Webster's New Words 2007

1. agnolotti
2. Bollywood
3. chaebol
4. crunk
5. DVR
6. flex-cuff
7. ginormous
8. gray literature
9. hardscape
10. IED
11. microgreen
12. nocebo
13. perfect storm
14. RPG
15. smackdown
16. snowboardcross
17. speed dating
18. sudoku
19. telenovela
20. viewshed

My favorites are
nocebo: : a harmless substance that when taken by a patient is associated with harmful effects due to negative expectations or the psychological condition of the patient
ginormous: extremely large, humongous

New Search Begins for Amelia Earhart

NEW YORK (July 13) - Hoping modern technology can help them solve a 70-year-old mystery, a group of investigators will search a South Pacific island to try to determine if famed aviator Amelia Earhart crash-landed and died there.

Perhaps they will find those letters?

WWOTB reviewed in Eclectica

From a review of What's Written on the Body by Gilbert Wesley Purdy, in Eclectica magazine.

"There is an attractive poetry in What's Written on the Body. It is a poetry the tropes of which have only been available for the last forty or so years out of all of human existence, at least if one did not possess considerable wealth. It is poetry of affordable health care, electricity, gas, milk, magnolia trees. It is poetry with two weeks available for vacation package tours to Paris, weekends for Sea World, two hours for meditation class, crossword puzzles, anagrams, poems. It is easy to share in the sense of the beauty of our daily lives that Peter Pereira brings to his poems. A mere forty years might suggest that it is an impossibly evanescent poetry if it weren't for our astonishing technological expectations and our ability to service endless amounts of public and private debt."

It's a different kind of review, somewhat experimental, interspersed with quotes from my blog (oh my), things he found on google, and passages from his [the reviewer's] own journal. I think he was a little disappointed with the book, compared to Saying the World, but still found some interesting things to say, and a few poems to praise.

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Following His Hero, Man Takes to Skies

This is an amazing story. I think there is a poem here.



Attached to the lawn chair were 105 balloons of various colors, each 4 feet around. Bundled together, the balloons rise three stories high.

Destination: Idaho.

I *Heart* Michael Moore

"Absinthe, the spirit of imagination to many, and the devil incarnate to the U.S. government, is being approved on a case by case scenario by the Feds. Banned since 1910 due to unproved health dangers from the substance thujone, found in wormwood, an ingredient in absinthe, it has been the subject of controversy for centuries. Many folk tales and rites and rituals have grown around it and its supposedly hallucinogenic properties." More here and here.

"How to drink: Pour 1.25 - 1.5 oz of lucid into an appropriate glass. Place a sugar cube atop a flat, perforated spoon that rests on the rim of the glass. Using the sugar and spoon are optional. Slowly drip 4-5 oz of ice cold water on top of the sugar cube (or directly into the glass), which slowly dissolves into the Absinthe. The cold water causes lucid to louche ("loosh") into an opalescent cloud as the herbal essences emerge from the Absinthe and perfume the room."

"Lucid is formulated by world renowned absinthe expert T.A. Breaux, and is distilled in strict accordance to traditional French methods. lucid is crafted in the historic Combier distillery, founded in 1834 and designed by Gustave Eiffel in the fabled Loire Valley of France. Each bottle of lucid is carefully prepared by skilled craftsmen, using ancient copper absinthe alembics. Unlike most contemporary imitators, lucid is distilled entirely from spirits and European herbs, and uses no artificial additives, oils, or dyes. lucid recalls the rich tradition of Absinthe, and is crafted using a full measure of Grande Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), Green Anise, Sweet Fennel, and other fine European herbs traditionally used in making fine Belle Epoque absinthe."

White House Debates Iraq Pullout

From the NY Times article this morning.

It's about time.
Pull it out George. We've all been screwed enough.

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And in poetry news: this prize-winning German book of poems(written by an South African-born poet) sounds interesting.

"'I only started writing poetry around 1996. When I was at university I always used to laugh at these guys with their silly little poems in little books and magazines. But then my life really crash-landed when I was in Germany. . . . I discovered Raymond Carver [and] everything changed.'
" . . .In 2005 he was nominated for the DaimlerChrysler Award for Poetry; last year Tafelberg published his debut, for which he won the Eugène Marais Prize; now he’s in Holland taking part in Europe’s biggest poetry festival."

The "New" Seven Wonders of the World

. . . were announced today.
I have not yet been to see any of these live and in person. Sad but true. How about you?

Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer
Peru's Machu Picchu
Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid
China's Great Wall
Jordan's Petra
Italy's Colosseum in Rome
India's Taj Mahal.

Happy 7-7-7 Day!

I remember the last one, July 7th, 1977, very well. I was working as a fry cook at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Aurora Avenue in Seattle, the summer before my first year of college. It was a gorgeous morning. Sunlight was streaming through the front windows as I watched the waitress mix me a strawberry milkshake by hand (my breakfast).

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Sevens

I’m seeing sevens everywhere.
Not just sins, virtues, wonders, rolls
of the dice — but holes
in the head, castaways, dwarfs, naked-eye
planets. What does it mean? Notes
in a musical scale, colors of the rainbow,
the number of dirty words you
can’t say on the air. Most people
choose seven when asked for a number
between one and ten. No coincidence there are
seven nuclear powers, seven heavens, seven
spots on a ladybug wing. There’s Beckham,
Mantle, Bond. Seven Vivian Sisters, seven
points on a sheriff’s star. Yes, even Libra,
September, left field. Continents, seas, days.
Habits of the highly effective,
hills for a city, years to an itch.

