Newest Phase in Generation Gap (From Last Week)

Chuck Barry is referenced in a poem.

"Oh, Chuck Barry--wasn't he a spy or something?"

Non sequitur? Nope.

"Yeah, I liked that movie about him being in the CIA."

Ringin' a Bell and The Gong Show are confused.

Question: Is holding in laughter hazardous to your health?

Sincerely,

Pamela B. Goode (or trying to be)

Scatter Shot--As Big As a Glacier and About That Slow

I have joined a fantasy basketball league--my REAL fantasy basketball league would involve the ABA. AJPL thought this was hilarious. He probably thought this stood for American Bar(d) Association.

Does anyone else remember David Thompson? I am writing a poem about him--I had an old draft that I started years ago, which I've gone back to with a more critical eye.

We have an assignment in workshop to write a poem of exactly 25 lines with 6 pairs of rhymes (avoiding couplets), no matching of parts of speech or length of syllables on the end-rhyme (for example, hard and card would not count, but hard and blackguard would), and all the lines must have greater than 11 syllables. (I had a presentment that we'd have to rhyme soon--I wrote a 36-line poem in couplets just last week, in anticipation, but this doesn't qualify in either, and I don't feel like turning it into a Readers' Digest Condensed poem).

Daniel Anderson is a hardliner, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

Maybe I can make that basketball poem rhyme. Who knows? I'm going to try.

______

Harvey is ahead of expected with his rehab. He is walking 1/4 of a mile already and is staying within his target heart rate. His doctor says GO FOR IT. As long as he doesn't lift anything heavier than his shoes...which I find a strange restriction. No cigarettes so far...I am thrilled. He has also lost weight and is adhering to his diet. I have been experimenting with new chicken and seafood recipes. I think I should write a cookbook...

______

I went to Mark Jarman's poetry reading last night. It was awesome--everything you would want in a poetry reading (except he did not read "Groundswell," which I love). He read primarily from To the Green Man, plus two poems that he had written when he lived in Murray, and a brand-new poem. What Jarman does with time in his poetry is fascinating to me.

Mark's wife Amy was with him, and she remembered me. I cannot believe it. I do not look the same, I don't think, as I used to be a blond with long wavy hair. My hair is still wavy, but it's no longer blonde--every baby makes your hair darker. (I didn't believe it either). Amy herself was easy to remember because she's so pretty and has not changed a whit. If you ever have a chance to hear her sing, please go. She has one of the most beautiful voices I've ever heard. One night in a basement rec room, I heard her sing, and it was transcendent. I've never had another opportunity.

______

Part of my editing work is for a facility on the Gulf Coast. It's had no work for weeks till today, so I must go "fill in the blanks" for a while. Two of the dictators are Belorussian, and their dictations are really hard for most people to understand, much less cast into sentences. I bet these are queued to me specifically. (Unfortunately neither of them is "DOCTOR PUNCTUATION," which is good, I guess, because I need the money and that account is major bucks). 10 weeks till the holidays. And Dr. C. Dale Young is the "real" Dr. Punctuation...)

______
I have finished the Hermione Grainger costume for Halloween--there is a school robe, a school tie, and a Hogwarts badge, and Harvey has made the coolest wand. I sort of look like Professor McGonnagoll (although I am not THAT aged), so maybe I should get a wand of my own and, of course, a hat.

Henry James and the Sentence

"And day after day, in the face of every argument, of every consideration of generosity, she would repeat, without winking, in that voice like the squeeze of a doll’s stomach: ‘It goes with the house – it goes with the house.’"

Mrs. Gereth, The Spoils of Poynton

Harvey

Harvey's better--he's made a huge recovery. The doctors and nurses are surprised--must be all that good mojo from Ironic Points of Light. He'll come home either late this afternoon or first thing tomorrow. I am so relieved. Thanks to all of you who emailed me or posted. He has a long road ahead of him, as far as cardiac rehab, but I know he can do it.

