Sognidhia

I've written a series of poems about typefaces, all of which are imaginary (the typefaces, not the poems).  It occurred to me to write these after I'd read a number of books that had "Notes on the Type" at the end,  notes which in some cases seemed longer than the author's own biography.

Tangent: Though I guess if it's in his/her own book, it's actually an autobiography, written in the third person. Something to think about next time you're asked for a 50-word (auto)bio.

Anyway, two of my typeface poems were published today at Used Furniture Review. They concern 'Sognidhia' and 'Dardont Modern.' I hope you'll try them.

die Taube

The anarchist Emma Goldman ranted incessantly about how stupid people are. Asked by her long-time companion Alexander Berkman how she could reconcile that conviction with her drive for anarchy, she was unable to answer the question.

Marlene Dietrich on Meryl Streep: "In the old days such an ugly person would have played the maid, or not even have gotten a screen test." 

In German the pigeon and the dove are the same thing, die Taube. 

Paul Antschel rearranged the letters of a variation of his last name to become Paul Celan.

Albert Camus’ last car was a 1955 Citroen that he named Penelope. For years after he died it was kept in a the garage of mechanic with whom he’d been friends. 

I don’t care if he writes like an angel, she said. An angel wouldn’t write anything I’d want to read. 

When you chose the name of your child, was it the name you once wished for yourself?

(luise  gudrun  josefina) 

“Comme tout le monde je m’appelle Erik Satie,” said Erik Satie.

verb blurbs

The homepages of these newspapers are about the same size, so why does WSJ have more verbs. One reason could be it often includes a sentence along with its headline link, and the NYT headline stands alone and has no verb at all. I only listed any verb per publication per day once, so if NYT used 'die' 3x (which it did in its obit section), it appears once. Another interesting thing is that despite the 24-hour period, NYT kept a number of article links up, as you can see near the bottom of their lists where verbs are repeated. On Wednesday, they're still up! Anyway, just something a media verb nerd enjoys looking at.

Monday
WSJ: bungle, acknowledge, affect, fear, remain, yank, perceive, need, coach, hire, complicate, dog, be, stop, strike, sell, succeed, wind down, sour, warn, offset, post, move, help, affirm, oversee, cost, die, discharge, acquire, rise, see, release, act, pinch, become, start, hit, shake, rattle, kill, gain, make, spur, gear up, book, vow, unseat, silence, flare up, try, question, raise, fall, appear, choose, back, enter, pull, take, sit, sputter, move, close, cut, launch, spend, prey on, believe, have, unfriend

NYT: cast, reopen, begin, end, put, test, prevent, move, wait, need, slow, pour, have, speak, argue, pin, face, drive, ask, fund, speed, turn, break out, sign, die, concede, be, recycle, help, get rid of, go, beset, clash, set, come, show, seek, sell, make, want, tie, curb, let, stumble, urge, call, leash, get, pierce, grill, poison, listen, ignore, meet, update, cram

Tuesday
WSJ: cost, shape up, warn, slip, open, suspend, mask, pull, slash, botch, confront, end, cut, force, say, report, scale back, go, leave, reconsider, start, improve, hit, hurt, remain, head, sue, seal, strike, expand, buy, find, shift, capitalize, pay, press, shake up, sell, flatter, joust, appear, set, seek, waver, ban, get, rack up, trickle, dwell on, look, keep, treat, figure out, skip, link, zone out, love, worry, affect (sic), use, choose, spend, control, test, anger, enter, regain, buoy, trump, grapple, resign, sit, share, toss, amass, rank, see, ease, rebound, rally, edge up, fight, cause, forge, plan, build, change, begin, expect, hang around

NYT: eat into, support, narrow, defend, want, produce, reform, be, rethink, save, face, find, spy, head, fall to, arrive, mark, turn over, review, say, stun, deliver, take, die, collide, kill, raise, knock out, press, kindle, prop up, file, warn, surprise, deliberate, rescue, remain, long, write, harken to, greet, seek, bankroll, weigh, urge, start, point, find, retreat, appear, tailor, tan, end, beset, sentence, question, defer, forbid, leash, debate, unveil, ignore, call, tell, want, meet, update, cram, go

circumlocution office

For the past two weeks or so all I've been able to think about is that I haven't yet read Little Dorrit. I tried to ignore it, but the inner reprimand/promise became insistent. It's got an orphan in it, I understand, and I love stories with orphans.

So I went to the downtown bookshop that has a good English selection and what did I see? A display of Charles Dickens books with bold, inviting covers - a classic dominating typeface dwarfing some poor cartoon-like character.

But of course the relatively obscure Dickens title, if anything by Dickens can be obscure, Little Dorrit, was not among the titles Vintage is publishing with the new covers, and the woman at the bookstore, who looked it up for me, said it looks like there's no plan to do so. Dang, I have read, and own, all these. So I left with my generic Penguin Little Dorrit, and it goddamned better be good.

the woolen crypt

Madrid. If you’d asked me a day ago if I’d ever set foot in the city, I would have said no. But yesterday I was having dinner in a pseudo-tapas restaurant that served Schnitzel and potato soup with wurst, and I remembered Madrid. I could barely recall why I went, or why I spent only one night. But there I was, out alone at 10 pm or so on a terribly busy square, dark and staircased, teeming with families. As the mother of small children at the time, I could only think it was a school night, and how would these children wake up on time. What a world, I thought, take me back to my cobblestones and mittens and punctual bedtimes. The memory was so vague I was almost afraid of it. But it came back. There were people waiting for me in a restaurant. I had a place to stay. It was the year Tom Jones had a comeback hit. Maybe that’s why I was blocking it.

