Why I'm Learning Greek

Has anybody seen this movie?

---------
Totally unrelated, but I'm drafting a poem, and did you know that Old/New/Last Will and Testaments, all have their root in testis, witness, from which root also derives the word testicles (literally "little witnesses")?

Subliminal Mutterings

1. Sleepy ::
Turkey overload

2. Thanksgiving ::
Bloat

3. Fifteen ::
Men on a Dead Man's Chef

4. Authority ::
Mellencamp Always Wins

5. Bangs ::
the Drum Slowly

6. Curled ::
Fern

7. Young man ::
Ganymede

8. Surprised ::
by Joy (Wordsworth!)

9. Mistake ::
Made

10. Handle it ::
with kid gloves

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you and yours have a wonderful day!
Since we are feeding my parents this year, and my mother is a stickler for this, here goes:

Menu Chez Johnson Parker

Appetizers
Parmesan Puffs
Shrimp Dip and Raw Vegetables

Salad/Soup
Spinach Salad with Cranberry Vinaigrette
Broccoli and Mushroom Soup

Drinks
Iced Tea
White Grape Juice
Toad Hollow Chardonnay
Coffee

Main Course
Turkey Roulade with Oyster Dressing
Steamed Green Beans with Feta Cheese
Corn on the Cob
Baked Sweet Potatoes (for the over-30 crowd, ie, Harvey, my parents and me)
Twice Baked Cheese Mashed Potatoes (for the under 30 crowd, ie, Dan and Raleigh)
Sourdough Rolls

Desserts
Carrot Cake (my folks and me--this is a vegetable serving)
Pumpkin Pie (Harvey--this is also a vegetable serving)
Chocolate Fudge Cake (cake topper size--Raleigh and Daniel)

Centerpiece: Autumn leaves/chrysanthemums culled from the yard

Dishes: Here's where I fall down. I have Pink Fiesta, pink and black dishes that look like Superspirograph designs (50s op art), and black/white china that I am NOT going to use, as it is too much trouble to wash/serve/rewash by hand. I guess it will be the Manhattan glasses and plates, although the soup bowls will NOT match, and I hope my parents can overlook a few fleabites on the coffee cups. (Santa, please bring me some practical stoneware for Christmas--and let it be beautiful).

I'm leaving you with my favorite poem of thanksgiving:

Try to Praise the Mutilated World--Adam Zagajewski

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

Rob Brezney's Astrology: Hers and His

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Two of the best money-saving steps you can take, says TV's mock pundit Stephen Colbert, are to stop filling your hot tub with champagne and stop lining your gerbil's cage with hundred-dollar bills. I highly recommend that you brainstorm about initiating similar conservative and preservative actions, Cancerian. It's time for you to get really serious about shedding wasteful habits, cutting out needless excesses, and culling trivial activities that impinge on the time and energy you have available for the really important things. This shouldn't be a cause for demoralization, by the way. On the contrary, the more creative you are about setting limits, the more long-term blessings you'll set in motion.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): When he's in his prime, a male panda performs an
average of eight handstands a day. There's no apparent evolutionary
purpose in this stunt. He does it because it feels good. I suggest you
make him your role model in the coming week, Leo. Identify three
activities you can do not because they're "good for you" or because they'll advance some goal you're pursuing, but simply for the sheer fun of it. If you can't think of any play-time endeavors that fit this description, do the meditation and research necessary to find some. Whatever deeds you ultimately settle on, do them at least eight times a day. (P.S. Do you know how to do cartwheels?)

_______________________________
So...Chimneysweep (Pamela) meets Kung Fu Panda (Harvey)? What interesting times we're going to live in this week!

I think he'll have the better week!

From Mary via RJ and Now to You

1. When was the last time you wrote a poem?

Two and a half weeks ago

2. What was its title?

"13 Ways of Looking at a Blackboard"

3. What was one image from the poem (if applicable)?

It was a small part of the palimpsest

4. Do you currently have a poem percolating in your brain?

Something's brewing...

5. If you answered "yes" to number four, what is one image from that poem?

rubato/quarter notes scattered like tadpoles

O, Dubya!

