Book Meme

Find the nearest book.
Turn to page 123.
Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.
Name the book and the author.

Heat a small skillet over medium heat; add pine nuts and toast until golden. Remove the nuts; add extra virgin olive oil to the same skillet, 3 times around the pan. Heat the oil, add bread crumbs and toast them. When they are deeply golden, remove them from the heat, season them with salt and lots of black pepper, about a teaspoon.

(From Rachel Ray's Express Lane Meals, Sicilian Spaghetti with Fennel and Onions--which with a little modification is delicious).

Most of the books I usually keep near my desk are packed for tonight's move to the MFA residency, so I had to make do with Ms. Ray (Misery--hardly).

I do like sentences 2 and 3 for these reasons:
(2) Round and round the cauldron go, in the poisoned entrails throw. . I always wanted to be one of the crones in that Scottish play.
(3) Toasted bread crumbs--Hansel and Gretel and the trail of croutons...reminding me of Gluck's "Gretel in Darkness," which I know by heart. "This is the world we wanted..." That's such a brave opening hook--where do you go from there, except deeper into the family instead of the forest?

I also like the alchemy that pops up in this recipe. Gold--deeply golden--cook as Midas?

________

There are days of reading and thinking and studying ahead--even though they will be lonely days. I'll miss my family, my pets, and my familiar bed (new mattress equals bliss). I hope the poetry workshop is friendlier. The teachers have all been great, but the camaraderie isn't there.

As far as meeting any other poetry-lovers (don't I sound like Bullwinkle?) and forging any sorts of friendships/critiques/support...I don't know whether it was wrong or naive or just idiotic to expect this. I am thankful for the fiction/creative nonfiction folks who have kept me sane, plied me with cappuccino and brioches, and assured me that I am not the problem. (Or at least not all of the problem--I tend to get really quiet when people are unfriendly to me, and then attacked head-on, my response is to sting suddenly like nettles. I hate this fact about me. I matriculated from the Home School of Sarcasm and try very hard not to display this side of myself to my family, my friends, and my co-workers--yet it's there, it's definitely there). What I didn't expect was the written-on-worksheets, sotto voce in-class sexism. Being called a slut in my late forties was certainly a surprise. One poem about desire, and I was suddenly sporting the scarlet "A".

Enough Marcia Marcia Marcia moments. Maybe this time will be better. I am starting on my ekphratic series, and that's exciting to me. I see a way into the gallery, into the parking garage, into the studio, into the cave. I have one new poem that is pretty good (again ekphratic, about Odysseus and also Molly Bloom) and two others that are risky for me--really risky. They are first attempts away from narrative, or towards a different sort of narrative.

I've been thrilled by Lynda Hull's Collected Poems. I think "Black Mare" may be the best of them on this read-through. It makes me cry, and I'm a hard shell.

Kaminsky's been fun to read also--though I think he telegraphs/shorthands a little too much--there's too much dancing and not enough actual dance. Is this fair? Is this a first book tic? I'm still thinking it through. "The dancer from the dance?" keeps going through my head when I read Dancing in Odessa.

On to Chekhov, which just arrived (fiction seminar). On to Kunitz, on to Blake, which I have really enjoyed in tandem (poetry seminar). On to Frey v. Oprah celebrity death-match (creative nonfiction seminar--the choice of this is beyond me--maybe the seminar discussion will make it clearer).

Wish me luck--I may need it. I'll have an apartment this week--so maybe I'll make a Mounds cake and try to woo them with sweetness. One hand in honey, the other in syrup...Why is Baba coming back to me this week? What can I learn from her? Maybe something about Chekhov?

Since I started thinking about Gluck, I'll end with her great poem. You'll have to trust me on the punctuation.

Gretel in Darkness--Louise Gluck

This is the world we wanted. All who would have seen us dead
Are dead. I hear the witch's cry
Break in the moonlight through a sheet of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas....

Now, far from women's arms
And memory of women, in our father's hut
We sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
From this house, and it is years.

