Rejoining the Fray--At Fighting Weight

From the Virtual to the Written: After nearly a month of no computer, I have my hard drive back--and six new poems. Yes, six. Five are exponentially, excrementally bad, but one still has my obsessive, expressive interest. This is more poetry than I usually draft in a decade--I cannot wait to see what my MFA director has to say about the first poem. My thesis is taking shape, too--we have to have 24 poems, and I have 24 already past the censors. And I have 3 semesters to to go (it's a 5 semester program--maybe I will be able to have a manuscript/chapbook done after all. That's been my goal).

Read It and Weep: Daniel Anderson's Drunk in Sunlight. The images are elegant; the prosody, impeccable. The garden's fallen, but words don't fail this amazing poet. (My favorite: "Elegy for a Dying Dog". It's astounding).

From the Land of Students: I'll be teaching two more classes next fall, which should also be my fiction study semester. I am looking forward to falling drunk-in-love with the short story.

SAG Awards: Chandra Wilson--thank you, thank you, thank you for the encouragement and inspiration you provide to others with thick noses and less than sculpted biceps. You are the reason I watch Grey's Anatomy. (Well, not the sole reason--there's also Justin Chambers, who plays Alex. McDreamy, McSteamy--step aside--there's only one McSTAT and that's Dr. Karev).

Australian Open: Serena Williams--She's shown us a second act is possible. Roger Federer, the best stone-cold stomp through a tournament since Bjorn Borg. Rafael Nadal--He has the best fame-ass quote. (See Land Mammal post for details--link's above).

Valentine Anagram: Ah, Cupid, maybe...my wish for February 14th. Bonus points if you get this one...I'll send chocolates.

Book Meme

Find the nearest book.
Turn to page 123.
Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.
Name the book and the author.

Heat a small skillet over medium heat; add pine nuts and toast until golden. Remove the nuts; add extra virgin olive oil to the same skillet, 3 times around the pan. Heat the oil, add bread crumbs and toast them. When they are deeply golden, remove them from the heat, season them with salt and lots of black pepper, about a teaspoon.

(From Rachel Ray's Express Lane Meals, Sicilian Spaghetti with Fennel and Onions--which with a little modification is delicious).

Most of the books I usually keep near my desk are packed for tonight's move to the MFA residency, so I had to make do with Ms. Ray (Misery--hardly).

I do like sentences 2 and 3 for these reasons:
(2) Round and round the cauldron go, in the poisoned entrails throw. . I always wanted to be one of the crones in that Scottish play.
(3) Toasted bread crumbs--Hansel and Gretel and the trail of croutons...reminding me of Gluck's "Gretel in Darkness," which I know by heart. "This is the world we wanted..." That's such a brave opening hook--where do you go from there, except deeper into the family instead of the forest?

I also like the alchemy that pops up in this recipe. Gold--deeply golden--cook as Midas?

________

There are days of reading and thinking and studying ahead--even though they will be lonely days. I'll miss my family, my pets, and my familiar bed (new mattress equals bliss). I hope the poetry workshop is friendlier. The teachers have all been great, but the camaraderie isn't there.

As far as meeting any other poetry-lovers (don't I sound like Bullwinkle?) and forging any sorts of friendships/critiques/support...I don't know whether it was wrong or naive or just idiotic to expect this. I am thankful for the fiction/creative nonfiction folks who have kept me sane, plied me with cappuccino and brioches, and assured me that I am not the problem. (Or at least not all of the problem--I tend to get really quiet when people are unfriendly to me, and then attacked head-on, my response is to sting suddenly like nettles. I hate this fact about me. I matriculated from the Home School of Sarcasm and try very hard not to display this side of myself to my family, my friends, and my co-workers--yet it's there, it's definitely there). What I didn't expect was the written-on-worksheets, sotto voce in-class sexism. Being called a slut in my late forties was certainly a surprise. One poem about desire, and I was suddenly sporting the scarlet "A".

Enough Marcia Marcia Marcia moments. Maybe this time will be better. I am starting on my ekphratic series, and that's exciting to me. I see a way into the gallery, into the parking garage, into the studio, into the cave. I have one new poem that is pretty good (again ekphratic, about Odysseus and also Molly Bloom) and two others that are risky for me--really risky. They are first attempts away from narrative, or towards a different sort of narrative.