In the less distant past, which I’ve barely had the opportunity to forget, a lot less exotic and mysterious things happened. There was, for example, a supposed tapas restaurant that served Schnitzel, and herring. Still, I do have some poems out concerning plants, birds, sleep and doodling. In honor of control freaks everywhere who like kids to go to bed on time, the Foundling Review has my poem Bonsai. And Curio Poetry published three of my poems, Spinning the Vines (ufos), Snooze Button (utmost reluctance) and Boone Hall (zoning laws). Be sure to read Dan Nielsen’s poems when you’re at Curio. You will be glad.

Song of the day: Sex Bomb

i sing of Olaf

I’ve lived in Germany so long I’m thinking of changing my name to Wolfgang. I like it most because it’s got a wild animal in there, and though you may think it refers to a gang of wolves, “Gang” in English means “gait,” so it is more like “(s)he who walks like a wolf.” Which could practically be a movie.

Not for me Lothar or Uwe or Klaus or Ulrich. As for women’s names, well, there just aren’t any I’m crazy about, except maybe Kunigunde. But the last time a girl was given such a name was around 1230, so it would be difficult to wear comfortably. 

Most people have, at least as children, come up with a name they would have preferred to have. My son, for example, wishes I’d gone with Jack instead of Miles. An acquaintance, whose son’s name is Max, says the boy complains that that’s a dog’s name. 

I have wondered if we give our children the names we would have wanted for ourselves. For me it's not the case. When I chose my daughter’s name, Luisa, it struck me as a dark, sensual name because of the deep /u/, and very feminine. But it was never the case that I said, “I wish my name were Luisa.” And I never would have named my son, or daughter, Wolfgang.

it will not be a pansy heaven

I called my mom. She wasn't home. We'll survive. I sent her a book as a gift that she got in the mail a few days ago. Of course it's one I want to read, too. As for me, my daughter also got me a book, and my son, well, he was completely oblivious, which we will also survive. It worked for me, since I guilted him in taking the dog out although it was my turn. What are mothers for.

Becoming a mother changed my relationship with the whole world. My ability to empathize exploded, as did my concerns about “the future” of just about everything.

Unlike women who say motherhood gave them something to live for, for me having children gave me something to die for. Not only in that I would jump between them and a hail of bullets, but also in that if they were to die, I would want to die, too. This is clear to me every time they ride the rollercoaster. I don’t want to, but when they get on, I get on. Like I'm going to cushion the crash. Sometimes, though, in a glitch of logic, I send their father.

Here's a poem ee cummings wrote for his mother, read in a not entirely serious way and accompanied by some very low-tech effects. Enjoy.

Tonic observations

I do not live in my dream house.
I do not live in my favorite town.
I do not have the job I once imagined in fantasies.
I did not marry my soulmate.
Surely I would hate my soulmate.
In my inner life I tend to come down on the negative side.
And this has done me a lot of good.

Money talks

One day my friend's car battery dried up, so she approached a man in the parking lot to ask if he could jump the battery. She had cables in the trunk. He said yes, but when he opened his hood he said he'd just bought the car and wasn't sure he would do it right. So he went over to two house painters eating lunch in a nearby van, and asked them if they could lend a hand, which they did. When they were done, the first man asked if they wanted to be paid, and they said no, and left. He, however, told my friend that he wanted to be paid for helping her, as he'd worked as an agent. She gave him $10.

There was a lawyer who worked at my friend's office, who specialized in estates. He was very well off and brought a lot of money into the firm but didn't work there long. While he did, once a week he could be seen throwing bags of trash out in the dumpster behind the office. This let him avoid paying for garbage service at his home.

Another lawyer at my friend's office, another successful and wealthy man in his late 40s/early 50s, one day complained to his father that the family had spent more money on his sister's college education, who'd attended an Ivy League school. He calculated that his mother and father had spent $39,000 more on her education than his, as he'd gone to a school with a lower profile. He felt he was owed that money and told his father as much. The father gave it to him. My friend knows this because the father, who frequently drops by the office, whispered it all down for her.

Giveaway

I don't know what happened to this week. Here we are at the end of National Poetry Month, and I only managed to write anything within the last week, like a reluctant IV drip. Because of my trip over the ocean, I also didn't participate in any giveaways and wish I did. So here, with my last opportunity, I'm offering a couple of copies of my chapbooks (=2 altogether) to whoever is interested. Just tell me if you have one or the other and leave your snail mail and I'll choose at random, provided someone answers....

On that topic, Dave Bonta the other day reviewed Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair. Thanks Dave. Elsewhere earlier this month, a poet talked about my Book of Hours Ghazal at her blog. Thanks to her too!

