handfuls of birds

Review of A Woman in the Polar Night

2012-01-13T10:20:00.000-08:00

I'm on Goodreads (Are you?) but I never blog my reviews. I don't know why not. But I love this book. Definitely one of the best and most surprising books I read last year. So I thought I'd splash it in this space, too. I wrote the review mid-read, but I still felt wonderful about it when I finished. In fact, I really really loved the ending. Quiet, deep close to a quiet, deep book. It never went out of print in Germany. I'm on a personal quest to revive stateside interest in it. Read it! Read it!

***

Why had I not heard of this book? I saw it in Tin House, in a feature on forgotten great books, and was skeptical, but got it from the library.

From sentence one, I've been hooked. It's nonfiction, written in the 1950s by an Austrian woman who followed her husband to the Arctic to stay with him in a hunting hut for a year. Her descriptions of travel and the scenery are stunning without being melodramatic. And she's causing me to have the deepest thoughts I've probably ever had on what it means to do housework, to be a housewife, a role she steps into with humor (cleaning bearded seal entrails from your doorstep, anyone?) and a stunning and almost unbelievable acceptance. Don't get me wrong: it's not a book that's ABOUT housewifery (yes, that's a word, says me), but that's what it's causing me to think of: the roles we step into, the roles we want or think we want to step into, and what it means when you strip away absolutely everything else and focus those roles and the attendant relationships down to a 10 X 10 hut in the middle of nowhere.

The writing is gorgeous. (Even my husband, who is the pickiest man alive when it comes to books, read the first few pages (I wouldn't let him have it for longer than that ...) and said it was clearly very good writing and made for good reading.) It feels like it's been awhile since I've had a book I longed for all through the day while I attended to less charming tasks, but this is a book like that. I want to stop people on the street and tell them to read it--it's that good, so far.

A Poem by Ms. Millay

2011-10-07T12:38:00.001-07:00

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY [1892–1950]

Wild Swans

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more;
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.
Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

This is lovely.

2011-10-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

Am perhaps beginning a love affair with TED, as in TED Talks.

The whole talk by Elizabeth Gilbert is great, but this was particularly lovely:

"I had this encounter recently where I met the extraordinary American poet Ruth Stone, who's now in her 90s, but she's been a poet her entire life and she told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the fields, and she said she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. And she said it was like a thunderous train of air. And it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet. She knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, and that was to, in her words, "run like hell." And she would run like hell to the house and she would be getting chased by this poem, and the whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. And other times she wouldn't be fast enough, so she'd be running and running and running, and she wouldn't get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it and she said it would continue on across the landscape, looking, as she put it "for another poet." And then there were these times -- this is the piece I never forgot -- she said that there were moments where she would almost miss it, right? So, she's running to the house and she's looking for the paper and the poem passes through her, and she grabs a pencil just as it's going through her, and then she said, it was like she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail, and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. And in these instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact but backwards, from the last word to the first."

Yes sir.

2011-06-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

--Franz Kafka

National Poetry Month

2011-04-20T17:45:00.000-07:00

My lovely friend Kat is having a super cool National Poetry Month giveaway. I'm posting my entry here, and I think it would be a lovely thing to do in celebration of NPM for anyone with an inclination. The line here comes from the poem in my last post.

Happy poetry.

To Reteach a Thing Its Loveliness

2011-03-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

I feel like this poem knocked me over this morning. So good, particularly that line from my post title: "sometimes it is necessary / to reteach a thing its loveliness." Feels like a message for spring, like the whole world is relearning its loveliness. Especially, hopefully, me.

Saint Francis and the Sow

by Galway Kinnell

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Cedar Feet

2010-11-15T05:09:00.000-08:00

How could I not have posted on this wee blog since July? Oh dear.

Anyway, some Emily Dickinson for your Monday. I read a bit this morning and she so quietly spoke to me that I nearly convinced myself she was haunting my office and would appear in her lacey white dress. But she didn't.

1113

There is a strength in proving that it can be borne
Although it tear--
What are the sinews of such cordage for
Except to bear
The ship might be of satin had it not to fight--
To walk on the seas requires cedar feet

Disagreeing

2010-07-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

Been thinking about opinions, about disagreeing, about how somewhere along the line I grew frightened of having a strong opinion for fear someone would disagree with me and then I'd feel bad. My father (and others) will be shocked to hear me say this, as in some ways I seem to have an endless supply of strong opinions, but this fear is also true about me. I still want the right answer, the A++; I want for everyone in the whole world to think I'm pretty and smart and cool. I wanna be the good kid.

Anyway, was talking to Sam about it yesterday, and today he sent me this quote by Tolstoy on how tedious he finds Shakespeare as an example of brave disagreeing. Love it, not because I agree, but because he just says it, you know? The whole world loves Shakespeare and Tolstoy says: meh. Although, I'm no Tolstoy. Can we only express opinions this bold when we're Tolstoy?

"I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear", "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium... Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself, I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the "Henrys," "Troilus and Cressida," the "Tempest," "Cymbeline," and I have felt, with even greater force, the same feelings,—this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent merits,—thereby distorting their aesthetic and ethical understanding,—is a great evil, as is every untruth."

Tolstoy on Shakespeare. 1906.

Scripture Study at Faulkner's House

2010-07-09T08:59:00.001-07:00

I read an interview with William Faulkner in The Paris Review this morning, and loved his response to the question of how he learned The Bible. It reminded me of my own childhood, each kid in the family having to read a verse of scripture before dinner. Faulkner seems to capture the restlessness of that part of childhood--that, and much more:

"My Great-Grandfather Murry was a kind and gentle man, to
us children anyway. ... he was simply a man of
inflexible principles. One of them was everybody, children on up
through all adults present, had to have a verse from the Bible ready
and glib at tongue-tip when we gathered at the table for breakfast
each morning; if you didn’t have your scripture verse ready, you
didn’t have any breakfast; you would be excused long enough
to leave the room and swot one up (there was a maiden aunt, a
kind of sergeant-major for this duty, who retired with the culprit
and gave him a brisk breezing which carried him over the jump
next time).

It had to be an authentic, correct verse. While we were little, it
could be the same one, once you had it down good, morning after
morning, until you got a little older and bigger, when one morning
(by this time you would be pretty glib at it, galloping through
without even listening to yourself since you were already five or ten
minutes ahead, already among the ham and steak and fried chicken
and grits and sweet potatoes and two or three kinds of hot bread)
you would suddenly find his eyes on you—very blue, very kind
and gentle, and even now not stern so much as inflexible—and
next morning you had a new verse. In a way, that was when you
discovered that your childhood was over; you had outgrown it and
entered the world."

Two Fantastic Essays On Body Image (by men, oddly enough)

2010-06-25T06:42:00.000-07:00

Just read a short piece by Augusten Burroughs on his quest to have a six-pack. Oh wow it's good.

You can read it here, on some dude's blog. His pictures and commentary are sort of annoying, but it's worth it to read this, serrriously.

And another thing on exercise-culture, body image stuff, also, surprisingly by a man: Adam Gopnik's essay "The Rules of the Sport" in Paris to the Moon. I can't find a link for that one, but oh it's good. It's about living in Paris, trying to get a gym membership, and how the American sort of gym-rat thing is simply beyond the French comprehension. Those women eat pastries for breakfast, can't fathom exercising on a regular basis, and still are trim and elegant. Why wasn't I born French, again?

On the Stories We Tell Ourselves

2010-06-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

I'm working on this book every morning, getting up at 5:30 so I have time before work, missing very few days, and feeling more momentum than I ever have as "writer." I've written a lot of poems, and those are cool because you can finish one in a single morning. Sometimes I've finished eight in a single evening. And although there's revision, all of it is on a single page so it's manageable revision.