No one remembers. Even you, my brother.
Summer afternoons you look at me as though you meant
To leave, as though it never happened. But I killed for you.
I see armed firs, the spires of that gleaming kiln come back, come back--

Nights I turn to you to hold me but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
Hiss in the stillness, Hansel we are there still, and it is real, real,
That black forest, and the fire in earnest.

First meme of 2007---all about poems

The first poem I remember reading was
..."maggie and milly and molly and may" by E.E.Cummings.

I was forced to memorize numerous poems in school because:
I was involved in fisticuffs (as the new kid in the neighborhood, one year younger than everyone else in my class and much smaller--I had to start AND win a fight to be accepted). I memorized Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods" and Shakespeare's "Who is Sylvia?"

I read poetry because...
it calls out to be read. Aloud.

A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem:
Theodore Roethke's "I Knew a Woman." That's the one, despite for romantic-morbid-age-19 reasons. My first love (and best friend of all time) and I vowed we'd each have a line from this poem put on our tombstone. I have mine planned (Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay).

I write poetry, but...
I'd rather teach it. That's my guilty little 2007 confession.

I find poetry...
everywhere but on the blank page.

The last time I heard REAL poetry..
Brian Barker was reading from The Animal Gospels.--Check it out--he's published by Tupelo, so you know the poems are good.

I think poetry is like...
tidal breath.

Stanley Kunitz--A Great Way to Start the Year

Benediction

God banish from your house
The fly, the roach, the mouse

That riots in the walls
Until the plaster falls;

Admonish from your door
The hypocrite and liar;

No shy, soft, tigrish fear
Permit upon your stair,

Nor agents of your doubt.
God drive them whistling out.

Let nothing touched with evil,
Let nothing that can shrivel

Heart's tenderest frond, intrude
Upon your still, deep blood.

Against the drip of night
God keep all windows tight,

Protect your mirrors from
Surprise, delirium,

Admit no trailing wind
Into your shuttered mind

To plume the lake of sleep
With dreams. If you must weep

God give you tears, but leave
You secrecy to grieve,

And islands for your pride,
And love to nest in your side.

_______
Don't you just love the rhymes here--and the wind that plumes the lake?

Reading his poetry in conjunction with The Essential Blake, which Kunitz introduces, has been very helpful for me. (I have a Blake seminar for my MFA residency, which starts in 9 days--I'm not ready. The poems are ready, the readings done, but I'm not seeing my way forward).

Blake: Prophetic, seeing, printmaking, role of the Father (God)
Kunitz: Role of poet, seeing, plaiting the "wild braid", also role of the father
_______
I can never decide on a favorite: "Halley's Comet," the "Hornworm" poems (pendants as in Tennyson), "The Portrait," "Touch Me," and of course "The Snakes of September." (That's probably it--this year my students wanted to talk about Snakes on a Plane).

And, oh, yes, "Passing Through," which brings me back to the link.

They Say You Want a Resolution....

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Paint it black. Get your resolution here.

_______

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Get an invisible friend. Get your resolution here.

From The Ephemera Connection: "A Sweet New Year"

As Baba used to say--"Have one hand in honey, the other in syrup."

Il faut se quitter souvent pour s'aimer toujours.

Are these in the original or just in the movie? (I cannot find my copy of Proulx's collection).

Big Rock Candy Mountain Moments in Brokeback Mountain:

Ennis: You ever get the feelin'... I don't know, er... when you're in town and someone looks at you all suspicious, like he knows? And then you go out on the pavement and everyone looks like they know too?

Jack: [Casually] Well... maybe you oughta get out of there, you know? Find yourself someplace different. Maybe Texas.

