Blargh

Drizzly today and chilly-ish. The sort of day that's perfect for napping and reading and lounging with coffee. I at least have coffee. On the up-side, I get to use a pressure washer later today. My inner butch is singing.

~*~

I've been revising and rethinking old and newer poems like crazy since I got back from LA...well once the jet lag and exhaustion lifted. It's been a much different process...for the first time in years revising has been as pleasurable as writing the first draft of something. Plus I've started a few new drafts.

Abundance

The daylilies are outdoing themselves. Surprising because I didn't feed them as heavily this year, but they are full, the blooms on some are so heavy they're warping the stems.

I've had an enormous blue hosta in the corner of the shade bed for years--six or seven, at least--and this is the first summer it's bloomed. It's nothing that spectacular but I'm hoping to get some seed and start some new ones.

~*~

The last couple of weeks I've gotten together with a couple of other people and we've workshopped, ate dinner, had some drinks and just enjoyed one another's company. It's been lovely--and I've gotten some serious work done on revising and rethinking some of the poems I wrote earlier this year. It's also been good prep work for Los Angeles. It's been about nine or ten years since I was in a formal workshop and I've been a little worried about having lost the ability to talk about a poem in an intelligent helpful way. I still feel like I need to brush up on terminology but I feel more confident I can talk about a poem in an analytical way.

~*~

The neighbors had a cow escape last week. A bull actually. Summer is here.

Good God...

What the hell happened to the month of June?

I'm behind on gardening--well I'm behind on lots of things--I still have about a dozen things in their pots from the nursery waiting to be sunk in the ground. It's pathetic. I swear to god I'm planting them all tomorrow morning.

What's been planted is thriving. The shade/semi-shade bed close to the house is filling in nicely. The dogwood is sending out new leaves (that was touch and go during the heat wave. I was sure I'd lose it.) My favorite find of the year is some sort of Hyssop, "Acapulco"--little bunches of tiny trumpet shaped blooms, a sort of cantaloupe color that changes to pink as the flowers spend. Really lovely. The hummingbirds love it.

Finally got around to reading J. Allyn Rosser's Foiled Again. It makes me want to keep writing sonnets.

Plane tickets bought for LA. Now if I can just get that prescription for Xanax I've always wanted.

Poem for the Day

Below is the poem I'll be reading for the tribute Monday. It's from Irene's last book Vivid Companion. An interview with her from earlier this spring can be found here. The poem "Fame" can be found here. Another poem, "Atavistic", was featured on NPR's the Writer's Almanac in April 2005.

Full Moon: Sitting Up Late at My Father’s Bedside

What can I say. The moon looms in the nighttime sky
with brilliance, as it does. But we are going to touch it,

and then it will go away. The animals on earth
are breathing, but someone takes their hearts

and puts them into broken human bodies.
What can I say to those people? You took the heart

of a chimp: you found you could do it,
and you did? Secrets come out of the heart,

and nowhere else. We don’t know how.
What can I say when my father is dying,

with his new eyes and his new heart.
His mind is like a flapping line of laundry,

clothing full of wind. How can I speak
about the babble of his speech? His saying

does not go from here to there, it’s only here.
Out of the dog came five pups, slick wet packets,

each different. They grew at different rates.
Some slept, two leapt around all day.

What can I say about their secret selves,
their paws, their separate ways of walking?

What can be said about their natures, and
their flawed and perfect lives? I gave

them away. They have a new trajectory and
I’m still here. I think about them every day.

My father’s manner is the same as it was
when he was sane. Senility’s a secret, too.

It isn’t vague to him. I see intensity in all
he misconstrues, —I think he misconstrues.

The night is brilliant, and the moon’s too close.
It calls him out: to where, I cannot say.

California Here I Come and Other News

God...it's been almost a month since I blogged. I intended to post before this. I'm going to try to be a little better now that things have slowed down.

But, I've got a few tidbits of good news.

I was picked for one of the 8 poetry spots at this year's Lambda Literary Foundation Retreat in August with DA Powell.

I finished up and mailed out my contributor's agreement for my essay to appear in Michael Montlack's Diva Complex.