Prose is different, especially long prose, and I'm astounded by the--and there's no other word--mystery of this process. How I show up every day, put my hands to the keyboard, and, more often than not, know exactly what comes next, even when I think I don't. There are all of these little voices in my head saying "You shouldn't say THAT" and "My, that was an ugly sentence" and "WHAT is Soandso going to think?!" But I find, miraculously, if I keep going they shoosh up, and I keep going and something else arrives in my brain to put on the page. I'm not trying to say that God is telling me what to say, that I'm speaking for Him by any stretch of the imagination, but in a way, doing this every morning makes me believe in God in a way that I haven't before. My goodness, there's something out there fueling me as I try to work stuff out on the page.

But this is a strange thing, to rummage around in my past like I'm looking for a pair of shoes, looking for something that goes with something else, looking to make sense of my experience to someone that doesn't have immediate access to my brain. Or really, to my own brain. I'm probably trying to make sense of things to my own brain, since the story of how a very young girl went to Mississippi and now lives in Boston with a Sam is a story that I don't entirely understand myself.

And so today I'm thinking about the stories we tell ourselves and the way we narrate our experiences, even inside us. In a way, this sense of story is what shapes our lives. What I mean is this: Once, when I suffered a painful (if mostly mutual) breakup, I realized I was obsessively trying to land on the story I would tell myself about it. Was it: boy and girl simply not right for each other, which happens often and everything will be okay? Was it: boy a big mean jerk who never loved me anyway? Was it: Woe is me; if I could have just lost 20 pounds then he would have loved me? Was it: I never liked that guy and I'm gonna get pretty and successful and then he'll see what he missed out on? When I realized I was doing that, shuffling through stories, I worked really (really) hard to only tell myself the most useful story, the one that would help me move forward gracefully. It wasn't that the other stories weren't true. I could acknowledge that in one way or another they were probably all a little bit true. But the one I wanted to dwell on, the one I wanted to package up and store on the shelves of my brain, was the kindest one, the most generous. It took me probably a year to tell myself that story often enough that it overrided the other ones that kept presenting themselves. But I remember that one day I cried about it and knew I was crying about for the last time, that I was ready to let the story alone.

In a way, I feel like that's what I'm doing now. I'm telling myself a story. I'm trying to make it as honest as it can be, presenting as many of the scary questions as I can. And hoping that, when I'm done, I'll have made a story I want to keep, even if no one else in the whole wide world reads it. I'm trying to move forward gracefully. I'm learning something new about that story every time I put it on the page.

Books are Delicious

2010-06-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

from Charles Lamb, quoted in Patrick Madden's Quotidiana:

"I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends: to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave."

And, from Joseph Smith, quoted in Eugene England's Dialogues with Myself, which, if the introduction is any indication, is going to be incredible. I already wish they would have issued it to me at baptism.

Joseph Smith, 1844, just before his martyrdom: "By proving contraries, truth is made manifest."

Okay, and a third quote, so you can have some context for how England draws on what Joseph Smith said:

"Part of the Prophet Joseph's moral and spiritual heroism is focused for me in his growing insight (and willingness to risk all, including his life on that insight) that tragic paradox lies at the heart of things and that life and salvation, truth and progress, come only through anxiously, bravely grappling with those paradoxes, both in action and in thought."

Witness to the Impulse

2010-06-12T03:56:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you had a chance to read my post on Segullah, but it turned out to be sort of an interesting experience for me. Overall, I've been overwhelmed by the warm response. People said the kindest things about my writing, the thoughts about my marriage, etc. Maybe it's just because it's all about, well, me, but the comment section of that post seems pretty fascinating; it's perhaps a better read than the post itself. (And if you've ever wanted to hear me talk sort of frankly about why I decided to marry Sam, I respond to a few comments with something along those lines.) So aside from those nice nice comments from people, there were also a few comments I expected, which were some people disturbed I had chosen to marry outside the church. Like I said, I expected those comments, and when the first one came in, I wasn't as bothered as I expected to be. A few folks ralied to my defense, and I felt like I knew what to say, and I felt sort of like, "Whew, crisis averted."

But then another comment came in, this one shorter, more pointed. I'm tempted to copy and paste it here, but instead I'll summarize that it said my guest post was so sad because according to my own beliefs, my beautiful marriage won't last. Let me say first that I don't agree, that this isn't my belief, that I've had some precious spiritual confirmation that my marriage won't be torn away from me on the other side (and I don't even think that's exact doctrine anyway, but okay). This in no way diminishes how wonderful and important temple marriage is, but, well, see, here I go defending myself again. This is hard to explain.  But the point is, the comment upset me. Even thinking about it now makes me want to tear my hair and spit nails. And not because I think this person is right, but that the response itself, the fact that it's possible, terrifies me.

You see, I'm writing a book. I don't know if I've said that so clearly here, but I am. And it's precisely about this, about dating and deciding to marry Sam. I mean, it's about other stuff, too, but it's about that. A love story. A coming of age love story, is what I'll say when I try to sell it. And the thing that trips me up when I try to write it, the thing that utterly paralyzes me, the thing that can stall me for several weeks of wordlessness, is responses like that one, or even the thought of potential responses like that one. I tried to patiently explain to this person where I was coming from, but he/she just responded again today making it pretty clear that they didn't get it, didn't see what I meant, and maybe didn't want to. Oh gosh, now I'm just worried you're reading this post and agreeing with this person, which you totally can; it's completely legal to agree with this person, just don't tell me about it, okay? I can't take it. And the point of this post isn't whether or not I agree, it's what happened after; it's about writing. Moving on.

So I read this person's comment right as I was leaving my office, and I was just devastated. I walked along Arlington St towards the T, feeling like I would weep, feeling vulnerable and terrified. And it occured to me, wait, I CHOSE this; I submitted my post. No one made me talk about this very personal aspect of my life. And then it occured to, yeah, wait, I don't have to. I don't HAVE to do this. I don't HAVE to write this book, or if I do, I don't have to try and publish it. This is MY business, no one else's, and maybe it's just not worth it to be that vulnerable.

Pause. Rewind to several months ago to when I had a similar thought. Sam and I were driving around town, and it was raining, and we were talking about Sam's book. This was back in the dark dark days of my last job, and I hadn't managed to write anything in months and months. I was listening to Sam talk about his book, telling him what I think, and he was finding my opinion useful and the thought came into my head, "Huh. Maybe the point of me going to school wasn't to be a writer myself. Maybe I went to school so I could be useful to Sam. Maybe he's the writer and I'm the writer-helper." Immediately, with barely a beat to consider this possibility, I burst into tears.   Poor Sam, driving along thinking we're having this intellectual conversation, and all the sudden my own brain makes me sob. I took my reaction to be a no: I ain't the writer-helper. I mean, I am, but I'm also meant to write. To write my own stuff. It's in me, somewhere, even if I couldn't find it at the moment.

Fast-forward back to last week, walking to the T, thinking that maybe I didn't have to write my book. Same response as in the car. I mean, I didn't burst into tears, but the deepest, deeepest part of me knew that I actually didn't have a choice. This is my JOB. God gave me my experiences and the ability to write about them because He wanted me to tell about them, and choosing not to do so in order to protect myself from idiot opinions was beyond unacceptable. It simply wouldn't do.

This is a long post, and maybe you don't care, but for me, this is the story of me turning into a writer. Not just someone who writes, but someone who MUST write, for whom it's an obligation, a spiritual and intellectual obligation. I don't know what will happen with it; I'm not saying I'll get wildly successful with it. That voice that compels me doesn't say anything about success. It just says I have to make this thing exist that doesn't exist now.

There's a passage in Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet that I've always liked, and always wanted to identify with, but never really felt. And now I do. And it's both lovely and terrifying. I'll post the quote here.

"You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple 'I must,' then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse."
                                                                                   --Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, letter 1

Shared Interests

2010-06-09T04:43:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals.

It would appear that Tadzio the cat is also reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals.

(We both think it's dang good, thus far.)

