Southern Festival of Books--Photos, Butch Coone, Wunderkind

Chet Weise, Bang Candy Company, rocking the Marshmallow credo:  "Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy marshmallows, which are kind of the same thing."

 Daniel Nathan Terry, showing us his tattoo, before he reads some beautiful poems.

Three Poets:  Joshua Marie Wilkinson, superstar; Chet Weise, supercool; yours truly, super-accessorized.  Please note $3 cowboy boots, which I scooped up at a Nashville yard sale, as well as great dress and not one but two irons--one flat, one sad.  (And I have never realized that 5 feet 4 inches, even in cowboy boots that add another inch, is so flippin' petite).

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One Ring to Write Them All: Pamela Wears Sterling and Reads a Poem after James Dickey's "Cherrylog Road"

I was told by a fancy Southern journal:  "We love your poem about James Dickey, and we will never, ever publish it."

Perhaps that's the best--and most truthful--rejection letter I'll ever receive.  My poem takes Dickey to task for writing a poem in which a teenage speaker (male) has sex with another teenager (a young woman) in a junkyard, then roars off on his motorcycle, and leaves her without a goodbye, much less an orgasm.  

Throughout Dickey's poem, Doris is completely silent, so I gave her lines and a backstory, and I have her talk about sex--how it wasn't good for her--and church and whippings and how men use women and how women are both trapped and able to escape that world and that mindset.  (Can women say that? Bad sex? Men being selfish?  Can you write about that? one Nashville reader asked me).  

Well, this woman did.  And I read it in Nashville at the Southern Festival of Books.  

Oh, yeah, there's a little strychnine in there.  And snake handling.  And movie magazines and Mary Worth and my favorite lipstick, Cherries in the Snow.  And a couple of black dresses and the Begats in a red-letter Bible.

If anyone ever publishes this poem, I'll be surprised.  That's not the point, really.  I know I'm a better writer for having written it.   It's going in my next collection, which is probably going to be called BACK TALK.

Photo by Butch Coone, Bang Candy Company Reading, Southern Festival of Books

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GEORGE MICHAEL: "KISSING A FOOL" - Royal Opera House, Sunday 6/11/11

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SOUTHERN FESTIVAL OF BOOKS

Card 1 (The Sun) : How you feel about yourself now  »

You are feeling abundant happy and joyful - if you don't, be assured that you are about to enter a period of success and fulfillment. This is a time of pleasure, vitality and good health, travel and holidays to be enjoyed. Good news around children or the conception or birth of a longed-for baby. The Sun heralds an ending to difficulties and a time to celebrate with friends and loved ones.

Card 2 (Wheel Of Fortune) : What you most want at this moment  »

The cards suggest that what you most want at this time is a turning point in your life and positive change - well expect it now. Life will go up a gear or two and events will accelerate forward. Destiny is at play here - have you noticed a number of events that seem rather a coincidence? This is synchronicity, trust it and go with the flow.

Card 3 (The Hermit) : Your fears  »

You are frightened of being on your own and loneliness, and you simply don't know quite what to do. Take time to relax and in time you will have the answers. The Hermit signals a warning not to make hasty decisions, so try not to get too stressed, and if you have been unwell this is a time for rest and recuperation.

Card 4 (The Lovers) : What is going for you  »

New love and commitment will enter your life, even if there's no one on the horizon - be prepared for a surprise. Throw caution to the wind and expect joyous and happy times ahead.

Card 5 (Judgment) : What is going against you  »

If you allow fear to stop you from taking a chance or a new possibility then you will lose out. Do not ignore the new opportunities being presented to you - a decision, new job or relationship could change your life for the better. Do not refuse change when change at this time is vital - feel the fear and do it anyway. Outcomes may well be delayed, however this is a time for positive action and not passiveness.

Card 6 (The High Priestess) : Outcome  »

Your intuitive powers are at their height at this moment in time; only by listening carefully and trusting them completely can you embrace that power. Do this and you will make strong, clear, self-assured decisions. Allow for flexibility and expect promising outcomes.

