a sad gold

2010-06-11T19:25:00.003-04:00

A misty day today. Every day when I walk from the Bunker Hill T to the office, I pass by North Point. It's been slated for development since at least 2001. Back when I was going to be an urban planner, one of my projects at Harvard GSD's Career Discovery Program was to make a design for North Point.

A few parts have been developed, but I've slowly fallen in love with the parts that are still "wild". I have to put "wild" in quotes because this whole area was originally a swamp. Then a rail yard. So it's hardly in its natural state. Every time it rains, I think the swamp tries to come back. The vernal pond you see below had dried up, but it came back with the recent rains.

I like to imagine what it's like to be a small creature on that rock at the edge of it. On my way home today, I think it was a cardinal roosting there. It flew away before I could photograph it. The light to the west was sublime.

As I was nearing home, these lilies just jumped at me. Today has been a good day. I'm off to walk the dog.

A wonderful evening

2008-09-10T22:36:00.002-04:00

Wonderful night. After work, I walked over to the I got to lay on my back as the sun set, enjoy the purple and orange light in the western sky, then watch the stars appear. They don’t just pop out, they drift in and out of sight so that you wonder if you’re imagining them into place. The moon stayed right over my sister’s right shoulder.

Bats overhead flew through the beams cast by the stage lights. A red-tailed hawk flew from behind the Hatch Shell directly above us – beautiful bird. The air was cool enough that I was glad to be wearing a sweater, but I was comfortable. What may be the best part of all, though, is that the whole time I was enjoying my surroundings, the Boston Landmarks Orchestra was playing Verdi’s Requiem.

It’s a wonderful piece – the person who introduced the piece said that a criticism of Verdi’s Requiem is that it’s rather dramatic for a requiem, which tend to the peaceful, somber side of things. Well dramatic it is, but not to any detriment! I found it rather moving. Nights like tonight are why I’m so glad to live in the city.

Requiem aeternam, dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

An afternoon in the garden

2008-09-08T20:48:00.001-04:00

I'm delighted to announce that I've got a poem up at Qarrtsiluni. It's "an experiment in online literary and artistic collaboration", to use their words, and I've been a fan for some time. The theme these days is Transformation, so I submitted a poem inspired by the works of Frida Kahlo, whose diary I read last year. You should pick it up. And don't forget to check out my poem and all the others. You can even listen to my nasally voice reading it.

* * *

So yesterday I engaged in some backyardsitting, enjoying a late summer late afternoon. We're in that post-September summer that everyone forgets to reckon. Labour Day is the ritualistic end of the season in our secular calendar defined by measured by three-day weekends.

But everyone who uses their own senses can heard the cicadas, feel the breeze, see the waning summer light, smell the vegetation. The tomatoes on the porch are still going, the yard is pretty robust.

Looking from the balcony to the garden, don't those two chairs look inviting?

Oh yes, on closer inspection they still do. They're old but have character, and they were salvaged from trash day. It's alarming how quick people are to throw out stuff that definitely has a few good years left in it!

Looking from my afternoon perch to the drive way. I need one of those wooden rakes them zen gardeners use.

Trevor has managed to turn the yard into a garden, with birdbaths and chairs and brickwork. Our neighbour contributed river rock pebbles, and that with the tree trimming really brightened it up. This is the first summer in the almost four years I've lived here that I sat down and enjoyed the back yard.

Tropical Storm Hanna poured and poured on us Saturday night, but by daybreak yesterday it was beautiful. I know because I was awake for it. I can see why people like getting up early. We walked to Cafe Ula and had our breakfast outside, as we've been doing on some Sundays this summer, and realised we still had lots of day left.

* * *

From Thoreau's blog:

Some hours seem not to be occasion for anything, unless for great resolves to draw breath and repose in, so religiously do we postpone all action therein. We do not straight go about to execute our thrilling purpose, but shut our doors behind us, and saunter with prepared mind, as if the half were already done.

Emerald Necklace

2008-09-01T21:15:00.009-04:00

Kalends September

A lovely Labour Day spent walking along the so-called Emerald Necklace. One of the pleasures of living in Boston, especially Jamaica Plain, is that I can walk through parks all the way from my house to downtown. So this morning Trevor and I set off with Isaac. Our path took us through the Arboretum, along the Arborway to Jamaica Pond. From there we crossed into Olmsted Park, which does straddle the Boston-Brookline line, though it seems to be much more on the radar of Brookline residents. Every time I've come to Olmsted Park, I feel like I'm wandering in the ruins of some lost civilisation. In some ways I suppose I am.

See? Throughout the park there are the remains of lampposts, benches, walking paths. If you sit at the shore of Ward's Pond, you could be forgiven for thinking you're in the middle of a far-off forest. The sensation of being far away and yet in the middle of the city has always been very intriguing. Beaver Lake in Vancouver's Stanley Park came to mind.

Can you spot the hobbit?

This is a bend in the Middy River, right near the Museum of Fine Arts. It brought back memories, walking this stretch. There are so many colleges in the Fenway area, the streets were swarming with U-Hauls and students burdened with their various new belongings. It's fifteen years that I've been here now. Tempus fugit.

This is a rose garden that I'd no idea existed. I took this picture because it makes it look like the gate leads to a garden that has skyscrapers growing from it. Which it does.

This is one of the many gardens in the Fenway. The Victory Gardens were started during the Second World War to encourage people to grow vegetables since there was extensive food rationing. Now people grow mostly flowers. You can see that some of these gardens have been well attended for years.

After a leisurely picnic on a bench along Commonwealth Avenue, we came upon our destination, the Public Garden. I suppose the necklace would include the Common, but we were meeting Soma, who was fresh from the Boston Harbor Islands to share blackberries that she and a friend had picked.

This is the pond the Swan Boats ply.

Willows are probably my favourite trees in the world.

Waiting for the T. If you thought we were going to walk all the way back to Jamaica Plain after all that, then you crazy.

All in all a perfect day.

Just money

2008-06-02T00:39:00.001-04:00

I've been finding money everywhere lately. I have lost track of how many dollars I've picked up off the ground in bits and pieces since January. So I've started either giving the coins I find to people or leaving them in tip jars so I can spread some of this luck around.

I found the penny in the picture the other day by the busses at Forest Hills. It's pretty mangled up and you can even see the zinc beneath the copper layer has been exposed. It's barely a penny any more, and I can't put my finger on what's so strange to me about that. When I picked it up, my first thought was, "Is that all money really is?" A symbol, a set of agreements, a collective hope, a zinc plug with a super thin layer of copper for show.

Sunset from my bedroom window

2008-04-29T22:44:00.001-04:00

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Franz Kafka

Ponkapoag

2008-04-20T12:02:00.004-04:00

Yesterday T & I decided to take a walk around Ponkapoag Pond in the Blue Hills. The forecasters had been predicting a rainy day, so the sunny blue skies were a welcome surprise for the morning. One of the numerous advantages to living in Jamaica Plain is our ready access to so many great outdoor areas. Then again, metro Boston is brimming with great green spaces.

I was rather taken with this rock right away, when we'd come down the hill closer to the water. I feel like I just need to know the right language and I'd be able to read whatever it's trying to tell me. The grooves do seem to tell of water that flowed along some mud, but why do they also make me think of flames?

This is the reading stone's neighbourhood. We're still in early spring, so the splotches of green are really vivid against the grey. Mind you, in places like the Arboretum, many of the trees are in full flower.

This was basking in the sun right in the middle of the path. Somehow I'd walked right past it without noticing, so I guess it decided to notice Trevor and lunge at him. And yes this picture was taken using the zoom feature. It's not until we got home that we broke out the Audubon Guide and identified the snake as a Nerodia sipedon, a Northern Water Snake. Not poisonous, but who wants to be bitten by a snake?

Here is the attack victim recovering and reflecting on his luck.

And here's some joker who drags himself about the region wearing funny hats and orange, pondering the meaning of the word isolation, which comes from the Latin word for island, which makes said joker wonder what's so bad about islands & what's with the negative connotation?

This was marked on the trail guide as a boardwalk through the bog at the east end of the pond. I had pictured something a little more substantial, that wouldn't soak my new sneakers in Atlantic Cedar tea, but still found myself captivated by this little path. The boards were mostly steady, but occasionally sank under our weight. I'm looking forward to seeing how all this scenery changes over the seasons.

Daffodil morning

2008-04-15T21:50:00.000-04:00

I've been watching the new North Point Park in Cambridge emerge over the last several years. It's tucked away behind the Museum of Science Bridge at the very eastern tip of Cambridge - you can see it when you are on the train to Lechmere. Last fall it looked finished, but they hadn't gotten all the rails up along the water.

Well, it's finally open and I'd been meaning to go and today I decided I had a few minutes before work started to make a detour.

So this is what it looks like when you walk under the bridge. I'd walked along the bridge numerous times, countless times, but never under it.

And this is what greeted me as soon as I walked in: daffodils! They have planted daffodils all over the park. It was very quiet and the nicest surprise was all the birds chirping about. I think it would be a good thing to stop at a park and sit in the sun listening to birds before going to work in the morning. It would certainly be a nice antidote to the deadening effect the train sometimes has. And I imagine it would do wonders to ease the agitation of driving.

The rest of the day was coloured and lightened by my morning detour.

Nones of April

2008-04-05T21:18:00.001-04:00

So Trevor found this branch on the ground and decided to stick it in some water. I relocated it to this spot by the window on my dresser. It was popping into bloom when I left for Florida last weekend. The flowers were, shall we say, past peak when I got back. Still it was a magical thing to have happen.

Today D, T and I met Sat and event called Evolving Traditions at Wellesley College. It was put together by S's friend, and now my neighbour, who is a professor there. The dancing and music were top-notch, as was the food. I had never been on the campus before, and was quite impressed. I always find it a good sign when an older, established institution is unafraid to bring on some modern architecture.

* * *

I finished the book Three Cups of Tea, after reading it for one of the book clubs I belong to. I strongly recommend it not because it was great literature, but because it is an inspiring story, and a counter to all those who say that one person can't make a difference. Though it did make me wonder why I didn't start schools in Haiti or something. I've gotten to a point where I realise that it's more productive to see what I can do than to beat myself up for what I haven't done. Greg Mortenson, the subject of the book, is doing good work and I only wish that all the money we have poured into the abyss of war had been given to organisations like his instead.

Like any good depiction of a person who does such good work, it steered away from hagiography by illuminating some of Mortenson's flaws, though not as much as Tracy Kidder did Paul Farmer's in Mountains Beyond Mountains. If such people are portrayed as saints, it makes the regular folk think that they are too small to emulate them. Three Cups of Tea doesn't do that. Still, anyone who thinks education is some pie-in-the-sky idea that we can deal with after "security" is established, well, the two need to come together.

* * *

In other book news, I just got a whole bunch of poetry translations from Action Books. One of the editors was at Harvard at the same time I was. They have a focus on Scandinavian poetry, which is a fascination of mine. And luckily most of the books are bilingual.

It's poetry month, but instead of writing a poem every I think I'm just going to read one every day.

Happy New Year!

2008-04-01T21:08:00.003-04:00

Well, in the old (really) old days, this would have been the start of the year. What better day than today to start a new year? It's spring, despite the bare trees and gray skies. This morning as I walked up the hill to the cemetery, I noticed that the brambles have gone from being stick brown to having just the faintest ghost of green hovering about them. When you look directly it's hard to see, but there nonetheless.

I came into the office this morning after a long weekend away. It was nice to be back. I like the hubbub and the interactions. Apparently our society has reached the point where most people hate their jobs, or so I read somewhere. Thankfully I am not among those people. I love my job as much as I love a nice crispy apple. Really, there aren't many things lovelier than a crispy apple, especially if you've grown up on St. Thomas, where crispy apples are heartbreakingly rare. I don't know how I came to deserve such good fortune, but I'm going to enjoy it as long as I can. And what do you know? They had crispy green apples at the gym today!

But enough of this giddy exultation. The sky was moving today, rainy but warm. Momentous. I lost my uncle on Easter, one of my dearest friends lost her father on Good Friday. It's sad, too sad. So no resolutions for this new year, just hope.

Boox!

