I Heart NY!

Yay for Marriage Equality in NY! It's another step in the long and winding road. Keep your eyes on the prize! I don't mind at all the waivers for religious groups, who are allowed to refuse to host gay nuptials, based on religious grounds. In fact, I think marriage should be completely separate from religion: it should be a secular civil ceremony and equal for all, with full legal rights and responsibilities. A religious ceremony, if you want one, should be a completely separate (and optional) thing, with no legal bearing. And if your religion doesn't support gay marriage-- then leave the haters behind and find a new religion. :)

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And speaking of things gay -- check out the GLTBQ page up for Pride Month at The Academy site:

Celebrate pride and explore the rich tradition of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer poets and poetry through a showcase of audio, video, poetry, and prose—resources as exciting and diverse as the communities they represent.

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Check out this poem from Lee Robinson's book Hearsay (Fordham 2004), lent to me by a poet friend at one of our "poetry lunches" the other day. I love how Robinson takes the common language of trial law (she was an attorney for 20 years) and turns it upside down and inside out, making it new again. It's really terrific.


The Rules of Evidence

What you want to say most
is inadmissible.
Say it anyway.
Say it again.
What they tell you is irrelevant
can’t be denied and will
eventually be heard.
Every question
is a leading question.
Ask it anyway, then expect
what you won’t get.
There is no such thing
as the original
so you’ll have to make do
with a reasonable facsimile.
The history of the world
is hearsay. Hear it.
The whole truth
is unspeakable
and nothing but the truth
is a lie.
I swear this.
My oath is a kiss.
I swear
by everything
incredible.

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I confess I missed this book when it first came out. But I am happy to have been turned on to it by a friend -- sometimes that is the best way to "discover" a new voice.

For the Solstice

What better way to mark the longest day of the year than with poetry?

A Longing for the Light
June 21, 2011

Heather McHugh, Michael Dickman,
Alberto Rios, and Sarah Lindsay

ACT Theatre, Seattle
$25 general; $10 student; $100 reception

This event helps support Copper Canyon and all the fine work they do. Hope to see you there!

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Weiner-free Zone

The funniest headline today: "Boehner Reacts to Weiner Scandal" HAHAHAHA.

But seriously, can we *please* return to talking about the issues?

War is not Peace.
The Stock Market is not the Economy.
Insurance is not Health.
Wealth is not Prosperity.
Fundamentalism is not Liberty.


Think about it.

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Wonderful, thoughtful, ironic, insightful essay-review by Joel Brouwer over at Po-Fo: it makes me want to read each of these books. Check it out--

In Praise of Promiscuous Thinking
On Charles Bernstein’s Attack of the Difficult Poems and David Orr’s Beautiful and Pointless.

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Arty Iron Railing

Thank you to friend and fellow poet-doc Ted McMahon for building this wonderful whimsical arty iron railing for our front steps! Dean and I helped install it over the weekend. I think it is just fabulous! Don't you?

Does This Poem Make Me Look Gay?

Gay Poetry, Politics, Poetics. What does it all mean? Check out the new issue of Beloit Poetry Journal and the symposium/discussion featuring Jeff Crandall, Garth Greenwall, moi, and Brian Teare. There are also lots of cool poems in this issue, including "when your grandmother mistakes your girlfriend for a man" by Marty McConnell, and more. Then log on to the BPJ website and join the conversation, or a least leave a comment and/or love note and/or flame.

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Happy Memorial Day: please watch this short film about the plight of homeless vets. It made me wonder what it really means to "pay respects" to service men and women, and the long term consequences of these dumb wars our country is always getting tangled up in.

WHEN I CAME HOME (70min)
WHEN I CAME HOME is a film about homeless veterans in America: from those who served in Vietnam to those returning from the current war in Iraq. The film looks at the challenges faced by returning combat veterans and the battle many must fight for the benefits promised to them. Through the story of Herold Noel, an Iraq War veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and living in his car in Brooklyn, WHEN I CAME HOME reveals a failing system and the veteran's struggle to survive after returning from the war.

