comments on "Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating" version 1

This is another 20 year old poem. It's from that "Blue & Yellow Sun/Work Journal Part 2" from which I've taken my last couple poems-to-revise. Poor me. I was a depressed kid. What? You're surprised?

I'm posting this one because I like elements of it, it embarasses me a little, and I don't see what to do with it.

Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating

“Glenn! Didn’tchu hear me?”

The day is whipped with a whisk.
A gust pulls my hair,
flicks my forehead with stray strands.
Two girls, “young women”
one dark haired, tan skin,
the other fair, rippling white-fleece hair.
My back to the wall. “Hi!”

As always I step back nonphysically,
though I am glad to see them.
We converse
graduating Friday?
No! Tomorrow!
Seen any of the summer movies?
one, but not really a “summer” movie.
MariBeth stands beside me smiling,
saying little,
while Julie pulls her hair back
from her shoulders.

I want to be natural,
not tumbling over inside.
Hands clutch, unclutch in pockets.
doing anything?
well, really we’re late but it doesn’t matter
munches on her cream cheese slathered bagel.
The wall offers little support
as I rest my back.

coming to graduation?
Julie and MariBeth both are graduating,
only a year from my formal exit.
It’s a cliché, but can it be a year?
They still seem so young
but I feel no older or more mature.
Am I really eighteen?
They are ready to leave.
I tag along.

i hadn’t planned on it. You going to a gradnite party?
no.
The subject dilutes in the wind.
We are wandering down Main.
they hold up more conversational weight
than I.
I exist in a limbo world; isolated.
My words filter through the void,
I am an incredible distance from them,
when should i be holding on?
already I let go.

Flash

Flashy is chewing her butt raw. We've dosed her & the cats with flea meds, both internally & externally. Hope that shuts down the irritation that's causing her to gnaw her fur off. Poor girl. Besides the flea-specific potions Kent bought some anti-itch sprays at the pet store. The sprays seem to have a lot of tea tree oil in them, which at least doesn't smell bad. They haven't done magic, though. Today when K & I got home from an aborted trip to SF (BART train got stuck at MacArthur station for an indefinite delay -- "at least 20 minutes," the announcement said, sounding optimistic -- we hopped out and took a bus back to Berkeley) we found Flash had chewed another hole in her fur, her exposed skin inflamed. As with barking and trash raiding she knows we don't want her chewing herself so only really gets down to serious gnawing when we're away.

gannon

The Gannon Story has been bubbling up for a couple weeks now. "Jeff Gannon" is nom de video of the man in the White House press room who asked George W. Bush that weird softball question recently, the one that accused Democrats of being "out of touch with reality." Gannon's sort of noise fills up the private rooms where Republicans let down their hair, and gets noted with indignant gasps on lefty weblogs or op-eds but seldom gets disseminated from such august settings as the media room of the White House. My favorite coinage so far tags the story, "Propagannon"; this man smelled of the dirty-tricks propaganda campaigns of Bush behind-the-scenes man Karl Rove. Or, anyway, some diarists at dailykos decided to run "Gannon" in Google and see what came up. And things came up!

You have to know already the context for this post, but it's a nice thumbnail of the "gay underground", the closeted men who know that being out would get in the way of their hobnobbing with the powerful, so they're not out, sometimes married, and often verbally bash out gays, either because they are self-hating or as a calculated distraction. Padraig (at the link) says, "I know Gay men of a certain age and income who routinely excoriate "the fags" ... But since the lights are out in the orgy rooms, good Republicans are happy to just overlook and pretend not to see. It is the public avowal of affection that makes them crazy over the gay marriage issue. ... I personally am sick and tired of being told that my only option is to have a lavender marriage with an understanding lesbian or a loveless marriage with an unsuspecting woman while trolling public toilets and internet chat rooms on the side. [Typical Republican alternatives to same sex marriage]"

For that context go to the "Jeff Gannon" page at dkosopedia.

po biz

Are you interested in the poetry business? As a writer of poems and one who would be happy to see a few of those in print it's my job to be, I guess. But reading about how many thousands of poems jostle in the slush that washes up on the desk of every harried poetry editor, especially when an editor says something like this, "I have 61 submissions [3-6 poems in each submission] I need to read, a combination of submissions that passed our initial readers, submissions from previous contributors, and submissions from very established poets. Although one can always dream big, it is unlikely I will find more than maybe 2 or 3 poems in this stack to publish."

