Almost 49 "if all else fails, sharks have a keen sense of hearing"

Yes, tomorrow is my birthday. I have elaborate plans, and several new empty notebooks, for getting my "50th year" off to a good start. Diet, exercise, vitamins. Water. Walking a little, swimming a lot. Keeping a daybook -- half diary, half journal, half sketch book, half PAD -- that's just like me, too many halves. I've been in a tiny email correspondence with Angela, who's raising money for flood victims in the Philippines, and I've started my thesis planning in earnest. Al is being very generous, and gently prodding, and I have to get going before I blow it. I even left a message for Laurie on her 50th birthday -- the actual day. My poetic life is up for grabs -- I plan to catch it myself.

I am happy to have found "What To Do About Sharks" by Vivian Shipley on the AAP website. What a great poem, and I hope to teach it to my 5th graders at Regnart this spring. They've asked me to come back, although I can't imagine where they are getting the money.

I'm intrigued to try to find and read something written by the new Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Herta Mueller (with an umlaut, not an 'e'). I like what the committee said about her: "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed" -- and I love the title of one of her books, at least the English translation, The Land of Green Plums. (Heart-animal is good too)

Herztier, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1994. Published in an English translation by Michael Hofmann as The Land of Green Plums, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1996

I just finished reading Francine Prose's 2000 novel, Blue Angel, which I adored, and kept me good company yesterday while I was home sick -- a cold? swollen throat -- headache -- I think it's more likely Remodel Pneumonia.

Here's a little lovely poem from Heidy Steidlmayer, published in Poetry in 2007. I know, I should have read that issue a while ago, but I am slow. I love the sounds in this poem. And the form. I'm a sucker for sound and shape and poems that have body and not just mind.

Scree

I have seen the arrested
shrub inform the crag with grief.
Lichens crust the rocks with red.
Thorns punctuate the leaf.

Sorrow is not a desert
where one endures the other --
but footing lost and halting
step. And then another.

A Pain in the Hip

So, I have early mild to moderate arthritis in my hips. Worse in the left. Probably. Still need x-ray confirmation. I need to take good care of my hips so I'll have them for a long long time. I'm looking for inspiration in poems (where else?) and found Lucille Clifton:

homage to my hips

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

— Lucille Clifton

audio clip
May 03, 1983
Guggenhiem Museum
From the Academy of American Poets Audio Archive

I'm going to keep looking for poems. But I'm not allowed to sit at the computer as much any more, so I guess I'll just have to be sporadic. Or, more sporadic.

Borrowing From Robert Creeley

I've been depressed, the natural progression from busy, overwhelmed, and stressed. It's an old story. It's even an old story among poets.

I found this little gem in an old copy of American Poet -- I'm trying to recycle years of magazines so I don't have to move them back into the newly remodeled house. Anyway, I love it, it speaks both of the blackness and the energy that eventually comes again (if your drugs are good enough to keep you alive that long).

I Know A Man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.

Thank you, Robert Creeley. From The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975 (Univ. of Calif. Press, 2008)

Poem of Kathy's Photo

"grasshopper on rudbeckia"



I think I've cheated this way before: a photo from Kathy's garden with a title I think makes a good poem. Here's one for September.

Slowly Getting The Poem Back In

I've been dead. Getting back to life, slowly, and finding blogs I want to link to, photos I want to share, snatches of poems I want to listen to and lift out. First steps:


1. Found a great great visual art blog: Accidental Mysteries: and today's post is "Poultry In Motion" -- great poem bird pun. Here. I won't plagiarize the photos, but do go look. My favorite ones are the face out of toilet paper tubes, and the Newspaper Blackout Poems. Here's one of them. Make sure you click on it to enlarge and read.



2. I've had some little poem publishing success. The 2009 issue of The Sand Hill Review has two of my poems, one of which is technically in four part. 'The Wife' (which I already need to revise) and 'Concussion Sonnets'. Am currently thinking about Depression Sonnets. And Anxiety Sonnets. I'm grateful to Janice for asking for my work. I don't get "out" much any more these days.

3. I also had a line of mine accepted into Nils Peterson's project: Santa Clara County: A Family Album 2009. Nils is the poet laureate of Santa Clara County and he invited poets (like me and you) to submit short lines, which he wove into a single ode to the valley. It was fun, and even though I got my entry in late, I got it in! You can read the poem here. My line is, 'with my wet laundry, I startle a doe.'

That's enough -- two days worth of posts. Whew. I'm reading Suite Francaise (thanks to Ray for the suggestion) and just finished Wind in the Willows again, although I'm not sure I ever read the whole thing before. What a dreamy book. My husband's favorite children's book.

The Ovaries Are Superior

My friend Kathy makes beautiful photos of her beautiful garden. Actually, she's my friend Alice's sister, but I claim friendship in beauty. She also has excellent captions for her photos, many of which would be poem titles if I had the time. For example: the ovaries are superior.

Gutter Poetry & Flowers in the Street & Amy Lowell

So, I can't tell if this is a real poetic genre or not. I should try writing a gutter poem to find out. In the mean time, read about my gutters on my remodel blog. I'm too tired to do much else right now.

Here's a nice photo, though, of flowers doing their best springtime thing -- growing up through the cracks.

While searching for poems about gutters and flowers in street cracks, I found a lot of interesting things by Amy Lowell. She didn't write a poem specifically about this topic (that I can find) but I did find this great poem 'Winter's Turning' that describes buildings shooting up through the streets like flowers. For some reason, some of her books are digitized in Google Books, so you can read the poem for yourself there, or here:

Winter's Turning

Snow is still on the ground,
But there is a golden brightness in the air.
Across the river,
Blue,
Blue,
Sweeping widely under the arches
Of many bridges,
Is a spire and a dome,
Clear as though ringed with ice-flakes,
Golden, and pink, and jocund.
On a near-by steeple,
A golden weather-cock flashes smartly,
His open beak "Cock-a-doodle-dooing"
Straight at the ear of Heaven.
A tall apartment house,
Crocus-colored,
Thrusts up from the street
Like a new-sprung flower.
Another street is edged and patterend
With the bloom of bricks,
Houses and houses of rose-red bricks,
Every window a-glitter.
The city is a parterre,
Blowing and glowing,
Alight with the wind,
Washed over with gold and mercury.
Let us throw up our hats,
For we are past the age of balls
And have none handy.
Let us take hold of hands,
And race along the sidewalks,
And dodge the traffic in crowded streets.
Let us whir with the golden spoke-wheels
Of the sun.
For to-morrow Winter drops into the waste-basket,
And the calendar calls it March.

Even though I found this poem while looking for flowers and streets, the image of 'we' who are 'past the age of balls' really breaks my heart. That we would be us, my love and I.