cryptomnesia

2011-11-26T17:15:00.002-05:00

tattoo

2011-07-20T23:36:00.002-04:00

Salter

2011-06-28T22:11:00.002-04:00

There are two kinds of life. There is the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other that causes the trouble, that people long to see.

fathers day

2011-06-20T01:15:00.000-04:00

How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying, our mothers? Or divorcing, or not divorcing, our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left?

Sherman Alexie

2011-06-02T17:29:00.004-04:00

Cool petals that flap around my breastbone
Congress of nighttime furniture
What letters do you have yet to reveal?

butterfly

2011-03-25T15:09:00.003-04:00

ocean

2011-03-17T02:17:00.004-04:00

The Art of Pausing

2011-03-11T00:38:00.000-05:00

According to the Elements of English Grammar,
(designed particularly for the use of
Ladies Boarding Schools in 1776)

the infinite variety of connection

is to be distinguished
by this small number of stops.

Woman, without her man, is nothing,

The comma like a dip in the ground,
A curve of the spine.

Allardyce said:
There is no rule to distinguish compound words
That take a hyphen from those that do not.

Paper-knife;
coal-pit; printing press;
Sea water,

Man-of-war.

The graduating class of 1942-46,
four years of lost lives in the little line.

Woman. Without her, man is nothing.

When Hughes edited Plath,
he changed several commas to periods,
as if finalizing her death
in the round stop of a capped well.

These days, most of what we say to one another
ends in an ellipses
Three yellow headlights blinking

Anyone…anyone…

seaweed

2011-02-17T20:53:00.002-05:00

birthmark

2011-02-13T20:57:00.003-05:00

2011-02-05T19:45:00.003-05:00

Salvador Dali to Patti Smith: You look like a crow.

Reading Patti

2011-02-05T18:29:00.003-05:00

I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust...

The Flower of Farewell

2010-12-31T13:05:00.000-05:00

Somewhere the flower of farewell is blooming.
Endlessly it yields its pollen, which we breathe.
Even in the breeze of this beginning hour we breathe farewell.

Rilke

2010-12-08T19:19:00.002-05:00

She drives me crazy (absolutely and completely) but I realize that at this moment in my life, there is nothing I enjoy more, that brings me more true joy than spending time with my daughter. She is whirling poetry, passion, interesting language, soft human and difficult and important compromise all at once.

2010-11-25T00:00:00.004-05:00

Dolphins sleep in one-half of their brain while the other half remains awake...

on Freedom

2010-11-09T11:22:00.004-05:00

Finally finished the Franzen book. I will miss it. Thinking back to the Newsweek article, which I found on a coffee table in a house on a palm tree farm in Israel, where the pompous photograph looked benign in its familiarity, its silly American flighty notions of greatness, its friendliness...something like home. I can't remember if he was called a "great writer" or one who had the potential to be great. I'm more comfortable with the later assertion, though not sure I buy into the whole idea to begin with.

It wasn't until I was back here and the book was literally everywhere, his voice even toned next to Terry Gross' overly-excited, beckoning one on my drive home from work, the term "franzenfreude" a repeated subject line on the listserve of mother/poets that the article took on a new meaning and I shut my ears to read the book. I gather people were pissed off by the amount and caliber of the attention he was given. Certainly, the notion of "greatness" the Newsweek article touched on is a dated, sexist one to say the least. Certainly, there are female writers who, while revered in the literary community, do not get the flash they deserve, (Alice Munro, Paula Fox, Moore, Gaitskill to name a few) but there seemed to be some conflation of this issue and the content of his book, which was also called sexist.

I actually think the content is sexist; the world it portrays is a sexist one, and Franzen's own imagination limits his ability to empathize with his female characters. The male characters are driven by base impulses, and the women change their lives or define themselves by sleeping with the male characters. This was true in the Corrections and it is true again here, even as our heroine is younger, allowed to be both a sexual being and a mother, even hints at becoming something of a "storyteller." There was something oddly distant and understated about the protagonist' rape, although the way it seemed small but had a lifelong ripple effect felt in the same room with truth.

