"All our rainy days saved up for this."*

When I am not writing poetry -
when I am punishing myself, or cozying up with fear or self-doubt -
I arrange my life so as not to be alone with my thoughts. My silence-filler of choice is books. I am embarassingly promiscuous in my efforts. I will go to the public library and fill up with anything and everything I can get my hands on - the schlockier, the better (the point is not edification, but distraction). Mysteries, thrillers, romance, even Westerns, for God's sake.

This winter, it stopped working. I couldn't move my eyes across the page - couldn't take in another sentence. Okay, fine; I upped the ante. I started reading literature in foreign languages. The extra effort required seemed to work for awhile. I read Sabato's El Tunel in Spanish, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Urdu (don't laugh - it's hard to find literature in Urdu that is conversational enough for me to forego a dictionary). I even tried to resuscitate my college German, memorizing pages of vocabulary and reacquainting myself with maddeningly complex declensions of nouns and pronouns. Enough. I am done with it.

In the past, I have been able to find my way back to my own silence by tricking my mind into thinking I am busy. Swinging on a hammock often works; "Hey, I'm moving! Clearly I'm being productive, no need to panic." Long walks sometimes work. A non-stressful, longish commute works really well. None of these things require sustained, higher-order reasoning, but they require just enough physical engagement to pass for "doing something". No commute this year, no hammock, it's hideous outside. I need a new strategy.

*Elaine Equi, "Can't Complain."

"as though here it were a daisy...

of which darker love is demanded"*

I am ready to think about poetry again.
Paul Celan can help one do that - consider poetry even in the bleak, unlovely margins of a life.

*"The Secret of the Ferns," Paul Celan.

A Sad September

A close member of my husband's family - my bhabi - died a few weeks ago in Pakistan. She was 7-months pregnant with her third child. It has been a sad, sad time. She died of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. She was my age, maybe even younger. We can think of little else.

"There is an open field...

I lie down in a hole I once dug and I praise the sky.
I praise the clouds that are like lungs of light."*

I picked up a copy of Mark Strand's Selected Poems at Powells over the holiday weekend, and I have been absolutely entranced ever since. The back cover has a page-long pull quote from Octavio Paz, discussing Strand's fascination with absence/presence (the self, the self!); I find this ironic, since I've been largely skipping over the poems that seem to deal directly with self/fracture/post-structuralist blah blah. That paradigm shifted ages ago already. I find Strand much more engaging when he finds an open field, lies down in a hole he once dug, and praises the sky. Yum.


*Mark Strand, From a Litany

Where I've been...

It has been so hard, finding my way back to the boards, the blog, poetry. Back from vacation, sure, but plunged immediately into the insanity of my older son's first year of high school - a performing arts school, with auditions the second week of school, which meant hustling to help him prepare a new monologue and a contemporary jazz song. All this along with watching him take public transportation on his own, a hundred thousand anxieties on my part.

But all is well; he was cast, he met a girl, he knows the way home.

William H. Macy is a genius

Did you know that in addition to his stellar film and stage career, Bill Macy is a genuine woodturner? I am even more impressed than I was before. Fargo, Boogie Nights, State and Main, The Cooler, and now, bowls? I love it.

"All those normally incapable of happiness...

Are catching flakes on their eyelids,
On their tongues
As they run amuck in the street.

Pastry chef, I believe, you're next."

Charles Simic, "The Master of Ceremonies"

Where all the demons dine collectively on game*

That's right, I'm going home. For two weeks. Call it a family vacation. A reunion. A bloodbath. No, wait.... Let's start again.

I'm going to Vermont for two weeks. Here's what I plan to do:
1. Sit in the hammock
2. Climb Mount Hunger
3. Not get mauled by a black bear
4. Sit in the hammock
5. Eat maple creemees at Morse Farm
6. Go canoing
7. Hammock
8. Look for Mary Azarian print
9. Hammock
10. Channel some poetry.

Here's hoping there will be bells.

*Lucie Brock-Broido, "Rome Beauty"

Word of the Week is:

Bombazine: cloth made from silk and wool. High quality bombazine generally has a silk warp and a worsted weft. Often dyed black and used for mourning. Sadly, this cloth went out of fashion in the early 20th century.

What a great word, though! It makes me think of the male lead in Bedknobs and Broomsticks - David Tomlinson (who also played George Banks in Mary Poppins). Can't you just picture him saying "Bombazine!"

Some other great fabric terms include: loden; cambric; barkcloth. Mmm. Lovely.

Being Happy All Night

"Oh I think it was the books I read long ago.
It's as if I joined other readers on a long road.
We found dead men hanging in a meadow.
We took dew from the grass and washed our eyes."

~Robert Bly

Because It Was There

Because it's air-conditioned.
Because the kids wanted gelato and I said yes.
Because it's right next to Istria Cafe.
Because I am weak-willed.
Because I cannot be trusted with a stack of singles.
Because people give up their babies (blood; eggs; plasma; organs; previously-read books)

I went to Powell's and bought Morning Poems by Robert Bly.

(Re)Finished

I had an HGTV experience today. Salvaged a desk from the trash in a nearby alley - it was painted dogshit brown, had chunks of dried glue spilling out of the corners, very scratched. But all the same, it was good, solid hardwood, with an adorable craftsman-style bookcase built in on one side. I called my two mean friends - my cleaning co-op buddies - and we stripped, sanded and stabilized it (in 90 degree heat, mind you). Then we stained it mahogany, and it is currently drying under a fan in my kitchen.

