Pretty books. 

I love postcards. Here are two I've received recently. One from Hunger Mountain, and the other from Wendy Wisner. 

My book reviewed

The Diagram

Read Victoria Chang's poem at Slate

Holiday Parties

I hereby

I never make New Year's Resolutions. Do you? If so, what? Tell!

My cinematic debut

Or, rather, my book's:

Video

Look for the video by Taylor Loy.

hail

TO A GIRL WAITING FOR A BUS

It will never last,

anything said

to the frozen ground,

though you hover

and hold in and hush

your mortal warmth

and nurse every frigid thought

as though it might die

without you.

A child’s thought,

that. The sky

in its lacerated swath

of light was once an idea

of forever,

a template for the end.

Just as the stars

gleamed cheaply

in the radio’s blue

blue firmament, a song

pretended to speak

to anyone

about anything. There you stood

as though there you’d spilled

and it began

where you were soft, wherever—

in the subterranean root

of each blind tooth,

in the salt-sewn creases

behind your locked knees,

it began,

the pain or a song,

it made no difference then,

it began

lightly, like snow,

to blot the abiding air

of everything you might hope

to leave behind.

Some good news

In the mail today: a postcard from Hunger Mountain, with the news they're nominating my poem "Questions for Godzilla" for a Pushcart Prize. That makes four nominations this year, an embarassment of riches.

Much needed news--I'm in a funk.

I haven't

checked my university email address in two days. Insert copious diabolical laughter. That feels good. Of course, there's probably something really important waiting on me there....

***

I'm fighting a cold, I think. Sneezy all day. I've lazed about watching tv and movies. Aside from this cold, I think I'm in that staring at the walls phase that Louise Gluck talks about. Aside from my poem for Wendy, I'm pretty quiet in the head. And generally content to be so. For now.

***

Has anyone else been dreaming about me? Recent posts by Steve Mueske and Jennifer Drake Thornton both have me appearing in their dreams.

So, c'mon, 'fess up. Details.

Yawn

I'm sleepy and my leg hurts.

More Bob

"Spongebob & Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall" by the Flaming Lips is just the sweetest song I've heard in forever. I'm a recent convert to Wayne Coyne and co., and their work is so strange but pure. A perfect choice for the Spongebob soundtrack.

You should check it out on iTunes.

Free

Just turned in my grade-sheets for the semester. Done, finito, kaput. Fabulous feeling.

Who wants to go out tonight?

City of blinding lights

Left outside my door this week:

a $20 gift certificate to Krispy Kreme doughnuts, in a cute Christmas bag, addressed to Sarah T. I'm not sure who that is. And that's a lot of doughnuts.

one garbage bag, then another, then a duffel bag, all of them being dropped from two stories up on to my porch. Hello?

Several dozen feet of heavy strand, used to tie my door knob to a brick pillar supporting the balcony above. The door opens inward so the door would not have opened from the inside. Where I was.

***

In my mailbox:

the awesome Aubergine Anthology. A limited edition of 50. Very cool. You should contact Josh Corey if you want one. There might be some left. I appear alongside lots of good folk. More things like this should be done.

Rejections. Two.

24: Season 3 box set. I finally, today, finished season 2. The last disc was a duplicate of disc 1; I screamed, not literally, when I discovered this a while back.

***

In my refrigerator/freezer:

Hideous microwave Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits. Abe Frohman, call me.

Turkey pot pie.

That's about it.

***

In my wallet:

7 dollars (a 5, two 1's)

***

In the mail:

The check. I swear.

***

In the jungle, the mighty jungle:

No lions, but pray I sleep tonight.

Fess

Ok, I have to admit that the Christopher Walen blurb is bogus, though maybe I really will ask him now. Heh. And I didn't write it: it's from The Onion and it was about hot dogs, not my poems. Reading it, it struck me as a great blurb.

But can't you just hear his inflections and see his hand gestures?

Blurb

So in an act of optimism, I'm going ahead and requesting blurbs from people. Christopher Walken, a great actor and friend, agreed to do one:

Do you enjoy reading Paul Guest poems? I hope you won't be put off by my frankness when I tell you that I absolutely love them. In fact, I enjoy no poem more than a new Paul Guest poem.

Now, I've done a lot of movies, and it's true that I've worked with quite a few celebrities who did not share this opinion. I'm sorry to say that these people have always angered me. There are two types of people in this world: those who read Paul Guest poems whenever it is possible to do so, and those who opt to do other things with their free time.

Who do the latter think they are kidding? What pastime could be more rewarding than the reading of Paul Guest poems? I haven't yet found one, and I don't expect to in my lifetime.

Unlike other poems, Paul Guest poems can be read at any time, in any place, and it is not necessary to hide them. Now, I ask you: Why not read Paul Guest poems? They are fantastic. I carry a book of Paul Guest poems with me wherever I go. I read them whenever I get the urge, regardless of the circumstances. When I make a movie, my Paul Guest poems are my co-stars. If, in the middle of a scene, I decide I want to read a Paul Guest poem, I do so. I waste the director's time and thousands of dollars in film stock, but in the end, it is all worth it, because I enjoy reading Paul Guest poems more than I enjoy acting.

