Saturday night downtown

Pages from a childhood scrapbook

that I apparently put together sometime around 1979, and that I only have the vaguest recollection of.

Ready as a Lever

[for Todd Colby]

I’m building a sled from popsicle sticks

I’m wearing the jacket of the lamb, sliding

into a town near you to do the dance of glory, the Get-

Ready Man as my witness, for now, more than ever,

we all need a witness. In former times, we all of

us gathered in paddocks to witness the power

and the glory of the jive of the dance of perseverance

and rocking out. These days, it’s just me across town

watching you across town in videos online, rocking out.

I’m setting out to leave out of here on the “departure”

portion of my journey. Get ready, man. Stay tuned

in. I may need you as a witness. Pretty soon—

popsicle sticks everywhere.

Things I Wonder About

1. You'll catch more flies with honey. Sure. But who wants to catch flies?

2. Will my homemade therapies work? (A round of made-up 19th century breaths and small movements meant to teach my back its place, meant to encourage healthful vigor and elasticity.)

3. I don't want to be one, but I like the sound of the word. Weakling.

4. My mother's wish to become a diamond.

5. These sentences from the Morrison novel I'm teaching: "Those twelve years in Montour County, where she had been treated gently by a father and a brother, and where she herself was in a position to help farm animals under her care, had taught her a preferable kind of behavior. Preferable to that of the men who called her mermaid and the women who swept up her footprints or put mirrors on her door." Not everyone, apparently, learns "a preferable kind of behavior."

6. Some recent email subject lines: doppelganger; tick.; flying africans; This one?; You Should Come; Valentine Failure Massage.

7. Up here in my tower without curtains, I see all the weather. Even so, it sneaks up on me. The fact and idea of "overcast" taking hold of me like an uncanny event.

8. "A person can find a calm spot in hell/ between all the snow and spitting." Indeed.

9. Last night my dreams were on a whole continuum. On one end was a dream of washing dishes. I could wash dishes with amazing speed. On the other end was a dream of one of my oldest friends ("You Should Come") having died. I had to go down to the railroad station and turn in her coat, but at the last minute I refused. When I woke, I had just been wearing her coat, clutching it to me, and weeping weeping. No, you cannot have her coat! I am keeping the coat! (Ironically, she did once lend me a coat that I have yet to return. Also a bag and a key chain and a small table.)

10. Spring approaches. Or lurks. It feels more like lurking.

Hawk dawg

I dreamed the moon was the hugest it had ever been, which helped explain our behavior. The real things, though, were the hawk on a near tree when we woke yesterday, and, last night, wind like wind from Close Encounters, shaking our front door five flights up. All these shifts in weather and bird, all this feeling of winter being rent-- by which I mean tearing, torn, but I guess there's that other kind of rent, too. (Did you ever read Howards End? "Rent to the ideal.") This is all a workshop I'm paying for. The rent is slush and chill and knowing we will die, which is also part of the workshop. The cost of the class is the subject of the class, a seminar called "Difficult and Wondrous: The Costs and Rewards of Walking on Through." Syllabus forthcoming.

Groundhog Day Ice Storm Occasional Poems

Last night and today, I've been working on two poem drafts inspired by the ice storm. Luckily, I don't have to go back to campus until tomorrow, so I haven't been out in it. From my window, I just watched a guy and his small shoe-wearing dog try to skate-shuffle along. It seemed like slow going.

Here's one of the poems. The other is more lyrical and odd and uses words like "nimbus" and "consolation." It's called "Ice Blink." It isn't finished.


Ice Amounts Explainer

From this position of non-permanent privilege
I'm prepared to say: it's all shadow and act, all
crawling in and out of our personal own holes.
The Home for the Literal-Minded is where you'll end
up for clinging too hard. But then, we all end up at Home,
whether the guiding metaphor is lamb or lion, bionic
man or bird. Today I'm thinking: Groundhog. Thinking: Glissade.
Glissade sounds like a word I'd use in a poem about your hands
and the back of your neck and the way we skate around
on our mutual ice, sometimes doing some near-perfect silver
medal thing and sometimes taking the ice
metaphor in a horrible direction. Happy Groundhog Day.

