Robert Bly Sunday

The Night Abraham Called to the Stars

Do you remember the night Abraham first saw
The stars? He cried to Saturn: "You are my Lord!"
How happy he was! When he saw the Dawn Star,

He cried, ""You are my Lord!" How destroyed he was
When he watched them set. Friends, he is like us:
We take as our Lord the stars that go down.

We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.
We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel
The dirt flying out from behind our back claws.

And no one can convince us that mud is not
Beautiful. It is our badger soul that thinks so.
We are ready to spend the rest of our life

Walking with muddy shoes in the wet fields.
We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.
We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.

My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping
Abandoned woman by night. Friend, tell me what to do,
Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.

Joe Meno Saturday

"An apple could make you laugh: You are so charming. On our lunch, we find our way along the crowded boulevard. You stop abruptly and pluck two green apples from someone selling them on the street. You look at them and decide they are in love, these two apples. You make them whisper to one another. You make them dance: The kind of dances they do are dainty, spontaneous. At the end of the dancing, the apples get married in a little ceremony. After the two apples kiss, you and I laugh. It'll be okay going for the two apples, they will get on fine, anyone can tell. Together, we walk back to the office and hate each other for how easily we can laugh about this."

- "An Apple Could Make You Laugh"

True Story Friday

Over three years ago, I went on a date with a guy in Chicago who hated his job and had the same first name as my father. He'd previously Googled me and read all my poems and biographical notes. Throughout the date, I would start to say something about myself, and he would finish my sentence. I thought it was a good date overall, in the sense that I didn't do anything horribly embarrassing, and he laughed at my jokes.

Then a couple days later, I wrote him a jokey email. He wrote back to say we shouldn't see each other anymore because he thought I should get a bachelors degree. "Then some day I'll see your name in The New Yorker, and say to myself, 'I bought that girl a vegetarian platter.'"

Stop me if you've heard this one.

Last night, I went swimsuit shopping. No wait it gets worse.

On my way to meet Kendra, I tripped in a puddle on 1st Ave and landed on my ass in the street, in front of a cavalcade of bicyclists. I was wearing white. I cut a hole in the top of my foot the size of a nickel, and had to hobble to a bodega to buy Bandaids.

I found a poem Kendra wrote about me that I never knew was about me. When you read a poem about yourself, you feel like the most important person in the world for about five seconds.

New Yorkers, mark your calendars for August 29. Excellence promised, details forthcoming.

Autobiographical notes by special request

I tried doing this today. It is unbelievably hard. Are those veins popping in her neck or what?

The neighbors are having a party. It was "Play that Funky Music" a second ago, followed by "Super Freak." Has anyone else noticed that the bass line is the same as in "Can't Touch This?" When I was riding the Q this morning, "Under Pressure" came on my iPod just as the wall animation between DeKalb and the bridge started going, and it was like a moment of New York magic.

In college, I started wearing pink every day. I became known as The Pink Lady. I think it was a kind of armor, all that pink. I had a pink winter coat and a pink hat and a pink scarf and pink mittens. Now I have all these blue clothes. I wear blue every day. I don't know how it happened. Am I so embarrassed by my pink past? Why do I keep buying blue clothes? Do I even like/look good in blue?

The Kathryn A. Morton Prize or "There Must Be a Better Way"

I did not win this year's Kathryn A. Morton prize. I was not a finalist.

I received a letter from Sarabande Books, notifying me of the winner. At the top of the page is a handwritten "Thanks so much for your submission. Please try us again! :)" The emoticon, and the handwriting itself, suggest it was written by a 19 year old girl. The letter concludes, "Attached are a few comments by our first readers that might be of help as you continue in your publishing pursuits."

My first problem is that the entire poetry contest system is a quagmire. Dottie and I talked about this a few months ago, and neither of us could come up with a real alternative, but paying $25 to have your book read by a mystery reader who also has to read 200 ADDITIONAL MANUSCRIPTS (as they say in the letter) seems unreal. Is there seriously a person who can read two hundred manuscripts? Really seriously? Who are you? Come forward and teach me your secrets.

Here is a sample of the "comments" that should "help" me as I continue in my "publishing puruits."

"My very favorite manuscripts were capable of both play and insight, humor and strong emotion--preferably at the same time."

Insert second problem here: that sentence exactly describes what I believe my poems do. Maybe my third problem is that I am insane and a poor judge of my own work and someone should lock me in a tower.

"I found two styles most prevalent throughout the screening process: a tired, almost stubborn adherence to narrative, and an airy, ironic detachment, with a fleeting interest in any particular subject matter. I was always hoping I'd come across an engaging storyteller poet...but...that never happened."

"It's surprising to...think back and remember how many manuscripts didn't use figurative language, even within the opening stanzas!"

