Aaron Smith is the Reason: My Latest Temptation/Acquisition

I'd never even heard of this brand before: I just ordered them. I'm going to wear them on my birthday and feel like Dorothy. Minus the gingham, minus the anklets.

The NY Times' Top 25 of the Last 25 Years

This was done as a response to a post on Jewishy-Irishy's blog, which apparently was a response to the link above, Wot-What.

I bolded the ones I've read completely through and asterisked my top five (strictly based on the experience of a first read, all of which I've returned to with love and bemusement at the strength of the language).

Beloved–Toni Morrison *
Underworld–Don DeLillo
Blood Meridian–Cormac McCarthy
Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels–John Updike– Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit at Rest
American Pastoral–Philip Roth
A Confederacy of Dunces–John Kennedy Toole
Housekeeping–Marilynne Robinson *
Winter’s Tale–Mark Helprin
White Noise–Don DeLillo
The Counterlife–Philip Roth
Libra–Don DeLillo
Where I’m Calling From–Raymond Carver
The Things They Carried–Tim O’Brien *
Mating–Norman Rush
Jesus’ Son–Denis Johnson
Operation Shylock–Philip Roth
Independence Day–Richard Ford
Sabbath’s Theater–Philip Roth
Border Trilogy–Cormac McCarthy—
All the Pretty Horses*, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain
The Human Stain–Philip Roth

The Known World–Edward P. Jones *
The Plot Against America–Philip Roth

Confession #1: I like to think I'm a patient reader, but I have not been able to make it through any work of Don Delillo. I'm going to try again, because certainly the fault may be on my part.

Confession #2: I adore Philip Roth's sentences, yet I'd have to put Portnoy's Complaint and Goodbye, Columbus ahead of these works.

Confession #3: Who is Norman Rush? I am shamed.

Confession (and Praises)#4: Beloved is a masterpiece. I'd love to teach it, to spend more time studying it. I told everyone I knew about Housekeeping .
The Known World is an awesome first novel. Maybe this time I'll have time for his short story collection. He's a writer whom I'd like to meet. I just ordered his book. Here's its lovely cover.



Confession/Question #5: I don't understand C. McCarthy sometimes, but I love to go back and puzzle out the lovely carnage of his language. (Am I a patient reader after all?).

Question #6: Where the frost is Lee Smith? (ADT, that "frost" is for you!)

Confession #7: I have read only 4 or 5 "serious" novels since I started teaching. I have read over 20 poetry collections, and several essays on poetry, but I miss that head-long fall into the world of a novel. I'm craving a read of Anna Karenina.

The Writer's Almanac Sneaks In an Anti-War Poem

"Prayer Requests at a Mennonite Church" by Todd Davis
from Some Heaven. © Michigan State University Press.

Prayer Requests at a Mennonite Church

Pray for the Smucker family. Their son Nathaniel's coat and shirt were
caught in the gears while grinding grain. Nothing would give, so now
he is gone. We made his clothes too well. Perhaps this is our sin.

Pray for the Birky family. Their son Jacob fell to his death in the
granary. He was covered in corn before they could stop the pouring—
chest crushed by the weight, seed spilling from his mouth. We hope
something will grow from this, besides our grief.

Pray for the Hartzler family. Their youngest has left the church and no
longer believes that Christ died for her sins. She buys clothes at the
mall. Tongue pierced, nose as well. Her shirt shows her belly where a
ring of gold sprouts. We pray she will remember that her Lord's side
was pierced, that His crown held no gold, only the dried blood of His
brow.

Pray for the Miller family. Last week their daughter, who lives in
Kalona, lost her baby at birth. Child only half-formed: head turned the
wrong way; heart laid on the outside of her chest; one leg little more
than an afterthought. Lord, help them know that life may come again,
that we are all made whole in heaven.

Pray for the Stutzman family. Their son fights in the war. We call him
back to the Prince of Peace, to our Savior who knelt to gather the
slave's ear, brushed the dirt away, lifted it to the side of his flushed face.
May we leave no scars. May we ask no blessing for the killing done in
His name.

I Am Miranda

I bet I scored the same for height, too. We petite ladies need to stick together, although she is 5 feet tall and I claim an additional 3-3/4 inches.