I absolutely love it. It is perfect for the sun room off the living room. Okay, so it's not a "room of my own," but it is my own, my rescued, lovingly restored desk, and a fitting new home for my poetry books.

Woodcut Prints

I love Mary Azarian. The above print is from her Medieval series. I took a printmaking course once, and loved every aspect of it, from the wide swath of ink laid on the block, to the surprisingly smooth tunneling of wood with the v-shaped mouth of the gouge.

Word of the Week is:

Hardpan: any layer of firm detrital matter, as of clay, underlying soft soil. Hard, unbroken ground. The fundamental or basic aspect of anything; solid foundation; underlying reality.

I like this. Sounds like a parable - something about a wise man building his house upon the rock...?

No Bad Things

When the boys were little (9 and 4), we lived in the Picadilly, a wonderful, art-deco apartment building that was once a hotel and cinema. Everything about it oozed the Charleston, Speakeasies, Prohibition. There was a decrepit ballroom (with gorgeous views of downtown) on the top floor, and there were several, secret, underground floors with rows of "pay-by-the-hour" rooms, clearly used for - well, you know.

We often let the boys run around in the hallway on our floor, but I was worried that the younger one, R., might wander into the stairwell and end up God knows where. So, in a stroke of genius and not-at-all-problematic parenting, I told him there were "rat monsters" in the stairwell. My older son F. played along. Whenever we had to use the stairwell, R. would stick very close to us.

But naturally, it didn't last. One day, when the elevators weren't working, we were racing up the stairs, and R. took his time. When he got to the top and stepped into the hallway, I said to him, "You were lucky the rat monsters didn't get you!" He gave me such a look of reproach and said, "Mama. I know there are no bad things in the world."

I have never forgotten this, nor has my older son, who at that moment gave me such a sad and world-weary glance. It's a precious little gift of innocence I like to take out and ponder every once and a while. No bad things in the world.

Allegro Ma Non Troppo

"Life, you're beautiful (I say)
you just couldn't get more fecund,
more befrogged or nightingaily,
more anthillful or sproutspouting."

Wislawa Szymborska

Oh So Belated Word of the Week

Silver Bromide: a yellowish, water-insoluble powder, AgBr, which darkens on exposure to light, produced by the reaction of silver nitrate with a bromide; used chiefly in the manufacture of photographic emulsions.

Photography is like alchemy. Silver on paper. Miraculous!

Lots of good "silver" words out there:
1. silver bell (Halesia shrub)
2. silverberry (also a shrub)
3. silver doctor (an artificial fly/lure, for catching trout and salmon)
4. silver-eye (white-eye?)
5. silver fizz (alcoholic drink made with gin, lemon juice, sugar, and egg-white)
6. silver foil (silver in foil form; they put this on sweets in South Asia)
7. silver fox
8. silver frost (glaze)
9. silvering (coating with sliver, as in a mirror)
10. silver jenny (silvery mojarra?)
11. silver king (tarpon?)
12. silverlace vine
13. silver lining
14. silver maple
15. silver morning glory
16. silvern (made of, or like, silver; archaic)
17. silver perch
19. silver point (melting point of silver)
20. silver queen (gold dust?!)
21. silver-rag (butterfish)
22. silver rod (weedy herb)
23. silver sage (herb)
24. silver screen
25. silversmith
26. silver spoon
27. silver storm (ice storm)
28. silver thaw (glaze)
29. silver-tongued
30. silver trout
31. silver-trumpet tree
32. silverware
33. silver wattle
34. silverweed
35. silvery

Elaine Equi

I finished reading Elaine Equi's Cloud of Knowable Things, and I enjoyed it. A poet I admire lists her as a favorite, so I guess I expected to be blown away, but I was actually more entertained than floored - charmed than changed. That's not a bad thing. Here are my favorites:
1. Opaque Saints
2. A Quiet Poem
3. The Objects in Japanese Novels
4. Everywhere Today We See a Lack of Commitment (Hilarious)
5. Early Influence
6. Alien Fantasy (Terrific)
7. Four Corners
8. The Movie Version
9. A Sentimental Song
10. Can't Complain
11. Pivotal Gaps
12. For August in April
13. Return of the Sensuous Reader
14. Reset (contains my favorite line of all: "I plant my syllables in light./Let them multiply there." Wow)

Sharon Olds can really

end a poem. I think you could make a poem using the final lines of every poem from The Gold Cell and it would change the world.

That said, I didn't find every poem in the book worthy of its glorious end. But here are the ones that earned it:

1. On the Subway
2. The Abandoned Newborn
3. When
4. The Girl
5. California Swimming Pool
6. Little Things
7. The Latest Injury
8. The Quest
9. Gabriel and the Water Shortage
9. Signs.

The (Often Obscure) Names of Things

I recently read a poem by Elaine Equi entitled "Now that I Know what Feverfew Looks Like." I won't reproduce the poem here, but I can paraphrase: the poet is depressed because she read a book by a fellow poet she admires, and found poem after poem littered with the names of flowers, rather like a catalog or a list, as if the poet wanted to say something but couldn't quite say it so she just kept listing more flowers. The title leads us to believe that we're not talking about roses and daisies here, but maybe saxifrage, foamflower, alumroot, etc. So this got me thinking...

