Fascinating story about flowering bamboo. Apparently many species of bamboo are genetically programmed to flower and die in unison, over cycles that can be as long as 48 years. Plants from the same genetic line, even if they are continents apart, will all flower at the same time, and then die. In many parts of the world there are folk sayings that "when the bamboo flowers, death and destruction follow." There is some truth to this though, because as the bamboo forests die en masse, there is no source of wood for fuel and construction, the bare soil becomes eroded and floods and landslides occur, the rat population explodes to eat the bamboo flower seeds (which are apparently large and protein-rich). When the seeds are all gone, the rats then turn to eating the agricultural crops. Yowza. It's a mystery to scientists why bamboo forests would flower and die this way. A few of the theories:

1) The predator satiation hypothesis suggests that the mass flowering and seeding of the bamboo swamps predators with too many seeds to ensure some survive. 2) The plant competition theory suggests that under ideal circumstances bamboos maintain dominance over other vegetation in the areas in which they grow (see some of the extensive tracts of forests in India and China for excellent examples) and so to maintain that dominance, mass seeding carpets the ground with offspring and prevents other species from getting a foothold. 3) The fire cycle hypothesis, put forward by Keeley and Bond, that suggests that large scale death of flowered bamboos increases the chances of fire and the fire removes from competition any other plants.

Why does this fascinate me today? I don't know, exactly. But I want to work "flowering bamboo" into a poem.

What Sesame Street Character Are You?

. . . thanks Ivy . . .

You Are Bert

Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you loveable - even if you don't love them! You are usually feeling: Logical - you rarely let your emotions rule you You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil How you live your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others

The Sesame Street Personality Quiz

Woman dies after fall from moving vehicle on West Seattle Bridge

"Police found a black jacket, a pair of lavender sandals and an empty biscuit tray near the victim." This is just so disturbing . . .

I Want to Make a Poem out of This

Woman Hit By Lightning While Praying in Storm

DAPHNE, Ala. (May 29) - Worried about the safety of her family during a stormy Memorial Day trip to the beach, Clara Jean Brown stood in her kitchen and prayed for their safe return as a strong thunderstorm raged through Baldwin County.

Suddenly, lightning exploded, blowing through the linoleum and leaving a pockmarked area on the concrete. Brown wound up on the floor, dazed and disoriented by the blast but otherwise uninjured.

"I said, 'Amen,' and the room was engulfed in a huge ball of fire," she said. "I'm blessed to be alive."

Full story here.

Lemon and Olive Oil-Roasted Artichoke Quarters

  

I made this the other day, and it is really delicious! It's a lot of work cutting away all the parts of the artichoke you don't use, but the heart, roasted this way, is exquisite!

from Quick Cooking With Karin:
"Roasted artichoke hearts are an indulgence I savor when big, unblemished artichokes appear in my supermarket. The first "in-season" artichokes usually begin appearing in early February, with their peak months being March and April.

When I'm presented with perfect artichokes, I like to get to the "heart" of the matter, stripping off all of the tough outer leaves, removing the inner fuzzy choke, peeling the stem and cutting the hearts into quarters. Tossing the prepared artichokes in lemon juice keeps them from turning brown, but I like to use the lemon juice as a flavor component in my Lemon and Olive Oil-Roasted Artichoke Quarters.

Here, the artichokes are drizzled to your liking with olive oil, and are seasoned with coarse sea salt, ground black pepper and fresh thyme. Quartered garlic cloves infuse the oil with flavor, and the roasted cloves make yummy nibbles alongside the artichokes.

The artichokes are a wonderful addition to an antipasto platter, or can be served as a plated first course. At my house, they don't often make it to a plate or platter, as my family grabs them steaming hot right out of the Viking Sauté Casserole in which they're roasted.


Lemon and Olive Oil-Roasted Artichoke Quarters

4 unblemished artichokes
Juice from 1 medium-large lemon (about ½ cup)
Olive oil (about 3 tablespoons)
Sea Salt and Freshly ground black pepper
Fresh Thyme
3 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Remove tough outer leaves from artichokes. (Remove all leaves that are dark green, but do not remove leaves that are green at the top and yellow on the bottom.) Cut top of remaining leaves at the point where the green and yellow come together. Dip cut end in the lemon juice. Cut off bottom tip of stem, and peel away green layer of stem until white inner layer is exposed. Cut the artichokes in half and remove the inner fuzzy choke and any small prickly leaves. Slice in half again and toss with the lemon juice. Pour the artichokes and lemon juice in a casserole dish, drizzle with the olive oil, season with the salt, pepper and thyme and add the garlic. Stir and place in the preheated oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, stirring once during cooking.