Off to AWP! Having A Wonderful Time--Wish I was already there....

I'm excited! All the readings--and all the books--and maybe even a Peachtree martini!

Sputnik and Seuss--I'm the Same Age as V_NN_, too

(the year you were born)

Dwight Eisenhower is president of the US First civil rights bill since Reconstruction to protect blacks' voting rights is approved by Congress Hurricane "Audrey" destroys Cameron, Louisiana killing 390 people National Guardsmen bar nine black students from entering previously all white Central High School in Little Rock Russians launch Sputnik I, first earth orbiting satellite The FBI arrests Jimmy Hoffa and charges him with bribery Vanna White, Osama bin Laden, Sid Vicious, and Melanie Griffith are born Milwaukee Brewers win World Series Detroit Lions win NFL championship Montreal Canadiens win Stanley Cup On the Road by Jack Kerouac is published The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss is published

What Happened the Year You Were Born?

From the Paris Review Archives: Dinesen on Rhyme--and a Lot of Blather from Moi

INTERVIEWER

I suppose that you began to write seriously there?

DINESEN

I did begin to write [in Africa] . . . But earlier, I learned how to tell tales. For, you see, I had the perfect audience. . .the natives have an ear still. I told stories constantly to them, all kinds. And all kinds of nonsense. I’d say, “Once there was a man who had an elephant with two heads” . . . and at once they were eager to hear more. “Oh? Yes, but Memsahib, how did he find it, and how did he manage to feed it?” or whatever. They loved such invention. I delighted my people there by speaking in rhyme for them; they have no rhyme, you know, had never discovered it. I’d say things like “Wakamba na kula mamba” (“The Wakamba tribe eats snakes”), which in prose would have infuriated them, but which amused them mightily in rhyme. Afterwards they’d say, “Please, Memsabib, talk like rain,” so then I knew they had liked it, for rain was very precious to us there.

________
I love that definition of rhyme: "talk like rain."

Dinesen is an important writer for me, one who always makes me think about sound, makes me want to write for the ear, for the listener.

________
Shakespeare's "Sonnet 73" and Millay's "What Lips..." were really effective in the call/response lesson plan. I'm looking forward to the poems the group will turn in. And I'm asking myself the same questions I asked them: What do you write toward? In response to? In argument/agreement with?

Hopefully, we'll head from writing as political argument, to the sonnet as argument, to sonnets that argue/discuss/amplify other poems, to poems that talk to each other, or talk to themselves (Sandra McPherson's "Collapsars" as an example the class loved, and they also loved the siren/mermaid lineage of Homer-Donne-Eliot), to the argument/agreement all art has with the world (How do you respond to, say, Rivers and Tides?" which we're viewing on Tuesday). I'm equally excited about Komunyakaa and "simile/metaphor," and then ekphrasis, which evolves (I hope) from "You and I Are Disappearing." Can you think of ekphratic poems suitable for a sophomore/junior class? I've thought of "Archaic Torso of Apollo," "Musee des Beaux Arts," and "Why I Am Not a Painter." All of these are in our anthologies.

I love the whole idea of an anthology on talking back--and Conversation Pieces: Poems That Talk to Other Poems is available for preorder. It features fine poet and blogger Suzanne Frischkorn talking back to Neruda (speaking of mermaids)...I've preordered my copy already.

Also, I'm reminded that one root for conversation is "lifestyle."

Also, I'm thinking what's happened to voice in between the Sirens and Ariel...how the fairy tale often won't let women speak directly--there are riddles and talking animals to consult and women who lose their voices as a result of enchantment or other powerlessness...And in their movie, what does Disney tell young girls about voice and individuality?

Better stop now while I still have some energy for the page...

Teaching Simile and Metaphor

The mission: Teach simile and metaphor through two poems by one poet.

The plan: "You and I Are Disappearing" (simile)
"Facing It" (metaphor)

These are by Yusef Komunyakaa, from Dien Cai Dau.

Do you think there is another pair of poems by an author that I could use for my second class to vary this assignment? I'd appreciate any suggestions. Plath has come to mind...

Thanks for your help!

Tagging Myself

Top Ten movies (no order, except the first one is the first one!)