Tomorrow is May Day in Germany, which is labor day, and I look forward now to a long sleep.

Mileage

So where wasn't I? Montana, for one, and also Maine. But I did all the states that start with 'New,' including the southwestern one, and some one-word states, too. What did I learn on my traipse through the states? Mostly that crazy is given way too much air time. And that air time in general, even the supposedly serious talk shows, are against the serious.

On the upside, Americans love to interact. They gladly enter conversation. They stop your daughter on the street to say they like her hair, or lack of it. They ask you where you got your shirt. They call you darling and honey. Sometimes their zeal gets the better of them, as with the man who woke me up on the flight from Albuquerque to Houston to ask if I'd ever flown United. Well intentioned, I am sure. Even headphones could not stop his heart surgery. On another flight, after a guy across from me complained to the stewardess for the fourth time about the way she phrased something(!), the guy behind me told him politely to shut up.

I have been away. So long! I didn't get a chance until now to mention that I have three poems in the spring issue of Menacing Hedge: 'Snow Globe Shepherd,' 'Village' and 'Crepe Paper Body.' Like the label on the bottle in Alice in Wonderland might as well have said, "Read Me."

Set your monkey free

1. I always sleep alphabetically but last night God forgot and removed the W. I was sent back to sleep twice through the V.

2. In some parts of the world, the clocks are set back an hour at three in the afternoon rather than three in the morning. People sit back down to tea, and all the children who finished school at 2.30 are required to come back.

3. It’s an old story. I was in love but found the object of my desire terribly fickle – one hour cool, one hour on fire. Only at the bullring did it become clear that the matador with the floppy bangs had a twin brother.

4. As Chuang Tzu says: ‘To wear out your brain trying to make things into one without realizing they are all the same – this is called “three in the morning.” What do I mean by “three in the morning?” When the monkey trainer was handing out acorns, he said, “You get three in the morning and four and night.” This made all the monkeys furious. “Well, then,” he said, “you get four in the morning and three at night.” The monkeys were all delighted. There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger. Let them, if they want to.’

5. The year I spent in China was more like three years. At first the days were all equal, but soon moved unevenly as wheelbarrows pushed by a child. Pollution and endless exertion aged me threefold. The only way to offset this effect was to sleep all day, one brushstroke at a time. But once the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, time had spun out of control. When I set off for home it was as if one year were three. But three that flew by.

mermaids

Robert Oppenheimer went to New Mexico to recuperate from tuberculosis. He later said he had two loves, physics and New Mexico. Would there be a way to combine them?

Eugene O'Neill had TB, as did Paul Eluard and Camus, though the latter was killed in a car crash.

My cousin Christopher, whose middle name was Camus, was killed by a hit and run driver, never apprehended.

Watching the 'gadget' explode in Los Alamos in 1945, Oppenheimer thought of the lines from the Bhagavda Gita, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Miles away a girl who had been blind from birth saw the light of the explosion.

Centuries ago, the existence of mermaids was widely accepted. In January 1493, Columbus wrote in his journal that three of the creatures had been sighted. They "rose well out of the sea, but were not so beautiful as they paint them."

Tears, who needs them

Cedar smells better than lilies, and does not sicken the audience as it fades.

Camus suffered from tuberculosis for years on end, an ailment compounded by heavy smoking, but a car accident killed him within seconds.

Exercising one's willpower over a bad habit just for the sake of saying so is exchanging one weakness for another.

In the barracks of Russian labor camps, those who had memorized stories were the most prized inmates.

What could ever be objective about choosing between the last names Motherwell and Frankenthaler?

I considered learning Spanish to read Garcia Lorca, but if I pursued that line with consistency I'd also have to learn Portuguese to read Pessoa, Polish to read Szymborska, Serbo-Croatian to read Vasko Popa, Russian to read Akhmatova, etc. etc. und so weiter.

The bulb throwing its dim light down the steps like grey fur.

Misread "abominable teeth" as "abdominal teeth."

spoils

I went to the Strand bookstore yesterday equipped with a notebook page of 55 writers' names - from Samuel Beckett to Marguerite Yourcenar - all from my Good Reads to-read list. For some of them I noted a particular book, but mostly I was going for anything. Due to time constraints, and various family members pursuing me, I made it only to fiction and poetry. 19 of the authors I looked for weren't there; another seven I found and decided against.

I came home with seven books, each the first I've bought by the respective writer. 

1. Wonderful Wonderful Times by Elfriede Jelinek. "It is the late 1950s. A man is walking in a park in Vienna. He will be beaten..." (I would have preferred The Piano Teacher, but they had this and Greed.)

2. The Nervous Filaments by David Dodd Lee. "Imagistic, passionate and uncompromising ... transforms the harsh realities we experience as brutal and permanent into transient informative moments of release." (The volume I wanted.)

3. The Ninth Life of Louis Drax by Liz Jensen. "Louis Drax is a boy like no other. He is brilliant and strange, and every year something violent seems to happen to him. On his ninth birthday, Louis goes to a picnic..." (I wanted The Ark Baby, but happy to give this a shot.)

