Little pack rat in a great big room

You know by now that Randy and I like to quilt. One of the most basic activities (obsessions?) that quilters engage in is the building up of what's called the "stash": a hefty and ever-growing hoard of various fabrics from which to design and create one's quilts. But like rabid bibliophiles who buy way more books than they will ever have time to read, most stash-builders know (secretly or not) that they'll never be able to use all the fabric they already have. That doesn't stop them (us) from accumulating more.

Enter eBay, forum of the obsessive collector and bargain-hunter, and rationale behind my own fabric binges: what I don't use, I insist, I can always sell on eBay to other fabric-holics. The only trick is forcing myself to part with material I really like but will never realistically get around to using.

My current quilt project requires a relatively small piece of fabric from each sample, and a large number of samples, most from the 1930s (for authenticity: I want the fabric to match the pattern era). Because we live in central PA, it's not that hard to find what I need at yard sales, flea markets. Sometimes I'll spy a reasonably-priced bundle of scraps at an antique store. And my justification for buying it is always: I'll cut what I need for this one quilt, and sell the rest on eBay.

Enter the pack rat, or "Obsessive-Compulsive Lady" as we call her. If you ever go to estate auctions, there are often boxes of assorted junk piled around the perimeter: a box might hold a (used) scented pillar candle, a Tupperware bowl, a pair of flip-flops, some mayonnaise jars, a straw hat, some plastic flowers, a book or two, a heavily-pilled acrylic sweater, a soiled flower pot, drapery rings, a gimme cap with a farm logo on it, a piece of tacky jewelry with some of the shiny beads missing--any or all of the above. These boxes usually go for a dollar apiece. People will paw through them during the auction, checking out the contents, "surreptitiously" moving things so there are *two* beaded handbags in one box *plus* the mayonnaise jars (or whatever seems of value to them). It's kind of interesting to watch, but no one, you tell yourself, is really going to buy all these boxes.

OCD Lady does. I think she buys them all. And she has a building: a huge, sprawling, cavernous, many-roomed building. And let me tell you, boys and girls, it is full to bursting with dollar boxes.

Last Sunday, at a local flea market, I bought a 1945 Reader's Digest (more on this in another post) and a small piece of 30s fabric from her, and we got to talking about her shop (which, it turns out, R and I had been to--once, last year, where we kept to the main room, which actually had shelves, though we had to climb over boxes to make our way through: we actually found some pretty nice fabric--aha!--at a great price.) We've passed her place since then but there's always a chain across the gate, and more and more assorted junk disgorged from the front door (a rusted potbelly stove with intricate scrollwork but one side missing, broken chairs, tire rims, and lots and lots of rain-curled boxes). So we arranged to phone her one day soon and meet her there. Which brings us to yesterday morning.

She directed us to the fabric from the relative safety of the main room: Go past the book room and turn left, watch out for the cat--she's just had kittens and she'll let you pet her but then she turns and bites, the litte bitch, you'll have to squeeze past the bookshelves to get to the clothing room, then work all the way around to the right to get to the fabric room. You'll have to climb over some stuff. Just yell if you need anything.

Imagine a large garage with cinder block walls and sunlight passing weakly through old dirty windows. High, high ceilings, wooden beams among which noisy sparrows are darting around, kicking down what looks like straw and whatever decomposed remaining substance once comprised the ceiling. Broken half-sheets of plaster have fallen, covered in dust. All this sifts down upon what is basically a twelve-foot-high mountain of "fabric": it completely fills the room and the only way in is to step, to climb, onto it. Which we gamely did. We each chose a spot and started digging, pulling on the arm of a sweater, the edge of a jacket, and setting (tossing) each item to another area of the pile to see what was beneath.

I pretty quickly worked out a system: I opened a sheet and spread it across some fallen plaster. Whenever either of us found something of interest (we were digging for vintage cotton), we'd toss it over to the sheet. Dust flew. Some of the mountain was composed of plastic trash bags--these usually contained sweaters or draperies--and there were lots of boxes. Once in a while I'd recognize a corner of fabric as a vintage pattern, grab it, and tease it from the mess. Twice, I found boxes with someone's sewing stash intact: small bundles of fabric rolled and tied with torn strips. Some were good cotton but mots were synthetic blends, which is just too messy to quilt with.

After over an hour, I started working backward, into the "clothing room" where R had retreated earlier, setting things of interest out where I could easily find them. I had stuffed everything I wanted into a large trash bag. I tried balancing it on my shoulders, on my head, as I squeezed between sagging bookcases (of ruined books!) and made my way back to the main room. R, whose obsession is vintage photographs, had found a really interesting one ($5). My trash bag, plus a smaller bag, cost 40 bucks. We thanked the OCD Lady, blinking like moles in the afternoon sun, loaded our treasures into the thruck, and drove away, blowing our noses. I wondered what she would do with her $45: buy food? Or 45 more dollar boxes?

Submission limbo

Well this hasn't happened in a while, so I guess I'm due for a slice of humility: on the recommendation of a good friend, I sent some poems to a newish journal a few months back. I haven't been writing all that much, but I tell myself that's okay because I just had another chapbook published, so (some of) my stuff is "out there" (as opposed to being stuck in my laptop where no one will ever read it).

So it's been a while now, and all last week I kept thinking "gotta check on those poems" and then forgetting again. Just thought of it again tonight. Here's what I found at their website:

"Effective immediately, [XYZ] is on hiatus. We are not sure how long this break will last or if we will have to simply call it a wrap — that remains to be seen."

"As Editor, I appreciate all of the support and encouragement that I encountered along the way.

"Best to all of you on your journey. Writer, may you find the prefect [sic] rhythm in your voice. Reader, may you discover and be changed by these worlds within great stories — worlds we would all surely dream up otherwise."

Okay, so I indulged in a teensy moment of snit by pointing out the editor's typo above. That's all the unkindness you'll get from me.

Except for the following gassy bubble of resentment that climbs my esophagus like Frankenstein clanging up the windmill's spiral staircase to blurt out its monstrous little thought-bile: Would it KILL THEM to notify the writers who've sent work? Who are waiting patiently, dutifully, hopefully? If I hadn't thought to check the website, how much longer would my poems have remained in limbo?

One year, within a span of about six months, my poems went missing at no less than five journals. I was writing like crazy at the time, and had roughly a dozen batches of poems constantly circulating, in a crazed push for validation that I hope I never repeat. I grew so caught up in the unfairness of my work being lost--who are these people who can't keep track of a simple envelope?--that I started enclosing, in addition to the SASE, a stamped postcard that listed the names of the offending journals with a reprimand: "What do V, W, X, Y and Z have in common? They've all misplaced my manuscript within the past six months. Please distinguish yourself from their company." The journal's editor/reader was then asked to both sign and date the card and return it promptly.

Now that I've worked in an editorial capacity for several years--and now that I've misplaced a few manuscripts and written a few apologies--I'm disconcerted--no, appalled--at the egotism of some writers. If your batch of poems is so earth-shatteringly important, if the possibility of human error in their handling is so abhorrent, then why bother sending them to a magazine at all? Why not bypass the slush pile and simply stride right up to the Nobel Committee and demand your fucking prize? And I'm embarrassed to have bought into the same mucked-up thinking that places the writer in some ridiculously imagined position of privilege. If thinking of "my" journal as a living, breathing community of writers--with those who've made it in no more privileged than those who haven't yet--is foolish and passe, then fine, I'm a fool.

Yeah, I wish [XYZ] had let me know that I could send my few poems elsewhere. But jeezustapdancingchrist, it's not the end of the world. I wish the editors well, and thank them for giving the endeavor their best shot.

