) are linked....I've got to think about this a little more, but this is a smart way to approach poetry, too. I don't know if I'd agree with McDaniel's review of Dancing in Odessa--I'll have to find the book and see.

BTW--regarding my distant literary past--I can remember proposing an honors paper on Nathanael West and being told he wasn't "good enough to write about. " (At that time, the early 1980s, West was not taught in any of the literature surveys or specialized classes at my university). I was dumbfounded then and showed it, much to my adviser's amusement. I ended up writing about Keats' odes instead. Now there's a topic untrammeled...

Pamela

"The Bear" and "The Bitch"

Here's one of my favorite Faulkner fragments, from "The Bear," when Isaac returns to the camp:

....he had not stopped, he had only paused, quitting the knoll which was no abode of the dead because there was no death, not Lion and not Sam: not held fast in earth but free in earth and not in earth but of earth, myriad yet undiffused of every myriad part, leaf and twig and particle, air and sun and rain and dew and night, acorn oak and leaf and acorn again, dark and dawn and dark and dawn again in their immutable progression and, being myriad, one: and Old Ben too, Old Ben too...

I love the cycles here--just like the dog trailed the bear...
___________________________________________

Another blog I read daily, Chanticleer, has an entry on BITCH poems. I nominated Sexton, and agree with Plath and Gluck, too.

Here's another entry into the pantheon, from Robert Lowell:

"To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage"

"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor's edge.
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . .
It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust--
whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick?Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . .
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant."

The Wife of Bath reborn...

Tennyson, Anyone?

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, Now the White

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me.

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:

So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Line 7 is, well, hot. If you can say that about Tennyson and not be struck by lightning.

Way to Go!

Harvey passed his comprehensive exams for his MA in art. One more class (which he'll take this summer) and then he'll have his degree.

I am so proud of him! To earn a degree while working full time as an elementary school teacher and taking care of a family and making art--WOW.

Woe unto the Whited Sepulchres

This is just in from North Carolina:

The minister of a Haywood County Baptist church is telling members of his congregation that if they're Democrats, they either need to find another place of worship or support President Bush. Reverend Chan Chandler has excommunicated nine members of East Waynesville Baptist Church. Another 40 members have departed in protest.

One former church member says Chandler told some of the members that if they didn't support George Bush, they needed to resign their positions and get out of the church, or go to the altar, repent and agree to vote for Bush.

I wonder how the IRS is going to feel about that. I certainly think this church should voluntarily relinquish its tax-exempt status immediately! After all, render unto Caesar applies here...

Here's another scripture that seems to apply if they don't immediately disqualify themselves from tax-exempt status: Matthew 23:27 and 28.

How terrible it will be for you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs--beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. You try to look like upright people outwardly, but inside your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness. (NLT)

Since I read that President Bush laughed about signing the death warrant of born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, I have redoubled my prayers for our nation.

Meme de la Meme

Name five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over.

1. Bleaching your hair. Heck, brushing my hair's enough primping for me most days.
2. Language poetry. For the longest time, I thought all poetry was language poetry. (I still think deconstructionism's kissing cousin to vivisection).
3. Photo-capable phones. Not unless they bring back hieroglyphs do I want a picture phone.
4. Shania Twain. Give me Dolly and "Jolene" any day.
5. Margarine. I am not putting plastic on my food unless it's Saran wrap.

Man, oh, man, am I boring.

One Mint Julep...Was the Cause of It All

You have not lived till this is your Mother's Day greeting from your spouse...ending with Just a little spot of soul now. Especially after Derby Day! Harvey has a great singing voice! I love to hear him.

I've had a wonderful, spoiled rotten weekend--all because of a total of 24 hours labor (22 with stubborn first boychild by C-section 7 weeks early and fat as a bowling ball and 2 hours with stubborn little girlchild who couldn't wait for the scalpel, and also 2 weeks early! If you cannot tell it all three of us are very impatient!) Daniel took me out to eat and bought me flowers. Raleigh gave me a framed picture of herself as a baby--very cute--and wrote a poem for me, which rhymed coins with going, which was pretty cool, also.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there! It's a great blessing to have children and a husband who spoil me 364 other days of the year, too. I am thankful every day for them all.

Adopt a Poet

I think I'll adopt three of my former teachers who are featured on the Academy of American Poets website. (I saw this on another blog today). The fourth one can fend for herself.

Here are the three: Jim Galvin, Mark Jarman, and William Matthews.

Some of the best poets and teachers of poetry, however, are not on the website.