I've heard other poets/readers complain that they want to be led more directly through a poem - that they want to be fed the sounds, scents, flavors of a thing, that its name doesn't suffice (especially if they're unfamiliar with its referent). Although I think packing a poem with unfamiliar terms can be offputting (I did this very thing in a workshop exercise on "gardens" to see where it would take me), I have always been moved by the (often obscure) names of things. Words - especially unmodified nouns - have so much power. They are in themselves small encyclopedias of time and place; they encode social relationships, to use some anthro-speak.

I picked up a used copy of Seamus Heaney's Collected Poems, 1965-1975 about a week ago. I wasn't planning on buying anything when I went into Powell's, but I came across this book and opened it to a random page. Next came the proverbial "blew the top of my head off" moment. Over the next few days, I read the whole book cover to cover. When I read words like peat, gorget, loam, demesne, maw, turf-face, fledge, coomb, I am absolutely transported. I don't know exactly what each of these words means, but they exude rural Ireland, and perhaps more important, they carry, convincingly, the voice of the narrator. If your poem's narrator is a hooker in the city trying to score smack, having her describe her syringe falling in a patch of feverfew is unconvincing. But if you have a farmer or a gardener spying a sprig of tansy growing in the loam that borders the bog, that's a different story.

I have read many poems that employ a nautical metaphor for struggles with relationships and identity, and the nautical terms they use go right over my head - bowsprit, boom, spanker, spar. And yet, I somehow get the point; in fact, I may be more moved than those readers who happen to be sailors, because the fuzzy edges allow room for multiple interpretations. (See, for example, Olena Kalytiak Davis's poem "The Unhoused Heart" from her stunning collection And her Soul Out of Nothing).

When I was doing research in Karachi, a Sindhi friend told me that people in her village enjoy reciting the poetry of Shah Abdul Latif, the brilliant poet-mystic from the middle ages who is considered the "Shakespeare" of the Sindhi language. The thing is, the language of his poetry is archaic in the same way that Shakespearean English is today - it reflects a dialect no longer spoken by the majority of Sindhi-speakers. According to my friend, her fellow villagers greatly enjoy reciting verses from Latif's "Risalo" and debating the meaning of obscure words.

So...I am not taking some stand against the movement for clarity and accessibility in poetry; I'm just saying that there is pleasure to be had in ambiguity.

Coordinates

It is rare that I know exactly where I am. For one brief moment on Saturday, I could fix my location with uncommon precision. Unfortunately, according to quantum physics, I could not simultaneously measure my velocity, and therefore had no idea when I would reach my ultimate destination, metaphorical or otherwise. Usually, it's the opposite: I'm going nowhere fast. This was a welcome change.

Word of the Week is:

Penny Wheep: a short glass of beer; from the Scottish whip: to drink fast. Barkeep, give me a penny wheep. Ah, what the heck; penny wheeps all around.

Headline Woes

"Mutilated bodies litter bomb site." Courtesy of CNN.com.

Headlines like these astonish and infuriate me. When S. spent a year back home in Karachi before we got married, I read a similar headline reporting on the Bohri Bazaar bomb blast - something about body parts being scattered over the streets and buildings. I remember thinking, No, not parts, not limbs, nails, bones, organs. That could be my love on the street, my whole life, my youth, my old age. He could have stopped off at a paan and juice shop for bhel puri, or accompanied his mother or sister to the cloth market.

How easy it is to be frank and graphic when you don't care, when you don't love what's been lost.

On Second Thought...

Naumachia is not a good word. It's not so much a "mock sea fight," which sounds like a lovely evening of theatrical entertainment, as it is a hideous, sadistic bloodbath: an enormous battle to the death staged for the benefit of Caesar, Claudius, the usual suspects. Thousands of slaves and condemned prisoners were involved. Well, I guess I shouldn't blame the word, but I'm sorry, naumachia, I no longer love you.

Belated Word of the Week is:

Naumachia: a mock sea fight, given as a spectacle among the ancient Romans.

This is a very good word.

Soundtrack of my life

Once I expected a lowing --
the solid footstep presence of a French horn.
Now I only hear bells:
the silver charms of an anklet a-jangle;
a sudden, joyous lift
of the heels.

Far-fetched

Have you ever had this experience? You say a common word or phrase, and suddenly it seems foreign and strange. You repeat it several times; it makes absolutely no sense.

This happened to me yesterday with far-fetched. Far-fetched; fetched from afar, like a crate of spices from Madagascar. Or pearls from the Great Barrier Reef. Or some rogue ganglion plucked from the highways of my bone-hinged mind.

Far-fetched
That you love me.
That I found socks that match.
That ants communicate with their mandibles.
That cows do not rebel against the system.
Fjords.
Bunjee-jumping.
That eggs and flour and sugar make cake.
Lupines.
Hopping on one foot. For fun.
Animated porn.
Parthenogenesis.
The luge.
Jogging.
Roman purge pits.
Honey.
Spongebob Squarepants in German.

Word of the Week is:

Foss: a ditch or moat. "After that he threw their bodies into the foss or great ditch that surrounded the palace." - 1001 Arabian Nights

This word has a lovely sound - far superior to "ditch" or "moat." It is also spelled fosse, like Bob Fosse, but I prefer it e-less. Foss. Foss. Reminds me of sluice; another great word.

Between the lips and the voice...

something goes dying.
Something with the wings of a bird, something of anguish and oblivion.
The way nets cannot hold water.

