Baby!

Go see the happy family over at Laurel's. Welcome baby Mose into the world.

Today's word is Ow

My legs are killing me today. Someone pass the Advil. Or the Alleve, which Amy B. prefers. Or the laudanum. Well, it isn't that bad. They just hurt. They do that some days. I don't really quite believe the whole weather changing thing that some people swear by in their joints, but days like today, blustery, combustible, make me have second thoughts.

***

Still no word from the eBay guy! Double grr. I'm going to obsess over this until there's some sort of resolution, so I'll try to keep it out of here. But I'm making no promises.

***

Heard, second-hand, of a Hurricane Katrina anthology being put together. Which sort of makes me nauseous. Lots of white people sipping 8 dollar coffees being sensitive about, you know, death. And how inconvenient it is.

It reminds me of the couple in Best in Show who met in Starbucks. Separate ones. Across the street from the other. While browsing their J. Crew catalogs.

***

I must seem grumpy. But I'm not.

***

Speaking of Best in Show, last weekend I finally saw A Mighty Wind. Christopher Guest, no relation that I'm aware of, basically has his own sandbox, in which no one else plays. His other films, like the hysterical Waiting for Guffman, are largely improvised mockumentaries, complete farce. What makes Wind interesting, and problematic, is that the jokes here are less barbed and the emotional pallete is broader.

And that seems to be the film's major intent, to allow something more in, so much so that it never quite seems to coalesce until Mitch and Mickey perform at the tribute concert.

Whether they will kiss at song's close brings a startling focus, and emotional punch, to the movie. Catherine O' Hara's face is beautiful in the moments before what happens. All the other groups, who've gathered side-stage, are moved.

And then the movie retreats, almost shyly, from the moment. Six months later, Mitch is apolegetic that Mickey misread his intentions; Mickey is performing at some dinky trade show. It's back to yucks and I kind of hate it.

Still, it's a wonderful, curious little movie, filled with hysterically dead-on takes on folk songs.

***

Hi.

My Thanksgiving wasn't quite like this

 

Grr

You go to the trouble of selling off all your Buffy boxsets, so you can replace them with this ultra-cool all-in-one set. Or you didn't. But I did. I bought one off eBay because it was cheaper than on Amazon. The seller, actually a company that also sells on the internet, shipped it last week. But not to me. To some woman in Colorado Springs. When I noticed this, I called them. They were polite and suitably puzzled, cooperative, were going to ship another one out that day but they were out of stock. So I asked them to cancel my order and issue a refund, to which they agreed. That refund hasn't come yet, despite a rather terse request in writing from me that they immediately refund my money. So, screw 'em, I filed a claim against them with PayPal. That was yesterday and still no word.

I'm not particularly concerned about losing the money. I'm fairly certain that I'll get that back, either voluntarily from the company or via PayPal, but it's frustrating to have it tied up.

***

Thanksgiving was low-key this year, just us, and even then my dad had to work that morning and the twins had to leave somewhat early. Starr's family was in Myrtle Beach, so I was feeling a bit deflated. Still, good food, and limited time with family ain't bad.

***

Idea percolating for a new poem.

***

Still grooving on Walk the Line.

Jackson

Time to get something up here besides that awful pizza man murder. And what better, yet still somehow appropriate, new topic than Johnny Cash, specifically Walk the Line? In a word, awesome. It hews close, of course, to the standard bio-pic beats, including one or two way too on the nose lines like, "You can't walk no line, John!" or "It burns...it burns...." There needs to be a cosmic ruler to smack a screenwriter's hand when he types those lines out, but otherwise, a great time at the movies. It's probably impossible for anyone else to sound like Johnny Cash and so Phoenix doesn't, not quite, but he has the same quality, he channels the same subterranean spirit, and so becomes Cash. Great chemistry between him and Reese Witherspoon should guarantee them both Oscar nods. Lots of great music. It ocurred to me that I would have enjoyed a concert movie by them, they performed so well. Go see it if you haven't.

