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Tuesday, April 27, 2004

it was 100 degrees in LA today. and I got more lost than I've ever been in this city and still didn't buy a map. blame it on low blood sugar. besides, using a map requires knowing where you are to begin with. someone should make a movie about Anne Sexton's life and work. I'd like to play Anne Sexton but they'd have to cast short people around me so I could look tall. bought flip-flops today, which makes me happy. I'm unreasonably tired, but I did get two magazine submissions done: crazyhorse and AGNI. what a tedious process. at this time next week I'll be in Brooklyn. yay! Roger made the slam finals. it'll be strange to be there for the finals and not in them, for the first time in four years. but a relief -- I'm really glad I'm not slamming this year, and more sure than ever that I would have taken this year off regardless.


Friday, April 23, 2004

so last week I posted the original draft of this and its major revision, and mentioned making it into a villanelle. and lo and behold, here it is! of course, thanks to the brilliance of my writing partner, I discovered that the form I have is not a villanelle at all, but whatever. it's a McConnell-elle or something (that's Roger's suggestion. blame him.)

I haven't decided yet which of the revisions I like best. I'm leaning toward the form one, but that might just be because I've never written anything in form that I actually liked. votes and comments welcome!

I highly recommend this as an exercise: take a poem you're not crazy about, and try it in whatever form it seems to suggest to you. here 'tis:

burn all the letters

don't ask me about his mouth.
most days this job has me at the wrong ocean
missing Brooklyn, our slanted kitchen, your ankles.
at the register: green apples, zucchini, lime popsicles.

most days this job has me at the wrong ocean
-- a pattern's a pattern, not everything fits.
at the register: green apples, zucchini, lime popsicles
(there's a subway card in the other pocket.)

a pattern's a pattern, not everything fits,
I can write this. our names on the checks, the mailbox,
there's a subway card in the other pocket.
his mouth, the ocean. your voice on the machine.

I can write this: our names on the checks, the mailbox,
both our names, leave a message.
his mouth, the ocean, your voice on the machine.
so much blood. today is green. ginger ale. leaving.

both our names, leave a message:
I have a lover and something like a husband.
so much blood. today is green. ginger ale. leaving.
J says your confessions are overwhelming.

I have a lover and something like a husband.
we've never been a good idea.
J says your confessions are overwhelming.
if it weren't for metaphor, we'd never write anything.

we've never been a good idea.
to write this down – he says you write it all?
if it weren't for metaphor, we'd never write anything.
never trust a poet. so much blood.

to write this down – he says you write it all?
I wanted this we so long I got over the wanting
(never trust a poet. so much blood.)
and there you were. no roses. a cactus.

I wanted this we so long I got over the wanting.
write it: maybe I invented you
and there you were: no roses, a cactus.
if so, I want the keys back.

write it: maybe I invented you.
(take the trash out. change the sheets.)
if so, I want the keys back.
your hair, it's on everything.

take the trash out. change the sheets.
(missing Brooklyn, our slanted kitchen, your ankles.)
your hair, it's on everything.
don't ask me about his mouth.


Thursday, April 22, 2004

just compiled a two-minute six-voice piece and sent it to the rest of the poets. drumroll please. we'll see how it goes. now I'm so tired my eyes aren't focusing. eight-hour rehearsal scheduled tomorrow. if I escape with my sanity and my skin intact, we'll count it a victory.

in other news, beg borrow buy or steal Margaret Atwood's book "Morning in the Burned House." details to come. this isn't my absolute favorite, but it's the one readily available online and I don't have the energy to type another in:

IN THE SECULAR NIGHT
by Margaret Atwood

In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller
with his big-band sound,
and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,
and cried for a while because you were not dancing,
and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.
Now, forty years later, things have changed,
and it's baby lima beans.
It's necessary to reserve a secret vice.
This is what comes from forgetting to eat
at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,
drain, add cream and pepper,
and amble up and down the stairs,
scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,
talking to yourself out loud.
You'd be surprised if you got an answer,
but that part will come later.