Week in Review

I meant to post yesterday and the day before. Oh, well. Here's what's been going on of late:

• Last weekend I finished a blurb for Jeff Mann's new book of poems, On the Tongue, which is due out this summer from Gival Press. Check out Jeff's web site for more on his (prolific!) work.
• We got our new cell phones on Friday. Randy had studied the on-line reviews & compared models, so it was easy to go along with his recommendation. So now we have flip-phones, kinda neat: they take photos (with flash!) and do all sorts of things that I will probably never learn or need.
• My sister, whose job takes her all over the country, offered to provide us with a rental car so we can drive to Ohio to see the family. I promised to send her my schedule so we could coordinate a visit. We have a truck, and it's been very dependable, though it doesn't have air conditioning. (My Saturn is still parked in the alley: one of the first things I want to do when my new salary kicks in this fall is get my car roadworthy again. This will probably mean new tires, new battery, new hoses. It's just been sitting there. Our money goes to pressing things like food and rent. I don't like to talk about it.) Randy thinks that I should go, if I can, in mid-May, and then later this summer (late July, after summer session) we can both try to go.
• We need rain. It's been, like, sixteen days, and this, added to the relatively dry winter, has our region in the early stages of a drought. It's maddening to watch the radar and see rain showers just an hour to the south, knowing it won't reach us.
• My friend D's manuscript is a finalist for the National Poetry Series. I'm so excited for her. I know they select a pretty large number of finalists, and that chances of winning are only one in ten at this stage, but still it seems to me an incredibly validating event, especially given that so many of the poems are new--I've seen several of them over the past six months as D has been writing them--and since I don't know anyone else who's a finalist this year (I'm sure I probably know *someone* else, just haven't heard) I am totally rooting for D (whose anonymity I preserve here because it really is *her* news, not mine).
• Still waiting for my copy of Amanda Auchter's new chapbook, which I ordered back in the Pleistocene.
• The columbines are blooming: these are "Barlow" columbines, generally double-flowered: they look like very full petticoats and so far each plant bears a different color, which is exciting because I started them from seed last year and the wait is finally ending as to what they will actually look like in bloom. The first to open was a dusty rose-pink, very nice. Then a deep violet which, though not double, is (so far) Randy's favorite. Then another pink, much paler, with a cream interior. Then a sort of rust-red. I planted I think twelve seedlings along the shaded side of our back walkway, and those in the sunniest area are large and robust, but even among the five or six plants in deeper shade under the white pines, two have sent up smallish bloom stalks. I also gave several seedlings to the Kellys next door, and one of theirs is the same pink as ours. Also, the last time I visited the folks, I dug some seedlings of wild columbine from their (gravel) driveway. These are the great-great-great offspring of columbines that grew in Rue's garden, which I still remember vividly from my childhood. (More about Rue some other time.) The species is Aquilegia canadensis, the common eastern columbine that grows in rocky forest crevices--the same plant on a limestone shelf might grow six or eight inches high; in our garden, they are two feet tall. It will be great fun to collect the seeds this summer and see what sort of crosses may have developed. Randy says it's fine with him if I plant *lots* more columbines. I'll take photos to post soon.
• Paula (Closson Buck) has wonderful news: her second book, Dogs at the Temple, was taken by LSU Press and will be out in (I think) 2008. LSU published her first book, The Acquiescent Villa, in 1998. I've seen many of the poems in the new manuscript over the past couple of years, and it's really strong: I think its publication was inevitable, just one of those extraordinarily good works that has to eventually land a good home. And though LSU's titles are off-puttingly expensive, it's a pretty fine press to call home.
• Eric Leigh (according to Eduardo) is a winner of this year's Nation/Discovery Award! I love Eric's poems--we published a couple in West Branch a while back. Very happy to hear this!
• I wrote Eduardo a postcard--twice--while he was at MacDowell, but the first time I didn't have a stamp and I stuck the card in a book. The second time, what I'd written just seemed sappy and pretentious. I need to get better at this.
• Oh, and my P&W entry came up really quickly, within less than 48 hours I think--I received a e-mail notification but haven't yet gone to look myself up.

It's cool and cloudy today. I'm writing upstairs and trying to remember to check the laundry once in a while. Randy called his dad this morning--R has had dreams several nights in a row now about his late mother--and heard a little about another ancestor, a Rowsey I think he said, who was married to a guy who helped to guard Lincoln's casket. Our local mail carrier, Mike, has written several books about the Civil War era, so R flagged him down--I could hear them outside talking about how to research this name--and pretty soon R was online and had located some interesting stuff.

I can't believe it's almost 3 in the afternoon. We've both had rotten headaches all day; I'm just trying to push along but there's this out-of-time-ness to everything I do, a dull throbbing bubble I can't escape.

Directory Insistence

I finally submitted my data to Poets & Writers for inclusion in their online directory. It was pretty easy to do online, just a series of forms to fill out. The site says it takes a few weeks for the entry to show up.

Last year, I urged all the poets in my department to fill out the (paper) forms so we could submit them together and get listed. I think one other person besides me actually filled out the forms, and I thought that I'd mailed them in. But I was working between several offices then, and I fear the paperwork probably ended up in a box with other "urgent" stuff. It's amazing how mail will wait for years in a forgotten box (instead of, what? spontaneously exploding into flames after 30 days?)--and, for the most part, it's a relief that so much of it ends up not really mattering at all. But I do feel bad about P's application. Which is somewhere in my possession.

One other thing: the online directory is searchable by category (i.e., how writers self-identify) and, just to see, I did a search for L/G/B/T writers. I was surprised at how few turned up. So I'm glad I included that tag in my listing.

One last thing: big congratulations to my friend Ben Grossberg, whose manuscript has won the Richard Snyder Award from Ashland Poetry Press. Ben's chapbook, The Auctioneer Bangs His Gavel, is just out from Kent State. Please buy it--it's really very good. The new book is going to be called Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath (nice title).

Thinking

That's pretty much it these days. I'm certainly not writing much. Reading, yes: I usually fall asleep reading something from the pile beside the bed. Oh, and the garden seeds arrived (late!) , so I spent a couple of hours this weekend happily starting tomatoes, cucumbers, Thai peppers, more lettuce. And some flowers. And bottle gourds, which we're going to try to grow in big tubs, from which they will--we hope--climb trellis netting tacked to the second-floor windows between our house and the neighbors'.

On Sunday afternoon we drove out to R.B. Winter Forest and walked in the woods, sat by the creek, scrutinized the few wildflowers that are up. It's much cooler up in the woods. No ferns yet. There are colonies of violets growing in the sunny marsh areas--in the running water--and some of these have started to bloom with incredibly tiny white blossoms. And the marsh marigolds are blooming. They're so intensely bright (yellow).

Six weeks now until summer session. Teaching comp in summer is going to be an interesting challenge. (I've probably said this before.) Any writing I hope to do this summer needs to happen soon. . .

Hysteria Lane

Speaking of spring flora, am I the only person in America who gets nettled every time they show those utterly FAKE blooming wisteria vines on Desperate Housewives? Wisteria doesn't bloom all year long. And it's not made of silk. Don't they pay people to check stuff like this? Is it always spring on Wisteria Lane? Fake, fake, fake.

Slushing

I've parked myself in the Shaker rocker in the living room to read through the latest batch of slush (what a crummy word for unsolicited manuscripts, even though some of the contents are--admittedly--awful). I usually drop by the office once a week to clean out my mailbox (and slush box). Meant to catch up on Monday, but this has been a week of garden work: beautiful weather, the lindens and pears in full bloom, the first violets opening in our back yard. Ferns uncurling in the shade garden. Hostas poking up. The crabapple tree looks ready to burst, as do the ornamental cherries that grow everywhere, everywhere in this town.

Yesterday we hauled three truckloads of raked leaves and garden waste (our plus the neighbors'--an annual gift to them) to the town lot (behind the baseball fields) where the borough grinds and recycles everything into enormous piles of mulch. The mulch is free for the taking. We filled three trash cans full and got it all onto the beds by early afternoon. We need more.

Thunder and rain last night--we fell asleep with the window open just to enjoy the sounds--and thunder again this afternoon. We need the rain; there wasn't enough snow this winter and we're at a deficit.

You can tell I'd rather be outside. Poking around the garden. Starting more seeds. Reading in the hammock.

* * * * *

PA Poetry is the name of my other blog--it's new--so if you know of any readings, calls for work, special announcements for Pennsylvania-area poetry (mainly here in central PA but heck, we'll announce whatever you send) please feel free to post there--or send me an e-mail and I'll get the pertinent info up ASAP.

* * * * *

Changing horses

We decided last month to change our e-mail server. The new package includes digital TV, which has Randy excited, and I must admit that the caller ID feature is impressive: when the house phone rings, a box flashes in the corner of the television screen (because where else would anyone be, right, but parked in front of their television?) & identifies the number and caller. Freaky cool. One less reason to get up and walk into the dining room.

So the installer [a bear!] came today around noon, and I took Sadie & Allie into the bedroom and closed the door. Allie was TOTALLY freaking out--Who is this? What the--Ohgod ohgod ohgod--her whole body was just quaking. I have never seen her do this before, and I was half-afraid she just might pee everywhere. Sadie, on the other hand, was only mildly curious. She threw Allie a look, then turned to me as if to shrug and say, Cats: why even bother?

I read fiction submissions at my laptop. All day. Only came out to snack and to pee. So this is a short post, to say my new e-mail is up and running: rmohring at dejazzd dot com. Don't send mail to our old ptd accounts; we're deleting them soon. [My BU account is still fine.]

Shout outs to Nadine, Robin, Miriam, Kay and Nels. I need to catch up with each of you. Will try soon.

Wednesday morning surprise

The pic just about says it all. . . April is so fickle.

Looking ahead

As part of my '06-'07 contract, I'll be directing the 2007 June Seminar. Today I had a delightful phone conversation with Nancy Eimers: she and hubby Bill Olsen have agreed to be our visiting poets next June. I'm so happy.

