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.

Hiatus

Since Randy and I don't "do" christmas, my online absence has little to do with the "holidays" (except that they translate into time off, which I relish). I've been lazing. Lazing and grazing. Today is the first day in two weeks that I haven't eaten a slice of pie. Apples are refreshingly yummy again.

Speaking of apples, Randy picked up a bag of "Arkansas Blacks" at the Farmer's Market on Wednesday: what a beautiful apple! Dark mahogany burnish, small size--they looked so beautiful in a bowl that I wanted to (and plan to) photograph them. The vendor told R that this is an old, heirloom variety with a rather tart flavor. R sliced one today and the flavor was good, though the texture was a bit of a letdown: I like an extra-crisp apple (all-time fave is Honey Crisp). But I'm thinking of baking them into something (yeah, still craving pie).

Randy worked on a photo I took last week with the digital cam. My old Canon (an awesome camera) started having trouble again this summer (the shutter sticks)--I'd had it cleaned and repaired about 2 years ago over in Bloomsburg, at this old-timey shop, the kind you can't believe exist any more. Lately--for the past year or more--I've had no time for the campus darkroom (I used to go as part of the photo club). Anyway, I've gotten more comfortable with borrowing the digital cam, even though R knows a lot more than I do about how to use it.

So last week I took a series of photos, and a couple of days ago Randy came downstairs with an 8x10: he'd fiddled with the contrast (and opacity) and made what I think is a super photo. Let me know what you think. (And thanks again, hon.)

Is this for real?

My friend K (not Kayteau) sent me this link today. I am speechless.

His name is Earl and he's my next-door neighbor

Since I've heard naught from the Island this afternoon, I took some time to catch up with Earl Pickens and his blog. You've got to read it; Earl's a hoot. Moreover, he's a real nice guy, a talented musician, and a super dad. Oh, yeah: he's our next-door neighbor.

I'm hitching my blog-star to Earl's coattails. Just for today. Yeehaw.

Nice line

In Fresh Men, a queer fiction anthology selected by Edmund White, here's a great line from the opening story, Vestal McIntyre's "ONJ.com":

"The line between his ironic and real personae must have been worn away years ago from frequent crossings."

I love that. I read the story on my lunch break, then looked up to see that our wintry mix had arrived. Most of the writing center staff have fled--one reported back that the roads are treacherous--but I was planning to walk home this afternoon anyway. Typing now on a borrowed computer, which won't allow me access to e-mails and files I really need, which sucks because I am *supposed* to be grading short stories right now. Grrrr.

About the computer: this semester I worked on a "loaner" laptop. Loaner equipment has to be turned in by Monday--in the middle of grading week--so, with Randy's approval, I ordered a new laptop. Took them both over to the tech desk today for a data transfusion, or whatever they call it on the Island. (The problem with ISR is what I call the Island/Mainland paradigm: everyone there speaks the same language, but when one of us tech-deficient-but-earnestly-trying dummies paddles over, there's no translator available.) So I'm waiting. And it's snowing hard. And though they said they'd try to have it ready by five, and though I tried to underscore my urgent need for computer access to my students' final portfolios (I have them turn in all their work online), it's really, really snowing hard. Final exams are over and students are leaving for winter break. Is there anyone left at ISR to even look at my laptop? Should I phone? Will that annoy them? Will they purposefully "lose" some of my data out of spite because I've annoyed them? Are they snickering even now, because they know I'm too deficient to even notice its loss for weeks or even months?

On the mainland, we worry that the islanders don't take us seriously. We know it. We feel absurd, like overcautious hand-wringing ministers trying to advocate celibacy to owl-eyed gang members, young men who nod, yeah yeah, speed-typing codes and whisking our precious laptops into the tech labyrinth where Things Get Done. I stand at the counter as the computer technician affixes a case number label to my brand-new Dell. I haven't even had the chance to play with it yet. I feel like a Muggle who's stumbled onto Hogwarts. I have to trust that everything will work out, and on time.