Mid-Winter

Saturday poem

I Am Always

by Joanna Penn Cooper and Todd Colby

I love how all your friends are shy. You befriend them in order
to put them at ease, make them nervous, and put them
at ease again. I'll light a candle and think of a place I've been
to with you. And then I'll stop because the wind will be howling
and the cold snap will be unbearable, mostly, without you.
Like this red down coat my mother had in the '70s.
It made her look like the Michelin Man, even with her
long hair and bird bones, and I ripped the pocket
grabbing onto her in parking lots, waist high
and desperate. That coat is gone. I drew a skull and crossbones
across the back of it with a giant Sharpie and hung it above the garage,
and then it just blew away the very first day it was up there.
The view from here is Christmas lights and gravel, and maybe
a whiff of cinnamon and cigarettes. I don't want to go home.

[1/9/10]

I Have Seven Things to Tell You

1. I think I'm going to start putting something on my blog every Wednesday. This is the year in which I tell some version of the truth. And as Hunter S. Thompson said, "[A]nybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor." I do not emulate HST in other ways, but in this way (the commitment to a psychic anchor), I will. But don't worry. I'm not as jangled as all that.

2. This is the view out the window of my home office. The dirt on the window is not my fault-- it's between two panes of glass-- but it makes for an interesting photo.

3. Today I will finish preparing for tomorrow, which is my first day of spring semester teaching. I will be talking about "Coming of Age Narratives" and "American Literature, 1890-1929." There are so many things those categories could mean. I will narrow it down and narrow down until each topic fits within three pieces of papers; six novels; and a series of 75 minute discussions.

4. An opera singer moved in next door. He is doing scales right now. Maybe I should do some kind of vocalizing every morning. Or maybe some kind of ritualized movement. I could be like Allen Ginsberg in his kitchen doing tai chi.

5. I would like to take this class. I've been mulling over ideas for a poetry workshop I'd like to teach in which students put themselves in trances. I recently found out that Eleni Sikelianos hypnotized her poetry students herself! You are allowed to do such things in Colorado.

6. The night before last, I dreamed that I was on vacation with my little brother and a friend of his from junior high named William. Somehow, I was concerned that William had not brought the right clothing. When I woke up, it was strange to realize that I was no longer on vacation with the two of them and that they are no longer the age I dreamed them to be (which was maybe 16 years old). However, I quickly accepted it and was no longer in that reality by the time I finished brushing my teeth.

7. Next year at this time, I will likely be somewhere else (in a new apartment, if not a new city). This is due to neighbors who stomp and to the academic job market, which is also inconsiderate. (The opera singer doesn't bother me.) I am trying to figure out where I've lived the longest. It may be Lawrence, Kansas, where I lived for about seven years in my late teens and early twenties, with one year away. Can that be right?

Happy Wednesday!

Things I Still Have

Our New Year

I’ve cleaned off a space on my desk big enough to riff

on you twenty times. By which I mean I’m on the bus

back from Boston, thinking of your eyes and mouth and hands.

This poem, you may have noticed, has an I and a you. This poem

is the daughter we don’t have. She’s a curly-headed implicated

implicator. She’s American. She’ll be oddly happy up through

the age of ten, then suffer seven years of anger. Blame her mother;

blame her father. Emerge from flame knowing the different

music. American. This is our new year of learning urgency

and a kind of loose-headed, courageous heart. Some people think you

shouldn’t use “courageous” in a poem. But consider this:

Near the end of Ingrid Bergman’s life, she and her friend

Liv Ullman went to the movies. Fifteen minutes in, Ingrid leans

over and says, “I don’t have time for this,” then gets up and leaves.

This is all just to say, there’s a wild low singing under all these naps,

and from now on I’m telling the truth. From now on, I’m telling

some version of the truth.

Movies I've Watched in 2011 So Far

image from Flixster.com

Exit Through the Gift Shop [First movie of 2011. Interesting-ish; hoax-ish]
Shutter Island [better than I thought it would be]
Alice in Wonderland [eh]
Precious [eek!]
Audrey Rose [1970s supernatural thriller with a very creepy Anthony Hopkins]
Moon [Sam Rockwell. Sam Rockwell. Sam Rockwell.]
Stephen Fry in America [BBC series. I love the way he talks.]
Patti Smith: Dream of Life [I liked watching her paint and seeing her talk to her parents.]
Monty Python: Almost the Truth [delightful documentary watched with my delightful friend in Boston]

I also just watched American Masters: Jeff Bridges. I see some Starman in my future. Maybe American Heart. The Fisher King? [And: How much do I love The Last Picture Show? A lot.]