[Full disclosure. *And, no, I haven't seen nearly so many poems.]

Then there are contests. I don't like contests. I don't think they are a good idea. I have entered contests -- yes, I wanted to be a Yale Younger Poet! I just think a publisher shouldn't publish the best but what he likes the most, what he loves, what he has fallen in love with, what he can't live without, what he has to show the whole goddamn world, what he is willing to sacrifice for, because with poetry publishers rarely break even let alone make bucks.

On his blog Steve Mueske posts correspondence with a suspicious poet on whether the new contest Steve is sponsoring is rigged. I know Steve a teeny tiny bit from an online workshop and from publishing one of his poems in the latest issue of Hogtown Creek Review. He's a very good writer and his three candles is worth reading. Now he's getting into the publishing of real books. The poet who wins his contest will be fortunate.

reviews

I haven't been reading it much lately but I discovered Rhubarb is Susan, a blog that reviews individual poems plucked from ezines and if anyone is curious about such a project it's quite readable.

we have poems

Kent took my back-up Zip disk to work and transferred its load of poems and other writings to one of those little flash memories plug-ins, which he brought home and poked into the USB port. Nearly everything that I'd typed into the PC was on that disk. OK. We're in business.

a shuffle of ten

1. "Bamako City" Malian Musicians & Damon Albarn

2. "Scottish Rite Temple Stomp" Ninian Hawick

3. "Get Up and Go" The Go-Gos

4. "American Pie" Don McLean

5. "Jack Names the Planets" Ash

6. "Miss Dandys" Bandit Queen

7. "Laid (live)" James

8. "364" 7th Betty

9. "Worked Up So Sexual" The Faint

10. "Speeding" The Go-Gos


Curious, I thought I'd deleted the Go-Gos from my iPod. Oh, I see. I only deleted the playlist for the Go-Gos. They must still be in the library. Hm. Gotta fix that. I don't hate the Go-Gos or anything. I just didn't much like this selection of Go-Gos' songs so I deleted them all (I thought) to make room for other stuff.

poets bloggin'

I am pleased to see two names that became familiar to me via poetry bulletins boards are now blogging:

Amy Unsworth ... in her latest post Amy asks if she should be working harder on getting her work out, "Should I be more motivated to submit? When I'm in the mood where I hear time's winged chariot, I get annoyed because I haven't been submitting. But for the last few months I haven't felt motivated to get the work out. Writing alone is enough."

Frank Matagrano ... In posts so far Frank has excerpted from articles on Deep Throat (the Watergate source), the benefits of a wok's breath (wok hay), and prescription drugs. But he also notes an acceptance of two poems by a literary magazine.

sending poems out

I have not sent any poems out anywhere in ... months? Maybe years.

I only have a few on the Mac, the computer with internet access. I can print out poems from the PC. I tell myself I'll do that. There are certainly places I could be (ought to be?) sending work.

But last night I decided to send some stuff out and I wasn't up to the whole printing and self-addressing and stamping so it would have to be a literary ezine. I quickly wrote a note and grabbed 3/4 of the poems on the Mac (which would be 6 poems for those who want to know) and copied 'em to the email to send to Poetry Superhighway.

Featured poet of the week? Me?

random blog sentences

"This seems like something I would like to do with my life. Write a great book and then hide in an apartment in new york." link ... how funny. the preceding sentence has been edited out of the post to which I linked. The post, having been edited, changed its URL. Now the only place these words appear on the web is here. Whatever!

"people left, got new shoes, came home, had fun" link

"two guys playing a $25,000 match of Pong" link

"Albert got the idea that he could weigh his mice. So he brought them down one at the time and put them on our scale. And then he wrote down how much each one weighed." link

ALL SENTENCES FOUND BY HITTING THE "NEXT BLOG" BUTTON AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE.

this year

I didn't go to City Hall. But many did.

