they got cars big as bars

This one's for Vanessa. Because somehow we didn't drive around listening to this before we both shuffled off to our respective coasts this year. Happy Christmas.

papers making one crazy part ii

and then last night's diversion was reading some old notes I'd written high school (saved for me in a scrapbook by good ol' Tina P) with excerpts of terrible off-the-cuff teenage poetry:

"my pulse rocks to the beat
of the hum of a girl
who sits on the street corner
playing with her see-through panties
while Moses parts the water
flowing from her skin...
my car breaks down
outside your house...
your car is stopped
you say come inside
but i'm bleeding
and my blood clashes
with the upholstery..."

90's ephemera:
"I got a new Sassy today and it was good..."

and bad attempts at humorous wisdom:
"sometimes i think i have to cut myself in half to be whole again but then i realize that for god's sake i'm not playdough."

There were also some bits that gave me insights in retrospect. I realized for the first time how these sorts of notes really record something very precise about my experience as a high schooler, gen x-er, child of divorce, alternakid, whatever. It wasn't such a bad distraction, in the end.

when i start going crazy from writing papers and it's dangerous that i have a camera on my computer

I take ridiculous breaks. Here's this from the other night...

An excerpt of one of my crazy-making papers:
...In its depiction of a transatlantic circuit of transit and exchange, The Secret History complicates the binary between colonizer and colonized, white and black, center and periphery. It is for this reason, its Creole nature, that Elizabeth Dillon argues the book has “remained hidden in plain sight,” overlooked by contemporaneous readers and contemporary critics alike; to the extent that, as per Benedict Anderson, the novel participates in the project of building an imagined national community, Sansay’s community is based on the Creole, rather than the black/white dichotomy the United States ostensibly founded itself on...

Two excerpts of me being silly:

This one is entitled "Faces You Never See Yourself Making"









This one is entitled "Portrait of the Artist as Spunky 80's Lady Trucker"

second chance haircuts

This year my dear Vanessa triumphed in that she managed to successfully recreate the ideal haircut that, years ago, had resulted in the worst haircut of her life. Today I was able to accomplish the same feat. In Vanessa's case, the haircut was the infamous Winona Ryder Reality Bites haircut whose ease and, as they would say in the 18th c., artlessness, tempted so many of my own peers. Vanessa ended up with a mushroom, but this year she bravely cut her hair short again with gorgeous results. My bad haircut happened in 1986. I was going for some kind of sexy tousled long-layered deal (I know, I was too young to be thinking sexy, but what can I say). Instead, I got the closest haircut to a mullet I've ever had. She chopped the bangs way back into my head and feathered them, thinned out the hair radically and left the longest pieces at the nape of my neck, rather than cascading down my back. Anyway, I hadn't intended to go into today's haircut reclaiming my original vision, but I think that's what I got. And somehow I feel immensely gratified. It is as if, even though so many other things seem inordinately frustrating these days, the universe was able to right one tiny wrong, restoring a little bit of balance.

single girl, married girl

All this yoking of theory I'm doing - travel narratives, epistolary novel, creolization, national allegory - is making my head hurt. In two days it will all be over, though who knows whether what I'll have to show for the semester will be in any way worthwhile. I took a break and listened to some sad and rockin love songs last night, though, and that helped.

Sitting at a red light on the way home tonight, V and I observed a gaggle of girls taking pictures of the Christmas lights around Courthouse Square, all holding out their cell phones high in the air. They finished just in time to lose their walk signal, and sort of lingered, edging out into the road as the left turn arrow blazed. We winced in anticipation of the inevitable; they wandered across the street just as the light turned green for us to go. As V and I flung our hands around and cursed them out to each other (look, it's the end of the semester and our nerves are shot), I looked over at the one girl left on the sidewalk, the sole adherer to pedestrian regulations, and I realized it was one of my students. A good, earnest, student. So, of course, I waved.

Earlier that day I saw a murder of crows loudly congregating on the maples along one of the campus paths. Their squawking was a lot more palatable than these girls'.

how i know i live in a college town

The graffiti in the bathroom at the local coffee shop (ok, the writing on the chalkboard in the bathroom of the local coffee shop) says "for god's sake don't just spellcheck, proofread!" This is also how I know what time of year it is. Clearly, all the grad student hipsters are doing their grading grading grading. Not me. I'm still writing writing writing.

don't wear it out

I remember vividly that the year I turned 14, suddenly it seemed as though all three-year-olds in spitting distance had my name. I'd be in the grocery store and I'd turn around every other minute because someone would be shouting it. Certainly, my name never did live up to the key reason my parents bestowed it to me - that it was unique. They always chalked up its popularity to the soap opera character with my name who was popular when I was a toddler. That and the fact that we moved into the heart of the Boston Irish when I was two. But there was a definite explosion around the late '80s, early '90s. All this to say, that instinct was confirmed for me today when it dawned on me that all those three year olds must be around 20 now. When I'm at the Starbucks where I hold my office hours (the Starbucks that used to be the Indiana Memorial Union Gallery, for those interested), one out of every five people waiting for some sort of coffee drink has my name. And as I sit there doing my work, I look up every few minutes wondering who's calling me.

