April 11th poem
Thursday, April 11, 2013
While
the Baby Sleeps
I read an Anne Carson poem about walking before dawn in Iceland. I'm envious of Anne Carson then. I want to be in Iceland doing things like that, seeing crows as big as chairs. Ravens. Or in another place, Nova Scotia, maybe, where I went once to stay at Elizabeth Bishop's childhood home and write because one of the house's owners told me I should. Or could. I did more revision than writing there. I read a book of prose poems by Anne Carson there that I liked. I also read the beginning of Anne of Green Gables, a couple of books by Canadian authors I hadn't heard of, some old National Geographics in the sitting room that was lonely to go into, some files of photocopied archival materials about Bishop. I got my feet stuck in the red-purplish mud of the Bay of Fundy. I walked down the middle of the road with my friend Douglas at around midnight. There were so many stars I didn't know what to do. I thought of Bishop's poem about Robinson Crusoe, and I kept telling Douglas that we should move over to the side of the road in case a Canadian redneck came peeling through the village in a pickup truck in the dark. Every night we would meet in the kitchen and ask each other if we thought the house was haunted. Neither of us would stay in the largest bedroom. I think that's where Bishop's mother screamed that time before she went back to the sanatorium for good. The house got very sad around dusk and stayed that way for a while, but I loved it.
I read an Anne Carson poem about walking before dawn in Iceland. I'm envious of Anne Carson then. I want to be in Iceland doing things like that, seeing crows as big as chairs. Ravens. Or in another place, Nova Scotia, maybe, where I went once to stay at Elizabeth Bishop's childhood home and write because one of the house's owners told me I should. Or could. I did more revision than writing there. I read a book of prose poems by Anne Carson there that I liked. I also read the beginning of Anne of Green Gables, a couple of books by Canadian authors I hadn't heard of, some old National Geographics in the sitting room that was lonely to go into, some files of photocopied archival materials about Bishop. I got my feet stuck in the red-purplish mud of the Bay of Fundy. I walked down the middle of the road with my friend Douglas at around midnight. There were so many stars I didn't know what to do. I thought of Bishop's poem about Robinson Crusoe, and I kept telling Douglas that we should move over to the side of the road in case a Canadian redneck came peeling through the village in a pickup truck in the dark. Every night we would meet in the kitchen and ask each other if we thought the house was haunted. Neither of us would stay in the largest bedroom. I think that's where Bishop's mother screamed that time before she went back to the sanatorium for good. The house got very sad around dusk and stayed that way for a while, but I loved it.
Opening Day
Sunday, March 31, 2013
[Tomorrow NaPoWriMo begins! Here is a prose poem from my 2012 poem-a-day efforts. See you tomorrow! Don't forget to say "rabbit, rabbit."]
OK.
First of all, it's warmer out than I thought, and so I'm overdressed.
Second of all, even with sunglasses on, I'm squinting. Thirdly,
when a bird goes, poo-tee-weet, I direct my next thought toward it,
thusly: "Petulance. We like the sound of the word petulance,
don't we, birdie?" Then I pass three separate teenagers, still
young, still forming, looking elastic in spirit like fourteen year-olds mostly
do. I wish them the best. I begin to worry. They look
so full of potential. As the third one passes, I sigh loudly in
his direction, and he politely looks away, ensconced in his own hat like that.
When I get on the subway, all the adults look vacant and spiritually
sparse. At least there's one kid. At least he's scowling with his
hands jammed into the pockets of his jacket and thinking what look like serious
thoughts. At least he's swinging his little feet. His socks are
black and white striped. His Adidas are the same ones my 25 year-old
brother has. Welcome to opening day, little boy. Play ball, I
guess.
April, almost!
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
OK, so I'm going to write 30 poems in April again for Maureen Thorson's NaPoWriMo. I'll post them here. This is my fourth (!) time doing it. First time with a newborn. zomg. Imagine me singing this part in a high-pitched quavery voice: "Aaaaah!"