For both public and private spaces, the president's family can sort through first-rate spoils instead of relying on shopping trips. There's a White House storage house with old furniture (like four-poster beds) and an art collection with about 500 sculptures, drawings, and paintings (including works by Norman Rockwell and Georgia O'Keefe) obtained as gifts or by previous first families and the White House curator. Traditionally, presidents select portraits of their favorite predecessors to line the walls. For the Oval Office, George W. Bush chose a painting called A Charge To Keep. He often tells visitors that it depicts Methodist circuit riders—missionaries who spread the Good Word across the Alleghenies in the 19th century. It actually depicts a horse thief fleeing a mob.

AWAD: Asyndeton/ Polysyndeton: Argal

This week's theme
Unusual Conjunctions.

This week's words
argal

A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

Most of the words we feature here in AWAD are nouns, adjectives, and verbs. We have also discussed many adverbs. We have even featured a whole week of prepositions -- but not a single conjunction.

It's as if we had unknowingly been committing asyndeton, the fancy word for for omission of conjunctions, as in "I came, I saw, I conquered." The word is from Greek an- (not) + syndetos (bound together). On the other hand, if one is extravagant with conjunctions, as in "Uncle Charlie gobbled cookies and bagels and pizza and pasta," it's called polysyndeton.

It's time to redress the years of injustice and neglect of conjunctions in AWAD. We'll bring this overlooked part of speech into the limelight. This week let's look at five not-so-common conjunctions.

argal
PRONUNCIATION:
(AHR-guhl)

MEANING:
conjunction, adverb: Therefore.


ETYMOLOGY:
By alteration of the Latin ergo (therefore). The word argal is usually used to indicate that the reasoning presented is ludicrous.


USAGE:
"Mr. Barbecue-Smith was a short and corpulent man, with a very large head and no neck. In his earlier middle age he had been distressed by this absence of neck, but was comforted by reading in Balzac's 'Louis Lambert' that all the world's great men have been marked by the same peculiarity, and for a simple and obvious reason: Greatness is nothing more nor less than the harmonious functioning of the faculties of the head and heart; the shorter the neck, the more closely these two organs approach one another; argal...It was convincing."
Aldous Huxley; Crome Yellow; 1921.


A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham. -Anna Sewell, writer (1820-1878)
_________________________
If argal suggests ludicrous reasoning, is it somehow related to gargle, something swished but not swallowed whole?

My Favorite Elegy--I wish the formatting was right.

The Sparrow

(To My Father)



This sparrow

who comes to sit at my window

is a poetic truth

more than a natural one.

His voice,

his movements,

his habits--

how he loves to

flutter his wings

in the dust--

all attest it;

granted, he does it

to rid himself of lice

but the relief he feels

makes him

cry out lustily

which is a trait

more related to music

than otherwise.

Wherever he finds himself

in early spring,

on back streets

or beside palaces,

he carries on

unaffectedly

his amours.

It begins in the egg,

his sex genders it:

What is more pretentiously

useless

or about which

we more pride ourselves?

It leads as often as not

to our undoing.

The cockerel, the crow

with their challenging voices

cannot surpass

the insistence

of his cheep!

Once

at El Paso

toward evening,

I saw--and heard!--

ten thousand sparrows

who had come in from

the desert

to roost. They filled the trees

of a small park. Men fled

(with ears ringing!)

from their droppings,

leaving the premises

to the alligators

who inhabit

the fountain. His image

is familiar

as that of the aristocratic

unicorn, a pity

there are not more oats eaten

nowadays

to make a living easier

for him.

At that,

his small size,

keen eyes,

serviceable beak

and general truculence

assure his survival--

to say nothing

of his innumerable

brood.

Even the Japanese

know him

and have painted him

sympathetically,

with profound insight

Into his minor

characteristics.

Nothing even remotely

subtle

about his lovemaking.

He crouches

before the female,

drags his wings,

waltzing,

throws back his head

and simply--

yells! The din

is terrific.

The way he swipes his bill

across a plank

to clean it,

is decisive.

So with everything

he does. His coppery

eyebrows

give him the air

of being always

a winner--and yet

I saw once,

the female of his species

clinging determinedly

to the edge of

a water pipe,

catch him

by his crown-feathers

to hold him

silent,

subdued,

hanging above the city streets

until

she was through with him.

