Romney VP pic coming soon. Who will it be? . . . and while we are waiting, here's a funny bit of reminiscence from today's Huff Post: "Meanwhile, the ghost of Sarah Palin continues to loom over Romney's decision. Only two days ago, former veep Dick Cheney, 2008 loser John McCain and La Palin herself engaged in a mud-slinging ménage a trois over whether or not Palin was up to the task of riding shotgun on the Republican ticket four years ago. The ever-dour Cheney asserted that she was not. Ya think? McCain, who will forever bear the Palin stain on his political legacy, played Sir Walter Raleigh-on-Geritol yet again and bashed Cheney on her behalf. The half-term governor, who now appears as a bobblehead doll on Fox News, tossed an incoherent (and duplicitous) word salad in her defense, reminding the world yet again why Cheney was right." Ya think? *

A Guide for the Poet Within‘The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets,’ by Jeffrey Skinner

I love the tongue in cheek of the title -- sounds like this might be an interesting book! "Halfway through Jeffrey Skinner’s new book, “The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets,” he quotes W. H. Auden: “Form looks for content, content looks for form.” It’s a pithy bit of near tautology that also happens to neatly describe Skinner’s thoughtful and genre-defying book." --from NY Times review

This looks to be a real fun evening, and for such a good cause. Hope you can come!

Such a delightful, heartwarming movie. Multiple interwoven stories, all coming together at a rundown but beautiful old hotel in India, that an unrelated group of British ex-pats have landed upon in their retirement years. A wonderful ensemble cast, including faves Judie Dench, Tom Wilkinson, and Maggie Smith. And a surprising (and quite moving) plot line involving an Englishman who grew up in India, returning now to look for a lost love (also a man). The movie had so much going on, I am sure they left out a lot of the novel. In fact, this is one of those movies that makes me want to go back and read the book it is based upon: These Foolish Things, by Deborah Moogach.

Such an amazing journey: a magic carpet ride from Istanbul to Venice, and everywhere in-between.

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Sharon Needles Wins!

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/gossip/la-et-mg-rupauls-drag-race-finale,0,2716191.story But what was that thing she was wearing on her forehead?

Happy Earth Day

Remember to love your mother today (Mother Earth, that is!).

For Earth Day, Dean and I have been spending the lovely sunny weekend tending our garden. So satisfying to be getting our hands dirty, digging and planting and weeding and pruning. Almost nothing could be better . . . .

I love this poem from Poem a Day, and what it says about language, and memory-- as well as the nod to WCW.


Untitled [A house just like his mother's]
by Gregory Orr

A house just like his mother's,
But made of words.
Everything he could remember
Inside it:
Parrots and a bowl
Of peaches, and the bright rug
His grandmother wove.

Shadows also—mysteries
And secrets.
Corridors
Only ghosts patrol.
And did I mention
Strawberry jam and toast?

Did I mention
That everyone he loved
Lives there now,

In that poem
He called "My Mother’s House?"



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RIP Adrienne Rich

Wow. End of an era. End of an era. So sad. so sad.

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Poet Adrienne Rich, whose socially conscious verse influenced a generation of feminist, gay rights and anti-war activists, has died. She was 82.

Rich died Tuesday at her Santa Cruz home from complications from rheumatoid arthritis, said her son, Pablo Conrad. She had lived in Santa Cruz since the 1980s.

Through her writing, Rich explored topics such as women’s rights, racism, sexuality, economic justice and love between women.

Rich published more than a dozen volumes of poetry and five collections of nonfiction. She won a National Book Award for her collection of poems “Diving into the Wreck” in 1974. In 2004, she won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for her collection “The School Among the Ruins.”

She had first gained national prominence with her third poetry collection, “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law,” in 1963. Citing the title poem, University of Maryland professor Rudd Fleming wrote in The Washington Post that she “proves poetically how hard it is to be a woman — a member of the second sex.”

I was looking up the calories/carbs in a Wendy's Doublestack, and found this. Read the full report (table format) It is too funny:

Sex Calories – Results of Dr. Wieder’s Calories Burned by Sex Study


Following are the results of Dr. Robert S. Wieder’s exhaustive study of the average calories burned during sex activities of various kinds, as published in the American Journal of Exercise Calorimetry in August 2006. Dr. Weider’s research supercedes the energy expenditure figures in the Compendium of Physical Activities, last updated in 1993. As authoritative as the Compendium is, the detail of its data for sex calories per hour is lacking: only three values are given for different levels of exertion for general sexual activities. By comparison, the Compendium lists 12 detailed values for calories burned by forestry activities, including “barking trees.” Dr. Weider’s research has remedied these shortcomings.

