Tim Hardaway Says He Hates Gays?

Sounds like somebody has "issues?"
You know, it is usually the most homophobic who have something to hide, something they are personally ashamed of, or resisting. Poor Tim.
Funny, I always thought he was one of us.

http://sports.aol.com/nba/story/_a/tim-hardaway-says-he-hates-gay-people/20070215002909990001?cid=2365

What They Said

I think this picture and poem go together nicely. Can you guess who wrote the poem? A special prize to the first who can (no googling, though I am not sure it will help).



What They Said

: After I am dead, darling,
my seventeen senses gone,
I shall love you as you wish,
no sex, no mouth, but bone —
in the way you long for now,
with my soul alone.

: When we are neither woman nor man
but bleached to skeleton —
when you have changed, my darling,
and all your senses gone,
it is not me that you will love:
you will love everyone.


*

What'cha Doin' Tuesday Night?

I'll be here:

Open Books:
Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 07:30 PM
REBECCA LOUDON & RON STARR

from the OB website:
"We are happy to host two poets with books recently published by Edmonds-based Ravenna Press. Radish King ($13.95) is Rebecca Loudon's deliciously dark and darkly hilarious collection. Things domestic go seriously wrong -- "She's ready to go it alone, more than ready / having tired of and tidied her family, / having sewed her daughter, her son, into waterproof coats." The poems are dreamily menacing, permeated with a sort of courtship of threat and sex. "I want to hurt you in a Rock Hudson Doris Day kind of way." And where else will you find a poem like "Everyone's Favorite Holiday Suicide: A Letter in which Violet Bick Addresses George Bailey for the Last Time," ending (we're sorry to give it away, but we're compelled), "I hope more than anything you just have the courage to jump." She is also the author of the fever-dreamish book Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home, mentioned in our December 2006 newsletter.

Ron Starr's inventive book, A Map by a Dim Lamp ($12.95), flows from the belief held by Oulipo, the French experimental writing group, that form is freeing, and that new forms must constantly be created. Mr. Starr, in "Luther's Narrow Road," replaces some of the words in Basho's classic haiku with those from a Martin Luther essay, resulting in poems such as, "An offense / has settled on a bare Christ -- / autumn evening." Sharp intelligence, humor, close attention to the details of rhythm and sense, and a fascination with religious texts allow his writing to spark on various levels, including the baroque/modern oddness of its structures. Another example: one section of his "Creation Myths of the Latter Urbanites" starts, "In the beginning green grass created happiness and envy. The expressways were without Fords and Volvos, and dusk was upon the fences of the domiciles...." This promises to be a quirky and dynamic evening.

The Devil’s Dictionary of Poetic Schools & Movements

. . . or, my afternoon with the anagram machine:

Beat Poetry: A Petty Bore
Black Mountain Poets: I’m Ant on a Slop-Bucket
Cavalier Poetry: Procreative Lay
Concrete Poetry: Type One Correct
Confessional Poetry: So Openly Fornicates
Dada Poem: A Mad Dope
Deep Image Poet: Emptied Apogee
Dramatic Poem: Riot Made Camp
Epic Poetry: Type Copier
Feminist Poetry: I’m Fine, So Pretty
Georgian Poets: Sage on Ego-Trip
Harlem Renaissance: Charmless Inane Era
Imagist Poetry: A Grey Optimist
Language Poetry: Ugly, Ornate Page
Lost Generation: Intolerant Egos
Magical Realism: Lacrimal Images. Liar’s Mega Claims
Medieval Poetry: Morality Peeved
Metaphysical Poetry: Hypocrite’s Playmate
Modernism: More Minds
Narrative Poem: Private Moaner
Nature Poetry: No Rapture Yet
New York School: Clowny Hookers
Oulipo Poetry: Lie to Your Pop. Pool Your Tripe
Parnassian Poetry: Noisy Rants Appear
Pastoral Poem: Tame Proposal
Post-Avant Poetry: A Vast, Petty Porno
Post-Modern Poetry: Dopey Rotten Romps. Soppy or Tormented?
Romantic Poetry: Impotency or Art?
School of Quietude: O! Foul Discotheque
Spiritual Poetry: Popularity Tires
Surrealism: Murals Rise
Surrealist: Surest Liar
Symbolist Poetry: Pity, Mostly Sober
Transcendentalism: Star-Sent Mind Lance

Form of Prozac approved for anxious dogs
BLOOMBERG NEWS, WASHINGTON -- A variation on Eli Lilly & Co.'s depression pill Prozac can now be used to help dogs cope with the anxiety of being separated from their owners.
The product, to be sold under the name Reconcile, is designed to help quell panic attacks and bad behavior that separation anxiety can cause. The chewable drug should be used in conjunction with behavior modification, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday in a notice on the agency's Web site.

And let the record show that Anna Nicole Smith is believed to be the first person to prescribe doggy prozac, when she fed her dog a pill during her 2002 reality TV show.

I'm reading Justin Chin's Gutted and enjoying it a lot. The greater part of the book is a long poem titled "Gutted" (about 100 pages) that is based on the Japanese zuihitsu, a kind of "formless form" that uses diary entries, lists, quotations, observations, commentaries, fragments. It covers a lot of territory: a father's illness, airplane travel, SARS and other epidemics, childhood music lessons, the number 12, all possible ways of dying, to name a few things. I think the "gutted" of the title can be read as a gutted fish, spilling one's guts, but also gutting it out, surviving.

Here's a couple poems (sorry I can't get the formatting quite right, some of the lines in "portamento" cascade nicely):

(portamento)


Her piano teacher, she said, told her to keep playing
even if mistakes were made.