The Beauty of Men

So I've been reading Andrew Holleran's The Beauty of Men, episodically, twenty or thirty pages at a time, mainly late at night before I fall asleep, with continued admiration for his prose style but a rising gorge against his protagonist: I simply loathe the portrayal of contemporary gay men as long-suffering, doomed queens. Am I the only queer who wants to run a few of these characters through a slapping booth? Do we need to perpetuate the message that gay men are virtually invisible after forty, that they have no possible chance at love? I haven't read (nor do I want to read) any reviews or criticism of the novel, and I'm probably too late to join that discussion--which I'm sure is out there--but mainly I'm just, well, appalled. Forty pages from the end of this novel, I'm losing hope of a redeeming moment for this self-loathing whiner.

There, I said it.

Calling all undergrad poets!

January 3 is the postmark deadline for applications to this year's Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets (the "June Seminar"). Fellows live on campus from June 1-22, and are provided free meals and housing. This is such a great opportunity for young poets to spend some focused time with talented peers and accomplished mentors. Past June Fellows include Kevin Young, Mark Wunderlich, Ilya Kaminsky, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Deirdre O'Connor, Stacey Waite, and Mary Szybist. I taught for four years in the program (and was a June Fellow myself years ago) and can't speak highly enough about it. Visiting faculty this year: Terrance Hayes and Michael Waters. Please urge your most promising students & friends to apply!

Rhythm disturbance

So on Tuesday my dad got implanted with his new device: a combo pacemaker/defibrillator unit with two lead wires threaded directly into his heart. A new machine to keep the old machine chugging along. A necessary accessory. A purchase (more time).

Mom, meanwhile, has fractured her foot (in three places) (with no idea how). Well, the general cause is osteoporosis--which sucks--but she doesn't recall jouncing around on a pogo stick or kicking the wall or dropping a casserole on the foot; it just broke. Scary.

Last week, in my sister's e-mail describing Dad's upcoming procedure, she explained that the unit is designed to detect and regulate a "rhythm disturbance." I'm rankled at how medical (and other) terminologies (d)evolve into bland niceties that distance us from our experiences (you're having an "event," they say to the person experiencing a stroke). Still I couldn't help relishing the term: rhythm disturbance. Such associations. I offer it to you, dear reader. Write me a poem. Send something back.

Mary Szybist in town

Poet Mary Szybist will be on campus for a couple of days this week: we had scheduled a visit to my intro creative writing class, but because my class meets at noon, we were able to book a larger space for a Writers at Work talk up at the Writing Center (my class will attend but there will be room for others, too). Mary is also giving a public reading on Tuesday night at Bucknell Hall.

I've been re-reading Mary's book, Granted, and I'm struck again by her poems' inventive engagement with their subjects, and with their structural suspension (I don't know what else to call it): she uses the colon and dash to create connections and extend possibilities. I'm not sure I even have the capacity any more to write critically about so much of the poetry I genuinely like (I'm not sure it's wise to make this confession, but really, my brain feels tired lately), but reading this book makes me want to go back to my desk and try writing something new.

World AIDS Day: searching for poems

Randy, who faithfully reads my blog (dear man), has pointed out that I haven't been posting lately. Things are busy-busy around here, and the November Madness of--well, everything, it seems--takes its toll. I thought it couldn't hurt to ask for a little help with one of my projects:

I'm helping to organize a reading on December 1 to commemorate World AIDS Day. Two years ago, we did this during the noon hour in conjunction with a display of panels from the NAMES Project, and it went really well: lots of folks came through the campus gallery on their lunch breaks to look at the quilt panels, and stayed for the reading. Next year, we're bringing the quilt panels back. But this year, we are trying to present a reading that showcases a multiplicity of voices: some of the multicultural student groups have volunteered to read poems or prose excerpts, and we're doing our best to find material that represents a range of voices.

