Testimonial to oneword: Daily Prompt

The rules are simple: You have one minute, and one word.

One Word: Evidence

Perry Mason, Della Street, Paul the oh-so-suave detective, and Hamilton Burger, Hamilton Burger, who looks like the fry cook at my grandpa's restaurant, something about that mouth--he sings in the church quartet, that other Hamilton Burger, the look-alike at the Hamburger Hill; with metal spatula in hand he's conducting business, humming Somebody Ought to Testify...

Cameo, Take Two

My second poem in qarrtsiluni is up today. (It's also about a cameo. Can you tell I have a jewelry obsession)? Please give it a read; also be sure to check out the other pieces in this wonderful issue on Transformation.

Particles' Particular Truth, Particular Beauty: Poetry and Physics

Thanks to Poetry Hut Blog for this link to Time: Here's a quote:

"The driving principle behind the CERN experiment — and indeed physics itself — is that despite its vast and complex appearance, the universe is actually ordered, rational and elegant. Every major breakthrough in physics has shown the cosmos to conform to mathematical equations so symmetrical and satisfying they can only be described as beautiful. (Physics have christened two of the particles they will study at CERN as 'truth' and 'beauty,' after a Keats poem that suggests the two are interchangeable.)"

Keats is in perfect alignment with the principles of the universe, just as I always believed.

Very busy here--my mom's in the hospital, my dad's beside himself with worry, and we've had no power till today for nearly 36 hours. Wind storms without any rain have snapped transformers like haystraws. I'll post something good later. I have it almost all thought out, but an electricity surge zapped my prior post, and I must begin again.

Transformation: Qarrtsiluni

I have a poem up 09/09/2008 at qarrtsiluni. Please give it a listen/read.

One Word: Brick

Brick by brick the house is built, or plank by plank or straw by straw; and like so many Legos or pick-up-stix, the bulldozer dozes each down. Eminent domain--no sticks, no stones, just break the bones as you move the cemeteries to their new "resting" places, as you displace the families who have been kicked off land where their families farmed or ferried or forged iron since the 1700s; there are no more foundations, no more roots laid down, just roots and rooftops underwater over which a bassboat glides, hoping to snag something

Catfish Delight: My Wordle

Expunction: the place or mark where something has been erased

Composition influx.
Catfish delight.
Beautiful brushpile.
Students going rust-red
Vintage lures.
Demolition's dark meaning.
Dark, meaning underwater
You're vintage.
Noodling.
Pairs hooks to eyes and hooks to hands.

Right-Wing Recipe

Take this:


Add a pair of these:


And many pairs of these:


Combine with Vintage GI JOE.

Serve half-baked.

Food for the Fishes

I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

X Marks the (Sweet) Spot

I've been busy as a bushhog in a brushpile.

SCHOOL: I'm teaching composition (sheer delight) and Intro to CW. (This is not such a delight as it has been in semesters past, as one of the sections was canceled due to low attendance and I have absorbed the influx of new students, one or two at a time). The first student is fine because she's made the effort to catch up; the second student has missed 2 class; the third student, 3; the fourth student, well you get the picture...I don't know what else to do but to go back to the image, the line, the idea that poetry is mystery and so is my attendance chart. Forrest with his candybox and me with my gradebook--I never know what or whom I'm going to find in class, and it's been really hard to forge a sense of community, a sense of exploration, when the numbers are shifting. Any ideas? I love the students; I love the poetry; it's the staggering amount of reviewing I have to do with the staggered attendance that feels like my undoing. Enough bandsaw-whining...

STAMPS AND SUBMISSIONS: I've sent out 2 chapbooks and one complete manuscript, as well as an entry to the Howard Nemerov Competition for the Sonnet. (Isn't that a mouthful?) Poems of mine should be up on qarrtsiluni within the week. My first retirement check arrived in the mail, too. I was all excited till I realized it was 3 checks in one. Sigh...Back to the blackboard/dry-erase for me. I need to write more and more regularly. My poems have started to bore me and boor me, too. It's time for some new writing to get done!

SUNDRIES AND SALES: This has been a great Labor Day Trade Day: Antique St. Christopher medal (nothing too valuable there; it's a picture encased in celluloid) on an 8K Victorian rose-gold chain that is valuable, creamware vase, antique easel-style child's chalkboard that I'm going to use in my office at school, extremely good Erphila art deco vase (pink matte finish), Mission oak bookshelf ($12--a freakin' unbelievably great buy--cheaper than Wal-Mart pressed wood and beautiful besides), antique books (Wordsworth and Dickens for 50 cents each), not one but two Bakelite bracelets (one black ribbed bangle and one end-of day tobacco-brown whirled bracelet without a scratch), and a half-doll/Art Deco crumb brush. I've sold the vases, priced the chain and half-doll, polished the shelf. I cleared, after deductions for mileage (10 miles from my house, maybe $6.50), hourly salary (I consider my time worth at least minimum wage, so I deduct $6/hour for both Harvey the Hauler and me, so $15.00 for 2-1/4 hours), the cost of the items above ($25.00), and the purchase of 2 Sundrops and country ham biscuits (total $3.50, including tax), I've already cleared $75.00 just from the vases, one of which was SWEET and hated to bid it adieu. Harvey spent his fistful of dollars on 12 plastic toys; I'm keeping the shelf, the bracelets, and the $1.00 chalkboard.

INCIPIENT MIDLIFE CAREER CHANGE: If teaching doesn't work out (and I hope it will, even with shrinking CW class sizes and an always-smaller spring semester enrollment), if retirement doesn't work out (and I know it won't--I like having money), I can always pick for an antiques dealer. I take great pride in stalking a sale, working an auction floor; I thrive as a hag not haggard from haggling.

OIL-OF-DELAY EPIPHANY: I overheard one of Raleigh's friends tell her, "Your mom's kind of pretty for someone like 100 and all." That was the same day my AARP membership arrived.

SEPTEMBER'S BIG FAT ZEROS: What the other A-Rod is going to add to his bank account if he continues to storm the US Open. His serve is destroying his opponents, he has what looks to this jaded observer to be a completely rebuilt backhand, plus his feet are moving, moving, moving. If he continues to play like this, I pick him to win, which would be even more delicious than the racquet's sweet spot. Go, Andy!

"Noodling Around" with Translation--A Side Bar

I guess I'm going to drive a rust-red '72 Bonneville to the demolition derby of "beautiful car wrecks" that C. Dale describes.

The phrase noodling around has a different meaning here in Kentucky. It means to fish for catfish by literally trying your hand at it, sticking your bare arm into a dark underwater hole and grappling around for catfish. No hooks, no reel, no poles, and no lures--your hand is the only thing-a-ma-bob in the tackle box; it's also live bait.

Isn't it a beautiful thought, though, that translation's like that, that all poetry's like that? Wading around in language instead of water; probing, prodding, pulling out something that might be a marvelous catfish, might also be a snapping turtle, a behemoth of a crawdad?

And in what other two pasttimes are you actually the line?
___________________

This isn't noodling (or hogging, or dogging, or rassling), but I like it anyway:



PS And, yes, I've noodled before, and I have the river rash to prove it.