2008-03-21T20:01:00.000-04:00

So these are the little beauties sitting on my shelf. I used to have a lot more, but I, unlike many other bibliophiles, found that I was quite able to part with books. Maybe moving every year had something to do with it. Or maybe moving in with L & M back in '99 did it. They were able to move all their belongings in a few trips in a VW bug (an old one!), whereas I needed like three trips with a U-Haul van.

So I pared down. Maybe a little too hastily at times. There are a few books I miss, but I do live in a part of the world where I’m never too far from a library.

This is what’s left. I have read every book I own (except for the four I’ve acquired in the last month). It took years. There are a few I’ve been looking forward to re-reading, but most of them are just kind of sitting there. And it’s become less a matter of them taking up space than a matter of letting someone else have a turn at reading them.

In other news, yesterday was the first day of spring. I decided to stroll along the river at lunchtime the other day, for the first time in a long time. Everything I could see was a watery sort of blue-grey.

Back to school

2007-09-09T22:04:00.000-04:00

Tonight it's cool out. The leaves are changing early this year because it's been so dry. Last weekend every moving truck in the city was occupied. It was a good summer. Highlights included the free classical concerts at the Hatch Shell, Shakespeare in the Common, my new job, the Garden in the Woods, among many, many other things.

Always so much left undone, but that only means there's plenty left to do! The Brookline Poetry Series started back up on Friday, and was delightful as always. I'm looking forward to one of dearest friends visiting at the end of the month. I signed up to be a host for two first years at Harvard, so I look forward to showing them around the area. And I am planning to learn Swedish.

Delight of delights, the Thoreau blog seems to be daily again.

The Dirdy Birdy (full version)

2007-07-21T12:16:00.001-04:00

Hiatusing

2007-05-09T22:26:00.000-04:00

I think I’m spending too much time looking at screens. Instead of trying to update this blog three times a week, I think I shall cut it down to once a week, at least while I’m finishing this project. I’ll keep updating my St. Thomas blog daily, though. Well, until next Friday when I fly back to Boston.

Oh yeah, so it was funny: my Mom had saved all my Harvard papers from back when I was applying. It’s a funny little time capsule. You know what I said my plans for the future were when I was seventeen? I would study social sciences and work at a multinational company. So I guess I haven’t actually gone too far from that.

One last thing – go to wiggle worm and check out my doppelganger.

Third World?

2007-05-04T14:31:00.000-04:00

So there was a very interesting discussion that erupted the night I was watching the fireworks. Somehow it was brought up that there are people who consider St. Thomas to be part of the Third World. Well, I have long counted myself among those people, but I refrained from joining the conversation because people seemed rather indignant at the proposal. But then again, I suppose that many people think "Third World" has negative connotations, whereas I find it more neutral and certainly less insulting than "developing world" or any other of the other alternatives. And it means at least we don't number among the nations that went out and colonized others.

Later on, though, I mentioned it to my cousin who had been at the party and another friend. My cousin asked me how I can consider St. Thomas Third World when I've been to a country like Haiti. But what about all the countries that are far better off than Haiti, but still considered Third World? Then I brought up the fact that we have neighborhoods like Savan, Nadir and Smith Bay. Then the power outages. But those are all aesthetic.

I remember when I worked at the law firm one summer in college and I looked at some demographics for the Virgin Islands. That's when I realized what part of the world I was in. Poverty levels, birth rates, infant mortality, distribution of wealth, it all points to the fact that we are not on par with the industrialized world. My friend decided that we are a Third World society with First World amenities. I can accept that. I'm sure they said the same about Suriname when it was still Dutch Guiana, and look at it now.

Funny then, that we had a power outage the other night and this picture occurred to me. I'll title it "Third World but with First World Amenities".

otoliths & meng-hu

2007-05-02T23:19:00.000-04:00

The online literary journal Otoliths has launched its autumn issue (it's based in Australia), where you can find my poem in memoriam to Russell Jones. They have published some great stuff in past, so I'm looking forward to reading it myself. Check it out.

* * *

So over at the Hermitary the other day, Meng-hu was critiquing the book The Secret, one of the latest best-sellers about leading a better life. I haven't read it yet, but my mother seems to be enjoying it. I'll have to check it out myself. I am always suspicious of, well, anything popular, but especially pop spirituality because it always seems to be watered down Buddhism or Sufism but without the hard parts. Still, I'm not going to judge the book until I see for myself, especially since I know my Mom to be pretty sharp.

But what I did like most was his own secret:

What do I really want? Well, I already have my own "secret." I call it the "law of disengagement." It, too, is a universal law, as far as know. It simply states that peace of mind, habits of simplicity, the company of the wise, and disengagement from the rush of society, culture, and the crowd, is the source of happiness. Maybe that is the real law of attraction. I don't know, but it amounts to all the wealth I want.

It's not a road map, but it's a good summation of what I aim for, I think. Whether or not I'm actually on it or even whether it's a good thing remains to be seen. I'll say this much, though, I don't really miss pop culture at all.

Carnival

2007-04-30T10:35:00.000-04:00

It's been sixteen years since my last Carnival on St. Thomas. I loved Carnival as a child, going up and down the street, following troupes I liked, walking past troupes I didn't. As I got older, though, Carnival started to sour. There was a lot of crime and animosity. "Kill the Rabbit" kind of ruined Carnival for me. I don't want to go into it, but anyone who was on St. Thomas in the mid-80's should know what I mean.

I'm not the biggest fan of crowds, or people for that matter, so I never made it a priority to come back for Carnival. Over the last few years, though, the more parades I've been to in the States, the more I appreciated what we have here. It's really a coincidence that I'm here for Carnival this year. I hadn't really planned on going to the parade, but my cousin Hans called this morning. I didn't know he was going to be on island, so it was a nice surprise. Anyway, I decided to go with my cousins and I'm glad I did. I ran into lots of people I know and it was entertaining as hell.

I love that there are no barriers, so it is really more like a moving party. I love that even the fattest women on the island get into skin-tight outfits with sequins and feathers and dance down all of Main Street. I love how people of all classes and nationalities can join together for a good fete. Carnival really unites us as a people in so many ways. I think if more Americans had the experience of wearing sparkly costumes and dancing down the street with a beer in their hands, they wouldn't be so uptight.

Things have changed since I was a child, everyone's telling me that Carnival was smaller this year, but I thought it was wonderful. I'm glad I brought my camera.

Dreams

2007-04-27T22:38:00.000-04:00

Today I was reading Naguib Mahfouz's The Dreams and really enjoying it. It recalled a lot of surrealist poems I've read and really nicely blends elements of the fantastic and the quotidian - just like dreams. It's a book of short shorts, though it's sad to say that more happens in them than in many longer short stories I've read.

In the introduction it said that relating and interpreting dreams is a big part of Arabic culture and literature. I thought, though, of all the times someone would bring a poem about a dream into workshop. Some people generally dismiss anything labeled as a dream. I suppose you could say that it's because dreams only happen in one person's head and thus cannot be shared. I don't believe that though. And in reading Mahfouz, I could relate to some of his dreams, not because I'd had similar ones, but because the syntax, so to speak, was the same. The way you can "remember" something in a dream that isn't real either, the way dead people appear and you forget that they're dead, the way people turn into other people and it all seems normal. I think dreams are also a way of approaching a subject you don't want to talk about. Reading the dreams of Mahfouz put me as a reader into the very interesting role of being the interpreter of dreams. Funny, I just remembered that the etymology of interpret eventually leads back to trading.

Thank goodness some of my classmates ignored the whole "tell a dream, lose a reader" dictum and went ahead and wrote fantastic dream poems.

soggy

2007-04-25T21:44:00.000-04:00

Yuck. It’s amazing how soggy everything is. It has been raining heavily for days. There is so much water in the air, all the paper in the house is limp: my books, cash, loose papers on the desk. There’s absolutely nothing crisp in this house, possibly even the whole island.

Still it’s been nice to drive through clouds every day on the way home from work. And we have waterfalls now.

Celtic Living

2007-04-23T21:38:00.000-04:00

I’ve enjoyed listening to the radio in Gaelic and Welsh the last few days. I have been home alone working, so the radio is good company, but I don’t want to get distracted. Listening to radio in languages I don’t understand is a good way to fill the silence at home but stay focused on the tasks at hand. It gives some people a headache, I’ve heard, but not me. I find it more effective than music, and I love the sound of the languages. I picked Gaelic and Welsh because those were the two I knew I could find easily in a pinch the other day.

Gaelic. Welsh.

My mother and I used to spend hours watching news in languages we didn’t know. There was a great channel on St. Thomas where there would be soap operas in Tagalog and news in Amharic and Greek.

I'm afraid of Americans

2007-04-20T23:25:00.000-04:00

I'm afraid of Americans. I'm afraid of the world. I'm afraid I can't help it.

There is a moment in the video where David Bowie has a look of dawning horror as he begins to sing, “God is an American.” It made my spine tingle then, and it does so now. I live in America, true, but I also grew up in an American colony. The anger I’ve encountered when trying to talk about the gap between the way Americans perceive themselves and the way others perceive them has always unsettled me. It’s that same anger that has fuelled the invasions of country after country.

“I’m afraid of Americans” came out in 1997, but I’ve often wondered how it hasn’t come to be the new national anthem. Besides the bombings and invasions, how about the school shootings and the hostage situations and the like? I think of the song now, though, not in response to events abroad, but rather to events on the Mainland.

I’ve been told that my problem is that I will make these criticisms, but that I don’t hold myself accountable for any of it. Foreigners aren’t allowed to criticize, apparently, and citizens have to say the mea culpas on behalf of everyone else. But where do I fit in? I’m both and neither. I may have moved to the mainland, but it can be argued as to whether I really had a choice.

Still, I’m willing to accept responsibility. I accept all of America’s sins as mine. Everyone who has benefited from any injustice is responsible for that injustice. How does that sound?

What consoles me in all this is how rare events like the Virginia Tech killings are. After all, it could happen a lot more, but doesn’t. Somehow we manage not to require a police state to keep things like that from happening every day. Not that more compassion in the world would hurt anything.

Spring

2007-04-18T23:21:00.001-04:00

Even though I am enjoying the sunshine and the cooling breezes of St. Thomas, I do miss my beloved New England. Sure the weather there has been harsh of late, and the winter is lagging on longer than usual. But I looked at this picture taken a year ago at the Arboretum, and it's easy to remember why I love Boston.

For everyone up North, remember that this is coming. This is special. Where I am right now, there are never days like that. I'm sad to be missing it.

Town

2007-04-16T23:22:00.000-04:00

It's funny, you can grow up somewhere and not realize that it is brimming with architectural treasures. Charlotte Amalie, better known to us locals as Town, was founded in 1671, but most of its buildings date from the nineteenth century. I always knew that the downtown area by Main Street was old, but I hadn't realized even the streets at the edges of town were laid out in the 1760s.

This weekend I read The Royal Three Quarters of the Town of Charlotte Amalie by Edith DeJongh Woods and Historic Buildings of St. Thomas and St. John by Frederik C. Gjessing and William P. MacLean. The former is a gorgeous book - the illustrations alone make the book worth having.

We are finally seeing some appreciation for Town, a lot of outsiders are fixing up some of the old buildings. Actually, a lot of the old local families never left and still live in their townhouses. It's too easy to zip through town on the waterfront. It's very easy to avoid town altogether, but it would bear a good walking-through. It was laid out when cars were unimagined. Indeed, the only way to go on the step streets is to walk them.

It turns out that St. Thomas has been a cosmopolitan trading center right from the start. Even though I grew up in the relatively rural Northside, I suppose the kernel of urban appreciation was placed in my young mind by going to town every day after school. I feel cheated that it's not until I was an adult that I learned our history. I don't get any indication that our schools have gotten any better on this front since I left. Still, I think awareness is growing, so I'm optimistic.

Lazarus

2007-04-13T20:20:00.000-04:00

Back among the living, it was nice to leave the house today. I wondered if anyone would mention that today is Friday the Thirteenth. We used to make a big deal of it when we were children, I think because we hadn't lived long enough yet to realize that it's not actually that rare an occurrence. You know how it is for kids, everything is happening for the first time ever.

Nobody mentioned it at all, though, which sort of surprised me. Not that I believe in silly superstitions like that. Even if I did, I would just use my jumbies to protect me, right?