-- Pablo Neruda, Poem XIII from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Fanciful thoughts about this thing called "poesy"

A poet from a workshop forum I frequent asked visitors at his blog to answer the question "what is poetry?" Wow, what a dangerous question to pose to poets! You just know they'll give you a cryptic, metaphorical, flowery answer. And why not? Here's mine:

There's a stage that children go through, when they're just on the brink of language. They wander around all day, pointing at things in the world, just for the sheer joy that comes with recognition and discovery. They wonder at the "suchness" of things. Sometimes, along with pointing at something, they'll plunge right in and name it. The name they give things is less about convention and reference than it is about finding their own voice. I admire toddlers in this; they’ll stand up for the names they’ve chosen – scream, fight, cry if they have to. In the end, if they want to name all four-legged animals “bow-wow,” they do.

That's poetry, to me. Paying attention to the suchness of things, and struggling (daring!) to name it.

Be a String, Water, to my Guitar*

I am a huge fan of classical, jazz and gypsy guitar - Segovia, Sergio and Odair Assad, Django Reinhardt. So I was thrilled to discover the music of Rodrigo y Gabriela. Their self-titled album came out in the U.S. last year. Originally from Mexico, they took their act to Dublin, settled there, and ended up at the top of the Irish charts. Their background is more heavy metal than classical, and some of the pieces on their album are fascinating arrangements of rock classics (e.g. Stairway to Heaven). The pair do such interesting percussive things with the body of the guitar; when I first heard the album, I couldn't believe that the sound was coming only from two guitars. I hope they come to Chicago! That's one act I'd like to see in Grant Park.

*Title of a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Clarissa Burt

Warning! Do not try this at home!

If a female friend ever asks you, "What's my best feature?" do not answer! Or rather, tread very, very carefully. Trust me; being female, and having been on both sides of this question before, I can say unequivocally that there is no winning here.

Let me give you a blow-by-blow of the only possible way this can play out:

Scenario 1:
L: Hey guys, I'm doing a style makeover, and I need to get your honest opinion: what's my best feature?
D: That's easy: your figure.
K: Your legs.
L: Hmm. So, what are you saying? I've got a funny face or something?

Tables are turned:
K: What's my best feature?
L: I'd have to say your eyes - your whole face, really.
K: So you're saying I'm fat.

I'm learning:
D: What's my best feature?
L: Hmm. So hard to choose...
D: I think it's my hair.
L: Your hair is fabulous. I was going to say face or legs, but I have to agree with you. Your very best feature is your hair.

We all panic when we're broken down into objectifiable parts like this. I repudiate any and all so-called makeovers that would ask such a question. Better to ask, "What do you like best about yourself?" That's what you should accentuate. That should be the center of any "style makeover." It doesn't even have to be a physical trait. I'd rather wear "wit" and "compassion" than a Max Azria wrap dress any day.

The Good Word

I love words. Sometimes when I'm reading a book, I jot down pleasing words in my journal. Not necessarily unfamiliar words, just words that strike a chord, like flagstones, chastened and tonsure. Hawthorne, Cooper and Melville texts are rich for word-mining. Lots of nautical terms, whaling lingo, the newly arcane. Many of the poems I write are inspired by a single word (e.g. portage; lightfast; fractality; caustic; rococo.

Word of the Week is:

Colomb: a heraldic representation of a dove.

Again with the heraldic. I can see that I'm going to have to do something with these words (colomb, crusily, fess dancetty).

Why Can't I Finish this Manuscript?

Got a voice mail from my sister H. last night. She has been pressuring me for the last six months to finish the manuscript for a middle-reader chapter book that needs a few finishing touches. The publisher wants me to simplify the language in places, draw out the action a little more in the climactic scene (by piling more misery on my characters), and remove some foreign words and change some names for reading ease. No big deal, right?

Apparently not. I just can't seem to do it. H. says it's critical that I finish this, that I need to be "in the habit of finishing things." Hey! I've finished plenty of things. I finished the PhD (very useful, that; I jest). Published an academic book with IUP. I finish most things, I'll have you know. Just not this one thing...

So what's the hold-up? Am I so attached to the current version that I can't bear to mess with it? No, I don't think so, although I've been there before. Revising can be like cutting off digits. Ouch. I think it's more that I've moved on; I'm ready for the next challenge; I'm focused on other things now. Why would I want to go backwards? It's like the orchid thief from Adaptation: "Done with fish."

H. says that's not good enough. Secretly (not so secretly), I know she's right. What's it going to take for me to spend half-a-measly-day on this and be done with it?

Ixnay on the at-screen-tv-flay

S. wants a flat-screen T.V. I, naturally, am resisting. We have such limited time for TV and film viewing, what do we need with a top-of-the-line set?

S. says that if it were up to me, we'd still be using our old J.C. Penny TV, with built-in VCR. Admittedly, that was a monstrosity; but it worked! At least, the TV part did. I think S. is still bitter about a little incident that happened way back in the days before DVDs and Netflix. We had rented a movie from Hollywood Video, and darn if the cassette didn't get stuck in the VCR. S. called the people at Hollywood, and they said, "No problem. Just bring in your VCR and our tech people will take care of it." So there's S., carrying a gigantic J.C. Penny TV with built-in VCR down 53rd Street in Hyde Park. I'm surprised no one called the cops. Of course, the clerks at Hollywood looked at him like he was a madman. I'm pretty sure we bought a new TV that very afternoon.

The J.C. Penny TV was one of those "church sale" acquisitions you make when you're a starving graduate student. What stuns me, though, is that someone, somewhere, years ago, was in the market for a new television, and they said, "Sony? Zenith? Panasonic? Naah, let's buy a brand-new J.C. PENNY T.V.!" It boggles the mind.

