Yes, on top of finding a new place to live in a new city in a new state, plus starting a new job, I’ve been re-designing the web site. I’m going for a kind of whimsical-yet-subversive-feminist thing with the wonderful art of Yumiko Kayukawa, who kindly gave me permission to use “Zen Cracker” which we altered to make a banner (it’s actually more rectangular – here’s an online version –http://www.sweetyumiko.com/files/zencracker.gif) Her other art work is great too – I encourage you to browse her art work.
I used to have a technical site and a poetry site, and now I just have one, more writing-centered, site. (You might want to update any links you have to my poetry site, by the way…)
Yesterday was a mournful day, with the passing of Reginald Shepherd, and the eerie memories of another sunny September 11th. I spent most of the day getting rid of things. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. It turns out I’m not as attached to most of my stuff as I thought – except my books – and maybe my shoes. At night I played hooky for an hour from packing and sorting to see Peter Pereira and Rebecca Loudon read at Port Townsend’s Northwind series. They both read new work that I really loved. Peter has so much good energy it just radiates when he reads, and Rebecca is always electrifying (plus she had really great hair last night – I was all, how does she get her curls to lay like that? I know, a really serious poet shouldn’t have been thinking about hairstyles.) So that was a nice poetry break in my insane-moving-world of right now.
And I have to learn new educational software for my job and read two textbooks before the class starts! OK breathe, breathe, breathe…
So, let me know what you think of the new site, and if you find any problems or missing links, tell me!
Let’s see, I got to see Matthew Zapruder and Seattle’s own Peter Pereira read at the festive Copper Canyon open house the other night. The reading was so crowded I couldn’t even see my six-foot-four husband sneak in the back of the room at the beginning, so I didn’t know he was there! I came away with some new books and a broadside and really enjoyed the reading itself – Peter read new work (which was really good!) and though I’d seen Matthew read a couple of times, this was his best reading yet.
Then yesterday we spent eight hours downtown shopping, from giant superstore Uwajimaya (notebooks, stuffed Japanese characters like Totoro and some new baby seal character, cranes in glass bulbs, so much eye candy! and actual candy!) to Nordstrom and their discount sister The Rack, and I think I actually set foot in about twenty other stores, bookstores, kitchen stores, but now I am done done done! I do love getting people presents, but…sometimes I wish I was one of those people who did everything by e-commerce.
I still have work waiting for me (another re-write of my essay, stress stress) but I was tagged by Karen W. to reveal seven crazy things about myself, so even though in general I don’t go for these meme things, I can’t risk the wrath of Karen!
–I lack the enzymes or something to process alcohol, so I can’t drink, not even a half-glass of wine. And sunlight? Pretty much a no-go as well. And garlic. So, I could very well be a vampire. Except I don’t really like blood. Even bloody meat makes me squeamish. Anyway, all those Sandals resort ads this time of year are like an evil parody of things I can’t do – tan, drink margaritas, etc. Sad. I am not, however, allergic to dairy, wheat, nuts or strawberries, or animals. So, it could be worse!
–I grew up on a farm with chickens and horses and like 20 roaming dogs and cats and acres of strawberries and used to do farm chores like gathering eggs and mucking stalls and currycombing and everything. Moving to the suburbs was very painful after that.
–When I was growing up my mother didn’t encourage me to wear pink or feminine clothes, because she didn’t think it was feminist (possibly also because she was encouraging me to wear my brother’s hand-me-down’s as well.) This may explain the amount of pink in my closet.
–I still get excited about the concept of XML.
–My single favorite Christmas present of all time was when my little brother tracked down a in-box lost toy (called a Nyamy kitten) that I was so upset someone stole at girl-scout camp when I was eight, that was only made for six months in 1980 because I believe it is stuffed with hazardous materials. It has a treasured spot in my home, with all its highly flammable parts and everything. (It actually has a warning tag that read: “danger – stuffed with iron filings.”)
More mini-review madness
Mary Biddinger’s Prairie Fever:
Don’t expect any mild-mannered nature poetry about prairie wildlife here, although wildlife does appear, torn and bedraggled, birds dead on windowsills, red flowers appearing on throats. Full of dark fragmentary looks at the inner and outer violences of the bored bad girls of the prairie, poking dead bodies with sticks, rinsing their hair with beer, and making out in abandoned barns. Stark, vivid writing illuminating shadows with lightning-sharp imagery and bone-cracking emotion.
Did some more Expedia work today, then combed Craigslist for places to live, which were all too expensive, which made me comb Craigslist for more part-time work. All in all, depressing.
In reading news:
Peter’s new book reading at Open Books was standing room only, and Peter was wonderful. His new book even has a couple of mythology-alluding poems in it! You know I’m a sucker for those. Here’s the first few lines from “Case History: Persephone:”
“The visiting surgery resident
inserts the icy speculum
while the mother stands nearby
clutching her only daughter’s pale hand.
Outside the window – a barren
January day. The long fields lie empty,
their edges stitched with bare trees.”
Isn’t he a great poet?
Today, I’m re-socializing myself by going to Peter Pereira’s new book reading and party, which should be wonderful, and I’m meeting up beforehand for a birthday lunch with a friend (her birthday, not mine) which should be good as well. I always need a little living-in-a-cave-by-myself time after big social weeks, like AWP or the school residencies. I swear I’m an extrovert, I just need breaks in between extroverted events.
So, onto writers and their portrayal in film. I loved the tremendous “Stranger than Fiction,” which features an author obsessing over how to kill her main character, a vulnerable and subtle Will Ferrell. Then I fell into the movie “Music and Lyrics” (Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore,) a much less tremendous film, which features a foetry nightmare character – a girl who seduces her powerful professor (a la David Lehman) at the New School to get her poems published, (or so the professor says) and when he dumps her and writes a thinly-veiled fictional account of her seduction, she has a nervous breakdown and becomes “charmingly quirky” (except the script allows the quirks to come and go like cats in the scenes. There’s no continuity or integrity about the character.) Then she’s redeemed by writing the lyrics for a pop-tart’s hit single. Nothing like the music business to clean up the dirt left by the poetry biz? LOL.
Post-AWP Reading:
I’m reading Simone Muench’s Lampblack & Ash, which is painfully pretty and powerful, like walking in stilletos over every word, and Brandi Homan’s chap, Two Kinds of Arson, which I read all in one sitting and then promptly wrote a poem afterwards (always the sign of good reading.) I even envisioned a string of poems about Rapunzel. So, my advice: read both books, then get to your writing! I also read the lastest issue of Sentence, which had some wonderful bits by Margaret Atwood and a bunch of fascinating stuff. It’s not just your typical lyrical surreal prose poem kind of writing. A nice diversity.
I may get in trouble for mentioning it (he explicitly asked for no reviews!) but Jim Behrle’s chapbook, She’s My Best Friend, is fun reading, as well as beautifully produced. OK, that’s all I’m saying.
(Music: Reasons to Be Beautiful by Hole)