So all today I had that washed-out feeling one has when one has been sick enough to lose track of time. Also, there is always that faint suspicion that, no, life can't possibly have been going on without me. They're all kidding, right?

The Caribbean Writer

2007-04-11T15:05:00.000-04:00

The Caribbean Writer is a journal put out by the University of the Virgin Islands. They have published some real Caribbean luminaries like Kamau Brathwaite and Edwidge Danticat, among many others. And now they've decided to publish me.

It's very fitting that I would get notice of acceptance while I'm down here. It was a bright light in a day made otherwise gloomy by this lingering flu. Also, they pay their contributors in copies, but that still means that this is my first paying publication!

2007-04-09T15:05:00.000-04:00

I am sick today, so I will not post.

good friday

2007-04-06T17:55:00.001-04:00

I'll never understand why we call it Good Friday. I had forgotten how much of the island shuts down - it's the one day of the year you aren't allowed to sell alcohol. Most of the businesses were closed. The one grocery store that we stopped by was open because the owners are Palestinian.

My parents and I had a sinuous conversation that sort of lasted the entire day on faith and religion and the difference. They are both people of great faith, but no dogma, which I appreciate all the more as I get older. My mother still attends Catholic mass; it's a part of her culture and upbringing that she isn't willing to abandon, yet she maintains the right to disagree with the Church. I suppose that's the kind of adherent they need - mind you, they don't seem to want that.

Whereas I have really left it behind completely. Though let's not forget that the Catholic Church has been pretty adamant about pushing people like me out (unless we're priests, I suppose). In any case, I'm glad that my parents gave me a framework to explore and consider faith, but I'm gladder that they never pressured us to adhere to any man-made dogma.

It was a topic that's been on my mind since I read Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great (great read - I'd never read him before - fantastic writer) on the way down here. There was also a special on CNN called "What Would Jesus Do?" that I found extremely poor. They hit on a whole variety of interesting questions, but didn't pursue anything in depth. In the case of the debate between evolution and creation science, I think it was criminal.

On St. Thomas again

2007-04-05T00:20:00.000-04:00

I'll be here for six weeks. T has requested that I keep an additional blog while I am on St. Thomas, so I have created my St. Thomas Notebook. It should be more picture-heavy. It's been a long day.

Here is a star and a hillside:

National Poetry (Writing) Month

2007-04-02T11:56:00.000-04:00

The Academy of American Poets has designated April as National Poetry Month for some time now. While it seems to be focused more on increasing sales of poetry books, whatever one thinks about the AAP, it can't hurt to have a month when you can focus your energies for a month on poetry as it exists, as it is read and shared, as it is created.

To that end, Maureen Thorson has been celebrating by writing a poem a day every April since 2002, I think. Hence NaPoWriMo, whose acronym I actually have a soft spot for. I've decided to participate this year, so I set up a separate blog for my NaPoWriMo poems: showressoote.blogspot.com

It's just a spur to generate material that I may or may not use later - I'm not going to be terribly serious about it this year. But it's an experiment that can't hurt. I hope.

Anyway, here is a poem by Bill Knott:

NAOMI POEM

The beach holds and sifts us through her dreaming fingers
Summer fragrances green between your legs
At night, naked auras cool the waves
Vanished
O Naomi
I kiss every body of you, every face

artists' books

2007-03-30T22:49:00.000-04:00

Space Other is a gallery in the South End that focuses on innovative contemporary art. I had visited it before during open studios and enjoyed the video art they had up at the time. So when I saw in the paper that they were exhibiting book art, I was intrigued. Book art is one of my favorite media to interact with - it extends the whole idea of reading, which I love anyway. The show, "Artists' Books: Transgression/Excess", ends tomorrow.

Some of the books were really boxes that one opens to examine the contents, one "book" was really a clay object made to look like a book. There was a series of books that was completely blank - white pages, white covers. The interesting thing was that behind it were some photos of an entire library of books like that. It made me imagine a world where everything has really been wiped clean. Kind of chilling, actually.

There was a set of chapbooks bound in cardboard that I found very cool. The covers were painted as well. I wish I had taken pictures. They were made in Peru by a group called Sarita Carbonera, whose website is interesting, but more so if you speak Spanish.

Another piece that I liked was more of a regular book by a concrete poet named Emmett Williams, who I had never heard of. What I liked about it was that the poems really played with words and language as if they were silly putty. I wish I had gotten the title. One of the poems used the old English letters ð and þ, which represent the 'th' sounds in English. Well, I think that stuff is neat.

still life

2007-03-28T10:18:00.000-04:00

I brought home some ingredients for soup and left them on the table. When T walked in, he said it looked like a still life. Those aren't all the ingredients - we're not that broke. I'm going to make a roasted red pepper soup. Hmmm, and I just realized that I forgot to buy the peppers.

culture weekend

2007-03-26T15:54:00.001-04:00

On Saturday night, T and I went to hear the Tallis Scholars perform at St. Paul's in Harvard Square. They are a group from Britain that performs Renaissance choral music. T's uncle had given him a CD of their music several years ago. When I saw they were coming to town as part of the Boston Early Music Festival, I decided to get tickets as a Christmas present to T. I really believe that listening to music like that is good for your health.

On Sunday I went to the New England Flower Show at the Bayside Expo Center with a friend. I had never been before, but I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that it was all indoors. Some of the garden displays would have benefited from natural light. They should bust some holes through the roof. Still, the displays were lovely and it was nice to be surrounded by greenery. I got some herbs at the market and S took lots of photos.

Otoliths

2007-03-23T17:52:00.000-04:00

The editor at Otoliths wrote yesterday to accept "In Memoriam, Russell Jones, the O.D.B., 1970-2004", my poem in memory of the Ol' Dirty Bastard. He was one of my favorite rappers in college, and the poem is sort of a trajectory from some segues he did on the Chris Rock album "Bigger and Blacker".

Otoliths is "a magazine of many e-things" edited by Mark Young, a poet who lives in Australia. The issue goes live on May Day.

equinox

2007-03-21T17:52:00.000-04:00

This winter's melting snows will drain away more than water. I have been drawn to the brook in the Arboretum over and over again this winter to see if it is flowing. The brook will wash away everything. I've written down on leaves the things I want to be rid of and I intend to drop them into the water. Because I don't want it to seem that I only give the world my refuse, I've also written down some things that I hope to see. One-word prayers, written on leaves, put in a brook to flow away on equinox. Seems like a good way to welcome spring.

2007-03-19T17:52:00.000-04:00

I have grown to love the way that dogs walk everywhere on their tippy toes.

patrick's eve

2007-03-16T17:51:00.000-04:00

Today I sat in a large room and waited for my number to be called. There were several hundred people there from all walks of life. The television was only used to give us instructions and to assure us that we were fulfilling a sacred duty, otherwise it was off. Periodically, we were told we could leave the room for minutes at a time. Of course we were allowed to leave to use the bathroom or get a snack. Some of the people had their numbers called and they were taken to another room.

It began to snow and it was very pretty. Most people didn't look outside at all. Nobody spoke. After some time a man in uniform told us that we wouldn't be needed and could go home. he advised us to look out for a letter in the mail that would absolve us from having to spend another day in that room for the next three years.

Luckily I had been warned in advance to bring a book with me. Saul Williams' Dead Emcee Scrolls made for good company. As poetry that has grown out of old school hip hop, it displayed the same word play, dense allusions, rhythm and internal rhyme that has gone
missing from pop rap. It was the first I've read of him, though I have heard some of his performed pieces and I think they do succeed on the page. His manifesto really struck me:

I think I should aim at nothing more that ridding myself of lying, negative attitudes, trying to control how people see me, overconcern about what others think of me, dishonest expression of emotion, trying to possess that which isn't mine, false humility, lack of discipline: physically, mentally, spiritually and of all that leaves me incapable of giving and receiving love.
Simply, I don't have to try to be a poet or how I imagine a poet should or would be. I don't even have to write, as long as I am honest to each moment rather than to my ideas of myself.

The Man Suit

2007-03-14T17:51:00.000-04:00

When I went to the Small Press Night put together by the folks at Quick Fiction earlier this week, I stopped by the table for Black Ocean. They had lots of cool stuff, but I decided to pick up The Man Suit by Zachary Schomburg, who edits Octopus. I was hipped to Octopus by my prof Peter Shippy. Geez, that's a lot of links.

I loved The Man Suit most for being its own crazy world. I also dug how one poem seemed to write another. The recurring characters and themes and images made me believe in the world between the covers. Instead of it being like reading Alice in Wonderland, it was more like being in Wonderland. Oh, and it has an index, which was fun to read for its own sake.

It makes you want to spend time with it - not to figure it out, but to explore it. In that spirit, I'm not going to quote it. Instead I have gathered everything I know about two recurring characters and tried to reconstruct the truth they came out of. If you like this, you should read the book because it made me want tease this out:

Marlene was known to dress inappropriately and inhabit hollowed-out trees, where she would hide agendas and hand out flowers. Other times she wore a purple one-piece bathing suit. Lost Souls would gather at the beach near her and write messages in the sand.

On occasion she told people her name was Madeline. She was made out of snow and knew just how to stand with her perfect feet and legs. She had once lived in a House of Glass, but somebody lost her at the planetarium.

Carlos Carlos was muscular, wore tuxedos and wrote operas. He owned a villa in Mexico that had a white phone. People call him on it even though he is dead. He also had a man suit and was sometimes chased by tree machines. One time he found a voice box inside a dead sheep. He claimed it told secrets.

His Garden of Lost Souls that got uprooted and all the lost souls floated loose. He floated into Canada on a life raft that he spent so long on he grew a full beard. After a brush with half-death, he noticed how heavy the sky in Canada was. He didn't like it when people asked him how he got there, even after some years. He ended up becoming scenery.

clever subconscious

2007-03-12T17:51:00.000-04:00

Meditating the other day, I noticed, though tried not to think about, the fact that the in the whirlwind of thoughts that came up, much of it was from media: things I've seen on television, radio, websites. After that came pieces of conversations. Bodily needs only came up after I'd been sitting a while: hungry, need to pee, leg's falling asleep.

What didn't come up? Beethoven. Poetry, nature, quiet moments. I guessed that it's always like that - I just don't pay attention. So today I start meditating and what pops into my head first? Wavy branches dancing in the wind, one of the bare trees in the cemetery, the texture of bark. Clever, clever subconscious, always listening.

still life

2007-03-09T16:42:00.000-05:00

I wonder sometimes at the elements I use to decorate the spaces I inhabit. I think I very much follow in line of the voodoo altar aesthetics. We are a syncretistic people, so I don't worry so much about consistency of theme. Or at least that's how I justify it.

In the center is Erzulie, who is often presented as the Virgin. She is the goddess of love, but she is actually two goddesses. Erzulie Freda is the goddess of the pretty side of love: jewelry, beauty, compassion, sweet stuff. Erzulie Dantor represents the fierce, protective, jealous side of love. Apparently out depiction of her is based on the Black Madonna of Poland, which came to Haiti with the Polish mercenaries Napoleon sent to squash our revolution. They wisely switched sides. That is the Erzulie you see in the picture. Both Erzulies are associated with gay people, Freda with men and Dantor with women.

On the left is a Waterford crystal piece that my sister brought back from Ireland. It is a joy to have - it turns the candlelight into diamonds. Since my partner is Irish, it also represents a new facet of my own life.

Michelangelo's Moses is on the right. It belonged to my grandmother and she designated it be given to me on her passing. I always used to wonder why Moses had horns and I remember asking her when I was little. She wasn't sure. I found out in college that the words for "horns" and "rays of light" are identical in Hebrew, and that it was an issue of mistranslation. She was fascinated when I told her, which is probably why she saved the replica for me. It was always right by the television set. She had curios all over the place. I don't know where she got it.

astrology

2007-03-07T16:41:00.000-05:00

How do the stars know when they are close to the horizon? How does a big nuclear reactor constantly (but not eternally) bursting into flame develop a brain and keep track of its thoughts? Or do they need to plant them in our brains? When that was set up, when the decision was made to use our decentralized minds instead of one server, how did they get a wireless system to transcend the light years?

memory, muses, lethe

2007-03-05T16:40:00.000-05:00

Music
Sophocles, tr. Reginald Gibbons

By Memory's daughters,
the Muses,
Forgetting,
named Lethe, is hated
And not to be loved.
O for mortals, what
Power there is in songs,
What greatest happiness
That can make bearable this
Short and narrow channel of life!

appeared in Poetry, March 2007

This poem really made me wonder what the Greeks were onto, in terms of the relation of art to memory. Could art really have as simple a definition as "that which is worthy of memory"? That, of course, brings up the inevitable question "to whom?" Or is art whatever is remembered? And what is the difference between remembering and memorizing?