But I still hope we don't expect all writers to do everything. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, was amused, moved and accompanied by his mind. Franzen is enormously gifted at painting the multi-layered American world as he sees it, from his white, male, privilidged, depressed, ambivalent and slightly self-loathing perspective. He is still growing up, just as we all are. I remember something in the Newsweek article about him considering collecting a few kids (which makes me think of Walters' birds) so that he could tell the American family story better, but the truth is he's still telling it from the son's perspective. Women are both mother and lover and sister now, but they are still other, opaque, something to manage. They are still towering. He decided against parenthood, and I don't doubt he is limiting his gaze by doing so. I don't know what his relationship with his own mother is like, but he writes like a man who hasn't finished figuring it out. The fact remains he is still telling a great American story, about a kind of freedom only a small group of Americans will ever know.

fancy lady

2010-10-11T16:04:00.002-04:00

internet

2010-10-09T22:55:00.013-04:00

Saw The Social Network tonight. It got me thinking about the online universe and what hungers bring me here. I made ruin of love a few times and tried to find it in this illusive space. In an odd way, the Mark Zuckerburg (is it Zuckerburg? I could google it, but I'm kind of okay with not knowing for sure...)reminded me of both of them. I am him, with his stubborn, shadowy longings, and I am also his girlfriend, who can't stand his posturing, who rejects his social hierarchy, ultimately rejecting him. I guess we all are. How much of the internet is driven that...by that need to fill a space where human boundaries leave off? There is beauty; my daughter really does know her aunt better because of skype. And there is real dialogue, and it really is essential. The listserve of poet mothers this year has kept me afloat in ways I can't even name while navigating this new me. Even facebook has helped me feel connected while homebound. It was something I could do while breastfeeding. It allowed me to express myself in a way that I had a kind of control over without being hijacked by social anxiety. It offered adult conversation. But at what cost? The screen, the mirror...how can we balance our gaze in with our drive to live out there, where the risks are higher, the payback so much more alive...

Kaya

2010-10-08T20:17:00.001-04:00

from the Kaya Press website:

The word "Kaya" has meaning in many major languages. In Japanese it is "summer night" or a type of yew tree that withstands harsh environmental conditions. In Malay, "kaya" means "rich," in Indonesian, "prosperous," and in Tagalog "to be ables." In Sanskrit, "kaya" means "body," and in Turkish it means "rock." In Zulu, "kaya" means "home."

self-expression

2010-09-25T14:03:00.001-04:00

Today, Kaya drew a beautiful orange and pink picture. I hung it on the fridge. A few minutes later she took it down and peed on it.

Israel

2010-08-31T09:37:00.000-04:00

photo by Chanan.

2010-06-27T22:27:00.000-04:00

muse

2010-06-09T07:47:00.001-04:00

past bedtime

2010-06-06T20:28:00.003-04:00

spring

2010-04-08T21:26:00.003-04:00

beauty

2010-04-02T20:41:00.000-04:00

kiki smith

2010-02-27T12:26:00.001-05:00

snowday

2010-02-27T11:46:00.004-05:00

2010-02-11T13:47:00.008-05:00

Another
Persephone
Poem.

When she was ten,
if she stubbed one toe,
she stubbed the other,
to make it even.
Her thin girl body
radiating
from two sides.
So much pain
that for a moment—
it was indistinguishable
from calm. All the way
to fingertips,
it tingles sweetly
with the brutal caress.
And then recedes.

At thirty, her body
is carved of this intelligence.
If you love her, you should prepare
for a sense of symmetry.
Each seed of light must match
the dark. With each step you
carry her to heaven,
she'll make you bring her down.
Golden tangle at your feet,
begging, kick me,
and then shut the door.

For Kaya

2010-01-17T21:11:00.004-05:00

You are three days short of a year, three-hundred
sixty-five days ago your fists coiled inside me;
your tiny feet kicked my ribs as I circled this
same icy pond. You squirmed out
in a flurry of snow, a splash of blood,
a caesura of time. I meant to record it.
I meant to anthologize your every move.
But I chose your plump warmth
over the skinny pen. The thick black book
with your name sits in a pile of things I moved
out of your persistent, brave and sticky reach—

I wanted to remember when you first laughed
in Colorado, your grandmother was tickling
you on the carpet. Machine gun staccato.
You surprised yourself. Weren’t sure how
to repeat it. Or how your cousins in Israel
taught you to say hello with the same toy phone
your father played with as a child. How you would
do it over and over across the world; hairbrushes,
remote controls, socks and even air would become
receivers at your ear. When you started dancing,
first to Van Morrison in my arms, later Amy Winehouse,

in the jumperoo, and your father swears you sway
to opera with a sense of serious calm. You dance
on your own now to the CD your aunt bought
San Francisco, your face lights at the familiarity
when the same voices meet your Brooklyn home.