Tee hee

This photo is for S.

Friends recalled

I met John Hedge in Houston, shortly after moving there in April 1985 to live with David. John was David's friend and lived in a secluded apartment near the corner of West Gray and Shepherd. Sometimes we went to his apartment for dinner, but mostly he came to our house. John and his lover, Craig, were the only people I ever met who were allowed to smoke in our house. (This was David's rule and I knew that he valued John and Craig so much that I never questioned it.)

At our first meeting, I was intimidated: John was well-educated, spoke carefully, and made frequent references to literature, films, opera which I knew nothing about. I stammered responses to the few direct questions he posed to me--where was I from (Ohio), how did I like Houston (it was enormous), what were my career plans (I had none but had just volunteered to train with the Gay & Lesbian Switchboard, a volunteer commitment I kept for eight years).

John and David also talked about their health, and the health of their many friends and acquaintances. When David and I first started dating, he said that, based on our sexual histories, he assumed I was seronegative, he seropositive, and that we should take appropriate precautions. I had volunteered as one of the first "AIDS buddies" in Cincinnati--ironically, my buddy, Stephen, had lived in Houston but had come back home to die--and so I had developed a mindset about AIDS and the virus, a kind of intellectual buffer I guess: my response was to volunteer and to subvert any emotional doubt or fear. I don't think John had been tested when I first met him, but--like David--he assumed the worst.

I don't think I ever saw him as he really was. John was extraordinarily well-read, and when he learned that I wanted to become a poet, he tried to encourage me and lead me into discussions about Whitman, Eliot, Bishop: poets whose work I was horribly ignorant about.

John and Craig fought rather famously. They both drank hard, and Craig, I eventually learned, had a cocaine habit. (Craig was also rumored to have appeared on the cover of a Houston magazine in Halloween makeup--the costume was allegedly composed of not much more than makeup--but I never saw a copy.) One day over lunch in Montrose, John told the story of one of their fights: he had stormed out of Craig's house (the top level of a duplex near Allen Parkway with a beautiful view of downtown) and, backing his car out too recklessly, had broken the axle. Undeterred, he started walking home (a distance of, I would guess, two miles). Craig followed him outside, begging him to come back. "I broke my car!" John shouted. Craig got into his own car and followed him all the way home.

Once, when John was in the hospital for perhaps the first time, we stopped to visit on our way to St. Thomas University: I had been selected as a juried reader for the Houston Poetry Fest. John asked me to "say" a poem (I now know that Robert Frost used this phrase, as in "I'd like to say one of my poems"). I was too nervous to comply: how could my stuff compare to anything he'd read? He gently persisted, even though he seemed much too ill to really care, and I'm ashamed that I didn't have the courage to comply. "Then say just one of your lines," he finally said. "Say the first line." It was the summer that scared Maria, I squeaked out. "Hmm," he said. "That's intriguing. It was the summer that frightened Maria."

Of course I changed the line.

Craig died first. I remember one day at the hospital, when David and John had gone downstairs for coffee, and I was left alone in Craig's room. He was burning with fever, emaciated, skeletal, past recognizing any of us. He breathed in deep rapid gasps, his arms flung wide and one bony leg drawn up. I couldn't help thinking of a photo I'd seen somewhere of a prehistoric bird--Archeopterix--fossilized in stone. And I couldn't help realizing--I'm ashamed even now to admit this impulse--that I wanted to peek under Craig's twisted hospital gown, to get one look at the infamous cock which, David had once told me, Craig had been able to insert inside himself.

It was only a few months before John was bedridden at home. The last time we visited, the shades were closed and his room felt unbearably hot. A nurse swabbed his forehead with a cold cloth, murmured he won't open his eyes, and left the room. John's usually straight-banged black hair was gone, and I couldn't understand why he looked almost bald, how his hair could be reduced to this gray wispy fuzz. Sweet Pea, his little dachsund, was curled at the foot of the bed. The phone rang in another room, and we could hear Ann, John's former wife, leaving a lengthy message. David, whose shock was palpable, and whose inability to express emotion was one of the deep wounds in our own relationship, took John's hand. I will always remember the great effort it took him to speak: I love you and I will always treasure our friendship. He then stepped past me, leaving me alone in the room with John.

So much to say. Such guilt for not checking in more often. I could have read to him, I kept thinking. I stared at the bony, sunken face. I said nothing. After a few minutes of intense silence, I walked out.

On the drive to Montrose--the university was just a block from where David and I had first lived (on Yupon Street), David broke the silence: "I never realized that John wore a toupee."

He didn't! I exploded with fury, stunning us both into renewed silence: David appalled at my tone of rage, and I ashamed that I had known so little about a man who could have been one of my truest mentors.

Spring greens

Just went up to the attic to retrieve some small pots of seedlings I have going under lights: leaf lettuce, mesclun mix, arugula (mmm, my favorite). Moving these to the bathroom sill (very sunny) so I can start more under lights. Trying to wait a bit on the basil seeds: they take so long to get really going that I always jump the gun in January or February. Though now might be about right. Hmmm.

The mint is coming up in the herb bed, as is the comfrey. A few nice feathery spears of bronze fennel. And two clumps of lemon balm, which always looks so washed-out and creepily yellow when it first starts up.

[PHOTOS: mesclun & arugula in yogurt cups]

In the garden

Another beautiful warm day. Randy is quilting the final sections--the outer border--of the new quilt, and so we took a ride to Mifflinburg to buy seven yards of red bias tape for the binding. I can make the binding myself--and have, when I only need a couple yards or an especially narrow width--but it's very inexpensive, and we welcome any excuse to browse through Verna's shop.

Back home, I decided to tackle the shade garden, and toted my tools--clippers (for the rampant ivy), edger blade, small hand rake, and all-important foam kneeling pad--to the back yard. Sadie hopped up onto "her" chair and curled up in the sun. A rowdy cadre of goldfinches chipped and fussed in the trees--they're not used to seeing us in the yard and have mostly had it to themselves all winter. It's delightful to see their bright yellow flashing in the trees, and their silly roller-coaster style of flying--tight arc up, then plummet, then arc up again.

Coming up in the shade garden:

• tiny wood ferns (dug from behind my parents' house in Cincinnati), just uncurling, tight & delicate
• clump of green nubbins: an early hosta
• thin maroon strap-like leaves of springbeauties: these I started from seed gathered two years ago in June, painstakingly catching one tiny seed at a time from pods that had already turned yellow and popped open, most of them already empty of seeds. I scattered them immediately in a bare spot in the shade garden--I moved a flat stone--and last spring, less than a year from scattering the seed, I had four blloming plants. Hoping for more this year. Hoping they'll establish a nice little colony under the Japanese maple.
• fuzzy ferny clumps of wild yarrow
• drifts of an odd, floppy-leaved, species tulip. Our first year here, we found one blooming and took extra care after that to not disturb them. Last year there were maybe half a dozen flowers: small, bright yellow. Hoping for more (and more).
• lots of the Barlow columbines I started last spring from seeds. I'm particularly looking forward to these, as they should be mixed colors. We had one dark purple Barlow in the garden when we moved here, and Billy & Jackie, our neighbors, had a lighter-purple one. So we traded seeds. And I bought mixed seeds and gave Jackie several small plants last summer. Very excited to see how it all turns out. (NOTE: I told Randy he is lucky to have a flower that bears his namesake, and agreed, then reminded me there's a Barlow pocketknife too. All I have--all I know about anyway--is a coffee from the Gevalia line, "Cafe Mohring.")

Many of the ferns and hostas aren't up yet, so I had to tread carefully. Filled two large trash cans with leaves and pine needles and ivy. We'll take it all to the park to be composted this week.

Time to shower off the grime.

Susquehanna

Monday was a beautiful spring day, and we walked over to Soldiers Park on the river. The borough clear-cut all the trees and shrubs from the river bank, which is disconcerting because I don't know what they're doing to replant and hold the soil. For a while now it's been shockingly scarred and bare.

But the river is lovely as always, and there is a bit of a trail down beneath the old railroad bridge. Randy and I took turns with the camera.

Gregory Djanikian

It was a pleasure to hear Greg read on Tuesday night. I hadn't really kept up with his work since Falling Into America. Jeanne Walker says his new book is going to be awesome.

Stacey Waite

Here's Stacey reading on Tuesday night. Gerald Stern couldn't make it--though he was digitally present in a video reading, as was Terrance Hayes--but Stacey gave a wonderful reading.

Rear Window

Here's a photo I took from my hotel room in State College on Tuesday night. It was late; the streets were pretty much empty, and I was drawn to the television images in an apartment a block away. Couldn't quite make out what was going on, but I think the pic came out really well. I took a whole series of these and now I'm itching to do more.

