PROVIDENCE, R.I. (July 26) - Dogs can sometimes predict an epileptic owner's seizure or sniff at an owner's mole, signaling a possible cancer.

When Oscar, a hospice cat, curls up on a patient's bed and stays there, the staff knows it's time to call the family. It usually means the patient has less than four hours to live.

Poetry and CEO's

Via Jilly at Poetry Hut Blog:

Poetry speaks to many C.E.O.’s. “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers,” says Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, a $3 billion producer of sound systems for luxury cars, theaters and airports. Mr. Harman maintains a library in each of his three homes, in Washington, Los Angeles and Aspen, Colo. “Poets are our original systems thinkers,” he said. “They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.”

WA Sate Domestic Partner Registration Now in Effect

Isn't this a sweet picture? Dean and I already have a Domestic Partner Agreement, Durable Power of Attorney, Living Wills, and etc, but we're going to register using the online forms and mail it in anyway. Hopefully there are at least a few more protections. It so funny that this is happening at the same time as the movie "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry."

OLYMPIA, WA -- Same-sex couples came here Monday with mixed feelings, lining up to register as domestic partners with the Secretary of State's Office.
They said the new set of legal rights that went into effect Monday morning -- including hospital visitation, property inheritance and funeral planning -- were steps in the right direction but still a far cry from full marriage equality.

Decked out in a veil, the top half of a wedding gown and black leather pants, Amanda Swarr, 34, walked with her partner T Steele, 41, carrying a small sign that read: "When we get the rest of our rights, we'll wear the rest of the dress."

It has been raining and muggy for three days straight. Very unseasonable weather here. They say it is from a typhoon in Japan that moved our way. I say it sucks.

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Had an old med school friend over for dinner last night. She and I were the only two gay people in our first year class (or so we thought!). She is now at the CDC and partnered and has two boys. It was so fun to hear about where her life has taken her. Though we hadn't seen each other in almost seven years, it was as if no time had passed.

She does pottery and ceramics, and is thinking about trying stained glass. Check out this very cool site, for the process she wants to use. Here's an example:

This is too freaky -- 1500 inmates in a Philippine prison, one of them dressed in drag, performing in unison the dance for MJ's "Thriller."

Been to Oregon Lately?

I have five poems up at Oregon Literary Review.
They are all from What's Written on the Body. It's an interesting selection of poems, and I didn't know they would be appearing at OLR, so it was a pleasant surprise to see them there today. It looks like a lovely journal, all on-line content, including artwork, interviews, essays and reviews. Check it out, if you are so inclined.

F.O.S.

WASHINGTON (July 20) - President Bush will have a routine colonoscopy Saturday and temporarily hand presidential powers to Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House said.

Press secretary Tony Snow told reporters Friday that Bush will have the procedure at his Camp David, Md., mountaintop retreat.

He last had such a colorectal cancer check on June 29, 2002.

Funny.

I bet they'll find he is still full of shit.

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Po-Jacking

Had a fun time at the Soulfood Books reading. A group of us went out beforehand for dinner at Spazzo in Redmond Towne Centre (great restaurant, but it is so bizarre how it is located in a mall -- "Towne Centre" is really just a giant mall). Great food and coversation. Dean and I shared a flight of Pinto Grigios.

Soulfood (also located in a mall, there is a theme here) has a nice large stage, well-lit, with a good microphone. Michael and Lana were gracious hosts. And there was a decent turnout (though thank god the people playing noisy dominoes at the front of the stage left before the reading started ~grin~). There was a lot of open mic at the end, including drumming and chanting and teen angst and performance pieces (one woman reading her poem/song from some sort of hand-held PDA or blackberry or something).

I had fun reading some newer work, as well as some pieces from WWOTB that I had not read in public before.

Nancy Pagh's reading from No Sweeter Fat was terrific. I just love that book, and if you have not heard of it you should really check it out. The poems in the voice of the "Fat Lady" are just so poignant and moving and funny and real.

