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!
Monday, April 30, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
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.
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.
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