On Reading Sad Books

2010-06-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

I'm over on my friend's blog, Squeeze the Universe, talking about sad books and offering up a review of After Leaving Mr Mackensie. Check it out? Weigh in? What's your sad book threshold?

Sort of, Yes, Obsessed with This Image

2010-05-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

Alice in Wonderland, George Dunlop Leslie

Love Alice's chubby and serious little face, the couch, her resting doll, her mama's yellow dress, her black tights and shiny shoes, the way her pinafore is falling off one shoulder, and that she's being read to. Alice is so vulnerable in Wonderland that I like to think of her here, although I guess the title implies that this is sort of a Wonderland, too. Maybe the Wonderland, come from a book.

(Should say, saw it first here, at a blog I am certainly obsessed with as well.)

Weird Signs

2010-05-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

This NYT photo gallery had me laughing and laughing. I'm especially fond of #43.

Stuff to Read, if You Wanna

2010-05-13T13:03:00.000-07:00

This blew my mind and made me very very afraid of computers: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

And this, well. It made me feel bad for the lobsters and perhaps awakened my latent vegetarianism: "Consider the Lobster"

This one is just weird weird weird: "A Mind Dismembered: In Search of the Magical Penis Thieves" Apparently, in Africa (and other places), this, um, happens? Magically though, not physically. Anyway, I won't say more.

Famous People

2010-05-11T11:20:00.000-07:00

My teacher at USM, Angela Ball, has a poem featured on The Writer's Almanac today. Oh, she's wonderful. She taught me everything, and she did so with wise grace.

(Click Writer's Almanac for the link.)

Blosssoms

2010-05-04T04:19:00.000-07:00

This is a poem that is very near to my heart. Once, in Mississippi, I instituted an ambitious project of memorizing a poem a week. I didn't last long, not even really past the first week. But the first week I memorized this poem, and I have been forever grateful. On hard days in Hattiesburg, I used to say it to myself as I walked around lonely on campus, and it was a bit better. And now, in Boston, when the trees are in full bloom, I say it again, less lonely.

From Blossoms

by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

(hat tip: Poetry Foundation)

Poem for Today, in Regards to Observation as a Form of Prayer

2010-04-22T06:58:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning and meaning to post something about blossoms here, but my camera and I are still negotiating the easiest way to get pictures from it to me, so I'm stalled. In the meantime, here's a lovely little one by Mary Oliver which is in regards to summer, not spring, but nevertheless reflects how I feel lately, and how I want to feel. Hat tip to Poetry 180.

The Summer Day
Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Virginia Woolf, On Keeping a Journal

2010-04-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

"What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace any thing, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself...into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life."

--Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary

What I Do When I'm Stuck

2010-04-09T04:02:00.000-07:00

Writing a poem every day is hard. Writing is hard. One has to call up images and ideas out of the brain, and those images and ideas, sorry to say, aren't always there to be had. I used to feel like I had poem and essay and story ideas arrive, already cut from the cloth. But if I waited for them now, I'd never get a word on the page. My brain is far (far) too crowded.

So somehow, and I can't really remember how, I came up with this system:

Step 1: Find a pretty box

Step 2: Go through old magazines and cut out every picture that strikes your fancy. Pretty ones, gruesome ones, weird ones. Advertisements are often better than actual articles for this. Advertising is pretty darn clever. I have a picture in that box of a girl wearing a dress made out of white porcelain teacups. It doesn't get much more clever/interesting than that.

Step 3: So now you should have a stack of pictures, a pile of them, a cohort. Grab a random handful of these images and spread them out in front of you.

Step 4: This is the step that I can't explain. Let the cutouts trigger lines and images, memories, dialogue, character, setting, whatever. You have to sort of turn your brain to jello here, and let it meander around in what you have in front of you. See what happens. I've found ways to write about stuff I had absolutely no entry into, using these images. I wrote a story this week, based on pictures of a sliced tennis ball, the Milky Way, and feet.

(Optional Step 5: Teaching. This makes a fantastic teaching tool. My students' biggest problem--one of the biggest--was that when they tried to think of images, they were boring. Their stories had absolutely no tangible objects in them, no details, aside from a passing reference to spaghetti on page three or some such. These pictures helped more than I can say. I'd either give each of them one at a time and we'd pass it once they'd found a way to put it in (sort of a game approach) or I'd grabbag each of them a random stack and they'd get to work that way. Gosh those poems were great, the ones that came out of this. Some of the best I've seen.)

Plus, the box really is pretty, no? I was never sorry on a day I got to carry it around.

An Essay Worth Reading

2010-04-05T07:16:00.000-07:00

Author: Nancy Mairs

Title: "On Being a Cripple"

A candid, brave, funny, raw account of what it's like to be crippled by MS. Really though, she's speaking to what it's like to be a human housed in a body, to be disappointed by what we can do, to be both grateful to those who are patient with us, and afraid of their motives. It's just well written. Incredibly moving.

I'd link to it, because it's everywhere online, but the links are all complicated in some way. So I leave you to google it. It's worth it.

Quote from Carver, Note from Me

2010-04-01T08:39:00.001-07:00

First, Raymond Carver, on writing: "Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing--a sunset or an old shoe--in absolute and simple amazement."

And, from me: 'tis poetry month, folks. Time to read (and write) poems! I'm attempting to write a poem every day again, and hoping hard not to fail at it, as I did last year. Wrote one this morning, which wasn't any good, but hey! It exists! Which is what counts for now. I'm telling myself it's okay to miss days (although I'd prefer not to), so if I get 20 poems out of the month, I will be such a happy camper. I'll try to keep you posted on how it goes. I'll try to stand and gape at things in absolute and simple amazement.

a few lines from rilke's first duino elegy

2010-03-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

(spoken in the voice of an unhappy angel, which seems like a cheesy concept, i know. but it works. for the whole poem, and number 6, go here: Poetry Daily.)

"Ah, whom can we turn to
in our need? Not Angels, not humans,
and the sly animals see at once
how little at home we are
in the interpreted world. That leaves us
some tree on a slope, to which our eyes returned
day after day; leaves us yesterday's street
and the coddled loyalty of an old habit
that liked it here, lingered, and never left."

A Wee Green Poem for a Green Day

2010-03-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

from Kay Ryan

(i had to read it three times. then it made me feel weepy.)

Green Behind the Ears

I was still slightly
fuzzy in shady spots
and the tenderest lime.
It was lovely, as I
look back, but not
at the time. For it is
hard to be green and
take your turn as flesh.
So much freshness
to unlearn.

Google book link: here.

Trying to Net Some Elusive Fish

2010-03-03T07:18:00.000-08:00

A Few Quotes from Kay Ryan, found in X J Kennedy's Introduction to Literature:

"First, when I write a poem I'm completely occupied with trying to net some elusive fish; I'm desperate to get the net (made of words) knotted in such a way that it will catch the desired fish (a half-formed idea, a wisp of a feeling). I'm not thinking of anything but that; I'm not thinking of me, I'm not thinking of you" (627).

In response to the question, what is the purpose of poetry:

"The secret, long-term purpose of poetry is to create more space between everything. Poetry is the main engine of the expanding universe. You yourself will have noticed how reading a poem that really strikes you (that will be one in 25, if you're lucky; a poem can be great and still not strike YOU) makes you feel freer and less burdened, even if it's about death. You feel fresher, more awake. This proves my point; your atoms have been subtly distanced from each other, like a breeze is blowing through your DNA. That's poetry loosening you" (627).

Morning Cup of Hope

2010-03-01T04:26:00.000-08:00

A friend told me about this old talk by President Spencer W Kimball and it was exactly what I needed to read this morning. Maybe you've already seen it, but perhaps you'd like to be reminded of it? Anyway, it was delicious to me.

Link: "The Abundant Life"

What I Am Doing to Pretend

2010-02-25T13:13:00.000-08:00

The day is dragging, and so I'm here, feeling like I want to put some of my own words down, since I've been posting so much by other people.