Nancy also read a poem she had written recently in response to a poem of mine in WWOTB, "Ravenna at Dusk." She did her own riff off on it, using some of my lines/phrases, but making it all her own. (I believe this is called po-jacking?"). I was very honored. Don't they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

Anyway, here are the two poems, hers first, and then mine:

Whatcom Falls Park Today

Today when I looked in the road
I saw the gray squirrel’s viscera
trail from its body and thought
is that why we call them entrails.
I like walking alone in the park.
One can be happy in cotton shorts
even though synthetic dries faster.
Dogs do not understand personal boundaries.
There are such things as red dragonflies;
I saw five rest on this iron bridge last summer.
What can you do about a creosote stain?
Rabbit! no rabbit: white grocery sack
handles tied up as ears. What’s with
the used doggie poop bags, twisted
and set on the trail like wrong dim sum?
I have always found that garter snakes
remind me of zippers, but not known why.
I would have cared more
if it had been a native red squirrel.
I know what that says about me.
That’s a thrush. It sounds
how I felt to fingerpaint when I was six.
Now I am glad I chose the caffeinated tea.
Waterfall~waterfall~waterfall~stream.
Haruspicy is the word I almost thought.
I will cook the rice in chicken stock.
I am thinking: will I cut the yellow squash
in rounds or cubes and
not of you, sorry man. Not you.

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Ravenna at Dusk

Today when I looked in the mirror
I saw my father looking back.
I like walking alone at night.
One can be happy not only without love,
but despite it. It’s best to fertilize roses
in March, plant gladioli bulbs in October.
I love the sound of thunder before rain.
Country Western dancing can be fun.
Oak floors with a Swedish finish last longest.
Espresso after six will keep you awake
past two. Antique floor lamps are cheap
at Capitol Hill garage sales in summer.
What can you do to give your life meaning?
It’s useless to repair socks once the heels are out.
My married friends make babies because they can.
Bath towels stack best when folded in thirds.
I have always found the lives of mystics
and clerics more appealing. I still read
the funnies and sleep in late on Saturdays.
Life is not so much invented as composed.
In high school I loved my English teacher
and wrote my first poems for him.

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Kinda fun, huh?
I need to try this now.

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Come to Soulfood

I am reading at the Soulfood Books poetry series in Redmond tonight, with Nancy Pagh of No Sweeter Fat fame.
If you are nearby, come on down! (Especially all you Microsofties, you know you need a break). The reading starts at 7pm. Directions here.

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From Webster's Daily:

Abyss, n.

That which is immeasurable. That in which any thing is lost.

After three days and nine chapters of writing ficiton, this is where I feel I have been.

Littlefoot

I wrote three more chapters yesterday (all very very rough), and have planned 14 total. Almost 15,000 words so far. Eeeesh. It flies by when you are in a zone, and it is excruciatingly slow when you are not. I hope to get three more done today. We'll see.

I've been reading Littlefoot, Charles Wright's new one. The cover is all white, with just the title and author's name, and the words "a poem." Sort of like the Beatle's White Album, I thought to myself yesterday. And this is Wright's White Album, in a sense. (BTW, Littlefoot is the name of a horse, as far as I can tell).

The book is one long poem in 35 sections. And it is all the same. All exactly the same one endless poem that Wright has been writing over and over for the past 25 years (or more). The one poem of keen nature imagery and lonely observation interspersed with a Southern whiskey drawl and Zen koan-like insights about life, death, memory, the work of the poet. It would get old if Wright weren't so damn good at it.

Here's one section that grabbed me while I was having dinner at Fins last night:

We've all lead raucous lives,
some of them inside, some of them out.
But only the poem you leave behind is what's important.
Everyone knows this.
The voyage into the interior is all that matters,
Whatever your ride.
Sometimes I can't sit still for all the asininities I read.
Give me a hummingbird, who has to eat sixty times
His own weight a day just to stay alive.
Now that's life on the edge.

pg 65

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Happy reading . . . .

Having a productive time in PT so far. I cranked out three chapters of the novel yesterday. We'll see if I can keep the momentum up today. It's cloudy and cooler, and I think it may have rained in the night.

Saw S and J briefly at lunchtime at Siren's. Then later I met up with K and G to go to the evening reading at Centrum. Barbara Sjoholm read from her memoir about traveling with a girlfriend in Spain in the 70's (when she was in her 20's), very insightful, touching, and funny. Arthur Sze read from Quipo and from new work. One long poem was in the form of the I Ching, I believe.