My shoe is off...

my foot is cold.
I have a bird
I like to hold.

I am feeling Seussical today. My sister J. sent me a big box of socks from Cabot Hosiery Mills. It was a fox in socks moment: big socks, little socks, thick socks, thin socks; socks to wear with a sweater and jeans; socks to wear with my new capri's. Some for fun, some for sport; some are very, very short. What fun!

Yet again the Belated Word of the Week is

Crusily: covered with crosslets, or strewn with crosses. Apparently a medieval heraldic term, used to describe such-and-such lord's coat of arms. So "gules crusily" would mean a red shield covered with crosses. A "gules crusily and fess dancetty" would mean a red shield with crosses and a gold zigzag stripe. How cool is that?

The Gladdest Thing

S. says my poetry is dark. That may be true; well, at least some of it could be called dark. Perhaps most. Why is that? Some of the poetry I read is dark, but plenty isn't. And the poems that flit through my mind at random points throughout the day tend not to be dark at all - like Millay's Afternoon on a Hill: "I will be the gladdest thing/Under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers/And not pick one." Also Plath's Poppies in October: "A gift, a love gift/Utterly unasked for/By a sky."

I think it's hard to write about happiness, about happy moments and good things, and to successfully capture their richness and nuance without resorting to tired phrases and expected formulations. It's as if writers share Tolstoy's notion that "Every happy family is the same, but unhappy families are all different." Same with Hardy's notions of war and peace: "war makes rattling good history," but peace is "poor reading."

It is amazing how we simplify goodness and happiness. Evil always has an author, a cause and effect. We analyze it for tortured childhoods, chemical imbalances, cruel vicissitudes of fate. Good deeds, heroes, they seem to emerge pristine, like Athena from Zeus's head. Do we think "good" is just about strength of character? Do we think it's the default setting, something that requires no explanation, no deep thought?

Evolutionary biologists think about it. They shake their heads over things like altruism and self-sacrifice. Social scientists largely ignore it. Novelists seem to be wary of it. Readers and viewers are bored by it. Ours is a truly disenchanted world. Not the best of all possible worlds.

Belated Word of the Week is:

Scarf cloud, or pileus: an accessory cloud, often cirrus (i.e. made of ice particles) that forms above or is attached to a cumulus or cumulonimbus cloud. As you would expect, it is generally shaped like a cap, hood, or scarf.

Now let me get this straight; a scarf cloud is a small ice cloud riding on a great big fluffy cumulus - like a sleek accessory. So it's a special occasion cloud. I like that.

St. John and Simic

I am not good at picking favorite poems, and yet I feel compelled to try. Currently (because I am fickle in these matters), my favorite David St. John poem is "Hush," from his collection Study for the World's Body. However, I also love "Iris," "Wedding Preparations in the Country," and "Shadow."

While we're at it, I may as well list my favorite Charles Simic poems (yes, plural; I told you, I'm hopeless):

1. Medieval Miniature
2. The Once-Over
3. Midnight Freight
4. Ambiguity's Wedding
5. Obscurely Occupied
6. House of Horrors
7. To the One Upstairs

And those are just the ones from Jackstraws! Ah, how I find ways to amuse myself.

Ayre

Last night, a friend and I went to see Golijov's Ayre, performed by Soprano Dawn Upshaw and a brilliant group of CSO musicians. We were completely blown away. Dawn Upshaw is extraordinary in anything she does, but this was so different, such a stretch, combining classical operatic technique with wild, folk-inspired rhythms and tonalities. Golijov himself introduced the song-cycle, and his speech--along with the program notes--framed it as a rumination on the interweaving of Christian, Arab, and Jewish folk traditions, in Medieval Spain/the Middle East/North Africa, and the Jerusalem of today. An excerpt:

"I lived in Jerusalem for three years and was in contact with three cultures and their musics--Christian, Jewish, and Arab....In this song [Wa Habibi--My love], the melody is sung twice, but with Dawn uttering it in different ways. You go from a very Christian feeling to a completely Arabic feeling. I wanted to explore how little you have to change in order to cross the border from one culture to another." (Golijov)

After the performance, we had an opportunity to meet Golijov and the performers over beer and pizza. I have to say, the MusicNow series at CSO is absolutely the best thing going.
Salud!

Word of the Week is:

Antiphon: A short liturgical text chanted or sung responsively preceding or following a psalm, psalm verse, or canticle. It can also mean, more generally, a response or a reply.

The Golden Compass

So the Philip Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials is heading to the big screen. You can find your Daemon on their website.

Mine is Eamon, a male tiger (softly spoken, competitive, solitary, a leader, and humble). My two sons did this too, and the older one got a raccoon, the younger a rabbit. Fits pretty much perfectly their crafty opportunist/wide-eyed prey personalities! (I say in jest, but there is a smidgen of truth there...)

Waiting by Ha Jin

I just finished reading Waiting by Ha Jin, and I can concur with the many glowing reviews I've read; it's wonderful. That said, I have an unshakable bias against certain characters one comes across--in literature and in life. I'm talking about the Newland Archers of the world, the Stevens's, the Lin Kong's. Those who give in to their "fate," choosing the conventional or expected road rather than risking everything for the thing they think they really want. It's not their "choice" (or "compliance") that disturbs me; it's their inability to bootstrap themselves and say, "Oh, well, this is the hand I've been dealt. I've made my choice. I'm going to find a way, despite it all, to be happy." Is this a peculiarly American attitude? Pollyanna-ish? I don't know. I think I just hate all the whining.