My 2010 and 2011 efforts are still archived on my blog. I removed the 2012 poems in case I wanted to submit some of them to journals, and I will likely do the same thing this year, once April is over. Here's one that was published in RealPoetik.
The 30 poems in 30 days challenge is just that-- a challenge. It's a good way to feel connected to poeminess and process and one's everyday observations. It's also a good way to feel a bit crazy and vulnerable. (Because, you know, I need more of that right now.) Anyway. I'm doin' it.
Stay tuned also for a new drawing-poem collaboration by me and my brother at the Malfeez blog.
In the meantime, here is a picture of the baby to tide you over.
My 2010 and 2011 efforts are still archived on my blog. I removed the 2012 poems in case I wanted to submit some of them to journals, and I will likely do the same thing this year, once April is over. Here's one that was published in RealPoetik.
The 30 poems in 30 days challenge is just that-- a challenge. It's a good way to feel connected to poeminess and process and one's everyday observations. It's also a good way to feel a bit crazy and vulnerable. (Because, you know, I need more of that right now.) Anyway. I'm doin' it.
Stay tuned also for a new drawing-poem collaboration by me and my brother at the Malfeez blog.
In the meantime, here is a picture of the baby to tide you over.
Elias is here
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
 |
| After three days of labor, he decided to be born. We regarded each other. |
 | ||||
|
 |
| Once home, he gave me this look. |
 |
| And this one. |
 |
| We can't believe our good fortune in having this person in our family. There is much to learn. Meanwhile, Elias sends you his blessings. |
On the Delicate and Non-Delicate Movements of Weather and Time
Friday, February 08, 2013
At 2 a.m. the humidifier sounds like crickets and then I
know I should move to the country.
I let my large gray yoga ball sit on my
reading chair, even though in times past that would have meant something
ominous if I woke up wrong. But I
know I’m undergoing a transformation because, when they do show up, the ghosts
in this room keep me company now.
One will hang around all matter of fact and affable, like a wise old
dog, before leaving again, and then I’ll just go back to sleep.
My boyfriend tucks me in for the second time and tries to
sneak away to do more work.
“Goodnight,” I say, then hold up my arm and make a beak. Then I say, “Remember shadow animals on
the wall?” He laughs and turns to go. He knows I’m always
trying to start conversations about shadow animals when people are trying to
say goodnight.
What do you expect?
One lifetime is very short, but it’s hard to realize when it’s
happening. Except sometimes it’s
easy to realize. Sometimes you’re
almost a year later in a room in Brooklyn waiting for a blizzard, when just a
second ago you were almost a year earlier in a different room in Vermont
sitting on a bed with a Vanity Fair,
a pregnancy test, and an empty bag of M&Ms you don’t remember eating.
My friend tells me there’s a word for this made up by a
theorist. She can’t remember the
theorist’s name or the word. My
friend is very intelligent, but we like to half-remember things when we talk. It’s just what we do.
Physics calls it “everything happens at once and all the
edges touch.” I believe I read
that somewhere or heard it on PBS and didn’t just see it in a movie.
I will be the theorist and I will call it effleurage, which actually means “a
delicate stroking motion.” In my
theory, it means that and it also means “the mind and body’s flagrant disregard
for notions of the consistent forward movement of time.” A delicate and non-delicate motion.
The Next Big Thing
Saturday, February 02, 2013
The wondrous J. Hope Stein has tagged me in this self-interview series. As she explains it, "The Next Big Thing is a neat, pass-it-on, chain-letter-ish
interview series in which you conduct a brief interview with yourself
and post it on your blog & at the end of the interview tag 2- 5 [writers]– thereby passing it on to them . . . just like
influenza! or birdsong!"
I believe these are supposed to come out on Wednesdays, but I'm doing it today! Here goes.
What is the working title of the book?