Ennis: [Sarcastically] Texas? Sure, maybe you can convince Alma to let you and Lureen to adopt the girls. And we can just live together herding sheep. And it'll rain money from LD Newsome and whiskey'll flow in the streams - Jack, that's real smart.
___________

Jack: Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together! Fuckin' real good life! Had us a place of our own. But you didn't want it, Ennis! So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain! Everything's built on that! That's all we got, boy, fuckin' all. So I hope you know that, even if you don't never know the rest! You count the damn few times we have been together in nearly twenty years and you measure the short fucking leash you keep me on - and then you ask me about Mexico and tell me you'll kill me for needing somethin' I don't hardly never get. You have no idea how bad it gets! I'm not you... I can't make it on a coupla high-altitude fucks once or twice a year! You are too much for me Ennis, you sonofawhoreson bitch! I wish I knew how to quit you.
___________

Lureen Newsome: He always said he wanted his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain, but I wasn't sure where that was. I thought Brokeback Mountain might be around where he grew up. Knowing Jack, it was probably some pretend place, where bluebirds sing and there's a whiskey spring...

___________

Above is "The Land of Cockaigne" by Brueghel the Elder: Cockaigne may be a type for "Big Rock Candy Mountain."

Mr. & Mrs. Wallace Stevens, Phrygian Caps, and Captions

"At times, it seems that Stevens wishes (or writes) for representation to be anti-allegorical; “Instead of allegory,/” he writes of a particularly moving statue in “Examination of the Hero in a Time of War,” “We have and are the man.” The Greek agoreuein, from which the word allegory comes, does not mean simply “to speak,” but rather “to speak in the marketplace”; allegory, then, means not simply to “speak other,” but rather “to speak other than in the marketplace.” Let us, then, allow the words in allegory’s definition to remain in order, but let us also pierce them with a dash. Let us say that Wallace Stevens speaks other-than in the marketplace." (See link above)


I've been reading Stevens obsessively this week--as respite from the MFA non-poetry stuff--Chekhov, which has not arrived, and Frey, which I did not want to re-read in the first place. (I've been re-reading Hull, Kaminsky, Blake, and Kunitz, though). What a difference to read one Stevens poem immediately upon awakening, rather than Google News. I discovered in my reading that Wallace Stevens' wife was considered quite beautiful, as she was the model for both the Walking Liberty half dollar and the Mercury dime (apparently a misnomer, neither a depiction of the god of trickery nor requiring actual mercury in the minting). Ms. Stevens was wearing a Phrygian cap--which also may be found on the gallbladder. I think I prefer the hat she's wearing in the photograph above.

______

Typo of the Week: This patient has no cognitive defecate. (For those of you not in the transcription field, this should be "no cognitive deficit"--unless I've forgotten all my coding skills and there is an ICD code assigned to shi*t for brains).

I Must Have Dropped My Fortune Cookie

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: The Right Honorable Pamela of Under Table Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

I'm not sure how, er, aristocratic, that title is.

My Fortune Cookie told me: BAD WOLF. Get a cookie from Miss Fortune

Who's afraid now?

From The Ephemera Collection: Greensleeves Was My Delight

There are Santas in reds, in black, in white, in blues from indigo to sky, in mauve, in scintillating satin and glass sequins, in scarlet with a mitre like the Pope, in grey, in gold, in silver, in purple-mountain-majesty robes with fur sleeves, with and without gloves, and one even without a beard. And, oh, yes, in green, like the delightful guy above. Santa in cars, in trains, riding bicycles, orbiting in hot air balloons, in the sleigh and pulling the sleigh out of a snowbank--and, in one delightful Santa series, Sants's piloting airplanes. Oh, yes, Santa can sometimes be found with a figgy pudding or egg nog. Despite all the candy canes and cookies, sometimes he's skinny (must be the South Pole diet). He has lists and sometimes is listless.

Here, Santa's tucked into china cabinets and barristers' cases, inside the Hoosier cabinet in the kitchen and the curio case in the hall. There are at last count 347 still in the albums--I haven't dug out my newspaper series, where Santa is answering letters, like Miss Lonelyhearts. That's what I'm saving to put out today--for some reason that series is my favorite.

