Poetry Lunch

Had a nice poetry lunch at Elliott Bay Books yesterday with my friend John Wright. He is a retired endocrinologist, who began writing poetry at age 58, and now has three books of poems. We had vegetarian chili, and talked about the difference between anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism, and wondered why so many of the younger generation of poets have no nature and no autobiography in any of their poems.


Praise

This quiet elation that comes, finally,
at seventy-one

— I no longer envy the snow birds
their flying south

and this year winter solstice comes
without the slightest longing for light —

It's something akin to a leaf-bare maple.
Its upraised limbs.


* from As Though Praying: poems from Decatur Island
Bluestone Books, 2002

Snow!

We woke up this morning to find it had snowed in the night. Hadn't expected it at all. I love how it muffles all the sounds. I know it won't last, but it's beautiful right now.

later . . . actually not so beautiful here: traffic is in a knot all over town, with spinouts and crashes everywhere, the 99 tunnel blocked, I-5 a mess. I made it to the hospital for rounds, but I'm not sure I'll be able to get to clinic anytime soon. Rather than fight the traffic, I have stopped for a coffee, and to just sit for a while and enjoy the morning. Ahhhhh . . . .

PS: It's nice that practically the whole city of Seattle is one big WIFI hotspot.

Paper & Personality

It's been a busy week. We are in the midst of "Going Live" with an electronic medical records system for our clinics here in Seattle. Between now and Mid-April we'll be turning the system on, one week at a time, over each of eight sites. After months of prep work, and training of "Superusers," I hope it all goes smoothly. (fingers crossed!)

Though I'm looking forward to going electronic, part of me is going to miss the old paper chart, with it's handwritten med list and problem list and progress notes, its little sticky-note reminders stuck here and there and all over, the stapled medical coupon or insurance card copy, the colored dividers for labs and consults and outside records, the creased and torn spine, how after a while when it got too full of stuff it would just fall apart in your hands. I really will miss it. The paper chart had a personality. If a patient called the nurse with a question, and I wasn't exactly sure who they were, one look at the paper chart, and bingo, I could picture the exact patient in my mind. I am just not sure that will be the case with an electronic chart. They are all going to look the same. Alas.

Anyway. I've been on call all week, and it has been fairly steady. Lot's of newborns, as usual. Seven so far. Three by C-section. I miss doing OB, but not enough to start doing it again. Besides, the midwives to a great job, and I still get to attend on all the babies. And it's the funnest part of being on call: examining the newborns, talking with the new parents, sending them off happy.

Clinic has been busy as well. Wednesday starting off with my least favorite kind of visit to see on my schedule: "New Patient. Wants Pain Meds." Sometimes it's a legitimate problem. But too often it is someone merely seeking drugs. And it is often not a pleasant encounter, especially since I usually say NO.

I liked this one

from Poetry Daily the other day:

Results


1.

Click here to vote
on who's ripe
for a makeover

or takeover

in this series pilot

Votes are registered
at the server
and sent back

as results.



2

Click here to transform

oxidation
into digestion.

From this point on,
it's a lattice
of ends
disguised as means:

the strangler fig,

the anteater.



3

I've developed the ability
to revise
what I'm waiting for

so that letter
becomes dinner
gradually

while the contrapuntal
nodding
of the Chinese elm leaves

redistributes
ennui


Rae Armantrout
jubilat
Number 11

Goldfish

  

They say a goldfish has
only a three-second memory.

What I wouldn't give for that.

Home Visit

This I Believe

A terrific essay read on NPR tonight, by Gregor Orr. Check it out here.

The Weeping Cherry

  

What I've been reading lately:

American Family Physician (it's free, online, and searchable). Featuring "Chronic Plaque Psoriasis" and its treatment, including pictures!

Families, Systems, & Health: The Journal of Collaborative Family Health Care. Including an essay by Johanna Shapiro entitled "Poetic License: Writing Poetry as a Way for Medical Students to Examine Their Professional Relation Systems." Heady stuff.

Literature and Medicine. It's a journal out of Johns Hopkins, with academic articles on a subject near and dear to my heart. My favorite one this issue: "Interventional Narratology: Form and Function of the Narrative Medical Write-Up" by James Hunter Wood.

The Hypochondriac's Pocket Guide to Horrible Diseases You Probably Already Have, Dennis Diclaudio. This was really silly, and really funny, if it weren't so true.

A Little Book of Hangover Cures, Alex Benady. I ordered this from England. In it you can learn about the "Puerto Rican Faith Cure" and the "Prairie Oyster Cure." Among other fascinating and hilarious "treatments."

Alcoholica Esoterica, Ian Lendler. I heard his interview on NPR and had to get this one. Full of fun facts. I'd love to get a poem out of it.

Eunoia, Chritian Bok. I finally got this after Ron's and Kathleen's posts about it. And it doesn't disappoint. I especially loved the short poems under "Vowels" that were anagrammatic texts of the letters in the title. Here's an excerpt:


Vowels

loveless vessels

we vow
solo love

we see
love solve loss

else we see
love sow woe

selves we woo
we lose


Cut Off the Ears of Winter, Peter Covino. I first heard him at last year's AWP, and finally got around to finishing this book. "Box of Broken Things" is just devastating. A brutally honest poem after the death of his abusive father. Start there.