Synesthesia

until everything
was Rimbaud, Rimbaud, Rimbaud

Harvey

My husband had a heart attack and is in the cardiac care unit after stent placement. I won't be back for a while.

Hopefully he'll be okay after a few changes in diet and exercise and STOPPING SMOKING. This nearly killed him, and he's only 41. People, please pay attention and don't smoke.

Summer poem for autumn days

Summer
Louise Gluck

Remember the days of our first happiness,
how strong we were, how dazed by passion,
lying all day, then all night in the narrow bed,
sleeping there, eating there too: it was summer,
it seemed everything had ripened
at once. And so hot we lay completely uncovered.
Sometimes the wind rose; a willow brushed the window.

But we were lost in a way, didn't you feel that?
The bed was like a raft; I felt us drifting
far from our natures, toward a place where we'd discover nothing.
First the sun, then the moon, in fragments,
stone through the willow.
Things anyone could see.

Then the circles closed. Slowly the nights grew cool;
the pendant leaves of the willow
yellowed and fell. And in each of us began
a deep isolation, though we never spoke of this,
of the absence of regret.
We were artists again, my husband.
We could resume the journey.

Cardinals, Cardinals, Cardinals

There is no joy in Mudville--oops, Houston. I will bet the Astros fans were shocked into silence. 412 feet--and two feet that you could probably hear rounding the bases.

Bad, bad move for the Astros to pitch to Pujols.

Monday Mish-Mash and Monty

Space-takers were my favorite part of newspapers—snippets of fact used prepress to finish off a column of type. (This was way, way before Pagemaker).

Little details like the following still intrigue me. These are lines from my notebooks that I intend to use someday, somewhere.
_____

One can type numbers from zero, one, two,... onwards, and not use the A key on the keyboard until reaching one thousand. (Peter Pereira, this one's for you).
_____

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West were friends in Hollywood. They died within a day of each other. Today's West's birthday. He was 37 when he and his wife died in a car crash. (West wrote three of my favorite novels ever: Miss Lonely Hearts, A Cool Million, and The Day of the Locust).
_____

It's also the birthday of Montgomery Clift, the most beautiful profile to ever appear on-screen. He'd crack your heart clean as you'd crack a walnut… See the link above before disagreeing with this assertion.
______

Of the 250-plus known species of shark in the world, only about 18 are known to be dangerous to man.
(Query: How does one "know" a shark?)

e. e. cummings

This is the first poem (and cummings the first poet) I ever found on my own. This broke the rules I'd learned from Sister Magdalen, even as it kept them.

10

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

____________

Here's one of my favorite poems--think tone.


somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

___________
As for the link, I'm wondering if cummings started the tradition of authors touching their faces for book jackets. Jim Behrle should take a look at this trend.

Forty-Something

On this day in 1943, Robert Lowell was sentenced to jail for a year for draft evasion. He refused to be drafted because he objected to saturation bombing. Lowell served his sentence in New York's West Street jail.

This is one of the first poems I read in college, and it still blows me away.

MEMORIES OF WEST STREET AND LEPKE

Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming
in pajamas fresh from the washer each morning,
I hog a whole house on Boston's
"hardly passionate Marlborough Street,"
where even the man
scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans,
has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate,
and is "a young Republican."
I have a nine months' daughter,
young enough to be my granddaughter.
Like the sun she rises in her flame-flamingo infants' wear.

These are the tranquilized Fifties,
and I am forty. Ought I to regret my seedtime?
I was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O.,
and made my manic statement,
telling off the state and president, and then
sat waiting sentence in the bull pen
beside a negro boy with curlicues
of marijuana in his hair.