I'll be on deck as a speaker/reader at a tribute to Irene McKinney, WV Poet Laureate, next Monday night.

I almost forgot one: Brian's flying in Sunday night and we'll be spending a few days in Charleston.

qarrtsiluni

My poem "Something Got Inside" is up today at qarrtsiluni.

Thanks to Dave for advice regarding punctuation and for cleaning up the audio.

More thanks to Brent and Ken for giving the poem a home.

Especial thanks to Maggie Anderson, Jan Beatty, and Irene McKinney for input and advice on an earlier draft. I also can't forget to thank Aaron for his help and advice when I was sick of the poem and didn't know what to do with it.

Afterglow

Yesterday was a good good day on all fronts. Warm and sunny and springy.

Got my Amazon order-- Jan Beatty's new book Red Sugar is marvelous. Just knock you back on your heels good. Also got the new REM album, Accelerate. Much better to me than their last couple of albums. I love "I'm Gonna DJ." Also the new Gnarls Barkley. I'm saving that one to listen to when I roadtrip to Baltimore at the end of the week.

In honor of NaPoWrithe Month, I revised an essay and some poems. I'm not really generating new material. I did enough of that at the end of last year into the beginning of this year. I'm just trying to work every day on old stuff and see how it fits.

~*~

It was especially good yesterday because I got to spend time with Aaron and Irene. Seeing Aaron twice in the same year is like some extra bonus karma. Seeing Irene is always delightful. The luxury of talking about poems and life and all that stuff for several hours in her sunny front room is just simply perfect.

Driving home in the afternoon I was thinking about the fact that I'm genuinely lucky. The most important people in my life have been part of my life for about 15 years. There's a sort of luxury in that--the long abiding affection, the sense of knowing someone, the surprise and pleasure at seeing them grow into themselves.

Why Amn't I Sleeping?

Sleep is where I'm a viking. I like that. It's better than dreaming about work and mysteriously appearing and disappearing clothes. But, I digress.

I should be asleep. I should be acclimated to my new diurnal schedule. But, obviously, I'm not. It's almost 4 in the morning. It's windy outside and the maple's limbs are beating the roof, the bunches of wind chimes are cacophonous and awful. The cat is tearing through the house like he's been dosed with PCP doing his usual circuit of kitchen, living room, bathroom, reverse, repeat. When he's not doing that he's insisting he sleep on my chest with his face in mine. He needs to go on a diet.

I went to a reading last night by my friend and former teacher Irene. She was, as usual, grand. A nice mix of older poems, some short short essays which she's been reading for a series on the local public radio stations, and some new poems. One of the essays and the final poem brought tears to my eyes. I was gut punched. They're magnificent. We're planning a visit in the next couple of weeks. I'm glad, it's always a good afternoon. Even though she doesn't live far, maybe 40 minutes away, I feel like I never see her often enough.

Pod People

Christopher Hennessy has posted some recordings of James Hall, Jericho Brown and me reading work, along with introductions, at his site.

Poem for the Day

Here's a link to Daisy Fried's "Shooting Kinesha" from issue #93 of Ploughshares.

Drifts

This yo-yo weather is insane. Back in the 20s today, five or so inches of snow. I want it to be spring. All the nursery and gardening catalogs have been pouring in and it's like porn.

~*~

Four packets of poems out in the mail over the last couple of days. Not a sim sub in the bunch. That feels good. I've worked so slowly the last year that this recent burst of poeminess gives me more options and a cushion to rely on.

The chapbook is essentially done and has been sent out to a crack team of fresh eyes. My only worry is they'll hate it.

Still getting about a poem a week, not nearly as crazy as a few weeks ago when it was a poem every couple of days. I can manage this. And the poems look/feel/move differently. Tons of quatrains in tetrameter. Who knew. I usually hate tetrameter.

Drudegery Port

Still no acceptances or rejections, I'll stifle the neurotic and go about my business, hewing to the no news is good line.

More packets almost ready to go out next week. Last minute tweaks and decisions of what goes in each.