Here's where I need some help: does anyone out there have any recommendations of where to find some decent-quality writing that presents a multicultural perspective on AIDS and HIV? I thought I was pretty familiar with the literature (duh) and I've been writing about the subject myself for a good long time, but finding poems that voice, for example, the HIV experience of women is proving difficult: what I continue to find are poems by women about gay (white) men. Any help is appreciated; I will track down any leads that you can suggest.

Thanks--

Reading Edith Pearlman

is such a treat that I have to hold myself back or there'll be nothing left on my plate. (Fortunately, Edith's stories only get better with re-reading.) Savoring now: How to Fall, her newest collection, which Sarabande released this spring. Included is "Trifle," a story we ran in West Branch a couple of years ago. Please check out this marvelous fiction writer: she's at the top of her gift, and she totally deserves the prizes that are coming her way.

Fall of the Medici

At one this morning, we were jarred awake by a resounding shatter from downstairs. I was out of bed before Randy (for once) (he'd been sleeping with his headphones on). Even as we stumbled down to the kitchen, I groggily noted that he'd had time to pull some pants on (I was wearing only my glasses), and that he was urging me to "wait upstairs." [In situations of perceived danger, R's bear emerges protectively.]

Flipped on the blinding lights to see that it wasn't a window, but a teapot in smithereens, literally all over the kitchen floor. It had rested on top of the cupboards. I had moved it a wee bit closer to the edge the other night, to make more room for Allie (cat), who has gotten into the habit of leaping from floor to counter to fridge and then into a smallish empty spot at the end of the cupboards, where she perches like a ginger gargoyle to supervise our cooking and dishwashing.

So: top of cabinet + impact at counter = stupendous spray of fine white bone china shards. I found Allie hiding in the living room and made sure she was unharmed. Randy sent me back up to bed (I have an early start this morning and won't be home from Penn State until pretty late tonight).

It's not like the teapot was functional. It had a hairline crack, which I noticed one day in Houston when it started to leak delicately on the countertop. I had visions of it exploding all over me (or worse, over me and the dog or cat) immediately after being filled with boiling water. I set it in the back of the cupboard, packed it up with our other must-haves when we left Houston, and have carted it from apartment to apartment since. I even considered sticking a plant in it, but the image of a fern growing out of a fancy Wedgwood teapot seemed way too fey, as if it might open a door to the influx of tatted doilies and fuzzy toilet seat covers.

But I couldn't throw it away. I'm not even sure what it's come to represent (though after ten years you'd think I'd have a keener perspective). This was David's china, an elegant pattern--"Medici"--with a small blue and gold shell design around the rim. He picked the pattern, though we bought it together, and in fact we even registered at a big department store in downtown Houston (this was the mid-eighties and the clerk was flummoxed at the suggestion; I think my name was entered in the "bride's" column). But the truth is that I'm just not a Wedgwood sort of fag, and I never will be. After David died, and once I was able to realize that hoarding a Wedgwood setting for eight* was ridiculous, I sold it all on eBay.

And now the last of it is gone.



* more on my hoarding tendencies some other time

Another Common Wealth reading

I'll be bopping over to Penn State for another reading by Common Wealth poets: this one's set for Saturday, November 19, 2:00 pm at the Barnes & Noble in State College. Will post an update if I get more information.

(The reading was initially scheduled for October 22 but has been rescheduled.)

Pepe LePew!

Okay, we're in a pretty small town in rural PA, so it's not unusual to see (or smell) a skunk scurrying along the street. Nice, eh? Often in the evenings, a malodorous local critter wafts its lovely essence through the open windows: it's noticeably strong, enough to make us glad that Sadie has never encountered a skunk on her evening walks. (We actually did get about ten feet from one last summer; Sadie was on her best behavior.)