Some Ether, Nick Flynn. This came out in 2000, and I missed it back then. What a wonderful book. The suicide of his mother, which occurred when he was just a boy, informs one whole section, and many of the rest of the poems. And they are riveting poems. I wonder if this life event will continue to inform his work (how could it not?), the way Greg Orr's accidental shooting of his brother has continued to inform his work. Here's a sample poem:


You Ask How

& I say, suicide, & you ask
how & I say, an overdose, and then
she shot herself,
& your eyes fill with what?
wonder? So I add, in the chest,
so you won't think
her face is gone, & it matters somehow
that you know this...

& near the end I
eat all her percodans, to know
how far they can take me, because
they are there. So she
won't. Cut straws
stashed in her glove compartment,
& I split them open
to taste the alkaloid residue. Bitter.
Lingering. A bottle of red wine
moves each night along
as she writes, I feel too much,
again & again. Our phone now

unlisted, our mail
kept in a box at the post office
& my mother tells me to always leave
a light on so it seems
someone's home. She finds a cop
for her next boyfriend, his hair
greasy, pushed back with his fingers.
He lets me play with his service revolver
while they kiss on the couch.
As cars fill the windows, I aim,
making the noise with my mouth,
in case it's them,

& when his back is hunched over her I aim
between his shoulders blades,

in case it's him.


Also reading the latest Red Mountain Review, Gettysburg Review, and New England Review. But mostly just the poetry.

There's Fever in the Funkhouse Now

Rolling Stones, live in concert in Rio, right now, right here.How do Mick and his guys do it? OMG.


It's Only Rock & Roll (But I Like It)

If I could stick my pen in my heart
I'd spill it all over the stage
Would it satisfy ya or would slide on by ya?
Or would you think this boy is strange?
Ain't he strayayange?
If I could win you
if I could sing you
a love song so divine.
Would it be enough for your cheating heart
If I broke down and cried? -
If I criyiyied.

I said I know
it's only rock and roll
But I like it.
I said I know
it's only rock and roll
But I like it
like it
yes I do.

If I could stick a knife in my heart
Suicide right on the stage
Would it be enough for your teenage lust?
Would it help ease your pain?
Ease your brain
if I could dig down deep in my heart
Feelings would flood on the page
Would it satisfy ya
would it slide on by ya?
Would you think the boy's insane?
He's insayayane.

Mundo Portugues

If you can read Portuguese, I have an interview by Antonio Oliviera in the January issue of Mundo Portugues here. It's a Portuguese language magazine out of New York. Click on "SUMÁRIO do mês, Janeiro 2006 (Páginas 14 a 16 em formato PDF)." The title of the article is "O medico-poeta dos pobres," which I think means "A doctor-poet for the poor?" I can only understand about half of it. I like the pictures he used (~grin~).

  

In Posse Review 10th Anniversary Issue

The latest issue of In Posse Review is live now here. It includes a special "Seattle Slew" section, guest-edited by Susan Rich, featuring ten marvey Seattle-area poets:

Peter Aaron
Allen Braden
Kathleen Flenniken
Marjorie Manwaring
J.W. Marshall
Rosanne Olson
Peter Pereira
Derek Sheffield
Annette Spaulding-Convy
Molly Tenenbaum

I know, missing are Jeannine Hall Gailey (she has an interview with Brian Turner), Kelli Russell Agodon, Rebecca Loudon, Ron Starr, Lillias Bever, Ted McMahon, Jeff Crandall and many more. Hell, Seattle is a hot bed for good poetry right now. Check out In Posse Review, and enjoy this tastey home-cooked sampling.

Iman!

  

What a fun episode of Project Runway last night I squealed with delight when I heard Iman would be a guest judge. She is amazing. A DIVA. But where was the David?

My favorite, Nick, got the boot last week (boo-hoo!). Now there are only three left. Santino is annoying and conceited, but probably the most original of the remaining contestants. I like Chloe, but she always plays it way too safe (except for the dress made of leaves: wow!). My money is on Daniel to win.

Imagine doing a "Poetry Runway" show. Where the contestants are given a different challenge for a poem to write each week, then perform their new poem for a panel of famous poet judges. Each poem/poet gets critiqued on the spot by the panel, and each week one poet is eliminated. The winner gets money ($100k), a book deal with Knopf, six months of psychotherapy, and is named the "Poetry Runway Laureate" for a year. Now, wouldn't *that* be a fun show to watch?

The Death of Disco

I've been reading Charles Jensen's chapbook, Little Burning Edens, winner of the Red Mountain Review chapbook award. It's a fascinating exploration of gay love, night-clubbing, the specter of AIDS, coming of age in the era of HIV:

"The sidewalks at night
in our most beautiful cities
are fraught and nervous with tics
of dead canaries. The surly hustler in his laceup jeans
feels a chilly rush of feathers at his neck
where his john
has bitten the skin through . . ."

from "Canaries"


"Everyone at the Cock
throws salt over a shoulder
at the bar. The floor gritty with it,
becoming bleached . . .
. . .
There are dead boys
inside us right now. Our own lightless lips
are ashen, burned inside out.

And later, in bed, one man touches
another man's face. The ghosts inside them touch.
The worst kind of love."

from "Gotham"

I love how the title Little Burning Edens can be read on several levels: Our lives and loves are "burning" with desire, with passion; or, they are burning out, crashing and burning. Our lives and loves are "little," meaning impoverished, or, perhaps, they are a small piece of paradise on earth, a "little Eden," a garden refuge in the endless steel and glass and cement of the city.

And I admire the humor that comes through amid the pathos:

" . . . this world
is just so dirty

and officially, they say
it's death for disco."

from "Dirty World"

It's a lovely chapbook. Printed as the center section of Red Mountain Review. Get your copy now!

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In other news: a fascinating interview with Franz Wright in the current issue of Poets and Writers here.