How We Were Strangers. I've gone through a series of other titles-- including A Girl's Guide to Self-Hypnosis-- before returning to this original title.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
The book didn't emerge from one specific "idea" so much as it represents a few years of writing poems, prose poems, and short prose vignettes and watching a voice and themes emerge. One memory comes to mind, though, when I think about having an idea that I could write a book like this. When I was getting my Ph.D. (in American literature) at Temple University, I was "secretly" continuing my life as a creative writer, which included writing brief prose vignettes that fell somewhere between prose poem and short short story. Anyway, I showed some of these to my friend Ross Gay, and he commented that he "could read a whole book of these." I tucked that away in the back of my mind to return to later.
What genre does your book fall under?
I'm glad I asked myself that. I actually submitted the manuscript to publishers as a book of poems and prose poems, and the editor who showed interest, Joe Pan at Brooklyn Arts Press, explained that he would like to work with me in publishing a book of the prose pieces. So, after some reorganizing of the manuscript in which I reworked some of the pieces and swapped out others, the book is now all prose vignettes. I believe we're publishing them as "lyrical shorts."
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Hm. Interesting question. The book is more about voice, mood, and thematic threads than it is about plot or characters, but I suppose there are some recurring characters. I guess the speaker would have to be played by a few different actors, like in that I'm Not There movie about Bob Dylan. One would be a Blue-era Juliette Binoche. One would be Winona Ryder from Beetlejuice. And one would be this kid:
What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
I did an MFA after the PhD, and some of the pieces in the book appear in the 2009 thesis version of the manuscript. The book has really evolved since then, though, and I've included many pieces that I've written in the last three years or so.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I'm inspired by writers who have an appreciation for the rhythms of speech and the way that odd or piquant observations intersect with individual consciousness. For me, this includes writers as different as James Schuyler, Eudora Welty, and James Thurber. Some of my appreciation for colloquial speech and strange/delightful observation also comes from listening to my mother and grandmother speak. They're like walking found poems.
I've also been thinking a lot about works that exist at that intersection of genres. I'd love to teach a class in prose poems, short short stories, and micro-essays, just to explore the blurry boundaries between those genres. We could read prose poems by Charles Simic and James Tate; fiction by Lydia Davis and Amy Hempel; Abigail Thomas's memoir in vignettes, Safekeeping. Also, there seem to be many women who identify as poets and write in a form that's somewhere between poetry and essay-- Brenda Coultas, Bernadette Mayer, Claudia Rankine, Maggie Nelson, for example. I'd like to explore that more. That could even be its own class.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Below is only one of the three pieces I've written that mention Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (Well, ok, it's the only one in the current version of the book.)
Is your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
It will be published by Brooklyn Arts Press in late 2013/early 2014.
My tagged writers for next week are below. They may or may not have time to complete the self-interview, but I urge you to check out their work!
Todd Colby. Karen Dietrich. Annmarie O'Connell. Lee Ann Roripaugh. Shanna Compton (who's already been tagged five times, but who says she'll do it soon!).
I believe these are supposed to come out on Wednesdays, but I'm doing it today! Here goes.
What is the working title of the book?
How We Were Strangers. I've gone through a series of other titles-- including A Girl's Guide to Self-Hypnosis-- before returning to this original title.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
The book didn't emerge from one specific "idea" so much as it represents a few years of writing poems, prose poems, and short prose vignettes and watching a voice and themes emerge. One memory comes to mind, though, when I think about having an idea that I could write a book like this. When I was getting my Ph.D. (in American literature) at Temple University, I was "secretly" continuing my life as a creative writer, which included writing brief prose vignettes that fell somewhere between prose poem and short short story. Anyway, I showed some of these to my friend Ross Gay, and he commented that he "could read a whole book of these." I tucked that away in the back of my mind to return to later.
What genre does your book fall under?