I used to write about a small animal
that lived like a knot in my gut.
It was small and dark and had swallowed
my joy. Over and over I knocked on
locked doors, trying to find you. The year
Before the year you began, a woman felt
you in my toes. A little girl she said,
But wait. You need a layer first
around that raw heart.

I could never imagine the way you trumped
all that. You’ve no time for the slowness
of poetry, the brooding of autumn leaves.
Pages best be thick, or velvety, and smell
like spices and fruit. We call you monkey
because right away you reached for what
you wanted. I have to swallow
my city self and smile at the friends
you make across the crowded subway.
You are nothing I could have thought of.
Happy Birthday my sweet Kaya Hope.

I REMEMBER (A Joe Brainard Style Birth Story)

2009-09-13T15:53:00.003-04:00

I remember feeling like I had a toothache in my whole body.

I remember almost crawling into the lap of the man driving the car.

I remember the man in the lobby who said, “She’s in pain.”

I remember Suze asking me if I preferred vitamin water or Gatorade.

I remember the answer to that question came easy.

I remember Stacey smiling.

I remember being taught how to breathe.

I remember joking about how it was a lousy time to learn a new skill.

I remember having mixed feelings about the placenta.

I remember Stacey saying she was going to be a conehead and having horrible images in my head.

I remember exchanging a look with Stacey that meant
Don’t lie to me, I’m about to tear.
Yes, you are, I’m sorry.

I remember Suze telling Stacey she had the same birthday as Pete Townsend.

I remember Stacey asking me if I wanted to move out of the tub and it not mattering.

I remember wondering how Ariel felt about the positioning.

I remember leaning my head back against him and thinking he was like a tree with a heartbeat.

I remember screaming at Ariel and Suze to PUSH HARDER against my sacrum.

I remember hearing them mutter little conversations about “taking breaks” or “switching places.”

I remember that for a couple of hours in the night, I was the only one (aside from Kaya) who knew it was for real.

I remember amniotic fluid trickling onto the wood floor.

I remember my pregnancy pillow was covered in fluid.

I remember puke just flying out of my mouth incidentally as I moved across the room.

I remember thinking we’d never be able to clean up all my fluids.

I remember Stacey covered the bed with something and the nurse said:
What, you don’t think she’s staying?

I remember Stacey’s phone ringing and I said “maybe someone has a sinus infection” because I had interrupted Gina’s birth with mine.

I remember Stacey saying: “When Huck came out, he was so funny looking, and now he’s so cute.”

I remember a quiet splash of so much blood, like the red slide in DON’T LOOK NOW.

I remember thinking we should be leaving for the hospital before we did.

I remember Ariel and Suze talking about a smoothie.

I remember Suze saying it had an interesting taste and Ariel realizing he forgot the yogurt.

I remember worrying that Stacey was going to think I was racist after I made a joke.

I remember the nurse saying she’d never seen someone worry so much about what other people were feeling while in labor.

I remember Ariel felt very still behind me.

I remember blackness between frames, my body coiling into two second sleep.

I remember wanting to say YOU make sounds deeper that the pain….or make sounds deeper than THIS…but holding my tongue.

I remember Stacey saying as I got out of the tub, I know you feel like you can’t go on, but you can.

I remember at some point in the tub saying to her, I might die, and she said I know it feels like that, Caitlin, but you’re not going to die.

I remember remembering Hilke saying in some ways a toothache hurts more than labor because it’s constant.

I remember knowing I was not going to die.

I remember how quiet everything was.

I remember thinking: oh, she’s his.

I remember bringing her straight to my nipple amidst all the blood because I’d seen that in some video.

I remember being taken aback by how big she was, and how much hair was on her head.

She was so much more that the tiny fist that had lived in me for years…

I remember the nurse didn’t think I was so fabulous after I refused the IV.

I remember feeling like I had avoided medical intervention all through birth so didn’t want to start post-birth.

I remember hearing the nurse say: “Oh, Daddy’s little girl…he’s going to spoil her, you can see it already.”

I remember waking up in the middle of the night and going to find her.

I remember asking if I could take her and realizing I was in charge.

The nurses would defer to me, the mother.

I took her back to my hospital bed and dozed blissfully holding her into the light.

There was snow outside and distant traffic, the river.

I just had to wait and people would come to me.

I remember seeing the sign on her bassinet:

BREAST MILK ONLY.

We dressed her in a red T shirt that said ADO(RED) and was too big.

Ariel cried for so long
Rach came by and said:
Has anyone said she looks like you? (to Ariel)

Em said: So animal.