The Koran is memorized, times tables, baseball stats, but in oral tradition were things memorized or remembered. Etymologically remember implies re-put-together, re-created every time. What are the implications?

Poetry is one of the arts that can be remembered and recreated as a whole. You can remember a painting, but you can't recreate it. You can talk about it, but you don't have to talk about poetry, you can just recite it and let the listeners decide for themselves.

Oh, and I wonder what the relation is between Lethe and lethal.

Sawbuck

2007-03-02T23:16:00.000-05:00

Sawbuck is an online poetry journal that launched earlier this year. If you take a look at their current issue, you will see some of my poems. What makes me even happier than seeing my poems there, though, is that there are so many poems up that I like. Also, I like seeing that there are some authors I had no clue existed but definitely want to look out for now. I couldn't ask for better company for my poems.

The poems published were "Lines Taken from Tranströmer's 'Loneliness'", "Tortola, British Virgin Islands, 1991", "I'm Not Going Crazy", and "Further On", which is a translation of a Tomas Tranströmer poem. So, poems about faces turning to clay, ghosts of people who have been hung, crazy animals and light switches for entire countries. An eclectic bunch.

Other poets included Jenna Cardinale, Julia Cohen, Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney, Michelle Greenblatt & Sheila Murphy, Duane Locke, Christopher Mulrooney, Ben Myers, Amanda Paananen & Ryan Vine.

Baka

2007-02-28T19:09:00.000-05:00

Rykodisc put out a record of music from the Baka forest people of Cameroon back in 1993. I listened to it a lot in college, but had sort of forgotten about it until today. It's called Heart of the Forest. One of the things I always loved about it was that it was recorded in the field, so there are many incidental noises: insects, people coughing, conversations. A lot of what in included really involves daily rituals like children's games, wake-up calls, hunting songs, cooking songs. I wonder if people in a society like that would understand our need for constant entertainment?

Anyway, my favorite tracks were the "Water Drums", where people are actually hitting the water in the river to make music. Now, though, I've grown to appreciate the singing more. Funny how tastes change. I probably enjoy the CD more now than I did in college. The people who put it together, it turns out, formed a group called Baka Beyond and have continued the project. I haven't heard any of their work.

It just occurred to me now - baka is the word for imp in Creole. Considering that the Baka people are pygmies, I wonder if there's a connection there.

lines of writing

2007-02-26T16:39:00.001-05:00

This is what today's snow did to the roof next door.

And this is what it reminded me of.

It says something about me that instead of wanting to know what the snow on the roof says, I'm far more interested in knowing how its language works.

For most of human history, of course, there was no writing. So what did people read? I have to believe that my reading skills would have been good for something. Tracking animals? Forecasting the weather?

Øyvind Berg

2007-02-23T16:37:00.000-05:00

On the way to a reading on Wednesday night, I stopped by the Grolier and picked up a book by the Norwegian poet Øyvind Berg. I'd never heard of him, but he was in the Scandinavian section where I was looking for Tranströmer. I'd say he's not well known, not just because I hadn't heard of him. Rather, it seems the only wikipedia entry for him is in Norwegian.

They are strange, short poems that grab you and confuse you. I don't usually buy a book on the first pass, but I was afraid somebody else might buy it before I had time to figure out what I was seeing. Here are three examples:

(Déjeuner sur l'h

Where skeletons grow white as trees
and the flesh migrates north
like birds in the dawn light

to visit the curse upon the house
and hatch out more chalk. A delight
for us who love the song of the flesh.

And when it's dark and dire up north
we drink white milk and remember
how unseemly things really are.

(Eternity's bowel

There's no talk of occupation. As I walked along nights at length, all I was shown was an unfamiliar brutal depopulation. Nothing else was mentioned.

(What the minister said

Take a stillborn child.
Slit it, trim of slices of fat
and stuff them in the kid's mouth.

If it's now able to speak freely
it's not a dead child

but a future minister.

Such is the magic of politics.

The surrealist strain is evident. The first poem contains elements of death and seasonal change, and seems to be a song of the accursed taking delight in curses. While I can't pinpoint a precise meaning, I think it's the whole mood we should look at. What's the meaning of a soup, after all. The second poems speaks to all who've ever wandered at night, but also to all who've ever wandered an landscape abandoned for other reasons. The last is one of my favorites, and the most jarring. Babies getting sliced is disgusting, but how much more so than what politicians do? I supposed I'm reading the last two poems through the lens of our current wars, but how can one not do so?

It's a slim book called Totschweigetaktiken, which is German for "tactics to silence the dead". I recommend it if you can get your hands on it. It's a quick read, but bears rereading.

*
Readings, readings, readings:

On Wednesday night I helped set up for a reading at the Democracy Center in Harvard Square. It was part of the Ellen LaForge reading series, organized by Louisa Solano. The readers were Eugene Gloria and Barbara Ras. They were both good, so I'm glad the turnout was large. The fact that it was held in a former finals club gave me a warm glow all evening. Some changes are for the better.

On Thursday night I went to another reading at Lame Duck Books. This one was a launch for a new journal called Tuesday; An Art Project. It seems like a very interesting project: every poem is printed on its own card, the idea being that poems can be tactile objects. It was nice to talk to some of the poets afterwards. I always feel so awkward when I lurk about to get books signed, but it's a good way to make myself meet and talk to people. I ran into another Emerson alum, Mary, which was nice.

Ash Wednesday

2007-02-21T11:52:00.000-05:00

Calling me a lapsed Catholic would probably be an understatement. In addition, I somehow didn't even know about the whole ashes on the forehead thing until I came to college, despite growing up in a Catholic family. But one tradition I have held onto is giving something up for Lent. I think it's a good spiritual practice, and it helps you decide what is really important to you. I gave up meat a few years ago and didn't really miss it; I gave up chocolate one year and I thought of it every day. I would only give up chocolate again for the sheer pleasure it gives you to eat chocolate after forty days of not having any, but that would be a warped reason, so I'm not doing it.

This year, my partner and I have decided to forsake television. Not that we watch much, and most that is DVDs, but sometimes we'll fire up the set to later find we've lost an entire evening without meaning to. It's that "without meaning to" that I worry about.

Television lost it appeal for me in the summer of 1999. There was no concrete reason, I just realized one day that I hadn't touched the remote in two months. I read a book a few years ago called Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television that helped justify my aversion.

The cocktail of the last seven years (the 2000 election debacle, 9/11, the war with Iraq) have only made me withdraw further from the mainstream, to the point that I feel like I live in another country. I've met people who can't seem to relate to me because I don't know the shows they're talking about. One of my cousins told me about a seminar he went to where people chose to introduce themselves by what show they watched.

It's a little isolating, but I don't feel like I'm missing that much. I definitely feel happier than when I was still trying to keep up. I don't find myself wanting as much stuff, to be sure. So it may seem silly for me to give up television for Lent - it was actually my partner's idea - but who knows, maybe I'll find that I'm more attached to the little that I do watch more than I had realized.

One question that has been percolating in my head, but that I haven't yet sat down and confronted, is whether all the time I spend web surfing is any better. It's not the surfing and the information overload so much as it is the physical act of staring at a screen for hours on end.

Funny enough, I just noticed that my friend Christopher also wrote about these things just yesterday. He refers to this article from The Guardian, talking about the physical risks of television watching. I agree with him that the study is more noteworthy for talking about physiological effects rather than psychological, maybe people will pay more attention. Then again, people still smoke, don't they? Still, can we work on getting television banned in bars and restaurants now?

Okay, this is more rambling than I normally like to be in writing.

2007-02-19T12:24:00.000-05:00

Good reading Thursday night at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Harvard Square: Katia Kapovich, Philip Nikolayev and Glyn Maxwell. All three were very good, and blended seriousness and levity together quite nicely. I had seen Nikolayev & Kapovich back in October and really enjoyed their books after buying them, especially Nikolayev's embedded sonnets. I had heard of Maxwell, and he’s a good reader. He read a lot of new poems, which I always appreciate. I bought his book Nerve. I liked the very first poem in it, which is always a good sign.

THE SEA COMES IN LIKE NOTHING BUT THE SEA

The sea comes in like nothing but the sea,
but still a mind, knowing how seldom words

augment, reorders them before the breaker
and plays them as it comes. All that should sound

is water reaching into the rough space
the mind has cleared. The clearing of that mind

is nothing to the sea. The means whereby
the goats were chosen nothing to the god,

who asked only a breathing life of us,
to prove we were still there when it was doubted.

The pathetic fallacy is dismantled in this poem - the sea is just the sea - and blind religiosity dispatched, though we're not left completely alone. It reminds me of Pessoa in The Keeper of Sheep when he wrote:

The moonlight behind the tall branches
The poets all say is more
Than the moonlight behind the tall branches.

But for me, who do not know what I think, -
What the moonlight behind the tall branches
Is, beyond its being
The moonlight behind the tall branches,
Is its not being more
Than the moonlight behind the tall branches.

(tr. Edwin Honig & Susan M. Brown)

A doubleplusgood surprise upon reaching the gallery was that they were displaying some photographs by Josef Sudek, an amazing Czech photographer. There had been an exhibit at the MFA some time ago that I really dug.

a ramble in the snowy woods

2007-02-16T21:36:00.000-05:00

After all the snow and ice falling from the sky this week, the spot of sunshine that woke me was a relief. People haven't really had a chance to dig out yet, so the sidewalks were treacherous, but once I got to the cemetery it was beautiful. Even though no paths have been shoveled, the ice and snow were textured enough to walk on without falling if I was careful. Today and the next few may be different, as everything seems to melt by day and freeze over by night.

So I had as my companion our dear Isaac, whose fur coat and love of the outdoors made him an enthusiastic rambling partner. He's quite a handsome dog. This is in the parking lot of the Catholic school that has been closed for some time now. The woods of the cemetery await us ahead.

I went out there thinking of something from Thoreau's blog the other day, "Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer." I realized that the snow and ice were compacted to the point where I could walk on top of it, instead of trudging through. So I took advantage to be able to walk through the woods in any direction I wanted, not needing any paths, minding only the branches. There's a lovely geometry the shadows made on the ground.

I came across Gen's dragon. Named for a friend of ours who moved away, she showed us the path and the downed tree. She said it looked like a horse, which it can, but I like the idea of it being a dragon, and the tree behind it with its leaves reminds me of flames or scales. If for nothing else, I'll always remember and thank her for showing it to me.

After romping in the woods with Isaac and chasing sticks and each other, I realized that I had lost a glove. After looking around and not seeing it, I had Isaac sniff the one I did still have and said, "Go find it!" At that, he promptly ran to the stick he had left a minute ago. Poor dear. So I sat thinking, "I guess I'll have to retrace my steps!" I'm almost embarrassed to say how long it was before I realized I could do precisely that, as there was enough of a dusting of snow atop the ice that I just had to follow my footprints. And my glove was right where I had left it.

All in all a good ramble. I love these sunny winter days where being outside is a joy. You just need the right clothes. Indeed, I'd say with all the gear I had on, I was warmer outside than I was back at the apartment!

happy valentine's day

2007-02-14T13:12:00.000-05:00

I got the latest issue of Adbusters today, and there was an interesting article about our human need for social networks, be it friends, family, what have you. It talks about the health benefits that researchers uncovered. It's not exactly news that having friends and loved ones makes us feel better, or that our thoughts and emotions are affected by the people around us. The scientific rationale is that there are "mirror neurons":

Neurosciences Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues from the University of Parma first came across mirror neurons in the eighties while studying the brain activity of macaque monkeys. Rizzolatti found that parts of a monkey’s brain would light up when observing the actions of another monkey: more than simply responding to stimuli, the activity of the monkey’s brain would start to mirror that of the other monkey, as if it were performing those actions itself.

