I just came across a site called the Random Poem Idea Generator. Here are some of the suggestions it gave me:
Boldly advance wrong opinions about eagles saying everything twice but phrased differently
Throw a friendly arm around gophers in a cocktail dress (Are the gophers wearing the cocktail dress or are you?)
Indicate your preference for Michigan entirely in overheard dialogue (This just makes me think of Sufjan Stevens, so I would probably end up inadvertently plagiarizing him.)
Levy taxes on tigers in the form of an invoice (There's a Charlie Sheen joke in there somewhere.)
Plagiarize every line of a poem about the Midwest in the style of Dickinson (Look, I don't condone plagiarism, okay?)
Here is the result. I sort of combined all the suggestions:
Animals in America
How many gophers to fill out a cocktail dress?
They wear it to sneak up on eagles.
Eagles are cowards.
They should be more like tigers
Attn: Eagles, you owe tiger tax.
What do you think of the Midwest?
Michigan wins America.
And yet he wandered through the heartland alone . . .
(That last line was borrowed from Edward Hirsch's "In the Midwest.")
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Who is on the phone?
My dear friend Angela is coming to see me this week all the way from Nashville! I am so excited and in honor of this, I would like to share a story regarding our similar cases of mistaken phone identities.
When we were in college, Angela used to get calls in the middle of the night of people asking for Cash, who was apparently also a person or drug dealer or both. This happened repeatedly until one night she answered and the person on the other line said, "Yo, is this Cash?" and Angela said, no, this is not Cash. The rest of the conversation was pretty one-sided and went something like this:
"Who is on the phone? WHO IS ON THE PHONE? (then, to someone else) Man, I don't know who the f*ck I got on the phone."
She has a different number now, but we still laugh about that line. Then when I moved to LA and changed to a local number, I started getting calls from someone named T-Bone's assistant. They would always come in during business hours, and at the time I was working a normal office job and could never answer and say it was the wrong number. But despite the fact that my voicemail stated my full name, this T-Bone person's rather dimwitted assistant always left desperate messages for whoever to call T-Bone back. Finally one day I got a text from T-Bone himself telling me he was running late for our meeting, and I so wish I had just texted back to ask the address so I could meet this T-Bone in person. Instead, I texted to tell him he had the wrong number. That was the end of that.
Fast forward to last night when I was reading US Weekly (hold your judgment), specifically an article about Reese Witherspoon's wedding to CAA agent Jim Toth. (Coincidentally, the office job I was working during the era of T-Bone phone calls was at CAA.) There I was, mindlessly glancing over details about decor, flowers, and food, when I came across this paragraph:
"Inside, producer T Bone Burnett's pals, rockabilly band the Americans, played during dinner. 'Reese and Jim . . . thanked T Bone for the band.'"
Como what? I sat up straight. Somehow, I knew this had to be the same guy. How many T-Bones or T Bones could there be working in Los Angeles who have frazzled assistants that call about how their boss is late for meetings? I always assumed T-Bone was some kind of gangsta rapper name, but maybe I wasn't that far off if T Bone apparently is this music producer legend.
Who is on the phone, indeed.
Excerpt from "California Plush"
The only thing I miss about Los Angeles
is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing
--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars
--descending through the city
fast as the law would allow
through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to the stack where lanes are stacked six deep
and you on top; the air
now clean, for a moment weightless
without memories, or
need for a past.
-Frank Bidart
When we were in college, Angela used to get calls in the middle of the night of people asking for Cash, who was apparently also a person or drug dealer or both. This happened repeatedly until one night she answered and the person on the other line said, "Yo, is this Cash?" and Angela said, no, this is not Cash. The rest of the conversation was pretty one-sided and went something like this:
"Who is on the phone? WHO IS ON THE PHONE? (then, to someone else) Man, I don't know who the f*ck I got on the phone."
She has a different number now, but we still laugh about that line. Then when I moved to LA and changed to a local number, I started getting calls from someone named T-Bone's assistant. They would always come in during business hours, and at the time I was working a normal office job and could never answer and say it was the wrong number. But despite the fact that my voicemail stated my full name, this T-Bone person's rather dimwitted assistant always left desperate messages for whoever to call T-Bone back. Finally one day I got a text from T-Bone himself telling me he was running late for our meeting, and I so wish I had just texted back to ask the address so I could meet this T-Bone in person. Instead, I texted to tell him he had the wrong number. That was the end of that.