There is so much silence between the words,
you say. You say, The sensed absence
of God and the sensed presence
amount to much the same thing,
only in reverse.
You say, I have too much white clothing.
You start to hum.
Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn't now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone's been run over.
The century grinds on.

***

There's a great persona poem in there called "Half-Hanged Mary" about a woman who survived being hanged as a witch. fantastic.

OK, now for sleep. more analysis and detail and raving soon.

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

back in LA -- staying at this crazy fancy corporate housing place in Marina del Rey, right by the ocean, with my own kitchen and a pool and laundry in the building (yeah, it doesn't take much.) excess makes me nervous, but I love the ability to actually cook my own vegetables, and the energy here is radically different from Beverly Hills -- a little too laid-back, spring-break, for me, but a definite improvement; I can't complain.

the NYC/Urban Word teen slam team is coming over for a BBQ/rehearsal tonight -- yay! figure I should make the most of this setup while I'm here, try to make sure they have a good time in LA despite the competition.

the addition of Beau and Mayda has brought excellent new/NYC energy to the group -- I'm thrilled. makes it harder to keep my NYC smack-talker self in check, but I'm working on it. somebody told me last night that we take ourselves too seriously. as if I haven't heard THAT before.

speaking of which, I've been reading and re-reading Kimiko Hahn's book "Mosquito & Ant" and trying to figure out how she does it. the bulk of the poems in the book are series poems, a correspondence with "L." about her life -- so of course the next poem that pops out of me is in this form, but as GK pointed out it doesn't merit the form, feels too free-written, talky -- I think. maybe it'd work as these do, in a group of such poems. but maybe not. so I'm saving all versions, fascinated to see what happens. it's pared down now, and I'm considering trying it as a pantoum or villanelle (unrhymed, though), because I haven't done form in forever and the poems so rarely call for it.

back to Kimiko Hahn: the book is so devastatingly authentic. she weaves her own story -- or rather, the speaker's story -- with the stories of ancient Chinese women who corresponded with one another in this way (nu shu, or mosquito and ant), and the overlap is always surprising and yet right. not the obvious "look, this has always happened" but a simultaneous speaking to L, to herself, and to and about these women. gorgeous and she makes it look easy. I think the multi-layeredness is what my attempt at it was missing, hence the need to cut away and find the actual poem.

here's one I love:

Garnet
by Kimiko Hahn

i.
X wanted to present a gift
the husband would not detect
as inclination. Book bag.
Rhyming dictionary. Hand mirror.
I copied poems from The Orchid Boat for him.

ii.
You are the Empress Wu Tsu-T'ien
requesting her lover
examine her pomegranate dress.
I am as delighted as you.

iii.
Eating a bowl of raspberries
I imagine X sucking
on the beads of my garnet necklace --

iv.
She began as concubine to Emporer T'ai then to his son,
Emporer Kai, until he replaced his Empress with her. She ruled
China from that moment. After his death and into old age she
kept a male harem, concubines and courtier lovers. How do you
feel about this?

v.
nipples the color of garnet

vi.
You advise, why dull a sharp point?
why flatten the crests? why
rinse out color? why douse what
the gut claims from the heart --

vii.
the he residing in the she

viii.
garnet hard as nipples --

***

so here's my attempt at it, and the revision:

burn all the letters

I can write like this. his hands,
your hands, I have a lover and something
like a husband, you, our names on the checks,
the mailbox, your voice on the machine, both
our names, leave a message

-

I wanted this we so long I got over
the wanting and there you were / no roses
in hand, but a cactus / OK.

don't ask me about his mouth. most days
this job has me at the wrong ocean, missing
Brooklyn, our slanted kitchen, your ankles

-

at the Bristol Farms register I realize
I've bought green apples, lime popsicles
zucchini and chicken. not everything fits
but a pattern's a pattern. there's a subway card
in the other pocket

-

when she says the thing is, you can't fuck with either of us
and stay in good with him
and the us is me
and her and the him is (you) her ex-great love
and my current __________ I think of how shit
grows the most glorious roses / how you and she
were they when you and I collided
in a year of lies and how could we / how
did we inhabit versions of ourselves that could carry
such mouths / explosion and the long silence
after

-

the way you have to let soda go flat
to drink it when you're sick

-

to write this down – what if somebody reads it. J says
you write it all? why not just remember? never
trust a poet. so much blood. today is green.
ginger ale. leaving. remember to send the rent check.