So tonight, when a sudden overwhelming ODOR completely permeated the living room within seconds, we suddenly realized how much worse a skunk encounter could be. O. My. God. I just about gagged. My eyes and throat started burning. Randy ran for the Lysol--it doesn't help--and slammed the windows shut. Too late.

I'm typing this through streaming tears and a wheezing, sneezing allergy attack. I think my throat is actually swelling. I cannot fucking believe this smell.

What I'm reading now

Between Camelots, stories by David Harris Ebenbach.

Weekend proofing

Spent a big chunk of my weekend proofreading the new West Branch (#57, our fall/winter issue): it's nice to come in during the last stage of this process, when literally months have passed since the work was accepted, and most everything feels fresh and not-too-familiar. I found only about a dozen errors, roughly one in every ten pages, and though I know there's probably something that we've all overlooked, I'm proud at how clean this issue looks. We've also redesigned the cover and interior, and the cover art by Ken Beck looks awesome.

Not to miss: super fiction by Joseph Bathanti and Edith Pearlman, poems by Mike Dockins, Charles Jensen, Matt Ladd & Shane Seely, and a lecture/essay on sentimentality by the incandescent Mary Ruefle.

We're reading now for issue #58, so send your fiction (to wbfiction@bucknell.edu) and your bestest poems (by snailmail to West Branch, Bucknell Hall, Bucknell University, Lewisburg PA 17837). (If you want me to look at poems, say so in your cover letter & mark your envelope "solicited.")

[/end whoring for my mag]

Morning shrieking

Our entangled drowsing was pierced this a.m. by a familiar panicked shriiiieeeeeeeek! that demonstrated once more why Randy would be an excellent fireman but I (all fantasies aside) would not. He sprang up and was downstairs--following the sound--before I had even found my glasses (which had fallen under the bed). I stumbled toward the hall and gravity had its way with my bladder--no avoiding a stop at the bathroom--so I was mid-stream when R hollered up for some clothes.

It's hard to stop some things once the've started. I figured as long as he wasn't yelling for bandages, he had things under control. I hurried up and went back to grab last night's shorts and t-shirt from the floor.

He was at the foot of the stairs, holding a freaked-out chipmunk wrapped in something--a kitchen towel?--and he comically stepped into the shorts and then declared them too baggy (who you calling fat?) so I undid the drawstring and yanked it tighter. Little Chippy's beady eyes--you can't really see the "whites" of their eyes, I thought, so what makes them look so panicked, the glinting light?--took in nothing, I guess, except two GIGANTIC predators, as its one free forearm scratched feebly against Randy's grasp.

Allie was, of course, beside herself, ashiver with the constant trilling meow that looks like some kind of seizure. I picked her up and R took the chipmunk out the back door, through the laundry room, to release it. "One of your people bit me once," I heard him say quietly. Then it was over.

I love that gentle man.

Mark your calendar

Mark your calendar for October 11: I'll be reading with Stadler Fellow Betsy Wheeler in the River Poets series in Bloomsburg, PA. Totally looking forward to this!

Location: Phillips Emporium & Coffee House, 10 East Main Street (rte 11) in Bloomsburg (570.387.8027)
Time: 7:30 pm.

Common Wealth release!

I'll be heading over to Penn State on Wednesday, October 5 for the launch party of Common Wealth, the new Pennsylvania poets anthology edited by Marjorie Maddox and Jerry Wemple. There'll be a reading, reception and book signing at the Pattee Library (Mann Assembly Room and Foster Room); it all starts at 7:30 pm. Come to the reading! Say hello!

Fine Press Seminar for Emerging Writers

I'm passing along this e-mail from the Fine Arts Work Center; please share this opportunity:

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 Fall 2005. The seminar is tuition free for participants. 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 - May2006).Application postmark has been extended to October 1, 2005.Email snicholls@centerforbookarts.org for more information, or download the guidelines at http://www.centerforbookarts.org/newsite/opportunities/.