Three from today

Pema Chodron

The New Year

New Year's Eve: Chimay and cheese and heirloom tomatoes. Twilight Zone. New Year's Day: Sushi. Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church.

Finalist

My book of poems (the more prose poem-y version of it) was a finalist for the Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books. Congratulations to the winners and all the finalists and semi-finalists!

Here I Am

Merry Christmas, all you elves out in internet land.

I'm at my mom's. I might go see True Grit later.

I am in Florida

37th Annual New Year's Day Marathon Reading

I'll be reading with Clif's trio at about 6:45.

January 1, 2011
2:00 pm
Saturday

The Poetry Project
at St. Marks Church
131 E. 10th Street (and 2nd Ave)

poetryproject.com

Poets and Performers for 2011 include: John Giorno, Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye, Philip Glass, Suzanne Vega, Taylor Mead, Eric Bogosian, Anne Waldman & Ambrose Bye, Vito Acconci, Foamola, Anselm Berrigan, Ariana Reines, Peter Gizzi, Liz Willis, Ted Greenwald, Bruce Andrews & Sally Silvers, The Church of Betty, Thom Donovan, Tim Griffin, Todd Colby, Tom Savage, David Shapiro, Jonas Mekas, Josef Kaplan, Judith Malina, Albert Mobilio, Alex Abelson, Maria Mirabal, Bill Kushner, David Freeman, David Kirschenbaum, Diana Rickard, Don Yorty, Dorothea Lasky, Douglas Dunn, Alan Gilbert, Alan Licht w/ Angela Jaeger, Charles Bernstein, Christopher Stackhouse, Citizen Reno, Cliff Fyman, Corina Copp, Aaron Kiely, Adeena Karasick, Bill Zavatsky, Bob Holman, Robert Fitterman, Rodrigo Toscano, Brenda Iijima, Brendan Lorber, Brett Price, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Curtis Jensen, Dael Orlandersmith, David Vogen, Derek Kroessler, Diana Hamilton, ARTHUR’S LANDING, CAConrad, Akilah Oliver, Douglas Piccinnini, John S. Hall, Samita Sinha, Sara Wintz, Secret Orchestra with special guest Joanna Penn Cooper, Shonni Enelow, Bob Rosenthal, Brenda Coultas, John Yau, Julian T. Brolaski, Evelyn Reilly, Filip Marinovich, Douglas Rothschild, Drew Gardner, Eleni Stecopoulos, Elinor Nauen, Eve Packer, Jo Ann Wasserman, Joanna Fuhrman, Dustin Williamson, E. Tracy Grinnell, Ed Friedman, Edwin Torres, Eileen Myles, Elliott Sharp, Emily XYZ, Erica Hunt, Erica Kaufman, Evan Kennedy, Joe Elliot, Joel Lewis, Frank Sherlock, Gillian McCain, Greg Fuchs, Janet Hamill, Jeremy Hoevenaar, Jessica Fiorini, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Jim Behrle, Julianna Barwick, Julie Patton, Michael Lydon, Lisa Jarnot, Maggie Dubris, Marcella Durand, Marty Ehrlich, Merry Fortune, Michael Cirelli, Kristen Kosmas, Laura Elrick, Lauren Russell, Leopoldine Core, Nina Freeman, Paolo Javier, Patricia Spears Jones, Paul Mills (Poez), Michael Scharf, Mike Doughty, Karen Weiser, Lewis Warsh, Linda Russo, Penny Arcade, Peter Bushyeager, Rebecca Moore, Mónica de la Torre, Murat Nemet-Nejat, Nathaniel Siegel, Nick Hallett, Nicole Peyrafitte, Pierre Joris & Miles Joris-Peyrefitte, Kathleen Miller, Katie Degentesh, Kelly Ginger, Ken Chen, Kim Lyons, Kim Rosenfield, India Radfar, Tonya Foster, Stephanie Gray, Susan Landers, Tony Towle, Tracie Morris, Valery Oisteanu, John Coletti, Rachel Levitsky, Edmund Berrigan, Jamie Townsend, Macgregor Card, Wayne Koestenbaum, Will Edmiston, Yoshiko Chuma, Nicole Wallace, Arlo Quint, Stacy Szymaszek and more T.B.A

General admission $20/Students & Seniors $15/Members $10.