Script Frenzy Begins!

Today is the first official day of Script Frenzy, and I have written 992 words. Yay! Unfortunately, I'm already sensing a potential plot hole the size of Kentucky. Hmmm... That's okay. My strategy has always been to write first, worry later. Toying with titles: Confessions of a Former Orphan; Tales of a Part-Time Orphan; Teenage Gothic.

Happily, I have resolved one thorny problem: how to get my characters from present-day to flashback without insane and impractical set changes. David, the memoir-writer, will direct the other orphans as they act out scenes from "home." That way, the entire play can take place in the orphanage, with a split-stage design to signify boys'/girls' dormitory, dining hall, attic, etc. That could work.

The Word of the Week is:

Calibrachoa, which is the scientific name for "A Million Bells." (Could there be a better name for a flower?) A member of the petunia family, calibrachoa blooms in cascading trumpets of violet, blue, pink, red, magenta, yellow, bronze (!?) and white. Wow. Somebody bring me some!

Three Tragedies by Lorca

Read "Three Tragedies by Lorca" over the weekend: Blood Wedding, Yerma and Bernarda Alba. It is amazing how prophetic Blood Wedding feels--the mother mourning the death of her husband and elder son at the hands of an enemy family, a fate Federico Garcia Lorca was to share, albeit at the hands of the Falangists, who murdered hundreds of people during the Spanish Civil War. At the end of the play, the mother's younger, and only remaining son, is killed, and she sends all her well-wishers away:

"I want to be here. Here. In peace. They're all dead now: And at midnight I'll sleep, sleep without terror of guns or knives. Other mothers will go to their windows, lashed by rain, to watch for their sons' faces. But not I. And of my dreams I'll make a cold ivory dove that will carry camellias of white frost to the graveyard. But no; not graveyard, not graveyard: the couch of earth, the bed that shelters them and rocks them in the sky."

There's a saying I used to hear in Karachi: Ghore bechkar sote hain; Having sold the horses, we sleep. I immediately thought of this when I read the above passage. What an extreme and tragic example of having nothing left to worry about.

Alec Kolodny Gets a New 'Do

When I was 8 years old, my mother brought home a bizarre and slightly grotesque terra cotta planter. Basically a hollowed out sculpture of a human head, my mother claimed it was the spitting image of an old, beloved neighbor from the Burlington neighborhood of her childhood. From that moment on, the planter--and the series of plants it came to hold--was known as Alec Kolodny. A large nose, protruding ears, a charming mole on the left cheek. We loved Alec Kolodny.

If I remember correctly, Mr. Kolodny's first hairdo was a Boston Fern; very loose and frondy, it gave off a rasta vibe. Every year or so he'd get a full hair transplant-- one year sedge, one year a jade plant, one year spiked aloe (now that was strange).

When I went home a few months ago to visit my parents, I was happy to see Alec Kolodny in his usual place on the windowsill in the living room. But I was shocked to see that his lustrous, live tendrils had been replaced by not-so-subtle silk. All I could think was, poor Mr. Kolodny. No more hair-club-for-men; it's a fake ficus toupe from here on out.

Still Drowning

When F. was little, we spent some time living with my parents in Vermont before heading to Karachi for fieldwork. F. was three at the time. He had gotten mad at S. and me for some reason, and informed us that he was going to "run away, fall in the pond and drown." (Clearly we had told him over and over not to go outside without us or he could fall in the pond and drown; be careful or he could fall in the pond and drown; wait for us or he could fall in the pond and drown). Anyway, a little later, we were sitting in the car, my parents in front, S. and F. and I in the back, and I asked F. if he was feeling any better. His answer: "Nope. Still drowning."

My parents have gotten a lot of mileage from this story. But here's my point: last night, S. and I were remembering this, when it occured to us that R.--our 8-year old--has never gotten mad at us. Ever. Yikes! Maybe he's saving it all for puberty.

I finished The Mercy Seat

and I compulsively make my list of favorites:
(In no particular order)

1. Monologue of Two Moons, Nudes with Crest: 1938
2. Anima Poeta: A Christmas Entry for the Suicide, Mayakovsky
3. Of Politics, & Art
4. February, The Boy Breughel
5. November 23, 1989
6. A Grandfather's Last Letter
7. Aubade of the Singer and Saboteur, Marie Triste
8. Comes Winter, the Sea Hunting
9. Thomas hardy
10. The Pennacesse Leper Colony for Women, Cape Cod: 1922
11. Coleridge Crossing the Plain of Jars
12. The Circus Ringmaster's Apology to god
13. Penelope
14. Hummingbirds
15. The Everlastings
16. An Old Woman's Vision
17. Several Measures for the Little Lost (I love this title)
18. Pictures at an Exhibition
19. To A Young Woman Dying at Weir
20. The Elegy for Integral Domains
21. Arkhangel'sk
22. Danse macabre
23. New England, Springtime
24. Chemin de Fer
25. New England, Autumn
26. Thomas Merton & the Water Marsh
27. Revelation 20:11-15
28. A Depth of Field
29. The Photographer's Annual
30. The Clouds of Magellan (Aphorisms of Mr. Canon Aspirin)

From this list, I was hoping to pick a FAVORITE favorite to memorize, but I'm hopeless at narrowing it down. I think perhaps Penelope lends itself best to memorization, but what I really want to do is memorize the first stanza of Anima Poeta, the final stanza of Thomas Merton, a bunch of sections from the prose poem The Clouds of Magellan--and so on.