Richard Speakes is a wonderful teacher AND a wonderful poet, and I'd gladly sponsor him with an extra zero attached. I urge you to look up his work! (Plus--I met my husband at a party he hosted, and for that I am rarely exasperated and eternally grateful!)

Claudia Keelan--well what can someone say that has not been said about her teaching and writing? I can only echo the praise that others have given her work, and I still refer to the notes I took in her classes. She gave poetry a new voice for me. I would gladly sponsor her with extra zeroes, as well.

I am blessed to have had these teachers.

Crying Woolf

I get a daily email from Today in Literature, which today focused on Virginia Woolf. This is a beautiful passage from TO THE LIGHTHOUSE:

She saw the light again. With some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one's relations changed, she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her, which had her at its beck and call (she woke in the night and saw it bent across their bed, stroking the floor), but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination, hypnotized, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!

I love the rhythms in this passage. And Woolf loved TTL, also, being satisfied with her writing for "up to a page at a time." Isn't that a telling comment?

Parched

Les verres d'eau ont les mêmes passions que les océans. Victor Hugo

Glasses of water have the same passions as oceans.

__________________________________________

Gardening update: My yard is beginning to be glorious. 17 pink roses, 24 pink/white peonies, white azalea, and 7 iris blooming--tan, pink, purple-white parrot, white-purple parrot, pale blue, deep purple, burgundy--oh, the colors, and more to come. Monkey grass is pushing up in Mohawks along the walkways. The hydrangeas are leafing, as are the daylilies. Yesterday we potted 9 different purple-pink fuschias for the plant stand, a big Chinese urn of moss rose at the entry, pink wax begonias, and a zebra-leafed begonia. The front porch is blooming, too. Lavender is at my desk in new robin-blue pots and also in straw baskets by the doorway. The scent is incredible and so calming.

I'm only leaving up posts for a few days now, otherwise this blog looks rather, well, unweeded.

Pamela

Derby Daze

On Saturday, expect no transcription and no blogging. Here in my Old Kentucky Home (circa 1888), there will be juleps in chilled silver cups, rimmed with sugar and sprigged with mint fresh from the back yard, served by me, outlandish hat at the ready (a cartwheel big as one of Scarlett's). I know all the words to the state anthem--it's one song I can sing. Pardon the pun.

I do not consider myself a belle at all, but I am proud to be a resident of the Commonwealth. This is the BIG Saturday here, and I am putting my money where my mouth is, too. Folks, I calls 'em as I sees 'em and I like Coin Silver--breeding, name, and jockey--or maybe Bellamy Road--speed in the Wood--and who'd not want Afleet Alex with his young jockey, fresh off the Arkansas? I'm betting 3, three ways.

Trust me on this...

James Wright

A Blessing--James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

__________________

This poem has my favorite line break of all time, although it's not my favorite Wright poem.

I posted it to make me feel a little bit better. Lucifer is no longer with us. I hope the yak-cat had a happy life here at the end.

Pamela

Happy Birthday, King James Edition!

On Writer's Almanac: The KJV was written by a committee of 54 of the best linguists in the country...At the time, words like "thee" and "thou" and "sayeth" had already gone out of fashion in England, but the translators wanted the language of the Bible to sound old, to sound like long ago and far away. Some of the phrases in the King James have become enduring expressions: "the land of the living," "sour grapes," like a lamb to slaughter," "salt of the earth," "the apple of his eye," "to give up the ghost."

Not to mention: "The Sun Also Rises." "The House of Mirth." "Absalom, Absalom."

And archaic at its inception--no wonder that except for the poetry, I prefer to read other translations alongside this one.

Dynamic Duo

To continue the pair-ups from another blog:

Two Things I Have Never Had:

1. A competent cervix.
2. Enough bookshelves.

Two Things I Have Always Had:

1. Fast hands.
2. Luck at poker. Don't play me--you will go down.

Don't know why these two, but they are the pair.

Pamela

May Day

Too much work, not enough sleep. I have an idea of writing a myth...this is probably on someone's top 12 things not to write about.

(I have a butterfly poem about the thyroid but am scared to post it--even though the universe wasn't affected--don't know why as no one reads any of this anyway. Insert half-choked sob here--no icon known for that!)

I am still sort of perturbed--well more than sort of--that no one I know reads this blog (except Harvey and, of course, the coworker who blasted me). I guess it's my letter to the world that never blogged to me--so I'll take all my drafts out of seclusion and put them on the laundry line.

At least Harvey will read this. I hope.
_______________

And What Of?

Lupus and its
Constellation of symptoms: no
known tale for the wolf
___________________

More later, o gentle non-reader. That's just the way it fell out of my fingers and onto the keyboard.

Pamela