What was the use

of that?

She hung there

herself,

puzzled at her success.

I laughed heartily.

Practical to the end

it is the poem

of his existence

that triumphed

finally;

a wisp of feathers

flattened to the pavement,

wings spread symmetrically

as if in flight,

the head gone,

the black escutcheon of the breast

undecipherable,

an effigy of a sparrow

a dried wafer only,

left to say

and it says it

without offense,

beautifully;

This was I,

a sparrow.

I did my best;

farewell.



--William Carlos Williams

November 22, 1963: Incorporeal Punishment

For some reason this didn't post yesterday, but anyway, here's my memory:

I was in the first grade at Hickman Elementary, in what would be known two decades later as time-out. My beehive-headed teacher had banished me from the Bluebirds circle and sent me to the darkest corner of our classroom for being able to read without benefit of her instruction. Caterpillars of cobwebs were clinging to my black corduroy jumper and my knee socks. I was next to a bookcase of red "The World Around Us" science volumes, trying to get up the nerve to reach out and read, when the principal's voice scratched through the oak-and-cloth-covered PA speaker. "Kennedy has been shot in Dallas, Texas." Miss Helprin started crying and told us all to take our regular seats. I emerged from my corner, spider-webbed and tear-streaked. Most of my aunts and cousins lived in Dallas, and I wondered if they'd been shot, too.

I didn't know who'd been killed till my grandmother came early in her shiny black Deluxe to pick me up from school. Boy, was she mad at Miss Helprin about the corner and the cobwebs; boy, did she let her know it. I didn't know till then you could yell at a teacher and not be forked by lightning.

On the way to the Deluxe, Mammaw explained to me that our President had died, and everyone was sad, everywhere. As we passed the building's entrance, I noticed the school's flag had been hauled halfway down the pole; it slithered just like the knee socks down my skinny shins. I remembered the President had a daughter named Caroline, a little girl almost exactly my age, with hair the same color as mine, and I guessed that everyone was sad because that little girl had lost her daddy and the country had lost a president. Something was stinging in my eyes; I want to say it was sleeting, but I can't be sure it wasn't just rain, or strings from the spiderwebs. I didn't stop crying until later, when Mammaw reassured me that my aunts and cousins were all okay, and she had talked to them all over the telephone.

Later that weekend, I saw on TV where Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, watched his mouth fall open in that funny jack-o-lantern O; and for a long time I thought everyone who was shot on TV really and truly had died. This made me dread watching any program until Adam West became the Batman, because that couldn't possibly be real.

Alphabet Juice, by Roy Blount, Jr.

Here's the complete title: Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts,...With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory.

This is an amazing read, one of those books that I will keep bedside, as the Wigwam Motels do the Gideon Bible, because I never know when a soul-searching moment might strike.

Tonight, I've flipped from Russian pigs' chrjo chrjo to phlegm to what we might call the "snasal family": snuff, snort, snivel, sniffle, snuffle, snoot, snout, snot." This reminds me of my History of the English Language (also known by me as the acronym HOTEL, not to be confused with the roadside motels above) professor and his class on Old English: Snotornesse, meaning having exceeding wisdom. My theory on this: It's the source of our word snotty which isn't snasal at all but involves looking down the bridge of your nose at someone else. I can find no source to back up this theory, so maybe I do have a contribution to make to literature.


This is where page 1 of Alphabet Juice has led me, from the sounds of swine in my family's native Russia to my own theories on Old English etymology and pejoration.

Also, did you know that it's W.E.B. Dew-boyce? Not Du bois as in of the woods, but "Boyce" like Joyce?

So far, not to be missed entries include: Wilt Chamberlain; rhythm; pareidolia. Here's the latter:

Pareidolia is 'seeing things.' Seeing, that is, what you want to see in ambiguous patterns or images. The Virgin Mary on a piece of toast (never, you notice, on a bagel), weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

To go from eBay to bagel, from the Virgin Mary to Dubya to Hussein, all in a paragraph on religious delusion. (And it gives a new meaning to the phrase She's toast!).

I'm of the opinion Roy Blount, Jr., is a genius. Buy this book.

