Weekend

[Under the High Line is where I ate lunch with some of my family; my brother met up with a "couple friends," and I walked them through Prospect Park; David Byrne put this globe here; my brother made a plum cake, and I made a cake with the leftover plums, which sunk into the cake, but were still good.]

A. R. Ammons

I tried to read Ammons years ago, and didn't get it.  But just today, I get him, like him.

This is just a place.

J. Hope Stein

My friend J. Hope Stein, a wonderful poet, has a blog here.  Be sure to read About her and to watch the excerpts from her short film, "The Inventor's Last Breath."  It is all very wondrous.   

Quiet weekend

Yesterday I took a cab to a 9/11 memorial poetry reading (because the two subways I needed to get there weren't running), and everything just seemed so quiet in Brooklyn.  Very quiet.  The reading had entrancing moments.  My former teacher Malena Mörling read her poems in English in her Swedish accent.   I've heard her read several times now, and in my mind the voice of her poems is so tied to the lilt of her accent, the way the English runs over it so that it's plucked at in a lovely way.  Nicole Peyrafitte started her performance piece by saying something like, "Remember.  Reflect.  Mark."  And then she rubbed a bunch of charcoal across a huge sheet of paper.  It went on from there.  There was chalk dust on her head and French lilting singing and marking on her body and more singing.  And, of course, given her presence and her voice, we marked and reflected.  It's amazing to me when people can do that kind of thing and pull it off.  And Dorianne Laux held us all.  Rapt.

What else?  Clif and I ate Tibetan food on Saturday.

On Sunday, we sat in our offices for most of the day, and still I have more to do on my syllabus for tomorrow's class.  Well, I've been mulling it over and making notes on possibilities for about three days.  Yesterday I read some poems and thought about them, the kind of poems that lull you and knit you into them.  The lulling and knitting distracted me from finishing culling down the list and fitting the poems into categories and boxes of time on the syllabus.

We also finally got my tall bookshelves upstairs.  They wouldn't fit up the stairs when we moved, and we (well, mostly he) had to take them apart and put them back together.  Now I have a tiny library room attached to my office, in addition to the built-in bookcases downstairs.  Yay.  But, you know, I still need to arrange the books.  Here is the Collected Frank O'Hara looking lonely.

 Clif says our upstairs reminds him of the Millennium Falcon, and that he likes how we can both lean back in our office chairs and look at each other down the curved hallway.  That hulking black case there is a double bass.  

I have seven things to tell you

1.  Ten years ago, it was a beautiful day in Philadelphia.
2.  The tv in the English Department hallway at Temple.  Lyn Tribble saying, "This is bad."  Knowing DC and New York had been hit.  Thinking at first Philadelphia would be next.  After teaching, a skittish drive through Philly with my friend and former student Walter, on our way out of town to be with other friends.  Feeling waves of grief and shock up and down the eastern seaboard.  
3.  I guess I moved to Minneapolis after that?  In part because of that?  To be near family?  I was in Minneapolis when the U.S. declared war on Iraq.  The war is ongoing.  The grief of the Bush years.  The numbness.  Eric saying something like, "That is how they want you to respond.  Don't succumb to the numbness." 
4.  A Facebook friend posts, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace."  Yes, do that. 
5.  Another thing:  I am remembering the atmosphere in Nova Scotia, where I got to go for a week two years ago.  Where I was, the air had a lightness, but the atmosphere was also heavy enough to hold you.  That is what I remember or what I was feeling at the time, lightness and weight, the air and a holding.  May I be grateful.  
6.  This morning's email from my mom: "If u were little I would buy u these PJs and talk u into wearing the hat w them."  For the fact that someone sees me this way, may I be truly grateful.

7.  And: grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; 
to be understood, as to understand; 
to be loved, as to love.

Everyday Genius

I am pleased to have a piece of writing up over here.  Thanks, Everyday Genius people!

Perhaps

Perhaps this drawing parodying pre-Raphaelitism will have a cheering effect. 