4. Reader's Block by David Markson. "In this spellbinding, utterly unconventional fiction, an aging author who is identified only as Reader contemplates the writing of a novel. As he does, other matters insistently crowd his mind -literary and cultural anecdotes, endless quotations attributed and not, scholarly curiosities- the residue of a life's reading, which is apparently all he has to show for his decades on earth." (I wanted Vanishing Point, but no go.)

5. The Tanners by Robert Walser. "(Walser is) the dreamy, confectionary snowflake of German-language fiction." (I would have taken anything.)

6. The Garden Going On Without Us by Lorna Crozier. The poem 'Onions.' (Exactly the book I wanted.)

7. The Quincunx by Charles Pallier. "A remarkable book ... in mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated. It is an immersing experience." (The book I wanted.)

from The Catalog of Swallowed Objects

Padlock
Safety pins
Straight pins
Toy opera glasses
A quarter
Radiator key
Buttons
Wool
Wire
Tin steering wheel
Umbrella tips
Nails
Chains
Toy dog
Sticks
Burnt matches
The letter Z
A half-dollar
Beaded crucifix
Toy goat
A medallion that says 'Carry Me for Good Luck'

a book about the man who removed the objects

tiny kingdoms

A tree is considered too huge and unruly to bring indoors, unless you choose the docile bonsai. We have four bonsais in the house, in various stages of surrender. Tending them is an exercise in patience, but also a show of power. We love them because they’re beautiful. We love them because they make us giants.

off we go

We leave for America tomorrow and I have not packed any snacks. Despite airplane food, I have not packed any wheat bread or fishes and I don’t consider it my business to make money exporting the dirt around Schopenhauer’s tombstone. Dear suitcase that comes smashing down my mottled halls, things go better with clean underwear. Things go better with a change of socks and soap and jewel-like jars of eye moisturizer. Tonight I will lie conscious of the long bodies of airplanes, their cool wings waiting, their tailflukes and inner chambers that explode with headphoned entertainment. Like any man I will refuse a blanket that’s become a sack of static. Like any man I may drink a tomato juice once we have reached cruising altitude, and I won’t take Manhattan but will accept a moist towelette expertly folded and packed tight with a hint of lemon.

thanks to catherine mellinger for the collage.

death & vegetables

Nothing much happened. I woke up. I made coffee. I washed my hair, and in the elevator later in the day I noticed how very grey it's growing. I had my mozzarella sandwich and worked non-stop all day long. I gave up on a crappy book set in NYC in favor of a promising one set in Poland.

I also had a prose poem up at Juked called "Mist," which involves death and vegetables.

Another reason to love Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

I have dueling versions of Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands on my iPod, Bob Dylan’s and Joan Baez’s. For a long time I only listened to hers, but in fact I prefer his. She has a distinctive, beautiful voice, whereas he just has a distinctive voice. But he’s also got personality, and that piercingly sad harmonica!

Ok, so what's another reason to love the song? Because it is a list poem that reminds me of the French surrealists, that’s why.

Take this, from the song:
With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace,
And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace,
And your basement clothes and your hollow face,
Who among them can think he could outguess you?
With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,
And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns (etc)

Then this, from Benjamin Peret’s “Here:”
my ghetto of black iris my crystal ear
my opal snail my mosquito made out of air
my bird-of-paradise mattress my hair of black foam
my exploded grave my rain of red grasshoppers
my flying island my turquoise grape (etc)

Then this, from André Breton’s “Free Union:”
My wife whose hair is a brush fire
Whose thoughts are summer lightning
Whose waist is an hourglass
Whose waist is the waist of an otter caught in the teeth of a tiger
Whose mouth is a bright cockade with the fragrance of a star of the first magnitude
Whose teeth leave prints like the tracks of white mice over snow
Whose tongue is made out of amber and polished glass
Whose tongue is a stabbed wafer (etc)

See! I told you.
Listen to André Breton read his luscious poem.

Word Thursday

The word mellow acquired a dubious reputation in the 60s with that goofy Donovan song and later with the antics of Cheech and Chong. If it didn't reek of marijuana, it would be a useful member of worddom.
Sometimes it manages, for example in talking about wine and dogs that lose the desire to bite, or in this odd sentence from Wolf Hall:

"The mellow brick frontage is smaller than he remembers, but that is what memory does."

I had to wonder when I read it how on earth mellow was being used. I imagine the red bricks have faded with age? They've gone soft and chalky, and are possibly intoxicated?
The proximity of mellow to brick also evoked Oz's yellow brick road, and I wondered what on earth kind of bricks those could have been. Gold, I guess. I'd never asked myself.
Though mellow and the prefix melo- have no known ties, there is a hidden affinity between mellow and melodrama, that which makes the eyes well stupidly with tears and softens the grey matter to a mushy pulp.
I guarantee none of this happens in Wolf Hall, however. The stiff upper lip prevails.
It has been a busy morning on page 510!

Song of the day: Factory, Martha Wainwright

legs too short

It's the first day of spring, and our transport union celebrated with a strike. This is the second time in two weeks, and after a grueling, pointlessly long taxi ride last go-round --at one hour I could have walked it in the same time, less expensively-- I took my neighbor up on the offer of borrowing her bike. It was a bit too high for me, at least so says my sore crotch. It took about the same amount of time as the UBahn, maybe less, and indeed there was fresh spring air, but cycling would never be my preferred way to and from work. I don't know if you've noticed, but it is impossible to read a book while commuting by bicycle, even if it's Wolf Hall. Make mine the UBahn, even if it can be rough company.

