Hell-O, Poetry Lovers! Here are some flowers...

Above are blossoms of Sorbet, which is my favorite peony. We have three bushes of these in the front right corner of our lawn, and I think they are beautiful as poems. Check out this charming poem and its especially strong simile at the end.
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Pink and White--Deborah Garrison

Peonies are the only flower I care for
and when I saw them from the window
yesterday, tumbled and heavy along
a fence, fully exploded, nodding
at the ground,
hanging their heads but not
yet spoiled, I remembered
a summer (maybe seven years
ago, or was it ten?) I wasn't sure
our love would come again,
and here I am, almost

kissing the grass like that,
bursting and rich, cracked
all over like broken cake—
makes you cry but still sweet.

Ganache!

You Are a Chocolate Cake

Fun, comforting, and friendly. You are a true classic, and while you're not super cutting edge, you're high quality. People love your company - and have even been known to get addicted to you.

What Kind of Cake Are You?

Avatar Review: A Quick Note

Work by Jared Carter, one of my favorite poets, is in this issue (along with three lovely pieces by Suzanne Frischkorn). I love Carter's work especially for his careful craftmanship of sentence, line, and image; for his mastery of both lyric and narrative--he has a storyteller's voice, and equally a musician's. His newest book, Cross This Bridge at a Walk, is composed of 16 narrative poems, set around a river and the bridge that crosses it, featuring Miss Emily Dickinson, a musical bridge (including notation), a tent revival, freshwater pearls, and Coxey's Army. Read it and see if I'm not right: Carter is one of the best poets writing today, and this is an astounding book.

Ten I Live By

Rivers and Tides sums up my philosophy on writing. Here are some other quotes I've taken to heart and tried to take to the page.
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“Nothing happens unless you first dream.” Carl Sandburg

“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” Juan Ramon Jimenez

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” Dr. Seuss

“You can taste a word.” Pearl Bailey

“Everything has been thought of before, but the difficulty is to think of it again.” Goethe

“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.” Truman Capote

“There is no great writing, only great rewriting.” Justice Brandeis

“All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.” Frederico Fellini

"I am fretting, scratching. What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in. " -Flaubert

.“The more controlled, limited and tormented art is, the freer it is.” Igor Stravinsky

Another quote on poetry and prose : T. E. Hulme

The prose writer drags meaning along with the rope. The poet makes it stand on end and hit you.



Henri Rousseau's Snake Charmer has been in my thoughts today: Poet as snake charmer--I measure time by how a body sways (Roethke).

Five-Oh! Tagged By Aaron Smith

Here are today's favorites--the weekday wonders plus 2 for the weekend.

1. "Let's Stay Together." Al Green--oh Reverend, how you testify! It's hopelessly romantic, and there's something very primal in those high notes.
2. "Livin' for the City." Stevie Wonder is awesome at any time, but Stevie Wonder angry produces perhaps the greatest pop/poetic/politic song of all time.
3. "Love Shack." The B52's bring back memories of the 80s and my own outsized hairsprayed hair and silver eyelashes, when I drove a car as big as a whale and literally danced all night. Oh, to be 20 again in a New Wave Format.
4. "Eleanor Rigby." Sir Paul, you don't write 'em like this anymore. Great lyrics and violins straight out of Vivaldi.
5. "Sexual Healing." Martin Gaye. (My husband sings the hell out of this song--ahem).

A special mention has to go out to:
6. "They Say It's Your Birthday," which my teacher and friend Bill Matthews sang to me on my 22nd birthday.
7. "You Ain't Woman Enough to Take My Man." Loretta Lynn (and her lookalike--quite possibly the best drag performance I've ever seen).

I tag Peter and A.D. Thomas.

San Antonio Statistics--The Best Thing Since Sliced...

For the eleventh consecutive game, Tim Duncan has scored at least 20 pounds and swiped at least 10 rebounds. Amazing--it must be the carbs.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

The Return of the Cicada to Chicago (Home of Poetry)

Three Haiku

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The Love Song of J. Alfred Cicada
(With Apologies to Mr. Eliot)

Wings beating, whirring
blender's blades: I do not think
that they will sing to me

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Cicada Lazarus
(With Apologies to Ms. Plath)

I have done it again
once every 17
years I emerge

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Sunday Morning Hangover
(With apologies to Mr. Stevens)

Sussuration of
cicadas and late coffee:
here I'm red-eyed, too

Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six

Please check out the link--I have work up today. Thanks.

Perhaps the Best Pickup Line, Ever

Yf thou were a latyn tretise ich wolde putte thee in the vernacular.



Thanks to Heidi for the link.

Attention, All Mark Doty Fans: This is Adorable!

Mother's Day...I've always been a liberal...

Now I'm a liberal with bleeding hearts.




Harvey has planted a shade garden for me: pink pouting bleeding hearts, hosta, caladium, ferns, and vinca. It's gorgeous. My daughter made me a card "herself," Daniel called and sent cards, and I am blessed.