Fast forward to last night when I was reading US Weekly (hold your judgment), specifically an article about Reese Witherspoon's wedding to CAA agent Jim Toth. (Coincidentally, the office job I was working during the era of T-Bone phone calls was at CAA.) There I was, mindlessly glancing over details about decor, flowers, and food, when I came across this paragraph:
"Inside, producer T Bone Burnett's pals, rockabilly band the Americans, played during dinner. 'Reese and Jim . . . thanked T Bone for the band.'"
Como what? I sat up straight. Somehow, I knew this had to be the same guy. How many T-Bones or T Bones could there be working in Los Angeles who have frazzled assistants that call about how their boss is late for meetings? I always assumed T-Bone was some kind of gangsta rapper name, but maybe I wasn't that far off if T Bone apparently is this music producer legend.
Who is on the phone, indeed.
Excerpt from "California Plush"
The only thing I miss about Los Angeles
is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing
--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars
--descending through the city
fast as the law would allow
through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to the stack where lanes are stacked six deep
and you on top; the air
now clean, for a moment weightless
without memories, or
need for a past.
-Frank Bidart
Monday, March 28, 2011
Do you agree with number 1?
I like this list that a friend of mine posted of the 100 Greatest Writers of All Time. Many fantastic poets are included along with some interesting facts and photography. I like the Saul Bellow photo myself.
A few excerpts:
Of Ezra Pound: "Somewhere between the worst person who was a great poet and the greatest poet who was an asshole"
Of Emily Dickinson: "She is in every poet we read, every word that is written. Even when she is not, she is there, in her lacks."
Of Ovid: "Invented eroticism."
A few excerpts:
Of Ezra Pound: "Somewhere between the worst person who was a great poet and the greatest poet who was an asshole"
Of Emily Dickinson: "She is in every poet we read, every word that is written. Even when she is not, she is there, in her lacks."
Of Ovid: "Invented eroticism."
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
They call me Slug Savior.
Yesterday morning I woke up and there was a slug on my bathroom floor! My first reaction was, That is a slug. My second reaction was, Huh, I guess I'm not that bothered by it. I mean, slugs are not known for speed. I had plenty of time to pee and think about the slug situation before I actually had to deal with it. It was then that I decided I wanted to save it.
This was new territory for me. I'll be the first to tell you that I'm a big wuss when it comes to creepy crawlies. I have genuine arachnophobia. The very sight of even a fake stuffed Halloween spider sends electric currents down my back. It's something about the legs that freaks me out. Ew, just writing about it gives me shivers. Okay. Deep breaths. So whenever the spiders find me--and they always do--my two options are to either drown them in Raid or alert my roommate, who, being the adult person that she is, will calmly handle the situation and take the spider outside to let it live and procreate and GAH GROSS!
Okay, enough with the spiders. Back to yesterday's slug. I felt instinctively that since I did not recoil at the sight of it, I was emotionally equipped to handle said slug disposal myself. I've always had a theory that since leggy insects bothered me, I could handle slithery things like snakes and worms. This was my chance to prove it.
My plan of action was to get a piece of paper out of the printer, lay it down on the ground, and wait for the slug to creep its way onto it. It didn't take as long as you would think. The slug was actually pretty keen. Maybe because the piece of paper that I grabbed had a recipe for West African peanut soup on it, I don't know. Anyway, phase one of slug removal was completed. Phase two was to transport the slug paper through my bedroom, around my bed, through the hall, through the living room and out the front door. At first I thought I would wear gloves, but then I realized the thing about slugs is that they will cling to anything for dear life. Once that became evident, I did not worry about the slug sliding around onto anything, namely me.
Phase three was to put the slug outside, thereby releasing it into the wild and hopefully saving its life. This proved slightly more challenging due to the aforementioned slug grip on the paper. I tried to angle the paper so he would just slither off, but he kind of went into a ball of fear, so I just set the paper down outside the door and figured I'd check back later to see if he was gone. I then proceeded to accost my roommate in the middle of her getting ready for work with the tale of my heroic slug rescue. It went something like this: "Omi, there was a SLUG in my BATHROOM and I saved it! Me! I saved it!!!" Oh, the humility.