In between I've been reading the novel The Attack, by Yasmina Khadra. It's the story of an Arab-Israeli surgeon in Tel Aviv whose world comes crashing down after a terrorist suicide bombing. It is discovered his wife, whom he had no idea was even remotely involved with any kind of thing, is found to have been the bomber. He sets off trying to find out why she would have done this. The story is riveting.

I have the week off and am up in Port Townsend to attend some of the Writer's Conference, and to do some writing. I actually have an idea for a novel and I want to get going on drafting it out. I am really curious how it will go . . .

I was talking with a poet friend about it the other day. She said whenever she takes a break and writes fiction for a while, the poems inevitably come screaming back at the front door, demanding to be let in, as if they were saying "You two-timing bitch, how dare you!" We'll see if I end up writing more poetry than prose . . .

Sharon Olds: Sayin No to the White House

I got this from PapaDuck and The Buffalo Report. I love how she ends the letter with the images of war juxtaposed to clean linens, knives, candle flames.

Laura Bush invited poet Sharon Olds to take part in this year's National Book Critics Circle Award in Washington. Here is Olds' letter declining the invitation to read her poetry, have dinner at the Library of Congress, and have breakfast at the White House.

Dear Mrs. Bush,

I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.

In one way, it's a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, and in terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents--all of us who need the pleasure, and the inner and outer news, it delivers. And the concept of a community of readers and writers has long been dear to my heart.

As a professor of creative writing in the graduate school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of settings: a women's prison, several New York City public high schools, an oncology ward for children. Our initial program, at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now for twenty years, creating along the way lasting friendships between young MFA candidates and their students--long-term residents at the hospital who, in their humor, courage and wisdom, become our teachers.

When you have witnessed someone non-speaking and almost non-moving spell out, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter, his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion and essentialness of writing.

When you have held up a small cardboard alphabet card for a writer who is completely non-speaking and non-moving (except for the eyes), and pointed first to the A, then the B, then C, then D, until you get to the first letter of the first word of the first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week, and she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation, self-expression, accuracy, honesty and wit--and the importance of writing, which celebrates the value of each person's unique story and song.

So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country--with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain--did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made "at the top" and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism--the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to.

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness--as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing--against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

Sincerely,

SHARON OLDS

Ugly Mug Reading

Had a great time reading tonight with Rebecca and Susan at the Ugly Mug in Renton, a suburb south of Seattle. A great diverse audience, many of whom participated in the open mic: a secretary from the local high school, a couple church ladies, a black diva named Peaches (accompanied by her BF on drum), a nice transexual with a poem about prison, an angry white guy with a post-9/11 rant, a financial planner reading Bukowski-like poems.

I thought Susan and Rebecca and I read very well. And I actually enjoyed the round-robin format (each of the featured poets reads 2 poems, then a round of one-poem-each for the open mic, the the featureds read 2 poems each, followed by another round of open mic, and so on for about 5 rounds. It was fun to be able to change and rearrange what I was going to read based on the feel of the audience and what the people before me had just read.

Susan read some wonderful poems about her time in Bosnia, and about love and heartbreak. Rebecca read from Radish King and new work from Cadaver Dogs and a devastating new new poem about that 12 year-old girl who was kidnapped and murdered on July 4th. I closed with "Twenty Years After His Passing, My Father Appears to Us in Chicago, at Bobby Chinn's Crab & Oyster House, in the Guise of Our Waiter, Ramon" (I know, it is a really long title). I think it went over fairly well.

Thanks to Chris J for having us!

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The Girls Who Went Away

I was needing to do some research for a character in a piece of fiction I am working on, and found this amazing book by Anne Fessler. It uses hundreds of interviews with women who became pregnant as teenagers, and were forced to relinquish their babies back in the 40's, 50's and 60's (pre Roe v. Wade era). Amazing stories of the neighbors being told the girl was going to live with an aunt, or the girl having to hide out in her own room until after the delivery, or lying down in the backseat of the car until they got out of town for weekly doctor visits.
My favorite story: one father who would go and visit his daughter every week at the home for unwed mothers (the mother would not visit or speak to her) and take her and three of her pregnant roomates out on the town for ice cream. She still laughs when she thinks of it: her father and four hugely pregnant teenage girls, sitting at the ice cream shop together, laughing and carrying on. She wonders what the townspeople must have thought.

It's a terrific read, and an important history to know.

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My nephew, throwing out the first pitch at last night's Mariner's game.