This discovery was like a flashlight shining down on the dark caverns of the human psyche, illuminating enigmas such as empathy, imitation, and shared experience. It was also the evidence that explained why people who are surrounded by friends seem to live longer and bounce back faster from setbacks than those who are socially isolated.

How much of this applies to our need for performance art? Whether it's live music, dance, theatre, I think that our mirror neurons would be stimulated by those. I think of how my mother always said people need to be uplifted. That sentiment is sneered at these days (and sometimes rightfully so, I'll admit), but applying the idea of mirror neurons to art does bolster my mother's assertion. In Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde has Lord Henry say, "It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting." But does this extend to cinema or painting? Reality TV, commercials, sensationalist news, pop music? It would explain a lot and it's certainly worthy of study.

The Buddha always exhorted his followers to seek good people and avoid bad ones. I've been particularly fortunate with my family and friends, and fortunate beyond imagining in finding my husband.

back from St. Thomas

2007-02-12T22:27:00.000-05:00

It's good to be back in Boston. On Sunday I saw the SMFA Traveling Scholars Exhibit, which I've always enjoyed. The standout this year for me was Asuka Ohsawa, whose work talks back to the Japanese giga tradition (cartoons, basically) and brings in modern influences and concerns. It was so dense with allusion, hinting at its own hidden darkness, but so light and fun as well.

As always, some of the stuff was absolute rubbish (though that's not always bad, see Tim Noble & Sue Webster), but my faith in humanity is always renewed when I see that good art is still being made. Last year's SMFA exhibit included Cliff Evans' The Road to Mount Weather, a video collage which was probably the best summation of and meditation on the Bush administration that will ever be created.

*

There was another poetry reading at Forest Hills yesterday, which is always delightful. The Forsyth Chapel has to be one of the best venues in Boston. It was a reading of Jamaica Plain poets. Maybe some day I can hope to number among them.

my so-called poverty

2007-02-09T22:29:00.000-05:00

Today I head back to the land of Thoreau. I have missed Boston, although I know that winter is waiting for me with its icy grip. It has finally come to pass that I consider Boston more my home now than St. Thomas. You heard it here first.

Thoreau's blog yesterday (a special 150th anniversary entry) addresses his "so-called poverty", something that I think we have in common. I have to work for a living, and I hate that fact. No matter how engaging the work may be or how delightful the people or stimulating the environment, I still wish I didn't have to work. Though right now, I seem to be enjoying the golden combination of flexible schedule, interesting co-workers and challenging tasks. And I like the people it will most benefit. That's a nice change.

Again and again I congratulate myself on my so-called poverty. I was almost disappointed yesterday to find thirty dollars in my desk which I did not know that I possessed, though now I should be sorry to lose it. The week that I go away to lecture, however much I may get for it, is unspeakably cheapened. The preceding and succeeding days are a mere sloping down and up from it.

In the society of many men, or in the midst of what is called success, I find my life of no account, and my spirits rapidly fall. I would rather be the barrenest pasture lying fallow then cursed with the compliments of kings, than be the sulphurous and accursed desert where Babylon once stood. But when I have only a rustling oak leaf, or the faint metallic cheep of a tree sparrow, for variety in my winter walk, my life becomes continent and sweet as the kernel of a nut. I would rather hear a single shrub oak leaf at the end of a wintry glade rustle of its own accord at my approach, than receive a shipload of stars and garters from the strange kings and peoples of the earth.

I know what he means. Give me the simple life. Make me a bird and my house a nest. Would it be frivolous to say that my goal in life is to clear my head enough to hear the stars?

Reading by the light of a globe that still bears the USSR

2007-02-07T22:32:00.000-05:00

It's getting close to my last day on St. Thomas. It always sneaks up on me, and all the things I left to do because there was plenty of time will go undone. I'll be back. I forgot the candy lavender the sky becomes at dusk.

You know, forget the stars. I want to learn how to read the clouds. I wonder what they looked like on the day I was born. And what it meant.

I read Chinua Achebe's collected poems this week. They all seem to be about Important Things, and the topics were of interest to me: war, tradition, love, colonialism. But his greatest strength seems to lie in his retelling of Igbo myths. And I found I was drawn closer to the notes he wrote to explain them than I was to the poems themselves. That said, I loved a sequence in "Beware, Soul Brother" where he appears to lay out th reminder that art needs to be grounded, that there needs to be return.

...Our ancestors, soul brother, were wiser
than is often made out. Remember
they gave Ala, great goddess
of their earth, sovereignty too over
their arts for they understood
so well, these hardheaded
men of departed dance, where a man's
foot must return whatever beauties
it may weave in the air, where
it must return for safety. Take care
then, mother's son, lest you become
a dancer disinherited in mid-dance
hanging a lame foot in air like the hen..."

I love the foot weaving the dance in the air. Funny, though, I don't feel the need to return to St. Thomas for safety. This trip has underlined for me the fact that this is no longer home. Still, ground doesn't have to be native ground. And how much more disinherited of my past can I become? After a century like the last one?

Afternoon tea

2007-02-05T22:29:00.000-05:00

I throw my tea and watch the curve it makes, the splash into the bush below - my cup's still in my hand. This gray sky makes it look whiter. The smell of rain, the vague cement of dirt's odor, has climbed up to this balcony.

The curve it made told me something - the clouds went faster, I think, and a smear of sun pried through the clouds and quickly darted back behind.

I've dropped my bookmark; it's next to a brown mahogany leaf. I don't know which to pick up.

Frida Kahlo

2007-02-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

I've been reading the diary of Frida Kahlo. Amazing stuff. I had never realized how much suffering was at the root of her work, but now I wonder how I didn't notice. She was active in creating her own mythology of self to the point that she claimed the year of the Mexican Revolution as the year of her birth. I can understand why, though. Having gone to Mexico and seen the murals of Orozco in the city hall of Guadalajara, I can say that the cultural energy released in 1910 was significant. It was pretty clear to me after just a few days that Mexico's culture is far from derivative.

Kahlo's diary seems to have three pillars of obsession: Diego Rivera, Communism and Kahlo's own body. Artists' diaries always make me jealous, though, because of all the drawing and the inevitably cool handwriting. Kahlo was definitely a surrealist, but aimed to root herself in indigenous culture. And I don't mean indigenous as just pre-Columbian, but indigenously modern as well, in terms of the living Mexican culture.

Money as Water

2007-01-31T22:25:00.000-05:00

MONEY AS WATER
-Kurt Brown

"Cash flow" "liquid assets" "pooling our resources"-
it's clear that money falls from heaven,
drops in pennies, nickels, dimes, to gather
in the small depressions of our hands.
It's clear how profit swells and streams of money
merge, how waves of money move
through nations, cause a "rippling effect"
and soon recede. How some people
drown, while others stay afloat and keep their heads
above the flood. How banks are "bailed out"
like wounded ships and panic follows,
bubbles burst, small investors find it hard
to breathe. It's clear how money
passes through our hands like water,
and our sources, once dried up, leave us
thirsting after more. How funds
diverted, often vanish, and those without a "safety net"
go "belly up." How all we have
goes down the drain, and we get soaked.

The semiotics of this poem are intriguing. Using cliches in poems, which are, by definition, language that is not cliche, serves to draw attention to the language we do use every day. That makes it so that this poem can live in our daily lives, which is something that few poems seem to be able to do. I enjoyed this, as it functions not only as a surrealistic exercise in visualization, but also as a meditation on our economic system.

Lu Tong

2007-01-29T22:25:00.000-05:00

I've been reading Sasaki Sanmi's Chado, the Way of Tea: A Japanese Tea Master's Almanac, enjoying the poems, the descriptions of the tea ceremonies, the recipes for things I can only barely imagine. I like the idea of ritualizing entertainment and attuning it to the seasons. Mind you, the same fear of rigidity I have, the author has, so it's hardly lifeless. At least from what I read.

One of the poems was by Lu Tong, a ninth-century Chinese poet. It's called "Seven Bowls of Tea", so I decided to write my own version.

His (in Sanmi's book):

A first bowl wets my throat and lips,
A second bowl dispels my loneliness,
A third bowl swells my dried and shrunk intestines, preparing me for 5,000 volumes of writing,
A fourth bowl induces slight perspiration which flushes all my complaints out of my pores,
A fifth bowl makes my skin and bones clean and fresh,
A sixth bowl makes me feel as if I had become a hermit or divine spirit,
A seventh bowl, therefore, is not really needed, my arms are free to feel the breeze blow.

His (as found on Wikipedia):

The first bowl of tea moistens my throat,
the second breaks my loneliness, and
the third bowl racks my brains, bringing to light the texts of 5,000 volumes.
The fourth induces perspiration whereby all ills evaporate through my pores.
The fifth makes my muscles and bones feel light, and
the sixth links me to celestials.
Be careful when drinking the seventh bowl,as it makes you feel as if a cool breeze were coming from your armpits.

Mine:

bowl 1 my throat and lips are wet
bowl 2 invites ghosts into the room it is full though i am alone
bowl 3 my soul is watered and thriving i will write a hundred poems
bowl 4 i break out into a sweat all my ills pass through my pores
bowl 5 my skin has cleared my bones are squeaky clean
bowl 6 i am holy
bowl 7 another cup might be too much i can feel the hairs on my arm feeling the breeze

a story

2007-01-26T22:24:00.000-05:00

He was nervous about getting honey poured down his ear. His master, who had always been kindly, flew into a rage at his young slave's questioning. Like all masters, his duties in owning another human being had corrupted him. Like all masters who think themselves kindlier and more human, he became crueler than most.

He tied the young man to a stake in barn and ordered no one to feed him. The young man stayed there a thousand years while the outside world changed without his knowing. The barn filled with ash and he was buried, sustained only by his memories, until someone heard his story and thought to look for him.

He was gray an withered, but alive. His heart had shriveled to a tiny, black diamond, but it still beat. He was a treasure, for the slaves had inherited the world. But he was sad to the end of his days, because he still remembered how kind the master had once been. His master's soul had been destroyed by slavery, where his had survived.

poetry and performance

2007-01-24T22:23:00.000-05:00

In music, what lies on paper is ideal, but the music is in the performance by voices and instruments. Is this the case for poetry? Is what's on the page the sheet music? What is the instrument, then, the voice? Is it only in reading aloud that the poetry exists?

Or is life the sheet music and the writing is the performance? Or is the reader performing?

Snow!

2007-01-22T21:50:00.000-05:00

Snow brings me such a feeling of levity. When I left the office this evening, I felt such a sense of love for the falling snow. The big flakes made me think of feathers. I didn't mind the snow getting into my eyelashes, it's been so long since I've had the pleasure. At one point as I was walking to the T, I yawned and a snowflake drifted right into my open mouth, which made me think to try and catch some on my tongue. Try as I might, I couldn't do it. I guess you do have to appreciate what comes to you.

What's odd is that I don't think I've harbored such cheer towards snow before. As a matter of fact, I remember intensely disliking it the first time a flake burned my cheek with its iciness. Still, I began the process of falling in love with it that very first winter when I walked by an oak tree one quiet night in Harvard Yard and heard the sound the snow made hitting the dry, brown leaves.

This winter has given us almost no snow, which unsettles me far more than I thought it would. In his short essay "Good Use For Bad Weather", Donald Hall wrote:

Every now and then we have an open winter, as we call it when we have no snow; it's a psychic disaster. It's disaster also for shrubs and bulbs, but it's the soul's woe because we haven't suffered enough. The earth can't emerge because it never submerged.

I know what he means. And I think that means I've become a New Englander.

My last Friday

2007-01-19T16:40:00.000-05:00

It's noisy here. Rather, the absence of people brings out the humming of the overhead lights, the rush of air coming through vents, the whir of the hard drive. I've packed my personal effects: statue of Ganesh, pair of comfortable shoes, plastic easter egg filled with salt, picture of my husband, spoon, tea cup from China, postcards, magnets, etc.

I'm reading Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet and I just left a part where he has been imagining freedom from work. But he feels unease:

"I felt that I would be sorry. The boss Vasques, the bookkeeper Moreira, the cashier Borges, the good boys, all of them, the happy kid who carries the letters to the post office, the delivery boy, the friendly cat - all of it became part of my life; I wouldn't be able to leave all that without weeping, without understanding that as bad as it may seem to me, it was part of me that remained with all of them, that separating from them was half like death."