Given a year,
I walked on the roof of the West Street Jail, a short
enclosure like my school soccer court,
and saw the Hudson River once a day
through sooty clothesline entanglements
and bleaching khaki tenements.
Strolling, I yammered metaphysics with Abramowitz,
a jaundice-yellow ("it's really tan")
and fly-weight pacifist,
so vegetarian,
he wore rope shoes and preferred fallen fruit.
He tried to convert Bioff and Brown,
the Hollywood pimps, to his diet.
Hairy, muscular, suburban,
wearing chocolate double-breasted suits,
they blew their tops and beat him black and blue.

I was so out of things, I'd never heard
of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
"Are you a C.O.?" I asked a fellow jailbird.
"No," he answered, "I'm a J.W."
He taught me the "hospital tuck,"
and pointed out the T-shirted back
of Murder Incorporated's Czar Lepke,
there piling towels on a rack,
or dawdling off to his little segregated cell full
of things forbidden to the common man:
a portable radio, a dresser, two toy American
flags tied together with a ribbon of Easter palm.
Flabby, bald, lobotomized,
he drifted in a sheepish calm,
where no agonizing reappraisal
jarred his concentration on the electric chair
hanging like an oasis in his air
of lost connections. . . .

Safe as Houses?

Manderley? Thornfield Hall? Poynton?

_________________

On a happier note, I am starting an MFA this spring--only 20 years after I first wanted to go. This low-residency program is the right choice for my family, my job, and--in this case, most importantly--me. I feel really good about it, and I am glad someone liked my manuscript.

In workshop this week, I turned in a double sonnet--very ambitious for me--and the professor gave it back, with this note: "Write 30 lines. And only keep a third of these." The x's on the page looked like a complicated football playbook.

...Which Alters When It Alteration Finds

“Love is the revelation of our deepest personal meaning, value, and identity. But this revelation remains impossible as long as we are the prisoner of our own egoism. I cannot find myself in myself, but only in another. My true meaning and worth are shown to me not in my estimate of myself, but in the eyes of the one who loves me; and that one must love me as I am, with my faults and limitations, revealing to me the truth that these faults and limitations cannot destroy my worth in their eyes; and that I am therefore valuable as a person, in spite of my shortcomings, in spite of the imperfections of my exterior ‘package.’ The package is totally unimportant. What matters is this infinitely precious message which I can discover only in my love for another person. And this message, this secret, is not fully revealed to me unless at the same time I am able to see and understand the mysterious and unique worth of the one I love.”

From Love and Living by Thomas Merton

_____
I keep coming back to Robert Penn Warren's "All things lead me to love."

Thankfully

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

32 POEMS Challenge--FRET: TRYING TO WRITE

                                    


                         Peevish as a baby
                              it stutters a cry.
     
                         Rough as a ruffle
                              it's a boat worrying water,

                         wrinkling into waves,      
                              sundial shadowing hours,

                         hemp twisting and twining,
                              winding like kudzu, bent

                         mats of vines tighter and tighter,
                              wrapped around and around

                         the heartwood's heart
                              until an oak uproots.

                         Bleached out as a blonde,
                              her darker roots

                         blooming, ink on a page,
                              it will cry and cry

                         out.  Worrying words, dog
                              with a bone, around

                         and around widdershins, how
                              I water this poor garden,

                         furrowing plowshare bent
                              against the stone

                         time's hidden
                              in topsoil.  Hours and hours

                         of it and like the poor
                              this form of mine

     
                         is with me always.  
                              Kudzu again roots

                         where there is only
                              earth to hold it:  bent
     
                         green hearts like mouths
                                devouring the hills.  Cry
     
                         me a river, cry me an ocean,
                              but only water

                         takes on its shape.  
                              Lines work in a round

                         as I row, row, row
                              my poor boat.  I drink to water

                         a whistle, and all I have
                              is wet wind.  My fingers root

                         in earth, root in water, but nothing
                              grows. I fret

                         my paper to bits.  

                         
                                   Pamela Johnson Parker

Like Gothcakes

Subtitled, in a Nathaniel West way,

The Dismantling of the Good Grey Poet

HOWL Turns 50 Today…Carl Solomon! We were with you in Mayfield...