I celebrated spring with a poem in the new issue of Birdfeast, their second issue. It's one of my short poems with long titles: "Lines written in a Japanese noodle shop watching a building being demolished." I hope you will enjoy it, and celebrate by liking spring on Facebook.

spring&all

the chest
the pretty chest
the pretty chestnut
tree

The zone

I was downtown today, and noticed I have officially entered the mental “near-home zone.” This occurs every year before I visit the states. I go into a store, see something I like, then turn up my nose and snort:

“I can get something better in America.” (tough luck, potholders)
Or “I can get this much cheaper in America.” (hope to see you in 3 weeks, Calvin Klein tote)
Or “I don’t like this enough not to covert the 30 euros I would have spent on it into $40 I can spend in America.” (good try, pillow covers)

This is really a great money-saving psychological device, also because there's often no follow-up. I don't go LOOKING for potholders, for example....

My retail dreams of America are no longer wholly realizable since the airlines started charging for overweight baggage, rather than just threatening to. Last April when I came back they told me I had to pay $200 for overweight, or $50 for a second bag. Needless to say, I whipped out a second bag and transferred the 50 books I’d bought from my suitcase into it, mentally adding $1 to the price of each book (which was still kind of a bargain).

snakes and birds

sometimes it's as if i lived my sister's life / or i am inside it / i inhabit her gestures / my sister had a clique of friends in college / ages ago / they claimed all people resembled either birds or snakes / there were no hybrids / there were no cats no horses no starfish / they went around categorizing whole populations / they did their best to be outrageous / one threw up in my room / though i would not admit it to them / i have been surveying the data / 30 years later i can report back / the split is not even

The N words

I was out today and two young guys were behind me, friends obviously and goofing around, and one suddenly called the other a Nazi. “Get lost, Nazi,” he said, laughing and pushing his friend. They were two completely decent looking 18- or 19-year olds and I was stunned that they broke this tabu. Of course the term is used often by non-Germans as the ultimate insult. It’s thrown around lightly these days, too, with Greeks calling Germans Nazis, or calling Angela Merkel a Nazi, or whomever.

But for Germans, outside of historical context, it’s a no-fly zone. When these two used it, it was so unexpected I had to laugh, and they were laughing, too, knowing they were stepping over a well-patrolled boundary.

It reminded me, oddly, of two black people fooling around call each other 'nigger' - that frowned-upon put-down, made innocuous for some as insider banter. There are worlds between the words, it goes without saying: one being a criminal, the other a victim, one having once been an official moniker, the other a condescending insult. And I surely don’t think Germans calling each other Nazis is going to gain any currency. Still, hearing it used was a kind of relief, like acknowledging the elephant in the room, and the laugh was the relief of tension.

song of the day: two little hitlers

Spring and all

I finished The Tin Drum and it was better than I expected. I saw the film long ago, and thought to watch it again now - we have it in the cellar - but as often happens I am sure it can't do justice to the book, its hideousness, its humor.

I had that marvelous moment yesterday deciding what to read next. At work I jotted down some titles and settled on Wolf Hall, which I started last night. I am doing everything possible, apparently, to avoid the present. The book begins so well (in the year 1500). I felt very grateful reading it on the UBahn.

I had to change my US visiting rhythm this year and will go in April instead of October. I wasn't really happy about that, though it does mean I can spend Easter, which I usually hate because it's boring and empty, with family.

What I miss about America: lots of stuff, including screens on the windows to keep the bugs out, water fountains and general friendliness.

What I don't miss about America: school shootings, political campaigns, driving a car.

right-height trees

Though not a Romney fan, my father enjoyed his quote about trees being the right height. He likes the idea - says it's a kind of found poetry. But it's a bit short for poetry, even for haiku, so I looked up the quote and found more, out of which came this found poem.

Michigan

I come back to Michigan.
I like seeing the lakes. Something special,
the Great Lakes, but also all the little inland lakes
that dot the parts of Michigan.
I come back to Michigan: the trees
are the right height.
I love the lakes. Brownish-green,
the grass is the right color.
I love being in Michigan.
Everything seems right.

Politicians seem to be masters of the deeply inane. Who knows what the right height is for trees? Romney, the sage, accidental poet, does. On the way home from work I sized up the trees. Some of them seemed insecure about their height. Others were too loose, too tight, or too symmetrical. Some had a freakish branch jutting out at an uncomfortable angle without a proper counterweight.

Grotesquerie

It's carnival time in Germany, with its parades and absurdity. There are costumes and floats, beer and huge paper maché heads. I imagine carnival is nice in Rio, but in Germany it is cold, damp and plain weird. It invariably drizzles, or just rains. Today is the height of it, Rosenmontag, but it continues tomorrow with Fat Tuesday. My boss takes three days off, and he’s not alone. The train station this morning was empty.