Those aren't precisely the thoughts running through my mind, but I feel an affinity with them. This is my last Friday at this assignment after three months. As much as I groan, there is something soothing about having a job to go to, besides the paycheck.

The chaos of Rome

2007-01-17T16:15:00.000-05:00

Trevor sent me this quote from the Writer's Almanac-

The Roman poet Horace hated the chaos of Rome, and when his patron gave him a farm in the Italian countryside, he wrote:

"I prayed for this: a modest swatch of land where I could garden, an ever-flowing spring close by, and a small patch of woods above the house. The gods gave all I asked and more. I pray for nothing more, but that these blessings last my life's full term."

I've been giving a lot of thought to E. M. Forster's Greenwood, to hermit traditions of China and Japan, to the chaos of the present day. There is a case to be made for continued engagement and there is a case to be made for recusing. Maybe they can be the same thing.

2007-01-15T23:17:00.000-05:00

Who can believe rivers aren't dropped whole from the sky?

Buddhist Theory?

2007-01-12T23:17:00.000-05:00

I just read Thanissaro Bhikku's Karma of Questions in which he mentions the fact that Buddhism is based on practice, and that practice should yield theory and not the other way around. I think most people know that on the macro level, but how many really understand it on the individual level. I've often noticed a disconnect between how writers say people should write and what they write themselves. I don't want to let critics who don't write off scott-free either.

There's always talk of the role of poetry criticism and theory and I'm thinking just now that I need to re-read Bhikku's ideas on Buddhist theory and apply them to literature. He said that academic, historic study of Buddhism is fine, but that it doesn't really tell anyone how to live or practice or thrive. I guess when you look at a poem, you should ask it what it's telling you, not about how to live, but about how to read and write poetry.

Winter is the Sabbath of the Year

2007-01-10T17:17:00.000-05:00

From Thoreau's journal, 1/9/1859:

At sundown to Walden.

Standing on the middle of Walden I see with perfect distinctness the forms and outlines of the low hills which surround it, though they are wooded, because they are quite white, being covered with snow, while the woods are for the most part bare or very thin-leaved. I see thus the outline of the hills eight or ten rods back through the trees. This I can never do in the summer, when the leaves are thick and the ground is nearly the same color with them. The white hills are now seen as through a veil of stems. Immediately after the wood was cut off, this outline, of course, was visible at all seasons, but the wood, springing up again, concealed it, and now the snow has come to reveal the lost outline.

The sun has been set some minutes, and as I stand on the pond looking westward toward the twilight sky, a soft, satiny light is reflected from the ice in flakes here and there, like the light from the under side of a bird’s wing. It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky. I am inclined to measure the angle at which a pine bough meets the stem. That soft, still, cream-colored sky seems the scene, the stage or field, for some rare drama to be acted on.

C. says the winter is the Sabbath of the year. The perfect winter days are cold, but clear and bright.

Branches and berries graces my drinking glass. Outside air hardens puddles. Every day lengthens lighter skies and this open winter teases thoughts of snow, drives in to reflect and huddle. Thoreau's friend called winter the Sabbath of the year. In our technological days we might put it this way: it's our time of year to hit reset.

Cocoa and fondue, walks in snow (if it ever comes), books and windswept, empty beaches. Friends over and soups, maybe a crafts night.

Rhyme

2007-01-08T17:17:00.000-05:00

I haven't decided yet about rhyme. It sounds nice, but I worry that it hinders translation. As someone who has grown up multilingual and reads a lot of authors who didn't write first in English, how can it not be a concern of mine that my poetry be translatable? And yes, there are things that cannot be translated.

My worry about rhyme is that it's part of keeping poems from only being their meanings. I think there may be other ways of patterning and structuring that cross language boundaries better, but I need to come up with a way to test my suspicions. I do know that the Old Testament in English carries some of the Hebrew poetry with it, with its parallel syntax and such. Maybe that's why it's been such a model.

Borges and colds

2007-01-05T17:18:00.000-05:00

There are albums and books I've never been able to face again because I made the mistake of encountering them the first time when I had a cold. That irritated feeling comes back to me when I hear, for example, Ice-T's "New Jack Hustler", though not so much as it did in 1992.

Jorge Luis Borges considered himself primarily a poet, yet he is renowned more for his fictions. I'm reading his selected poems now and I find that his fictions are more startling overall. But I can't help thinking that maybe the fictions are better translated, at least going by what I see on each left-hand page. That's why I always get bilingual editions if I know the language in question.

Still, I'm plugging through the Borges. Maybe I'm just crabby.

organizing

2007-01-03T17:18:00.000-05:00

Since it’s the new year, I put some thought to new projects, tasks. One of my perennial concerns is reducing clutter. I strongly recommend Julie Morgenstern’s Organizing from the Inside Out, as she doesn’t make any broad commands and top-down instructions, but rather induces you to organize based on your own lifestyle. And for her, organizing helps reduce clutter, not the other way around. So organizing what you do have will help you see how much you need.

Of course, I’ve been doing this so long that I’m coming to the point where I really don’t have much more to get rid of. Well, I’m sure I still have stuff I don’t need, but I’ve got enough space for it all, which is pretty good. Anyway, I don’t want to just be the kind of person who organizes and purges just for its own sake. Though I have to say it is addictive.

new year's

2007-01-01T23:18:00.000-05:00

Back from Florida. The funeral was beautiful and horrible in the way that all funerals should be. Instead of an open casket, there was draped a quilt that Mima had made. We spent some time identifying where the squares came from. Everybody had input and memories to share. It wasn’t a planned activity, either, it just grew from the moment and I think Mima would have enjoyed that very much. We flew back to Boston yesterday and visited with my aunt in Andover a bit. Her father, my great-uncle, Mima’s brother, died the day after Mima did. We talked about all the people who have gone, and how the last one of my grandmother’s siblings is my great aunt in Lebanon. Who knows if I’ll ever see her again?

I’ve long held a superstition that the first day, maybe even the first few hours, set the tone for the whole year. We rang it in quietly at a friend’s house. There were five of us and we ate gorgeous food and reminisced. We spoke to friends far away on the phone, spoke to our respective families, watched the ball drop. The cats were soft, the house was warm, not a bad way at all to start the year.

We also had a visit from a friend who moved away a few months ago. Her dog and Isaac are best friends, and he gave her a rather enthusiastic greeting. Who said dogs don’t have good memories? The menu was pizza, salad and squash pie.

2006-12-29T17:36:00.000-05:00

Jorge Luis Borges considered himself primarily a poet, yet his renown comes mostly from his fictions. I’m reading his selected poems now and I’m not as startled. Granted, he has some magnificent poems, but I don’t feel like I’m being tossed by waves, as his fictions did to me last summer. I can’t help feeling that it may be because they’re not as well translated, at least going by what I can see on each left-hand page. That’s why I only buy bilingual editions of poetry.

Mima

2006-12-27T23:19:00.000-05:00

My grandmother has died. My aunt told me that when she walked into the room where Mima lay dying, the air was calm and it felt like there were angels. She was surrounded by family on her last day, and my mother was with her when she passed. She died well, if there is such a thing.

When I heard yesterday morning, the tears were so salty they burned my eyes. and I beat the carpet with my palms. I think the fact that I’ve realized grieving never gets any easier, has made it easier.

christmas

2006-12-25T17:36:00.000-05:00

My first Christmas in Boston. There was a lovely program on WCRB last night and I stayed in with my husband. I made djondjon rice with the recipe my mother emailed me, which is a Haitian delicacy made with a special mushroom that only grows in Haiti, as far as I know.

It’s my first Christmas away from my parents and family, so it’s strange. I was hoping for snow, but nothing t’all go so. We spent the day at my in-laws and it was lovely, and I guess I wasn’t away from family since they’re family, too, now. And we did visit with my family in Andover for a bit, though briefly.

2006-12-22T17:36:00.000-05:00

TOUCH OF THE MARVELOUS
– Philip Lamantia

The mermaids have come to the desert
they are setting up a boudoir next to the camel
who lies at their feet of roses

A wall of alabaster is drawn over our heads
by four rainbow men
whose naked figures give off a light
that slowly wriggles upon the sands

I am touched by the marvelous
as the mermaids’ nimble fingers go through my hair
that has come down forever from my head
to cover my body
the savage fruit of lunacy

Behold the boudoir is flying away
and I am holding onto the leg of the lovely one
called beneath the sea
BIANCA
She is turning
with the charm of a bird
into two giant lips
and I am now falling into the goblet of suicide

She is the angelic doll turned black
she is the child of broken elevators
she is the curtain of holes
that you never want to throw away

she is the first woman and the first man
and I am lost to have her

I am hungry for the secrets of the sadistic fish
I am plunging into the sea

I am looking for the region
where the smoke of your hair is thick
where you are again climbing over the white wall
where your eardrums play music
to the cat that crawls in my eyes
I am recalling memories of you BIANCA

I am looking beyond the hour and the day
to find you BIANCA

I first read this poem about a year ago in Rain Taxi, which I had picked up somewhere or other. It was a great read - it's the first place I read Bob Hicock, too. Lamantia was an American surrealist, had met André Breton. What I love about this poem is that it's not afraid to be marvelous, to go out there. The poem makes a sound in my mind, the cumulative sound of dreams. It isn't vague: all the images are very clear. It's the leaps that are astounding, yet they aren't random. It's exactly the kind of poem that would have been trashed in most of my MFA workshops despite its gorgeousness.

solstice

2006-12-20T17:36:00.000-05:00

I understand why ancient northern people valued Solstice so much. In the tropics, it would never occur to us that the sun may go out. In this part of the world, it wasn’t so farfetched to think it might. If you ask me, it does just that – the colors fade, the sun seems like an image of itself.

Solstice in the summer is a different matter. It’s bright and warm enough to forget that it’s a tragedy – the tragedy: that what waxes, wanes.

2006-12-18T17:35:00.000-05:00

when life gives you lemons, make lemonade

when life gives you snow, make snowcones

when life gives you rain, make rainbows

thoughts of summer

2006-12-15T17:35:00.000-05:00

Summer is so far away. I was remembering a day in July when I was ambling about in the Arboretum with the aim of getting a good view of the Blue Hills. I decided to walk up Bussey Hill with no shoes on (hey, summer is when you're supposed to do those things). The overgrown path was softer on my feet than any carpet, but also certainly wetter. In a neglected spot I found the stump of a tree from which a seat had been carved. "It must be Oberon's throne, the king of fairies," I quickly decided.

I sat on it for a bit, meaning no offense, offering that I would certainly leave before it was needed. The fairies turned into mosquitoes and pointedly asked me to leave. Further up the hill, I found the stand of water that must be their reservoir.

When I got to the top of the hills, the pines were making that lovely sound they do in wind. I was thinking I would do well to stand up once in a while and move the way the trees do in the wind.

learning

2006-12-13T17:35:00.000-05:00

The expression “a liberal education” originally meant one worthy of freemen. Such is education simply in a true and broad sense. But education ordinarily so called—the learning of trades and professions which is designed to enable men to earn their living, or to fit them for a particular station in life—is servile.

So much of what passes for education is simply learning to parrot back what one has heard. That, or to take as gospel what is written in a book. I don't think it requires any kind of conspiracy theories as to why people are subdued this like. It can be chalked up to human laziness. It's easier to say "because I said so" and to value obedience over intelligence.

People learn business theory as something that is eternal and unchanging. As if any human economy could be such a thing. The funny thing is that by teaching people what to say instead of how to think, we make their learning obsolete before it's even done. The most important thing to know how to do is ask questions - and recognize true answers.

2006-12-11T17:35:00.000-05:00

Ah, temp bliss. I get to enjoy the view from this this top floor office - on one side, the Boston skyline, on the other, the hills of Arlington in the distance.

I don't know that it's bad to pass the hours in tempitude. I'm used to leading amphibious lifestyles Also, isn't it romantic to toil in obscurity? And what could be more obscure than a low-level temp admin in a biotech company? It's like getting to be in an office, but not of it.