Public Poetry Project

On Tuesday, I'll be heading over to Penn State to attend a reading & the release of the Public Poetry Project's new series of broadsides. This year, judges Lynn Emanuel, Jeanne Walker & I selected poems by Gerald Stern, Terrance Hayes, Gregory Djanikian, and Stacey Waite. I'm especially proud that we continue to expand the range of voices represented in this great series. You can order broadsides from the web site.

If you happen to be in State College on Tuesday night, please come to the reading & say hello. It takes place at 7 PM in Foster Auditorium in the Pattee Library.

You can also check out the video of me reading at this event last year!

Hanging with the Digerati

My copy of Steve Mueske's Digerati anthology arrived a week or so ago; I've just started reading it. Want to say first off that this is a handsome book! Great cover, nice paper, nice large font. It would have been great to have author names/titles in the header or footer, but on the other hand it's fun to just open the book randomly and read without knowing whose poem I'm checking out. (There is a table of contents, of course, so it's easy to figure this out.)

Happy to see Nancy, Paul, Eduardo represented here. I'm not on a first-name basis with anyone else, but I'm looking forward to reading everyone's work.

Buy it here!

Quilt progress

Randy is making good progress on the new quilt.

Passiflora

About a month ago, on one of those unbelievably warm, fake-you-out-that-Spring's-about-to-arrive February days, I asked Randy if we could stop over at the Kountry Kupboard. The KK is one of those Old Folks Buffets: soft, overcooked veggies, kitschy PA "Dutch" decor, busloads of octogenarians shuffling in to dine and then browse through the gift shop and--and--the greenhouse.

I love the greenhouse. I love any greenhouse, at any time of the year. For one summer in my youth, I worked in the greenhouses at King's Island (a theme park) in Cincinnati. Before we sold our house in Houston, I told Randy that the only way I'd ever move north again was if our place had a greenhouse. We don't have one. But the President's house, right next to the Poetry Center, has one, a modest walk-in greenhouse attached to the side of their Victorian home, and through five years and two university presidents, not once--not once--have I seen a single plant growing in their greenhouse. I have to squelch the urge to throw on some coveralls, knock on their front door, and say "Kids, let's make a deal."

On this particular day, lots of orchids were blooming on the back bench: oncidiums, phalaenopsis, lots of hybrids of hybrids--plants I'd never heard of (Randy was the orchid grower in our garden back in Houston). But the one thing I wanted to take home was a small-leafed passion vine. They had a dozen or so, some in bud, in little 4-inch pots. Sure, R said, then about gagged when it rang up at nine bucks. I brought it home, repotted it in a glazed bowl, and strung it up in the bathroom window with some heavy fishing twine. I've been checking vigilantly for spider mites--which defoliated the impatiens cuttings on the dining room sill--and watching the first bud slowly grow to the size of a swollen thumb. And today it finally opened.

Ding Dong

A delightful lunch yesterday with Deirdre, Steve, and (surprise) Erica, who's in town on her break. Great food, delightful conversation, an experience I don't get often (most of my "people time" is spent in the classroom--after that, I just want to crawl back into my cave to recharge).

Erica is a hoot: even though she's (currently) living in St. Louis, she knows more gossip and stories about what's going on here in central PA than anyone I know. Hence, the "whizzinator" tale, which she swears happened locally just last week or so:

Guy walks into a convenience store and asks the clerk to please nuke something for him in the microwave. (This is one of those places where you can buy packaged sandwiches and heat them up.) She obliges, but when the microwave beeps and she turns to remove what she presumes to be a meal, she realizes it's a penis.

I can only imagine the gasping and shrieking, the dropping (flinging) of the object. Did the guy stay or did he flee? Did he try to stammer an explanation? If he had, would she have listened? Would you?

Story makes the local news. (I wish I'd seen that newscast: "PENIS Found in Microwave"--like a headline straight out of the tabloids.)

And again on the late edition. But by now, there's more information: no one is running around with a missing penis. It turns out that there's a drug testing facility right next door to this Speedy Mart. And it turns out that there's this gadget called the "Whizzinator" (I'm not sure of the spelling; I haven't Googled this): an artificial penis containing a fluid receptacle. Right: you fill this fake dong with someone else's pee, stuff it in your boxers, waltz into your drug test, whip out your faux manhood and let 'er rip.

There's a catch: apparently, the urine has to be warmed (in order to flow freely through the counterfeit urethra?) (because cold piss is a dead giveaway to the technician, more likely).

So there you have it: guy comes in for his drug test, makes a pit stop at the Gas -N- Go next door, calmly asks the clerk to pop his fake whizzer into the microwave so he can be all ready to pull a switcheroo at the lab.

I told the story to Randy when I got home, and he says "Oh yeah, the Whizzinator. Tom Sizemore."

"Huh?"

"Tom Sizemore. The actor. Remember? He was brought up on drug charges and then they caught him faking his own urine test. He used one of those things."

Okay, so R knew all about it--if not about our local incident, then at least about the gadget itself. Still, some crucial questions linger in my queer mind: is this a one-size-fits-all fake weiner? Does it come in various flesh tones to match the wearer?

Can you wear it to the beach? Is it a one-use item or can you sterilize it in the dishwasher and use it every month (or however often one goes in for drug testing)?

Is it cut or uncut?

Oh. And isn't Tom SIZEMORE missing a totally hot marketing opportunity here? To cast a model bearing his name (and likeness)?

**Mary Richards simper**

More good news

Checking my e-mail late Wednesday night, I found an invitation to teach a summer comp course. I've taught composition only three times, and though every course feels to some degree like a work in progress, comp is where that sensation is truly heightened: a crucible of ideas and methods, of trying one approach, tossing it aside, trying another.

Last week, before everyone left for AWP, my friend Betsy asked if I had a short fiction exercise she might use in her class that day. I have a whole "bag of tricks" for fiction and poetry writing. We talked about a few ideas and B said she was going to try one--I haven't seen her since AWP but then again, I've been staying home this past week. Anyway, my point is that I don't yet have a bag of tricks for teaching composition: it still feels like an uphill journey.

And a nice challenge. I've taught creative writing in summer sessions, but not since 2003.

So: this is an open call to anyone who's taught summer comp and is willing to share a few ideas, textbook recommendations, essay exercises, even a rough syllabus. I'm going to spend next week getting my head around this class, and I'd love your input.

[photo: unidentified tree along Dale Engle Walker Trail, Monday afternoon]

Diamond in Square

Okay, if you don't care a whit about quilts, just skip this post now.

Still with me? Aren't you a dear. Well. The quilt frame was empty, so yesterday afternoon I took up the challenge of copying a design (okay, it wasn't that much of a challenge) from one of our books. It took about five hours to get the whole thing pieced on the machine; I finished up just after midnight.

It's a basic Amish pattern, "Diamond in a Square." Randy's going to quilt it. I may bore you to death with progressive photos.

Good news:

On Friday I was offered a one-year contract to teach several creative writing sections at Bucknell next year. The great news is that I'll be teaching as a visiting assistant professor. Real money (whew) and benefits.

::sigh of relief::

And I was superstitious enough to wait for confirmation from the Dean before posting this.

Primitive

Randy and I took a break this afternoon to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather, heading out to the Dale Engle Walker Trail, just a couple miles out of town. There's a trail along Buffalo Creek that winds, eventually, up a pretty steep hill and through some woods and fields. A couple years ago I was delighted to find a stand of bloodroot in full bloom. I thought it was a fairly uncommon wildflower, but then last spring I noticed some blooming in the yard of a house just down our street.

We brought along the digital cam, though there's not much up yet (in terms of wildflowers). I ended up taking some macro shots of tree bark and stones. Then, crossing a field, we ran into this malodorous fellow: a mud-caked snapping turtle making its way, I guess, toward the creek. It hissed and lunged when I got too close with the camera, and though I was a good ten feet away, believe me I jumped. This turtle is just amazing, totally armored and capable of inflicting serious damage to fingers or hands. Its smell was stupefying--I guess from hunkering down in the same muddy hole all winter--and we circled it a few times to get photos and then wished it well.

Snow Geese on Lake Chillisquaque

Some promised photos . . . I love the one of the Canada geese crashing the party.

Blue phase goose

I just like singing it in my head to the tune of Elvis's "Blue Suede Shoes."

Actually, it refers to the uncommon coloration of certain snow geese. I haven't researched it. All I know is that last night, walking to campus to hear Kwame Dawes read his poems (wonderful reading!), I heard snow geese flying over. So today, Randy and I drove out to the Montour Preserve, which has a really big lake (on which, currently, all boating is banned because, sadly, someone drowned recently and they haven't found the body), on which thousands--two thousand? three?--of snow geese had landed.