The holiday this year coincides with my reading of The Tin Drum. Like carnival, The Tin Drum in shocking in places with its dwarves, eels, onions & potatoes, horseheads as fishing tools, incest and invading armies, and also outrageous, and very engaging. Along with the story, I like the particularly German things that come up, like school-going "cornucopias" (Schultüten), which I wouldn't have understood if I hadn't had children here, and the famous fizz powder sweet, a stand-in for sexual climax in the book.

Anyone who knows anything about The Tin Drum knows it is about the rise of the Nazis, and the post-war years in Germany. The protagonist is a supposedly insane dwarf, who decided at three to stop growing and remain a child, and there of course are all the Germans who had no responsibility for anything in their society.

This is the year I penciled in to read more German/ic and Germany-related literature, and this seems a good start. Here's part of the first chapter, the creation scene, which leads us right into the distorted grotesque: My grandmother had on not just one skirt, but four, one over the other. It should not be supposed that she wore one skirt and three petticoats; no, she wore four skirts; one supported the next, and she wore the lot of them in accordance with a definite system, that is, the order of the skirts was changed from day to day. The one that was on top yesterday was today in second place; the second became the third. The one that was third yesterday was text o her skin today. The one that was closest to her yesterday clearly disclosed its pattern today, or rather its lack of pattern: all my grandmother Anna Bronski's skirts favored the same potato color. It must have been becoming to her.

plans, schemes

someday i will write it all down in greater detail

someday i will write it all down in greater detail

someday i will write it all down in greater detail

someday i will write it all down in greater detail

someday i will write it all down in greater detail

Thumb Theater

I treated myself to a mac, and it is a lovely machine, clean and easy. But I am having a terrible time without Word. Apple has many programs for writers (too many) - Pages, iA Writer, Ommwriter, Text Edit etc - but it is difficult to make the transition. I almost gave in and bought Word yesterday, and even now I wonder why didn't I, but the Apple store convinced me to come in for a Pages class. It is not hard to use, but I want to save things in Word, or send them in Word, and I have run into one obstacle after another. For example, the computer accepts my password for some applications, but not others, so I can't set up my mail account. I only have one password! Then there's the question of where the hell are my files when I save them. MUST FIGURE OUT.

I was hoping to write more, not spend the evenings feeling defeated.

So, ironically, for now I am back to writing poems exclusively on paper. Page after page of the same poem with a slight change in each new version, like those flipbooks you hold in one hand while flipping through the pages with the thumb of the other to see a horse run, a head turn, or a star explode.
Kind of defeated the purpose of the new computer.

Happy Valentine's Day. I heart Word.

More flipbooks:
Break dance
Close up
Louis Vuitton

Schnee

Cold without snow is like nakedness without nostalgia.

I said that. And am very glad to have seen some flurries today, a consolation amid minus temperatures. Some people say snow sucks up some of the cold. I think it just makes it easier to bear.

My Book of Hours Ghazal is up this week at Linebreak. I couldn't think of a better home for it.

Unseen

Despite my choice of the kind sepia tone in the video below, I'm trying to modernize. Over the past couple days I've learned how to make audio files, convert photo files, use iTunes for more than music, and here's my first (fidgety) iPhoto video. Primitive! I'll take it down in a couple days to protect my secret identity. Ironically enough, this is my poem "Unseen," from my chapbook.


Unseen 


Unseen, an airplane slices up Sunday 

and why do I have to listen?



It’s not noon that starves me of my shadow.

Just the dull-pronged pressure 

of spring coming again. 



Under the long sleeves of my shirt, 

time has been purpling my arms until 

they lie wine like. 


Aging goes on inside.

Merciless. Hidden. 



Once on tv I saw a virus,
shown under a microscope.
 It appeared playful.



The underbellies of elms fill with oil.

Green wants to drip down and kiss 

the top of my head. Stop there, 



it says, and leans close.

What is the heart but
another mouth to be fed?

more fan love

Of Wislawa Szymborska’s poems, most American poetry readers are familiar with the one called “Could Have,” sometimes titled “Any Case,” which for some became almost an allegory of the 9/11 tragedy. If I’m not wrong, the New Yorker (?) printed the poem over a picture of the WTC, sealing its fate as a 9/11 poem. It’s an excellent poem, though its writing predates the terrorist attack and refers to the Holocaust, a tragedy of a much larger scale. (She later DID write a 9/11 poem, “Photograph from September 11.”) But the good thing about Szymborska’s poems is their seeming simplicity makes them like Colorforms, peel them off one situation and stick them on another. They leave lots of room. She ignores poetry workshop directives like, “Get all the senses in there! Did it smell like nutmeg?! Was the sky slateblue or greengrey!”

When Szymborska died last week, I didn't blog about her, though she’s a favorite of mine. I didn’t feel I had anything to add besides more fan love. Then I read this blog at Slate this morning, clicking in when I saw “the Szymborska poem above my desk,” fully expecting to see “Could Have” and finding instead “ABC!” That was refreshing.
 
All this is leading up to the fan love I promised and my favorite Szymborska poem – "Contribution to Statistics". This was the first Szymborska I ever read. It appeared years ago, before she won the Nobel Prize, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a newspaper that sometimes prints poems. Of course it was in German, as “Beitrag zur Statistik,” and because I first read the poem in German, it remains for me far superior to the two English translations I’ve since read. (One even uses a baseball metaphor – “not even in the ballpark” – which makes me groan in dismay. Sport metaphors!)

