New review for She Returns to the Floating World, New Poems, New Vistas…
I woke up to a new review of my second book of poetry, She Returns to the Floating World up at Web Del Sol Review of Books. Thanks Web Del Sol and Gina Barnard!
With this latest bug I’ve had, I’ve been running high fevers, especially in the evenings, and waking up every night at 3 and 4 in the morning. Now I’ve got Murakami’s IQ84 audio book on my CD player in the bedroom, so I can listen to it when I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. Last night, I actually had an idea about feral princesses and prophets for a poem at 4 AM – I’m so happy I wrote it down because when I woke up for real this morning, I had a new poem I was actually pretty happy with (especially since I wrote it in a daze in the middle of the night.)
I have a confession, though I know it’s not confession Tuesday: this last week with the flu, I’ve started watching the Home and Garden network shows, like “Property Virgins” and “House Hunters.” I’m trying to remember the language of floor plan, square footage, and closing costs. It’s been too many years, and the processes have changed a lot, since the last time I did this. I watched a single girl in Seattle buy a $275K one bedroom, one bath condo in Ballard. (Where I grew up, $150K bought you a two-story four-bedroom home – and probably still does today. So.)
I’ve also been trying to write a little creative non-fiction. What I struggle with is setting a scene, slowly, building suspense, extending scenes with dialogue and description. So many years of poetry has taught me to condense, to capture a moment in as few words as possible. It’s like retraining muscles. Got to learn to create new vistas for my readers, for myself.
The Fourth of July, a review of She Returns to the Floating World, a Poem for Japan and some Recipes
Happy Fourth of July, Everyone!
Thanks to Sandy Longhorn for her beautiful review of She Returns to the Floating World:
http://sandylonghorn.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-im-reading-she-returns-to-floating.html
For some delicious red, white, and blue recipes, go check out my blueberry ricotta gelato and grilled watermelon salad recipes at my gluten free blog here:
http://glutenfreenorthwestadventures.blogspot.com/
On a somewhat more sobering note, I read the disturbing news that Cesium-137 traces have entered the water supply of Tokyo, Japan, as a result of the nuclear power plant disasters out there. This poem, “Cesium Burns Blue,” describes the contamination of my childhood home, Oak Ridge, with this same isotope. It was first published in The Cincinnati Review Winter 2010 issue.
Cesium Burns Blue[1]
Copper burns green. Sodium yellow,
strontium red. Watch the flaming lights
that blaze across your skies, America –
there are burning satellites
even now being swallowed by your horizon,
the detritus of space programs long defunct,
the hollowed masterpieces of dead scientists.
Someone is lying on a grassy hill,
counting shooting stars,
wondering what happens
when they hit the ground.
In my back yard, they lit cesium
to measure the glow.
Hold it in your hand:
foxfire, wormwood, glow worm.
Cesium lights the rain,
absorbed in the skin,
unstable, unstable
dancing away, ticking away
in bones, fingernails, brain.
Sick burns through, burns blue.
[1] Cesium burns with a blue light, explodes on contact with water, and has a highly radioactive isotope which was used in experiments at Oak Ridge. It can cause mental instability or other problems if absorbed through the skin or ingested; children ingesting produce grown in contaminated soil might exhibit mental symptoms as well as physical symptoms later in life.
You can see me reading the poem last year in San Francisco at a Fourteen Hills reading, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NolDPaTkZDk
My husband Glenn (a chemical engineer) wants me to remind you that our blue fireworks use less dangerous copper salts, which can burn blue or green, not Cesium.