It makes me appreciate poetry all the more.

pessoa and boyd and theory and beauty

2006-12-08T17:35:00.000-05:00

from Pessoa's The Keeper of Sheep

XXVI

Is there really beauty in a flower?
Is there really beauty in a fruit?
No, they've got color and form,
And existence – nothing else.
Beauty is the name for something that doesn't exist,
A name I give things for the pleasure they give me.
It means nothing.
Then why do I say of things, they’re beautiful?

Well, Fernando, probably because that mere pleasure they give you in really this huge phenomenon fraught with meaning and contention! Beauty is something that has been maligned in the last century, partially because it proved to be so slippery to define as the just be a grander form of opinion. But. It’s still something we talk about and feel. And how can any say it doesn't exist or that it’s just constructed when even the simplest tribesman can tell you it exists? Not that it can’t and hasn't been manipulated – I’m not so boneheaded that I think beauty is always just obvious.

In this autumn's issue of The American Scholar, there’s an article by Brian Boyd about science, theory and beauty, and how they can inform each other. There are universals, which I know kills people to hear, and it doesn't make me some conservative to think so. There are aesthetic, cultural and biological universals and they are tied together. Just because we don’t know how, doesn't mean we should try and claim that there aren't. Boyd’s essay really deals with the contention that knowledge is never certain. Well, surprise, scientists have been saying that for centuries (good ones anyway) and that is why every theory is always up for review. And if every fact is uncertain, that has to extend to the fact that every fact is uncertain. What Boyd advocates is bringing things back to ground level and determining what is useful, what is helpful, and what is so wrong with the contention that there is such a thing as beauty.

Still, I remember feeling uncomfortable the first time somebody called one of my poems beautiful. I have been puzzling over my reaction for years, but I think it had something to do with the fact that I had internalized the suspicion of beauty that is out there. Oh, and maybe modesty.

2006-12-06T17:34:00.000-05:00

I've thought about the possibility that I may pass the rest of my life in temp servitude. But as long as I have enough to eat, a place to live, and free time to write and be with the people I love, what more can I ask?

Maybe I'm bound to be a ridiculous temp-poet. I don't think that's so bad.

Brookline Poetry Series

2006-12-04T17:34:00.000-05:00

On Friday night I went with my sister to a reading at the Brookline Booksmith
. Tonight didn't feature any readers, rather you were meant to bring and read one of your favorite poems. And memorize it if you could. I chose Borges' "Ars Poetica" which lends a phrase to the title of this blog.

ARS POETICA

To look at the river made of time and water
And remember that time is another river,
To know that we are lost like the river
And that faces dissolve like water.

To be aware that waking dreams it is not asleep
While it is another dream, and that the death
That our flesh goes in fear of is that death
Which comes every night and is called sleep.

To see in the day or in the year a symbol
Of the days of man and of his years,
To transmute the outrage of the years
Into a music, a murmur of voices, and a symbol,

To see in death sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold - such is poetry,
Which is immortal and poor. Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.

At times in the evenings a face
Looks at us out of the depths of a mirror;
Art should be like that mirror
Which reveals to us our own face.

They say that Ulysses, sated with marvels,
Wept tears of love at the sight of his Ithaca,
Green and humble. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of marvels.

It is also like the river with no end
That flows and remains and is the mirror of one same
Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
And is another, like the river with no end.

(translated by W. S. Merwin)

It's an easy enough poem to memorize, given its repetitions. I'm still not sure what the poem means to me. There is something in it that resists the urge to put art outside of life. The river and time are things that we live, that we have to make poetry out of.

As always, I had a great time, and I think it was fun for my sister - it's not the kind of thing she gets to do much in Fort Lauderdale. It's a great bookstore, too. I don't go enough, but at least the readings give me an excuse to visit Coolidge Corner.

canada

2006-12-01T17:34:00.000-05:00

GOLD AND BLACK

At night the gold and black slashed bees come
pluck my head away. Vague thousands drift
leave brain naked stark as liver
each one carries atoms of flesh, they
walk my body in their fingers.
The mind stinks out.

In the black Kim is turning
a geiger counter to this pillow.
She cracks me open like a lightbulb.

Love, the real,
terrifies
the dreamer in his riot cell.

This is from Rat Jelly, one of Michael Ondaatje's early books.

I first came across this poem in the Norton Anthology of English Poetry when I was in college. I went straight to the back, looking to see what the more recent poetry looked like (remember, like most people, I grew up thinking you had to be dead to be a poet). This is before the movie The English Patient came out, mind you. Something about the poem startled me, as it still does: phrases like “black slashed bees”, “vague thousands drift” and “the dreamer in his riot cell” still do it for me.

When I was in Vancouver in the summer of 1997, I picked up Rat Jelly (and about a thousand other Canadian books that you won’t find in the US) at Duthie's, a local independent bookstore. In my typical fashion it's only now that I've finished reading it. I was on a real Canadian kick then - oh wait, still am. Margaret Atwood, Christian Bök, Timothy Findley, Christopher Simons, Alice Munro, Douglas Coupland, and I'm sure a host of others I'm not remembering at the moment.

2006-11-29T17:34:00.000-05:00

I used to keep mountains of scraps of things I'd written down. I had no way of organizing them, but I always said I would someday craft them into something worthy. Worthy of what, I never asked. But at one point I began to feel suffocated by them, that I was ignoring so much by letting things accumulate, so I decided to try and go back to work on them. Then I realized that I was spending too much time on past creative flashes that had long since gone dry. Some of the stuff still spoke to me, but too much of it was alien.

So I got rid of it all. And I don't feel like I've made a mistake at all. The only difference is that now they're not sitting in a drawer, ignored and heavy. So I've decided to try and work on things while they're fresh. There's nothing wrong with putting something away for a while, but ten years is too long, at least for me.

when dogs dream

2006-11-27T17:33:00.000-05:00

The other day I was watching Isaac sleep - I always look to see if he's dreaming. He's quite active in his dreams. He barks and runs or sometimes even growls and sniffs. It never seems particularly pleasant, more aggressive. He could be dreaming of playing with other dogs or maybe chasing squirrels, but something always keeps me from deciding it's anything that good.

For once, though, as I was sitting at the dining room table I heard a thwacking. I knew he was wagging his tail, but I wondered at what. He was dreaming. Eyes closed, a good dream! It made me glad because I always worry that he is reliving some trauma from before we adopted him. But now I know that he does have pleasant dreams, and if the other ones have been traumatic, maybe it means he is working through them.

Still, I wish I could ask him what he dreams. And whether he knows the difference between being asleep and being awake. I mean, it's hard enough for me to be sure sometimes.

Eunoia

2006-11-24T17:33:00.000-05:00

"She resembles the lewdest jezebel."

I ran into the book Eunoia at the Harvard Book Store a few months ago and couldn't take my hands off it. It's a series of prose poems by Christian Bök arranged in chapters, each of which only uses one vowel. I was too broke at the time to buy it, so I checked it out from the library. But sometimes you just have to buy a book, so when I saw it at the Strand Bookstore in New York, I decided to add it to my collection, along with Bök's Crystallography.

I really don't know where I've been, that I hadn't come across this stuff yet. Besides the gimmicks of the vowel restraints, there is also accented internal rhyme and syntactic parallelism, which really aren't any more of a restraint (or any less), so it sort of shows that the restraints (or constraints, I guess) of Oulipo aren't really gimmicks at all, any more than iambic pentameter. How can one have a totally serious relationship with tradition and form in this century? I mean, look at the last one!

from CHAPTER I

Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit,
scribbling in ink this pidgin script. I
sing with nihilistic witticism, disciplining
sighs with trifling gimmicks - impish
hijinks which highlight stick sigils. Isn't
it glib? Isn't it chic? I fit childish
insights within rigid limits, writing
shtick which might instill priggish
misgivings in critics blind with hindsight.
I dismiss nitpicking criticism which
flirts with philistinism. I bitch; I
kibitz - griping whilst criticizing
dimwits, sniping whilst indicting
nitwits, dismissing simplistic thinking,
in which philippic wit is still illicit.

I don't see how this can't be considered major work. This passage seems to be about Bök's project itself, but how can you argue with "I dismiss nitpicking criticism which
flirts with philistinism."? What's interesting, too, is how it looks on the page. Each chapter has a different look and sound to it, which gives each a different tenor. In case anyone ever wondered whether the sound of a word affects its meaning, here is your answer: it infects it.

poetry vs prose

2006-11-22T17:33:00.000-05:00

I wonder if prose really is freer than poetry (of course recognizing that the line between the two is far from clear). For the most part we talk (and maybe even think, though I'm not convinced yet) in prose, so is poetry a way to free us from the every day? Then again poetry is by definition constrained (even free verse). Is that why prose poetry is growing in popularity? How does one define prose? It seems to be viewed as just unmarked writing, but that makes it seem like the pure form that all others are to be compared against. I can't accept that.

Anthology!

2006-11-20T17:33:00.000-05:00

Oh wow - some of my poems were accepted for inclusion in an anthology! It's called the Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets. There are some poets whose work I really respect on their roster, including some of my classmates from Emerson who I always thought were really talented. I don't know which of the poems I submitted they accepted, but I don't care - I just appreciate it.

One of the poems I submitted was "Like hermit crabs to sea", that I posted back in August. I also submitted a remix of that poems plus a few others. I'll put them here, why not?

FLOCK OF ME

As I lie napping, you draw back
the curtain of my shirt and pick
the lock to open the door to

an enormous room filled
with all manner of flapping bird
instead of a meaty heart.

Guinea hens call their young
with a metallic screech, and chickens cluck
and lay down rules that none follow.

What you have been taking for words
are just chattering and ruffling and squawks,
but it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.

I offer you this flock of birds
always pecking at each other
and up to a whole heap of racket.

IN MEMORIAM, RUSSELL JONES, THE O.D.B., 1970-2004
If a brick didn’t know how to sit on walls no mo’, what would you aks it?

If a yellow wing fell from the roof but no canary…
If a bullet miss me and go home to watch cable…
If a bottle of Olde English could recite Beowulf fables…
If a page wandered streets jonesing for a library…
If a weave snuck out hair by hair leaving confettis…
If a hand slapped itself and sounded like fingers hitting air…
If a tree fell in the yard and you didn’t know how it got there…
If a five dollar bill you lost came back with a broke-wheel Mercedes…
If a lizard jump out my pocket to build a gold-rim cage…
If a arrow sat by itself without no bow in the dirt…
If I give a shout-out to the Eskimos but they don’t send a ounce…
If the letters from a book break loose and hop off the page…
If a house go to sleep on Pluto then wake up back on Earth…
If my food stamp bounce…

ISLAND IN THE SKY

Grant me hope, dirt,
you who have always bridged
my every destination.
I have short hair now;
I cut it when the moon hides
in its dark dreams and faces away,
smoked to blackness.

A dirge – men shout, cars roll
through dust, their hands seem truly gray.
The penned earth grows arid;
the loam dries there beneath concrete.
Soon, it will act: the earth,
the deepened land, has slid shut.

Paths merge in the gloaming;
pine needles bake on the land.
The ports have opened,
men in hair shirts make for an island,
They’re hoping to cross
the clear sheet of water
to a new earth,
bare of dreams or hedges,
where the man in the moon is a boar.
This new land, opened, huge sheets
of sunlight strike straight to my heart.
I drink until my body aches.

Shout to earth, it has opened.
Fair moon, bride to dreams,
claim-spikes lie in her soil.
Forget the ones who sank to that blue land
intact. They will foam and roll over
all the earth. Their seaweed hair
will be a bridge, a bridge of dreams
while others dare shout at busy hands,
smoked skies, doom. Jump to this earth.

LIKE HERMIT CRABS TO SEA (REMIX)

I have lost the language of dreams, the filter
of words that clung to my ear as you whispered
by my side. Their letters slide on the floor
with carefully separated crumbs of cereal.

Jumping like fleas: frenetic, sneaking, jumbled –
they’ve broken themselves; they look amused
by their own frailty. I hear scratching noises;
consonants with little winged feet

against cold tile squares; as my eyes adjust I try
to reunite the fuckers – they’re slithery,
uniformly mercurial, alarming
in a new way, they have taken to life.

I have not been successful without you, who took
part in whispering away my hands and ears.
They were deficient: I tested them and the letters
decided on new words to mean.