-

a period drama. costumes, hair. nothing documented,
a historical fiction. I write it down
because I don't remember my dreams. the body
remembers, and pictures. purple hair, a stain
on your wall, that's how S found out.

even then you didn't tell everything. years
before it all came out, if it weren't
for metaphor we'd never write anything.

-

J says your confessions are overwhelming.
we've never been a good idea. but joy will out.
I don't believe in the inevitable. this is me talking
this time.

could I make all this up? maybe I invented you. if so,
I want the keys back. I'll be home in two weeks.
take the trash out. change the sheets. your hair,
it's on everything.

***

and the latest version:

burn all the letters

don't ask me about his mouth. most days
this job has me at the wrong ocean, missing
Brooklyn, our slanted kitchen, your ankles.

at the register: green apples, lime popsicles
zucchini and chicken. not everything fits
but a pattern's a pattern. there's a subway card
in the other pocket.

I can write this. our names on the checks,
the mailbox. his mouth, the ocean. your voice
on the machine, both our names, leave a message.

so much blood. today is green. ginger ale. leaving. remember
to send the rent check. if it weren't for metaphor
we'd never write anything.

I have a lover and something like a husband.
J says your confessions are overwhelming.
we've never been a good idea.

to write this down – he says you write it all?
never trust a poet. so much blood.

I wanted this we so long I got over
the wanting and there you were / no roses
/ cactus / a pattern's a pattern / write it.

maybe I invented you. if so, I want the keys back.
take the trash out. change the sheets. your hair,
it's on everything.

***

it's slightly wrong how much I love this process. what little allegiance I feel to facts. I love my job.


Thursday, April 08, 2004

glass houses, stones, etc.

I'm always disturbed by those who relish the pain
of those whose lives they envy

even in part. the supermodel stumbling
on the runway, the friend with the perfect

marriage now dividing the furniture, bachelor
with a broken heart. and we all do it -- wish

on flaws like children on dying stars, gape
at the steel pretzel, light and bone of traffic accidents --

somebody's always screaming in the asylum. chisels
for hands, trying to escape our latter selves, good

and wrong losing fast to infamy, bliss, another lift --
or so it seems from behind the two-way mirror. from

lifeguard seats we appear to be running, deadly toward
edges, the deep end / but look close. the kiss, isn't it

honest. everything you ever wanted.


Sit down, Domenic. What we do to stay alive
is different from what we are,
and some things are lost so well
we won't ever have to lose them again.

- Dorothy Barresi, “For Domenic, My 1970s”

COMEUPPANCE
for Michael, fallen through a skylight

Your enemies call it comeuppance
and relish the details
of a drug too fine, how long
you must have dangled there beside yourself.
In the middle distance of your
twenty-ninth year, night split open
like a fighter's bruised palm,
a purple ripeness.

Friends shook their heads.
With you it was always
the next attractive trouble,
as if an arranged marriage had been made
in a country of wing walkers, lion tamers,
choirboys leaping from bellpulls
into the high numb glitter, and you,
born with the breath of wild on your tongue
brash as gin.

True, it was charming for a while.
Your devil's balance, your debts.
Then no one was laughing.
Hypodermic needles and cash registers
emptied themselves in your presence.
Cars went head-on.
Sympathy, old motor, ran out
or we grew old, our tongues
wearing little grooves in our mouths
clucking disappointment.

Michael, what pulled you up
by upstart roots
and set you packing,
left the rest of us here, body-heavy
on the edge of our pews.
Over the reverend's lament
we could still hear laughter, your mustache
the angled black wings
of a perfect crow. Later
we taught ourselves the proper method for mourning
haphazard life: salt, tequila, lemon.
Drinking and drifting
in your honor we barely felt a thing.