These are represent only the ephemeral Clauses--over 100 of Harvey's plastic Santas line the stairs to the attic--and under the tree's a "new" one from the 1950s where a light-up Santa's caroling, holding that long last note, mouth round as a goldfish's (He's 2-1/2 feet tall, so this is quite an unwieldy package). There are Santas my husband's made from velvet and papier mache, burlap and clay, Fimo and fur, Santas in sweaters and breeches, for casual Friday. There are Santas I've stitched on little samplers, and Santa ornaments pendant from the branches of our trees--dating from 1900 (glass) to 2006 (Hallmark).

From feather tree to fireplace, Hoosier to hearth, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus--wherever you look.

Merry Christmas to you all.

From the Ephemera Collection: Day One

One of my (too) many collections is antique postcards. I have over 5000 cards. I like this one because the rocker of the hobbyhorse reminds me of a gondola. Some sort of collecting intervention may be necessary--I dropped postcards to focus on pink/black kitchenware, switched to rhinestones, then (in order) Manhattan glass, art prints, typewriter ribbon tins, Cordey ceramics, perfume bottles, and then back to antique/costume jewelry. I think the Bakelite/rhinestone/cameo obsession is here to stay, along with my obsession with, er, desks. We have one in every room, except the baths, but I usually write at the kitchen table, as does the rest of my family. Go figure...

This is my first busy day, too--I have Dancing in Odessa to reread (MFA residency text, along with Lynda Hull's Collected Poems) and comparisons between Kunitz and Blake to discover (MFA seminar in poetry). I think it will be the 12 days of poetry, as I blitz through these works. Usually I try to take the fiction seminar, also, but I don't know if I have the time or the willpower this semester.

And I'm brooding like a biddy over this chicken poem idea. And I owe AJPL a Dr. Seuss poem.

By the Chimney With Care...

The tree is up, the shopping is done, and the blog has gone Beta. I have curled ribbon and unfurled wrapping paper, mailed books and other, less wieldly packages, baked cookies and fudged fudge, and now I'm ready for a giant drink. (Is there such a thing, I wonder, as egg blog? Would it be spiked?)

Happy Holidays to all of you, and may your poems be merry and bright.

My best gift so far: Geography III from bookmooch. You need to check that site out. I'm excited to read the poems in this order, and I have a brand-new poem in hatch mode (sort of inspired by "Crusoe in England," sort of not). It may be about chickens...there are chickens in my first real poem (there are nuns playing chicken), so why not in my latest?

Happy Hour with Mr. Stevens

I dreamt (always want to be archaic) last night that I was having drinks with Wallace Stevens in a very posh Art Deco bar. He gave me an insight into "Sunday Morning" that I'd never had before. It has to do with migration. And ornithology. And kitsch. And Dadaism.

One of the best dreams ever. And maybe a creative thesis...

Mr. Stevens drinks whiskey neat, by the way.

I hope that tonight it's high tea and we're tackling "The Idea of Order at Key West." ("I'd love me some scones and clotted cream," as Hardy wrote).

M.C.--but not Hammer

Who Should Paint You: M.C. Escher

Open and raw, you would let your true self show for your portrait. And even if your painting turned out a bit dark, it would be honest.

What Artist Should Paint Your Portrait?

It Pays to Improve Your...

Your Vocabulary Score: A+

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

It's Freezing Here!

THE ICE HOUSE--James Wright

The house was really a cellar deep beneath the tower of the old
Belmont Brewery. My father's big shoulders heaved open the door
from the outside, and from within the big shoulders of the ice-man
leaned and helped. The slow door gave. My brother and I walked
in delighted by our fear, and laid our open palms on the wet yellow
sawdust. Outside the sun blistered the paint on the corrugated roofs
of the shacks by the railroad; but we stood and breathed the rising
steam of that amazing winter, and carried away in our wagon the
immense fifty-pound diamond, while the old man chipped us each
a jagged little chunk and then walked behind us, his hands so calm
they were trembling for us, trembling with exquisite care.



Lakeside View #1: Brewery, Bottle House, Ice House