I've been thrilled by Lynda Hull's Collected Poems. I think "Black Mare" may be the best of them on this read-through. It makes me cry, and I'm a hard shell.

Kaminsky's been fun to read also--though I think he telegraphs/shorthands a little too much--there's too much dancing and not enough actual dance. Is this fair? Is this a first book tic? I'm still thinking it through. "The dancer from the dance?" keeps going through my head when I read Dancing in Odessa.

On to Chekhov, which just arrived (fiction seminar). On to Kunitz, on to Blake, which I have really enjoyed in tandem (poetry seminar). On to Frey v. Oprah celebrity death-match (creative nonfiction seminar--the choice of this is beyond me--maybe the seminar discussion will make it clearer).

Wish me luck--I may need it. I'll have an apartment this week--so maybe I'll make a Mounds cake and try to woo them with sweetness. One hand in honey, the other in syrup...Why is Baba coming back to me this week? What can I learn from her? Maybe something about Chekhov?

Since I started thinking about Gluck, I'll end with her great poem. You'll have to trust me on the punctuation.

Gretel in Darkness--Louise Gluck

This is the world we wanted. All who would have seen us dead
Are dead. I hear the witch's cry
Break in the moonlight through a sheet of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas....

Now, far from women's arms
And memory of women, in our father's hut
We sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
From this house, and it is years.

No one remembers. Even you, my brother.
Summer afternoons you look at me as though you meant
To leave, as though it never happened. But I killed for you.
I see armed firs, the spires of that gleaming kiln come back, come back--

Nights I turn to you to hold me but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
Hiss in the stillness, Hansel we are there still, and it is real, real,
That black forest, and the fire in earnest.

First meme of 2007---all about poems

The first poem I remember reading was
..."maggie and milly and molly and may" by E.E.Cummings.

I was forced to memorize numerous poems in school because:
I was involved in fisticuffs (as the new kid in the neighborhood, one year younger than everyone else in my class and much smaller--I had to start AND win a fight to be accepted). I memorized Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods" and Shakespeare's "Who is Sylvia?"

I read poetry because...
it calls out to be read. Aloud.

A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem:
Theodore Roethke's "I Knew a Woman." That's the one, despite for romantic-morbid-age-19 reasons. My first love (and best friend of all time) and I vowed we'd each have a line from this poem put on our tombstone. I have mine planned (Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay).

I write poetry, but...
I'd rather teach it. That's my guilty little 2007 confession.

I find poetry...
everywhere but on the blank page.

The last time I heard REAL poetry..
Brian Barker was reading from The Animal Gospels.--Check it out--he's published by Tupelo, so you know the poems are good.

I think poetry is like...
tidal breath.

Stanley Kunitz--A Great Way to Start the Year

Benediction

God banish from your house
The fly, the roach, the mouse

That riots in the walls
Until the plaster falls;

Admonish from your door
The hypocrite and liar;

No shy, soft, tigrish fear
Permit upon your stair,

Nor agents of your doubt.
God drive them whistling out.

Let nothing touched with evil,
Let nothing that can shrivel

Heart's tenderest frond, intrude
Upon your still, deep blood.

Against the drip of night
God keep all windows tight,

Protect your mirrors from
Surprise, delirium,

Admit no trailing wind
Into your shuttered mind

To plume the lake of sleep
With dreams. If you must weep

God give you tears, but leave
You secrecy to grieve,

And islands for your pride,
And love to nest in your side.

_______
Don't you just love the rhymes here--and the wind that plumes the lake?

Reading his poetry in conjunction with The Essential Blake, which Kunitz introduces, has been very helpful for me. (I have a Blake seminar for my MFA residency, which starts in 9 days--I'm not ready. The poems are ready, the readings done, but I'm not seeing my way forward).

Blake: Prophetic, seeing, printmaking, role of the Father (God)
Kunitz: Role of poet, seeing, plaiting the "wild braid", also role of the father
_______
I can never decide on a favorite: "Halley's Comet," the "Hornworm" poems (pendants as in Tennyson), "The Portrait," "Touch Me," and of course "The Snakes of September." (That's probably it--this year my students wanted to talk about Snakes on a Plane).

And, oh, yes, "Passing Through," which brings me back to the link.

They Say You Want a Resolution....

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Paint it black. Get your resolution here.

_______

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Get an invisible friend. Get your resolution here.