I just want to say: I've been stuck. Leave it to a really, really, horrifically unjust working situation to sap the fun right out of my creative self. I couldn't write a word for months. It didn't even feel like I was the same person as the person who wrote words. But I'm so tired of whining about that, and I know the only thing there is to say is, enough. Do it anyway. Write something, anything, now.

And I'm working on that. I've been doing The Artist's Way morning pages most days, and I keep a small red moleskin notebook in my bag, and jot notes on the train. (This morning, a rainy morning, I saw a little Asian boy in yellow rain boots, and yellow raincoat with blue and green trucks on it, and a bandaid on his left cheek. He stopped on the steps inside the train, held is mom's arm while she got out their fare, and I wrote him down.) These are cursory gestures, mostly. But they're what I have, and I think of them building momentum for me.

The other thing I'm doing: submitting two items a day to literary journals. Back in the day, I used to do these all at once. I'd rent a season of Alias, and spend the entire weekend admiring Jennifer Garner's back muscles and stuffing polite queries and stacks of poems into envelopes. It would take me hours upon hours, but I would do 50-75 of these in a go. Now, I've had to accept, my life isn't like that. I don't have hours upon hours. They simply don't exist. But I do have twenty minutes between waking up and washing my hair. Those I have, if I hurry on the hair routine and make my lunch the night before. And it feels measly to only have a wee little pair sent out each day, but they're quickly adding up. In a month, I'll have sixty. Except that sometimes I miss a day or two, and I'm trying to be okay with that, too. If I beat myself up, tell myself what a sorry excuse I am to not even be able to push out two a day (and yes, I AM that mean to myself), I never get back to it. And, like I said, the slow and steady momentum is what I'm counting.

Last weekend, Sam invited me on a writing date, bless his soul. We went to a coffee shop, he ordered me pretty little pot of minty tea, we staked out a couch as our territory, and we both typed for a few hours, our laptops perched on our knees. I don't think I got anything good out of it, but how romantic, no?

Poem for Today, Addressed to a Baby (Not that I'm pregnant.)

2010-02-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

The Alien

by Greg Delanty

I'm back again scrutinizing the Milky Way
of your ultrasound, scanning the dark
matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say
is chockablock with quarks & squarks,
gravitons & gravitini, photons & photinos. Our sprout,

who art there inside the spacecraft
of your ma, the time capsule of this printout,
hurling & whirling towards us, it's all daft
on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens,
our Martian, our little green man, we're anxious

to make contact, to ask questions
about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss
the whole shebang of the beginning & end,
the pre–big bang untime before you forget the why
and lie of thy first place. And, our friend,

to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we'd die
for you even, that we pray you're not here
to subdue us, that we'd put away
our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share
our world with you, little big head, if only you stay.

"The Alien" by Greg Delanty, from The Ship of Birth.

hat tip: The Writer's Almanac

Oh, Wow.

2010-02-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

You (you, nebulous you) may ignore my posts and posts. I'm just gathering stuff I love. Stuff I can't let sift through my fingers without pinching.

Anatomy Test, Eleventh Grade
by: Valerie Loveland

The skinny girl in my class seems reptilian—
armored with an exoskeleton:
rib cage, collar bone dinosaur ridges.
Dangerous wrists and elbows jut,
shoulder blades poke the air like silky stone wings.

It's not fair,
she doesn't have to study.
She is her own cheat sheet—her fingers clink
down each of her xylophone ribs.
When she strikes each bone, it sings, ringing
its name: whisper jingle of the ear bones,
a long low drone from the femur.

Do I even have bones?

My sloppy disagreeable body swells. My bones retreat
into layers so thick, I would have had to start peeling
them away last night if I wanted to pass the test.

I find my knuckles, which I snap over and over,
trying to persuade them to tell me their names,
but they refuse.

link: from Wicked Alice

Another Poem to Love

2010-02-17T09:47:00.000-08:00

Swan Falls in Love With Swan Shaped Boat
Christina Kallery

BERLIN (Reuters) - A swan has fallen in love with a plastic swan-shaped paddleboat on a pond in the German town of Muenster and has spent the past three weeks flirting with the vessel five times its size, a sailing instructor said Friday.

He's not half nuts, this German swan, to love
Something so near the actual, you might squint
from shore, squishing sand beneath your toes,
to see its broad white belly part the shining

green, neck angled always toward the clouds
deflecting every antic of its frenzied,
mini-suitor. This happens, right? Who among
us with a single red corpuscle hasn't dug in

and waited the whole doomed thing to its conclusion,
wanting some chill beauty to paddle its slow turn
toward us on the man-made lake? In your case,
not a Muenster tourist boat, let's hope, but more like

the narcissist with lovely eyes and a voice
to unzip things to, or the one that cut the right
profile but sank like a Petoskey stone. But still,
in spite of tearstains, sucker punches, fists to the glass

jaw, the dumb heart beats, and tries again. See,
there he goes, beak agog and hissing at the rival
birds, wings spread to seem more menacing, black
webbed feet paddling frantic through the algae.

Then night sets and a silver moon beams down
on bird and boat, afloat alone, and in the pale
light looking for all the world like the shape of love.

link: from failbetter

Poem for Sam, Upon the Occasion of Valentine's Day (Or Several Days Thereafter)

2010-02-17T06:36:00.000-08:00

This Year's Valentine

by Philip Appleman

They could
pump frenzy into air ducts
and rage into reservoirs,
dynamite dams
and drown cities,
cry fire in theaters
as the victims are burning,
but
I will find my way through blackened streets
and kneel down at your side.

They could
jump the median, head-on,
and obliterate the future,
fit .45's to the hands of kids
and skate them off to school,
flip live butts into tinderbox forests
and hellfire half the heavens,
but
in the rubble of smoking cottages
I will hold you in my arms.

They could
send kidnappers to kindergartens
and pedophiles to playgrounds,
wrap themselves in Old Glory
and gut the Bill of Rights,
pound the door with holy screed
and put an end to reason,
but
I will cut through their curtains of cunning
and find you somewhere in the moonlight.

Whatever they do with their anthrax or chainsaws,
however they strip-search or brainwash or blackmail,
they cannot prevent me from sending you robins,
all of them singing: I'll be there.

from: The Writer's Almanac

Long, but Gorgeous Essay

2010-02-16T12:57:00.000-08:00

Nature essay. On birds (pelicans) and babies and surfing and being human and stuff.

I love this bit from Emerson that Gessner includes: "First, be a good animal."

Link here: Learning to Surf by David Gessner. In Orion Magazine.

I've Been Duly Chastised

2010-02-14T03:44:00.001-08:00

Quotes here come from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, which I should have read 100 years ago:

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its color, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison." (110)

"Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream." (113)

“When I rummage in my own mind I find no noble sentiments about being companions and equals and influencing the world to higher ends, I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves.” (Page 115)

And here's the real chastizement, which won't make as much sense out of context. I can provide the remainder, if you're interested:

"How can I further encourage you to go about the business of life? Young women, I would say, and please attend,you are, ... in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays of Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilisation. What is your excuse?" (116)

from Flaubert and Dillard, on writing

2010-02-14T03:43:00.000-08:00

Flaubert: "It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as a man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horse, the leaves, the wind, the words that my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes."

Dillard: “One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. do not hoard what seems good. Give it give it all, give it now. Something more will arise fo later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.”

You Can Tell I'm Hunting Poems Today

2010-02-12T09:28:00.000-08:00

Here's another:

The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God's love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow

To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by
your up-ended
skirt

To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other dogs
can smell it

Alicia Suskin Ostriker

The Book of Seventy
University of Pittsburgh Press

(from Poetry Daily)

Loving This Tony Hoagland Poem

2010-02-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

“Hard Rain,” by Tony Hoagland

After I heard It’s a Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
played softly by an accordion quartet
through the ceiling speakers at the Springdale Shopping Mall,
I understood there’s nothing
we can’t pluck the stinger from,

nothing we can’t turn into a soft drink flavor or a t-shirt.
Even serenity can become something horrible
if you make a commercial about it
using smiling, white-haired people

quoting Thoreau to sell retirement homes
in the Everglades, where the swamp has been
drained and bulldozed into a nineteen-hole golf course
with electrified alligator barriers.