cold praise

Paula's in town and we're going for a walk in the autumnal splendor. Last night Alyce Miller and Ross Gay read beautiful pieces at my house while lots of people looked on in delight. V made mulled cider with rum and I made a Turkish feta/parsley/filo dish whose name I can't spell. I took pictures and maybe I will post some later. It's always nice having people in my space. Opening up the household makes me feel as generous as I want to be all the time. It makes me feel better about my capacity for open-heartedness, especially in times in which said capacity can feel like a handicap or a challenge. Ross Gay read poems that were praiseful, including one about Roti which made me think of Elissa. Listening, I immediately wished I had more capacity for writing joyful poems. When I asked him about it, however, his answer made so much sense to me. His joyful poems are in service of a larger project which is much more painful. His poems were written into this project as an attempt to reconcile the joyfulness in his character with the strident qualities of his writing, which if you know it, is often more political, more cutting. Of course I'm paraphrasing entirely.

Praise the cranberry pancakes at Uptown. Praise the thick-knit sweater. Praise the bits of yarn that change hands, even after the hands are closed. Praise the sway Nina Simone calls out of the hips. Praise the navigating mind. Praise lip balm. Praise the empathy that engenders guilt, even as you surrender guilt. Praise mopped floors. Praise toes even the cold ones. Praise language even when it lets you down.

all hallows

but not too much extraordinary. Reading Jefferson comparing the relative size and fortitude of quadrapeds of the new and old worlds. Reading about the bardic tradition in English poetry. This morning, fittingly, reading 30 papers evaluating horror movie reviews. Finally watching Seven Up and Seven Plus Seven...five more to go, though I saw 42 Up in the theater in PDX. Vanessa tells an anecdote about a man wielding a chainsaw at Nick's then locates my fame and marriage lines. Chris comes over to share pizza and give out treats to the few trick-or-treaters, a ragtag mangy bunch of mostly too-old or out-too-lates. The best costume is the small ghost of a Titanic drowned boy, complete with ineffectual life preserver. Sirens. And the oddest coincidence - Stove and I have both written Donner party sonnets! Now, there's that lonely freight train whistle telling me it's time for bed.

Semiotic Tranquility

I -did- see the Dalai Lama. For free, which was nice. Tibeten monks' robes make them look like marigolds, which I'm sure is no groundbreaking observation. Unfortunately, there was no mandala making or throat singing. Lots of talk about various kinds of meditation. I like that the Dalai Lama wears glasses, uses kleenex from a little plastic pack, pulls sunvisors out of his satchel and dons them, and scratches his face while speaking. I do not like how sleepy I feel, but that is not to be helped. Perhaps I will attempt critical analysis, which according to the Dalai Lama, is a form of meditation, in my French class. Bon soir!

think/know

I think I only HAVE to take one course next semester. I think I can read French well enough to get by. I know I miss my writing. I think I'll be able to return to it this weekend. I know the Dalai Lama is in town and I think I may go try to hear him speak. I think I may be able to AI for a children's lit class next semester. I know I need to get serious leaving.

nobody can look well without taking some pains to please

Fall blew in all wet and leafy today. It matched my mood. I would like to squirrel myself away. I have started leaving my ringer off. It's better to watch for the blinking light. I've decided my concentration is the 20th C. novel. I would like to be contributing more. I would like to not have a slippery carpet under my feet. I would like to wake myself up in the middle of the night laughing.

long time no post

I'm going to try to get up on this blogging thing again, particularly given that the next year is likely to bring many rapid changes.

So, I'm just back from my aunt's funeral and my cousin's baby shower. Doves were released, seven-course Italian dinners were eaten, 5 hams were received in the mail, ersatz poop in the form of melted candy bars in diapers were identified, photographs were ogled, and togetherness was had. It was a hard few days, an important few days. The best line of the funeral goes to my cousin Karen: "My mom was a piece of work." May we all be.

Now I return to reading Belinda by Maria Edgeworth. Proto-Jane Austen. Thusfar, I've gotten to the bit where women duel with pistols, while dressed in men's clothing. I have to present on the transatlantic romanticness of this book on Tuesday. Wish me luck these next few days. Maybe after that I'll remember I'm a writer again.

saturday, june 30

it's chilly bears, hon-ey.

a very practical update

I'm here in Vermont where I live in a small wooden cabin with a wood stove. The cabin is perched on the edge of a horse field, which is bounded with an electric fence; when the horses come galloping down the hill they come so close I can smell their musky horsiness. I can watch them graze not twenty feet from me, and they'll stand out there sometimes chewing in the rain. The field is full of fireflies, and at night their tiny green lanterns make me think about how Barrie invented Tinkerbell. I wear my Wellies and tromp around, listening to the wind. At night I look at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling and the actual stars out the window over my head.