I'm glad I asked myself that. I actually submitted the manuscript to publishers as a book of poems and prose poems, and the editor who showed interest, Joe Pan at Brooklyn Arts Press, explained that he would like to work with me in publishing a book of the prose pieces. So, after some reorganizing of the manuscript in which I reworked some of the pieces and swapped out others, the book is now all prose vignettes. I believe we're publishing them as "lyrical shorts."
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Hm. Interesting question. The book is more about voice, mood, and thematic threads than it is about plot or characters, but I suppose there are some recurring characters. I guess the speaker would have to be played by a few different actors, like in that I'm Not There movie about Bob Dylan. One would be a Blue-era Juliette Binoche. One would be Winona Ryder from Beetlejuice. And one would be this kid:
What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
I wrote this in a job letter: "The pieces in the book explore the liminal spaces between the
lyrical and the surreal, and also between genres of the prose poem,
micro-essay, and short fiction, ultimately seeking to depict the fine shadings
of individual consciousness as a way to honor that which we share as human
beings—mystery, wonder, existential struggle, and a desire for understanding
and love." An even simpler way to say
it would be: How We Were
Strangers explores the speaker's longing for solitude and simultaneous
longing for connection.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
I did an MFA after the PhD, and some of the pieces in the book appear in the 2009 thesis version of the manuscript. The book has really evolved since then, though, and I've included many pieces that I've written in the last three years or so.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I'm inspired by writers who have an appreciation for the rhythms of speech and the way that odd or piquant observations intersect with individual consciousness. For me, this includes writers as different as James Schuyler, Eudora Welty, and James Thurber. Some of my appreciation for colloquial speech and strange/delightful observation also comes from listening to my mother and grandmother speak. They're like walking found poems.
I've also been thinking a lot about works that exist at that intersection of genres. I'd love to teach a class in prose poems, short short stories, and micro-essays, just to explore the blurry boundaries between those genres. We could read prose poems by Charles Simic and James Tate; fiction by Lydia Davis and Amy Hempel; Abigail Thomas's memoir in vignettes, Safekeeping. Also, there seem to be many women who identify as poets and write in a form that's somewhere between poetry and essay-- Brenda Coultas, Bernadette Mayer, Claudia Rankine, Maggie Nelson, for example. I'd like to explore that more. That could even be its own class.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Below is only one of the three pieces I've written that mention Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (Well, ok, it's the only one in the current version of the book.)
Everyone’s a Winner
Take
me out to the dream stadium, the contest of great minds where players beam down
from on high-- all men-- but I find myself in the mix, learning to leap and
float above the green green turf. We all contribute something, me, Einstein,
the Gandhi-Nehru guy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and the poet-athlete from my early
years. Our mascot tells us things with his eyes, listens for me during the
medal ceremony, as I squat there, falling into a trance to the sound of a weed
whacker, picking up small animals, setting them down again.
It will be published by Brooklyn Arts Press in late 2013/early 2014.
My tagged writers for next week are below. They may or may not have time to complete the self-interview, but I urge you to check out their work!
Todd Colby. Karen Dietrich. Annmarie O'Connell. Lee Ann Roripaugh. Shanna Compton (who's already been tagged five times, but who says she'll do it soon!).
You May Be Approaching a Developmental Milestone
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Today is late January and you'd sooner fling your dinner
than eat it. You are pale and careworn around the eyes
and hair. It's been a day. And all day of it you've needed
a nap. Instead you lay there whimpering, somewhere
in the recesses of your delicate skull knowing it won't be long
before you hold up your head, sit up of your own volition,
and grasp what's right in front of you.
Recently and Soon
Friday, January 18, 2013
2. The all-prose version of my book, How We Were Strangers, has been officially accepted at Brooklyn Arts Press, with publication in late 2013. If you have ever wanted to read a book of "lyrical shorts" by me, it will soon be possible!
3. In the past several months, I was also a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press and a finalist during the open reading period at Trio House Press.
4. Oh, and . . . my due date is two and a half weeks away!!! Yes, we have chosen a name. We'll tell you later.
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