If you don’t know dreams, you can go crazy
in that direction. I can only wait
to be with you again in some waking world.
The words of dreams do not have any letters,

but they will follow paths strewn with letters
like hermit crabs to sea. That type of devotion
freezes my voice. I will let them push and refer
to others, yet to come, balancing themselves

as stairs clack from being hit by rolling shells
from above, approaching but never breaking.
That will calm them; they will find their own way,
the way things floating learn the ocean.

a good sit

2006-11-17T17:32:00.000-05:00

The other day I got home with a headache. I've been sick, sinus pressure, long day at work, etc. I sat down to drink some chamomile and read. I was going to take an aspirin, but after a few minutes my head cleared on its own. I guess all you need sometimes is a good sit.

Harvard’s radio station has an 80’s segment on now. I went downstairs to get the laundry and the Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry” was on. I came back upstairs to the sound of Blondie’s “Rapture”. This is one of the best days of my life.

Ides of November

2006-11-15T17:32:00.000-05:00

I've been submitting work to journals like a madman today. I've been reading a lot of online journals and the impression I get from some of them is that they're just glorified friend groups. It's not so much that the same names pop up, but that the same combinations seem to pop up.

I'm sure it's true for the print journals, too; they're just more established. I need to go to the library and read more journals so that I can get a wider idea of where to submit. I've decided not to enter contests that cost money (unless your entry gets you a subscription or something). I can't afford to go on retreats.

What I am doing is going to readings and trying to meet poets. I do think it's important to befriend other writers.

Anne Sexton at Forest Hills

2006-11-13T17:32:00.000-05:00

It's been a warm November and today saw our first bit of rain in weeks. Can't complain.

We had my friend Heidi over today for tea and sandwiches and then headed over to the Forest Hills Cemetery for a reading of Anne Sexton's poems. It was an abbreviated show, since the chapel is being renovated and it had to be held in a smaller, outdoor space. They had it at the entrance to the receiving tomb, which has a roof at least. I had taken shelter under it before, never knowing what it was.

It's where they used to keep bodies in the winter because they couldn't dig through the frozen ground. We got to sneak inside and see the drawers and creepy chambers. Very cool.

Anyway, the reading was good. A fellow named Bob Clawson read. he had known Anne Sexton and even recorded with her in a band. I haven't really read her, but I would like to now. He had brought some of the recordings with her and played them. After the reading we went to Anne Sexton's grave.

On our walk back home through the cemetery it was getting dark. We got to see a great horned owl. It was a nice incursion on my built, urban life from that other world we don't see.

* * *

We saw Adam Clay read at the So and So on Saturday. I liked his stuff a lot. Trevor got his book.

a bag of gold around our necks

2006-11-10T17:32:00.000-05:00

For a man to pride himself on this kind of wealth, as if it enriched him, is as ridiculous as if one struggling in the ocean with a bag of gold on his back should gasp out, “I am worth a hundred thousand dollars!” I see his ineffectual struggles just as plainly, and what it is that sinks him.

Isn't this just what's going on? It makes me think of petrodollars and the people who have them. Their very beachfront houses will be the first to sink beneath advancing waves. On a level closer to mine, I see people drowning in hurry. All the money they earn will never by back the time we squander. I'm trying to tie a lasso around time and slow it down to a pace that I can live with. It can't be that hard. It has to be easier that stressing out.

Pompeii

2006-11-08T17:32:00.000-05:00

POMPEII
-John Brehm

Standing on the subway, exhausted, dispirited,
glancing over the exhausted, dispirited faces
of my fellow passengers, I read posters
for a new movie about Pompeii.
"How can you breathe when the air is on fire?"
"How can you escape a boiling mudslide?"
"How can you outrun an eruption
faster than this train?" they ask.
Obviously the ad writer has never been
on this train, because this is a Q train,
and anybody who can't outrun a Q train
must be on death's doorstep anyway
and will soon be overtaken by time itself,
if not a boiling mudslide, though sometimes
that's what time feels like, thick
and burning, pushing you on and pulling
you back. And now we rise creaking
over the Manhattan Bridge, where
one can see through scratchy windows
the city skyline and the buildings that are
not there, where thousands tried
to breathe air on fire and failed,
tried to flee an avalanche of concrete
and falling bodies and failed.
If only they'd been asked to outrun something
as slow as this slow train that takes us home -
how easily they might have done it.
But that is not what they were asked to do.

From the February issue of Poetry, this is the first 9/11 poem I've seen that I like. Oh yes, he really punches us at the end with that turn, and maybe Brehm is manipulating us, but what of it? Isn't that what drama is? And I find that last line understated and devastating at once. The poem doesn't start out being about 9/11 and that is its strength. It starts as a meditation on a subway ad. And the fact that the ad features a movie about Pompeii brought to my mind the connection between Rome and America. The poem is about the quotidian, and then the suffocation of time, but how can you look at the skyline of New York and not think about the attacks? And I think that is what the poem is about, more than anything. How do we absorb a collective traumatic event into our everyday lives?

Election Madness

2006-11-06T17:31:00.000-05:00

Goodness, the Democrats took both houses of Congress. I wasn't even letting myself hope they would get one, so I was shocked when my mother woke up with tears of joy in her eyes. My mother's only woken me up with new twice before in my life. The first time was when Jean-Claude Duvalier was driven out of Haiti (tears of joy), the second was when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown (tears of sadness).

Still, I can't help but wonder what the hell people know now that they didn't know two years ago.

2006-11-03T17:31:00.000-05:00

I've been reading Fernando Pessoa's The Keeper of Sheep and I came across this poem about emitting poems to the greater world.

XLVIII

From the highest window of my house
With a white handkerchief I bid good-bye
To my poems going off to humanity.

And I’m neither happy nor sad.
That’s the destiny of my poems.
I wrote them and must show them to everyone
Because I cannot do otherwise,
As the flower can’t hide its color,
Or the river hide its flowing,
or the tree its fruit-giving.

There they go off in the distance, as in a coach,
And I feel sorrow without wanting to,
Like bodily pain.

Who knows who’s going to read them?
Who knows what hands they’ll reach?

Flower, it was for eyes that my destiny picked me.
Tree, it was for mouths my fruit was plucked.
River, it was the destiny of my waters not to remain in me.
I yield, and feel almost happy,
Almost happy, like one who’s tired of being sad.

Go, go from me!
The tree goes by, its remains strewn everywhere by Nature.
The flower wilts, its dust remains forever.
The river flows, entering the sea, and in its waters always its own remains.

Like the Universe, I pass and I remain.

This is the best explanation I've seen for why we send our poems out into the world (besides vanity, though there is always a whiff of that, even in this poem). In The Little Prince, the rose was the vainest creature of all. Still, I've only started sending out poems in earnest, and this poem made me glad I have. To do otherwise would be miserly, and knowing that there are people on the other end will keep me honest (though it also bears the danger of making me dishonest – we’ll see).

I love how the poem starts with such a Victorian image, waving goodbye with a handkerchief, of all things. Also, from what I know of Pessoa, I can’t imagine him doing something like that, which I guess is why he wrote this as Alberto Caeiro, who would. There’s an innocence and lack of irony in this poems, which it needs to succeed. Comparing the poet to trees and flowers seems disarmingly naive, but if you think about it, it’s more down to earth than invoking some muse. Those last two lines make me think of Heraclitus, and of the poem “Ars Poetica” by Jorge Luis Borges. Also, there is something in the last line that echoes Eastern philosophy, via Emerson. I swear I've seen it before.

sudoku poems

2006-11-01T17:31:00.000-05:00

So in the spirit of Oulipo, I've created a poem-generating process that puts my addiction to sudoku to use. First step is that I solve a sudoku. Then I basically use it as a phonetic scheme. I take a text whose language I really like and I take nine words that don't sound too similar, and then assign them each a number.

Then, nine words to a line, and nine lines long (like a sudoku), every time a number is given as a clue, I use the exact word for that number. Then everywhere you had to supply the number in order to solve the sudoku, I use a word that rhymed (or slant rhymed or meant the same thing) with that number's word. So now I have nine lines of nine words, and none of them are repeated in the same place or same line.

Then I link the words together into a poem. It's really a way to spur writing and bury some rhymes. I can't say how well it's worked, but it's fun.

I don't know if this makes any sense, but here is one:

AN ANCIENT GAME
a conversation between Ashbery, Diogenes and Heraclitus

A swift river - flow of red leaves, bushes brown with dust.
Mouths half-open: gates along the trail the Nobles took,
holding symbols of fire. Their words have changed to cobalt;
they laugh. As I ramble I feel their third eyes,
these woods made dark by smoke.

They've changed to water inside a spit of fire,
bubbling around stale mirrors, lit jumping red,
hovering above crumpled papers, stale puddles almost dried.

An odd growth of truth: crowds of birds walk up the hill
seeking truth the gods wired down (I swear: lowered down on leaden wires).
They lash my ears with ribald cries to earth.
The truth of our fate - bodies and sounds
hinge on symbols They permitted to touch down on the hill,
which gushed light at sunrise.

Leaning on their staffs, fathers have heard
the spaces at the bottom of the hill. Our mothers
aspire to reveal symbols, cobalt-black silences
emanating from below, lit red by late sun
fallen into bushes below - I'll not go down.

Both gods and Men laugh miles away down the road
while the flowers beget new gods in silence.
I no longer walk away. Things change: fire on rafts of truth,
the hobbled birds drunk from stale symbols of the forest,
fermenting dark spaces, water climbing hills
(boding ill of re-creation), speeding up of Fate.

Birds and birds stake themselves on the fate
of a truth that lashes from sick riddles
badly cast with a feather, not rods or switches.

Stumbling hounds seek hell, eyes charged,
and spit fire while glowing symbols float toward the hill,
heralds mate and grist, lofty fathers of the Unwise.

Cabled bodies drop like four flowers arranged
- two truths, two gods -
to find new stashes of unstale water.

Gods, Men, they rustle as they shake off, dry
down, down to opalled edgy spaces, skin glazed.

The petals fatten waiting under bushes where eyes,
orange from the tense flow of light, finally split
and drop their shells. Free of fear
of gods changed to bushes, their wills are frail.

The ample fire flows - it's stirred by what they've found:
a youth simple yet ornate, body the color of cobalt,
new god with no father, laughing vitally, rising to the top of all hills.
She guffaws bubbles of new creation to meet an empty, watching sky.

Lost tree

2006-10-30T17:30:00.000-05:00

We lost the tree in front of the house - the one that fed red berried to birds, so we'll have to plant something else for them to eat. The tree was sick, and it was incredibly windy all weekend. This is around the time of year when it always turns. Winter clears its throat and taps you on the shoulder.

just playing with words

2006-10-27T18:30:00.000-04:00

palette – plate – pellet – paltry – paddle – complaint – plot – plan to – pallid – spell it – pearl tea – steeple – staple – pestle

2006-10-25T18:30:00.000-04:00

forget a pity party, let's have a pity riot

a sign of resistance

2006-10-23T18:30:00.000-04:00

This morning I noticed that somebody on had scratched through the subway system map on the train to reveal the old one beneath. It was only in bits, so the result was that the map was neither wholly new or old, neither and both.

Someone looked at this sign of progress and thought of the increased fares of the last few years, the hours spent on stalled trains, the tin voice of announcements, the lost god, the ex-girlfriend, and said no.

E. E. Cummings

2006-10-20T18:29:00.000-04:00

We had my friend Soma to tea today before we went over to the Cemetery for the E. E. Cummings reading. He gets sort of a bad rap from a lot of younger contemporary poets, I've heard, but I still think he's worth a read. He's one the of the first poets I read, which I'm sure is true for a lot of people. In school we read a lot of his dainty, whimsical poems, but I'll never forget Mrs. Streibich reading "I sing of Olaf glad and big" back in 11th grade.

I often walk by his grave in the Cemetery when I'm walking the dog. I'm slowly reading his collected poems. There's a lot in there. I don't think he'll ever fade into obscurity.

why some people are afraid of puppets

2006-10-18T18:29:00.000-04:00

"Time is living me," wrote Borges. Were that I was a marionette, but there are no feeble strings at my joints suggesting which way to go. Instead I have been hollowed out, icy fingers stuffed inside guide my limbs, my life. And when they're done with me, I'll flop down lifeless and discarded.