Wow, what a brilliant collection. I have learned so much from this.

The Word of the Week is:

Zimbelstern:
a percussive feature of some pipe organs, a zimbelstern is basically a star-shaped wheel of bells. Well, that's a poem right there.

No one writes to the colonel

Yes, I do feel a bit like the colonel when I look at all the "zero comments" tags under each post. I suppose it is time for me to share my blog with my friends. Why have I hesitated? Well, see, my friends are all really mean. It's okay, I like it that way. In fact, I've made it a point, at this stage in my life, only to have mean friends. They're just a lot more fun. I will take a lot of guff for this site; the fun part will be giving it back. K, K, D: bring on the pain!

This is why I love shape-note singing...

Where else do you get to sing words like "sublunary"?
Here's a verse from Kingwood:

The grave is near the cradle seen,
How swift the moments pass between,
And whisper as they fly.
Unthinking man, remember this,
Though fond of sublunary bliss,
That you must groan and die.

Just the kind of pick-me-up I need on a Saturday morning.

I Love Naked People!

Oh, how I miss the land of my birth.

I Love naked people. You never have to worry that they might be carrying a gun.

The best of all possible forms

I have a longstanding argument with a number of very close friends, as well as with my sister, over the extent to which the myriad components of the human body, and human “traits,” have actually been selected. My friends, and my sister, argue that “if we’ve got it, it has a purpose”—meaning, at some point in our evolutionary journey, it was adaptive; it gave us an advantage in the whole game of survival and reproductive fitness. They vehemently dispute the idea that some traits may simply hitchhike along with other, specifically desirable ones, making them neither adaptive, nor maladaptive, but “spandrels” (incidental products of evolution that have no function).

Well, of course, natural selection does not really work at the level of the gene; it works at the level of the organism. Dalmations, bred for appearance and stamina, often suffer from genetic deafness—a trait that came along with the specifically selected traits. My friends argue, not without reason, that under more natural conditions (presumably in the wild), deafness would be so maladaptive as to be selected out. Okay, fair enough.

Here’s where we really part company. My friends and sis (henceforth referred to as "they") believe that, after all those years of evolution, the human body/form is pretty much perfectly adapted to its environment, by which they mean “the African savannah.” One friend even follows a “Paleolithic diet,” eating only those things that would have been available on the savannah (i.e., no grains other than rice, no dairy unless raw, no legumes). They argue that long life and great health will follow from adjusting our diet and lifestyle to best mimic the conditions for which we are so adapted.

Here’s my problem with all this:

1. Natural selection does not care about perfect health and long life. You only have to live long enough to reproduce; the more surviving offspring you have, the more your traits/genes get passed on. Biggest causes of death now—heart disease, cancer—figure well after the game of reproduction has been fought (and won or lost). (Disclaimer: Some people argue for the Grandma hypothesis--that organisms with “grandma” caregivers are more likely to survive to reproduce, making longevity, in a roundabout way, adaptive. I’m on the fence with this…)

2. There is no such thing as perfectly adapted; evolution is a compromise. A peacock’s tail makes him more attractive to mates, but more visible to predators. It’s always a tradeoff.

And my biggest problem with this is:

3. Natural selection does not really mean survival of the fittest. It means elimination of the unfittest. We like to think of nature as “red in tooth and claw,” where only the truly magnificent specimens can survive and pass on their genes, but for most periods of human (and early human) history and prehistory, conditions were not so dire. In any given generation, the norm is that only the very worst will not survive to reproduce. So to make it in the game of evolution, you only have to Not Suck. Thus, we do not have the best of all possible forms; we just don’t suck. We have fallen arches and lower back problems because the benefits of being bipedal outweigh the costs (benefit: it leaves our hands free; cost: fallen arches and lower back problems).

It’s interesting; I think for Enlightenment thinkers, this notion of the perfectability of the human form was the consolation prize for giving up on a notion of god. Maybe this wasn’t the best of all possible worlds. Evil was real. Nature was the mover and the shaker, not a benevolent creator god, and nature was a cruel and indifferent master/mistress. But, that very cruelty--the harshness of existence and the improbability of survival--ensured that humans were honed, over millenia, to something close to perfection. But it just ain't so. Oh, well; so much for consolation.

A rat is a rat is a rat...

Are rats and squirrels so different?

We tend to think of rats as vile, germ-ridden pests--oh, the horror, were we to find one in our home! They skulk around dumpsters, eat garbage, make a home in the sewers.

Squirrels get a better rap. They nest in trees, frequent parks and tree-lined streets. Sure, sometimes they dig up the seeds we've planted, or eat the food we've put out for the birds, and on occasion, you do hear about squirrels in the walls. Annoying, nothing more, right?

But if you honestly look at a squirrel, they're just as tiny-mammal-creepy as rats, with their busy-monkey claws and twitchy tails. In Hyde Park, they hover in the trees and shout at passersby. I'm convinced that one of these days, a rabid squirrel is going to jump on someone's shoulder and tear out the jugular with its cartoon teeth.

I had a friend in Pakistan who hated birds. Found them absolutely repulsive. Pigeons were always roosting on her window sills, on top of air conditioners, under the eaves. She used to leave empty eggshells on the ledges, to keep them away, which apparently didn't work. She said that pigeons were just rats with wings.