Jesus

The man who delivered my pizza last night, who goes to church with my parents and thus knows me, was murdered by one of his customers, presumably shortly after making my delivery. According to the news, he was given a bad check, sent back to collect the money, where the customer beat him to death with a hammer, then hid the body and car in the garage.

Later, the man killed himself. Inside the home, police found his 86 year old grandmother, dead in a closet.

And, no, I'm not kidding.

Glass

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was very good, though I still think Prisoner of Azkaban is the best film in the series. Alphonso Cuaron brought a macabre poetry to Harry's world, some of which is carried over into this film, though Mike Newell adds a element of classical elegance to the precedings. Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort is unrecognizable, which is good, and plays the villain well. I was hungry, no, starving, throughout the movie so I feel I paid it only about half-attention. I'll see it again after catching Walk the Line, which I'm anxious to see.

***

I finished season six of Buffy this weekend and Jesus, am I glad. Another great year, but I'll be damned if it isn't the darkest, most dysfunctional thing I've seen in, well, forever. I still maintain that Willow's arc seems the least grounded in the histories of their characters, but all the other developments seems logical, the seeds for these storylines sewn over the years. I mean, it's a stretch to go with Willow ending up where she does. Buffy, Xander, Spike, yeah, that's all true to them, it's writers mining the characters in rich, real ways.

I said I was glad, but I'm not in that I'm nearly to the end and that's bittersweet.

***

Everyone who bought books: they'll be going out today and tomorrow, so look for them soon in your mailboxes.

If anybody else still wants one, I have a handful left.

***

I feel the Super Oracular Magic 8-Ball speaking to me. Ask your questions!

10 Questions with

Sophia Kartsonis. Or actually more like 8 questions. She's too pretty for 10 questions and, really, 8 is enough to fill our lives with love.

I had the idea to start interviewing poets here because, well, I thought it'd be fun and maybe even interesting.

So, we begin with Sophia.

***

Your first book had a particularly circuitous path on its way to winning the Wick Prize. Multiple drafts, even other entirely separate manuscripts preceded it. Can you talk some about its evolution?

Well, for starters, my first book, as it will be known in fall of 2006, is actually my second book, a manuscript I completed after I finished my MFA thesis, a manuscript called The Rub. That manuscript has been gutted, revamped and now contains a good number of new poems that span all the time after Intaglio (the manuscript) up until now, with poems that are as newly-written as a couple of months ago. There are a couple of narratively-linked collections completed or in the works and they make up entirely separate work. It's weird and it makes the whole process of tracking the process really tangled.

Intaglio, the book, has benefited from lots of smart and savvy poets/editors, the most recent of which is Eleanor Wilner, after she judged the Wick Prize. She spent what can only be countless hours editing and suggesting and for that, I am so grateful. The book is still evolving in some ways as my grandmother's narrative series is included and she died this summer about two months after the Stan and Tom Wick Prize concluded. I am madly working on an elegy so that the series of poems about her--about a half dozen--might include this sad finale.

So would the elegy close the book then? In some sense, then, are you writing *towards* a certain end, in regards to both the elegy and the book, as opposed to writing in a more open-ended way, Frost's famous quote about the poem riding the ice of its own melting?

No, the elegy won't close the book or even the section that contains all the grandmother poems. But I think in certain ways the book as a whole has been riding its own melting in the Frost regard. Time has had its way with the poems, my perceptions of their strengths and weaknesses, certain preoccupations and focuses have shifted and the book can't but reflect that.

Putting together a collection of poems is often a series of happy accidents. Is there anything in Intaglio that surprises you?

Kind of. I sent Eleanor some additional poems after I pulled some others out. One of the poems: Hot Lunch

Poem is part of a John Yau-inspired series and it didn't seem very Intaglio-like or my take on what Eleanor would like. It's now in the book. The shapes forming around moments like that and what I'm willing to keep and cut make it seem kind of new-again and that's a surprise, especially after all the time I have spent sending this book/these books out in the hopes that they might one day be books and not just an extravagant habit.