This is the fiftieth anniversary of this poem’s public debut at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. I cannot imagine the wildness of that reading, but I do distinctly remember my first encounter with Ginsberg. Not unlike Lawrence Ferlinghetti, my friends and I had our own experience with obscenity charges. My friend Sherry found a mimeographed copy of this poem and some other--er--reading materials, in her brother’s closet. We were 11 years old, it was the summer before sixth grade, and we were curious. The five of us perused this poem carefully, because we were sure it was PORNO (and S-E-X was a big topic of conversation for us).

We passed HOWL, from house to house, inside an issue of American Girl, till it was confiscated by a mom and promptly incinerated (along with our other reading material, which included an issue of Playboy, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and The Sensuous Man/The Sensuous Woman). We were all grounded for a week, which meant no TV, no telephone, and even more time to think about what we’d read. (That was the exact punishment given to me by my parents: “Think about what you’ve read.” My friends and I could think of, or talk about, little else than those books. The Monkees and Tiger Beat were definitely back-burner topics that summer, and I think Ginsberg would have been glad of the uproar he and Hefner caused in our little cul-de-sac).

At the time of its demise, the pages of HOWL were as soft and textured as chamois, and the purple letters had faded to wisteria.

By the way, Sherry’s brother was the same guy whose car we had hidden in, hoping to go to a rock concert called Woodstock, but that’s another story...one I'm trying to revise...

Those were the days, and I guess that was my introduction to contemporary American poetry, the 20th century British novel, and the self-help genre of paperback publishing.

Rosh Hashanah, Rilke, Robinson, and Writing

KING ME/WAILING ME/ME, MYSELF AND I

The sounds of the shofar (1/3/9) are deafening, and its shape's unchanged for centuries.

Tekiah -- long blast
Shevarim --wails
Teruah -- bleats in short succession (J. Carol Oates--"Where Are You Going...Where Have You Been?" always reminds me of this part of the Shofar. I have no idea why)

_______

Two lines that I admire in Rilke:

Give me your mouth to soften, love;
Ah, your hair is all in idleness.--

Rilke, from "What Fields Are Fragrant as Your Hands?"

______

I'm sitting in my study, in the dark, because the bulbs in the old ceiling fan are blown (I need to go to the hardware store and find more--last night I asked Harvey to go to the store for bulbs and he brought back TULIPS).

Only the light from the computer monitor is working. It reminds me of this passage, on sitting in the dark, from Housekeeping by M. Robinson:

Evening...She gave the word three syllables, and indeed I think she liked it so well for its tendency to smooth, to soften. She seemed to dislike the disequilibrium of counterpoising a roomful of light against a world of darkness. Sylvie in a house was more or less like a mermaid in a ship's cabin. She preferred it sunk in the very element it was meant to exclude.

I guess I am the counterpoint to Sylvie's counterpoise---I'm sitting here in a dark room against a world of light. It's 80 humid degrees here and very sunny.

_____

I've written my obsessive image poem, which has as its focus weeds. I'll post it after workshop. I have a draft of it saved already.

44 Things You Don't Want to Know About Me

1. Alias First name?
Pamela.

2. Were you named after anyone?
Middle name is "Leigh," after Vivien. Thankfully, my dad saved me from the complete movie star moniker.

3. Do you wish on stars?
Yes.

4. When did you last cry?
What time is it?

5. What is your favorite lunchmeat?
Chicken salad. Is that a lunch meat? If not, roast beast.

6. What is your birth date?
July 9.

7. What's your most embarrassing CD?
It's an 8-track (embarrassing enough, but it gets worse)--of A. Ginsberg, reading William Blake, and it's just as awful as it sounds.

