The Man in Black: Do the Math

I heard this song yesterday on NPR's Radio Lab. The topic was numbers and how we understand math. I'd completely forgotten about this song. Have a listen, then check out this link.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/10/09/segments/137633

One Word: Bunny

Bunny--of course, chocolate, of course Easter, of course the layer of chocolate that surrounds the Cadbury Cream Egg, of course the lay-er of those Cadbury eggs and all the other dyed-hard eggs in their spectrum of colors, the Easter bunny who leaves his pawprint in ink on the card he leaves with my daughter's Easter basket. Brown ink of course, his mark in sepia. I think she'll believe till she's 30. [Pamela]

English as the Other Language: Snippets from My Journal

"But to say what you want to say you must create another language and nourish it for years and years with what you have loved, with what you have lost, and with what you will never find again." George Seferis (from The Poet's Journal)

"Let us think of the answer of Oedipus." (from Seferis' Nobel Prize acceptance speech)
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One of the most important pieces of MFA wisdom for me came from my mentor Phil Stephens: "Go read Richard Wilbur's 'The Writer,' and get ready for a long haul yourself." I think that maybe he's right. (Here I originally scribbled "write."). I have to be both the child (the learner and drafter) and the father (the observer and reviser). I also have to start and stop and question myself constantly (There's the love, loss, and never-recovered/rediscovered part about which Seferis journals).

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Question: Seferis and Oedipus.

Answer: (One of many)
"The Child is Father to the Man." (capitalization mine own). See Wilbur's "The Writer."

Holy shade-of-Billy-Wordsworth, Batman!

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In discussions with my friend Chet about lyric time and narrative time, I always mean to mention Beth Ann Fennelly's excellent essay, linked here:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5907
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Notes to the Self: I Wish I Were

More like Alice, and less like the White Rabbit: Curiouser and curiouser.

More like the Caterpillar, less like Alice: Who are you? meets its match (and makes its metamorphosis) in Who am I?

See also Dickinson, Emily--I'm Nobody.

Brought to You by the Letter R: Free Writing

One Word: Runway

Runway: I thought at first it was runaway, but the A has run away from the runway: Maybe the shoes were too tight, maybe the model A knew that she'd been replaced by the model T (that stick-thin torso a better hanger for clothes), and she decided arms akimbo, to exit the building [Pamela]

Here's an illuminated R, from the link above. I like the green man and the grins.

Ai

I'm so saddened by the news that the poet Ai has died. Her work is a touchstone for me.

Here's an obituary from the Oklahoma State Department of English:

The poet Ai died unexpectedly from an illness on March 20, 2010.

Ai was born October 21, 1947 in Albany, Texas and lived much of her early life in Arizona. She received a B.A. from the University of Arizona in Oriental Studies in 1969 and an M.F.A. from the University of California, Irvine in 1971. Ai was a major voice in contemporary poetry, working extensively in the dramatic monologue. She published her first book Cruelty in 1973, and six later collections, Killing Floor (1979), Sin (1986), Fate (1991), Greed (1993), Vice (1999), and Dread (2004).

She was the recipient of many awards for her poetry, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975, the Lamont Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets for Killing Floor, and National Endowment for the Arts Awards in 1978 and 1985. She received the American Book Award for Sin in 1987 and the National Book Award for Vice in 1999. In 2002-2003 she held the Mitte Chair in Creative Writing at Southwest Texas State University, and in December 2009, she was recognized with a United States Artists Ford Fellowship in literature.

From 1999 until her death, she was a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Oklahoma State University. A volume of new poems, No Surrender, is scheduled to be published by W. W. Norton in September 2010.

The poet Ai is survived by her half-sister, Rosslyn O’Carroll, and by many colleagues, students, and friends.

The OSU Department of English plans to establish a creative writing scholarship in Ai’s memory. Contributions may be sent to: Ai Scholarship, OSU Department of English, 205 Morrill Hall, Stillwater, OK 74078.

Rob Brezsny's Astrology: The Sweet Spot?

CANCER (June 21-July 22): It's time for you to stop specializing in furtive glimpses and start indulging in brazen gazes. You're ready to phase out your role as a peripheral influence and see if you can be more of a high-intensity instigator and organizer. Yes, Cancerian, you've earned the right to claim more credibility and clout -- to leave your tentative position outside the magic circle and head in the direction of the sweet hot spot.

The New Poems: Say Hey to Prestidigitation

Prestidigitation, or The Gloved Man--the working title of my newest sports poem--a Willie Mays sonnet.

I'm so happy to be writing again--and these are really fun. First Mickey Mantle (prose poem, done), then David Thompson (pantoum, still in the works), and now Mr. William Howard Mays. (And I would love, absolutely love, to write a Yogi Berra sestina--o, the possibilities there).

Off to Tupelo and Points Hither and Yonder

Here's a Wordle of my full-length MS, heading out today.