Where were you when you found out Intaglio wasn't going to be an extravagant habit? Describe that moment, if you can.

I want to tell you I accepted the moment with cool, elegant nonchalance. The truth is: I was visiting my family in Salt Lake City and I checked my email on July 27th and Maggie Anderson, the director of the Wick series (bless her, bless her!) had written (after trying to reach me by phone) to say that Intaglio had been selected. I couldn't really read the words correctly, thinking that this was an announcement of the winner and maybe I was being given this information because I was a finalist or because I was not. The winning-manuscript-Intaglio-bit took a moment to register and when it did, I think I began weeping like an infant. My adorable father ran into the office to see what was wrong and from there, the whole Kartsonis clan was either laughing or crying or both. It is not a cool moment but it was deeply, terribly cool for me.

Of course it's cool. So what have you read lately that has impressed you?

Impressed? More like obsessed. Ilya Kaminsky's Dancing in Odessa keeps me coming back.
What else? Well, on the Ph.D. exams lists, I am reading and re-reading the likes of Stevens and Williams and really, what's not to love? I'm gaining a slow-growing appreciation and admiration for the way Ms. Moore works, though my admiration is, like her poetry, restrained and not of the hot, lick-it-off-the-page variety.

For that response in really recent books: of course, Josh Bell's No Planets Strike was long-awaited and much-revered. Its intensity makes me think too, of Richard Siken's Crush and in fact, I'm comparing those two in a conversation with another favorite poet: Matt Guenette--whose own fine poems better be getting ready to appear in book form very soon.

Otherwise, I've just discovered Judy Grahn--a fabulous and fabulously-under-read poet. And Anne Sexton's Selected stays on my nightstand. I've just found "Eighteen Days Without You" and keep reading and re-reading it. I wish I could do that--all of it.

Tell me about your writing process. Where/how does a poem begin for you?

Variously. Sometimes it's a word that sounds nice to me. Other times, a news article or single line that keeps nagging at me. Once in awhile, I think of an image that needs a home and begin to attempt to build a poem around it. And occasionally, I assign myself a form or an exercise or attempt to imitate the sound or form of something I have recently seen and admired. Brenda Hillman's spacing through one of her poems inspired me to try to write a similarly-shaped poem that would "breathe" the same way hers did--lots of doors and windows to her lines, meta-line-breaking by way of pauses. It was a fun venture and one that yielded--I think--a poem that was different from my usual fare.

How would you describe the ideal reader of your poems?

Hmmm... I hate the old self-deprecating observation that if you're reading poetry at all or if you're reading my poems, you are the ideal reader.

But let's dream for a bit: My ideal reader would appreciate the beauty of words, their textures, the way they magnetize each other. I'd like a reader too, who likes a poem that is attempting (though not always succeeding) to keep a lot going on in terms of image and sound and texture and voice. My favorite poets finesse all that very well but they are the few that can do all of that. Many of them do two or three facets extremely well. I guess I hope for a reader that will cheer for me when all the confetti is in the air and hanging and would forgive me for the times when the confetti is more like debris polluting the weather of the page. I think every work of art is or began as, an experiment. I'd like a reader who would understand that.

Last question: why poetry?

I'm really bad at everything else.

Oh, and I love it--reading it, writing it, teaching it.

***

Sophia Kartsonis' first book, Intaglio, won the 2005 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize and will be published in Fall 2006 by Kent State University Press. She is currently a Ph.D.candidate at The University of Cincinnati.