Sarah Nicholls, Program Manager; Center for Book Arts;
28 W. 27th Street; NY, NY 10001;
212-481-0295; FAX 212-481-9853

Gilligan

Gilligan (Bob Denver) has died. He was seventy years old. How can this be? Gilligan was older than my parents? Someone should write a poem about Gilligan. Or, better, about Bob Denver and how he never escaped that island, never achieved enough velocity in his career to escape that program. I remember seeing him once on "Love Boat"--good grief, did I ever watch "Love Boat"? Or maybe it was "Fantasy Island"--"de plane, de plane!"

The late poet Walter Pavlich wrote a whole series of poems about Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Michael Heffernan has an early book of poems titled The Cry of Oliver Hardy, and now I want to find that book and see what it's about. Amanda Blake (Miss Kitty on "Gunsmoke") died several years ago of AIDS. Fess Parker (played Daniel Boone in the TV series) was, many years ago, a car salesman; I don't know what happened to him after that. When I was a boy I wanted a coonskin cap, just like Daniel Boone on TV. (I know now that I probably just wanted Fess Parker to come take me away.)

Poor Gilligan. Poor castaway. Was there life after the island?

Weekend reading

I very much enjoyed reading Eduardo Corral's The Border Triptych this weekend. Really fine poems! As much as I enjoy the convenience of reading online--and I do--this is one collection that I would love to hold in my hands as well.

Also reading Stacey Waite's new chapbook, Choke, which won this year's Frank O'Hara Award. I'm really hoping that Stacey and I can do a couple of readings together. I've never been to Pittsburgh. It could happen.

Off to teach in a few. We're gearing up toward writing our short-short stories. I have no idea where mine's going, but I have another week to pull it into shape. (Doing the assignments alongside my students is SO fun.)

On another note, my dad went home from the hospital this weekend. Thanks for the kind words, all.

End of August

We stayed up late, toggling between CNN and the Weather Channel (which I could watch every day just to see Carl Parker, how yummy he was back in Houston and how much yummier now) (but I digress), feeling increasingly, sinkingly awful about Katrina and her bead on New Orleans. . . I think Randy got up during the night to check the news. I slept poorly: dreamed of embarrasing classroom scenarios (you know the sort, kind of like forgetting-your-high-school-locker-combination dreams, only these are teaching dreams, in which a 19-year-old student asks a question about Ezra Pound and you suddenly can't recall a single effing thing that Pound wrote, or you're talking about a short story they've all been assigned to read and suddenly you realize that was your 1:00 class not your 3:00, or, or. . .) and the weather, none of which I clearly remember, my god what an endless sentence I've painted myself into, let's kill it HERE.

Woke with anxiety, which never really abated, even though it looked as if K was going to scrape N.O. instead of a full-on blast, but then there's the flooding to worry about, and Randy has family just north of Lake Ponchartrain (which I'm sure I've misspelled) and still (this evening) no one has gotten through to them.

But classes went well, spent today in the library for Blackboard orientation so they can turn in all their work online (I'm the worst paper-hoarder), and in my 3:00 I had time to do some other stuff afterward and to read a poem (today I chose Chris Forhan's "Bits & Pieces," from Forgive Us Our Happiness).

Caught up a bit at the end of the day with my friend Deirdre, who is back from Vermont (where I would love to go once more) with a fistful of new poems, hooray, and we're going to try to schedule an hour somewhere to trade poems and give time to our writing. (Back in Houston, the fortune cookie paper I saved, the scary one, said: Work expands to fill the time available.)

Phone call from my sis this evening, just after I walked home from campus: my dad's in the hospital. To be honest, I'm afraid to say anything about anything, lest the fates be tempted to respond with an "oh, yeah? Watch THIS." Just a gut-punch of a day. It took a couple of hours for the fear to catch up to me; my first response in situations like this is to turn cold and objective, a what-needs-to-be-done-next mode which is really pointless when you're 500 miles away.