SF marriages

The marriages at SF City Hall. A year ago.

scary rabbit

My brother David has occasionally been creating his own renditions of movie monsters, particularly the ones that could have been realized better in their bad movies.

"Night of the Lepus is a bad movie. Well, not a bad movie so much as a bad execution of a silly idea. ... But think about it - giant jack rabbits hungering for your flesh? Giant carnivorous beasts that move as fast as panthers and can leap a twelve foot wall?" Scary!

Hogtown Creek Review

Hogtown Creek Review is now available at Cody's in Berkeley.

It's supposed to be in Moe's, too. But I can't find it on the shelf. I left 3 copies with Owen, the poetry buyer, when I was at Moe's for the Ron Silliman/Kit Robinson reading.

comments on "Love" version 5

I don't like version 5 as much as version 4. I've been thinking version 4 is the final version. But I wanted to try again after I achieved a final version. I haven't done that before. Plus I find version 5 interesting. I think its argument is better constructed than version 1. There were things (many things) version 4 left behind and I wanted to give the other elements another chance.

"Love", version 5

The sky likes love.
Love always rides there with the moon.
The stars are jealous.

I dream about love between the stars.
The sky is passionate with me.
Stars love passion more than they love me.
Love vanishes like stars in the sky.

Stars love the way I love.
Love loves love in the sky.
In the sky love pursues love to the stars.
Still I love love.

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the love in the stars in the sky.
I love the way the stars love the sky.
I love the sky.

see the clever birdie

crow fashions tool to get yums

summary judgment

Judge Doris Ling-Cohan of a New York Supreme Court (unlike the US Supreme Court, the New York Supreme Court is a lower-level court; the NY Court of Appeals is the court that has the last word in NY) ruled on summary judgment that the state of New York must begin issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.

Being as Kent's a lawyer and reads & writes about court decisions as part of his job I asked him how significant he thought it was that the judge ruled on summary judgment. Kent shrugged. "You have a trial when the facts are disputed."

In her opinion Judge Ling-Cohan says, "Defendant [the City Clerk of New York] does not dispute that plaintiffs [the same sex couples currently suing to be allowed to marry] are serious, committed couples, devoted to building lives together as families, whose relationships are no different from those of married couples. In fact, [the city clerk] acknowledges that same-sex couples can establish committed, loving relationships and can be fine parents. Since both sides agree that there are no material facts in dispute, summary judgment is appropriate."

Further the judge finds, "[The city clerk] does not dispute that plaintiffs and their children suffer serious burdens by being excluded from civil marriage. Marriage provides an extensive legal structure that protects the couple and any children." She goes on to list several of these, including joint income tax filing, joint property ownership, collecting on life insurance, presumed relation to children, inheritance, etc. I downloaded the pdf of the decision. The pdf is available at the Lambda Legal site.

The judge stayed her order for 30 days. Even if there had been no appeal (and the mayor of New York City has already appealed) there weren't going to be any gay marriages right away. Some surprise. Anyway, Kent seems not to find the summary judgment aspect particularly significant, at least as regards the eventual outcome. At this point it's this judge's opinion and nothing has changed really, not for anyone who wants to get married.

comments on "Love" version 4

ah yes, even more "brutal" ...

"Love", version 4

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the sky.
I love the sky in the stars in the sky.
I love the stars in the sky in the sky in the stars.
I love the sky in the sky in the stars.
In the stars I love the sky in the stars.
I love stars in sky in the stars’ sky.
I love the sky, the stars, and the stars.
I love the sky in stars.

fingerspelling

I've studied sign language. My hands are frequently in motion anyway so some years ago I decided to incorporate fingerspelling into my fidgets. If my hand was going to be jiggling or fiddling it might as well be improving my manual alphabet at the same time. I'll fingerspell signs as I pass them, fingerspell words as they pass through my head. When this will come in handy, who knows, it's not like many people can read fingerspelling.

the sun king

When I hear an American soldier has died in Iraq I picture him kneeling blindfolded on the White House lawn while George W. Bush plugs him in the back of the head.