Don't you know me

TO BETH, WHOSE PHOTO REVEALS SNOW AND A PASSING TRAIN

Because it is American to love

that which one has no knowledge of,

I lean in, shaping my eyes

to sharpness, hoping not to see

in the anonymous gloss

of this photograph some fraction

of your life within mine, no,

because we’ve never met,

but the train’s blurred logo instead:

an Indian in headdress,

or maybe a sunflower’s silhouette.

Slow and illegible,

its burden is

whatever cannot be moved

with ease. Once like the song I rode

on The City of New Orleans

south through rural darkness

to end in that city

where bathwater

seemed to spill from the sky.

Every spasm of rain

would send me

beneath a Napoleonic arch

to wait for the favor

of the sun, to watch

for whomever might watch for me.

And there was a woman

who asked to pray

for my healing, for permission to petition the angels.

All I knew to say

was yes,

though I did not close my eyes,

or bow my head,

or even believe,

but watched her, wary, while the day wavered.

I haven’t thought

of her in years,

just as I will come to forget

this picture.

But I cannot seem to pass one day

without thinking

of how one I loved felt
sleeping beside me,

or the faded

tattoo of a flower

she carried

on her hip like the vast freight

of youth.

Maybe, Beth,

were we able to speak

there in the bright swath of snow

our words

might seem

to one who watched

like the first, falling breaths of reunion.

Comeback special

Public transportation is so dodgy. Not because of the transportation part, but because of the public. I'm reminded of the time in Carbondale taking the Saluki Express out to the Walmart when the bus stopped to pick up a man in a blue cape. He climbed in, announced to everyone that it was his birthday then began to sing. About Darth Vader. He sang in his seat all the way to his stop. This being Carbondale, nobody much noticed.

This poignant vignette is all lead-up to my trying out public transportation this morning. In particular, I was trying out the service the city offers for the disabled, elderly, etc. If I teach next semester, it will be at the campus of the other college in town, no place I can get to on my own.

Of course, I always dread these excursions into the land of the inevitably looney that is the world of the disabled. The driver introduced himself as Smitty. Already, that spidey-sense I mentioned a couple of weeks ago is flaring. A man who goes by Smitty is, of course, utterly insane.

"We'll getcha on thar, yessiree, don't you worry, Smitty's here."

"I'm not worried."

"Good! Good! It sure is cold. Did you get rain last night, Paul? Lord, back at the house, it rained to beat the band!"

"Yeah, I heard the rain during the night."

"Ten tornadoes in Tennessee touched down."

(Here I must admit I was rather taken with that line, all those t's.)

"Oh, really?"

"And some fella out in California won the PowerBall. 310 million. Have mercy! I'd re-tar quicker than you can say re-tar. How quick can you say re-tar?"

"Pretty quick."

"That's what I mean! 310 million. Why, old Smitty, he's headed to Hawaii with that kind of money. I'll take you too."

By now I'm on board. I notice a stocky young guy, dressed head to toe in denim, setting up front. He moves towards the back, towards me.

"Now, you buckle up, Patrick! If something happens to you, first thing they do is fire me, then the state'll sue me and I won't have nothing."

Patrick buckles up. He leans in close, with a conspiratorial air.

"I'm Patrick. But call me Pat. All my friends call me that. Pat."

"Hi, Pat."

"Look. Look at these pictures. I took 'em myself."

He shows me a photo of an Elvis impersonator. In a white sequinned jumpsuit. 'Elvis' is windmilling one arm with amazing passion, eyes closed, nearly on bended knee.

"That's a great picture, Pat."

"I took it myself."

"You don't say."

The next photo is of an Elvis in a red jumpsuit, towelling the sweat of the spirit of Elvis from his forehead. After that, Patrick poses with yet another Elvis. By now it's clear Pat who, besides being a little slow but pleasant enough, has a major Elvis fetish.

"This is outside Graceland. Isn't it gorgeous?"

"Yes, it's quite a sight."

"It's gorgeous. This room is inside Graceland. Isn't it gorgeous?"

I can tell he really, really wants me to say the word gorgeous, that upon this word hangs a great importance.