They had to put a catheter in me to release my urine. The right side of my belly was inflated like a balloon. As the pee poured into the pan, it deflated.

I was so glad Suze was there to make the pizza happen.

I knew I didn’t really need an IV; I needed pizza.

Her hands and feet were bigger than I expected.

She had a jewish nose.

She became my love in the morning light.

I knew she was tougher than me.

She was as tough as my core.

And then some.

Parenting Haiku

2009-07-09T12:33:00.001-04:00

Mosquito buzzing;
I wrap my body round yours,
forty-year-old bait.

caretaking

2009-04-02T14:55:00.001-04:00

is my arm flexed just so that you can let go into sleep without even knowing it's there.

How many arms were there??

2009-02-14T11:04:00.001-05:00

2009-02-13T17:59:00.000-05:00

Kaya Hope Friedman

2009-01-25T10:20:00.001-05:00

Born 1/17/09

39 1/2 weeks

2009-01-10T22:23:00.000-05:00

Full wolf moon and a rush of quiet snow. We're ready for you.

2008-12-15T20:35:00.000-05:00

Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

--Raymond Carver

Jack Gilbert, Tear It Down

2008-10-13T09:09:00.000-04:00

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.

2008-10-09T14:11:00.000-04:00

2008-09-06T18:09:00.003-04:00

This actually made me cry.

En Paris

2008-08-13T05:14:00.005-04:00

Paris smells like roses and bodies and begs the question of love. What good, she demands, is that kind of love? Shattering of plates, locked doors, black and white photos hidden in drawers...
I am beginning to see, Malte Laurids Brigge said, and you do see faces here in a different way. They linger. They recede inward. Le Lundi. Quiet night. No dogs. Her body matters more than words. The question dips in the night. Her muscles soften.
Placenta. Cords. Window.
Ligament.
Thread.

What's Going On

2008-07-25T07:19:00.002-04:00

from Rilke's First Elegy

2008-06-30T17:04:00.002-04:00

...Fling the emptiness out of your arms
into the spaces we breathe; so that in the expanded air
birds might feel themselves more inwardly flying.
Yes, the springtimes needed you. There were stars
counting on you to sense them. A wave rose toward
you in the past, or when you walked by an open window
a violin gave itself up to you. All this
was commission. Were you up to it?
Weren't you always distracted by expectation?

2008-06-15T20:37:00.001-04:00

Obama on Fatherhood...

2008-04-27T15:40:00.000-04:00

2008-04-27T09:15:00.002-04:00

"...because we don't change because we want to, do we? We change because we have to. Because there's enough pain."

Richard Panek

Feral Ghazal

2008-04-26T18:19:00.004-04:00

Lichen thrives in adverse environments, mountaintops and ice.
A feral animal is one that has escaped domestication.
St. Augustine's definition of God was a being whose center is everywhere, borders nowhere.
The process by which any technology disembodies us is called angelization.*
In a basement in California, a woman sleeps cradling a phone.
The heightening of one sense necessitates diminution of the others.
All change begins with disruption.
The process of one animal taming another is both violent and loving.
And you, Caitlin, what will it take to hold you still,
pockets filled with sea-swept stones.

*This line is borrowed from Nick Flynn.

Moment

2008-04-24T11:23:00.005-04:00

This year is more outside myself than any so far, there has been little time for reflection. I feel like I am learning more than I can keep up with. Often about things I thought I knew, like the importance of living in the present. Drove out to the end of the spiral peninsula this week to find a moment...this sun disappeared with the final note of Brahms Violin Concerto No. 1...

Oh, Me, Oh My Oh

2008-03-02T10:49:00.009-05:00

My friend Sarah Kramer just sent me this picture of Obama from the night she and I worked at the benefit in New York last summer...this is his face right after shaking her hand. I feel like it embodies something of his charisma/cockiness/authenticity. I still didn't know who I was going to vote for that night, and talked to lots of people all evening about the choice. For some reason, the conversation that stayed with me the most wasn't about his politics. I sat at a table next to a woman who is close friends with Barack's sister. She was telling me how thoughtful he is, how he always remembers details about peoples' lives so he can refer to them...(like any politician). But she told me about seeing him at a wedding, and how he brought up the movie "Maria, Full of Grace." (She's a filmmaker, and her husband is Colombian.) He had seen the film and really liked it, wanted to know what she thought. Something about that really struck me...that a presidential candidate would actually have seen this independent film about international drug trafficking and teen pregnancy...and liked it enough to want to talk about it. I think I dated somebody who dated somebody who dated somebody who made that movie. I guess it was the moment for me, when he started to seem like "my people." I told my Dad (who has sometimes voted Republican but is now volunteering for the Obama campaign) this story and he compared it to some comment Kennedy made about Norman Mailer...

