Powdering My Nose

Thrift shop finds:

• Gold compact engraved, with initials and date on the front and stones that might just be rubies (1947)--Three dollars. (Definitely taking this to the gold buyer--this will probably make my mortgage payment on the rental house; it's thin but tests as gold and matches exactly the one in the photo).
  
• Jade earrings (definitely jade, set in gold; definitely not taking these anywhere other than the jewelry box)--50 cents.
  
• Perfect skirt--Two dollars. Size--ahem, 10--It matches my black and purple suit. The jacket still fits but the skirt was too big. Now I can donate the old skirt and still have my suit! Two dollars, plus recycling at its most useful. I loved that suit and am glad to keep it.
  
• 10 rolls of player piano music--total of $10. I bought them for the beautiful red, green, and black boxes, in which I plan to store some jewelry. If you have a player piano, I will send you the rolls, as I doubt I can even get a dollar out of them. They'd also be great as the background for a collage. (The boxes are just lover-ly; I cannot wait to store some glass necklaces in them).

I sold the following this week:

• Oak tables (set of three), $52.50 (this was probably too low; I was a bit disappointed).
  
• Shawnee elephant cookie jar with mismatched lid, $30.00.
• Milk glass vase, $50 (what the heck was THAT about?--not that I'm complaining).
• Luzianne salt and pepper shakers, $17.

After the auctioneer's commission, I made $110. I had nothing invested in the tables (gift from my dad years ago), $20 in the cookie jar, 50 cents in the vase and a nickel in the salt and pepper shakers. (PROFIT: $89.45 in profit. From this amount, I have spent $15.50 for the above items, plus a candy dish, which was also a dollar. Total profit turned $73.95--that's my cell phone bill for the month)!

I still have a very nice Meissen candy dish (French Onion pattern) and an antique sewing machine to send to auction next month. I would prefer to send about 10 things to fill up my dad's truck. Maybe in November--I have some planters that I might send, or I might put everything but the sewing machine on E-bay.

I am not writing but am reading and thinking about a new poem including punctuation. The em-dash really makes me think. I love Randall Mann's "?" poem, and I've always wanted to write a poem with a symbol as the title.

I also need a third item for the braid/triptych of "Process Through Which My Beloved Becomes a Diamond." Can you think of something that goes with Renaissance paint-making and turning the cremains of your loved one into jewelry? I can't, either.

This is a boring post, I know, but I am a teaching and editing fool these days.


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"Come, I will show you now my newest hat"

(I have the hat but not the manikin). Who's the title poet?

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"The Bride Who Becomes Frightened When She Sees Life Opened"

Oh, Kahlo!

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The Sun, The Moon, The Buds, The Bones, The Branches, The Roots, and O The Thorns

27 bones in the hands, and the roots look like all of them and none of them. Cacti, sky, moon, sun, and skull. The death that gives us life. The life that we give to others to help them bloom.

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Elizabeth Bishop and Sacrificial Feminism | Online Only | Granta Magazine

Elizabeth Bishop and Sacrificial Feminism | Online Only | Granta Magazine

Here's an excellent article on why classification may be limiting....

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We Could Wander the Street like Rogues

I'm having one of those mise in abyme moments. Backward and forward and not being able to see today full on: Through but not into the looking glass.

Self-Pity Friday.

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Sean Hayes - "Powerful Stuff" (not the Subaru commercial!!!)

Some day, I hope to laugh like this again. What joy there is here. Oh, Sean Hayes, I have to add you to the Ander Monson/James McAvoy/William Gay/John Cusack litany of impossibly talented men who will never call me (listed in reverse alphabetical order).

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Leaves of Grass & "Some Say:" On Cleaving

Leaves of Grass, Section 2 As I ponder'd in silence,

Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,

A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,

Terrible in beauty, age, and power,

The genius of poets of old lands,

As to me directing like flame its eyes,

With finger pointing to many immortal songs,

And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said,

Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards?

And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,

The making of perfect soldiers.

Be it so, then I answer'd,

I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any,

Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering,

Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the field the world,

For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,

Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,

I above all promote brave soldiers. There's Walt. And here's Sappho--one of those genius poets of old lands to which he refers: Some say an army of horsemen (some, foot soldiers; some, ships) is the most beautiful thing on this dark earth, but I say it is what one loves. _______ Aren't she and Walt both writing that the most beautiful thing, the most powerful thing, is whatever you love, whatever makes you sing? The thing that, when it's lost, is irretrievable and still beautiful and still worth the song? The thing that you cling to,the thing that divides you? Whatever is brightest in the dark? Whatever is noun to your controlling metaphor? ______

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Fatboy Slim - Weapon Of Choice

Enjoy--there's no such thing as too much Walken!