"Oh, yes, it is gorgeous, defintely."

"Here's his Cadillac."

This went on for some time. Pictures of the mostly tacky interiors of Graceland. More Elvis impersonators. Pat spoke up again.

"They just won't leave him alone, they won't let him rest."

I took this to mean all those who believe Elvis to have faked his death. I didn't press. Pat had grown introspective, still shuffling through all the pictures of his dead king.

Lyric

In the mail today: Sebastian Matthews' gorgeous chapbook Coming to Flood from Hollyridge Press. Sebastian was at Meacham a couple of weekends ago and we kept getting tugged in seven different directions, so we didn't get to hang out much. But he's a cool guy and I'm looking forward to reading it.

***

I've sold more books than I expected; I was actually prepared for selling none. Heh. So keep it up!

Remember, the holiday season is upon us. Dad doesn't want another pair of socks. He wants poetry. Specifically, poetry by Billy Collins. I mean, by me.

Well, maybe not, but poetry is better than socks, right? Right?

Hmm....

***

Shout out to Amy Blache for her sweet email and for not being, after all, one of my ex-girlfriends who cheated on me with a Satan-worshipping drug dealer.

Yeah, that was a great day, let me tell you.

But, hi, Amy.

***

A nice weekend and yet I didn't do anything. Maybe that's why it was nice?

For a limited time only

Everything must go!

I'm selling brand new copies of my first book for $10, postage included. If you'd like, I'll sign it as well.

Today

I will mention no names to protect the innocent. You already know I was the guilty party.

X: "I hesitated yelling at you."

Me: "Why?"

X: "Well, you know, strange woman screaming out your name."

Me: "Sadly, not as often as I'd like."

X: {laughter}

Me: "That was a terrible thing to say. I hardly know you. I'm sorry!"

It looks like

I might be teaching a poetry workshop next semester. Your suggestions for books of poems to use as texts?

Happy couple

Over at Amazon, me & Rebecca Loudon are engaged in a certain sort of congress....

Woe!

It is a sad day. Because I'm broke, I'm dipping into the vault, selling off some of my comic books. This issue from 1986 being part of one set of 139 issues in a row. I keep fighting the urge to pull the listing off eBay.

You may begin making fun of me now. It's ok. Really.

Of

AT NIGHT, IN NOVEMBER, TRYING NOT TO THINK OF ASPHODEL

No one is ever taking anything with him

to that deserted island which allows

you to check just one thing,

like some cheap airline whose jets fall

apart on the runway. One book

or one album or one wife—

we’re always choosing but never going

and it bothers me. How quiet

the place must be, and clean and possessed

by an expectant air: soon, soon,

they’ll come, packing light

but preciously and they’ll have to stay,

sure, but they’ve brought

that which they could not bear to be

absent. Such a place

would hum, I think, with longing to be

lived in. Such a place

does not exist and if you listen

the world is louder

for it. In the air that is always too close

with alarms, with sirens,

with the sad shamble

of a train, it is hard to hear trees speaking

the language we just made

up. Or I did, thinking

of you. You will lament your appearance

in these words, just

as I regret my own

in the police blotter

someday for stealing armfuls of oranges,

for running away with

the sun. Maybe,

I’m wrong: I could live with that much infamy,

I could speak to the morning

and the mirror

in the strange tongue of the pine trees.

If I had never known you,

my choosing would be

easy, because in all the world to which I belong

something would remain

that mattered enough

to bring. But here I am planting that flower that grew in hell.

Overheard today

At McDonald's:

"That tea isn't sweet at all."

"It's not sweet, at all?

"Well, it isn't ghetto sweet."

***

At the the movie theater:

"What in the hell is Fandango?

"You use it to buy your tickets in advance."

"Oh. I haven't been to a movie in a long time."

"Like Star Wars. I bought my tickets online."

"I didn't see Star Wars."

"Yeah."

