$60,000 grant for poetry

Wow! Talk about a poetry grant! I am moving to Canada. Looks like they pay their poets quite well!

$60,000 federal grant funds profesor's body-pollution poetry
By Erica Bajer QMI Agency

A Brock University professor has received $60,000 in federal funds to write poetry about the impact of environmental chemicals and other invaders on his body.

Over the next three years, Adam Dickinson will find out what chemicals, bacteria and viruses have accumulated inside of him.

The 37-year-old associate professor of English language and literature was awarded the grant in the category of research/creation in the fine arts from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, a federally funded program.

Dickinson's funding was announced as part of more than $900,000 granted to Brock researchers for economic, social and cultural projects.

The professor will be tested for such things as mercury, lead, bisphenol A (a chemical used to make plastic), pesticides, the West Nile virus, the superbug methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus and the feline parasite toxoplasma gondii.

He'll use his experiences being tested and the findings to pen poetry that explores how the human body is impacted by the world of synthetic chemicals.

"This is an art project," he said of the $60,000 grant, which will culminate in a book called Anatomic.

Medical Bankruptcy

And in other political news (from HuffPo:)

As the economic recovery remains slow, many Americans have found that basic payments have suddenly become unaffordable.

Those payments include medical bills, which increasingly are pushing Americans into personal bankruptcy, the New York Times reports. About a fifth of people seeking financial counseling this year and last said debt related to medical bills was their main reason for deciding to enter bankruptcy -- up from as low as 12 percent in the previous two years -- according to counseling agency CredAbility, the NYT reports.

I remember someone saying in poetry group the other day that they thought medical was the number one cause of bankruptcy. Looks like it is heading that way. And many on the right and the Tea Party don't think we need health coverage. I think we need to catch up with the rest of the civilized world, and have Universal coverage.

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Rick Perry Gay?

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I liked this poem from yesterday's Poetry Daily:


Y

Perhaps it's a thread that needs to be pulled,
a single stitch caught in the crux.

Whole word in French and Spanish,
vertical axis of Cartesian three

loaning its fragile branch to a boy
in theory. On y va. Let's go There.

What happens to unrepaired sequences
in subsequent generations? Semivowel,

blown umbrella, arrow reversed in wind,
frizzy blot of genetic code directing the symphony

of a trillion sperm, a single Y ... might fold over,
line up these similar patches of genetic sequence,

and then accidentally delete everything
that lies in between. Je est un autre.

If the face is a christening in flesh,
the boy of him is its opposite,

raising the tent of bones in which
he will harbor all the starry anomalies

that a knowledge of God cannot undo.


LESLIE ADRIENNE MILLER
Antioch Review
Summer 2011

The Joy of Cooking

I recently started a subscription to One Story. It's this cool literary magazine, where for one dollar per issue, you get one short story (in small, offset, saddle-stapled chapbook form), written by a new or established writer, mailed to you every 3-4 weeks. My first issue was "The Joy of Cooking" by Elissa Schappell, and it was a hoot, such a good read. I am thinking of doubling down and extending my subscription to two years.

In "The Joy of Cooking" a mother is trying to explain a "family recipe" to her daughter over the telephone, bringing up the entire family history of love, divorce, anorexia, sibling rivalry, etc, in the process. There is tight, funny, heartrending dialogue (both spoken and interior), and the story just zips along (after all it's the length of a phone call/recipe).

Highly recommended. Check out the One Story website here.

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I've also just finished reading The Hypnotist, by Lars Kepler. It is supposed to be the next in line in the Swedish Crime/Thriller genre, in the vein of Steig Larrson's Millennium Trilogy. The author's name is actually a pseudonym for the husband-wife team who wrote the book (it's their first collaboration). It's uneven, but definitely worth the read. The chapters are very short, 3-4 pages long for the most part, and the story moves at a rapid clip, until in the middle of the book there is a 80-100 page extended flashback (almost a novella in its own right). At first I was annoyed at the change of pace, but in my opinion it totally works, lending depth and dimension to the characters and plot. My favorite scenes are the ones that take place in group therapy, with the hypnotized subjects appearing as if underwater, with bubbles coming out of their mouths and seaweed and sea creatures floating by. An image that returns to great effect in the stunning finale. Check it out!

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from a brief article by Ray Waddle in The Tennessean:

Poetry feeds the soul, people say. What on earth does that mean? Poetry offers what a soul hungers for in times of stress and bewilderment — precision, alertness to beauty and poverty, fury, honesty, renewal.

Society now is networked, connected, stressed. We elect politicians to fix government, and Washington is now more impotent than ever.

A culture that still respects the silent spaces needed for poetry (or walking or praying) still believes in the soul, its desire for adventure, its power to transform individuals and even public life. It sounds absurd to say poetry can save the republic. It’s outrageous enough, these days, to be true.

Columnist Ray Waddle is a former Tennessean religion editor who lived in Nashville 20 years. Now based in Connecticut, he can be reached at ray@raywaddle.com.

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It sounds a little hokey, but I believe it, and agree with it.

Torn Calf

It's nice to know I am a classic case. But did they have to use the words "middle aged male tennis player?"

Gastrocnemius strains
Calf strains are most commonly found in the medial head of the gastrocnemius [3]. This injury was first described in 1883 in association with tennis and is commonly called tennis leg [6]. The classic presentation is of a middle-aged male tennis player who suddenly extends the knee with the foot in dorsiflexion, resulting in immediate pain, disability, and swelling. Pain and disability can last months to years depending on the severity and effectiveness of initial treatment [1].

Hobbling around for now. Hope I can drive soon . . . eeesh. Next time I am letting that high overhead smash go.