You can’t keep beating yourself up, Billy
I heard the therapist say on television
to the teenage murderer,
About all those people you killed—
You just have to be the best person you can be,

one day at a time—

and everybody in the audience claps and weeps a little,
because the level of deep feeling has been touched,
and they want to believe that
the power of Forgiveness is greater
than the power of Consequence, or History.

Dear Abby:
My father is a businessman who travels.
Each time he returns from one of his trips,
his shoes and trousers
are covered with blood-
but he never forgets to bring me a nice present;
Should I say something?
Signed, America.

I used to think I was not part of this,
that I could mind my own business and get along,

but that was just another song
that had been taught to me since birth—

whose words I was humming under my breath,
as I was walking through the Springdale Mall.

(Hat-tip: The Writer’s Almanac)

Another, Very Wee Poem

2010-02-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

17

Why is the word yes so brief?
It should be
the longest,
the hardest,
so that you could not decide in an instant to say it,
so that upon reflection you could stop
in the middle of saying it.

Vera Pavlova
translated from the Russian by Steven Seymour
from Poetry Daily

Russian Dogs Ride the Metro!

2010-02-09T12:11:00.001-08:00

Apparently, there are a lot of stray dogs in Moscow, like 100 per 10 square miles.

More impressively, they've figured out how to ride the metro. They wait on the platform, get on, then get off a few stops later. Weeeeird.

Link to article: here.

Why Poetry Feels True?

2010-02-09T08:43:00.000-08:00

(From this article in the Boston Globe.)

McGlone did a study in which he presented subjects with a series of unfamiliar aphorisms either in rhyming or nonrhyming form: “Woes unite foes,” for example, versus “Woes unite enemies.” He found that people tended to see the rhyming ones as more accurate than the nonrhyming ones, despite the fact that, substantively, the two were identical. Phrases that are easier on the ear aren’t just catchy and easy to remember, McGlone argues, they also feel inherently truer. He calls it “the rhyme-as-reason effect.”

My New Favorite Joke

2010-02-09T08:01:00.000-08:00

TWO polar bears are perched on a block of floating ice.

One says to the other: "Do you know, I keep thinking it's Thursday..."

(from this article, on humor and the brain. worth reading.)

A Sweet Little Poem that Made Me Smile

2010-02-04T07:20:00.000-08:00

LOVE

What I know about love
could fill a bottle cap.
But sometimes
I use the word because
it feels good
and right to do so.
If we wait to express
something until we fully
understand it, we would
stand around like they
did in the depression
waiting for apples and jobs.

Ann Menebroker

Oh My Beautiful

2010-01-29T12:54:00.000-08:00

I read a lot for this new job. Not all of it pleasant, but some of it is.

Just came across the most lovely, moving story. David Means' The Secret Goldfish. Read it, if you have a spare moment and want to read something deliciously good, if sad.

(Someday I want to write a post about sad stuff--novels, stories--and try to figure out why I like it, why it doesn't make me sad, why it makes the heart swell instead. But that's another post. Note: this story isn't TOO sad, I don't think.)

P.S. Just unprivatized. Other blog will follow soon, I suspect. But I'll start here.

I Don't Think Many Read This Blog

2009-11-08T16:28:00.001-08:00

But I have to privatize it all the same. At least for now.

If you'd like to still read, will you leave me a comment here with your email address or shoot me an email? I'd like to get it privatized in the next couple of days.

Much obliged.

Alone in a Good Way

2009-08-16T05:41:00.001-07:00

I keep meaning to post this bit of business from Kay Ryan, U.S. Poet Laureate and very smart lady. I bought an anthology called Poem in Your Pocket, put out by Academy of American Poets, edited by Elaine Beakley, with an introduction by Kay Ryan. The book's concept is sort of cool: the pages are held together at the top like a notepad so you can tear the poems out easily and carry them around with you. In, like, your pocket. Get it?!

Okay, anyway, maybe it's a touch heavy-handed or cute, but I dig it. And the truth is, although there are some good poems here, I bought the book because of Ryan's short, delicious intro, which says this astonishing thing. I read it in the bookstore, and stood at the table holding the book, jaw dropped and the room ever-so-slightly buzzing and spinning with the truth of it:

"On some level poems can, of course, do good works and bind us together. Everybody will tell you that, but I'm never very interested. I'm convinced, rather, that poems bind us apart. They disconnect us from that pestering illusion that we are almost connecting to the world.

Oh, what can that mean? Well, we are alone, and poems make us feel more alone. But wait, I don't mean "alone" in the bad way, what we feel when we know that spending all the money in the world isn't going to keep the shimmer on life; I mean "alone" in the good way.

Alone in the sense of experiencing inside yourself a cascading series of exquisite discriminations and connections which leave you in the fullest possible possession of your self while simultaneously providing the most intimate escape from self, as though the twisted double helixes of your secret code got some blessed breathing room from each other for a minute.

And strangely enough, it is during the private murmured conversation between the poem and the reader, both agreeing that the world cannot be known or contacted, that it is."

Truly.

What I Told My Students About Reading

2009-08-11T21:14:00.001-07:00

In my syllabus, for the Into to Lit course I'm teaching. I think I'm going to expand it into a longer sort of lecture and handout, but I was pleased with what I said so far. I prayed before I started working on it, and I think He helped me say what I meant, what I've been trying to say since I started teaching. Not that this is particularly profound, but it's what I mean.

A Note on Reading: Reading is hard work. One of my hopes for the class is that you’ll enjoy it, but the best way to enjoy it is to work hard at it. All semester we’ll be practicing reading slowly and carefully with the idea that these habits will rub off on the way you read in general. Take notes in the margins, ask questions, get in the habit of putting yourself in the character’s shoes, be both generous and critical when you evaluate their choices, laugh when it’s funny, cry when it’s sad (if you’re the crying sort), pay attention to the feeling you get when something is beautiful or true. For me that feels like a literal, small swelling of the heart.

Hello World

2009-08-11T06:26:00.000-07:00

Probably clear here that this blog started to freak me out. Started to feel like it was feeding a life-compartmentalization I was already experiencing too accutely. But whatever. Today I feel I have something to post. And so I shall.

Just a little quote from Diane Arbus, the photographer, that I jotted in my journal awhile back.

"I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things. I mean, it's very subtle and sort of embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them." from a book called Photography Speaks

(Note: Picture not of Arbus, but by her. Snaked from this blog.)

Titles Never Used to Stress Me Out

2009-04-09T09:20:00.001-07:00

Still writing a poem a day. This probably shouldn't make me proud of myself, but it do. Oh, it do.

I'm re-learning that thing that writers say--that you have to show up for work. That you sit in front of the computer and it seems like there's nothing in the world to say. But if you stay there, something arrives. And the more often you show up, the more the gears get slick and efficient and ideas barrel down the conveyer belt more quickly.

Last night I wrote when I felt really bummed, and it made me feel better. The PhD sort of beat the theraputic reasons for writing out of me, but I remember them now. It wasn't like the sadness went anywhere, I just put it on the page, put it to work. And it abated. I went to sleep feeling better.

Here's what I made, influenced by some useful cutting from Sam, but without real line breaks yet:

Bowing to the Melting Countertop

A black cat sits on the doorstep. When I coo, it runs off. The molten center of the planet agrees I am a disappointment. A volcano yawns.

Somewhere a car wash burns down. An orchid bows to a melting countertop.

“It’s a snap,” insists a shiny ant. “Extend your crunchy pincers and take prey by the thorax.” But it’s a big ant, the rainforest sort, mouth like a tractor. I am small.

