E-BAP

I've been reading the new Best American Poetry, edited by Amy Gerstler. I actually pre-ordered it this year as a Kindle download, which made sense to me, because I usually don't keep these anthologies very long, and they don't usually resell for much. And so I decided to go with the e-version, and it arrived on my iPad the day it was released. Not bad.

It took a little bit of adjusting to read on the iPad, though, and I think some of the formatting was messed up, but there were several advantages to the e-BAP, in that some people had hyperlinks in their bios to their blogs, or websites, and you could go there with one click (see Dennis Cooper, for instance). I just wish the poems each had a hyperlink to the poet's bio/statement (I always love reading those, and it would be great to be able to toggle back and forth between them.)

I skipped Lehman's intro, and went straight to Gerstler's. She has some good insights, and admits that BAP isn't so much about "best" as it is about the particular editor's "taste." But I wish she would have kept it a little shorter. (I kept hearing Tim Gunn screaming, "Edit! Edit!").

My favorite poems so far are Catherine Wing's lovely "er" poem, "The Darker Sooner," and David Trindad's "The Black Telephone." But why no Rebecca Loudon? After Gerstler had so admiringly blurbed Rebecca's last book, I thought for sure she would be in this year's BAP. Ah well. . . .

Happy reading!

I LOVE Lady Gaga. Listen to her tell it like it is about Don't Ask Don't Tell.
Then CALL YOUR SENATOR!



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Also check out what is likely one of the new songs on her next album, "Out of Control."



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Hospital Gunman Kills Mother, Himself After Shooting

AOL News (Sept. 16) -- A man upset over his mother's medical condition wounded a doctor inside Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital today, then fatally shot his mother and himself, police said.

I saw this story earlier today, while Dean and I were at the gym. So sad. So sad. The rumor I am hearing is the man was upset about the doctor (an Orthopedic surgeon) "paralyzing his mother." Eeesh.

And speaking of words, it looks like Abby Hagler at Hugo House is doing her own version of "Word a Day" at the Hugo House Blog, by choosing interesting words from the books she is reading. This week she is featuring words from Mary Jo Bang's "Louise in Love."

Last week she chose these five words from my book of poems, What's Written on the Body:

Arpeggio

Zazen

Violaceous

Unguent

Chasuble

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Thanks Abby. Hope you enjoyed the book, and these "unusual" words.

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Looks like Palin can add one more thing to her resume: Neologist

from World Wide Words: "On Wednesday, the US dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster announced its "Word of the Summer", the word that had been searched for more often than any other in its online dictionary. The one that came top by a big margin wasn't there, or indeed in any other dictionary - it was Sarah Palin's confused blending of "refute" and "repudiate" in a news show and a Twitter message back in July: REFUDIATE. Merriam-Webster says they think searchers had worked out what Sarah Palin was groping for, since "refute" and "repudiate" were also looked up a lot."

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Had a great time being part of the reading extravaganza at Elliott Bay last night, for the New Poets of the American West anthology, edited by Lowell Jaeger. What a fun night! It was sort of like a homecoming or reunion of sorts, having so many Washington poets in one room. Each person read one poem, so it was also sort of a greatest hits parade. We had poems about Mt St Helen's, 9/11, fishing, Hanford, palouse fires, Native American museum artifacts (or are they holocaust reminders?). Great fun all around. Thank you again to Lowell for editing this huge anthology. And to Kathleen Flenniken for hosting the bash.

An interesting essay by Tony Hoagland up on the Poetry Foundations site:

What do we, as readers, want from a poem? On the one hand, plenty of poetry readers are alive and well who want to experience a kind of clarification; to feel and see deeply into the world that they inhabit, to make or read poetry that “helps you to live,” that characterizes and clarifies human nature. To scoff at this motivation for poetry because it is “unsophisticated” or because it seems sentimental—well, you might as well scoff at oxygen.

Similarly, to dismiss the poetry of “dis-arrangement,” the poetry that aims to disrupt or rearrange consciousness—to dismiss poems that attract (and abstract) by their resistance, thus drawing the reader into a condition of not-entirely-understanding—such a dismissal also seems to foreclose some powerful dimensions of poetry as an alternate language, a language expressive of certain things otherwise unreachable. Perhaps language as a study of itself has ends which are otherwise unforeseeable.

In our time, this bifurcation of motives among poets has become so pronounced as to be tribal.

And from later in the essay:

"One might extrapolate from these several examples the features of a period style. Here are the characteristics I observe:

1. A heavy reliance on authoritative declaration.
2. A love of the fragmentary, the interrupted, the choppy rhythm.
3. An overall preference for the conceptual over the corporeal, the sensual, the emotional, the narrative, or the discursive.
4. A talent for aphorism.
5. Asides which articulate the poem’s own aesthetic procedures, premises, and ideas.

Surely I am over-generalizing and omitting some things. But it is curious how much contemporary poetry bears some combination of these stylistic features . . . ."

Hmmmm . . . I might add "a heavy reliance on irony as the predominant tone." Or "a marked lack of interest in human emotional connection, almost to the point of being autistic."