Today was Bad Writing Day, and we wrote the worst poems we could think of. Somehow, mine involved a romance between two people presented metaphorically as squirrels "running up the trunk of life./Peekaboo." I've been out of touch because everything was crazy before I left Indiana (Revise two 30-page stories! Read 500 submissions! Accept the last of the work for IR 29.2! Meet the Director of Composition about teaching Basic! Have a last ice-cream sundae at the Chocolate Moose with dear P and B who will be gone from Bloomington by the time you get back! Revise your book review! Print out the Acceptance Sheet for your thesis on the fancy paper and place it in several envelopes so it can be mailed around! Pack! Clean! Get in that car and drive drive drive). And then I was driving cross country ("Don't Stop Believin" played before I'd even left Indiana) and stopping to visit my grandparents, and listening to Amy Sedaris and singing along to Bruce. -Then- I was hanging with Mamma (hooray for good conversations and new Thai restaurants and goofy mid-90's workout gear). Finally I made it up to Vermont, where I am now, and where I, of course, have very little access to a computer.

But that means I've been reading a lot (finished PORTNOY, began ATONEMENT), and running some, and getting coffee at the Putney Co-op, our local of sorts. In the "spare time" such as it is, I'm finishing that thesis. So expect more MIA for a while, though i'll try to be in better 1-on-1 touch. And of course I'll post any charming student anecdotes. I'm planning on going to go to the hip-hop dance evening activity. But probably not letter writing. I'll have to get by on that one on my own.

poems

A plug for Mary Austin Speaker's new work at failbetter. Go read it.

brooklyn is a long cab ride away (in indiana)...oh just google brenda kahn

I'm back in Bloomington and somehow, the moment I got home, I managed to get sick. Some of my Ledig momentum was currtailed by the illness, but today I woke up feeling moderately more human. There is laundry to be done and lawns to be mown and man I need to get back on that thesis. (So I can move on to the next project!)

Here are a few little snaps of where I was. There're lots of good ones C took of the other people there, but I'm starting to feel funny about posting pictures of people on my blog without asking them. So you have to imagine them. Or ask me and I'll show them to you one-on-one.

Oh, and sorry to renege on the book posting deal. It's a long story (or a short story, depending on how you look at it). Basically, my reading dropped off rapidly as my conversations/adventures with the other residents grew. But here's a bit of To the Lighthouse: "The sky stuck to them; the birds sang through them. And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr. Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs. Ramsay sitting with James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach."

dispatches

The only bad thing is the sulfuric water. There is a sound installation in the woods so that when you walk there at night everything is defamiliarized, frightening and also thrilling. The phrase "thrilled and chilled and existentially satisfied." We've written our messages on the slate gravestone. All the baby animals are out; the goslings stick close to their mother. I'm armed with pancake recipes. We are encircled by stud farms. I've met a German publisher who only prints books that have some connection to the ocean. The story is coming. I'm not ready to leave.

a machine that could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour

I'm working on my poetry portfolio and listening to August and Everything After for the first time in god only knows how long - I'm not sure which house I was living in when it disappeared from my collection, but it's been since Portland, at least. Someone here at Ledig has it on her itunes, so I'm listening in. Man. It really was a formative album for me. And one remarkably devoid of associations that make me feel sad, like many other albums I listened to obsessively at various points (see Elliot Smith, Tori Amos, Ani Difranco, Neutral Milk Hotel...).

It's so beautiful outside that I would really like to take a walk through the magical sculpture fields, but the portfolio is already past due, so I'm holing up like a good girl and plugging away.

Apparently Chris and my arrival doubled the number of Americans here. We've got writers from Spain, China by way of India, Austria, Germany, England and the Congo. Indiana? Not so exotic. Interesting dinner conversations, for sure. I have a king-sized bed and ate zucchini with mint last night and organic berries all day. We may stage an informal reading, since many of us are leaving before the next formal reading. I'll let you know how that goes. There's a beautiful wood-paneled library full of all the past residents' books. I also have a big white chair that's good for reading in.

I've been trying to read a book a day, so I might post bits of ones I've read. I started out easy, with a funny book about the personals blurbed by Ira Glass. Now I'm rereading The Great Gatsby. I'd forgotten how much I love that book. I haven't read it since I've been seriously writing fiction; it's so different now. What a brilliant characterization his introduction of Daisy is. I know I'm not saying anything new here, but the narrative perspective is so well handled. I keep being amazed at how Fitzgerald manages to tell a story about such compelling individuals as Gatsby and Daisy without ever losing sight of the fact that Nick's is the central story, and that all the drama of Gatsby's parties is simply one aspect of a summer in which so much more happened in this character's life. Plus, who can get over Chapter 3? "A pair of stage twins, who turned out to be the girls in yellow, did a baby act in costume, and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger-bowls. The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawns." Wow.