The noise was tremendous. We crept slowly from the parking lot to the covered shelter, carrying the camera and tripod. Hundred of geese milled around on the banks, but most were in the water, flapping, ducking, splashing, swimming around, taking off from one area to land in another. Most were white, but I counted maybe ten "blue phase" geese. Just before we left--Randy had the camera at this point; we had traded it back and forth a few times--I saw a dark flock coming in, about sixty birds, and hollered at him to look to his left. He took several shots as a big rowdy gang of Canada geese landed on the water. Such a sight. I love living here.

Photos soon.

Hard times

That's all I'll say, except to note that my literary friends will probably think "Dickens" and my more bohemian friends will think of the first syllable only. It's neither. That's all I'll say.

* * * * *

I've spent the better part of the day reading fiction for West Branch: I wish Chris Torockio would send another story. I wish he'd just sent "Conservation." I wish we'd taken it when he did. I hope it landed someplace nice.

* * * * *

Going tonight to a reading by Kwame Dawes, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I know absolutely nothing of his poetry. Looking forward to being surprised.

* * * * *

It's funny how reading unengaging manuscripts (I'm not trying to be mean, and I'm certainly not naming names) can launch me back into my own work with renewed energy. . . I have a whole series of VD poems, mostly unpublished, that I keep thinking I'll finish into some kind of project. I'd set a 3:30 deadline today to stop reading mss. for a while, and along about 3:05 I started thinking about one particular poem, "Skin," and how it fails: voice too scattered, for one thing. So I got to tinkering. I'm not through tinkering, but I think it's going to be a sonnet. I'm totally excited about this.

Sonnets are like double-fudge brownies: before I'm through with one, I'm already thinking about the next one. I'm thinking, I could do a whole pan of these.

And yeah, the wave of nausea hits around number three.

* * * * *

I was offered a course for fall '06: the foundation seminar I've taught twice before. It's never the same course exactly. Already thinking about how to make improvements.

Talking to the (English) department chair tomorrow about more possible courses. Wish me luck, y'all.

* * * * *

Thanks to friends--

--D, for giving me a job when I really needed one.

--K, for surprising me with a delightful phone call the other day.

--S, for prodding me about getting a website together. And for offering to help. And for doing that thing you did late late in the night last Tuesday.

Signs of life

Back in January, I noticed one day at the Writing Center that someone had thrown the remains of a plant into the trash--long, ropy, wrinkled stems of pothos (looks like marbled philodendron, if you don't recognize the name), absolutely leafless and desiccated, but still I grabbed it impulsively, coiled it inside my lunch tote (one of those soft-sided insulated things) and brought it home. I did throw most of it out, but cut the greenest section into stem cuttings, layered them in potting soil, watered it sparingly, covered the whole thing with plastic wrap, and stuck it on a high shelf in the bathroom. Two weeks ago when I checked it there was a bright green shoot. Today there are about a dozen, one large and the rest really small. I've moved the tray to the bathroom counter--nice bright light--and removed the plastic wrap. If Allie doesn't dig them up, I'll have a nice batch of wee pothos vines soon.

NOLA book donations sought

Passing this along, and sending what I can:

Seeking Book Donations: The New Orleans Public Library is asking for any and all hardcover and paperback books for people of all ages in an effort to restock the shelves after Katrina. The staff will assess which titles will be designated for its collections. The rest will be distributed to destitute families or sold for library fundraising. Please send your books to:

Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations
New Orleans Public Library
219 Loyola Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70112

If you tell the post office that they are for the library in New Orleans, they will give you the library rate which is slightly less than the book rate.

Stuff (and nonsense)

How my mind goes: after spending the bulk of two or three days in bed with back pain--and this is the last I'll speak of it--how peculiar (and annoying) it was to discover that I'd somehow fried the pin number to my cell phone completely out of my memory. There were messages on my phone, but I couldn't remember the pin number to retrieve them.

The annoying part was that I was *sure* I knew what the number *ought* to be: a short version of a specific date, an important date, a date I know (and consistently remember) quite well. Tried it. Nope. "Sorry," says the robotic female voice, "please enter your pin number." Okay, let's change one digit. "Sorry." Hmm, one more? After three tries, the voice says "I'm sorry you're having trouble--Goodbye," and hangs up.

I want that voice. I want it imbedded in a lapel button that I can simply push before I walk away from--ohh, I can think of dozens of scenarios. Can't you?

* * * * *

We sold a small quilt! (The one I showed Randy working on a few weeks ago.) I took my share of the money and stashed it in my project fund. I'm not ready to announce my project yet. . . still trying to think it through and determine whether it can be done.

Randy is downstairs starting a new quilt, a mini nine patch top (nice antique fabrics) that Mom asked us to do (he'll quilt it, I'll bind it). Also on the table, waiting to be basted, is a 24 x 24 four-patch: I bought the top online and I think it's big enough to quilt in our frame.

Fun times in small-town Pennsylvania.

* * * * *

We celebrated our 11th anniversary this week by trying out a new restaurant across the river. The place used to be (for years) Italian, and pretty good, but they sustained heavy flood damage last year and had to close & remodel. We ordered our steaks and looked around--new lighting, new flooring, and a big unfinished salad bar--when someone yelled hello from the kitchen. I had to turn to look, and I can't really see that well through the corner of my glasses (I'm very nearsighted), but Randy's face fell immediately. It was A__, the creepy guy who lived for a few months next door.

A__ had moved in temporarily with our next-door neighbor and proceeded to shamelessly sponge off him, bringing women home for midday trysts while our neighbor was at work, tossing his trash in our (and our other neighbors') yards, stealing our laundry detergent (we have a shared laundry room). He was just bad news. Always, always falling down drunk when we'd see him, and always, always blurting out his fake "hey how ya doing?" I've known a few sociopaths in my life, and I knew in my gut that this guy was a bullshitting loser the first time he spoke to me. He once bragged about stealing his roommate's car *and cell phone* so that the guy couldn't call the cops on him. (He finally wrecked the car; we saw A__ sitting in the driveway one afternoon, his feet braced against the front tire which was bent at a severe angle, actually *yanking* at the thing as if he could bend it back by brute force.)

There's more, but you get the idea. A__ finally got kicked out of the apartment and fired from his job. We had hoped that he'd left town. No such luck.

Our salads arrived. R. kept apologizing. Let it go, let it go, I was saying, but I'm sure we were both wondering: will he spit in our food? Walk out to our table and try to make conversation? Both were unthinkable.

Back

I am. I've been here all this time, but it was out. My back. Getting better now, thanks.

The train doesn't stop here anymore

Randy and I headed out yesterday morning to a public auction on River Road in Dewart, about 15 miles north-ish of here. (I'm bad with directions but good at navigating with a map--go figure). Big mildewed tent (think very sad circus) staked up in the side yard, deep muddy ruts in the driveway, old plain two-story farmhouse (also for sale, and though I was curious I couldn't bring myself to walk through the house) on three acres. Auctioneer's Heeeeey, whaddyathinkwegothere, who'll gimme fifty to start, fiftyfiftytwentyten, tenten five who'll give a dollar and let's go. Cold morning, people milling about the furniture stacked in the yard, crowded along the sides and back of the tent (the whole middle area taken up by those who'd brought their own lawn chairs). There were several old people--really, really old people--and I found myself scoping out the crowd, trying to figure out who was the family whose house and belongings were on the block.

If you've never been to a country auction, it's an experience. A woman to my right kept winking and smiling at Randy--all of which I missed; he told me about it later in the truck. The auctioneer paused for a train that barreled through on the tracks just across the narrow road. Cars and trucks were parked on both sides of the road for a good half-mile; we arrived an hour after the auction was scheduled to start and managed to grab a spot where someone had just pulled out. After three hours of waiting, the lot I had my eye on came up: a box of feed sack fabrics, along with two other boxes of linens. I had told Randy how high he could go for the feedsacks but I had not dug through the box to make sure what was in there. The bidding was giddily fast between R and someone else I couldn't see, hey five yessir five gimme ten, ten fifteen and fifteen twenty, twenty now twenty-five twenty-five, Randy nodding at the auctioneer, the price going up to $37.50 within--it seemed--mere seconds, and the other bidder dropped out and just like that, we won.

I lugged two of the boxes out to the truck as R waited for our ticket to come round to the pay table. There's an old, falling-down building just across the raised railroad tracks, amid a thicket of maples and raspberry briars. I took the digital cam from the truck and headed back. R was just carrying our third box from the tent, so I asked him to take a couple photos of this old building (and of the rusted-out ancient truck slumping in front of it) while I stowed the third box.

