Summer Project

[poem was here]

My chapbook

at the Poets House Showcase.

Today

I journeyed to Brooklyn for the apartment search in the hot hot heat wave. I had an iced coffee; looked at an apartment; walked around Prospect Heights in the hot heat; had a peanut butter-banana smoothie for dinner; came back home.

Weekend in Hudson

(1) Train; (2) wildflowers for my b-day; (3) looking ghostly-blurry at the b&b; (4) the ritual breaking of the Hello Kitty piñata at the wedding; (5) sculpture at Art Omi.

My friend John drew these feet.

Don't be jealous.


(Drawing by John Fleischer)

Last night when I couldn't sleep

I read an excerpt from this book by Aimee Bender.

Then I read an excerpt from this book by John Waters.

Then I looked up some pictures of Johnny Mathis:


Then I looked up Johnnie Ray:

Then I watched some John Waters interviews:


Then I somehow got to this video called "If David Lynch directed Dirty Dancing."

Then I ate some cereal and started watching this documentary on Netflix about Bergman's cinematographer, Sven Nykvist:


Shortly after the part in the documentary where they show the clip of Max von Sydow wrestling with a tree, I went back to bed.

Visiting W.

The apartment of one of my oldest friends, who lives in Boston.

Upcoming reading

Hey, New England friends: I will be reading in Keene, NH on Saturday June 12th. Information on the reading is here.

What Muriel Rukeyser said

They flung me into the sea
The sunlight ran all over my face,
The water was blue the water was dark brown
And my severed head swam around that ship
Three times around and it wouldn't go down.


Too much life, my darling, embraces and strong veins,
Every sense speaking in my real voice,
Too many flowers, a too-knowing sun,
Too much life to kill.

[photo from the Academy of American Poets]

Our Biography

I had not re-read Whitman this summer yet when I began thinking
"cultivate and circulate" and making fake ballet arms in the kitchen.
The lady on PBS was telling me to circulate my lady molecules
for the good of all living things and men. For once I didn't feel
resentful. I was thinking "lymph and chi" when I woke up and birds
were calling loud-- between a squawk and chirp. I was reading
about Rukeyser's river and how fear of women and fear of poetry
are the same thing. "Too much life, my darling . . . .
too much life to kill" is what Rukeyser said.
Imagine saying that.

Bauhaus

When I was a teenager, I knew a thing or two. I stayed in my room being skinny and having bangs, listening to Bauhaus and lifting 3 lb. weights. I drew pretty good portraits of my own face. I learned to drive stick, and I would drive farther out into the suburbs to go to the mall and walk around drinking Dr. Pepper and chewing candy and being mildly disgusted with the all the . . . people, who seemed to be sinking of their own accord. All the way there, I’d look for the Eagles on the radio, in order to demonstrate that the Eagles are always on the radio and to further demonstrate that—for good or bad—my vocal range exactly matched that of one Don Henley. On the way back, I would listen to Heart or Fleetwood Mac, which reminded me of my childhood in the ‘70s, a time of honest belting and bad vibes. Boys at school would talk to me in class, and I guess I would just look at them or say something weird about The Sorrows of Young Werther or something, because after a while they’d get nervous and blurt out, “I guess that’s how people dress in Europe.” Then we’d both turn around, and class would start.

Shoe Portrait

The Woman Who Awoke Before Noon

Todd Colby reading our collaborative poem "The Age of Wonders" at the Lungfull Release Party/April 2010

The view from here

May poem

[poem was here]

Saturday

Go For It Program: Morning Advice for the Non-Morning Person

1. What are those people saying? I mean, birds.

2. Do not think about what constitutes a "pleasant environment" in the morning. Look at the light. It's probably pleasant.

3. Where does the sunlight fall on your bookshelf? It might be: Howards End, Gilead, The Morgesons, The Brothers Karamazov. I really might organize all this differently.

4. Cheech and Chong voice in my head goes, "Organize your miiiind, man." OK.

5. If you stop paying attention to good or bad things, they stop happening. Or start happening. I read that in a book.

6. Now there's light on Paradise Lost and Celestial Navigation by Anne Tyler.

7. You should try it.

April 30th poem

Last poem of the April draft-a-day challenge! "It's been real," as my mother used to (embarrassingly) say to store clerks.

-------------------------------------------------

While Reluctant to Use the Word Sing, I Am Content to Say Hum

Do starlings argue about whether to put a change
jar in the bedroom? Would a starling sit on the couch
wanting to make poems of birds and light? I can hear
the city grinding itself into the earth, making something
living of itself and airplanes dropping soot from blue
blue sky. Everything is shining and in pain.
(The little girl yesterday at the restaurant looked
at me, then asked her parents, Are the grownups
going to die? Her father-- Don't worry about it.)
It's hard to be loving all the time. Let's try.

April 29th poem

This is me having a life of the mind

Late April and I'm almost back to swimming feeling--
swim swim--under a washed-clean sky and all
those green for real leaves out my office window.
Birds picking their mites and students doing some spring
frolic thing I don't even want to know about on the beach
(lawn) by the admin building. It's all good vibes and secrets.
I'll climb the shallow concrete steps, branches curving
up like scythes. If I learn to build on what came before
there are cool places to hide.