She was suitably impressed and wrinkled her nose at the prospect of the slug in the apartment. She, Savior of Spiders, is not so much a fan of the leg-lacking creepies. I told her I put the slug outside. She opened the door to go to work and saw the paper. Omi: "Why is there a recipe outside our door . . . OH. EW!"
We are a great team, don't you think?
Wild Gratitude
Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
And put my fingers into her clean cat's mouth,
And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens,
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
In everyone of the splintered London streets,
And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke's
With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude,
And his grave prayers for the other lunatics,
And his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry.
All day today—August 13, 1983—I remembered how
Christopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759,
For its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience.
This was the day that he blessed the Postmaster General
"And all conveyancers of letters" for their warm humanity,
And the gardeners for their private benevolence
And intricate knowledge of the language of flowers,
And the milkmen for their universal human kindness.
This morning I understood that he loved to hear—
As I have heard—the soft clink of milk bottles
On the rickety stairs in the early morning,
And how terrible it must have seemed
When even this small pleasure was denied him.
But it wasn't until tonight when I knelt down
And slipped my hand into Zooey's waggling mouth
That I remembered how he'd called Jeoffry "the servant
Of the Living God duly and daily serving Him,"
And for the first time understood what it meant.
Because it wasn't until I saw my own cat
Whine and roll over on her fluffy back
That I realized how gratefully he had watched
Jeoffry fetch and carry his wooden cork
Across the grass in the wet garden, patiently
Jumping over a high stick, calmly sharpening
His claws on the woodpile, rubbing his nose
Against the nose of another cat, stretching, or
Slowly stalking his traditional enemy, the mouse,
A rodent, "a creature of great personal valour,"
And then dallying so much that his enemy escaped.
And only then did I understand
It is Jeoffry—and every creature like him—
Who can teach us how to praise—purring
In their own language,
Wreathing themselves in the living fire.
-Edward Hirsch
This was new territory for me. I'll be the first to tell you that I'm a big wuss when it comes to creepy crawlies. I have genuine arachnophobia. The very sight of even a fake stuffed Halloween spider sends electric currents down my back. It's something about the legs that freaks me out. Ew, just writing about it gives me shivers. Okay. Deep breaths. So whenever the spiders find me--and they always do--my two options are to either drown them in Raid or alert my roommate, who, being the adult person that she is, will calmly handle the situation and take the spider outside to let it live and procreate and GAH GROSS!
Okay, enough with the spiders. Back to yesterday's slug. I felt instinctively that since I did not recoil at the sight of it, I was emotionally equipped to handle said slug disposal myself. I've always had a theory that since leggy insects bothered me, I could handle slithery things like snakes and worms. This was my chance to prove it.
My plan of action was to get a piece of paper out of the printer, lay it down on the ground, and wait for the slug to creep its way onto it. It didn't take as long as you would think. The slug was actually pretty keen. Maybe because the piece of paper that I grabbed had a recipe for West African peanut soup on it, I don't know. Anyway, phase one of slug removal was completed. Phase two was to transport the slug paper through my bedroom, around my bed, through the hall, through the living room and out the front door. At first I thought I would wear gloves, but then I realized the thing about slugs is that they will cling to anything for dear life. Once that became evident, I did not worry about the slug sliding around onto anything, namely me.
Phase three was to put the slug outside, thereby releasing it into the wild and hopefully saving its life. This proved slightly more challenging due to the aforementioned slug grip on the paper. I tried to angle the paper so he would just slither off, but he kind of went into a ball of fear, so I just set the paper down outside the door and figured I'd check back later to see if he was gone. I then proceeded to accost my roommate in the middle of her getting ready for work with the tale of my heroic slug rescue. It went something like this: "Omi, there was a SLUG in my BATHROOM and I saved it! Me! I saved it!!!" Oh, the humility.
She was suitably impressed and wrinkled her nose at the prospect of the slug in the apartment. She, Savior of Spiders, is not so much a fan of the leg-lacking creepies. I told her I put the slug outside. She opened the door to go to work and saw the paper. Omi: "Why is there a recipe outside our door . . . OH. EW!"