Last night Kent said, "Bush would never be able to do that."

And I said, "He could. Easily. Maybe he'd need a couple authority figures standing beside him, a Dick Cheney, a Donald Rumsfeld. But he would do it. And feel good about it. Day after day."

Kent had been watching a special on Auschwitz and was impressed again by the way ordinary men were essential to the running of the factories of death. He saw one interviewed, a man who processed the goods stolen from the people shipped to the camps, the man volunteered an interview to contradict the Holocaust-deniers. It really happened, he wanted to say. It happened and I helped it happen. Was I ever prosecuted? No. Few were.

Funny Bush's assertion that democracy is essential, that freedom is what America is bringing to Iraq. I don't believe him. He is no fan of democracy. He's not interested in it here.

Fact is, I'm okay with the notion that democracy can be/ought to be spread around ... that a benevolent military power might even effect positive change with guns. There are certainly evil dictators that need taking down. But it'll only work when the power that forces change is ... not stupid. Is truthful. Is generous. Is thoughtful. Is ... wise? Wise. That'd be something. Wise would mean such military might is used rarely and then carefully, thinking far into the future about what changes it brings -- both to the liberated people and to the liberators.

The American people in sending Bush back to the White House chose the sun king, the lord that feasts on human hearts ... in order that the sun come up tomorrow? And the American people decided his hunger could be fed with a few troops a day.

pwoermd of the day

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepuh?

misc

sore from lifting weights at the gym ... one of the personal trainers was helping a new member set up his routine, I worked out around them, the trainer said to me, "you're doing good, nice form." ... I followed a woman onto a thigh machine and had to reduce the weight by 5 pounds; later I followed her on an arm machine and she looked all worn down so I said, "if it makes you feel any better I had to reduce the weight when I sat down after you at the thigh machine." she blinked, then said, "I guess that makes me feel a little better."

kent gives me updates on "24", which I don't watch. I prefer k's updates to watching the show.

kent made a mix CD last night and listened to it today, "it's really tough to get a mix just right."

went to a meeting this morning to learn about the library's newest Electronic Resources. what comes to mind when you see the phrase "Electronic Resources"? me, I get stuck on the "electronic" part, then I think these "resources" must have to do with electronics or computers or something ... but it seems these are reference databases the library subscribes to. dictionaries, encyclopedias, indexes to periodicals and associations. during the meeting I suggested renaming the page, instead of "Electronic Resources" howabout oh maybe "Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, Indexes, etc."?

influence

C. Dale Young wonders about his "voice": "When I first started seriously writing poems, I spent a lot of time worrying about 'voice.' So many people, especially in graduate school, had a running discussion about finding one's voice. I became a little paranoid about it. Listening to them, I knew I didn't want to become an imitation of a poet I liked. I went so far as to never read one book of poetry at a time because I feared I would start emulating that poet. I always read two books around the same time, hoping to offset the other. So, I would read Sylvia Plath next to George Herbert, Marianne Moore next to John Donne, John Ashbery next to Whitman. ...

Recently, a friend of mine read the galleys for my new book. In a phone conversation, he reported: 'Your work is all about shadow.' My response: 'What are you talking about?'"

I posted the following in Comments: "Several years ago I thought to myself, the poem I'm writing today sounds like it's in the style of a poet I read a month ago. I wasn't sure whether that excited me (hey, I can write that sort of poem, too!) or if it made me nervous (anybody can see this is just an imitation of so-and-so).

There are certain poems I've written that sound most characteristic of my own 'voice'. There are times I think all my poems sound the same. A teacher once said one of my poems seemed typical of me and I said, 'What's typical for me?' A sort of meditative, contemplative poem, he said. I had to think about that."