First Poem

2008-02-23T13:52:00.003-05:00

some california morning spiritual wisdom from rumi

2008-02-20T13:57:00.000-05:00

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning is a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

2008-02-19T03:05:00.003-05:00

2008-02-17T23:58:00.002-05:00

Oakland

2008-02-17T10:39:00.008-05:00

smells of blossoms caught in the fog. Here I thought this place was lined with a particular pain, but find it is quite another. Of course. The reason I cry on tables. Something so bright it can't be seen...four years later I begin to glimpse the dark outline. Your small grip on my back. Loosening. Eucalyptus flower. Weightlessness, beginning to bear.

2008-02-14T00:27:00.000-05:00

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

what matters

2008-02-02T21:46:00.000-05:00

It's been a week of tempering the big emotions of small people, of small objects flying out of my hands, of braving awkward moments with exes that fade in the shuffle of what matters, of the long metal underground world not behaving as it should, the small rooms and corridors inside me quaking, of the corridors and classrooms outside me behaving a little more as they should, of big 4 a.m. questions and small tremors, of songs in my ears alone filled with wide questions and gorgeous silences, of writing words like ubiquitous on pink paper, of feeling what matters shuffling inside me on its own accord, of laughing on multiple levels, of lining the lining, of sleeping and not sleeping, on the edge of a queen-sized memory-foam mattress with white noise, of thinking about skin, of trying to hear, of trying to see, of wondering, of deciding.

Braved the AWP conference for awhile today, which generally feels like being held over at the Chicago airport during the holiday season with a sea of half-familiar narcissists. It was worth it to hear James Tate read "The Ice-Cream Man" (and field questions in what has got to be one of the funniest interviews I've ever seen...my favorite part was when he paused for about 15 seconds and then said gruffly, "I don't know if I have any pets,") and to run into my dear friend Spring Ulmer. Read her poems on the train home and they are echoing in my mind:

I am so famished I make-believe I'm a fruit.
I touch B's letter to A with my blue-brown skin. Just the edge of it–
Its creamy fold punctures my swollen side. My red insides open.

(from "The End of Our Correspondence" by Spring Ulmer)

2008-01-21T10:41:00.000-05:00

Martin Luther King "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"

Some newish poems

2008-01-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

This one was for The Best American's Challenge. First, you had to solve this anagram to find the title of a past judge's book: HIT THE LUMP OF RICH SEAL and then write an acrostic poem out of his or her name.
The answer took me about an hour: "The Triumph of Achilles" by Louise Gluck. In graduate school, one of my teachers told me that Gluck had originally written the line of her famous poem "Mock Orange," I hate this as I hate sex as I love this as I love sex. This has always fascinated me, so I started with that, and fragments from about ten different past judges' poems and made this out of it, (which alas, did not win):

As I Love Sex

Long ago you kissed the names of the muses goodbye
Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
Under the door, and stop before me
I hate them, as I hate sex
Slowly along the flank
Even as she held it, to bring back the picture of what life…
Go to your room, to all the rooms whose damp, cold air you breathed
Like a tiny, African god
Unsay those orders
Companion, good company
Kindness, every unheld breath.

This one mostly combines language from the LSAT, parking tickets and Ulysses...

Silver Stallion

O please, Mr Policeman, I’m lost in the wood.
Between the lightning and the thunder.
soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here now.
Oh, touch me soon, now. Use of placebos
would not lower costs, since a predetermined
number of participants approached the sacrament.
Failure to answer as required shall be deemed
an admission of liability. Knows the taste
of them now. Old Father Ocean. That one
is going too. Privileges suspended. You express
a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws.
A cloud covered the sun, slowly, wholly, shadowing
the bay in a deeper green. The answer lies in the fact
that there are two types of laws. What did I say?
I forget. A conscientious proofreader attempted
to mend it at the surface. And what is death,
he asked. Your mother’s or yours or my own.
This response is not justified by the information
in the excerpt. Other interactions across cultures
can serve to disseminate ideas and discoveries.
Hat square on head. Buckles shined and cleaned.
Young shouts of moneyed voices. The discovery
spread to the Arab world as a result of warfare.
Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.
The detection of temperature by a finger touching
a cool surface. I remember only ideas and sensations.
The spread of papermaking technology, increase
in breathing rate while exercising. In my mind’s
darkness a sloth of the underworld, power’s blank
voice spoke. This relationship is not linear.
As I am. As I am. All or not at all.