I make spaghetti and feel like a failure. Washing dishes, I tell myself I tried. I really tried.

The members of the jury outside my window shake their heads.

The Lettuce in My Fridge is Going Bad

2009-04-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

The statement is true, but lettuce is not actually the subject here. I just couldn't think of a title.

In other news, writing poems every day is cool. Hard sometimes, but cool.

Friday I wrote a sestina; yesterday I wrote one about running into my gay ex at the Hare Krishna temple's Festival of Colors; today I wrote one while watching House by stealing lines of conversation and ripping them violently out of context.

Doesn't this sound like more fun than cream puffs? Mmmm, cream puffs. Maybe not more fun than those. At parties in Mississippi when everyone one else was using booze as a social lubricant, I used cream puffs. Fill me with a few of those and I'm fine.

And that, dear friends, is why my jeans don't fit anymore.

Anyway, also wanted to share this quote from a documentary film maker that I loved: "A bad film stops when it's over. A good film starts when it's over."

True of all art, I'd reckon.

One other thing. Learned this on a podcast, from a sound artist man. He took a recording of seals under the water in Antartica, and I swear to you that it sounded exactly like electronic music, only really really good electronic music, better than humans can make. It sounded like outerspace is what it sounded like. Also, walruses clack their teeth under water and it's full of these beautiful, artful cresendos and decresendos. What does this mean?

I think it means this: We humans that think we're artists? Amatuers. Every last damn one of us.

April is the Cruelest Month

2009-04-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

It's also National Poetry Month. My goal is to write a poem a day.

Join me?

Here's poem one. Don't think I'll post all of them, but today, sure.

Pretend Today is Yesterday

I write this at a stoplight,
journal propped on the wheel,
bobbing my head to check for the arrow.
All the words are taken anyway,
so what can it matter when or how
I slap these down?

"Was my heart the same color
as the rose?" asks the kid
on the radio.

"How do I tell the bad guys
from the good guys?"
asks the bird carrying a twig
four times its size.

Rose, Bird, I can't say.

When walking,
I pass shattered barbie flesh,
worms on the sidewalk,
a green apple flattened, browning.

That's It!

2009-03-17T20:32:00.000-07:00

Tonight, at a Relief Society activity, a woman read a quote from President Uchtdorf. If you're an LDS woman, you've probably heard it. And if you're not an LDS woman, you probably won't care. But for me, it was a much needed reminder. Oh, I needed it. He says:

"My dear sisters, I have a simple faith. I believe that as you are faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, as you draw closer to Him in faith, hope, and charity, things will work together for your good. I believe that as you immerse yourselves in the work of our Father—as you create beauty and as you are compassionate to others—God will encircle you in the arms of His love. Discouragement, inadequacy, and weariness will give way to a life of meaning, grace, and fulfillment. As spirit daughters of our Heavenly Father, happiness is your heritage."

This is the part that gets me, the part that made a jolt of warmth pass from my head to toes: he says clearly that the work of God is to CREATE BEAUTY. Right there. He says creating beauty is up there with service.

Now, I've been struggling with this writing thing. Haven't be doing much of it, truth be told. I'm terrified of it. And I can't figure out if it's worth doing. I know it is, deep down. But I doubt and doubt it. I wish I had Sam's pure, clear devotion to the work. His pure, clear diligence and conviction that it's worthwhile. Instead, I go through bursts of enthusiasm, followed by months of fear and dithering. It's absurd. And it makes it very hard to get anything done.

So not only do I love President Uchtdorf for saying that happiness is my heritage, a message I'm in desperate need of, but I love him for saying I should be writing, that writing is what I give to God. I know there are lots of ways we can create beauty, and I'm drawn to all that stuff too: a lovely meal, a pretty room, an orchestra, a dress, a painting, a well-designed sidewalk. And I want to do all of those things too, I'm just not good at any of them. But I know how to write. I'm not saying I'm really incredibly good at it, I just know how. And I enjoy it. And I teach it. And I've been through 8 years of school to do it.

So I must do it. And by doing it, I serve God. Maybe, just maybe, He put me here to write something. Which means maybe, just maybe, if I ask, He'll help me do it. That would be nice.

New Juice

2009-03-14T07:41:00.001-07:00

I interrupt my silence to bring you ...

A new online issue of JuiceBox!

Go. See.

Something from D H Lawrence in My Brain

2009-02-11T20:27:00.000-08:00

I can't even claim I know what this means, entirely. I don't even know that Lawrence did. And I sure don't know how to do it. But I like it. It feels true. And I'm thinking and thinking on it.

"The essential function of art is moral. Not aesthetic, not decorative, not pastime and recreation. But moral. The essential function of art is moral.

But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood first. The mind will follow later, in the wake."

Read This.

2009-02-10T09:31:00.000-08:00

Read this book yesterday. Bought it yesterday afternoon, went to read a bit before I went to bed, couldn't put it down. Finished it at 2 in the morning. The writing is beautiful, clear, astonishingly unsentimental and honest. It's a memoir about the last three weeks of her mother's fight with cancer. Amara, you won't like it. Kira, you will.

I've been looking so hard for something to read that didn't make me work too hard, but didn't turn my brain to mush either. This was it. I'm sad it's over. It's been a long time since I read a book that I mourned for after it was done.

Speaking of mourning, I don't recommend reading this when you're already sad. That part--the part where I wept and wailed at 3am for my mother and everyone I love, even though they're fine--that was not so good. Poor Sam.

How I'm Feeling as of 4:32, Sunday Afternoon.

2009-02-08T13:28:00.000-08:00

Kay Ryan, new Poet Laureate. This from the most recent Paris Review.

The Walking Stick Insect

of South America often loses an antenna or leg—but
always grows a new appendage. Often nature makes a
mistake and a new antenna grows where the leg was lost.
—Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

Eventually the
most accident-prone
or war-weary
walking sticks
are entirely
reduced to antennae
with which they
pick their way
sensitively,
appalled by
everything’s
intensity.

I'm Won.

2009-02-02T20:30:00.000-08:00

I once read an essay by Mark Halliday in The Georgia Review called "The Arrogance of Poetry." It's my favorite. The whole thing is good, and you must read it, but to sum up, he writes, of all poems, of any poem, of a poem:

"[The poem] says,‘Do you or do you not get it?’ It says, ‘Do you love me? You should. If you don’t, you’ve missed something. The problem is yours—some blindness, some crudeness, some insensitivity to nuance.’ Fortunately, persons don’t often have the gall to say, ‘If you don’t love me, the problem is yours.’ Poems say this every time."

He goes on to say, "Poems keep stroking their own hair."

It's true.

I hate poetry.

Am I a poet? Yeah, sure. But sometimes I hate it. In fact, lately, I hate all literature, all writing. I don't want to read it; I don't want to do it. I want to watch "American Idol" and eat marshmallows. It's been bad. I'm in a lit funk.

But today, teaching (bless teaching), my student gave a presentation on a poem by Carolyn Forche, and I was won over. This poem reminded me why I must try, why I must read. Forche wrote it when she was a civil rights worker in the 80s in El Salvador. It's brilliant. It's below.

(Dear Senstive Reader: this poem says the eff word and is ... slight gruesome. Just a heads up.)

(Dear Curious Reader: If you want to understand it better, here's a website with some stuff about the poem, including an interview with Forche.)

The Colonel

What you have heard is true. I was in his house.
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on
its black cord over the house. On the television
was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles
were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his
hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings
like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of
lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes,
salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed
the country. There was a brief commercial in
Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk of how difficult it had become to govern.
The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel
told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the
table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to
bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on
the table. They were like dried peach halves. There
is no other way to say this. He took one of them in
his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a
water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of
fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone,
tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He
swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held
the last of his wine in the air. Something for your
poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor
caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on
the floor were pressed to the ground.

Awkward Anna

2009-01-18T16:47:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to read Anna Karenina. Trying and trying and trying. I couldn't figure out why it was so hard to get into. It's good, right? It's worth reading, yes?

