Dolly Parton - Jolene (High Quality) sound

"Here's one of the prettiest, blondest, song-writing-est little girls to come along down from the mountain." Porter Waggoner, introducing Dolly Parton.

He talks about you in his sleep/and there's nothing I can do to keep/from crying when he calls your name, Jolene.

This may be my favorite lyric from Dolly's repertoire.

I'm trying to create a place in my home where I can write without distractions. I will be a better blogger once I am not purging my possessions.

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David Sylvian - When Poets Dreamed of Angels

Say a little prayer for me, or light a candle, or both. I have big decisions to make this week.

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Escargatoire of Signage

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Janis Joplin - Summertime (Live Gröna Lund 1969)

I want to feel like this again. I want to feel this again. I want to feel again. I want to feel. I want to. I want.

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Anne Frank, Who Began Her Diary Today in 1942

From her diary, which she named Kitty after her best friend in Germany:

"How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway. ... And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!"

In this picture, Anne Frank looks very much like my mother, who was born six years after Anne, and also my first cousin, who would be insulted by this comparison. I find Anne to be beautiful and serious, studious and heartbreaking, here. Her diary breaks my heart, so much so that I can't write in the beautiful red and white checkered journal a friend gave me. I think of Anne's journal, tented on the floor in the Secret Annex, and her father searching for any clues he can in her writing. I'm glad that Anne Frank's voice survives.

Although my grief is nothing compared to that of a father who's lost a child, although my loss is nothing compared to even a single death in the Holocaust, I've gone through the motions this last year, done the same thing as Otto Frank. I've searched through sketchbooks and journals, notes written in the margins of books and magazines, in order to know Harvey better, in order to hear him again.

I'm glad that Harvey's voice is still real to me. I'm glad he was the person I thought him to be. I'm glad that he loved me, his children, his brothers and sisters, his parents, his students, his friends and fellow teachers. I'm glad that he was greedy for the world, and I'm glad that appetite for living extended to loving me. The world is a poorer place without you, sweetheart. Every day, and in every way, you taught me that kindness, as Anne writes, is something that we can always give; you showed me kindness and desire and humor for 23 years, 2 months, and 15 days. I miss you. I love you. I will see you again.

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Found in My 2008 Sewanee Notebook

"Ear is the libido of the poem. Sometimes it will take you places you don't want--or need--to go." Andrew Hudgins, on alliteration in a poem (Sewanee workshop, SWC, 2008)

Libido: Desire, desire for pleasure, desire to please.

libidin-, libido, from Latin, desire, lust, from libēre to please — more at love.

I guess that ear is different for many people, just as their desire for what, where, how often, (and perhaps with whom) is different. I like alliteration, stress, unexpected rhyme, lagniappe...

If the poem is part of the body of work, then libido--pleasure seeking and seeking to give pleasure--should be part of that body of work, too.

And I like the fanned-out form of the ginkgo leaf above--it reminds me of lingerie. Why not make something both functional and decorative? That's so much easier than beautiful, which is the aim of art--the beauty/truth conundrum of Keats and so many other writers. How do you, or I, or any of us, make art beautiful?

"Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what." Bruce Weigl, "The Impossible"

(If you don't know that poem, or Weigl's work, rush to read him:

http://books.google.com/books?id=TzEsbpwZu9kC&pg=PA134&lpg=PA134&dq=bruce+weigl+the+impossible&source=bl&ots=hRIM_2gFJL&sig=3aBZ58W9Vxoj1T6YCr9XkQwXJVk&hl=en&ei=KoHzTbPnKoyatweCsoDoBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=bruce%20weigl%20the%20impossible&f=false
)

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Mumford & Sons - White Blank Page (Bookshop Sessions)

Tell me now where was my fault in loving you with my whole heart?
Oh, tell me now where was my fault in loving you with my whole heart?

In loving you, my whole heart was whole.

Today's necessities: Final touches on Sewanee manuscript. Lunch with a friend who's moving away. Banking. Get rid of 50 things. (I have done this every day this week, and it feels good).

Here are the poems, from which I must choose 20 pages:

2 “First Person Plural, First Person Singular"
5 "Comings and Goings: Doris Holbrook Heads Again for Home"
2 "Housewifery: An Annotation"
2 "Little Lesson in Ornithology"
2 "Unchained Melody: The Studio Version"
2 "Process Through Which My Beloved Becomes a Diamond"
1 "Blind Contour Drawing"
1 "In Ictu Oculi"
2 "Imaginary Gardens with Real Deaths in Them, or Here Lies Pamela"
1 “Still Life with Wicker: An Interrogative”
1 "Envoi, or "Go, Little Book"
2 “32 Roses”
2 “What the Thunder Said, or, ‘Yes, if by hand’ ”

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~Rhiannon~ Stevie Nicks, Storytellers

She is like a cat in the dark, and then she is the darkness.

That's a line that teaches simile and metaphor.

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In the Throes of It: Day 327

STILL LIFE: FROM THE SUN PORCH

A halo of dust where
the saucer sat? The cup's cusp
of tea scorched to a
sepia crescent?
Who reads these leaves, these leavings?

(Revised into something better--email me if you want to see it).

Thank you for your thoughts! The poems are coming draftily these days.