Kent and I ate our brunch at on Chester's deck this morning. We were able to see San Francisco clearly, despite a quite usual thin haze. Young has a nice post today about the weather where he is: "Outside, the sun is out and the light is that gauzy light you see in San Francisco many times during the year. All that salt water in the air refracting the light and the hills partitioning up this light so that everything glows as if in a very well-planned fish bowl. Out over Golden Gate Park, the Marin Headlands, grey but somewhat golden from the sea's reflected light. And off to the left, the breakers landing at Ocean Beach while two teenage boys are running along the tops of the dunes. Out by the Cliff House, a red kite. And everywhere, the sound of the Pacific, the dim roar one hears in a shell held to one's ear."

Why do I suspect that "gauzy light" is as much smog as "salt water in the air refracting the light"?

comments on "Love" version 3

I restricted this version to these words: love star sky I dream moon

OK. You got me. I didn't. I may yet.

"Love", version 3

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the sky, the way the sky loves stars.

Stars love the sky.
Stars love the way the sky loves stars.

The sky loves stars more than I.
I love stars and I love sky.

I dream about love between stars.
In the sky there are stars and stars.

Stars love stars.
There is one sky, one love, one me.

There is one dream the moon turns.
And in this dream I love and sky.

Rice defines herself

Last week I heard an excerpt from the Senate confirmation hearings for Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State. California Senator Barbara Boxer said, after having run through a list of Rice's statements in the lead up to war, "Your loyalty to the mission [invading Iraq] ... overwhelmed your respect for the truth."

To which Rice replied, "I'd like to [discuss this] in such a way that it does not impugn my integrity."

That night the local PBS station was airing some sort of guide on buying antiques. The show's host demonstrated how to ask a dealer questions about a piece of interest. Ask where the dealer acquired the piece, what he knows about its history, has he himself made any repairs, etc. The host pulled out a drawer and pointed out a hidden repair to the back end of the drawer. The dealer nodded, made a couple additional comments ... When he'd walked away the host said to the camera (I'm paraphrasing), "That dealer was honest and upfront. He answered my questions quickly and matter-of-factly. Beware the dealer who says, when you point out a flaw in the piece (and a possible contradiction in what he's so far told you), 'Are you trying to impugn my integrity?'"

Japanglish

In David Chadwick's tale about moving to Japan to study Zen, Thank You and OK!: An American Zen Failure in Japan, he spends a couple pages on the ways the Japanese use English; it's a dash of the exotic. A lady's dress shop called Infect. A coffee shop called Guns and Coffee.

Chadwick taught English. He copied down these slogans from student Tshirts:

Pay close attention to various objects and be calm

for the player who demands the ultimate best sensitive comfortable fat fashion good things exist throughout time

Here's something printed on one of the notebooks he bought: please use this note book politely, and use up the last sheet. And then please use your brains everyday.

Dear Emily

In her poem "Dear Emily Dickinson" Cathleen Calbert asks Ms D lots of questions ("... how would you classify yourself? / Agoraphobic? Anorexic? New England eccentric? / ... / Did you have trouble rhyming? / ... Were you thinking -- / in gaps?"), and ends her poem with "... I've read every one / of your goddamned poems, / and I still don't know what they mean."

It always baffles me when I see people who otherwise fume about obscurity in poetry call Emily Dickinson a favorite. I've been gradually working my way through Dickinson's complete poems, I've been working on it for years now, likely I'll be working on it for years yet. Dickinson intrigues me. She really is like no one else. But her poems read like riddles. And they seem to me so fierce, a philosopher's work, as difficult to read as the thoughts they contain. Sure there are the anthology pieces. Dickinson wrote many many poems and many are easy, even goopy in their bees and sunsets sentimentality, but the more typical Dickinson, I'd say, is:

poem numbered 868

They ask but our Delight --
The Darlings of the Soil
And grant us all their Countenance
For a penurious smile.

What are the "Darlings"? Flowers? I'm tempted to say worms. And why is the smile "penurious"? Is it begrudging? Is it the smile of the poverty-stricken?

Then there's, poem #870

Finding is the first Act,
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
The "Golden Fleece"
Fourth, no Discovery --
Fifth, no Crew --
Finally, no Golden Fleece --
Jason -- sham -- too

Is this a version of the Hollywood formula -- boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl-boy-gets-girl-back? ... Maybe boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl-boy-never-really-had-girl-in-the-first-place ... boy was even deluding himself that he met a girl? And boy doesn't exist either? It's a fucking movie! Stumble out into the daylight and take your popcorn with you!