                                Mine, however, kept
a half-foot wooden dressmaker’s ruler hovering
above the hands on the keys, ready to strike
misfingerings,
           miscues, wrong notes,
                                 unmusic.   Fingers
                                                    being as fingers are,
mistakes were made.

We learned portamento;

just as our violin cousins in adjoining studios
learned vibrato;
                         under the crushing threat
imposed by needlenose pliers.

                       The music continued.

*


(Petit mal)

A little evil, a small illness.
Why does it sound like pastry?

And vaguely remembered incorrectly,
a euphemism for orgasm,
which is neither evil nor ill.

Is any evil so little, illness so small
that it ceases to be wicked and ill?

Oh, now I see what it does to a body.

Yes, it is evil. Small is relative.
Illness all.



I see Gutted has been nominated for a Lammy. Good news. I think it's a wonderful book.

Yowza

Really fun poetry group last night. We toasted the new book, and laughed and talked and ate and carried on. Good poems all around: hungry hearts, anagrams, visitations by foxes and birds, lying photographs, and a dog blissfully chasing his own tail. It's such a good group: I am so thankful for them all.

from today's AWAD:

umbrage (UHM-brij) noun

1. Offense or annoyance arising from some insult.

2. Shade, as from a tree.

3. A vague suggestion or a feeling of suspicion.

[From Latin umbra (shade, shadow), which also gave us the words
umbrella, adumbrate, and somber.]

*

It gives new meaning to "giving shade" doesn't it?

Cold and drizzly this morning. I need to get going to work. I just realized I am in clinic and/or on call for the next 13 days. Egads. How did this happen? Who can I fire? hahaha. But seriously, I often get a lot done when I am busy like this, and tend to waste my time when I really don't have much scheduled. So, go figure.

*
Reading Justin Chin's Gutted, which is fascinating and entertaining. More on that later.

*

Also reading In Posse submissions, and have found a number of lovely poems so far.

*

Looking forward to the ASU Desert Nights Rising Stars Writing Conference. I'll have a small group, a workshop on Word Play, a panel on balancing Writing and Work (haha), and a reading with Laurie Notaro and Tony Hoagland. I'm really excited to read as it will be the debut of the new book, which will make it out just in time for the conference. Looking foward to seeing Richard Siken and Carolyn Forche, as well. Yeehaw!

The "Publican Party"

In response to Bush repeatedly referring to the Democratic Party as the "Democrat Party," Jim St. John of Kirkland, in the letters section of today's PI, has a great comeback: referring to the Republicans as the "Publican Party." It's a name that truly fits (see below).

"Years ago, as a retort I began referring to the "Publican Party," using a biblical term referring to privatized tax collection businesses contracted by the Romans to extract abusive amounts of money from their colonial victims. Publicans were widely reviled in Israel as cowardly traitorous tools of a wealthy conquering empire. Likewise, I regard our modern Publican Party as the traitorous tool of greedy corporatists and a military machine that has an insatiable lust for the money of average folks who pay the bills."

*

Had a great time on Whidbey, despite the gray rainy weather. A lovely house overlooking Useless Bay. The two cats Spencer and Gracie suitably curious about the guests. Great discussion over lunch about all things poetry: confessionalism, the use of the private vs. the personal, how best to read one's work (monotone, inflected, dramatic), Richard Howard and the color red, William Matthews and red wine, "reviews" vs "criticism," the non-fiction poem, the poem series, the book-length poem, research and poetry, the trials and tribulations of teaching/academia, MFA programs, new books, old favorite books, and more. A yummy chicken and white bean soup. Orange salad with red onion, olives, and balsamic viniagrette. Two kinds of dessert including birthday cake. Such fun. We should do this more often.

Finished doing my taxes today. It is always odd to have to consider, for IRS purposes, whether the poetry thing I do is a "profession" (meaning the income counts as self-employment) or just a "hobby." Though one hardly makes much money with poetry, I resent it being the primary measure by which it might be declared a "hobby." And not one of the most important things in my life.

Off to Whidbey Island today with a very good friend, to visit a dear old friend and teacher, and bring her a copy of the new book. I am sure she will be tickled pink to see it.

Speaking of Pears/Pairs

Things have been coming in twos again. It seems to happen a lot in medicine. Has anyone else ever noticed this at work?
This week I've had two cases of 5th metatarsal fracture, two schizophrenic Samoans, two children with high fever reactions to immunizations (one required hospitalization), and two cases of BOOP, Bronchiolitis Obliterans Organizing Pneumonia (just the name sounds awful enough, doesn't it?).
BOOP is really uncommon (one patient thought the hospital told him he had "poop" in his lungs, haha), and so to have two patients with it at the same time is a little odd. And they were like dopplegangers of each other, each one arriving for his followup visit carrying the same style of portable oxygen case, wearing nasal prongs, and his face puffy from steroids.

*

From today's Poetry Daily.

Description of a Pear on a Pewter Dish

But pears prove to be impossible to describe.
—Czeslaw Milosz


See the blue there shadowed
beneath the yellow’s gloss.

That blue is the sky
within the cutis of the pear.

At night this sky grows dark
and unfolds a crust of distant stars.

It is these pale fires within its skin
that give the pear its taste of heaven.


Young Smith
Beloit Poetry Journal
Winter 2006-2007

Molly Ivins: RIP

I loved reading her columns. She was so good at skewering politics and politicians. She was always such a breath of fresh air. ANd from the good state of Texas no less.

—"Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other."

— "The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy."

— "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war," Ivins wrote in the Jan. 11 column. "We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!' "