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Dream Fragment

I woke up with the following phrases, but no images to clarify or deepen them:

• Alpha language (tongue)
• Tongue of the ocean (geography of the Bahamas, also a tongue and trough)
• Muscular hydrostat (what a tongue is, basically a boneless moveable structure; also in this classification are the arms of the octopus, the legs of certain spiders, the feet of slugs and the trunks of elephants. The muscular hydrostat manipulates without skeletal support. Once again the tongue is the most dominant of muscular hydrostats).

What do I do with these three phrases? They haunt me.

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Happy Birthday, Sweetheart

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You'd have been 47 today. We'd have had cake and ice cream and a huge meal somewhere, then more cake and ice cream. I miss you and I love you, and today I will be really really glad I knew you for 23 years.

This is the scan of a postcard I bought Harvey many years ago for his birthday. He loved frogs, because his grandfather (also a Harvey) loved frogs. I wanted to buy him a frog-shaped Majolica humidor that matched the one his grandfather had, but we couldn't afford it. I still want to buy that humidor, but it is on the list of things I have never seen again.

This trio of frogs was tucked in one of his sketchbooks, with a note that said More than worms (Dan's mishearing of the old song "More than Words"). This would have been 1991? 1992?

I did and I do love you more than worms and more than words, and I hope you are having a brilliant laughter-filled birthday, and that you have finally gotten Matisse to draw YOUR portrait.

His mouth is sweet, he is altogether lovely; this is my beloved and this is my friend, O you daughters of Jerusalem.

(Song of Songs 5:16, our translation)

Iggy Pop - Lust For Life

I'm worth a million in prizes.

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It Pays to Increase Your Word Power

This is all I remember from my dream, and I hope the rest of the words will come back to me. In my dream I am changing words; they are diminuendo.


From clover to cover or lover to over or love

From cloven hoof to oven

POOF!

Post SWC Syndrome

I have been at a writer's conference, and people have fed me and brought me towels and taken away laundry and driven me places and let me read their poems and hear their stories and watch their plays. They have read my poems and heard some of my stories and watched me act as though I knew what I was talking about in class.

This has been very much an "and" experience and not an "except for" or a "however" one.

I will write more later, but for now, the following remarks will have to suffice:

* Charles Martin is a genius teacher and was able to explain to me not just what is good about my poems but why it's good. This will make me a better writer, because I will know how to find the strengths of a poem and play it up. Why has it taken me so long to realize this is a part of revision?
* Claudia Emerson is a divine teacher and a wonderful reader. And can that woman sing!?!
* Phil Stephens was and is a mensch and a helluva fiction writer, as well as being the only poet I know who's written an epic.
* David Roby is an amazing actor, playwright, oral historian, and genius scholar. No one deserves success more than he does.
* I am humbled by my workshop's critiques of my poems. This level of empathy and support has never happened before.
* I have been on a moth walk (saw dozens of species and picked up katydids and Hercules beetles and an assassin bug).
* I have been on a bird walking expedition and saw many really beautiful birds, none more beautiful than the red-tailed hawk I saw on the golf course. I now want a scope for zeroing in on birds. And better binoculars.
* I have walked by candlelight to Allen Tate's grave and listened to Andrew Hudgins read "The Swimmers."
* I have delighted many people with my nasal Kentucky ay-uck-sent.
* I have bought 23 books and a pair of cowboy boots, as well as a Bakelite bracelet I found at University Thrift Store. I also found a piece of treenware that may pay for all my gas to Sewanee and back. A kind gentleman gave me an antique aquarium of an otter holding a fish bowl. (Pictures forthcoming, I promise).

And, oh, by the way, I will be in BEST NEW POETS 2011. This is kind of like Marianne Moore going to the prom--an unexpected delight! And the fact that it's D.A. Powell who chose my poem ups the ante (and this convoluted simile) to a wrist corsage brought by her date Jack Kerouac, who promises to dance with her to "How High the Moon."

PS I am so glad to be home. I don't suppose Raleigh would bring me coffee every day, though!

PSS My amazing suitemate was also named Pamela. She doesn't like the "PAM" name either.

PSSS I met a beautiful young woman who brought 7 pounds of jewelry to SWC. I thought I traveled heavy!

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Still Life Means There's Still Life

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