Elegy - David Michael Smith gallery show

ELEGY--W.S. Merwin

who would I show it to

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Happy Birthday, Colette/An Elegy for the Apple-Stuffed Pig

This is the story of my life:

"It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses."--Colette

Today I ate two meals at Hill's Bar-B-Que in my hometown. This is a continuously owned/operated family business that's closing its doors after 62 years. I cried a little, schmoozed a little, and remembered a lot--eating there in high school, college, with Harvey, with the kids, writing there early in the morning for the weekdays of July as I struggled to finish my first CNF piece (about grandmothers and Confederate dead and the South's love for strong women and gallant soldiers). I'm going to write a new essay about Hill's--I think I have the chops for it. Lord knows that I have the calories: pulled pork, vinegar sauce, coleslaw, potato poppers, chili dog plate with cheese, onion rings...God bless the grease that keeps my veins so supple.

Thank you, too, to Jerry, Sara Sue, Greg and Christy, Rhonda and Michelle--my two favorite waitresses of all time...for all the memories, for all the service, for all the laughs.

I love you all.

PS I have the secret chocolate pie recipe now. My chocolate pie will no longer be thick as tar or runny as syrup.

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Mozart K.488 Piano Concerto #23 in A 3rd mov. Allegro assai

Happy birthday, Mozart! I can play you fast, but I cannot play you andante or slower. This was always my favorite to play.

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From Orange Blossom to Orange Poppies

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Poppies
by Sandra McPherson

Orange is the single-hearted color. I remember
How I found them in a vein beside the railroad,
A bumble-bee fumbling for a foothold
While the poppies' petals flagged beneath his boot.

I brought three poppies home and two buds still sheathed.
I amputated them above the root. They lived on artlessly
Beside the window for a while, blazing orange, bearing me
No malice. Each four-fanned surface opened

To the light. They were bright as any orange grove.
I watched them day and night stretch open and tuck shut
With no roots to grip, like laboratory frogs' legs twitching
Or like red beheaded hens still hopping on sheer nerves.

On the third afternoon one bud tore off its green glove
And burst out brazen as Baby New Year.
Two other poppies dropped their petals, leaving four
Scribbly yellow streamers on a purple-brimmed and green

Conical cadaver like a New Year's hat.
I'd meant to celebrate with them, but they seemed
So suddenly tired, these aging ladies in crocheted
Shawl leaves. They'd once been golden as the streets

Of heaven, now they were as hollow.
They couldn't pull together for a last good-bye.
I had outlived them and had only their letters to read,
Fallen around the vase, saying they were sorry.

John Hartford & The Dillards -- "Orange Blossom Special"

I think I was in Austin for this--will consult my notebooks tomorrow and see!

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John Hartford, "Gentle On My Mind"

I want to get to that place (if there is such a Cockaigne as that place) where I can think of Harvey as gentle on my mind. However, I want to remember specific details (beard a roughening coal pile, for example). How do I reconcile the giving up of grief without the giving up of memory, especially tactile memory?

Eavan Boland writes in her oft-quoted poem "The Pomegranate,"

If I defer the grief, I will diminish the gift.

Is that true? Universally true? How do you keep memory alive and lively without being overwhelmed?

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Amy Winehouse - Wake Up Alone - Live HD

Oh, oh, oh, the triplet notes!

"Under Blue Light" would be a terrific title.

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From Today's Writer's Almanac, 1/19/2012

It's the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe (1809), born Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents were both actors, but his father left the family in 1810, and his mother died of tuberculosis a year later. The young Poe was raised by the Allans, a Scottish merchant family in Richmond, Virginia, who gave the boy his middle name. They sent him to the University of Virginia, where he picked up a habit of drinking and gambling from his rich classmates. He had a falling out with his foster father over this dissolute behavior, and was disowned. He spent the next several years living in poverty, depending on his aunt for a home, and supporting himself by writing anything he could, including a how-to guide for seashell collecting. Eventually he began to contribute poems and journalism pieces to magazines.

He first made his name writing some of the most brutal book reviews ever published at the time. He was called the "tomahawk man from the South." He described one poem as "an illimitable gilded swill trough," and he said, "[Most] of those who hold high places in our poetical literature are absolute nincompoops." He wrote fiction, too: mostly light, humorous tales because that's what was popular. But writing didn't pay well; he made about $4 per article and $15 per story. In 1842, his young wife, Virginia, contracted tuberculosis. His work became darker and more grotesque, and he wrote some of his best-known macabre stories and poems during the time of his wife's illness. In 1843, he published "The Tell-Tale Heart," and then published "The Raven" in 1845, and though it was an instant success, he was only paid $9 for the poem. Virginia died in 1847, and Poe died two years later, after he was found delirious in a Baltimore gutter.

