"This was the first eidelweiss." Andersen

I don't honestly know what to write, so I'll write this honestly. I have not survived the 2009 ice storm intact. There is ice in my eye, ice in my heart.

Who wore it first?

OR

Robert Hayden and the "Diver's Manifesto"

1. Refrain from criticism of others. A poet should be above this.

2. No longer share what is most personal with anyone--neither wife, friend, nor child. Express it only in poetry and in an indirect or objective way.

3. No longer discuss my writing or my hopes for it with anyone. It is too special and sacred to me; no one should be expected to understand how I feel about it.

4. Seek solitude and stand alone.

5. Do not let fatigue, disappointment, professional routine and academic trivia betray finer instincts.

6. Cease complaining. And do not any longer make excuses or explanations to anyone.

7. Read and think more and talk less. Or not at all, unless in a fairly objective and impersonal way.

_______________________________
After a month away from home due to family illness, lack of power and water due to the worst icestorm in my state's history, and a teaching load that is frenetic and frantic, I feel a particular resonance with this advice.

Awesome and awful to see every tree in this area annealed with ice. They've all been scalped. The landscape is devastated.

Way behind on bills, housework, tax preparation, and general self-care. I need a spa trip if I could afford it.

Rushing through essays to get to research.

Rushing through AWP to get to panels.

Writing (finally) something other than checks or essay eval.

Only good thing to come out of this whole devastating storm was a new ability to cook almost anything on a propane camping stove.

Strange literary factoid...

The model for Anne of Green Gables was...



Evelyn Nesbit.

I don't know why I find this so intriguing.

Happy Inauguration Day!

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or
at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of
the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows,
robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

I'm singing today, just the way Walt would have wanted.

Grosgrain: The Lunch Date Blouse GIVEAWAY!!!!

Grosgrain: The Lunch Date Blouse GIVEAWAY!!!!

Happy 200th, Edgar!

Harvard, Jale, or Prison, New Jersey

Adieu, Andrew

Hacked (Off): The Repo Post

I'm in the throes of beginning the semester with a slew of financial and family crises: Mother in hospital for weeks, sick family with flu/bronchitis/laryngitis, and monthly deductions on my debit card and bank account that I cannot decipher.

Attention, you who may have pretended to be me: My life sort of sucks right now. You might want to give it back.

On a more positive note, there's always this:

H is for Holly...Maybe as good as the original!

Thanks to Donna Trussell for the link.

Sick as Can't Be: A Slight Pity Party

I am not allowed to get sick while:

(deleted pity party)

Repeat after me: I am not sick. I am not sick. I am snot sick. I am snot sick.

I know that many other people have much worse issues that they deal with daily, cheerfully and without complaint. Today, I am not one of those people who is cheerful and without complaint.

Epistolary Poem--James Galvin

Dear Nobody's Business--James Galvin

What did you expect
Threadbare me to do
With nothing to deflect
The gale of your remove?

The scanty sacred secret
Tries to thumb a ride
Through drubbed, irresolute,
And famously slippery light.

Like a spooky spark from an anvil
The sun makes a teary streak
Across the almost tranquil,
Which is the almost bleak.

What is threadbare me to do
When wind cleaves your summer dress
To almost all of you?

--------------
Genius rhyme--lovely poem. And the missing line in the last stanza--again beautiful.

Linda Bierds Reading: MFA Visit Post Graduation

I went to Murray State's MFA reading last night: Linda Bierds was the featured poet; she read for about an hour. Her verse is erudite, elegant, and exquisitely broken (lines/stanzas). In person, she's so attentive, so intense, and so thoughtful a listener. We had a lovely chat about Michael Faraday, whom I'd read after reading some of her beautiful poems on science. Also, Ms. Bierds had kind words to say about her fellow poets and students.

Rest in Peace, Donald Westlake (Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt, Timothy J. Culver, J. Morgan Cunningham, et al)

A masterful novelist of crime and the human heart, Mr. Westlake also penned the scripts for many screenplays, including The Grifters, Le Couperet (based on The Ax), and Point Blank. The Ax is my favorite of his novels.

Here's part of the obituary from the L.A. Times (link above).

I suspect that the current recessionary roller coaster will attract readers to "The Ax," Westlake's 1997 tome of how one man decides to solve his perpetual post-layoff joblessness by eliminating the competition -- literally. Burke Devore is angry, frustrated and more than a little horrified at what he will do and later justify, and through him Westlake portrays the palpable paranoia in the wake of the pink slip:

"As the computer takes our jobs, most people don't seem to realize why it's happening. Why was I fired, they want to know, when the company's in the black and doing better than ever? And the answer is, we were fired because the computer made us unnecessary and made mergers possible and our absence makes the company even stronger, and the dividends even larger, the return on investment even more generous."

Westlake wasn't trying to be prescient here or in his other work: His natural ability to observe human behavior and to follow an idea, no matter how bizarre, through to its proper, rightful finish echoed the vision of an architect, the array of moves available only to a chess grandmaster. That he could accomplish all this beneath the veneer of elegant mischief and make it look effortless in the process is all the more astonishing.

No matter what, Donald E. Westlake echoed the advice he once dispensed to the publishing industry: He always paid attention. Now it's our turn to give this incomparable writer under any name his deserved due.