Well, squirrels are the rats of Vermont, I'd say. My parents are always capturing them in have-a-heart traps, and transporting them miles away, across rivers and brooks, and letting them go, to become someone else's problem. They felt pretty good about this solution until one day, they pulled into their driveway only to discover a women leaning out of her station wagon 10 yards up the road, releasing a whole family of squirrels from her own have-a-heart trap.

So what's my point? I think the only thing to do is reconcile ourselves to rats. If we can do that, we can probably handle squirrels and pigeons and anything else we choose to describe as "rat-like." And according to a clerk at Petsmart, rats make great pets. They eat what you eat. They're smart. Who knew?

"Our clayey part"

I am reading/re-reading too many books at once. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (okay, I just finished that one). Moby Dick; Dead Souls; The Mercy Seat (well, that's poetry, but I'm reading it straight through like a novel); The Sun Also Rises. Enough already. I am going to bracket everything else and focus on finishing Moby Dick. I am always inspired by Melville's language--such vigorous verbs and nouns, descriptive without being florid. Some of my favorite quotes:
"a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into eternity";
"it's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians"; "Because no man can ever feel his identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part."
My list of must-reads is obscenely long. People have to stop writing good books! At least until I finish all the old ones.

"Necklace, drunken bell

for your hands smooth as grapes."

Yesterday was my birthday, and I am giddy over my new gifts--one of them, a huge collection of the poetry of Pablo Neruda (hence the above quote from "So that you will hear me.") Other loot:
And Her Soul Out Of Nothing, by Olena Kalytiak Davis
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid
The Master Letters, by Lucie Brock-Broido (no more hoarding the library's copy!)
Ainadamar, an opera based on the life and death of Federico Garcia Lorca, by my favorite composer, Osvaldo Golijov. Yay! A friend and I have already purchased tickets to see it at CSO in February of 2008.
Finally, the boys made me some homemade bubble bath/body wash, from a recipe they discovered on the internet. They also made my cake. My birthday wish: a plot for the upcoming Script Frenzy.

NaPoWriMo, You Slay Me

Today is the last day of National Poetry Writing Month. One poem every day for the month of April. Well, the upside is that I have 30 poems to work with--of which I would say probably 14 or 15 are worth spending time with and revising. The downside? I accomplished very little else this month. All other writing projects were pretty much sidelined. The 30 poems:
1. Forgetting
2. Moving Underground
3. Xeriscape
4. Cartier-Bresson in India
5. August 1978, Vermont
6. Crackpot
7. Girls in a Tavern
8. Rewiring
9. Sign the Guestbook
10. Shushing
11. Hell is for Travelers
12. Silent Treatment
13. Pogonip
14. Blues Bass Line
15. Parts of a Bell
16. Parts of a Bell 2
17. Lightfast
18. Breaking News
19. Winter Garden
20. Things that Fall
21. Caulbearer
22. Fractality
23. Heartwood
24. Ocean #1
25. Gravity is One of the Human Senses
26. Mother at the Mirror
27. Zen Babies
28. In Trouble
29. Bokhara
30. They Come
I'm glad I did it, but I think I prefer my regular routine: write about 10 poems a month, pick the best 5 to revise. Congrats to all the NaPoWriMo survivors!

Rocks in my Head

I am missing a piece of malachite. A few years ago I bought two pieces of hematite and two of malachite from a science and surplus store. I was working in a rather sterile environment, and I thought that the shiny silver and swirly green would add some positive energy to my standard issue desk (I had just read a book on feng sui, and these rocks made perfect feng sui-y sense but I no longer remember why). So when I quit the job, I brought the stones home and placed them on a window sill. One piece of malachite fell to the floor while I was watering a philodendron, and it is well and truly gone--presumably to that place where all inextricably lost things go. Oh, well.

When F. was little, he was obsessed with rocks. He spent hours searching for them on beaches and roadsides. When I was heading to San Francisco for an anthropology conference, he asked me to bring some back for him. Well, time was an issue, and as I didn't find any likely specimens on the sidewalk, I ducked into a funky store to see if, maybe, they were selling a bag of local stones. (It could happen!) No luck. I asked the clerk--a young guy, probably around 20 or so--if he knew where I could go to find some rocks for my son, who wanted rocks, and only rocks, from San Francisco. In a lovely surfer drawl, he answered "Wow, far out. How about [such-and-such] Beach? That's where I go to get all my rocks."

It was a perfect California moment. I fell in love with the place right then and there. In fact, if I weren't from Vermont, I'd want to be from California. "That's where I go to get all my rocks." Beautiful.

Because it's April...

Someone gave me a flower today. I was sitting on the quilt that my cousin Jeanine made, writing a poem about fractality while the boys sold lemonade to passersby. A man was lost, looking for a church event. If he had waited ten minutes, he could have followed the reverse stream of yellow, orange and blue balloons parading down the street. I directed him to St. Thomas, and on his way back from the event, he gave me a flower. They were handing them out to attendees, and he gave me his. A lovely gesture--and a lovely flower, with pink and crimson striped petals and a yellow-green spiraled center. Yes, fractal, right down to the merest circle of yellow pollen, worlds within worlds.

Fractality doesn't negate singularity, anymore than the body's form--two arms, two legs--renders us indistinguishable from one another. It's just the loss you feel, when you replace random unpredictability with patterned chaos. A little less lucky. A little less wild. But still grateful.