So maybe there were too many confusing/changing/Russian names. Maybe it was because I was on page 70 and there was still no sign of Anna. Maybe I'm lazy. Maybe I don't know how to read good.

Today, it hit me: the book itself, the physical object, is awkward. I have this edition:

It's not that it's too long and therefore fat. I've read and adored plenty of longer(fatter) books. It's that when I'm lying in my bed, trying to snuggle up with it, it's simply not snuggling back. There's just something about its shape. It feels like trying to cozy up to a brick, a floppy and awkward brick. Today was the first time that Kindle thing seemed like a good idea. It could cuddle a kindle. This, no.

Looks like the Kindle is still a grotesque 359 bucks. Maybe when they sell it at the dollar store, I'll get one.

For now, tell me. Is Anna really really worth sticking with? Will she change my life, if I only let her?

If Bees Made the Clouds, Clouds Would Rain Honey

2009-01-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

Sam and I saw a Tara Donavon exhibit this weekend at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art).

First a word on the ICA: We got engaged there, we just didn't know it. It's right on the harbor, right next to Anthony's Pier Four, the fancy restaurant where Sam bought us a four pound, 50-year-old lobster, which actually didn't give me a clue that he wanted to ask me any important questions. Neither did him insisting we stand in front of the ICA (which I thought was just a weird office building) and look out at the water for a little while. I didn't get it until he dropped to BOTH knees, and asked. And for the record, because he'll correct me in my comments again if I'm not accurate with the dialogue, I said "I hope so," then a guy walking out of the ICA said, "Just say Yes!" so I said "Yes," and then I said, "I don't know, I have to think about it." Poor man. I would proceed to say yes, then I don't know, then yes over the course of three weeks. I tried his love.

Anyway, enough love.

I LOVE the Tara Donovan stuff we saw. Click on her name for a whole bunch of photos of her stuff. It is beauty. It's mostly installation art, made from everyday commercial objects in mass quantities: drinking straws, Styrofoam cups, tooth picks, scotch tape, glue. You would be SHOCKED at how lovely that stuff can be, how much it can look like elements of the natural world.

Take this, for example. Styrofoam cups. I think it looks like clouds, if bees were assigned to make them. Sam thought it looked like coral. Either way, both of us stood underneath it, our mouths agape, astounded and lost in it, pointing to beautiful curves.

This, paper plates. Yes, I know.

Toothpicks, held together with nothing.

And buttons. Did you know buttons could be so pretty? They remind me of The Little Mermaid's castle.

On How a Mormon Reads Lolita

2009-01-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

I read Lolita over Christmas break, and found it to be one of the most heartbreaking, beautiful books I've ever read.

It makes me nervous to admit this, admit I read it. It's one of those books you hear whispers about before you ever read it, especially when you're a good little Mormon girl, as I am/was/will forever be. (As a sidenote, check out this article on a kid's bed misguidedly named, "Lolita Bed." So not cool.)

You see, Mormon folk are careful what they read/watch/see. When I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to watch PG-13 movies, and I remember trying to read a book by Joyce Carol Oates and feeling like God told me not to read it anymore. Which, I sort of think He did, because it was ugly and negative and boring. So I grew up thinking that there was such a think as "moral" literature, books we "should" read and books we should not. And I still suspect that's true, I just don't know what they are anymore. The line seems blurry.

Take Lolita: the main character is Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who is basically a pedophile, who seduces (or is seduced by, some critics say) a 12-year-old girl. Do I find the thought of this character disturbing/disgusting? Yes, yes I do. Take him out the walls of literature, and I hate him, I say lock him up; tell me he lives on my street and I'll move to another neighborhood to protect my kids. I think about my niece who is nearly twelve and I just shiver.

But the book tells this man's story, and makes you feels stuff about him, stuff for him. At the end I wept for him, this man. I find I'm sort of offended when I (or someone else) boils the plot down and calls him a pedophile. And so maybe the book, therefore, is "bad." Do we really need books that redeem pedophiles?

That's one way to see it. The other way takes me to something C.S. Lewis said:

"[I]n reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."

There's more to it than that, but I can't find it. He says something about wishing the dung beetle could write books, because he'd want to read those too. And Humbert is a dung beetle; he basically says so himself.

Nabokov, in a essay at the back of my edition, talks about the seed for the book. He says he felt the first stirrings of it when he read in the paper about an ape they taught to draw, and how they painstakingly, over months and months, tried to teach it, and when they finally succeeded, what it drew were the bars of its cage. What's the implication here, the connection to Lolita? Humbert is writing the book from prison, so I assume the book is, in a way, the bars of his cage. And it feels like the bars of the cage. As I said, it's heartbreaking.

So maybe it's like something Yeats says, in a book of essays I can't remember the title of. He argues that literature is the purest Christlike act, because in a sense we do as Christ did, forgive, redeem. We take something dispicable and are made to understand it, to see the man as a man, not just a sinner who should be locked up. Which is how Christ sees us, right, with love no matter what we've done? I was talking about this with Sam, trying to figure it out, and I asked him if there was ever a limit what we should forgive, if there are people we simply should not read/write books about, and he said, "I don't know. Not according to Jesus." Point taken.

And there is a barrier between art and life, and of course this doesn't apply in the courtroom because laws against pedophila and murder are important and meant to keep us safe and maintain order. And Nabokov never says the bars of Humbert's cage shouldn't be there, he just shows you what they are.

And still, I'm nervous. Isn't there a limit, a line, a point we shouldn't cross? Or maybe all the lines are personal, none superior to the other?

Two sides, and I find myself straddling them. Do I want my nieces/nephews/future children reading Lolita? Maybe in a long long while. If I met my twelve or even twenty-year-old self, would I recommend the book to her? No, no I wouldn't. I wouldn't have been ready for it yet.

But now, I love it. At the end, when Humbert is driving down the wrong side of the road, and they put up a roadblock and pull his despairing, limp, apathetic body from his car, I wasn't sorry I read. Oh, I wasn't.

Art

2008-12-31T18:16:00.000-08:00

Was thinking today about the creation of the world--the classic story: organizing matter, dividing light from darkness, land from sea, making animals and plants, and finally man and woman.

And it occurred to me: God didn't make art. He designed the centipede, arranged the perfect tendons in my right hand, piled big rocks to make Kilimanjaro, gouged the Grand Canyon. But He didn't set down music, painting, and the novel on the planet. We did that.

Don't get me wrong, I think God has a lot to do with the creation of art, just as He's behind advances in science and technology. I'm of the opinion that good stuff comes from Him. My most successful work seems to come from some place beyond me.

But it struck me: art, as such, is so purely and beautifully human. It's our chance to create, to make something from nothing, to organize matter, to create the world.

Flipped Shadows.

2008-12-14T13:50:00.000-08:00

Sam and I went to this American Repertory Theater performance in Harvard Square. Aurelia's Oratorio. Strange, Brilliant.

When the lights came up, there was this chest of drawers on the stage. An arm came out of one of the drawers, a leg came out of another. The hand put a red high heel on the foot. Aurelia's head popped out of another drawer, smiled.

After a bit more play, she climbed out of the drawer, pulled out a red scarf, put it on, but the scarf kept going. Going and going until it was stretched across the stage several times over. She climbed up the scarf, swung from it like a trapeeze artist, stretched it out like a hammock and lay in it. She swung back and forth, and I wanted so badly to be exactly there, cradled like a baby, suspended in the middle of the stage.