Climbed up the muddy hill and walked back to meet Randy, who was being talked at by a strange-looking fellow, just a local guy who was telling all about how this had been a train depot and wasn't it a shame how they'd let it go, if someone got in there and got hurt there'd be hell to pay. The large sharp gravel around the tracks might have been marble chips?--light gray, and it clinked with an almost glasslike sound as I caught up with R, took the camera, and worked my way through the briars to get a couple of photos.

A boy playing in the yard of a nearby house started yelling Hey, there's someone over there! and I heard a man, presumably his father, complain That's why I hate living next to that place. I took two photos of the broken windows and headed back to the train tracks, where this other guy was still talking to Randy. He continued talking as we made our way back to the truck, then--Hey this isn't your vehicle is it? You voted for Kerry? You don't like Bush? and Who do you think's gonna win for governor? Those colored people, we used to own them, and now they're taking over--

And Randy was in and shut his door, and we were off.

Tea and hostages

Quick walk home with my friend Katie--with one detour to look at the snowdrops poking from beneath a hedge near the poetry center--and then tea and an hour to read each other's poem drafts (I call it "exchanging hostages"). She's working on a great poem, "I Made My Soul a Hat." I showed her the draft of my gazebo poem (which Deirdre calls my angel poem, and which I realize I've been resisting: it's really about the angel-shaped weathervane that's perched on top of the gazebo) and K had some great suggestions.

This poem feels so central to my manuscript. This is something I hadn't acknowledged to myself, partly because the poem is new, and I thought I was simply feeling something attendant to that just-cranked-this-out-and-it's-the-best-thing-I've-ever-written euphoria. But that feeling usually dissipates after, say, 24 hours. And then K asked something about the poem's centrality to the book, and I realized that, yes, it is. I think it is. I hope this doesn't mean that the rest of the manuscript is crap and that I'm only just now getting to the heart of what I need to be writing.

Breathe, breathe.

I wish we could do this every week. But then I would need to write more. And faster.

Thanks, Katie.

American Brilliant

I went through some odd pieces of glassware a while ago, and have lately gotten around to listing some of it on eBay: this is stuff I don't need and never really use, mostly art glass and crystal odds and ends that David & I bought together in the 80s, or pieces he already had (and that I ended up with). Anyway, I asked Randy to try to get some good photos of this tumbler (glass is hard to photograph) and I think this photo in particular turned out beautifully.

Thanks, hon.

Smith Library

A couple weeks ago, I heard that the English Dept had arranged for their library liaison to sort through the big-ass stacks of old, old books bending the shelves of their wee "library" space. This is a smallish conference/ office/ study area, with a central room and teensy office compartments, where lots of antiquated volumes (in various languages) gather dust on the shelves. Anyway, the deal was: check the book carts and if there's anything you want to be re-shelved (kept), put a color-coded slip inside the book. And if there's anything you want to *have*, place a different color-coded slip inside the book.

Well I resisted the urge to claim anything, but I did take the camera over on Jan. 11th to get a few "mood shots" before the space gets its (much-needed) overhaul. I love old books and wish I had room to adopt a box or two. . .

Carol Frost reads tomorrow night

Carol Frost is Bucknell's Poet-in-Residence this spring; she's reading tomorrow night at 7 PM in Bucknell Hall (pictured at right before they cut our beautiful oaks down).

I very much enjoyed reading Carol's book, Pure, a couple of years back. Awesome poems.

Here's the title poem from her most recent book, I Will Say Beauty (TriQuarterly, 2003):

The Part of the Bee's Body Embedded in the Flesh

The bee-boy, merops apiaster, on sultery thundery days

filled his bosom between his coarse shirt and his skin

with bees--his every meal wild honey.

He had no apprehension of their stings and didn't mind

and gave himself--his palate, the soft tissues of his throat--

what Rubens gave to the sun's illumination

stealing like fingers across a woman's thigh

and van Gogh's brushwork heightened.

Whatever it means, why not say it hurts--

the mind's raw, gold coiling whirled again

stair currents, want, and beauty? I will say beauty.

New York State Summer Writers Institute

Passing along this e-mail from Robert Boyers at Skidmore College; please forward this opportunity to your writing students/ friends who are writing students:

To Teachers of Creative Writing:

A renewed endowment gift to The New York State Summer Writers Institute allows us to offer, for the second time, several FULL tuition scholarships to deserving undergraduate and graduate students. The scholarships will cover up to $1000 for students applying for two-week workshops in Poetry, Fiction, or Creative Non-Fiction, and up to $2000 for four-week applicants.

It is our hope that faculty members will recommend--in a simple, one-step procedure briefly described below-- particular students who are likely to be interested in one of the following:

--Mimi Bresler Smith and Patricia Robertson Amusa-Shonubi Minority Scholarships in Creative Writing (up to 10 available)

--Borders Scholarships (up to 5 available)

To recommend students, you need only send me an email mailto:writerscholarship@skidmore.edu indicating the names and email addresses of those you have selected. I can take it from there. Please indicate which of the scholarships you are recommending for each of those named.

PLEASE NOTE THAT in 2005, under these same auspices, we gave a total of FIFTEEN FULL TUITION SCHOLARSHIPS to students from Temple University, Brown University, Stanford University, Cleveland State University, Connecticut College, University of Rochester, and other schools.

The institute this year extends from July 3 to July 28, 2006. As always, the program is held on the campus of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and offers two- and four-week workshops taught by the following people:

--FICTION: Marilynne Robinson, Mary Gordon, Rick Moody, Lee Abbott, Gish Jen, Amy Hempel, Howard Norman, Darryl Pinckney, Elizabeth Benedict, Kathryn Harrison

--POETRY: Frank Bidart, Carolyn Forche, Henri Cole

--CREATIVE NON-FICTION: Phillip Lopate, James Miller

--Visiting Writers: Joyce Carol Oates, Charles Simic, Russell Banks, Caryl Phillips, Jamaica Kincaid, Ann Beattie, Richard Howard, Katha Pollitt, Francine Prose, Robert Stone, Michael Ondaatje, Louise Gluck, Michael Cunningham

If you would like to visit our web site, or to send students to the site, you (and they) can go directly to the site at: New York State Summer Writers Institute

I look forward to hearing from you with your recommendations--again, ONLY THE NAMES OF RECOMMENDED STUDENTS AND THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES ARE REQUIRED. And please: All recommendations must be received BY MARCH 3rd. Thanks, best wishes,

Robert Boyers, Director, New York State Summer Writers Institute
Tisch Professor of Arts & Letters, Skidmore College
Editor, SALMAGUNDI

PS Please feel free to print out and post our flier announcing these scholarships. To view the flyer go to the PDF file at the following link: http://pull.xmr3.com/p/4059-FF20/71847810/announcement_flyer_pdf.html

Skidmore College
815 North Broadway
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866

Call this number

412-359-4223

It's the cafeteria at Allegheny General Hospital.

Just do it.

Paper or plastic?

Friday's my last day here in the sanctuary of the Writing Center . . . I'm delighted that Steve's well enough to come back to work, and I've enjoyed holding down the fort. So it's back to finding a Real Job. Just shoot me now.
*
Got a forwarded e-mail today about a local exhibit of David Bottini's paintings: the sender (Karla Kelsey, the new poet at Susquehanna University) has her students write poems in response to David's paintings; the students will read their poems this Friday night at the exhibit, which is in a coffeehouse near the campus. Great idea for an assignment. I think I'll go.
*
Started a new poem yesterday. It began with Yeats' line because a fire was in my head, and riffed from there, in unrepentant iambics, into an exploration of arrogance and shame. It's not done yet. I'm afraid to look back at what I wrote last night. I think it probably sucks. When I'm writing stuff that's not quite found its footing, I often resort to meter. A way of staying on the ledge?
*
Thank you, C, for ordering my chapbook! I mailed it from the office this morning.
*
I meant to clean off my desk by now. The desk I had last semester, in a cubicle upstairs. They've let me keep my piles of papers & library books, but yeah, it's time to deal with all those loose ends.

Maybe this weekend.
*

Something something

I've just been in the doldrums (and they haven't changed since last time). Slogging through today, thinking "must . . . blog . . . something . . ."

Something. Or as Randy says, sumpin' sumpin,' when we agree to let the ineffable remain, well, ineffable.

Which led me to ponder, momentarily, the difference between inexplicable and ineffable. Which I mentioned, in passing, to a (passing) coworker, who said (of the latter term) It's just not effable.

Which I think I shall adopt as my personal slogan.

Touch Me Not

My new chapbook arrived in yesterday's mail: it's perfectbound with the Editor's Prize manuscripts, a great idea I wholeheartedly endorsed when Phil Memmer, the editor, proposed it. (They plan to publish the series this way from now on.) Nice font, 91 pages, three chapbooks in one: Michael McFee's Never Closer, Lynne Knight's Life as Weather, and Touch Me Not (mine). I'd never read Lynne's work before, but I've admired Michael's poems for some time, particularly his book Earthly.