Anyway, I liked the Slate blog about the Szymborska poem that enjoys a “place of honor” hanging above the writer's desk, because “Contribution to Statistics/Beitrag zur Statistik” has a shrine in my home, too. However many years ago I cut it out of the paper, plonked it into a frame and hung it next to the mirror in my bedroom, or in all four bedrooms I’ve had since then.

Crush

As if writing a poem weren't hard enough, then comes submitting. Sometimes, despite having some favorite zines, I don't know where to begin. A good way out of the 'where to?' question can be to find a poet you like, find out where their new poems are, and try there, too. I do this!

I find Duotrope also a big help. I look at "recent responses" for new publications and also to refresh my memory. Recently I saw Birdfeast start up, and I thought, oh, not another zine with a bird name. But I checked it out and the 'bird' referred to 'flipping the bird,' and it just seemed a desirable home for a poem, and I was lucky to have one accepted. Funny enough, I also checked out Thrush, yet another bird name, and thought it would be girly love and nature poetry but looks (and names) deceive and it is full of terrific poems. They rejected me, but I will try again.

Then come the cases of cool-sounding zines that have sleek and savvy layouts, and are full of poetry you think is bad! Not 'not my thing' bad but downright weak. This is disappointing.

Considering all the time and thought that goes into submitting, beyond writing the poem, I think I'll just lie back and suck plastic grapes and wait until the publications come knocking at my door. Um, more plastic grapes please...

For those who celebrate, V-Day is a week or so away, and Poetry Crush has a feature up on erotic poems. They asked the writers who are publishing with Hyacinth Girl Press to choose a favorite and write a little intro. Mine is ee cummings, and there is a rich and varied selection of other poets too. Enjoy.

the balls off a brass monkey

It is -8C here or worse, which is about 17F to us Americans. Cold! The gypsies are nevertheless camped out across from the train station, sitting Indian style on their mattress with a blanket around them. At least until around 11 pm when the guy in the Mercedes comes to pick them up. He brings them back before the crack of dawn.

Anyway, yeah. Cold! Well-digger's ass! Witch's tit! Cold as hell. Cold as all get-out. Eskimo's chuff! Whatever that is.

My poem "Sidewalk Rage" is up in the new Snakeskin, which is all found poems. I admit Sidewalk Rage has also found me occasionally, most often when I'm behind the dope & her friend standing side-by-side on the escalator in the train station where I am trying to catch my train.

Injuns

When I first moved to Germany I was surprised when people told me they had visited or planned to go to New England for Indian Summer, as if it were a sure thing. How did they calculate, I wondered. I wondered aloud, and found out what they meant was 'foliage season,' when trees turned colorful as a headress full of feathers. It was easy to understand where the mistake was made.

Still, I tried to explain what Indian Summer really was - that time of year when the heat creeps back, although you thought autumn had started, a bout of hot weather usurping the season, unexpected and unwelcome. It was than that I first made the connection between Indian Summer and 'Indian giver.'

This backstory was more difficult to explain, and eventually I gave up. I know where the expression comes from, but I let the Germans keep their own, though the imprecision irks. Am I lazy, or just dismayed by the effort of explaining, or is it worse than that? Is Indian Summer = foliage season a semantic whitewash?

Safe Landings

Mark Wahlberg caused a ruckus recently when he claimed history would have been different had he been on the plane from Boston that crashed into the WTC on 9/11. He was supposed to be on one of the two, but rescheduled shortly before. He dreams frequently of his would-be heroism: If he’d been on board, he says, he’d have stormed the cockpit and kicked some terrorist ass.

While I appreciate the sentiment, how can anyone know the circumstances, assess the danger and opportunities, and above all know oneself –one's reactions, the thoughts that would go through your head, the power of fear– enough to judge what he’d do? In these days of easy heroism (local girl picks up baby sister at school!), I wouldn’t discourage the real thing, but how to make such claims hypothetically? Maybe because of your kids’ being on board, or the deal you’re about to close, or your crush on Tanya at your office, you wouldn’t dare anything at all? Most people hope for a best-case outcome. No one on the plane from Boston knew his fate.

(It’s interesting that Wahlberg has that German last name because if he’d been born, say, 90 years ago, we could have counted on him to take Hitler out. Too bad! ... but I’m having fun at his expense.) In his favor, he has since apologized. We all appreciate the sentiment, but we also benefit from hindsight. And the adrenaline of imagination. Still, there’s a lot of injustice out there, so he needn’t be disappointed he missed his chance to right wrongs. Opportunities abound.