8. If you were another person, would you be friends with you?
I think I might be like Groucho and refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

9. Do you use sarcasm a lot?
Constantly.

10. What are your nicknames?
I like my full name, Pamela, but my nickname's Whut, for the Kentuckiana way I pronounce W-H-A-T.

11. Would you bungee jump?
No, thanks--I've already had one umbilical cord.

12. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?
No--stilettos and clogs don't tie.

13. Do you think that you are strong?
Yes, most of the time.

14. What is your favorite ice cream flavor?
Coffee.

15. Shoe Size?
7

16. Red or pink?
Red and pink. But mainly black.

17. What is your least favorite thing about yourself?
I can't sing on key, even though I was in a band.

18. Who do you miss most?
My best friend and sister.

19. What color pants and shoes are you wearing?
Black heels and black dress. I'm in full Morticia mode.

20. What are you listening to right now?
"Shattered" by the Rolling Stones (from Some Girls)

21. What did you eat for breakfast?
Toasted bagel with mozzarella and homemade bruschetta. Yum.

22.If you were a crayon, what color would you be?
Bittersweet.

23. What is the weather like right now?
89 degrees in October. Sunny and not too humid.

24. Last person you talked to on the phone?
My boss.

25. The first things you notice about the opposite sex?
Hands. Voice. Eyes.

26. Do you like the person who sent this to you?
Yes.

27. Favorite Drink?
Coffee.

28. Hair Color?
Virgin--never dyed or permed. My hair used to be caramel but it's faded with each child to sort of a bronze color. I am almost-blonde, sometimes longing-to-be-blonde again.

29. Do you wear contacts?
No.

30. Favorite Food?
Pasta with clam sauce (my own).

31. Last Movie You Watched?
In a theatre--Corpse Bride.
On cable-Being John Malkovich (Now I think I've seen all of John Cusack's movies, and this was by far the most unusual--It's not Say Anything, although it is).

32. Favorite Day Of The Year?
Thanksgiving.

33. Scary Movies Or Happy Endings?
Henry James. You be the judge.

34. Summer Or Winter?
Winter. I'm happiest between autumn and spring equinoxes.

35. Hugs or Kisses?
Kisses.

36. What Is Your Favorite Dessert?
Mounds Cake (again my frosting recipe--call me Ogden Ganache).

37. Living Arrangements?
An 1888 Queen Anne, which actually owns me. And all living arrangements are incomplete unless cats are involved.

38. What Books Are You Reading?
Henry James--"The Turn of the Screw," for the umpteenth time. Working on the I-eye thing, and wondering how this influenced FSF in Gatsby.
Elizabeth Bishop--"Complete Poems," for fun.
Norton Anthology of Poetry, for class. (DH Lawrence for this week).

39. What's On Your Mouse Pad?
I have optical mice and don't have mouse pads. I guess my mice are transients.

40. What Did You Watch Last Night on TV?
Antiques Roadshow.

41. Favorite Smells?
Fleur D'interdit. Chanel No. 5. My children's hair. Vanilla. Fresh-ground coffee beans.

42. Favorite junk food?
Popcorn. (Add that to favorite smells, also). Milky Way candy bars (Monogamous relationship).

43. Rolling Stones or Beatles?
Actually, Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone."

44. What's the farthest you've been from home?
Kingston, Jamaica; San Francisco; Montreal; Cape Hatteras.
(Depending on the compass direction).

The Latest Rejection--Sour Grapes

I find this one to be disgusting--my online submission was deleted without being opened. Isn't that really callous? Not the "no," which I expect, but the "don't bother," which I didn't expect. If I didn't flag my e-mails, my submission would be in limbo forever.

What makes it worse is that this is a "prestigious" magazine that my local library cannot afford--so I provide an annual subscription to the library for writers in our area to access.

No more. I can send that $50.00 the Red Cross.

And I definitely won't waste a stamp telling them so.

Operator, Information, Give Me Jesus on the Line

Somehow, I don't think Saint Peter's picking up...