Don't judge this one by the cover, which is (alas) totally generic. I was hoping for some kind of photograph, some image, though I guess it would be hard to find one image to resonate with three books.

Three in one, just ten bucks: what a deal. Be the first on the planet to own a copy: order from Two Rivers Review, PO Box 300, Clinton NY 13323. Or you can PayPal ten bucks to me and I'll send you a signed copy.

/end shameless whoring for my new book.

Gertrude chapbook contests: good luck!

"In 2006, Gertrude Press will begin publishing limited-edition poetry and fiction chapbooks. These attractive collections will include a letterpress cover and will offer a limited and numbered press run of 200.
Writer Compensation: $50 cash award + 50 complimentary copies of the chapbook. Chapbooks will be distributed to subscribers, libraries, and bookstores carrying Gertrude, the Press’ annual literary journal.

Poetry Chapbook Guidelines:
Submit 16-20 pages of poetry via surface mail only. Indicate which poems have been previously published and by whom. Unpublished poems are welcome. Poetry may be of any subject matter and writers from all backgrounds are encouraged to submit. Include a cover letter and SASE for notification. For manuscript returns, please include exact postage. Include a $10 submission fee payable to Gertrude Press.
Deadline for submissions: Postmark – February 28, 2006.

Fiction Chapbook Guidelines:
Submit 16-20 pages of short fiction or a self-contained novel excerpt via surface mail only. Indicate which selections have been previously published and by whom. Unpublished pieces are welcome. Fiction may be of any subject matter and writers from all backgrounds are encouraged to submit. Include a cover letter and SASE for notification. For manuscript returns, please include exact postage. Include a $10 submission fee payable to Gertrude Press.
Deadline for submissions: Postmark – February 28, 2006.

Please send all submissions to: Gertrude Press, PO Box 8394, 8Portland OR 97283

Bookmarks

So I have this small collection of bookmarks--just cheapo advertising bookmarks from some of the bookshops I've visited on my (limited) travels--and I keep thinking there must be something I could do with them. I'm a quilter, so I keep coming back to that: some kind of collage? A quilt?

The problem is, I don't have enough bookmarks. So I thought I'd put out a call: do you have a favorite bookshop in your town? Like Rivendell or Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Brazos Books in Houston, New World Books in Cincinnati? Do they serve coffee? Soup? Poetry slams? Can you get me a bookmark?

Come on now, y'all. Help support my current obsession.

Good poem

YMCA, 1971

It took a quarter to keep the lights on—
that was all the machines knew. And so
my mother emptied her purse for change
while my father tried to resuscitate a man
on the tennis court in the dark. But the man
died. The paramedics called the heart attack
massive, a widow maker. My parents
had just wed; neither one knew how to play
tennis well, it was something they were going
to pick up together. Years later,
after taking up racquetball instead, after their son dies,
after they divorce, this is the one story
where their two sides continue to match.
They say it felt like it was going to be
another ordinary day. They fed the dog,
then walked into the damp indoor air
onto the invisible slick of the courts. My father
was poised to receive my mother’s serve when
a woman cried, My god. My god. I don’t know
what to do—the buzzer sounded that time was up
on the lights, everybody dropped their rackets
and began running in the dark
toward the white glow of the dying man’s clothes.

--Kristen Tracy, in The Southern Review, Autumn 2005

Bee

Thinking about cover art (no, not for me, but for West Branch), and browsing through paintings I've found online over the past few years to see if there's anything I've forgotten to bring forward to the other editors, I ran across a few Helen Bayley paintings again: I really love her work (what little I've been able to find) and fantasize about having something of hers on the cover of my next book (whenever it comes together & finds a home). Anyway, here's one painting, "Bee" (though they are hornets) (ahem):

Back in the canon

(sing along, little doggies) I'm back innnnn the canon a-giiinnnn. . .

Two years ago, Paula Closson Buck taught my chapbook, The David Museum, in her poetry workshop. I had a great visit with her students, and she said that TDM was their favorite book that semester. (Awww thanks.) So she's teaching it again this spring: I'll have a classroom visit in March, right after spring break. Way cool.

Just checked the New Michigan Press site, which says TDM is "still a classic, still selling well." Maybe other poets are more actively engaged in keeping up with this sort of thing? I confess that I don't know how. I have no real idea what "selling well" means at this point, but it sounds good. I did a big mailout (and e-mailout) when the chap first came out, and will prolly rely on e-mail to announce my new one (any day now!), but other than that, I guess a web site would be a smart thing to put together. . . I'm grateful, of course, to Ander Monson and his press for producing such a great-looking chap--and for keeping it in print.

Interesting collaboration

Check out Another Place, an online collaboration between poet Nat Hardy and artist Julian Grater.

Fine Press Seminar for Emerging Writers

This sounds like a dandy opportunity:


2006 Letterpress Printing & Fine Press Publishing
Seminar For Emerging Writers

The Center for Book Arts invites applications for our Letterpress Printing & Fine Press Publishing Seminar For Emerging Writers. The next section of this seminar is scheduled for Friday through Sunday, March 31, April 1 & 2. The seminar is tuition free for participants. There is a small fee for for those accepted to cover the cost of materials. Those selected must attend the entire three-day workshop.

Participants will hear lectures from various professionals in the field – printers, fine press publishers, book artists, and dealers, to get a practical overview of letterpress printing and fine press publishing. They will learn the basics of letterpress printing, both traditional typesetting and options with new technology, by collaboratively printing a small edition of chapbooks or other projects.

Each seminar will be offered to a maximum of eight students. Writers from culturally diverse backgrounds are especially encouraged to apply. Finalists may be interviewed or asked to provide supplemental information to their applications.

Applications will not be accepted from students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate degree programs during the program year (September 2005 – May 2006).

Application postmark deadline is February 15, 2006.

NOTE: Applicants must be 18 years or older.

APPLICATION GUIDELINES:

1) Three copies of the completed application form, filled out completely, signed and dated.

2) A five-page manuscript. You may submit prose, poetry, nonfiction or any other genre.
Manuscripts should be bound with a simple spring clip. A title page should list the title of the manuscript title, table of contents (as needed), the author’s name, address, telephone number(s) and email address. Manuscripts will not be returned.

3) Three copies of a resume, including recent publications, if any. (Two pages max.)

4) A Self Addressed Stamped Envelope (SASE) for results notification.

5) $20 application fee

Do not send additional materials. They will be discarded.

Send entries to: Writers Seminar Application; The Center for Book Arts; 28 West 27th St., 3rd Floor; New York, NY 10001

A few new poems

Well my friend Katie asked last week if we could meet and exchange new poems--we agreed on Tuesday (yesterday) at Mya's, a coffee shop on Market Street where I'd sit and write every day if a had a coffee budget--and this prompted me to open my file of drafts and notes and what-all to see if there was anything ready to step up and become a poem. There was. I tinkered and fussed over four drafts (two were really, really short, around ten lines each) and showed them to Deirdre and Peg on Monday at work (to build up my confidence that there was at least something happening on the page).

So a nice meeting with Katie last night. She had four poems as well, two of which really knocked me out; we spent the bulk of our time on those and on one of mine, the newest one, "No Wonder," which now feels most complete and even--dare I?--ready to go into the manuscript.

Up this morning much too early--I woke from a dream that I'd accepted a job in Columbus (umm, sure, I'll consider that here in the waking world, why not?) and then had to check the weather radar online to see if I'll be walking to campus this morning (rain or ice?). Turns out it's rain for now, and won't be changing to snow till late this morning.

The rain sounds nice . . . It's lulling me back to bed for an hour . . .

Reading

I bought Jan Zita Grover's North Enough: AIDS and Other Clear-Cuts a couple of years ago from the Daedalus catalog--this was back when I still had a decent book budget--and for some reason I just couldn't get into it at the time. Picked it up again this week and--well, I'm truly moved by this memoir. Partly it's my own memories of friends lost to AIDS; but more than this, it's Jan's use of scarred landscape as a figure of consolation. Here's an excerpt:

Eric had a story, and like most people, he told it and retold it until he finally understood it. I must have heard it a dozen times before that happened. It was always while we were in motion, as if the ground moving beneath us set up a goading, reminiscing rhythm that pulled the story out of him like a ribbon from his throat.

Man wielding thimble

Randy's been quilting a lot this week, working on a small sawtooth quilt that I pieced on the machine from reproduction Civil War-era fabrics. It's just another thing we do. He's very good at it. Here are pics of him from yesterday evening.

Skilled bees

In State College a couple months back, while browsing through the last existing used book shop, I found a wonderful old book: a 1919 edition of Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the Bee, translated by Alfred Sutro. As a child, I read whatever books were available (I remember lots of Reader's Digest Condensed volumes) and was especially lucky to find some old Pearl S. Buck novels. Still have a small collection of them.

