Info Desk Blogging

It seems someone didn't show up for their Info Desk hour so I've been sent to do the duty.

Busier with only one person on the desk. But it's not been hectic, exactly. I'm a little unclear on whether we're supposed to check the shelf for patrons who call in ... or whether we're just supposed to put a hold on the book via the computer and let a library aide hunt it up after hours.

... ooh, the time it goes so fast. Time to return to my usual cubicle.

dreaming it up

Steve Mueske has been trying to figure out where a poem comes from. See his blog.

Steve says he dreams about working on poems. So I responded, "One morning upon awaking I found my notebook open next to the bed. There was on a blank page a very intently written squiggle about the size of a single word. It wasn't till later that day I remembered that I had been writing down a dream word, a word from a language other than English. In the dream I might have thought it was Spanish but I remembered wondering if it really was a Spanish word (or any word that might be recognizable in waking life), so I propped myself on my elbow and pulled my notebook over and wrote it down.

Maybe I should've turned on the light."

bad writing

Nick Page has devoted his life to the quest for the worst writers of all time. By "worst" he means writers who are "so wonderfully awful, they have unwittingly arrived at genius ..."

Page disparages James Whitcomb Riley, a poet very popular in his day. An example:

Thweet Poethy! let me lithp forthwith
That I may thhing of the name of Smith --
which name, alath!
In harmony hath
No adequate rhyme, letht you grant me thith--
That the thimple, thibillant thound of eth --
(Which to thave my thoul, I cannot expreth!)
Thuth I may thhingingly,
Wooingly and winningly
Thu-thu-thound in the name of Smith.

*

I don't know. At least it's funny. Sorta. There's so much boring writing. I guess that's part of Page's point. I can agree that at times bad writing can be so awful it's its own kind of amazing. But poking around his site I keep reading work that's not really bad.

comments on "Our Two Trees", version 3

I didn't really have ideas when I started revising tonight. There were enough problems with version 2, I guess. I posted version 1 on a couple poetry bulletin boards, Haven and Melic Review's Roundtable.

I don't know that the comments were helpful. They weren't NOT helpful. But they didn't tell me anything I didn't know. Except that I got a more enthusiastic response than I expected. That was something, wasn't it? I'm not going to post this version. I'm thinking I'll wait for version 4. I don't expect it to be much different. But who knows?

"Our Two Trees" version 3

The maple’s spring is seed-first.
Red head to red head, the seeds edge
out in twos , the body of each a wing,
also red and still too soft for flight.

Out of the apple, however, spring spills.
Up all limbs buds’ dark shells have split
and big green leaves flop over
sudden white blossoms.

thoughts & thinking

First workday I've taken off since my mother died. I called in sick, feeling weary, achy, melancholy.

Have spent much of the day reading. I finished the chapbook Jack Martin gave me when he visited. Bark. Jack dares to be sentimental. Reminded me a little of Edward Field, another poet who gets sentimental, but whose writing is good to read. The horror over sentimentality. I don't get it. There are worse sins. Excess of sentiment. But what is excess? I wrote a poem once in which I talked about carrying around a box for tears. An editor called it "maudlin." Excess bad. Excess can be bad. Moderation can be bad, of course. Good can be bad. Etc. Many times I've had the physical sensation of a knot of tears in my chest. This is merely descriptive, not melodramatic. Not excess. Unless truth be excessive. Or fact. Or the presence.

Absence of sentiment. Can you have a poetry absent of sentiment?

My brother David writes about our mother's last days. July 25. July 30. August 5.

Kent suggested fish for dinner tonight. I like the idea. When I finish writing I'll go to Andronico's and get some fish.

comments on "Our Two Trees", version 2

Why do I find this poem so tired? Certainly the subject is about as done as done can be. As in the first version I'm trying too hard to be fancy. I envy people who are good at description. I sure don't feel I am. Acknowledging that, I've turned my poetry to what I think are my strengths -- metaphor (not simile) that builds a story of itself, and imaginative leaps (often suggested by the metaphor). In "Our Two Trees" I try to capture the contrasts of the spring styles of the trees in the yard. But who cares?

Our Two Trees, version 2

The maple’s spring is seed-first,
in twos, red head to red head,
from each seed, not yet stiffened for flight,
one red wing’s been lowered.

Out of the apple, however, spring spills.
Too tightly packed? The leaves’ green,
blossoms’ white – hurled out,
thrown, falling. From invisible wire exploding.

definition of art

from Edmund White's The Farewell Symphony:

"To me, a work of art is a performance of a certain length that generates interest." (italics in original)

Info Desk Blogging

My schedule is of such montonous sameness (indistinguishably montonous regularity even!) that I don't expect variation. It took me weeks to get in the habit of a Tuesday 11-12 Info Desk. Now that my Info Desk hour is 2-3 Friday ...

At 2:05 my desk phone rang. Sam: "Are you supposed to be on the Info Desk?"

One reminder later, I am, sir, reporting for duty.

A few of today's Qs: What is the phone number for the Library Board of Trustees (the board's last meeting seemed to have moved without notice)? Do we have internet access? Can't find The Poisonwood Bible on the shelf. I would like a library card. Eric Clapton CDs?

It's not been too busy. My Info Desk partner told me last week I'm going to be on my own for the next month. And it was really busy with her around. I expected craziness. Turns out there's not much to blog about.

deleting

From a book of short stories that the library is discarding: "They operated and got the glass out of me, and I ended up in a nice bed with clean sheets and my own radio to listen to. They fed good, too, for a hospital." A patron has added a note in pencil in the margin: "Tampa General Hospital? I used to work there."

comments on "Our Two Trees", version 1

Time for a new poem. This one is from a 1991 notebook. I was still living in my mother's house in Sebastopol, CA. We had two trees in the yard, a trident maple and an apple.