(Punch Magazine, 1866)

Today

Today I wrote road rode the bus to Montclair, NJ to fill out my HR paperwork.  I am teaching one class there this fall.  (American Poetry after 1945.)

Today I was very sleepy all day, and I ate dumb foods, like a croissant for lunch.

Today it rained and rained a lot at night just now, which is tonight.

Today I ordered Indian food from the place I like now, near me in Brooklyn now.  Gandhi Fine Indian Cuisine of Flatbush.  I have lived in my new place for a month and ten days, and I have ordered food from there four times, I think.  (Once for a visiting friend.)  The man who brings it said to me the second time, "I have been here before.  Do you remember me?" and he gave me a very sweet smile.  Yes.  Yes, I remember you.  Today we smiled sweetly at each other again, and I thought, "Please be careful on your way back."  Maybe he heard me think it.  It wasn't raining at that point.  Maybe a little miss. mist.  Careful.   

The rice pudding has a little tapioca in it, which I guess that sounds a little weird.  But so good.

This is how I sound at night after I was sleepy all day and it rained, and a croissant for lunch and a bus that sat there in the Lincoln Tunnel for a very long time (a short time, but an hour ride instead of twenty minutes, part of it in the tunnel).

This is what I look like when I'm tired like this.  (You don't want to see.)

But there was seafood korma and a salad we made at home, which someone cut up the vegetables for me for.  A few bites of rice pudding and the rest for tomorrow.

All of which sounds better if you think it over while you listen to this:

News and recent endeavors

1.  I'm excited to have a poem in the recent issue of South Dakota Review.

2.  Another piece is forthcoming (next week!) in Everyday Genius. 

3.  I realized that Bernadette Mayer and Donald Revell will be the Visiting Writers during my four-week writing residency at the Vermont Studio Center next May.  Hey!

4.  I've picked up some poetry teaching for fall, in addition to the research work I'm doing.  (I'm doing some paid research work for another writer, as well as some research of my own into late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century spiritualism.)

5.  Keep me in mind if you need someone to do paid research, editing, or writing work.  I'm hoping to get a simple website up this fall about the services I can offer along these lines.  Meanwhile, you can find my resume here and academic cv here.   

6.  Some of my research/celebration of the season change involved going to the Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp with my little brother last week when I was visiting Florida.  It was the site of a community of turn-of-the-century spiritualists, and now it's an isolated small town filled with psychics.  It is also, apparently, filled with spirit orbs that show up in photographs!  My brother and I tried unsuccessfully to photograph a spirit orb (see above).  

7.  Oh, dear.  Summer is ending.  But oh, my-- how I love fall. 

More exchanges

source: http://ibc.lynxeds.com

Me:  Look at that person.  That ibis.  That egret thing.
Mom:  That's a sandhill crane.

Me:  I feel like my recall hasn't been the same since I hit my head.
Brother:  I just haven't been the same since that roller coaster car jumped the tracks . . .

Me: [reading People magazine]  Why is Shiloh Pitt-Jolie such a little cross-dresser?*
Brother:  I don't know, Joanna.  Some of your questions are beyond the scope of my knowledge.

*FYI, I actually think little kids should be cross-dressers. It shows character.

Quotes from Mom

"Another one of Bill's weird birds.  Bill likes birds.  [shrug]"

"I'm glad you're getting old.  Otherwise you'd be dead."

"Why didn't you bring me spirit orb candy?  I didn't want to eat it.  I just wanted to set it on my desk and look at it."

"Here's the quote from Groucho Marx at the beginning of part 2 of my book:  'I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal.' "

"I know I'm charming.  You don't have to state the obvious." 

Florida again

Today

I got a few things done in my new office.  Here it looks like that shrinking hallway from Willy Wonka.

And I bought this minimalist bouquet (freesias) because I was told that fresh flowers would make the house spirits happy.  I got this vase as a going away present the year I taught 10th grade English in St. Paul.  I like the vase, but I may put the flowers in something else. 