2007-12-31T09:50:00.000-05:00

What "the road less traveled by" means today...

2007-12-29T10:14:00.000-05:00

This is the kind of thing that makes me love New York.

R.I.P.

2007-12-28T20:22:00.000-05:00

travel reading

2007-12-24T10:50:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan has got to be the most persuasive essayist around. His essay against hate crime legislation from the 1999 Best American had me convinced against my better judgment. His recent pro-Obama essay in The Atlantic is almost as convincing. Esp. his salient points about how much seeing his name (Barack Hussein Obama) and face on a TV screen might offer us hope for connectedness in the International community where we've managed to alienate ourselves so thoroughly. But, honestly, I couldn't help wondering how much Obama's face matters to Sullivan in another way, and smelling the most well-masked misogyny in his comments about Hillary...

Also, the New Yorker's publishing of Ray Carver's original draft of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" along with his correspondence with Gordon Lish about the edits was fascinating. He cut nearly 40% of the manuscript. It made me think about the art of editing; Lish really found the core of the story and chiseled it down until it meant something. It was really a collaboration.

On Love

2007-12-05T23:43:00.000-05:00

and heartache, one thing I've learned from watching myself and others: if you want to be free, you should set the other free. Do not blame them and give them a burden to carry about what they could have fixed. Be brave enough to claim your limitation and set them free.

2007-11-24T16:04:00.000-05:00

Thanks and Cleaning Up

2007-11-22T09:56:00.000-05:00

Heading up to Rhinebeck today with my sis, looking forward to dried leaves and bare trees over the Hudson out the train window. Time for reflection.

Just looked through the archives of this thing and am embarrassed by some of the earlier posts...thankful I am not in that place anymore. That look at my pain insistence...

All in all, I wouldn't trade this life so far.

2007-11-11T23:27:00.000-05:00

Saw "Into the Wild" tonight and want to write an essay comparing it to Herzog's Grizzly Man--the difference in subject/object--the distance of the camera's gaze, the agency in who is holding it.

Realistically, though, that is probably all I'm going to say about it for the time being.

2007-11-06T22:08:00.000-05:00

I'm on the cusp, so read two horoscopes weekly and decide which one I want to believe. This week, I'm fond of Libra:

It will be a good week to build your spiritual prowess by dancing on burning embers without getting scorched, by smashing bricks with your forehead without getting a headache, or by parachuting out of a plane without scaring yourself to death. But there are other, less physical ways to jolt yourself into a higher state of awareness; you don't need to risk injury in order to boost your ability to see the big picture. For example, you could push through the terror you feel about asking for what you really want. You could overcome your fear of being honest with people you care about. You could stride into a place where you once experienced a defeat, and take the forceful action necessary to render that loss irrelevant.

seahorse birth

2007-11-04T15:57:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Amanda Jones for this, my new favorite youtube video. I recommend turning off the sound...

Titles

2007-10-08T14:58:00.000-04:00

Ten most common titles of submissions to Virginia Quarterly Review:

1. Remember
2. Smoke
3. Revelation
4. Work
5. Grace
6. Waiting
7. Insomnia
8. Voyeur
9. Butterfly
10. Reunion

Thanks to Richie.

2007-09-26T11:43:00.000-04:00

I love Katha Pollitt.

Delivery

2007-09-25T11:32:00.000-04:00

de·liv·er·y (dĭ-lĭv'ə-rē, -lĭv'rē)
n., pl. -ies.

1. The act of conveying or delivering.
2. Something delivered, as a shipment or package.
1. The act of transferring to another.
2. Law. A formal act of transferring ownership of property to another: delivery of a deed.
The act of giving up; surrender.
The act or manner of throwing or discharging.
The act of giving birth; parturition.
1. Utterance or enunciation: The historic speech required but two minutes in delivery.
2. The act or manner of speaking or singing: a folk singer's casual delivery.
The act of releasing or rescuing.

Serra's New York

2007-09-06T15:47:00.001-04:00

Goodnight, Gracie.

2007-09-06T15:46:00.000-04:00

2007-08-19T16:48:00.000-04:00

I'll have to tell people the story individually first, as my lawyer advises me not to publish it just yet, (I know that's very mysterious). I'm off to NH to rest for a week. Just agreed to read @ the Royal Oak Salon when I'm back on the 29th...