A Face to Meet the Faces Anthology reading!

Hope to see you there! It's a really wonderful anthology, almost 400 pages of Persona Poems, written from a variety of perspectives and points of view.

Readers include Luke Johnson, Matthew Nienow, Kathleen Flenniken, Susan Rich, Martha Silano, Marge Manwaring, Jeannine Hall Gailey, and others. Wednesday night, April 4th. 7 pm Richard Hugo House.

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Also:
Monday April 2nd at 7pm Elliot Bay Books

Kathleen Flenniken and Martha Collins!

Visiting poet Martha Collins, the author of numerous collections and for many years an esteemed professor at Oberlin, and Seattle poet Kathleen Flenniken, an editor with Floating Bridge Press and the newly named Poet Laureate of Washington, read together this evening from new books. For Martha Collins, it's White Papers (University of Pittsburgh Press). "White Papers is praise song for the truth. It bravely pulls back the covers of whiteness to offer us precious views of racial privilege. Martha Collins has laid bare the more complex dangers of America's central trauma in a book of innovative craft and startling honesty." – Afaa Michael Weaver. Kathleen Flenniken's Plume (University of Washington Press), newest volume in the UW Press' Pacific Northwest Poetry Series and her second, full-length book, draws on her unusual (for a poet) background as a civil engineer and hydrologist, one who worked at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. "moving deftly between haunting lyric and disturbing documentary, Kathleen Flenniken packages recent history in a wide variety of poetic forms and styles. Plume raises the bar for documentary poetry, moving us with its timely and important subject matter as well as the meticulous craft of its poems." – Martha Collins.

I like this poem from today's Verse Daily!


Where the Hero Speaks to Others
       
Dear mailbox. I have abandoned the task. There is no more glory
to resurrect, spoils of the marriage to pick over. She finds me burdensome and has moved out into the guest house.
I don't remember building a guest house.
Many nights I have stumbled out into the unwilling streets and fallen
to my knees before you. O, mailbox. Your throat is swollen
and refuses to sing for me. You no longer bring me news of a timeshare abroad
which I might consider. You draw up from your long, black stomach papers
I will not sign. O, lamplight.
You are equally no friend. Beside you I deliver a monologue
correcting previous scholars about the usefulness of tulips. O, useless tulip.
There is so much I want to say to you when grinning, you mock me
for watching you from the window. I feel ashamed
for wanting you. For sitting quietly in a chair especially
to miss her. O, musty library flooded with sun. To rub her name
from the faces of your books.


-- Wendy Xu

Sarah Palin's Secret Plot to Capture the White House in 2012

I thought this was a fascinating, well-thought out article on Huff post, written by Geoffrey Dunn, suggesting that Sarah Palin may try to steal the Republican nomination at a brokered convention (or run as a third party?)

"In the aftermath of Santorum's sweep of Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday, a brokered GOP convention is a very real possibility. The Republican Party has become a fractured mosaic of fringe constituencies -- from Tea Partiers to evangelical anti-abortion activists, from libertarians who support Ron Paul to white supremacists who despise the fact that there is a black man in the White House. It is an unruly lot. The days of a GOP elite framing the presidential selection process are over. Charisma trumps experience; celebrity trumps substance; and, perhaps most disturbingly, anger trumps reason. Mama grizzlies, especially those who have been wounded, don't go down easy."

Check it out here: www.huffingtonpost.com

I love this poem from today's poem a day, and the way it explores the word "economy."


Economy
by Sandra Beasley

After you've surrendered to pillows
and I, that second whiskey,
on the way to bed I trace my fingers
over a thermostat we dare not turn up.
You have stolen what we call the green thing—
too thick to be a blanket, too soft to be a rug—
turned away, mid-dream. Yet your legs
still reach for my legs, folding them quick
to your accumulated heat.
                              These days
only a word can earn overtime.
Economy: once a net, now a handful of holes.
Economy: what a man moves with
when, even in sleep, he is trying to save
all there is left to save.



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Dems Owe Rush a Thank You Gift. Of Sex.

This editorial from Huff post was just a hoot - offering to award Rush Limbaugh with a special cache of Viagra:

"I'd like to clarify here that in no way do I mean to suggest that Mr. Limbaugh is a sex tourist. I'm simply saying it because it sounds good. And anyway, it's not personal or anything. And furthermore, I apologize."

see full story here: link