The Bicycle Thief
The Wizard of Oz ("These things must be done delicately.")
Rashoman (ambiguity)
Brazil (Machine Age gone amok)
Dr. Zhivago (swoon)
Lawrence of Arabia (swoon again, the most gorgeous men to appear on screen)
The Remains of the Day (exquisite acting)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint's best movie in my humble opinion)
The Last Emperor (Scope)
Casablanca (Play it, Sam.)


Honorable Mention

Vertigo
Rear Window
Breaking Away (Ciao Papa! and corn on the cob scene)
On the Waterfront
All that Jazz
Gone with the Wind
Sounder
The Graduate
Star Wars/The Empire Strikes Back(in inverse proportion to how much I hate S.Wars)
Under the Tuscan Sun (in which I don't love the movie as much as I do Diane Lane and Bramasole--it's my longing to rehab a house/poetry/Italian beach fantasy all in one).



What do you like?

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What's in a Name?

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 911 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

When I deploy my maiden name, the results plummet:

HowManyOfMe.com

There is: 1 person with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Articulation of Narrative Arch-Arc-and Flight

Because You Asked About the Line Between Poetry and Prose

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

Howard Nemerov

______
This says it better than I did. There is an arch-a structural form; there is an arc, which arises out of organic form; and then there's flight.

News from the Bluegrass State

More of the fraudulent out of state ID cards seized in the United States resemble Kentucky identification than any other state.

Now we Kentuckians have no credibility.

P.S. Yes, I am a card-carrying Kentucky Colonel.

From the Smithsonian: Why Longfellow Wore a Beard

Charles Dickens, the most famous novelist on either side of the Atlantic, spent Thanksgiving Day with Longfellow, renewing a friendship they had established 25 years earlier, when Dickens first visited the United States.

Dickens wrote in a letter to his son that Longfellow "is now white-haired and white-bearded, but remarkably handsome. He still lives in his old house, where his beautiful wife was burnt to death. I dined with him the other day, and could not get the terrific scene out of my imagination."

Dickens was referring to Fanny Longfellow's shocking death six years earlier, apparently after her dress was ignited by candle wax as she was sealing an envelope containing a snippet of hair from one of her six children. Longfellow's white beard hid scars from wounds he suffered while trying to smother the flames.
________________________________________________________________________________

I cannot get that "terrific scene" out of my imagination, either.

________________________________________________________________________________

On a somewhat related note, my son is moving out today--starting his first full time job in Nashville. Daniel, I love you--remember to write, call, and e-mail. I feel so proud of him--and so bereft. Thankfully, Raleigh is here for at least the next decade and a half.

Rejoining the Fray--At Fighting Weight

From the Virtual to the Written: After nearly a month of no computer, I have my hard drive back--and six new poems. Yes, six. Five are exponentially, excrementally bad, but one still has my obsessive, expressive interest. This is more poetry than I usually draft in a decade--I cannot wait to see what my MFA director has to say about the first poem. My thesis is taking shape, too--we have to have 24 poems, and I have 24 already past the censors. And I have 3 semesters to to go (it's a 5 semester program--maybe I will be able to have a manuscript/chapbook done after all. That's been my goal).

Read It and Weep: Daniel Anderson's Drunk in Sunlight. The images are elegant; the prosody, impeccable. The garden's fallen, but words don't fail this amazing poet. (My favorite: "Elegy for a Dying Dog". It's astounding).

From the Land of Students: I'll be teaching two more classes next fall, which should also be my fiction study semester. I am looking forward to falling drunk-in-love with the short story.

SAG Awards: Chandra Wilson--thank you, thank you, thank you for the encouragement and inspiration you provide to others with thick noses and less than sculpted biceps. You are the reason I watch Grey's Anatomy. (Well, not the sole reason--there's also Justin Chambers, who plays Alex. McDreamy, McSteamy--step aside--there's only one McSTAT and that's Dr. Karev).

Australian Open: Serena Williams--She's shown us a second act is possible. Roger Federer, the best stone-cold stomp through a tournament since Bjorn Borg. Rafael Nadal--He has the best fame-ass quote. (See Land Mammal post for details--link's above).

Valentine Anagram: Ah, Cupid, maybe...my wish for February 14th. Bonus points if you get this one...I'll send chocolates.