I have a story to tell

2007-08-15T16:29:00.001-04:00

about the events of this week, but I am still gathering myself to write it.

In the meantime, here's a picture of the view from the JMZ train with a billboard that looks an awful lot like angelina jolie.

2007-07-24T11:10:00.000-04:00

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

The Best Letter Poem Ever

2007-07-24T10:16:00.000-04:00

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.)

A Fine Romance

2007-07-19T01:18:00.000-04:00

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

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

2007-07-18T23:15:00.000-04:00

2007-07-17T08:32:00.000-04:00

It Gives A Lovely Light...

2007-07-11T23:53:00.000-04:00

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...

How to see me

2007-06-25T17:13:00.000-04:00

Dear mysterious and lovely blog readers, whomsoever you may be. It has come to my attention that some of you still see my profound, naval-gazing entries as one big link. I've found that they appear this way if you view the blog in safari, but not in firefox or internet explorer. Viewing the blog in safari especially sucks because then you will not see the actual links, when they are there... hope that helps, and bless your hearts.

Obama

2007-06-23T01:24:00.000-04:00

The constellation of events that is my life led to an opportunity to attend a party for Barack Obama tonight at the Hammerstein Ballroom, to hear him speak and stand just feet a few feet from him as he smiled and shook hands. I don't know if I'm certain yet about my vote, but I will say he gave me shivers...like finding a favorite book that'd been flooded and torn in a basement and drying it off in the sun to see the words still there. I know this is Boulder talk, but for a politician, the man has good vibes.

Inside Out

2007-06-18T13:04:00.000-04:00

Almost every time I read the NY Times online I hit something that brings up this pop up dictionary definition:

in·side (ĭn-sīd', ĭn'sīd')
n.

1. An inner or interior part.
2. Inward character, perceptions, or feelings: felt good on the inside about volunteering to help.
An inner side or surface.
The part away from the edge; the middle part.
insides Informal.
1. The inner organs; entrails.
2. The inner parts or workings: the insides of a TV set.
Slang. Confidential or secret information.

adj.

Inner; interior.
Relating to, known to, or coming from an exclusive group: inside information; an inside joke.
Baseball. Passing on the side of home plate nearer the batter. Used of a pitch.

adv.

Into or in the interior; within.
On the inner side.
Slang. In prison.

prep.

Within: We'll be there inside an hour.
1. On the inner side or part of: inside the package.
2. Into the interior of: going inside the house.

idioms:

inside out

With the inner surface turned out; reversed: wore the sweatshirt inside out.
Informal. As completely as possible; thoroughly: knew the city inside out.

on the inside

In a position of confidence or influence.

2007-05-31T21:54:00.001-04:00

More Rilke

2007-05-31T21:49:00.000-04:00

"...You mean you still don't know?
Fling the emptiness from your arms into that space we breathe;
Then maybe the birds will feel the air grow open
in more penetrating flight..."

From The First Elegy

2007-05-10T11:44:00.000-04:00

...No one sees what they'll need to survive.
No one sees the dream thicken and rise
like the old foundation, the pieces of life
that were good, that stood the strong weather,
the one with the other, us, inside...

from Flight of the Mice by Larissa Szporluk

Magical Thinking

2007-04-29T21:38:00.000-04:00

On Friday evening, I got to watch Vanessa Redgrave embody Joan Didion. Her physical presence, as has been pointed out by the New York theater critics, was antithetical to something about how one pictures the fragility of Joan Didion. But as simple as it was, it was theater afterall—she was a body representing a voice. Her physical presence was in many ways like Didion’s writing—austere, feminine, haughty, commanding and curvy. At some moments, she still looked like an ingénue, at others she aged before our eyes; she held our attention with confidence and authority throughout.

The set—a bare wood floor with different vague, lonely seascapes in the background—evoked the photograph on the back of the book, which was projected at the close of the play. In the picture, Didion looks on whimsically from the corner at John and Quintana, who both face the camera. A glass of white wine taken for granted in her hand, a seascape behind them. A bare wooden porch, something like the one at my Dad’s house where I read the book with M, who had given it to me, inscribed with the word hopefully.

For ten months we tried to carry that hope, which was mostly about the right things: that love could sustain us, that money shouldn’t matter too much, that wanting the same things was more important than timing. The moral authority in Joan’s voice is almost scolding, of herself as much as the reader, for being human, fallible, and living outside the real world. Trying to teach the book last year at a state university made me aware of her class blindness and privilege in a way I hadn’t been. She’s a little snotty, they’d say, doesn’t she know this stuff happens to everyone? But the sparseness of the set, the humanizing of the moral authority (and its flaws) made it clear that, despite her matching drapes and preciousness, in the end, she really didn’t expect more than anyone expects: to love one’s family, to have true companionship, to get to say goodbye.