We are a great team, don't you think?
Wild Gratitude
Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
And put my fingers into her clean cat's mouth,
And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens,
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
In everyone of the splintered London streets,
And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke's
With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude,
And his grave prayers for the other lunatics,
And his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry.
All day today—August 13, 1983—I remembered how
Christopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759,
For its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience.
This was the day that he blessed the Postmaster General
"And all conveyancers of letters" for their warm humanity,
And the gardeners for their private benevolence
And intricate knowledge of the language of flowers,
And the milkmen for their universal human kindness.
This morning I understood that he loved to hear—
As I have heard—the soft clink of milk bottles
On the rickety stairs in the early morning,
And how terrible it must have seemed
When even this small pleasure was denied him.
But it wasn't until tonight when I knelt down
And slipped my hand into Zooey's waggling mouth
That I remembered how he'd called Jeoffry "the servant
Of the Living God duly and daily serving Him,"
And for the first time understood what it meant.
Because it wasn't until I saw my own cat
Whine and roll over on her fluffy back
That I realized how gratefully he had watched
Jeoffry fetch and carry his wooden cork
Across the grass in the wet garden, patiently
Jumping over a high stick, calmly sharpening
His claws on the woodpile, rubbing his nose
Against the nose of another cat, stretching, or
Slowly stalking his traditional enemy, the mouse,
A rodent, "a creature of great personal valour,"
And then dallying so much that his enemy escaped.
And only then did I understand
It is Jeoffry—and every creature like him—
Who can teach us how to praise—purring
In their own language,
Wreathing themselves in the living fire.
-Edward Hirsch
Monday, March 21, 2011
Poetry meet art. Art, poetry.
My dear friend Angela is coming to visit me in a couple weeks! I'm so excited to see her, it made me open a box of pictures that she had drawn for me one birthday. More than a few years ago, she illustrated some of my poems as a gift, and I had them framed and hanging on my wall in my old apartment. Since The Great Move of 2010, I haven't put them back up yet. I was trying to figure out why and I wonder if it's because I don't want to commit that much to this new place. I like the apartment okay, but it's just a place to live, not a home like the last one. Possibly this is because I haven't put up any pictures.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take photos of her artwork and post them here. At least I'll feel at home on my blog.
This one accompanies a poem written about a trip to Venice I took with my family. It's called "A Native's Dream":
I realize it might be hard to read, which makes me thankful for my shoddy photographic skills.
And finally this one you might be familiar with already:
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take photos of her artwork and post them here. At least I'll feel at home on my blog.
This one accompanies a poem written about a trip to Venice I took with my family. It's called "A Native's Dream":
This one is "Through the Keyhole," written at a particularly angsty time in college:
I realize it might be hard to read, which makes me thankful for my shoddy photographic skills.
And finally this one you might be familiar with already:
A Native's Dream
Rain ruined my first impression
of Saint Mark's Square, flooded
enough to force people to balance, elevated
on wooden boards while we sought refuge
in the cathedral, guarded
by bronze horses,
with my father, quite taken
by the mosaic tile floors
slanting toward the altar.
"How long do you suppose,"
he asked, head bowed,
"it took them to piece this place together?"
I forgot to answer
in awe of those flashing cameras.
We struck out again into December
toward jade-colored waves that spilled over
concrete docks on the Grand Canal.
Gondoliers stood in the wet drops like needles
and called to us, offering
special deals "for only today."
One young man in a black cap promised
in exchange for 80,000 lira
to wipe down the vinyl seats on his gondola himself.
My father agreed, making his familiar declaration
that this was "his city" because he came from
a full line of Venetians with trademark blue eyes, dark hair.
Our guide squinted his brown eyes and held out his hand.
We sat rocking in the boat under our huge umbrella,
the young man at the helm like a tired god
informing us that he was also a fireman. Luca
told my father how one could only be a gondolier
if he father was, and his father before him.
As we passed under the Bridge of Sighs,
the trail of my fingers swirled the canal like marble.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
I'm like that guy who wrote a love letter about his typewriter except about food.