(As for the Wigwam obsession, ever since I was a little girl I've thought that they looked like A's. One of the three chains is still extant in Cave City, Kentucky; I've stayed there. It was as charming as you might think).

Fabulous Poet and Me: From the Teaching Files

Behold my student, Jessica (et moi, aussi) poring over poetry.

Happy/Happy, Joy/Joy

Happy #1: My favorite poem, which is also my longest poem (6 pages), has found a home.
Happy #2: It should be in a magazine that's distributed at APR during the Writers' Conference.

Joy #1: I did not submit this poem. Someone saw my work somewhere else and solicited it.
Joy #2: This poem had had 49 rejections.

"Such a Dirty Mind" (78 RPM version)

Another Meme: This one is surprisingly accurate, just like the predictions from the Magic Eightball. My Ipod apparently tells you more about my life than I'd like you to know.

Consider yourself tagged.

1. Put your iTunes on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
4. Tag 5-10 friends who might enjoy doing the meme as well as the person you got the meme from.

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
“We Can Work it Out"-Beatles

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
"She’s Not There"-The Zombies (Ouch!)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
“Instant Karma"- John Lennon

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
“We Are the Champions” Queen (Go, Titans!)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
"Paperback Writer”—Beatles (Yes, indeedy)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
“I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”-Rolling Stones

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
“Oh, Pretty Woman” Roy Orbison (Blushing!)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
“People Are Strange"-The Doors (Also 100% correct)

WHAT IS 2+2?
“California Dreamin” Mamas and Papas (New Math!)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIENDS?
“The Joker” Steve Miller (I have a pair of best friends--There are two in every (6)pack)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
“High on You” –Survivor

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
“Not Your Steppin’ Stone”- The Monkees

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
"Maybe I'm Amazed"- Wings

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
“If I Fell”—Beatles (This was thesong when Harvey and I were falling in together).

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
“Go Away, Little Girl” – Del Shannon (Sad but autobiographically apt)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
“Beast of Burden”—Rolling Stones

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
“Bohemian Rhapsody"-Queen (Eerie—this was played at my sister’s funeral)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
“Forever Young”—Rod Stewart (Explaining all the Oil of Delay products)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
“Personal Jesus"-Depeche Mode

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
“I Can’t Make It Alone” Dusty Springfield

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
"Not Fade Away"- Buddy Holly (Shades of Tennyson's "Tithonus"!)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
“Take Me to the River”-Al Green

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
“Time Is on My Side” -Rolling Stones

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
”500 Miles” -The Proclaimers (Only song I know with "havering" in the lyrics)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
“Wish You Were Here”—Pink Floyd

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
“The Sun Always Shines on TV” A-HA

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
“Tainted Love” – Soft Cell

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
“Everybody Wants to Rule the World”-Tears for Fears (My husband sings this 100 times better than they do, and they are awesome!)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
”Call Me” Blondie (I would call him myself).

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
“I Can’t Get It Out of My Head” –Electric Light Orchestra

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
”My Sharona” - The Knack

Sarah Palin's Continuing Assault on the English Language

From "The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla" by Dick Cavett:

What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”

"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.

"And, she concluded,“never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.

(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)

Great Post on Writer's Block: Causes, Problems, Solutions

The blog's RADIO FREE BARD. Among the type of writer's blocks described are three that affect me.

I: Pamela's Exterior Block

Symptoms: Can’t maintain focus on a single project until completion. Started too many projects and can’t devote enough time to them. Always starting never finishing. This is a valid and crippling form of writer’s block.

Cause: Your muse is strong but you lack understanding of your muse and you lack discipline.

Solution: Get your life sorted out. Understand yourself or you’ll never understand what you are trying to say. Understanding what you are trying to say is just as important as understanding what you want to talk about. You may think you want to talk about pirates, space ships and goblins but what you really want to express is discontent at the treatment of women in the workplace. You may think you want to write a marketing blog but what you really want to express is your wonder at the human ability to socialise.

QUESTION I WANT ANSWERED: If I'm sorting out my life, doesn't it inevitably lead to...

II. Pamela's Other External Block: Life or something like it....

Symptoms: Constantly distracted, always finding something to do other than writing. Real life keeps getting in the way.