Anyway, I heard all this and I'd have put it away in my mental clutter cabinet, except Wahlberg’s outburst coincided with the wreck of the Costa Concorida and its weasely captain. The wreck also brought up comparisons to the Titanic, and my colleague who covers the insurance industry and has a pet interest in cruises, sent me a link about second mate Lightoller, whom I’d never heard of and now ask myself why (boy walks dog for sick mom!). When the Titanic captain told him to get into one of the lifeboats, he refused. Instead when there was nothing left to stand on he dove into the ocean, after having packed as many women and children into the lifeboats as he could. Some think he misunderstood "women & children first" as "women & children only." Still, a hero in my book.

reading notes

Not long ago I finally finished Moby Dick. I admit there would have been an acute danger of failing to finish it if I hadn't been in an internet group dedicated to it, if I hadn't been one of the leaders of aforesaid group. Yup, "reading in public!" The pressure. I am very glad to have read it now; it was worth the while. When you're somehow involved with Melville, he seems to turn up everywhere - this, today, for example.

Afterwards, quite exhausted, I had a quick romp with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which had a good plot but which I found so-so. It was a fast read, though, which is often a plus point. To me it seemed like YA literature, though I understand that wasn't its original category. My take: skippable, unless you have an interest in Asperger's Syndrome.

Now I'm reading The Tin Drum and feeling underwhelmed after my high expectations. What I think of wistfully nearly every day is re-reading The French Lieutenant's Woman, which I loved last year. I even pulled it out this morning and re-read the first couple pages. Later in the day I talked to my mom who spent four hours in a doctor's waiting room today reading something I'd recommended, which turned out to be this! I could have cried. My only problem with my copy, I remembered this morning when I pulled it out, is the goofy cover with cutesy girlwoman playing peekaboo.

the what

“Thank you for sending us your poems; we are sorry to say they are not what we are looking for.”

What: substansive
What: a question word demanding definition
What: “that which”
What: (adv.) in a great or surprising manner, e.g. what a poem!
What: a thing inherently unspecified

(for further reference: whatever, whatsoever, whosiewhat, whatchamacallit)

Do you remember the riddle about the fisherman’s daughter, who was to come both dressed and undressed? In what was she un/dressed?

“When you have what we are looking for, please let us know.“

(it has yet to be fingerprinted)

Why you cannot sing 'Dem Bones' in German

The Scheitelbein's connected to the Hinterhauptbein
The Hinterhaupbein's connected to the Schläfenbein
The Schläfenbein's connected to the Unterkiefer
The Unterkiefer's connected to the Zwischenkieferbein
The Zwischekieferbein's connected to the Gesichtsschädel

ach nein, it just don't flow...

High Heeled

I always want more:
more Everest, more starshine,
something in the department of vertical.

That’s why I’m up here.
It’s better than smog,
better than settling.

Since coaching myself to one-up
the utmost, my dreams
only know the amazonian.

Could you say that again?
At these heights, I hardly
hear you. Sometimes from

my perch on the umpteenth
floor, I feel the distant pinch
of the finite. You’ll see

others like me, pumped
up, outrageous in altitude.
In the ascendent,

the hitch remains poise,
attaining cliff stillness,
and nerve enough not to topple.

Word Thursday

The little figure of the die is one of my favorites.
It is so neat and dotted, intact and self-contained, and yet with so many tentacled implications.

It's a loaded word, too, as dice can be loaded, hiding the fatal verb in it. I also like that die’s plural is dice. There’s nothing like the die-dice pair.

The mice don’t have their mie.

Advice has no advie, and rice must walk this world alone, or at least as a collective singular.

Another word I like is stacks, as in library stacks, which has no singular. Such stacks in fact are not stacked at all, ideally, but lined up in rows. For stacking stacks you need a used book shop or a plate of pancakes.

But what brought all this up was another word that I read today and meant to take note of, but now slips my mind. It’s like this morning, I put a pan of milk on the stove to warm and when I came back to get it the pan was nice and warm but there was no milk in it.

And now I remember the word: absentminded. It struck me funny. I wanted to give it a hyphen, but the dictionary says no. Perhaps I knew that.

One of the Tea Leaf fragments

Prince Igor

Let’s lay a cloth under our clutter,
acclaim the sanity of teapots
and backs of chairs, swans
curving into morning.

And though we’ve run out of sugar
and though time, too, runs out
to its grey and empty chamber

you fill a vase with grass
saying, “if there are no roses”
*

less usual delusions

A variation of delusions of grandeur are delusions of grammar, that is, the fixed belief that one’s language abilities are far superior than other people's, even infallible. In addition to grammar, the deluded person believes his spelling and punctuation are irreproachable. Dressing in robes or crowns is a symptom, as the patient may consider himself “the king” or “Jesus” of grammar, or chief of the grammar police. Patients obsess about perceived offenses in books, correspondence and newspapers, as well as in verbal interaction with others. This malady often leads to a complete loss of manners, as well as an obscure illness known as ‘denial of the dictionary.’

Elsewhere, closely related to delusions of persecution/paranoia are delusions of parsecution – the belief that other people – vaguely identified as "they" - are paying overly close attention to every word you say, that is, they are parsing your sentences. These parsecutory delusions often lead the sufferer to swear silence, or alternately, to use made-up words and bizarre syntactical twists to obscure the true meaning of their statements (e.g. "Withholding it stampedes, therewith spears taking tapwatery wonder," which means “Spanish agents are aggressively poisoning my tap water.”).

Happy even-numbered year

This music makes me glad to be alive.
I wish you a brilliant, beautiful new year.
The dragon is right behind.