Yesterday I gave a pasta-making demonstration to some people I work for. I was kind of nervous about it because I wanted to show them how to use their hands to mix the dough and not a food processor, which is something I've only done once but I think it tastes better. Yeah, I probably should have practiced, but I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal. Instead I went with talking about the process of making pasta and putting off actually making it for as long as possible. I figured maybe they would forget why I was there? I don't know. Anyway, it didn't work, and while they were looking at me expectantly I took the first step and measured out the flour. It's funny how something so simple can calm you down. Measuring flour I know. Cracking eggs? Old hat. Next came the tricky part of incorporating one into the other. You make a "well" and sort of pinch the flour into the eggs. As I was doing that I realized that I needed to be explaining as I went along. One of the people got out a video camera. My very own cooking show!
The thing about pasta as I've said before, is that it's not difficult to make really. It just takes a lot of time and upper body strength. Maybe I was more anxious about that last part, but as you knead the dough you think, wow I'm really earning this meal! And the great thing about teaching is that if you show them how to do it once, you can make the students do the rest of the work.
One of my "students" made an excellent point about the process of learning from a *cough cough* expert in a craft. It's a shared experience doesn't happen often enough these days. People teach themselves how to do things all the time using the internet or TV, but when another person takes the time to show you something, then you will always associate them with that process. What a nice idea.
All in all, we came out with two great batches of fresh pasta, one of which we ate for lunch. As the Barefoot Contessa would say,"How bad can that be?"
You Begin
You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.
Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.
This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.
Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.
This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.
It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.
-Margaret Atwood
The thing about pasta as I've said before, is that it's not difficult to make really. It just takes a lot of time and upper body strength. Maybe I was more anxious about that last part, but as you knead the dough you think, wow I'm really earning this meal! And the great thing about teaching is that if you show them how to do it once, you can make the students do the rest of the work.
One of my "students" made an excellent point about the process of learning from a *cough cough* expert in a craft. It's a shared experience doesn't happen often enough these days. People teach themselves how to do things all the time using the internet or TV, but when another person takes the time to show you something, then you will always associate them with that process. What a nice idea.
All in all, we came out with two great batches of fresh pasta, one of which we ate for lunch. As the Barefoot Contessa would say,"How bad can that be?"
You Begin
You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.
Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.
This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.
Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.
This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.
It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.
-Margaret Atwood
Monday, March 14, 2011
The error of my Wei
I was trying to find a poem I remembered reading a long time ago by the Chinese poet Wang Wei. The teacher who introduced him to me used to pronounce his name as if it sounded like "wrong way," which she thought was hilarious. It's been maybe 12 years since I last saw the poem, but the imagery struck me at the time. I even recall copying it into a notebook. I don't know where the notebook is now- probably rotting in a box full of angst-ridden verses- but I think this was it:
Stopping at Incense Storing Temple
I did not know the incense storing temple,
I walked a few miles into the clouded peaks.
No man on the path between the ancient trees,
A bell rang somewhere deep among the hills.
A spring sounded choked, running down steep rocks,
The green pines chilled the sunlight's colored rays.
Come dusk, at the bend of a deserted pool,
Through meditation I controlled passion's dragon.
Maybe it was the bell that got me. You all know I love a good bell ringing. Looking at this poem now, though, it's just not living up to the impression I had of it. Luckily, I stumbled onto the writings of the lovely Japanese poet Izumi Shikibu, which cheered me up. Despite lacking the heterography of Mr. Wang's name, I find her delightful.
Here's one for the people of Japan right now. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
“Although the wind ...”
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
Stopping at Incense Storing Temple
I did not know the incense storing temple,
I walked a few miles into the clouded peaks.
No man on the path between the ancient trees,
A bell rang somewhere deep among the hills.
A spring sounded choked, running down steep rocks,
The green pines chilled the sunlight's colored rays.
Come dusk, at the bend of a deserted pool,
Through meditation I controlled passion's dragon.
Maybe it was the bell that got me. You all know I love a good bell ringing. Looking at this poem now, though, it's just not living up to the impression I had of it. Luckily, I stumbled onto the writings of the lovely Japanese poet Izumi Shikibu, which cheered me up. Despite lacking the heterography of Mr. Wang's name, I find her delightful.
Here's one for the people of Japan right now. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
“Although the wind ...”
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
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