Finally, the aftermath of car accidents is no fun. Although my agent reminds me a little of Steve Carrell on The Office in that he's a bit overly personal (read flirtatious), but he's good hearted and seems like his fierce loyalty might get the job done. Cross your fingers.

temporary home

I am safely ensconced in the Hudson Valley.

I've missed the Catskills.

never enough time

Everything is madness right now! I'd really like to post about:

• The thesis readings. What amazing peers I have, and how lucky I am to take these writers away with me as friends.
• So much family! Spontaneous visits from my aunt and uncle for whom "in St. Louis" means "in the neighborhood," and planned visits from the immediate family. Hooray for moral support and breakfasts out.
  
• Sherman Alexie's reading, which seriously lived up to all expectations. What a perfomer. The dinner aftwards was revealing in many ways that I won't go into. He asked us all what song we wanted played at our funeral; you get mad cred if you can guess what I said. He also kindly recorded his poem from IR's 25th anniversary edition. Bounce over to the IR blog for more on that.
• Blackberry coffee cake.
  
• This beautiful book, The Back of the Line, that showed up in my mailbox today thanks to the inimitable Jeff Parker.
• Motorcyle accidents.
• Small bits of good news that I don't feel like posting about but you can ask me about if you want.
  
• The fact that I'm leaving in 4 days. Seriously.
  

three years later

It's my thesis reading! Tomorrow night! Are you in Bloomington? Do you want to come hear me read?

Come to the Faculty Club at the Indiana Memorial Union! I promise my fiction isn't this full of exclamation points!

Saturday, April 21, 7:00 pm
Tracy Truels, Megan Savage, Carissa DiGiovanni, Monique Harris
(followed by reception at Tutto Bene)

Thank you Nikki Giovanni.

reading between projects

So, it's that time in the semester when I have very little time for anything other than wrapping up the major projects. Maybe you're in the same place? Here are three little reading tidbits for when you need a procrastination break:

• Chloe Hillard in The Village Voice has an interesting article about AGs, or Aggressives, a subculture comprised of predominately African American or Latina lesbians. I saw Daniel Peddle's documentary in last year's Gay and Lesbian Film Festival on the same subject. I have mixed feelings on this issue: on the one hand, it's reassuring to see coverage of the diversity in the gay and lesbian community, but on the other hand, the rampant sexism that seems to be perpetuated in the community (this was stressed more in Hillard's article than in Peddle's documentary) in terms of attitudes toward femmes is profoundly disturbing. Also, while the documentary focuses on the women's limited career choices based on their often impoverished circumstances, the article skews toward the career-stalling choices some of the women from "better off" backgrounds make in order to maintain their appearances/lifestyles. Sample em both and weigh in.

• Having looked at a thousand houses with my parents over the course of my life (we moved a lot), I've often wondered about the appeal of the split-level ranch. Here's a fun little article on the subject. Turns out, wood paneling was once revolutionary.

• There's a new fiction editor at Esquire, and he's making his mark with fun pieces like The Napkin Project. This is an institutionalization of the age-old game in which you write a story on a napkin (if you're Laurel or me, you do this collaboratively while waiting for concerts to start). It's is a good one to sample over the course of several days. Check out, in particular, David Means, Daniel Alarcon and Julianna Baggott. Thanks for the tip, AD.
  

travels

So the Ledig House Residency has worked out after all. I've got my plane tickets, and I'll be heading to NY on Sunday, April 29th. I'll be in the scenic Hudson Valley until the 14th. After that, I'm heading down to the city, hopefully in time to make Mary Austin Speaker's reading with Jessica Baran and Bob Hicok. I'll be in the city until the 17th, if anyone wants to come out to play.

get yourself read to

Pop over to the Indiana Review Blog to listen to Tyrone Jaeger's eerie Civil War-era prose poem/short short, "Specter," on our new feature where IR authors read their work, the bluecast. IR is featuring 3 of Jaeger's pieces in our upcoming summer issue, 29.1. If you didn't get the official tiny teaser chapbook at AWP, consider this teaser #2.

kurt vonnegut 1922-2007

Hey, Kurt Vonnegut. I hope you are somewhere where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. I'm sorry for saying I should see you read because you were probably going to die soon. And I'm sorry that now I'll never get the chance. Thanks for this funny interview with Kilgore and for everything else.

rock 'n' roll days

Last weekend was Boxcar Books' annual Rock 'n' Roll Prom benefit for the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project. The theme was "Under the Sea" - lots of plastic shells and a decadent papier mache mermaid. I wore the most wonderfully hideous dress you can imagine - let's just say, picture the most decadent dress Melanie Griffith wore in Working Girl and add lace, ruffles, rhinestones and cleavage. Mostly we took polaroids, but hopefully I'll have pictures to post soon. Sadly, I missed most of the Pixies cover band. The ersatz "Iggie Pop" was very intense, but he wasn't Iggie Pop. He looked like he should be shooting up on stage, and his big move of night was to show us his wares. The highlight was definitely the "Sweet '80s and '90s Covers by Secretly Canadian's Best." My friend Sarah's husband and the rest of the band dressed up as the kids from The Breakfast Club, including drag versions of Molly Ringwald and a brilliant Ally Sheedy. Emilio Estevez was pretty compelling - earnest and also, "fit" as they say in Bend It Like Beckham - and he sang a mean "Eye of the Tiger."

