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.