This week

I Have a Few Questions for You

(with apologies to Uncle Walt)

Aren't we all just tigers and lambs with austere mullets, serious zebras with Elvis hairdos?

Don't you have something better to do with your mortal time?

Didn't you eat a bagel half with wondrous capers, red onion, etc.? Wasn't the going difficult-- all that chewing-- and blessed?

Have you studied so long to be one of them? Have you been born enough?

Isn't there always a stray remark lurking to help you plumb the depths?

Didn't you tense your shoulders in gladness, keeping them near your ears?

Weren't you always one of the chosen?

Weren't you a pilgrim alone, with only mysterious racket to keep you company (that hammering, that slamming vault door, that phantom semi honking)?

Didn't you glimpse the curve of the road through the newly bare trees and wonder what amphitheater this was now? Didn't you then recognize the road and say, "Oh, it's the road"?

Didn't the lion lie down with the lamb? Weren't both of them you?

Giving Thanks

(for Stella)

When I woke up, my thoughts were oracular.
There's so much I've yet to be grateful for, things
like circumstance and dogged joy and birth and--
I'll say it-- death. (Is approaching grateful
the same as grateful?) This is the holiday of, "Oh,
I forgot to notice you and your labored breathing
there in the corner." But really, I did notice you--
how your eyes seemed to point in two different
directions sometimes; your hound
tendency to just want to keep moving in
a straight line, nose toward the ground, away
from the house; how you hunkered in
joy and smiled a little and were your own fur-
covered secret of small pleasures and
longing and some smelling, flop-eared version
of love. What if on your last day, you got
a bath and were talked to sweetly and chewed
two of three bones you were offered?
What of being with ones who saw you young
and saw you old, who bailed you out of jail,
who lay on the floor with your animal body,
breathing?

Rivers and Tides

A clip from the documentary Rivers and Tides, about the artist Andy Goldsworthy.

Clif's trio's EP is out!

There's a poem by me inside.

Insomnia Poem

(for Todd Colby)

I’m like some freak who smells like moon tea, if only spirit
had not abandoned me, if only I could harness the power
of a single day’s frittering, I’d come back from the fourth dimension
and tell myself deep truths from there, flickering in the doorway,
saying, “Chill” and “Recognize.” I am high up in my home, bereft
of as many comforting textiles as I’d like to own, but rich in dark
haunted tree limbs moving of their own volition. Cradled
by more encroaching fog and nefarious 2 a.m. subway track
singing than I even begin to deserve. I am mourning the twentieth
century. Kids these days know nothing of Magic Fingers,
of luminous clock faces slowly going dark next to twin beds
as a dogwood tree comes on outside, shining the yard
bright in one spot, on the loneliest night in the twentieth century.

Weekends

First Aid Kit

[Found here: http://coldfrontmag.com/poets-off-poetry/four-fantasias-on-fleet-foxes]

Joan Baez

Found poem

If you Google "Joanna Penn Cooper poem" and then click on "images," you'll see a bunch of images that are mostly not me.

[The Jeanne Moreau image is from http://giuliageranium.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html.]

Because you know you like the cover

You can order a copy here.

Upcoming readings

If you are in New York, you could come out come out and see me read poems at one of these two events:

Ping Pong Launch Party
Saturday, October 16 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street

Tygerburning Literary Journal Launch And Reading
Dec. 4, 2010, 7:30 PM
Upstairs at Erika's
Williamsburg, NYC
For further information please contact Erika at viofem@gmail.com

Poems and bees

Poems of mine appear in the most recent issues of the journals SUPERMACHINE and Ping Pong.

Also: I'm covered in bees!

John Cassavetes

“You have to fight every day to stop censoring yourself. And you never have anyone else to blame when you do. What happens to artists is that it’s not that somebody’s standing in their way, it’s that their own selves are standing in their way."

[Read more here.]