This bothers some people. I was supposed to portray Batman, but when Tim Burton learned of my Paul Guest poem cravings, he asked Michael Keaton to wear the cape. To this day, I am peeved about this.

When we filmed The Dead Zone, I read over 800 Paul Guest poems a day. It was necessary. My character needed to come across as intense as possible, and I found the inspiration for that intensity in my intense love for Paul Guest poems. The director, David Cronenberg, said that he would never work with me again. I kept reading Paul Guest poems when the cameras were rolling, and that seemed to bother him. I say fuck him. He doesn't even like Paul Guest.

I would like to end by emphasizing once again that I really like to read Paul Guest poems. If any of you people disagree, I loathe you. I despise you. Not only that, but I also despise all your loved ones. I want to see them torn to pieces by wild dogs. If I ever meet you in person, I'll smash your brains in with a fucking bat. Then we'll see who doesn't like Paul Guest.

--Christopher Walken

Bug-eyed bliss

It was gorgeous here yesterday, 70 degrees and blue sky and cotton clouds scudding past. A short walk turned into seeing The Spongebob Squarepants Movie. Wow, I know what being heavily medicated is like. There were moments so daffy it was surreal. Like that gag in Mel Brooks' flick Spaceballs where they pass from ludicrous speed into plaid. There were moments where S.B. passed into plaid. I found myself crying I was laughing, giggling so much. The "We're Men" song. David Hasselhoff's key role. The pirates. Spongebob transforming into a superpowered mystic rock-god savior, with the impeccable David Lee Roth sample from out of nowhere.

All of this a break from grading. Double yuck.

then

SYNOPSIS
for Wendy, who has never seen Star Wars

Of course, I won’t say how it ends. Silent
in the seat beside you, I’m ignoring

each tug on my sleeve, universal lever
for leveraging curiosity. But, not you, no—

here in the ornate theater of words,
these words at least, the best dreams play out

as they ought or should. Popcorn
bubbles richly up from a brass kettle

in which our faces reflect copper moons.
And the butter is gold as daisies

are gold, as bees are gold, as the pollen
they bear is also gold, and

this is all about light. In the dark,
lowered from the ceiling

like a canopy, a beam begins to become
a story. Here we are, vanishing

for two hours time, here
in the false night that yields to starlight

and moonshine, here
as sound rushes out like a child

heedless into her shivering childhood.
Everything basic is about

a boy and a girl,
lost in the woods, by bread betrayed

into an oven. Or
it’s water they’ve come to fetch

and it’s Jack whose head will break
like a heart by the end.

Of course, I won’t say how this ends.
Soon enough we’ll know.

Band candy

All this rain! Dark and chilly outside, and I'm in slow motion. Almost no motion. So much to grade this week, and all by Friday, as I promised. It's doable, but not fun. Sixty something papers/projects to process. Yikes. Wish me luck, keep me in your thoughts, send me prescription pain pills.

***

I got my letter for the Brittingham Prize, regarding my manuscript. A "strong semi-finalist" again, which is good news, though it's about the tenth time this manuscript has placed, finalist or semi-, in a contest, so it's hard to muster excitement. I feel really bad about that. I should be more grateful, and in truth I am, but it's hard not to feel a little impatient. I shouldn't, though; I realize that. Something to work on.

***

Continuing to work on the memoir, bit by bit. I'll post more when I have it. Thanks to everyone that enjoys it.

***

Which journals annoy you the most? Why? Tell me, please.

Mo'

Tonight, writing this, I can look out my window and see the hospital I was taken to in Chattanooga. Lights blink in the darkness where the trauma helicopters take off and land. By the time they are this close to the hospital, they fly slow, they fly low. The air overhead shudders as they approach. I did not arrive there by air. I wish I had.
The ten days I was hospitalized here, before moving to Atlanta, were spent in a new kind of agony. When I was stabilized, I’d be moved. Two bones in my neck were fractured, circling a bruised spinal cord that might or might not be still swelling, causing the real damage. Both my arms were broken, sealed up in casts. The surgeries would come.
The ulna in my left arm, knitting crookedly, had to be re-broken, a plate screwed into the bone. And my neck, still in a collar, still fractured, would not safely heal on its own.
To be anesthetized is to be like a clock winding backwards, running down. That doctors ask you to count backwards is apt. The air wavers and with it all things. Sound warps and wefts. Your eyes forget they are still yours, that they are twinned. And then you sleep.
About the plate that was screwed into my arm there is nothing much to be said, except that weeks later the stitches coming out would bring me to tears. While I was under, the surgeons attached to my skull a band of stainless steel, fastened by four terrible screws that were drilled into my skull. Bars connected to the ring were then fastened to a fiberglass vest, sheepskin underneath, against the skin of my chest, and tightened shut.
I’d wear this for the next nine weeks, my neck entirely immobilized. They called it a halo.

Didn't I blow your mind this time?

Jackie Brown is the best movie....