"While I admired the skill in many of these poems, I often found myself wishing that something more unexpected might have happened in the individual poems.

My standard was this: I chose only the manuscript that upset me because I had to send them away."

Did you have to read that sentence three times? Me, too. Singular/plural confusion! Oopsies!

I'm not mad I didn't win. I don't win things all the time. I just don't know how to get better at playing a game that feels similar to throwing darts at the face of a mountain.

I am much too busy to generate real content for this blog.

Hattie: im donig laundry today
me: oh little lady!
are you washing your underpants?
Hattie: if theres any in there
man
me: where do they go, hattie?
Hattie: in the trash bin
me: why do you throw your underwear in the trash bin?
Hattie: they're just dirty
me: WASH THEM
Hattie: or they dissappear
i wash them over and over again
and then they smell like mold from the bsaement
all of my clothes do
even if i take it outright away


Hattie: you have to stop saying those things like 'well see if you're fake" [in the play] cuz its making me go DIZZERY SPAZO
me: AWWWW
sorry buggy
don't go dizzery spazo
i'm just hard on you because of my fierce love
Hattie: its sooo fierce
me: HAHAHA
ok, should i just tell you how wonderful you are all the time?
Hattie: yeah seriously
you have the ability to control my self confidence
me: you're the best little actress i've ever seen!
your eyes are like dinner plates!
Hattie: oh gross!
me: emotional dinner plates!

Hattie: you were in my dream last night
me: did i look thin and fabulous?
Hattie: yeah
but you weren't running with me on the express way marathon
i was running like all day
and every now and then some cars would drive by
but we were on the expressway
me: hmm
Hattie: you were back at the hotel/college
runing felt so god
good
me: so it wasn't a nightmare
Hattie: well it got frusterating
we both were suppossed to hang out with ben but oculdn't get a hold of him
but then a plane held down a sign that said he made a commericial for me and this girl wilma
so i go back to college to see this girl wilma and its not a commercial it's a sign or something
and i started waking up and couldn't read anything and i wanted to read it sooo bad
it was one ofthose things where for every sentance a letter was underlined and it spelled something out at the end
and then i went to drew's banquet of life
and there were slitherin snakes who acted like dogs
and i got distracted and got into a nightmare esque shennanigan with these pets
when i came back they only had desrts and dad got mad
and you were in there someow
me: wow
you have a vivid memory
Hattie: yeah
the poster was green! bens handwriting looked slightly arabic
me: HAHHAHAHA
he looks slightly arabic
Hattie: umm
he looks just like aladdin

COST by Roxana Robinson

"Julia had thought vaguely about her future, but only vaguely, and only up to a certain point. Everything was meant to get better, wasn't it? That was how you planned your life, looking ahead, toward improvement. It was easy to imagine yourself older: white-haired, spry, entertaingly outspoken, freed from convention. But not really old--incapacitated, mind gone, body failing, unable to care for yourself. How were you to plan for that? No one wanted to reach that place."

It's the final countdown

I have another Bible post up at the Book Bench.

Tonight: make last meerkat costume, scrub kitchen floor. If anxious, probably clean bathroom also.

Tomorrow: two classes and two recitals, empty cubby and bring costumes back to Ditmas, then probably drink and admire my kitchen floor.

Quoting myself

"When you’re feeling especially heartbroken or confused or vengeful, poetry gives you something to do besides jumping into a river and hoping whoever hurt you finds your body."

- There's an interview with me + 3 new poems in the June issue of The Scrambler

What have you memorized?

Poems I've got: "Jabberwocky," "Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony," "I carry your heart with me," "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why," and Helena's soliloquoy "How happy o'er others some can be." I used to have a lot of To be or not to be, but I think most of it's gone.

Also: the entire text of Where the Wild Things Are, a monologue about silence from Cigarettes and Chocolate by Anthony Minghella, probably hundreds of musical theater and art form songs. I can never remember the lyrics to pop songs, though. I thought Werewolves in London was Where was your thunder? for literally years.

Six reasons this may be the best New Yorker ever (shameless self promotion post)

The Dan Clowes cover includes an alien who, like yours truly, would never touch a Kindle, even post-apocalypse; there is a poem by Sherman Alexie that begins "Here's a fact: Some people want to live more / Than others do"; Louis Menand defines creative writing workshops: "The workshop is...an unscripted performance space, a regime for forcing people to do two things that are fundamentally contrary to human nature: actually write stuff (as opposed to planning to write stuff very, very soon), and then sit there while strangers tear it apart"; the lovely Ada Limon has a lovely poem; R. Crumb's Book of Genesis is excerpted for the first time by anyone anywhere, and I interviewed Pete Poplaski, his cartoonist comrade in the trenches of epic movie-watching, about the visual resources required to put faces on all those begats.