Cause: You’ve forgotten how easy it is to write. You’re either building it up in your mind as something horribly difficult or tedious or even worse, you just don’t care enough to hunger for it. This is made worse by poor organisational skills or thinking that being a writer is any less demanding than any other job.

Solution: Don’t tackle a big project as the first thing you do when you sit down. If you’re writing a novel, write a diary entry or a blog post first. If you don’t feel inspired by your first scheduled task, do the second. Whatever you do, write. If you’re at the point where you aren’t hungering to put down words and you haven’t written anything that day, start thinking about a nine to five job, it’ll either scare you back to your work or be preparation for when you realise you won’t cut it as a writer.

QUESTION I WANT ANSWERED: When your child comes to you with a cough and a 6th-grade-boyfriend crisis, or your husband comes to you for the car keys or the car insurance bill, or your mother calls you, forgetting how to get home from the grocery store 3 blocks from her house--what then? When there are 24 students who have written 18 essays and 6 implausibly delightful excuses for not having said essays, what then? When the company for which you freelance wants an 18-page technical article edited "right now" meaning rewritten, meaning by 9 a.m., meaning right this damned second or at least by noon dammit so the medical journal has it ASAP, what then? No wonder these dilemmas lead to...

III. Pamela's Interior Block

Symptoms: You can’t think of a single thing to write about. No idea about what kind of project, format, style, universe or issue you wish to tackle. You have nothing that needs to be expressed.

Cause: You’ve shut yourself down due to stress.

Solution: You were once a child with a boundless imagination, either a boy with a cowboy hat and a plastic six-shooter or a girl with a box full of mummy’s old clothes with which you would play dress-up. There is no reason for a person to be completely devoid of wonder unless they’ve shut themselves down from stress or fear or pain or any number of grown-up reasons. Chances are you’d be better able to write something pained and dark during these kinds of moods, even if you aren’t aware of the effect stress is having on you.

Go scream at the top of your lungs in an empty field in the middle of nowhere.

QUESTIONS I WANT ANSWERED:

A. If a poet stands in an empty field in the middle of nowhere, screaming at the top of her lungs in perfect pentameter, does this relieve stress? Does this make her a pastoral poet? How is this different from if a tree falls in the wilderness?

B. How does said poet:

1. Retrieve car keys from husband, reminding him (without nagging) to pay the car insurance bill; and, lugging laptop case stuffed with both laptop and student essays,
2. Rescue her mother from the Super Value (picking up cherry Coricidin on the same trip for sniffling daughter)
3. Deposit mother and groceries home from the Super Value, sorting out both canned goods and mother, and, whilst waiting for father to return home to solve car crisis, and, all the while carrying on conversations with mother, attempt to
4. Grade 18 essays, ghost-write medical article, and respond firmly but fairly to 6 whiny student e-mails, while poet still waits for father, in order to
5. Accompany both parents in father's Buick, both mother and father nagging at poet about the ways in which she mishandled grocery store scenario, in order to retrieve mother's Buick; and, chastened, with car keys in hand,
6. Retrieving her own automobile from parents' house, and after dropping off papers at school and using school's Wi-Fi to e-mail medical article on the therapeutic uses of Play-Doh to freelance editor at 11:56 a.m., return to own home to proffer kiss to husband and sympathy and cherry Coricidin to daughter, whose sniffles were caused by "Duh, stress, Mom," and whose stress-free mind is now off her boyfriend woes and on the latest Disney Channel tweeny-bopper melodrama; then, and only then, how does said poet navigate Subaru to the emptiest field around, without running out of gas, both literal and psychic fuel?




Maggie Taylor, "Paris, 1999" Flatbed scanner image.

Writer's block to end, the things do we...

YODA DEFROSTS THE SONNET

Been one acquainted with the night, I have.
Walked out in rain, have I--and back in rain.
Out-walked the furthest city light, have I.

Looked down the saddest city lane, I have.
Passed by the watchman on his beat, have I,
And my eyes dropped, to explain unwilling.

Stood still and stopped the sound of feet, I have.
When far away an interrupted cry.
Over houses from another street came,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Neither wrong nor right, proclaimed the time was.
Been one acquainted with the night, have I. Yes.