Poe's cause of death was never determined, but most people have assumed it had to do with his alcoholism, or his drug addiction. But many of the assumptions people have long held about Poe can be traced back to one of his rivals, anthologist Rufus Wilmot Griswold. The two men had had an ongoing feud since 1842, when Poe was critical of Griswold's choice of poets for an anthology. Griswold, under the name "Ludwig," wrote a lengthy obituary for The New York Tribune, which began: "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. The announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it." Somehow, Griswold secured the right to act as Poe's literary executor, and in a collection of Poe's work published in 1850, Griswold included a biography that he called "Memoir of the Author." He portrayed Poe as a drug addict, a drunk, and a madman, and included forged letters as "evidence." He wanted to destroy Poe's reputation and ruin his literary legacy; instead, his salacious rumors served to boost sales of the author's work.

We know now that Poe did suffer from bouts of depression, and that he had a complicated relationship with alcohol: he did some drinking followed by months or years of abstinence. But his reputation as a drunk and a madman can be traced back to the fact that he was a hard edged reviewer of other people's work, and his enemies were quick to spread demeaning stories about him.

______

The silhouette above is one of a series of authors hand cut by Harvey. Elizabeth Bishop, Alexander Pope, Emily Dickinson, and Poe are among the poets in the series.

Mark Twain's silhouette is in the Hannibal, Missouri, museum.

The Elizabeth Bishop silhouette is one of the most beautiful artworks Harvey ever created. Poe (a cousin of Harvey's great-to-the-third power grandmother, also a Poe), is a also a beautiful silhouette.

I'm waiting for Cusack in The Raven.

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I know I'm forgetting something...but not this

So out of love with life am I
No future will have me.

James Galvin, two lines from X

These lines have stayed with me since I first read Galvin's book. I never dreamed that they'd be true to my life. They've been true now for 522 days.

I want to believe that I have a future, but right now being present is tense enough. (Now I'm quoting from my final poem in Cleave).

Work is good to have but exhausting, teaching is exhilarating but an enormous responsibility, and writing is just too darned hard these days. I've written two poems in 2012 (one finished, the other an erasure--and is that type of poem, I wonder, ever finished?).

I can barely hold a thought in my head, other than I love my children, I love my parents, I love my friends, and I love poetry, fiction, and reading.

One day at a time, but sweet Jesus it is hard. (Yes, I know I'm borrowing from Christy Lane).

Happy Birthday, William Stafford!

Here's a fabulous poem by Mr. Stafford. When I first started reading poetry, I read this poem to my grandmother, and she pointed out to me what a powerful anti-war poem this was. (I am embarrassed to say that I missed the apocalyptic reference).

The Epitaph Ending in "And"--William Stafford

In the last storm, when hawks
blast upward and a dove is
driven into the grass, its broken wings
a delicate design, the air between
wracked thin where it stretched before,
a clear spring bent close too often
(that Earth should ever have such wings
burnt on in blind color!), this will be
good as an epitaph:

Doves did not know where to fly, and

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Joseph Szigeti - Prokofiev Violin Concerto #1 in D (1st mov)

No words required.

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Emily's Garden

785 They have a little Odor—that to me Is metre—nay—'tis melody— And spiciest at fading—indicate— A Habit—of a Laureate— _____ Emily Dickinson grew stargazer lilies and Oriental lilies, whose perfume is strongest as the blossoms wither. She mailed the petals of a flower along with this little quatrain in a letter to a friend. I dreamed of dead monarchs slotted in the grill of a 1972 Cadillac. I dreamed of dead bees in my favorite hairbrush. I dreamed of ladybugs upturned like scarabs on the white windowsill in my kitchen. I would like to dream of Harv, and all I get are these images.

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Gravestone: What I Want to Find for You

I want to find for you a natural stone (sandstone that's the color of hay), and instead of the pious boilerplate, I would like a porcelain copy of this picture and a brass plaque that reads "Let seed be grass and grass turn into hay" with our names and nothing else. The bookended years don't suit you.

This is exactly how we napped, and it makes me happy to see this.

A Good Day--Sort of

Dear Diary,

This is a good day:

• Because I'm holding a copy of Best New Poets 2011, and my poem is in there.
• Because my poem still holds up as a love letter to Harvey.
• Because I went to the thrift store and found four cashmere V-necks for $1 each. Orchid, scarlet, navy, and poppy-orange.
• Because I spent 2-1/2 hours on the phone today with my friend talking about poems, her book, my maybe a book someday, and our respective Kentucky family weirdness.

This is a not so good day:

• Because I cannot pay my bills till payday.
• Because payday isn't for another 2 days and my electric bill is due tomorrow.
• Because my computer passwords at school have been hacked.
• Because the guy with whom I had a date called me (just like he said he would), and said that while he would still like to go out with me, he freaked out when I told him my high school graduation class, and "I am too old for him." It was worded pretty much that bluntly. He is 62. I am 54. In what world is that "too old"? (I had already decided that I didn't want to see him again; this just made my resolve that much more adamantine). WTF WTF WTF?

Yours in wonderment,

Pamela

Silver Anniversary

Remember, Body ...
Body, remember not only how much you were loved, not only the beds where you lay, but also those desires for you, shining clearly in eyes....

Now when everything is the past,

it almost looks as if you gave yourself to those desires as well—how they shone— remember—in the eyes that looked at you, how they trembled for you in the voice—remember, body. C. P. Cavafy

Chet Baker - I get along without you very well

Let's Get Lost.

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Mermaids

For some reason, I find the cage more arresting than the caged...

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