Ron Silliman

Being as I've been reading Ron's blog almost daily (it's a nice break from the political blogs I otherwise obsessively visit & revisit), and he did quote me on his blog, something like, "What the hell are you talking about, Ron?", I hied myself over to Telegraph Ave for his reading. He lives in Philadelphia. I'm not sure what brought him to Berkeley, other than the Moe's reading (he gave another reading or two while in the area). I'm sure I've seen Ron read before. At least once. But I didn't remember his reading style. Turns out he's above average as a poet-performer. He read about farting underwater and punned and riffed off pop culture & politics, one long jumble of a piece.

Kit Robinson, who read first, writes in a similar vein (Ron said, "Whenever I hear Kit he reads poems I wish I'd written.") but he read with little inflection. I was sleepy (having woken in the middle of the night last night and not been able to get back to sleep) so I yawned and yawned during Kit's reading. Ron's reading was sprightly enough to wake me.

comments on "Love", version 2

I wrote version 2 last night. Right fresh it seemed clever and funny. Aged a day I'm finding it faux naif. Too cute. The original version is brutal, you might say, in that it forces variations even when they're absurd, the variations limited to a few words. Version 2 gets love-eyed and stars dance like fairies in it, reaches for a pretty metaphysics, less bounded loses tension.

"Love" version 2

"Love as a Matter for Stars"


I love the stars.
I love the sky which provides a place for stars.
I love the sky, most all the time.

The sky loves its stars, why not?
The stars love each other, love each other times one billion trillion.
The stars love!

The sky loves its stars more than I.
Stars would love me if I were a star, especially if I were a big star.
In the sky love is all over, filling up the space between stars, filling up the stars.
Is there room for anything else? No! Love is always expanding.

When I wake up in the middle of the night I discover I’ve been dreaming about love between stars.
It’s very hot, this love. I have to take off my sweaty shirt.
Even though it’s cold in space love doesn’t shiver.

Love rides a sunbeam, when it’s relaxing, when it doesn’t want to get anywhere fast.
Otherwise love is already there, where love would go if it weren’t there.

Love is sitting on the moon watching me.
I want to be there, too! I’m envious.
I would hop up and down in lunar gravity, holding onto love.
Then, because you have to, I’d let go, whee! And we’d both fall down.

comments on "Love"

"Love" is from the Tales of the Blue & Yellow Sun notebook. But not the Blue & Yellow Sun section. After I grew tired of the Blue & Yellow Sun stuff the notebook sat around partially filled and I began a notebook which I titled Tales of Nothing in Particular. It was my first work journal and it was there I started using the method I've continued using for 20 years now. I start a poem in the notebook, then write on it until it's finished or I don't want to write on it further. When next I open the notebook I either do some tweaking of the poems already in it, continue the last poem I was writing, or start a new one. If a poem wants extensive revision or an older poem wants additions I would type the poem then do revisions on the typed version. Since I've had the computer I've done most revision on the computer. In the last couple years I've done serial poems in the notebook. Used to be it was rare for me to extend a poem; it was always a new poem I was writing, even if the new poem was a sequel or variation on the theme of the poem last written. These days I seem to do a lot of variation on a theme in the bounds of what I think of as a single poem. I'm now willing to allow the poem a lot of range.

In "Love" I was trying out a lot of variation on a single idea. I think it works pretty well. Maybe it's fine as it is. When I was reading it in the notebook another version started bubbling around it so I quickly typed up the original then started pursuing the new.

"Love"

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the love in the stars in the sky.
I love the way the stars love the sky.
I love the sky.
Stars love the way I love.
Love loves love in the sky.
In the sky love pursues love to the stars.
Still I love love.
I dream about love between the stars.
The sky is passionate with me.
Stars love passion more than they love me.
Love vanishes like stars in the sky.
The sky likes love.
Love always rides there with the moon.
The stars are jealous.