On and on with these strange images. Women dressed like curtains with shoes on their heads carried a chair upside down. Aurelia called for a taxi, and attached herself to the chair, so she was sitting upside down. She performed a human show for a congregation of puppets that clapped and jumped in their seats. She took out a bouquet of plastic flowers, snifed them deeply, then stuffed the tops in a vase, so the stems made a stark arrangement. A black coat lined with red satin dropped from above the stage, and stayed suspended, covering the top of Aurelia's head; she tap danced, so she looked like a giant headless person. Another performer, a man kept coming on stage, looking and shouting for Aurelia, dancing the tango and fighting with empty jackets. At one point, and I don't even know how to describe it, but it looked like someone's grey shadow was walking upright, and their real, colorful self was spread out on the ground. Aurelia stopped to ask the shadow the time.

Another time, perhaps my favorite, a lacey monster ate Aurelia's foot, her leg up to her thigh. She knitted a new one. Then a lacey (but motherly) monster patted and cooed Aurelia to sleep.

Such a pleasure to see. I wish that it would have had a bit more of a narrative arc, and a bit more of a rough edge. But maybe that wasn't what it was going for.

Sam and I like to see this stuff because it helps us re-think our writing, the way we see the world. Don't know how to use it yet, but it was a delight to see and think.

Sam's Good News

2008-12-08T18:11:00.000-08:00

The writer-husband got a story picked up by Georgetown Review today.

He's brilliant. Just brilliant.

My Booky Bedside

2008-12-06T06:35:00.000-08:00

I find I don't read or write much during the week. At least not anything interesting. So I have no pertinent readerly/writerly reports. But I did finish that story last week. I'm still waiting for Sam to read it and tell me if it works. I managed to include a weird scene that happened in the church restroom last Sunday, so that's exciting.

Anyway, I was thinking yesterday about how when people ask me what I read or what I like to read or what my favorite books are, I freeze. I don't like that question. But I was thinking I should just tell them which books are on my bedside table, spilling off onto the floor. That oughtta work. And then I thought I should post that list here:

The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt. Editor, Ruth Andrew Ellenson.
Our Time. Collection of short stories by Hemingway.
Making Shapely Fiction. by Jerome Stern.
Quad of Scriptures. (I'm starting at the beginning of the Bible. It says, of Noah's dove, she "found no rest for the sole of her foot." I'm in love with that phrase.)
This Time. New and selected poems by Gerald Stern.
The Best Day, the Worst Day. Donald Hall. (If you want to read a very sad, beautiful, articulate account of someone's wife dying, I recommend the first chapter here.)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Short stories by Raymond Carver.
The Know-it-All. by A. J. Jacobs, who also wrote The Year of Living Biblically, which I loved.
Anton Chekov's Short Stories.
Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith.
The Best American Essays 2008. (Loved this one--beautiful essay on necklaces, on a man dying of aids, a gay woman planning her wedding, etc.)
33X3 Short Fiction by 33 Writers.
Lolita. Nabokov. (Am I not supposed to love this book? I've just started it, and the writing is superb. Don't read if you're easily disturbed.)
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. by neuroscientist, Oliver Sacks. (Tells stories of very strange brain disorders--fascinating stuff.)
Best American Science Writing 2007.

Does that seem like enough? Now if I could just find time to read them all. I've read snatches of all of these. But I want hours and hours with books and spoons full of peanut butter (my favorite book-reading treat.). Maybe after I read all these student papers, which aren't nearly as interesting as any of these.

I'm sorta a little teeny tiny bit famous.

2008-11-29T14:21:00.000-08:00

We were at the Harvard Coop today--the Harvard bookstore.

I happened to glance at the literary journals.

I noticed they had The Baltimore Review, which accepted one of my poems awhile back.

I looked at the back, and whose name did I see? Mine. MINE. My little name in the fancy shmancy bookstore.

That was a big writerly rush.

My Weakness, Explained.

2008-11-28T20:54:00.000-08:00

In writing news, I'm trying to write fiction, which I don't write and which I find incredibly difficult. For a few days I was thinking it might be the hardest genre, but I think perhaps they're all hard, I just do the others more often. In nonfiction, I'm adapting and thinking about my own life. In poetry, I'm playing with language. But in fiction, I have to turn a blank page into an entire world--characters and setting and thoughts and shoes and faces and hamburgers. It's an odd feeling. I'm trying to write about a woman who gives birth to a baby without eyes. Which actually happens: sockets, eyelids, no eyeballs. I didn't know. That's all I'll say.

In other news, I found out why I pick chocolate cake, in a general way. Before I get there, this is one of my favorite pictures of my niece, Ari. She dished up her own chocolate cake at my mom's birthday party. And this is when she realized she may have been in over her head, portion-wise. I can't tell you how often I feel like this. The only trouble is, I usually feel that way AFTER that mammoth chunk is in my belly. Okay, maybe not exactly that huge piece of cake because I'd probably throw up, but is this not a symbol? I keep it on my fridge, to remind myself to realize when it's still on the plate, so to speak, like Ari. I wish it worked better. Maybe I should tattoo the image on my hand.

Anyway, I was listening to a Radiolab podcast on choices. First they said that humans can only really remember 7 numbers at a time, plus or minus 2. This is why your phone number is 7 digits and your social is 9. See that? Clever scientists.

Just wait, they get cleverer. They did this experiment where they brought people into a room, gave them a number (2 to 7 digits long) to memorize right there, walk down the hall, and tell it to someone else. That's all they had to do. Only, on the way to the someone else, they were intercepted by a nice lady who told them they could have a snack: chocolate cake or fruit salad. Get this: the people with a whole 7 digits to remember were FIFTY PERCENT more likely to pick the CAKE than the people with a measly 2. I repeat, FIFTY PERCENT. I repeat, CAKE. That's really something. (And those other people, with 7 numbers who still picked the fruit, they're my mom--who has the will of an ox. The woman could swim a river of chocolate and not open her mouth. It's inhuman. Why couldn't she pass me that gene, why?)

I mean, Radiolab used it as evidence of something else, but for me this is the reason why I am always picking the chocolate cake or the cookie or the whatever else that looks appetizing. It's because I'm always stressed, like everyone else, trying to walk down the proverbial hall, keeping track of the proverbial 7 numbers! It's in my BRAIN! See. Chocolate cake, explained.

Can't Get These Images Out of My Head

2008-11-24T17:21:00.001-08:00

Also from The Paris Review, these woman belonged to the 2005 graduating class of all-female police cadets from the Iranian police academy.

I coudn't get it to post on the blog itself, but here's the link:

http://www.theparisreview.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5880

I think it's worth seeing.

Two Bits from Marilynne Robinson

2008-11-23T15:05:00.000-08:00

I read an interview with Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping and Gilead (which I've read) and the new novel Home (which I haven't read--anyone have thoughts on it?). It was in The Paris Review, fall 2008, and I recommend it for admirable insights on science/religion, solitude, writing life, etc. She also cleverly articulated a few things I've been thinking about:

Thing 1. When asked, "What led you to start writing essays?" she answered, "To change my own mind."

Although I didn't realize it, I think this is why I wrote an essay on polygamy, which is still looking for a home, but which I'm rather fond of. Completely changed my mind about the institution of plural marriage. Not so as I'm looking for a sister-wife, but so I have a clear empathy (pity?) for my ancestors who passed through it. Seems a good place to begin: start from a thing you want to have your mind changed about, plow ahead. Writing changes my mind anyway, might as well go in with that goal in mind.

Thing 2. This one, I hope, stands on its own: speaking of Freud who says it's best to have 'no sensation at all,' to remove ourselves from emotion, Robinson argues, "you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass throught his, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege" (58).

Makes me wonder: Why do we pull in, stay in bed, if this is a univeral experience, the thing that makes us part of humanity? Why, instead, does pain/depression/sorrow feel so isolating? Like we're the only ones on earth with heartache.

Reminds me of something Henry B Eyring said, which I always misquote, so I won't even try. He says if we treat everyone like their hearts are breaking, we'll be right most of the time. Sam loves that. When people say bad stuff about Mormons, he tells them that one of us said that. And if one of us said that, then we can't be as bad as they say.

But we're so forgetful. So disgracefully forgetful of the universality of our own pain, as well as that of others. We're human.