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From today's Poem a Day. I love the magic realism of this.

The Aerodynamics
by Rick Bursky

The night she walked to the house
she held a string; on the other end,
fifty-three feet in the air, a kite.
Wind provided the aerodynamics.
Does every collaboration
need to be explained?
She tied the string to the mailbox
left the kite to float until morning.
Every night this happens.
She sleeps, I listen, darkness
slides through us both.

The next morning
the string still curved into the sky
but the kite was gone.
This was the morning
newspapers announced
the Mona Lisa was stolen.
This was the morning
it snowed in Los Angeles,
the morning I wore gloves
to pull from the sky
fifty-three feet of frozen string.

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Born This Way, Special Edition, quick review

I bought the Special Edition (3 extra songs, plus 5 remixes) of Lady Gaga's new album Born This Way the other day, and have played it through a half dozen times now. It's really good! A bit less pop, a bit more rock/metal than I was expecting. Impressive amount of variety. Something here for everybody.

Some favorites so far (that have not had wide radio play *yet*):

"Americano" Great klezmer-Gypsy-like rhythms, about a possible LA-based, lesbian love affair?
"Hair" This has perhaps a little to do with the 60's hippie anthem, and being a free spirit. I could see it being done on Glee.
"Scheibe" Gaga sings in scary robotic German on this Euro-techno-disco masterpiece, about being a strong woman. (I think Schiebe might be a derogatory term for a woman in German?)
"Black Jesus+Amen Fashion" Jesus is the new black. HA!
"Heavy Metal Lover" I want your wiskey mouth/All over my blonde south. (oh my!)
"Electric Chapel" Smooth cruising love song, over a driving electric guitar riff.
"You and I" Wow. Almost a country twang going on here, a love song full of nostalgia for her ex-boyfriend, heavy metal drummer Luc Carl.
"The Edge of Glory" this song premiered on American Idol, and it was f**cking amazing. I think I have played it 20 times now on the CD. Dean thinks I am on the edge.

Highly recommended!

Bees Beeing

Dean and I had a good time at the Bradner Plant sale yesterday. It was a cool and cloudy day, unseasonable even for Seattle. But it was good to see so many friends and neighbors there! We are so lucky to live next door to such a wonderful pea-patch garden. We picked out a few heirloom tomatoes -- Black Zebra, Green Zebra, Mr. Stripey -- and also a few perennials for the shade garden. Had coffee and snacks and chit chatted.

And today, the bees are coming! The bees are coming! There are several bee boxes being set up in the park, in their own little bee house, and I think today is when the queen arrives.

It makes me think of Sylvia Plath and her bee poems:

The Arrival of the Bee Box

I ordered this, clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a midget
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.

The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can't keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.

I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.

How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.

They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

The box is only temporary.


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Lady Gaga performing Judas and Born This Way on the Graham Norton shown. Wow. Just great.

There has to be a poem here . . .

Cicadas, the loud yet harmless insects, have begun rearing their unattractive heads across the southern U.S. after a 13-year lull spent underground.

States like Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia are reporting the insects emerging in droves, and are preparing for that incessant buzzing that will soon fill the atmosphere as the male cicadas seek out mates in a clamorous event that last occurred in 1998.

Meanwhile, scientists are bustling to study the enigmatic creatures, well aware they won't have another chance to do so until 2024.

Can hardly wait to read this new book!

Michael Dickman’s second collection of poems Flies, just out from Copper Canyon Press, debuts at number 14 on this week’s contemporary best seller list. An auspicious start for the poet whose first book, The End of the West, is Copper Canyon’s best-selling debut ever. Dickman, who had a cameo roll opposite his twin brother in Minority Report, won the 2011 Laughlin Award for this collection. He teaches at Princeton. (from Poetry Foundation)

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PS: check out Copper Canyon's terrific new website.

Flashback: McCain in the 2008 presidential debate, calling Obama naive for saying he would take out Bin Laden in Pakistan if given the chance. My oh my. Check it out here.


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