My little brother was featured in this German newspaper article.  The article is about his biculturalism-- he was raised in Germany and the U.S.-- and it was written by his best friend since kindergarten, Anika.  I'll have to post this funny picture I have of them on the first day of kindergarten when I can find it.  They have those huge square backpacks German kids carry and the traditional huge cone of candy.  Now she's writing newspaper articles and he just started a graduate program in urban planning.

Also, Clifton is back from his trip up north.  Here he is doing the ritual pantomime re-enactment of his travel.  (And don't worry-- I'll hang some stuff on the walls at some point.  Maybe in September.)  

Top ten things that freak me out about ghosts

(for Todd Colby)

1.  Todd Colby goes, "I read an article in the New York Times that there are more ghosts reported in Brooklyn than anywhere on the planet!"
2.  Great.  Haha.  I didn't say anything about GHOSTS.  I just said I couldn't SLEEP because Clif's in BUFFALO.
3.  But now I'm thinking about the ghosts again.
4.  The first night we slept here, I had a dream about the people who had lived here before.  I discovered all their old clothes from the '40s.  The woman, especially, was happy that I knew who they were.
5.  But the attic still felt sad and unsettled.
6.  Until we unpacked our stuff and vacuumed.  Then it felt ok again.
7.  Until Clif went to BUFFALO.  And left me here with the GHOSTS. 
8.  Sometimes it's just trapped sadness, like the feeling of Elizabeth Bishop's mother that wells up at dusk in her childhood home.
9.  My other friend goes, "Poor Joanna.  Every place you live turns out to be haunted.  Must be hard." 
10.  Anyway.  Ghosts don't like to be talked about.

I Hear You Sometimes from a Veil

I have since childhood been sleepy and loved
and trying to work it out

A friend calls
and I report on my eye circles
He says, I thought I could count on you 
to take care of yourself
But we have a project
A proposed collaborative project
something about crossing dimensions
something about a veil

I will leave the attic door open
listen for you in a dream 
if I can sleep tonight
I'll call to let you know
what you said

Watching the Basquiat documentary again

Radiant child.

Semi-arranged

The new place is starting to get arranged.

If you ignore those two end tables that don't go there.  And the lampshade with no base.  And the empty basket that doesn't go there.  And the fact that my tall bookcases are still in the entryway because they wouldn't fit up the stairs.  Etc.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the two small attic rooms in our duplex after we moved in.  They seemed haunted and/or overly womb-like.  Now I like them again.  Here is my office/garret/guest room.  My friend Wendy and her brother made that small painted table in high school.  That Marimekko pillow was my gift to myself when I first moved to New York three years ago.  I thought, "A pillow of jaunty mystery.  Just the thing."

I just noticed that this closet has a glass doorknob.  You can't see it very well, but this painting is by my friend John. It's called "Setting Out."  I'm always setting out. 

Recent news

1.  I have been accepted for a month-long residency at the Vermont Studio Center for May 2012.  Hopefully I will have a good start on my second poetry manuscript by then. 

2.  Nic Sebastian has read one of my poems in that wonderful voice of hers for her website Whale Sound. 

3.  My friend Wendy, who I've known since we were 17, is visiting.  Usually I visit her in Boston.  But this time she is visiting me in my new digs in Brooklyn.  And she brought her talismanic travel object, a smirking Canadian doll.  It's Bonhomme, the mascot of the Quebec Winter Carnival, and he only scares me a little.  Middle Ellie seems fine with him. 

Today I Discovered

A button painted onto the windowsill.

A bunch of old photos of old friends, looking ten to twenty years younger.

Why there are so many books and movies about old houses that hold secrets.

The necessity of slowing down, in order not to walk away without your money or hit your head so hard it leaves a dent. 

There has been a turn toward autumn, and breeze, open windows, and cicadas remind me of Kansas, even though I am in Brooklyn.

I am in Brooklyn.

I still want to go to Coney Island.   Lawrence, Kansas and Coney Island. 

Wise Up