***

More with our good ol' boy movie patrons:

"Aw, hell."

"I can't believe they killed him."

"Ain't no damn way The Rock goes down like that. I'm just sayin'."

"Yeah."

O

TRIVIAL PURSUIT

Forty-two percent of American women

belch on command. If you’re like me

and wonder who is doing the commanding

and to what strange end this

gastrointestinal cabal is committed,

then come, sit down beside me

and be my friend. I swear

I won’t yammer long, it will be painless,

even charming when I speak

of joy. There will be no reason

for the capillaries in your face to open in shame.

Because scientists have found

that mice sing miniature ultrasonic arias

to the opposite sex, even

though we cannot hear the birdlike song,

you and I will forget

all about the vast history of human loneliness,

you and I will induct

into the choir of the cricket

and the humpbacked whale,

this common creature singing in silence.

And how we came to this

I am already forgetting,

distracted by hirsute Sinatras

that women in cartoons feared the stark instant

one would emerge

if only to send her screaming to the top of a stool,

nevermind a hunger

for cheese. Here

we are speaking

to the loose ends of existence.

Here we are waiting out the autumn sun.

It was in the news

that I read about

the scientists, who spoke of joy.

Of all things,

this seemed right,

especially when in my head I have

built a store of words

like dacrylphilia,

which is to be aroused by the sight of tears.

By now I’ve said

enough. Tell me

what your name was, before we met, before I knew my own.

Code

SYNAPSE

There is this story I want to tell you

about the time a doctor left me

with a catheter halfway inserted

you know where while he spoke to his wife

in the hallway outside the door

and in that moment one had time

to regard the body and bless the human

capacity for distraction, to learn

how the flower of grace bears the thorn

of murderous, Viking-like

fury. Did he want the pie left over

from last night, she asked,

and I knew then they were speaking

in code, that lunch would not be

the sandwich she’d made for him

while he showered, but sex,

and in this I could almost excuse him

when he returned from

dawdling in the hallway

with this woman who draped herself in euphemism,

that she was pie, dessert,

delicacy, secret openly discussed,

that she was for him

offered for the hour,

and, see, even in that intimate, invasive pain,

I began to love her

face, that I could not see,

but I knew was lit with candid, conspiratorial ardor.

This is the story I want to tell you.

How we knew that light,

once, you and me,

and as I remember it

we’d find without fail

ourselves clumsy

in the darkness of one room or another,

in elevators, in auditoriums, on the road to St. Louis

as the earth fell flat

all the way to the liminal edge of the sky,

in the fragrant stacks

of some arcane corner

of the library,

wherever it was possible for our bodies to speak

one to the other

the narrative of the nerve.

Sick feeling

I won't link to the story (no sense in piling on when it's readily available at the Chronicle) but the recent revelation that an award winning short fiction collection "contains uncredited material" leading to the revoking of the award and recall of the book makes me sad, sick. I don't know the author, except that he teaches at Mississippi State, had, in fact, offered to help unload my stuff when I was moving there, and is a native of Tuscaloosa, a town that left a large imprint upon my life. So I feel a distant, tenuous connection to him, and to think that this book, his first, ends so ignominiously and presumably casts considerable pall upon his academic career is sad indeed. Not that I can excuse the offense here, because I believe the actions by the press are most likely just, but I'm moved all the same. In thinking back to when I was first beginning to think that a book of mine just might be possible some day, in remembering all the worry and fretting and dreaming that was poured out on to what was then just loose pages, I can't help but think of his book and what happens to it now. I imagine it will be pulped, the remaining stock. What about his copies? Does he get to keep any? One? Would he want to? Would I? Would you?

I haven't read either of the books involved so I have no idea how serious the issue is. I would hope it's a matter of ignorance or oversight. Regardless, it's a sad end to somebody's dream, even when it's their own fault.

Check out

my pal Eliot Khalil Wilson and his feature over at From the Fishouse.