- Dorothy Barresi, from “All of the Above”

GK bought me this book New Year's Day 2003. Funny how books fall back into your hands, lines surfacing from brain cells faster than we can kill them off. “Some things are lost so well we won't ever have to lose them again.” I've lost more people to themselves than to death, that's for sure. I've been thinking a lot lately about what progress costs, what we have to lose, whom we lose, what I've lost or put aside or buried, not buried in the sense of suppressed but coffined, ceremonied, interred. I've lost track of the people I've been, but I have pictures, and the body remembers. and now, the poems remember.

comeuppance. what an old word. but clear, exact. and cruel, somehow, inherently. but all things in time, yes. all things returning. “Your enemies call it comeuppance” -- what a start. alignment of the speaker with the subject, an immediate sympathy of sorts. “relish” the details – a visceral word, hungry. gapers on the highway, a third serving.

“in the middle distance of your twenty-ninth year” -- the repeated short i, the repeated d, the emphasis on these words, the sense that to make it this far, the middle distance, and not make it... so close. but halfway to go, maybe too much. “night split open / like a fighter's bruised palm, / a purple ripeness” -- the excess, the struggle – look at the way the image itself works in tandem with the sounds of the words. the image of the split hand, the fighter's bruise purple, the idea of swelling, ripeness, too much, too much – paired with the sounds: the long I, I, I, I (night, like, fight, ripe) – pain sounds. the way your jaw moves to say it.

and these things, nobody decides in the heat of the draft, the pain of the dead friend heavy in the wrist. but why the lines work, why they fall as the ideal words for this precise minute – that's the trick, that's the art.

“Friends shook their heads” -- the first stanza begins with enemies, the second with friends. and right after the visceral imagery of the first stanza, to move to a simple sentence, a landing place just as the reader could lose her footing watching the split hand, the purple. and the simple lead-in tugging us along until suddenly we're once again in the weird, imagistic world, lion tamers and choirboys, high numb glitter, breath of wild -- and then the visceral again, back to the body, the breath of wild is not abstract but sits on the tongue “brash as gin.”

and landing again: “True, it was charming for a while. / Your devil's balance, your debts. / Then no one was laughing.” see how she threads us along, giving us these solid standing places so that we can take the journeys out into surreality and imagery, and stay tied to the very real heart of the poem, this man's death, and life.

“Hypodermic needles and cash registers / emptied themselves in your presence. / Cars went head-on. / Sympathy, old motor, ran out” and we're launched again into un/sur-reality, Barresi telling us just how much power this man's life had over him, the sense of uncontrol, the way everything seems to act of its own accord when you've let go of the figurative wheel to your life.

and the last stanza, this one directed to Michael. each stanza moving closer and closer to the speaker, the unmentioned I. only at the end of the third stanza does a “we” enter, and then in this stanza the speaker breaks through fully. the questioning, the inevitable why of it, the betrayal of the left-behind, “body-heavy / on the edge of our pews.” body-heavy, the almost envy not just of his leaving, but of the life, the almost admiration of it: how beautiful it was: wing walkers, lion tamers, choirboys leaping, high numb glitter: one understands, almost, the appeal. but not glamorizingly – the fact of the (inevitable?) death always present, always grounding.

the last few lines: “Later / we taught ourselves the proper method for mourning / haphazard life: salt, tequila, lemon.” not mourning death, but life. and haphazard life, the colon indicating definition, the two-fold meaning: salt, tequila, lemon is not just the proper method of mourning, but is the life as well.

and the end: “Drinking and drifting / in your honor we barely felt a thing.” the difference a linebreak makes, and the lack of a comma. drinking and drifting in your honor / we barely felt a thing. drinking and drifting / in your honor, we barely felt a thing. as opposed to the openness, the rush of a whole unbroken thought of “in your honor we barely felt a thing.” the need to get it all out, to be done, to be able to run from the room now that it's out, this necessary lie. the ace of irony, pulled out just here at the end. a contradiction to all the visceral, aching, images piling up at the end of each preceding stanza, this release, this statement, this letting go:

we barely felt a thing.