Makes about 6 appetizer servings."

  

I Wish I'd Written This Poem

Goldsboro Narrative #27

The dark and heavy coat she always wore hid
From her as much as anyone

What grew her belly out one thought at a time.

And she who did not know her body,
Who was surprised to feel it

Created with some boy she'd barely met,

Ignored the word so much a shock
She was someone who used to be herself.

She was stunned as anyone to learn

A newborn was found inside
A trash bin, a trail winding it's way back to someone

We all thought we knew.


— Forrest Hamer, from Ploughshares 32:1 edited by Kevin Young


I love the density of the language and images. And I love the daring subject matter, how compassionately it is explored. And the shock of the line break: "A newborn was found inside/a trash bin." This small poem conveys so much information, but doesn't tell us everything, leaves a fair amount of the mystery intact. It reminds me a little of Edgar Lee Masters' epitaph poems in The Spoon River Anthology. I really wish I had written this.

Happy Memorial Day

In honor of this day (or is it a "Weekend?") I'd like to share this poem from Mary Karr, about remembering someone . . .


Delinquent Missive

Before David Ricardo stabbed his daddy
sixteen times with a fork — Once
for every year of my fuckwad life — he'd long
showed signs of being bent.
In school, he got no valentine nor birthday
cake embellished with his name.
On Halloween, a towel tied around his neck
was all he had to be a hero with.
He spat in the punchbowl and smelled like a foot.
His forehead was a ledge
he leered beneath. When I was sent to tutor him
in geometry, so he might leave
(at last) ninth grade, he sat running pencil lead
beneath his nails.
If radiance shone from those mudhole eyes,
I missed it. Thanks, David
for your fine slang. You called my postulates
post holes; your mom endured
ferocious of the liver. Plus you ignored —
when I saw you wave at lunch —
my flinch. Maybe by now you're ectoplasm,
or the zillionth winner of the Texas
death penalty sweepstakes. Or you occupy
a locked room with a small
round window held fast by rivets, through which
you are watched. But I hope
some organism drew your care — orchid
or cockroach even, some inmate
in a wheelchair whose steak you had to cut
since he lacked hands.
In this way, the unbudgeable stone
that plugged the tomb hole
in your chest could roll back, and in your sad
slit eyes could blaze
that star adored by its maker.

— Mary Karr, from Sinners Welcome

How To Throw a Poem

  


First wedge the poem by kneading against a hard surface. Pat the poem into a round form, ready for centering. Center the poem on the page, and mold it roughly into a shape. Make the initial depression in the poem. Wet your hands and start to form the lines by turning the page at a steady rate. Never touch the poem unless the page is spinning. Pull out the lines. Grip the sides and begin to form a stanza. Bring up the margins and thin out the stanzas using left and right hands. Continue to raise and thin out, giving a shape to the poem. Form the belly. Form the neck. Use collaring to squeeze and smooth out the neck. Cut out any uneven rhyme. Refine the lines and the phrasing. Finish the lower curve (note how the left hand is steadying the right hand). Remember: the most pleasing poem is not necessarily a perfect poem. It can take years to learn to get the imperfection just right. When you have shaped the poem the way you like, remove it carefully from the page. A sharp wire string is ideal for this. Quickly and evenly bring it toward you while the page is spinning. Allow the poem to dry thoroughly before firing it. Then apply a layer of glaze to give your poem a finished look.



(for Michelle G)

Ekiwah Means Warrior

One of the highlights of the Skagit River Poetry Festival was meeting and reading with Ekiwah Adler Belendez. He's a poetry prodigy out of Mexico, bilingual English-Spanish, who had his first book of poems published at age twelve. He has cerebral palsy, and recently had spinal surgery, and is wheel-chair bound. You can read more about him here. Before I met him, I was skeptical; after meeting him, I was won over by his poems, his wisdom, and his reading voice.

Here is a poem he wrote at age 15 or 16, before going in for spinal surgery, from his book The Coyote's Trace. I believe he said he dictated it to his father as he was under the influence of the pain medicine, and about to go under the knife:


White

I am in the white prison
of those with disjointed feverish limbs,
yet, when there is no noise
I become the white prison —
snow of white and clean ideas,
a white shark
in a sea of mercy.

Around me luminous hands
open a wound,
the metal they temper
makes the strongest sword.

I see an emerald fire in me,
in this sweet hour I discover
by being a still
single-minded snake,
I am the warrior.