Maeterlinck's prose (at least in this translation) has a lyrical cadence that's reminiscent of (my memory of) Pearl Buck's fiction. Of course, as a gardener, I'm also fascinated by bees. (I didn't know, for instance, that the realization that a queen bee governs the hive is relatively recent: before that, folks thought that there was a "king" bee.) (How patriarchal.) Mainly, I confess, I pick this book up to be lulled by its rhythms. Here's a sample paragraph:

Now, the form of the hive that man offers to the bee knows infinite variety, from the hollow tree or earthenware vessel still obtaining in Asia and Africa, and the familiar bell-shaped constructions of straw which we find in our farmers' kitchen-gardens or beneath their windows, lost beneath masses of sunflowers, phlox, and hollyhock, to what may have really been termed the factory of the modern apiarist of today. An edifice, this, that can contain more than three hundred pounds of honey, in three or four stories of superposed combs enclosed in a frame which permits of their being removed and handled, of the harvest being extracted through centrifugal force by means of a turbine, and of their being then restored to their place like a book in a well-ordered library.

[photo: bumblebee in a hollyhock, Strawberry Alley (a block from our apartment), June 2005]

Weather

Quiet day at home. Gray and rainy, which I don't mind, and then the wind picked up this afternoon and we got a little snow. Feels like January again. I admit that the warm sunny days earlier this week felt a little--well, unnatural. January is for browsing through the garden catalogs and dreaming about growing six kinds of heirloom tomatoes. Sadie's been tracking in mud, and that shouldn't happen until March.

Sadie's such a good cuddler. I've had a headache all day. When I lie down, she finds me, lays her head on the edge of the mattress and sighs, waiting to be invited up. I stroke her soft ears and whisper poems: she seems unsettled by Robert Frost.

I took this photo last year on January 9th. Just resized it. Wish my initials were "EL." Maybe I'll go back soon and try to find one.

Re-reading Richard McCann's beautiful poem (& chapbook) "Nights of 1990:"

When the hospital therapist asked me what was the matter
I told him my heart had broken. He placed his hands upon my chest.
He said, "Now I'm going to press down harder."

Lavender Languages

The annual Lavender Languages Conference will be held at American University from February 10-12. Anyone planning to go?

Like pouting robots

From my lunch walk the other day, the photo at right is of two ginormous vents on the roof of the Carnegie building. I shared an office last semester in Carnegie. One of the oldest buildings on campus, it served for a time as the library. Old brick, old exposed pipes, loud knocking radiators, water damage whenever it rains, no elevator: I loved that office. These vents, or ducts, or cooling units--whatever--look so incongruous on the roof of such an old building. Like two aliens having an argument about how to climb down. Like snitting robots. Giant mailboxes set free to conquer.

A line from Lisa Lewis's poem "Genesis" (I'm re-reading her book The Unbeliever):

"As if some unseen machine had him by the hips."

Whiteness

Gail Griffin is on campus to lead a 2-day workshop on "uncovering whiteness" (in reading, writing, teaching); I'm looking forward to this. Should be some great discussions. (Not teaching this spring, but hope springs eternal each fall.)

Photo at left: close-up of Prof. Roberts (a plaque thereof), the dude this old building was named after. I love these old plaques: head-on, they look fine, but viewed from one side (or the other) close up, the noses get really wonky and out of perspective. There's a reason for this I'm sure (i.e., we're not supposed to view them other than head-on) (but I like the side view). I'll try to get a good wonky pic & post it soon.

Totally unrelated: I'm starting up some collaborative poems with two or three folks I haven't worked with before. Really, really looking forward to seeing where this goes!

Bedtime for Ronzo . . .

Look Up

Today on my lunch hour I walked around campus with the digital cam. I'm not so good at photographing people, but I do look for patterns: dew, shadows, that sort of thing. Here's a stairwell in Roberts Hall, where I'm working right now:

Pugilistic dreams

I've been fighting a lot in my dreams, but can't remember with whom. Also getting lost, often in Mexico City, or what feels like Mexico City, which is the only foreign capital I've ever visited (Frankfort, Kentucky doesn't count) (oh, come and get me, I haaaaaate Kentucky, it smells like an ashtray). Also, David is showing up a lot, though he's been dead ten years--

Duh.

January 14th. Okay, I get that part.

But the museums like open parking garages, and David buying antique Coca-Cola metalware, and losing the car in some hilly neighborhood, and the heartbreakingly beautiful Mexican lad who bandaged Sadie's paw (how did my dog get into this dream?), and David saying it's fine to go with that boy? I keep fighting awake like I've been drowning. It's not restful. It's only two in the afternoon on Tuesday and I'm whipped. I must, must, get to bed early tonight.

Randy got a splitter for his portable CD player; he falls asleep listening to Tibetan chants and such. I may take him up on his offer to share. I need to find less chaos in my dreams.

Trusses & beams

[Two photos today, taken in January of last year, of bridges in Bloomsburg.]

What do you do--besides read--when you're not writing? To nurture that awareness, that spark? If "poet" means a particular way of being in the world (I believe it does), then couldn't just about any activity be undertaken in the same conscious, receptive manner that typifies the "zone" I feel I'm in when a poem is coming to me? Walking to work, certainly--so much to notice, so many rhythms. But chopping carrots? Cleaning out the litter box?

Is it enough to practice mindfulness, to make it an increasing part of daily life? Or does being a poet require output: the product defines the maker?

Buffing Sestinas

Eduardo posted a link to Jason Schneiderman's snappy Buffy Sestina the other day. This got me to thinking about sestinas again--specifically, how I generally prefer to write a sestina that pushes back against the form. Example: I wrote a "truncated" sestina with a six-syllable line, and then "bumped up" every other line so the poem was set in 3-line stanzas. This is a pretty fun way of disguising the form, since half the repeated end words are "buried" mid-line; the resulting pattern of end words isn't immediately apparent, either. You end up with seven stanzas of three lines each. Mathematically, it goes like this:

1-2/ 3-4/ 5-6 //
6-1/ 5-2/ 4-3 //
3-6/ 4-1/ 2-5 //
5-3/ 2-6/ 1-4 //
4-5/ 1-3/ 6-2 //
2-4/ 6-5/ 3-1 //
2-5/ 4-3/ 6-1 [envoi]

So I'm wondering: how do other poets approach the sestina form? Does anyone else have a specific way of tweaking it to produce something atypical?

Chickens

The new Florida Review is out. My poem "Thievery" is in it. I'm very pleased.

All my little chickens have roosted for the long night.

Translation: I have no poems out. I haven't written any new ones since June.

Defense: I've been thinking about quilts. And quilting. I've been quilting, and also thinking about quilts.

Self-encouragement: Making quilts is just another way of making poems.

Self-doubt: I lack maybe three poems to finish my new manuscript. I think I know what poems they are (rather, I sense them in the room and can almost imagine their becoming). What if I can't write them?

Unrelated lingering image: For the past couple of weeks, in a low-lying cornfield just outside town, we've spotted several wild turkeys. At first they were easy to spot against the snow, eight or nine humped figures shaped like dark Amish bonnets, and I thought: crones. Now the snow's all melted--the fields are so muddy, it might as well be March--and they're harder to spot. But Randy saw them yesterday in the same field. Old ones. Almost a coven.

Return to the issue at hand: I'm okay with not writing poems for now. Ideas and phrases are bumping around in my head. Last month, for instance, I read Chris Forhan's poem "Dream: Obedience" in the summer Laurel Review and had to jot down this line:

Some boys won't go willingly. I will.

I think it wants to be a villanelle.

Walking home yesterday

Five things presumably left/lost in the snow which are now (that the snow has melted) visible:

• chapstick
• tube sock
• yellow pencil
• cracked cafeteria tray adorned with the letter "J" in duct tape
• spork

Also, walking past a maple tree, I noticed a squirrel's bushy ass hanging out of a hollow spot, about eye level, and wondered (idly) whether anyone had ever hidden anything inside the tree. It's on campus, beside a fairly well-traveled path. Surely I'm not the only one to ever consider this.

Would the squirrels allow foreign objects? Would any non-food item be rejected as taking up critical space reserved for sustenance? Do squirrels really store nuts and acorns in tree hollows, or simply line them with nesting material? What might I hide in a tree, knowing I could probably not retrieve it?

• pennies (version of a "wishing well")
• anonymous confession of a crime I've considered but never enacted
• poem drafts: the tree would slowly digest them and offer revisions in March
• a spare cell phone: I could hide uphill at night and dial it as people walked past & drive them batty as they attempted to find it

November photos

Yeah, I'm late posting these, but ran across them today on the PC: some local photos I took while we were out for a drive in the country on November 11. Enjoy.