On a bittersweet note, I went to see my mother with yellow roses (her favorite), and she called me by my sister's name all through the visit. (My sister Karen died 2 years ago). I cannot imagine the grief of losing a child, and the memories I have of my children, and eventually the memories of my own childhood. Think good thoughts for my dad.

"What We Don't Know About What We Know": Happy Mother's Day to You and Especially to Grace Paley

Grace Paley is one of my heroes as a writer. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, especially "A Conversation with My Father," is essential reading for me. I read this book straight through every year (the way many people read the Bible), and always I'm taking away the voices--so much of her work is a conversation with the reader, a folk tale she's spinning about faith and Faith.

Another definition of conversation, a biblical one, is lifestyle, and as much as I admire the work I admire the life. It's a life, not only a "literary life," but one filled to the brim with politics and writing and family and friendships. Her conversation really is how to live a life.

Among the quotes of Paley's I love and have saved in my journals are these.

"There isn't a story written that isn't about blood and money. People and their relationship to each other is the blood, the family. And how they live, the money of it."
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"We write about what we don't know about what we know."
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"The act of illumination is a political act. That is, the act of saying, "See, this has been in darkness. This life has been unseen, and unknown." Now, to make that decision and say, "I want to illuminate this life"—which is the act of bringing justice into the world a little bit—that's a decision you make. But if you say, "Here's a life that's lying there. Now I'd like to take a rock and slowly cover it," that's a political' decision. I think people do that with language all the time. Sentimental language does that."
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"Somehow or other in fiction I was able to really hear with this other ear—to use both. I mean the kind of traditional educated literary knowledge of this ear and then the ear that really had been just listening to people all the time, and used the language of place and time.

"When you write poetry—this is a false definition, but you'll see what I mean when I say it—when people write poetry it's really talking to the world....That's one definition: poetry is addressing the world and fiction is getting the world to talk to you. When I was able to get into somebody else's voice, when I was able to speak in other people's voices, I found my own. Until then I did not have a voice that could tell a story."
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(On being asked why there have been no great women writers before the 20th century)

"What do you mean? What's great? Great goes up and goes down. Shakespeare wasn't great for a period there. Then he got great, then he got greater, then he got greatless, then he got greater again. I think the main thing is that women have been bringing up children. They haven't had work of their own of any kind—I mean why should they, if they weren't great anythings, why would they be great writers? I mean they weren't great mercantilists either. They weren't great capitalists murdering the world. They were not in public life. And writing is an extremely public art. I just look at it from the other side. I say how amazing that Jane Austen wrote and was appreciated. There were plenty of women writing, different kinds of women, you know. George Eliot. How come they did it? How come Mrs. Gaskell really did it? How come Charlotte Perkins Gilman did it? How brave George Sand was! How come Kate Chopin did it? That's the way I look at it, in an entirely different way. The miracle is what women have done in this world. It's miraculous that they did the work they did on such a high level. Where did they do it? And wearing the clothes they were wearing? How could they even sit to do it? I mean they must have loosened something. But if they were in the family parlor, they couldn't loosen everything."

Only Grace Paley could bring stays and staying power together!

P.S. The last three quotes are from an interview with Paley in Women Writers Talking(link above), which is available through Barnes and Noble (link), Amazon, and also through Questia's online library.

The Fab Five--What Songs? A Moi (Avec Amour)

What 5 songs knock my socks off? I'll choose a few--it's hard to limit to five.

GOSPEL "Midnight Cry" (Andre Crouch version)
OPERA "Mon Couer S'ouvre a ta Voix" My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice" aria from Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila
COUNTRY/WESTERN"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" (Hank Williams--the lyrics are actually a poem)
STANDARD/INSTRUMENTAL "Stardust" (Hoagy Carmichael version)
STANDARD/VOCAL: "La Vie en Rose" (Edith Piaf--wonderful versions by Louis Armstrong and Pepe le Pew, as well. I pray k.d. lang will someday record this).

And, at the mention of lang, here's a classic (told you I couldn't stop at 5--and I think she is so beautiful).

Attention E!, People, Access Hollywood: Regarding Ms. Hilton

In order to provide more beauty and excitement to (most of) my otherwise mundane life, I'd suggest that you...

"The N" is for Narrative Magazine

We looked at each other. That sentence must suffice, but it doesn’t approach the
truth. I learned that day that some looks are tangible, sometimes when you turn
and see the person who is the one person whom you want to see, the look pulls into
your heart like a train into a station bringing every new thing to your old town. The
look held and our breathing subsided, and I saw her grin vanish as our eyes fixed
and there was nothing to do but kiss, and we did kiss. Side by side like that we both
leaned in and closed our eyes and I felt her mouth, the mouth that had helped me
learn to speak, fall against my own.---Ron Carlson, “The N,” in Narrative Magazine

This story is masterful in its language play, its deep puns on the idea of sentence, sound, and schism. Let us all praise Mr. Carlson. He's my teacher's teacher (T.M. McNally) and a fine fine writer.