I saw the play with a family friend whose husband had died the same year—the scene was frighteningly similar; it had been orange juice, not scotch, that she handed her husband before he clutched his heart. It was the kitchen, not the living room. But the suddenness, the life changing in an instant, had been the same. She wrote about her own experience, sent it to Joan, who wrote her back. After the play, I realized I’d forgotten my umbrella and Mary encouraged me to go back and look for it. Predictably, it was not at my seat, not in the bathroom stall, as I hunted around, I became increasingly sure it was at the restaurant where we’d eaten hours earlier. It had stopped raining anyway. I got caught behind an elderly couple trying to make it down the stairs. Already having made Mary wait once that evening, I was impatient at first, but the man and woman were taking their time, making sure they had their footing at each step and that the other was by their side. When I reached Mary, she told me that in the time I'd been gone, something magical had happened. Joan Didion herself had emerged from the theatre, glowing and self-possessed. They’d introduced themselves before Didion was whisked away.

It turns out love isn’t enough to sustain us. The pressures of the less than magical world close in on us before long, but if you fear this too much, you lose track of those moments in the sun, on the porch, on the stair. Those moments when you can’t think about the end because the vastness around you is too big. It turns out that’s all we've got. The trick that I have yet to learn is how to hold on to it without squeezing too hard, how to be on the step I’m on without worrying too much about what’s at the bottom.

Poetry is Dangerous

2007-04-20T12:03:00.000-04:00

Just ask Kazim Ali .

Question Mark

2007-04-17T22:48:00.000-04:00

The detail that struck me the most about Cho Seung-Hui:

"...on the first day of a British literature class last year, the 30 or so students went around and introduced themselves. When it was Cho's turn, he didn't speak. On the sign-in sheet where everyone else had written their names, Cho had written a question mark.
"Is your name, `Question mark?'" classmate Julie Poole recalled the professor asking. The young man offered little response."

2007-04-11T15:23:00.001-04:00

Primum non nocere

2007-04-03T12:33:00.000-04:00

"Do you still need the handkerchief? No,
just a permanent address."

from Ashbery's "The Recipe"

2007-04-02T08:48:00.001-04:00

There should be a personality test that determines your psychology based on how you use punctuation. The ellipsis reveals hesitation; the question mark is overly enthusiastic. What does it mean if, like Barack Obama, you are heavy on the comma in your verse?

2007-04-01T12:33:00.000-04:00

My first book review just came out.

Can you tell what had just happened in my love life when I wrote it?

Renate Wood

2007-03-28T11:22:00.000-04:00

My first poetry teacher, mother of childhood friend Chris Wood, died this week in Boulder. I remember her asking me to hold my hands over my eyes and write down what I saw, to go outside and listen to tiny sounds—dried leaves dancing on warm concrete. I remember her melodious soft voice with its quiet authority, her sadness at missing a mysterious world far away, her long blonde hair and gentle laugh. She was the first person to recognize and call forth my secret world and need to hold on tight to language. In other words, she helped me become who I am.

Feathers

Cleaning my desk today: the two blue jay feathers inside an envelope
I had taken to Germany for my mother before she died—
She didn't remember the jays, which had come to her feeder
in this country. Didn't remember their flash of unearthly blue.
Feathers? She had forgotten what they were for.
What are they for? Like the soul after death, detached from the body
that was their home, they're nothing almost,
so light I barely knew their weight,
flying with me all the way to that hushed bed, and back.

Renate Wood
2/5/1938-3/20/2007

2007-03-22T19:23:00.000-04:00

While I've always found John Edwards remarkably bland, I was impressed by the way he and Elizabeth handled their press conference about her returning breast cancer today, and came across this picture from the 70's...

Subject Headings from Recent Nigerian Scam Emails

2007-03-22T09:20:00.000-04:00

Seeking for Partnership
Get Back to Me Urgently
You Have Won
Confidently
Urgent Respond Needed
Please
Inheritance

Prayer

2007-02-10T12:02:00.000-05:00

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

Galway Kinnell

Big & Smaller Bridges

2007-01-30T20:59:00.000-05:00

The fabulous Tom Devaney guest edited this great online journal and included a couple of my poems.