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Sunday Blah, Blah, Bleh, Bleh, Blues

Ten Reasons to Live:  (Alphabetical, not actual, as Faulkner would not be penultimate).

Bakelite.
Cashmere.
Cats.
Daughter.
Henry James.
Rhinestones.
Son.
Tea and honey.
William Faulkner.
Wimbledon.

One Reason Against:

I miss love.  Sex for me is causal, not casual, which is why I have only slept with a handful (okay, a handful plus a couple of digits) of men in my lifetime.  And for me, it's always men, especially brunettes with glasses.  Bonus points if they're artists.

Whenever I try fun, I end up sad or married or, in the case of my first husband, both.  Or in the case of my second husband, blissful, faithful, fat, and sassy.  

I do miss Married Pamela.  She was a lot less healthy, but she was so much more joyful.

As consolation, though, there's poetry, and because my friend CHET WEISE is the greatest charmer in history, there is this.  I'm one of the afternoon readers, and I'm also reading at the after party.  How cool is this, to read at a candy factory!  I'm taking my long-ass James Dickey poem there.  Maybe the South won't rise and hang me, in effigy or otherwise.  My imaginary friend Butch is coming to take photos.  I have two perfect dresses, well actually three--one grey, one black and tan, and one red, which I always forget.  Which should I wear?

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A Feather in My Cap: Panache

One of the meanings of panache is "the feathers that adorn or comprise a hat."  Here's a panache for you, and here also can be found a poem with the word panache.

Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself
by Wallace Stevens
At the earliest ending of winter, In March, a scrawny cry from outside Seemed like a sound in his mind. He knew that he heard it, A bird's cry at daylight or before, In the early March wind. The sun was rising at six, No longer a battered panache above snow . . . It would have been outside. It was not from the vast ventriloquism Of sleep's faded papier mâché . . . The sun was coming from outside. That scrawny cry—it was A chorister whose c preceded the choir. It was part of the colossal sun, Surrounded by its choral rings, Still far away. It was like A new knowledge of reality. _____

The more common definition of panache, personal style, is something which I find myself lacking lately, so earlier in the week, when I was feeling very down, I primped for a date I didn't have, and I took myself out to eat, and I held the door open for myself, and I drove myself home, and I walked myself to the porch, and then...well, I don't kiss and tell, especially since there was no one to kiss and nothing to tell...This is my new knowledge of reality:  One can smile and smile and be a villain, just like in The Duchess of Malfi, and Harmonium is my version of Handbook for Girl Scouts.

PS Dez, I miss you but not as much as I did last week and more than I will miss you tomorrow.

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Retrieved from My Facebook Account

From Alice Oswald's Memorial (a retelling/reshaping of The Iliad)

Grief is black it is made of earth
It gets into the cracks in the eyes
It lodges its lump in the throat

______
SOME UNRELATED MUSINGS...

This is brilliant, brilliant work that Alice Oswald's doing here. I love it. It's not the same as Dante/Mary Jo Bang, or Sappho/Anne Carson. It reminds me of the Vietnam Memorial if I could see into it, from surname to story, from edge to elegy.

I have always thought of grief as grey...and mourning as black and white. Like the newspaper, like the magpie, like the letters of the alphabet glyphed on the pages of a journal, mourning as black spot, as black lung, as black wing of the blackest bird...

I find myself in mourning every morning; although I wake up glad to be alive, I'm not always glad. That's the conundrum isn't it? The curve in the nautilus; the opening frown of the parenthesis, the versus of the poetic line--from end to beginning to end again; the the (as Stevens puts it, in a widely divergent context). 

Tell me something truer than grief, than dirt. Tell me something about ash and bone. Tell me something about someone you'd die for, then tell me how you'd live when they don't. Would you tell his story for him? Would you sing her songs? |