In other Rock 'n' Roll news, my friend Matt's band Murder By Death is on perpetual tour - Europe now, but soon the US again - and they are also kickass. If they're playing near you, you should go see them. They put on a whiskey drinkin', bottom of the ocean scourin', old west saloon fightin' good time. Here are some of their sounds and moving pictures.

hip action

A few years ago I injured my hip literally "clowning around" with a friend of mine, a former Ringling Bros. performer. He had bright red curls and an imposing physique - a red nose looked startlingly incongrous on him. These past few days, the hip's been all twingy. I chalk it up to the storms. Like any good New Englander, I get the weather in my bones.

Laurel and Seamus came to visit for their birthdays

We saw these:

We ate peppers stuffed with stars. Sometime, I will show you a photograph of those.

They showed me this wonderfully funny animation sequence. And their interpretation of it (note my old kitchen):


We talked about Wittgenstein. Kind of a lot.

We saw Louise Gluck (insert oumlaut) read and she talked about wanting to hear the sound of a poet's mind on the page. I like that thought. I also really liked the first and second sequences of poems she read, the first of which involved horses (voodoo, Laurel says) and a burning field. The second of which involved girlhood and marriage. She proved not as crotchety as we expected.

We ate chocolate-dipped ice cream from the Chocolate Moose.

Laurel and I locked ourselves in the bathroom and sang the Billy Bee song. Everyone else was playing music we didn't know, you see, and singing beautifully and loudly and we didn't want to disturb em.

We had amazing Turkish food (mint in soup!) and I got to hear a story about an exciting but treacherous protest in Paris. Laurel has lots of photos of it on flickr.

We played speed Scrabble.

We ate (yes, we ate a lot) the aforementioned birthday Dutch Baby.

We read Eyeheart Everything aloud. Like this only without the robot and in Bloomington:

snippets from Laurel and Seamus's visit

My friend Seamus made a hilarious movie. It is incumbent upon you to watch it now.

The bloody ends of deer legs are terribly red. Lions' tongues are red too.

I ate a dutch baby yesterday.

grad school is indulgent

I appreciate that I'm taking a class in which we can spend two and a half hours reading "The Prelude" aloud, and only get through the first part because we're too busy digressing about sympathetic vibrations, the Sublime, Atomism and Lacan, or drawing little doodles that illustrate how, when rowing backwards, one can witness a cliff face suddenly rising up to blot out the stars. I had the revelation that I would like to make a claymation version of "The Prelude," but perhaps it's because I've been watching too much Morel Orel.

IR is Time's person of the year

Indiana Review has a blog. It's nascent. It will grow. We'll keep you abreast of what's going on with us and our authors. It'll be all hip-like.

http://indianareview.blogspot.com/

if you lived in bloomington you'd be stimulated now

David Lehman read some beautiful poems tonight. My favorites, I think, outside the incredible long piece, "Yeshiva Boys," were the Daily Mirror pieces and this, which I sort of love/hate.

Here's a tiny Daily Mirror from poets.org:

April 26

When my father
said mein Fehler
I thought it meant
"I'm a failure"
which was my error
which is what
mein Fehler means
in German which
is what my parents
spoke at home

But that is not all you missed because you do not live in Bloomington. Barbez played an amazing set in which poems and incidents from Celan's life were interpreted through their avant-chamber music. Of course, the theremin was a highlight, but so were the excerpts of Celan woven through the hypnotic, kinetic sound. Barbez is touring, but usually their shows are more rock-oriented. I'm not sure if the Celan pieces are part of their usual repertoire, but if you get a chance to see them, go!

palmistry

I used to get out books on palm reading (and napkin folding) when I was a kid. Now I live with a woman whose grandmother made a living during WWII by reading palms; V's got the art down. Here's something you may not know: the lines on your right palm change. Yesterday I learned that my palm is drastically different than it was a few months ago. My life line has utterly absorbed my head line. Thwack. No more twin "M"s. What does that mean? Well...I'm pulling for growing pains. That the head will re-establish itself in a healthier relationship to my life in the months to come.

rememberances

I just found out my friend and colleague from last summer, Lucinda Mason, passed away a few days ago. She was a brilliant, vibrant artist who worked in large-scale, in art as in life. She will be missed. Here's one of her pieces:


Addendum: Here's what I remembered today. One day last summer, when I was having a tough time of it, for some reason that's long gone to me now, Lucinda invited me down to her little cabin by Grey House. She little the stubs of candles she had lying around and fed me plums. We sat on her porch in the warm night and talked. I don't remember what she said, only that it was reassuring. We looked out over the pasture. In the fog a pack of horses emerged and disappeared again.

twilight

Whatever will I do if I don't live near a cemetary in my next life? All those lonely bodies, all needing a kind word, someone to read their names. Cracked stones, fallen markers, granite logs. Handfuls of pine needles. We leave our dead all over the place now. Cemetaries can smell like summer camp, mulchy in the warm air, the crickets whirring. Why hold your breath when you can laugh?

list - you connect the dots

1. Running on the cross country course outside of town. It was hilly, 60 degrees or so, the sun warm and the wind cold. The grass was dry and brittle; the mud tamped down easily underfoot. The fields were scattered with arrows in different colors which were less easily followed than the much more convoluted, mazy public path through the Cotswolds. I hid my car key in my bra like a mol. The golf course was nearby. But it felt like nowhere.
2. My round-offs need some work but my handstand is as good as ever.
3. Cate, reading a poem aloud over delightful cake with sugar sea turtles on it. She said, "the volta, the volta!" I want you all to admire it too, but I can't find it right now. I don't want to give anything away.
   
4. This morning, for the first time in a year, the espresso maker foamed the soy milk.
5. My favorite thing someone has said about my writing lately (context soon): "[the actions of the central characters in the story are] a reflection of their desire...to communicate beyond the limited vocabulary they've been endowed with in Milford, a place that seems diabolically American [emphasis added]." I think that accurately describes the suburbs of Boston, indeed.
6. Sunlight in a public library.
7. The Putney Co-op stainless steel coffe mug.
8. E-mail from Tucker Capps. Yes, Tucker, you sound dangerous.
   
9. The end of a great Bob Hicok poem, "Did I ever tell you about my love/hate relationship with confessional poetry?" Please don't sue me for copyright violations for posting it:

"The other thing/

I get wrong most of the time is caring
about people. For instance: recently blood
collected in my grandmother where blood

shouldn't, everythihng she said came out
like Jiffy Pop on the stove just before
the foil rips, people cried and the hospital

was a factory of indifference and I scurried
home to write a poem about death. This
is an indication that my head's not

in the other room but up my ass and that
my soul's in there with it. I don't mean
to care less about people than what

people do, and could lie and say
I've taken steps to increase my devotion
to the actual limbs that come off and hearts

that stop, so I will. The art
of confession's to focus attention on what's
confessed while leaving the secret

mutations untouched. I once put the hose
of a vaccum on my penis and turned it
on. Honesty makes me feel so clean."

awp pictures

Abdel brought the camera and took some great pictures of which I'm stealing a few and posting for your viewing pleasure. Because my camera went all wonky, I don't have pictures of my own, and most of these are from the Book Fair. Just don't get the idea that I was attached to a giant table all week, because that's sort of what it looks like.


Our motto for the weekend: sex sells. Whatever it takes, as Abdel says, whatever it takes, baby.


Mary's boyfriend Kramer's mother, the amazing Sue O'Neill, was published in IR's collab collage issue. Here she is posing next to Mary's beautiful banner. Can you see the fighting roosters?


We all love Joshua Poteat's poems. But he did promise to show up in an orange mesh tank top, so we were a little disappointed.


One really -can- spend too much time in a hotel bar. Packs of writers sprawled out from the bar's mouth and onto the carpet in teeming or tired masses. On the last night Ben Moorad took a picture of this carpet. It seemed highly symbolic at the time.


Everyone was happy at the Flying Biscuit. I ate the Love Cakes. I mean, really, who wouldn't?


Steven manages to camouflage himself at the Book Fair. Notice the low ceilings and cinderblock walls. I spent the week in a basement.


In the end, everything was gone. Note the absense of the stacks of journals. All we were left with were the pretty bookmarks and our sense of satisfaction for a job well done.


We flew home with Maurice, Mitchell and Micah. That sounds like a children's book. Mitchell's reading on the Affrilachian Poets panel was really wonderful. Thouh I missed Maurice's talk, I heard great things about it. And he bought me yogurt when I was desperate. Micah, she just exudes cool.

'lanta

I'm back from AWP.

I'm reading Ben Moorad's lovely letter-pressed books, The Strange Transformation of Eamon Arble and The Second Dream of The Berry-Nosed Cab and The Art of Chiaroscuro. Strange and wonderful poems. Although I had to repack my suitcase in the airport to make it light enough, there are so many good things to read I don't care. We were told many times that our banner was the prettiest at AWP, thanks Mary. Today I was confused to not be standing in front of a bank of eight elevators when I tried to take one in Ballantine - the hotel was ridiculous but somehow habit-forming. There are too many stories to write. But it's good to be home. Pictures soon.

My family is as wonderful as ever. I wish I could immerse myself in the chaos more often. I don't, however, wish that I could eat such rich food all the time! Collard greens and cornbread, fried green tomatos, chicken parmesan, tiramisu. How did I survive?