NYC, December 16, 2003

California
— Blue, Joni Mitchell, 1971

Sitting in a park in Paris, France
Reading the news and it sure looks bad
They won't give peace a chance
That was just a dream some of us had
Still a lot of lands to see
But I wouldn't want to stay here
It's too old and cold and settled in its ways here
Oh, but California
California I'm coming home
I'm going to see the folks I dig
I'll even kiss a sunset pig
California I'm coming home

I met a redneck on a Grecian isle
Who did the goat dance very well
He gave me back my smile
But he kept my camera to sell
Oh the rogue, the red red rogue
He cooked good omelettes and stews
And I might have stayed on with him there
But my heart cried out for you, California
Oh California I'm coming home
Oh make me feel good rock'n'roll band
I'm your biggest fan
California, I'm coming home . . .

*

PS: Though "Levon" sucked this time, I pick Taylor to win.

Deviant Chic Ode

Saw The Da Vinci Code with Dean yesterday afternoon at Columbia City Cinema, a new movie house located in a restored old theater in the Columbia City neighborhood near our house. I have not read the book, so have no idea how it compares. But I enjoyed the movie, especially all the codes and anagrams and word-play that were part of the plot. But it's really not much more than a good made-for-TV movie. And a really good one, at that. My favorite character was the Grail history expert played by Ian McKellan: a great mix of erudite academic, gay sophisticate (with his conniving male butler), dirty old man and double crosser. My second favorite was the albino monk, though it was a little hard to watch his Opus Dei-fueled self-flagellation and scratchy thigh bracelet. Ow! Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou make an interesting couple in the lead roles, but jeez . . . could there have been less romantic tension between them? And the lukewarm hug at the end? I mean, if Jesus was human and had a child with Mary Magdalene; couldn't his heir at least get jiggy with a professor?

Home from the fest. Had a great time, and bought way too many books. More highlights:

Peggy Shumaker and Kesler Woodward presenting from Blaze, their collaboration of paintings and poems. Woodward's paintings of birch trees, their torn, wounded, sensuous, fragile bark, from all seasons, in Alaska, are amazing. And Peggy's poems paired nicely with them.
Linda Hogan reading from The Books of Medicines, a poem about her father being in a hospital ward, and hallucinatig that the doctor is reading from a magical book.
Sharing a panel with Elizabeth Austen on "Word Play and the Workplace:" her poems were stunning, and I had great fun sharing my word play stuff and medical poems, and a few that blended the two.
The "Poetry and Politics" panel with Kelly A and Allen Braden. Great audience participation with that.
Chatting with Carol and Geo about the strange and mysterious Indian cemetery across the Rainbow Bridge.
Sharing a burger and a glass of wine with Dean on the deck overlooking the Swinomish Channel, as the sun came back out, and boats drifted past.
Going to sleep at the guest house, listening to a chorus of frogs in the meadow pond sing us to sleep.
Delightful.

Skagit River Poetry Festival

Having a good time at the festival. My favorite moments so far:
The Writers in the Schools presentation Thursday evening: So nice to hear about their work with students the past year.
Jeff Crandall's amazing art exhibit at the Museum of Northwest Art. His hanging sonnets, one syllable on eac shard of glass, are amazing.
Sharing palindromes with Billy Collins. His: "I Love Me: Vol. I" Hehehehe.
Presenting with Ekiwah Adler Belendez and Pat Mora on Poetry as Medicine. Ekiwah is amazing: Only 18 years old, and wise beyond his years. A terrific reader of his poems. Like a reincarnation of Pablo Neruda.
Going to the "Real Men Write Poetry" presentation by Carlos Martinez, Allen Braden, and Tod Marshall. Great stuff. Especially enjoyed the goth high school student in the audience, with his black cat's ears, sipping mineral water from a silver goblet.
Lovely cocktail party at the home and garden of the Bruce's. Such gracious hosts!
Dinner with Kathleen Flenniken and her husband at Kerstin's. Great conversation, and good company. Yummmy!

more later . . .

Poetry Garden Martini

Went to the Jeannine Hall Gailey-Martha Silano reading at Open Books in Seattle last night. Wonderfully delightful to hear both of these poets whose work I know well. My favorite part of the reading (besides, the poems, of course) was to hear a quote from M.S. about Stanley Kuntiz' secret to longevity (from an interview in People Magazine, of all places): "Poetry, gardening, and martinis." I love it. A man after my own heart.

Looking forward to the Skagit River Poetry Festival this weekend. Check it out here. Presenting are: Billy Collins, Linda Hogan, Pat Mora, Ekiwah Adler Beléndez, and many many more . . . Come on down! LaConner is gorgeous in the Spring.