cryptomnesia

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Location: Brooklyn, New York, United States

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Even better dialog about Denby's article over at Emily Gordon's blog.

The Best Letter Poem Ever

Thanks to Karen Chase for this:

LETTER TO KATHY FROM WISDOM

My dearest Kathy: When I heard your tears and those of your
mother over the phone from Moore, from the farm
I've never seen and see again and again under the most
uncaring of skies, I thought of this town I'm writing from,
where we came lovers years ago to fish. How odd
we seemed to them there, a lovely young girl and a fat
middle 40's man they mistook for father and daughter
before the sucker lights in their eyes flashed on. That was
when we kissed their petty scorn to dust. Now, I eat alone
in the cafe we ate in then, thinking of your demons, the sad
days you've seen, the hospitals, doctors, the agonizing
breakdowns that left you ashamed. All my other letter
poems I've sent to poets. But you, you were a poet then,
curving lines I love against my groin. Oh, my tenderest
raccoon, odd animal from nowhere scratching for a home,
please believe I want to plant whatever poem will grow
inside you like a decent life. And when the wheat you've known
forever sours in the wrong wind and you smell it
dying in those acres where you played, please know
old towns we loved in matter, lovers matter, playmates, toys,
and we take from our lives those days when everything moved,
tree, cloud, water, sun, blue between two clouds, and moon,
days that danced, vibrating days, chance poem. I want one
who's wondrous and kind to you. I want him sensitive
to wheat and how wheat bends in cloud shade without wind.
Kathy, this is the worst time of day, nearing five, gloom
ubiquitous as harm, work shifts changing. And our lives
are on the line. Until we die our lives are on the mend.
I'll drive home when I finish this, over the pass that's closed
to all but a few, that to us was always open, good days
years ago when our bodies were in motion and the road rolled out
below us like our days. Call me again when the tears build
big inside you, because you were my lover and you matter,
because I send this letter with my hope, my warm love. Dick.
(Ut: Richard Hugo, Making sure it goes on: the collected poems, W.W.
Norton,
New York 1986.)

Thursday, July 19, 2007

A Fine Romance

Good article by David Denby in this week's New Yorker about the changing roles of men and women in romantic comedies.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Me and my dear friend Amani at his birthday party 7/15/07

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

It Gives A Lovely Light...

Ahhh back in Brooklyn,
where I am more or less in charge of my exits
and entrances for the time being,
can more or less eat and sleep
what and where and when I want~
after a week in the land of tame oceans, elegant
brownstones and prestigious colleges.
Highlights:
reading Edna St. Vincent Millay's poems
by flashlight on the walk to her grave,
lying in a field of thyme,
the framed marriage vows on the wall in a suburban house:
I will always try to listen to you with an open mind
even when I know I'm right,
jumping in Walden pond in undergarments,
a temporary gazebo on a white sand beach,
sipping chilled Hendrick's over a Roman parking lot,
folding back a vaginal colored cloth that said:
Visitors May Fold Back Cloth

to read letters at the Gardiner museum,
sneaking a picture of the Titian on my cellphone,
almost getting locked in the drum at the Atheneum
while reading Lowell on the transparent floor,
an old black and white photograph of my parents when they were dating
at 22; she's sprawled out on a lawn chair while he looks lovingly up...