Every Day, in Every Way, for Harvey

Happy Birthday, Anne Sexton

Some Foreign Letters—Anne Sexton

I knew you forever and you were always old,
soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold
me for sitting up late, reading your letters,
as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.
You posted them first in London, wearing furs
and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety.
I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day,
where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes
of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way
to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones.
This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will
go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And I
see you as a young girl in a good world still,
writing three generations before mine. I try
to reach into your page and breathe it back...
but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.

This is the sack of time your death vacates.
How distant your are on your nickel-plated skates
in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past
me with your Count, while a military band
plays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last,
a pleated old lady with a crooked hand.
Once you read Lohengrin and every goose
hung high while you practiced castle life
in Hanover. Tonight your letters reduce
history to a guess. The count had a wife.
You were the old maid aunt who lived with us.
Tonight I read how the winter howled around
the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious
language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound
of the music of the rats tapping on the stone
floors. When you were mine you wore an earphone.

This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne,
Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learn
your first climb up Mount San Salvatore;
this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes,
the yankee girl, the iron interior
of her sweet body. You let the Count choose
your next climb. You went together, armed
with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches
and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed
by the thick woods of briars and bushes,
nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo
up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated
with his coat off as you waded through top snow.
He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled
down on the train to catch a steam boat for home;
or other postmarks: Paris, Verona, Rome.

This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue.
I read how you walked on the Palatine among
the ruins of the palace of the Caesars;
alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July.
When you were mine they wrapped you out of here
with your best hat over your face. I cried
because I was seventeen. I am older now.
I read how your student ticket admitted you
into the private chapel of the Vatican and how
you cheered with the others, as we used to do
on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November
you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll,
float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors,
to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional
breeze. You worked your New England conscience out
beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout.

Tonight I will learn to love you twice;
learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face.
Tonight I will speak up and interrupt
your letters, warning you that wars are coming,
that the Count will die, that you will accept
your America back to live like a prim thing
on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come
here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose
world go drunk each night, to see the handsome
children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close
one Friday at Symphony. And I tell you,
you will tip your boot feet out of that hall,
rocking from its sour sound, out onto
the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall
and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by
to mumble your guilty love while your ears die.

________________
One of my most enjoyable moments is to think about poems in units--poems that are letters, or that meditate on letters...I have a volcano unit (which is great fun to teach), several art units, a fish unit, a fishbowl unit, a medical unit, a call-response unit.

I've just started thinking about a letters/postcard unit. I wanted to use this poem, Kumunyakaa's "My Father's Loveletters," Hart Crane's "My Grandmother's Love Letters," Emily Dickinson's "This is My Letter to the World"....Some of Hugo's letters, too. Some of Kooser's postcard poems to Jim Harrison. Pound's "The River Merchant's Wife." James Galvin's "Dear Miss Emily" with its X's. Paul Guest has one (not sure of the title and the text's at work--think it's "On the Persistence of the Letter as a Form). Can you think of any others?

This Week's Subliminal Mutterings

Coverage :: Foundation
Cynical :: de Bergerac
Gust :: Western wind when wilt thou blow
Improvised :: Impromptu
V :: Wedge of geese in the air
Guests :: RSVP
Brutal :: Too much cheap aftershave
Grant :: Cary me back
Pull :: My Hair out
Streaming :: Hair in Preraphaelite Ophelia

Yes, We Did! And Now We Have To...

Obama won! What now? Click the link to read T.R. Hummer's brilliant analysis of the hopeful, yet hard days ahead. I don't know about you, but I'm still ready to work; I'm also going to continue to pray without ceasing, prayers of thanksgiving and also of petition for continued guidance and wisdom, for the health and continued safety for President-Elect Obama (what a thrill it is to type that!), as well as for national/international healing and cooperation. One Nation, Conceived in Liberty...may that continue.

I'm still very concerned about America's future. After all, GWB has 75 days left in office.

P.S. To the person who says I show no emotion: Yeah, I'm a really, really stoic, unsmiling person, but I cried the way I did when I first saw the original Incredible Journey--for haven't we all just borne witness to another one?'