"Our Two Trees"

How nice it is to see spring unsheathing from the apple’s
hard buds. The maple starts with seeds,
red, joined at the head, their membranous wings
hanging like sleeves; behind them the trident leaves
hang back, their tips like an animal’s capillary
bundle, precious and fresh, sipping at the changeable
weather. The apples bursts out. Leaves and blossoms
tumbling as from a tight back – somewhat difficult
to unpack everything, but once the first present themselves
the rest hurl softly into air.

an old lady

My task this week has been deletions. I sit in my cubicle in the Technical Services division of the library and pluck a book from a loaded cart. I zap the barcode under the frog scanner on my desk. I hit "D" for delete. Twice. So the computer knows I'm serious. If it's the last copy of the book I suppress the record so if you look up the title in the publicly accessible catalog there's no evidence the library ever owned it. (But if we get a new copy somewhere down the line the book can be reinstated without having to create a catalog record from scratch.)

I don't choose what goes. Librarians do that. Many of the books are falling apart. Some are just fine. Many are old and irrelevant. Some I'd keep anyway. Do I succumb to my reluctance to see treasures being thrown away? There's a stack on my desk of those I can't yet bear to toss. Or was that five stacks?

From Conversations: Portraits of Age by Virginia Bonnici, (1985), pub Exposition Press of Florida:

"Her given name is Emma but she prefers 'Em.' ... ninety-some years ... 'There are dark and gloomy days but poetry will satisfy you.'

She recalls the years she taught in a country school and eating biscuits and jam, wearing boots to her hips and the rattlesnake and the horse -- stories enough for a lifetime. She doesn't want to write them down though."

we get mail

I'm all a-dither. Somehow Loren Cameron found the little posting about him that I wrote last December.

This is the email that came today:

subject line: pansy little dog

Hey Glen. Nobody talks shit about my dog, Bix. Especially now that he's dead.
- Loren Cameron (That's MISTER to you).

The Evolution of "Interoceptor"

If you'd like to trace the progress of "Interoceptor" from the day it was first posted on this blog (4/23/04) to the 10th and final version (7/18/04), here are the links:

10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6? ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1

Naturally, I wonder what you, dear reader, have been thinking about this construction project.

FMA

The level of debate over the amending of the US Constitution to prevent two people from marrying has been pathetic. The people who want to amend the Constitution build their arguments on a basis of fallacy, their favorite being slippery-slope, a fallacy so popular and pervasive it's a wonder we don't all slide right off this slanted earth. If I eat that muffin what's to stop the next person from eating all the muffins in the world? Would that be a good thing? Hell, no! Put it in the Constitution!

comments on version 10

Feels like the final version? Yes. At the moment it does. There aren't any squeaky boards. The ending is ambiguous but in a way that, right now at least, I rather like. Could be I'm tired. Yes. I am that. On the other hand I'm also not all thrilled by my achievement, which feeling tends to form a perspective that the weary eye disagrees with. Also, I'm rather tired of the poem. Must say though, when I can skim a poem all the way to the end and still feel it, feel a thing, even when tired, when tired of the poem, when there's yet that odd breeze blowing through it that, for the moment at least, seems to wake me up, it feels there. Feels full and open. Feels done.

Interoceptor, version 10

When the wind, cold with sea,
puffed no striped umbrella,
cooled no glisten of sunscreen on a shoulder,

when, yellow foam crackling,
wave after wave rolled kelp heads and their ropes,
and seagrapes hissed,

when, between washes, sand flea burrows
bubbled open, and, carried over them,
not one gull cut the white with her gray,

when no dog unhooked from leather leash
heaved himself at the frisbee with the chewed edge,

when, brown bottles broken in the coals,
old fires’ only motions in log-hid holes
were the falling-in of new sand,

when, in the dark spaces of dunes
no one turned to touch, and there were grasses
sliding merely against grasses, I

stretched out my arms,
eyes tearing,
left ear aching under the wind’s battering. I,

the one in stiff cotton standing up,
the one in hard shoes,
open,

the one
chilly, damp, squinting, breath
by breath moved

white, water, wind, sand

comments on version 9

Hm. Comments. Comments, comments. In the original the "I" was "a certain great smallness" and "felt large ... big enough to take in this section of shore." In this 9th version the "I" seems rather more humble, not even showing up until the 7th stanza. The "I" gets an eye-drawing enjambment at that point, so it's not like the poem has given up on the "I"'s importance altogether. The poem is occupied with absences in both versions. Many of the details are the same or similar -- dog, frisbee, broken bottles --, sometimes changes even echo the original -- sunscreen bottle v. sunscreen on shoulder, grapefruit juice vs. seagrapes. The original insists on the speaker's place, the role as "interoceptor" (that which passes on inner body sensations), the human being nerve, perhaps, nerve that allows the earth to perceive itself? Some of the original's metaphors are muddled, what with "bricks of the wall of air" and "the elbows of the ocean." Are there any metaphors in version 9? I don't see any. The "one / chilly, damp, squinting" -- that's a humble depiction, isn't it? -- moves "nothing but" -- but everything? What is left out of the last four words? Seagrapes, grass ... The "I" seems still to feel small though not so great, yet the claim remains the same, eh?