I generally have no problem with being (somehow) 45, but I can't fucking believe how my parents are aging.

These chilling rehearsals.

Foundlings

I need to get to bed . . . have to be up early to meet my Foundlings (students enrolled in my foundation seminar). There are still a few days before classes begin (W) and I haven't completely nailed down my syllabi (still waffling over the final project to assign my intro class), though both are pretty close.

When Jeff Hardin visited campus last fall, I was inspired by several of our conversations about teaching. One idea I resolved to "steal": he reads a poem at the beginning of every class. How great is that?! For weeks I've been sticking post-its in my books, marking poems I want to read to my students. No discussion, no analysis, just give me two minutes of your attention. Just listen to this.

Sent my blurb off to Amanda Auchter today (for her forthcoming chapbook, Light Under Skin) (buy it!). This is only the third time I've been asked to blurb a collection; the first time I was sooo busy and (bad Ron) didn't get back to the guy (sorry). I haven't seen the ms. for #2 yet. Amanda's poems are good. I'm glad she asked me.

Also mailed my signed contract today to Phil Memmer at Two Rivers Review. My chap is going to be published in one volume with two other manuscripts, by Michael McPhee and Lynne Knight. This is a great idea. More on that soon.

Last note before signing out: yesterday I ran across an announcement for Juliet Patterson's first book, The Truant Lover. This is such a good manuscript, and I'm thrilled to hear that it's going to be published. Check it out at Nightboat Books. And congrats, Juliet--you deserve it.

Scratchings

Went out to the back yard (we have no front yard, so why do I call it the back yard?) with Randy to watch for meteors at two-ish this morning. Saw one. He'd seen four or five earlier, all at once. My eyes are tired this late, and the new bifocals limit my distance vision. Enjoyed the chirring of so many crickets, though, and the cool breeze. Two weeks till classes begin, and I want to melt in the hammock and watch clouds float by.

I love my new office, it's so quiet, and have resisted filling it with books (since I'm only there for a semester). Something large flew past the window the other evening (just past six, I was packing up to walk home) and though I didn't get a good look at it, I am hoping it was an owl. The window (second floor) looks out into huge old oaks with dark hollows in their limb scars. After four years with basement offices, it's like writing in the trees.

What I'm reading this week

Debora Greger's God.

Burfday

Went well, very low key, what a contrast to the Leo Party we used to throw for ourselves back in Houston, which now I can't imagine managing at all. Randy took me out to eat and to buy some new "school clothes," and he's right, my khakis are getting threadbare.

Surprise card from Kayteau--thanks, girl!--which makes me realize we never made it back down to DC for a visit. Fall is stacking up to be pretty busy; I'm still adding content to my courses and deciding which stories to teach. Not much scheduled yet for spring, though I remain optimistic that something will work out this time around. Of course I want to go to AWP in spring, because it's in Austin, and we haven't been back to Texas since we moved what, five years ago? (Not that we miss Texas, Texas is too messed up to really love, though parts leave one nostalgic, particularly Austin.)

Making my now-that-my-life is-statistically-half-over-what-do-I-want-from-the-rest-of-it? list. Okay, haven't put anything on the list yet; just the heading was enough to ponder for a while. (In the middle of my life, I find myself lost in a dark mood.)

My pal Deirdre is in Vermont for the month, which is great, and I hope she's writing lots of new poems. I was inspired by Jeff Hardin to think about reading a poem at the beginning of every class meeting, and in the course of rounding up some poems (on the chance that my students will want to read some of them) I've been sending a "daily poem" to Deirdre.

Heads up to Stacey Waite, wherever you are: we need to talk, hon. Please e-mail me.

Nels: I am thinking about the nebulous proposal I made. This would be so much better if we were talking about it over coffee. But I'll get back to you this week.

I believe I've meandered enough from my subject line for today.