Today, for the first time this whole year, I read my first name in a submission. In fact, I read it in two. Back to the routine. Only different.

peter is amazing

I bought a piece entitled "Name it What You Want to Name it." It is very zen, and the lines seem to indicate monsters, crocodiles, dinosaurs and an eye.

We stood around and talked eruditely about the work.

The playmobile piece with its upending of heteronotmative relationships (particularly as localized in the figure of Santa) was a standout.

Peter was almost tossed in the river a number of times, and each time was granted a reprieve.

I was sent to a desert eerily reminiscent of Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Here are some pictures.

if this were This American Life i would entitle this program "stories of being 'foiled again'"

Looks like my attempts to go here, to write and read and bicycle and swim, and also to visit my old stomping grounds may be foiled by unfortunate administrative snafus. I won the fellowship, yes, but sadly they may be booked during the only time possible for me to go. Keep your fingers crossed that things will work themselves out.

Last night the MFA basketball team, The Dangling Modifiers, aquitted themselves beautifully but were ultimately denied victory against their opponents, Some Team in Blue Jerseys with a Less Witty Name. I stood on the sidelines and tried to adapt my football cheers (by the time you get out "move that ball," the ball has been up and down the court five times already), and T wore her team colors, even if it was an accident. A had an amazing backwards lay-up, L scored several handy baskets, and dear sweet R blocked like the fierce woman we all know she is, even if she's usually too polite to show it. I wish I had pictures.

Thank goodness art openings for 4-year-olds can't be foiled. Tonight I will witness the debut of the masterwork, "No Good Things or Bad Things Ever Happen." I can't wait.

more stories from the gym

I can't abide by a Core Exercise teacher who uses music like "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" and who has no sense of rhythm. If only she didn't kick my ass so hard, I'd be out of there. But she does.

escapes

All of my belongings are walking away from me lately. I think perhaps they are trying to tell me I need to be less invested in things that tie me to the material world. First the phone adventure, and now my school ID has headed for the hills of Ohio in the company of a wandering minstrel. Hopefully it will come back to me through the good ol' P.O. in the near future so the gym won't charge me exhorbitant rates to use the services I already pay exhorbitant fees to use. Speaking of the gym, there's been a rash of children there lately. The other day I saw a little girl walking very deliberately, head down, in front of her mother on the treadmill (collective "ohhhh...") and today two little boys were scaling the railing I use for barre work. They climbed all around me and then there was apparently some sort of falling out, because the chubbier boy said, "well, you'll never get to be king, then." This warmer weather is nice, but the resulting floods of slush make it mandatory for me to wear my moonboots to the gym. This entry has been brought to you by the adjective: whimsical.

in the icy world

Last night I scaled the snowy heights of Prospect Hill without slipping once. Everything was iced and I felt like a pioneer as I wandered the silent world, trudging across bridges and fields and placing my footprints next to the tracks of dogs, birds and cars. During the day melting ice had made the trees crackle like paper. But it was cold enough again at night that everything was still and my legs in tights were two popsicles. It's been a long time since I've wandered alone after dark in snow that clean.

In an odd and fun piece of news, The Hartford Courant has nominated my mother as a finalist for letter to the editor of the year. We tried to figure out whether it was for her letter scolding them for their ethnocentric take on housing paint colors, or whether it was for her letter recommending Slim Whitman as a solution to the ubiquitous "loitering teens" problem. More information as it rolls in.

My friends are lovely writers. At the reading last night P read poems as beautiful as she, and V's bank robbery story held me in its thrall until the final, explosive and emotional ending. Marzipan is divine. I watched a cat and dog mate. I also picked up some terminology I really wish had stayed outside the purview of my knowledge. No, don't ask. I'm protecting your tender ears.

Oh, and in case Jamil called you, I have my phone back. No worries. Just one more petit adventure.

the great valentine project 2007

Unfortunately, there are no photographs of the hot pretzels or the hot toddy. No photographs of people actually making the beautiful valentines. And I didn't, as I promised A, actually attempt to make a pretzel in the shape of a sexy lady. That would have made for a good snapshot. But thankfully, there is a photograph of the wreckage (carnage?) of the valentine-making. Check out all the magazines. Can you see the Anthropologie catalogues? The copies of Science? What about Stanford Alumni magazine? CosmoGirl? Hustler? Poets&Writers? SexFever?