Narrative Magazine is my favorite online journal (Blackbird is a close, close second). The fiction is consistently fine, and the layout is very easy to read. (I don't need bifocals--yet. The day may be coming, though).

The Divine Miss D. #339

I tend my flowers for thee -
Bright Absentee!
My Fuchsia's Coral Seams
Rip - while the Sower - dreams -
Geraniums - tint - and spot -
Low Daisies - dot -
My Cactus - splits her beard
To show her throat -

Carnations - tip their spice -
And Bees - pick up -
A Hyacinth - I hid -
Puts out a Ruffled Head -
And odors fall
From flasks - so small -
You marvel how they held -

Globe Roses - break their satin flake -
Upon my Garden floor -
Yet - thou - not there -
I had as lief they bore
No Crimson - more -

Thy flower - be gay -
Her Lord - away!
It ill becometh me -
I'll dwell in Calyx - Gray -
How modestly - alway -
Thy Daisy -
Draped for thee!

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Now this is erotic. I can't believe in my hummingbird-drop-in-and-read approach to Dickinson that I've missed this one. That cactus line scorches. I put #339 up there with Wild Nights! and Split the Lark. The poem reminds me of Campion and Marvell, too...was Emily thinking of these poems? Is there a conversation here?

More on this when I'm not so tired--all the MFA work is done, teaching is all done, and I have only to grade 25 more portfolios and write the summing-up letters for final grades...I have a week. I'm sure I'll make it. I keep telling myself that...more moan than mantra.

N.B. From Dickinson's letters: "I don't know what you can do for it-thank you-Master-but if I had the Beard on my cheek-like you-and you-had Daisy's petals-and you cared so for me-what would become of you?"

Word of the Day: My Fortieth Anniversary (Ephemera Collection)

asyndeton (uh-SIN-di-ton, -tuhn), noun

Omission of conjunctions, as in "I came, I saw, I conquered."

[From Late Latin, from Greek, from neuter of asyndetos (not linked),
from a- + syndetos (bound together), from syndein (to bind together),
from syn- + dein (to bind).]

Asyndeton is a powerful device to indicate extemporaneous effect,
and to add intensity or force to diction. Imagine if it were
"I came, I saw, and I conquered." It's easy to see how rhythm is lost.

If you're itching to use all those conjunctions you've saved with
the use of asyndeton, try polysyndeton, as in "Uncle Charlie gobbled
cookies and bagels and pizza and pasta."
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The poem that first sent me into orbit with poetry was E.E. Cummings' "maggie and milly and molly and may." After exactly 40 years (going back to my first diary of musings) I have found the term for the effect of those anaphoretic conjunctions--- polysyndeton.


maggie and milly and molly and may

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.


On May 3, 1967, I printed this poem in my yellow leatherette diary, along with the folowing entry: Here are four little girls at the beach who learn themselves through what they've touched. I still don't think I can explicate the poem any better than that, forty years later. Polynsyndeton: maggie and milly and molly and may and me. I am the fifth little girl who learns myself through what I've touched, and through what touches me.

My last day of teaching is today--I hope at least one or two of my students will find at least one poem they will love 40 years later. If I've pointed them toward that, I've shown them a world, the way Cummings has done for me: Send it on.

Open Letter to Producers of American Idol

If two people from last night's show are going home, please make it...(drumroll) GEORGE AND LAURA!

Word of the Day: Usance/The Custom of the Country

usance \YOO-zuns\ noun

1 : firmly established and generally accepted practice or procedure : usage
2 : use, employment
3 : interest
4 : the time allowed by custom for payment of a bill of exchange in foreign commerce

Example sentence:
"Make an investment of any spare monies as may render some usance." (Lord Byron)

"Usance" was borrowed from Latin in the 14th century as a word meaning "habit" or "custom." In the late 16th century, its worth was compounded when it became a word for both the lending of money at interest and the interest charged. Both meanings were known to Shakespeare when he was writing The Merchant of Venice (1596). "He lends out money gratis, and brings down [t]he rate of usance here with us in Venice," says the usurer Shylock of the protagonist Antonio. And, later in the play, Shylock tells how Antonio has "rated ... about [his] moneys and [his] usances." Unexplainably, the currency of these uses plummeted shortly after appearing in the play, only to be revived in the 19th century.

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How closely is this word related to nuisance? In Kentucky, the same pronunciation, yousuns ,is a combined/contracted form of "you ones," usually referring to a gaggle of children or animals: "Yousuns get in this house. Right now!" (phonetically, "You suns, git iyun this haows racht naow!"). I have heard this many times, said it a few in my own hillbilly voice.

UPDATE: Nuisance comes from old French nocere, to injure. So "Yousuns come up here on the porch before you nuisance my flowers," which my Mammaw said many a time, actually had a real and accurate meaning.