Jim Daniels' Revenge of the Crash Test Dummies is fab. As is the latest issue of Court Green.

While I Should Be Working

Doing what I get paid for, I am not. I'm watching the primary returns, reading blogs, and looking at poems, my own and a friend's. My chapbook-length poem series thingie is almost done...it's currently 28 sections...only a couple more to go for tone and balance and I think I can start doing the heavy lifting and revising.

I'm also working on an artist's statement...it's excruciating. Ego(t)istic as I sometimes (often?) am, I find it hard to talk about my work in broad strokes.

Five

Via Pamela and Colin K, five songs/artists that best approximate my own aesthetic sensibilities. In no particular order.

1. The Kills, "No Wow." Buzz and stomp and a sense of threat. The pure simplicity of lyric. The sense that you're as likely to be kissed as punched. The first time I heard this, in Eric's living room, I thought I would have a panic attack.

2. David Bowie, "Cracked Actor." Seedy and spent and shattered. The sounds and rhythms, the persona. Bliss.

3. Tori Amos, "Datura." The vegetable world, the garden, the catalog.

4. Michael Stipe, "Arms of Love." A cover of the old Robyn Hitchcock song. Naked and plainly stated. (This isn't a performance vid, but uses the song as a background to a variety of pics...odd.)

5. Bjork featuring Thom Yorke, "I Have Seen It All." Self-explanatory, really.

Proofs

I got proofs last night, via email, of two poems coming out in March. I feel like a real poetical boy. Now I just need to finish packing.

Tyranny of Options

I'm not someone afraid of choices...changes often, choices, no. I'm more likely to be overwhelmed by the hordes of the dumb and damned in big box stores than I am the stacks of merch and bulging shelves--I like options. So I finally decided I'd look at the AWP schedule and see what was going on--a couple of things I definitely know I'll do...the Pitt Series reading, the Post-Gay Identity panel are musts.

So I printed the schedule and started perusing--easy enough to opt of out some sessions. But then there are several things simultaneously scheduled that I want to do or would like to sit in on. I suppose it's good--if something's too crowded I can opt for something else. All the same, there's that nagging interior whine "but what if thaaaaat's good" thing.

~*~

Poems still coming. Different rhythms and sounds than I normally truck in, awfully exciting.

Still haven't looked at the recently-finished beast. It's staying zipped up in my briefcase--though I desperately want to.

~*~

Why is it someone can find the money to play video keno but not buy soap and deodorant?

A Voice from a Cloud

Ach, I've been a bad bad blogger. The details are boring, but I've just not posted much the last week--not that there haven't been things that I wanted to, but hopefully this week I can catch up on some of them.

~*~

A draft of the long-gestating chapbook, long poem, poem series thing is done. It's rough, but it's down. I haven't looked at it in a few days, most likely won't for another week or so because I think I'd be like a drunk at last call, prone to bad object choices (cue the Donna Summer).

Aside from that I've written a few new things the past couple weeks. Very productive, much moreso than normal.

12 x 10

Here's a list of books that stuck with me this year. Not all of them were published in 2007, but I read them all for the first time in 2007. They're in no particular order. Just 12 by 10 authors.

1. Elaine Equi, Ripple Effect
2. J. Allyn Roser, Misery Prefigured
3. Chase Twichell, Dog Language
4. Charles Wright, Littlefoot
5. Rebecca Loudon, Radish King
6. Jean Valentine, The Door in the Mountain
7. Peter Pereira, What's Written on the Body
8. Virginia Chase Sutton, Embellishments
9. Virginia Chase Sutton, What Brings You to Del Amo?
10. Ted Berrigan, Sonnets
11. C. Dale Young, The Day Underneath the Day
12. C. Dale Young, The Second Person

In the Middle of the Night, I Steal Ideas

From Peter, at the Virtual World, I found out about the haiku blog post. Go over and check his out.

Leaving Work at 7:15 am, I Pass the Hotel Playground

Eight men stand there, proud.
They point to their bucks: hanging
from the swingset; dead.

Newness

This is the latest poem. It won't be here long.

[and scene.]