The house is still recovering. Next stop, groceries.

p.s. That new Charlie Brown Valentine movie they made was terrible. Stay away. It's no Great Pumpkin.

brushes with fame

This past week I have been stalked by a Famous Artist. I don't know who he is (ok, this is a lie - it's a small town so a little research led me to this conclusion), and I only know he is a Famous Artist because I've twice sat next to him in the Art Museum cafe during my office hours. Both times, professor-types have come up to him and discussed his visit - it became immediately clear that he was in B-town to give a talk, and also that he was much admired. It made me think about how many writers have come through town, and occasions that strangers have interacted with them in my presence in a way that made me want to say, hey, don't you know this is ________ (Mary Gaitskill, Charles Baxter, Toi Dericotte...), and how on this occasion I was the dummy sitting blithely at my table reading submissions while Famous Artist guy sat around being famous. So, I thought it was funny that I ran into him twice at the cafe. And then I ran into him at the union parking lot. And THEN he almost hit me with his car. This is totally unrelated (don't think it an unkindness born of the car incident), but I have to confess that something about him reminds me of Wallace Shawn.

go colts!

We were clearly a room full of writers. The wording of the commentary got us almost as up in arms as the game. At times it was like watching clowns come out of a clown car, at others like that greased pig wrestling I watched last year. And what was with Prince and his phallus? V says she heard gunshots. I'm just waiting to see how many students bother to show up to the 9am class tomorrow.

memo to the salt-scatterers of bloomington

You may think it clever to spread blue-green tinted salt on the road. You may think it brings light, like the pebbles on the bottom of a fish tank, refracted underwater. But here is what else it looks like: broken glass.

climate change, language change

As someone who teaches students about the precision of language, I find these two sentences from a CNN article on the latest global warming research amusing:

"The phrase 'very likely' translates to a more than 90 percent certainty that global warming is caused by man.

What that means in layman's language is 'we have this nailed,' said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who originated the percentage system."

Is Jerry Mahlman really the one who decided that "very likely" = 90%? Does that mean that whenever I use "very likely" in the future, it's going to mean I'm 90% certain about something? And why does "very likely" need to be translated into layman's terms? It it really such technical language that no ordinary mortal could grasp it?

road trippin for poetry?

Butler University has a pretty well-funded reading series. And people from here are always jaunting up to see the Famous Poets, and now that I'm writing poetry again, I thought maybe I might take a field trip myself one of these days. Of course, I secretly want to see Mr. Billy Pilgrim in all his glory, but I've also been trying to read bits of the other folks that I'm sure I ought to know (but too often, only know by name, my contemporary poetry literacy having been stunted).

So anyway, in poem-of-the-day form, here's some nice Franz Wright I came across. Particulary enjoying the turns (verse! reverse!) in the first, "Old Story."

three nice things about shorter hair

When I swim, no melon-sized ball of hair pulls my swim cap off.

After I shower, I can towel-dry (almost).

When I leave the gym with wet hair, it still turns into icicles, but at least they're not waist-length icicles.

another sign i've grown up (kids these days part ii)

There's the fact that I'm now the sort of person who, instead of causing a spritely ruckus in a public place, wants to grouchily quote the New York Times about the young folk causing a ruckus in a public place. One of the boys is wearing an example of those cartoony sweatshirts the Times Style section was reporting on a few weeks ago. These kids are talking outrageously loudly, playing music, breaking things that sound like glass, and singing. The girls are tee-heeing in squeaky voices in order to indicate to the boys how they are good girls enough to protest but bad girls enough to secretly think the boys being baaaad are sexxxxy. It's a public library for god's sake. I read another NY Times story, or maybe it was npr (so old, so very old), about a town that had to close its public library in the after-school hours because the kids were making too many scenes and vandalizing too much. I want to tell these kids to go to the mall. I also want to be shocked that no librarian has chosen to take these kids to task, but in the end, I decide that it's yet another example of adults not wanting to mess with kids who might be considered "dangerous." I mean, the bulk of them are African American, and you know what that might mean. Sheesh. Stove, how's that essay on fear coming? Because I think the aforementioned would be an interesting kind of fear to tackle writing about.

kids these days!

How can a student actually think it's acceptable to read a newspaper in class? I know it's 9am, but man. Get it together. And why is it always the Sports section? I'd love to see someone attempt to read the Wall Street Journal in my class. Or maybe Savage Love. I might even give them extra credit for that.

Today

• I read about meter and breath, bump up against old friends, such as"we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon...," and "two vast and trunkless legs of stone," begin to think in iambs again. Get dreamy about being young and lounging about on grassy fields in the Hudson Valley, memorizing from enormous volumes.
• Stephen Fry demonstrates to me why some people think that the British are more erudite than Americans.
• Someone I know shows up as a missed connection on craigslist, proving again to me what a small town this really is.
  
• I become disillusioned about the politics of the MFA program. Professionalism and art are not mutually exclusive, people!
  
• I laugh, because what else is there to do, about Bush's claim that new innovations will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil: "bicycles!" say I, "legs!" says V.
• I decide I really need to learn more about Jim Webb.
  

hot off the presses

Indiana Review Issue 28.2 is out! The issue features fiction by Richard Wirick, Marjorie Celona and Jonathan Hull as well as poetry by Bob Hicok, Susan Tichy,and James Capozzi and our own Sarah Cohen. There's also a very timely interview with Richard Ford. Check it out.