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Oh, yeah. And in case you missed it, there was a war that ended. In commemoration, I'd like to play this song, "War is Over: Merry Christmas":



War is over. If you want it.

Dean and I have been enjoying the new season of True Blood. I suppose you could think of it as a more "mature" version of Twilight. Vampires, Werewolves, and the Humans who love them.

The latest episodes have been terrific.
Sookie is a Fairy?! I never saw that coming!

Check out the video on YouTube:

Missed this live, looks like it was a hoot. Glee, Project Runway, Dancing with the Stars, Betty White, Lost, Mad Men, everybody has a cameo.



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Had a great time in PT with the writing group. Good poems all around, salmon bisque for lunch, an hilarious word game led by George (who knew a Hootchie MAMA cold be so fun?). I only wish the sun had come out. This has got to be the most bizarre summer I have ever seen. The weather has been so cool. Kathryn's witchhazel is already setting flowers. It thinks it is next Spring.

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Twinkie De-Fence

This looks like an interesting photo exhibit: a guy took a photo of each of the 37 "or so" ingredients in a Twinkie. Each one was posed on its own clear glass petrie dish. Does looking at these make you hungry for a Twinkie? Or just simply mild-to-moderately nauseated?

http://www.eschlimanphoto.com/twinkie/37_or_so.php?p=22

Just finished reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (on Kindle for iPad), and I have to say I just LOVED IT! I realize I am probably the last person in America to read it -- but what a sophisticated page turner. Enough plots and characters for ten books. And the character of Lisbeth is just so endearing. How can you not just love her? I hear Daniel Craig might play Blomkvist in the American version of the movie. Perfect.. I can hardly wait to see all his naughty bits!

I have already ordered the second book. Wheee!

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This is TOO FUNNY! Thanks to KT for the link.



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A sweet-sad poem from Peter Everwine, from a recent ALP article in the Lake County News. It really fits this year's Northwest summer, where the rains and mists have been everpresent, and fall seems to be coming early.


Rain

Toward evening, as the light failed
and the pear tree at my window darkened,
I put down my book and stood at the open door,
the first raindrops gusting in the eaves,
a smell of wet clay in the wind.
Sixty years ago, lying beside my father,
half asleep, on a bed of pine boughs as rain
drummed against our tent, I heard
for the first time a loon’s sudden wail
drifting across that remote lake—
a loneliness like no other,
though what I heard as inconsolable
may have been only the sound of something
untamed and nameless
singing itself to the wilderness around it
and to us until we slept. And thinking of my father
and of good companions gone
into oblivion, I heard the steady sound of rain
and the soft lapping of water, and did not know
whether it was grief or joy or something other
that surged against my heart
and held me listening there so long and late.


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I have been reading A History of Clouds by Hans Magnus Enzeberger (translated from the German by Martin Chalmers and Esther Kinsky). I picked it up off the poetry table at Elliott Bay the other day. It has a gorgeous cover, a photo collage of a street scene with buildings and clouds, and a bicyclist with angel's wings. I liked the first few poems I opened, so bought it, and it has been quite a delight to read. I don't know if it is just this poet, or if it is a particularly German sensibility, but I love how these poems are so philosophical, how they ask deep questions, yet still keep a sense of the joy and absurdity and sacredness of life.

The title poem is a long sequence,ostensibly about clouds, but really about the ineffable, the spiritual, life after death, etc etc.

"Appearing as they do,
overnight, or out of the blue,
they can hardly be considered
as being born.
Passing away imperceptibly
they have no notion of dying.
And anyway, nobody
can match their transience. (from part one)

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I love the poem "The Instruments," about medical instruments, and the doctors who use them, perhaps at times too coolly. And the poem "An Earth-Coloured Ditty," in which every other line ends with the word "potato," is beautifully done:


An Earth-Coloured Ditty

Another poem about death, etc. —
certainly, but what about the potato?
For obvious reasons it's not mentioned
by Horace or Homer, the potato.
But what about Rilke and Mallarme?
Did it not speak to them, the potato?
Do too few words rhyme
with it, the earth-coloured potato?
It's not too concerned with heaven.
It waits patiently, the potato,
until we drag it out into the light
and throw it onto the fire. The potato
doesn't mind, but it could be
that it's too hot for poets, the potato?
Well, so we'll wait a little while
until we eat it, the potato,
sing about it then forget it again.

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Highly recommended!

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Musical Mondegreens

Just finished a week of on call. Driving back and forth between hospital and clinic and home, I kept hearing this hypnotic song on the radio — a dreamy woman's voice singing "eight six six oh, eight six six oh." I thought it was a secret keyboard or cellphone text message to a friend or lover, but the letters didn't add up to anything. I googled and came up with nothing. Finally one day, when the announcer said it was a new song by MIA, I found it.



Not 8660, but XXXO. Duh! But give it a listen. Don't you hear "8660?"

Anyway, it is now Dean's and my special goodbye-tag in the morning, or on the phone. "Bye dear, love you, 8660."

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