More significant records of my youth

1. Bad Girls, Donna Summer
I think I got this for Easter in 1979, along with Mickey Mouse Disco. I loved Donna Summer. She was edgy and emotive.

2. Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles
I listened to the Beatles a lot when I was a kid. And whenever I saw those creepy vans with dark windows, I would think the Magical Mystery Tour was indeed coming to take me away.

3. "Call Me," Blondie
I had a bunch of cool 45s. "Roll me in designer sheets, I'll never get enough."

4. Business As Usual, Men at Work
A kid named Scott Ferguson made a tape of this album for me in middle school. He drew cool cartoons and had to have all these surgeries on his back. I think he was from Canada. I think Cargo was on the other side.

5. Rio, Duran Duran
Seventh grade was all about Rio.

6. Zenyatta Mondata, The Police
The older sister of my best friend in 8th grade loved the Police, so I started loving them, too. I was way too into the song "Don't Stand So Close to Me." Good thing none of my teachers were at all Sting-like.

7. Golden Age of Wireless, Thomas Dolby
Strangely strong connection with the song "Europa and the Pirate Twins."

8. Sweet Baby James, James Taylor
JT understands.

9. 12 Greatest Hits, Patsy Cline
Patsy understands. She understands more than we understand.

10. The Best of Leonard Cohen
Oh, Leonard.

11. Deja Vu, CSNY
Strong, slightly eerie double-layered nostalgia for both high school and childhood associated with this album.

12. Purple Rain, Prince
What??

13. Are You Experienced, The Jimi Hendrix Experience
What?????

14. Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, Dead Kennedys
I don't think I totally understood this album when I bought it in high school, but it allowed me to have conversations like this:
Friend of my mom's from work: What if I named a band after your dead heroes?
Me: [Shrug]

15. Led Zeppelin IV
When we were teenagers, a friend from childhood once tried to hypnotize me into making out with him by playing this and telling me about how Led Zeppelin had sold their souls to the devil. I went along with it.

16. The Velvet Underground and Nico
Record store re-discovery of music I vaguely remember from childhood turns an important corner. Felt like I was cooler than everyone for about a year, until I went to college and met someone else who also liked the Velvet Underground and early David Bowie.

Year

Clif and I met a year ago tomorrow.

Droopy

Text message from Mom, 12:29 PM: Remember to eat protein in the morning and stay hydrated against droopiness.


[image from http://dfenestrate.blogspot.com/]

Flight Lists

Flight to Orlando

1. Is that woman carrying a marijuana plant?
2. Two fauxhawks within three rows.
3. Little boy in front of me opens the window shade before we've pulled away from the gate and says, "I can see our town."
4. The first ingredient in my orange juice is apple juice.

Flight back to New York

1. Guy with a comical hat featuring an illustration of a HUGE marijuana leaf is one of the last people to get on the plane. (Problems at security?)
2. Autistic grown twins in the row behind me with their father. They seem to function quite well, until they get into an argument about how elastic is made of rubber as we're getting off the plane.
3. Young woman in my row whose carry-on has a BOGOTA tag seems to be on drugs or delirious. She puts her head on the empty middle seat between us, basically under the arm rest that my arm is resting on, then looks up at me quizzically when I keep touching the armrest to change the JetBlue tv channels. (Cash Cab-Law and Order-Cash Cab-Law and Order).
4. There's a very very old woman across the aisle from me who had to be carried onto the plane and put into her seat by two strong men. She has on a sassy green jacket and a lime green John Deere-style hat that says TABERNACLE-something-or-other. Her daughter beside her has the same hat.

New Smyrna Beach

Things Mom has said so far:

1. We’re only watching this to see if she’s a midget.
2. The warmest fur is the underhair of a musk-ox.
3. I’m not going to kill you with a blood pressure cuff!

Back at Mom's

where it's Christmas in August.

Move it

We're in a new apartment with new rooms and a view of trees. And there's this hole in the kitchen wall.

The night we moved, we ate a beige meal-- hummus and cracked wheat crackers and Chimay. It was perfect. We also watched a movie, but not one of these movies. (We watched Silkwood, which I haven't seen in years. It isn't what you'd call a celebratory movie, but watching something so well acted is comforting, at least.)

The next day we were really tired. We went to brunch and then sat on a bench and looked at these geese.

We still have a lot of unpacking to do.