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Poetry and Healing at Harborview

From an article by Carol Smith at the PI.

The poet laureate of Harborview steps back and admires his handiwork -- a box tacked to the wall of the ICU waiting room. He stuffs it with a sheaf of poems. "Room to Room" is this particular poem's title. It's nominally about his dog, Walt, a 9-pound poodle who might as well weigh 1,200 pounds, for the way he rules the lives of his owners.

But "Room to Room" is really about love, about attending to the present. About anticipating death.
. . .

I saw this on Wompo yesterday. What a fun sestina! (and I usually don't care for sestinas).

Boy Wearing a Dress (by Dan Bellm)

On the way home he asks me, If we cut off our
penises then we'd be girls wouldn't we Dad,
my little boy in cowboy boots and a long black dress
walking home from Castro Street playing
blue fairy and wicked stepsister and lost princess as he
walks, the people and store windows whirling by

as he twirls only figures in fairy stories he knows by
heart, though what he doesn't see yet is that our
neighborhood's a kind of fairyland for real--still, I hope no one heard him
ask me that, and hope my Dad
who is dead hasn't heard, who would never have let me play
boy and girl with this frightening freedom, dressing

up in public or alone in a four-dollar thrift-store dress
we bought because he asked for one. A drunk careening by
asks, Why who are you some kind of superhero, son, and from a display
window video porn stars sweating under harsh light smirk in our
faces--I don't have to tell them who I am now do I dad--
No it's a dress, the guy's friend says, I've seen him

around before, that boy's always in costume, he
must be a little fag. Ken dolls in white satin dresses
and angel wings and hairless Barbies done up as leather Dads
are climbing a Christmas tree inside the card shop by
the pizza store, some queen's fantasy scenario of what our
mothers and fathers should have let us play

back where we come from, but my little boy likes to play
the girl part of stories for reasons of his own, he
likes their speeches and their dresses and shoes, we tell ourselves
it's harmless, wanting to wear a dress,
harmless as my nervous laughter to passersby
and what do I apologize to them for, Dad--

When I was a child I wanted to wear my Dad's
work shirts, I liked the smell of his Army uniform, I didn't play
girl games, don't look at me. My little boy is getting distracted by
the dildoes at the sex shop I try to hustle him past. Soon enough he'll
learn to leave his dress at home, will hear somewhere that a boy in a dress
cannot be beautiful. Once inside our

house he undresses by the mirror to be naked under the dress,
and lifts it up to display what most of us keep inside our
pants, and he asks me, a little afraid for the answer, Am I beautiful, Dad--

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I just finished reading Aria, the debut novel by Nassim Assefi. What a wonderful book! It is a story told all in letters (epistolary form) about an Iranian-American oncologist in Seattle named Jasmine, whose 5 year old daughter Aria (hence the title) is struck and killed by a car. In her grief, Jasmine takes off on a round-the-world journey, first to Guatemala, then to Tibet, and finally back to her home country of Iran, where she reconnects with the culture of her ancestors. One of my favorite characters is Jasmine's best friend Dot, who is an achondroplasic dwarf and an archaeologist. I also admired the character of Jasmine grandmother, who Jasmine discovers is more like her than she thought. An inspiring debut!

Does the best poetry come from the heart or the mind?

Read the debate posted at Helium. Vote for your choice, or write a response.

As usual, I say: both. You need heart and mind -- as well as a little nerve, guts, and a funny bone.

Grub Street Book Prize -- so close!

"We are thrilled to announce that Linda Gregg has won the first Grub Street Book Prize in Poetry for her collection In the Middle Distance (Graywolf Press, 2006). Gregg is the author of five previous poetry collections, including Things and Flesh and Too Bright To See. A poet of international acclaim, Linda Gregg has taught at the University of Iowa, Columbia University, and the University of California at Berkeley. She currently lives in New York and teaches at Princeton University.

This year's contest attracted many excellent and worthy submissions, and we were honored to read so much great and varied work. We would also like to congratulate our two wonderful finalists: G. C. Waldrep for Disclamor (BOA Editions, Fall 2007) and Peter Pereira's What's Written on the Body (Copper Canyon, 2007)." (from the website)

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Have a Happy and Safe Fourth!

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Thought for the day: Why follow your bliss when you can follow your folly?

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Spent most of the weekend working (Saturday clinic), sanding and varnishing the back door, puttering in the garden, and seeing "Sicko" (terrific movie) at Pacific Place.

I've also been reading Marvin Bell's new book of poems. I especially admire how he is unafraid of including the political in his poems. From Vietnam to Iraq, and more.

Here's a sample poem:

Homeland Security
by Marvin Bell

Two owls have perched at the property line,
and a scraping on the porch means the postman
is wiping his shoes before continuing
across the yards, three homes’ worth of catalogues
and ads, and the occasional letter, all cradled
in the crook of one elbow. I’ll be getting an offer
of money, a map to riches, a new future
that has come out of the blue. Today I finger
each envelope before opening, and I admit
I feel for wires and beads of plastic explosive
amid the saliva. The daily rags speak
of a dirty bomb. The government tells me live
in a wooden house with a hurricane lamp,
a gas mask, and flares, while it arms
an impervious underground temple from which
it can map the surface, choose a site
anywhere on the globe, and call down the rain.