Two things poetic

1) Finished a poem today. First time since.....May 08, I think. Long process, that one. But it feels tight, so rock on. A friend of mine, a poet, once said that in writing poems I "whittled jolly ranchers." That's about right: slippery and unyielding little suckers they are in progress, but they seem to sit solid after they're done.

2) Have I mentioned how much I am amused--and not in the good way but in the condescending and dismissive way--by the dramatic, eyerolling, stalking-around-the-front-of-the-room, tossing-finished-pages-with-a-flourish-onto-the-floor, white-guy-rap, and to my mind fundamentally insecure brand of poetry reading? No? Well I won't here.

Good news/ bad news. (Together = just "news"?)

Just discovered today that the publication date of my Old Poem in Translation has been pushed back to 2010, a year later than I'd expected. Not that big a deal, I guess...not as if I'm expecting to buy a Ferrari once the royalties start rolling in. But the anticlimax of publication gets a little more anticlimactic.

The reason?: Major American Painter, upon reading the text, agreed to paint the cover. I wonder if he'll give me the original after the book is published. You know, as a little token of our shared affection for Old Poem. Hey, I'd be HAPPY to give him a copy of the book in exchange: it's only fair...




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[UPDATE]
So! The 2010 publication date is for the paperback, I'm told. The hardcover will be released in April!

Practically a fish.

So I went for a routine doctor visit today, and at the outset of the appointment, the nurse took my blood pressure, as nurses will. After the cuff had exhaled, she stood for a few concerned moments, and then said, "Do you feel lightheaded when you stand up?"

See, I have really low blood pressure. Like usually around 65 over 45. There's no danger in it, except that I tend to pass out during procedures in which my body-core thinks it's under attack, like pap smears and mammograms and the occasional blood-draw. Embarrassing, completely, but harmless.

But it occurred to me today: I'm such a stress-bucket, such a high-strung and tightly-wound multi-tasker and any number of other hyphenates...but goodness gracious, where would my blood pressure be if I weren't? I have come to the liberating conclusion that MY STRESS KEEPS ME OUT OF A COMA. If it weren't for my constant and frantic jitters, I probably wouldn't be able to wake up in the morning.

Perhaps the better title for this post: Academia saved my life.

Finally getting around to it....

Squadratomagico was kind enough to give me one of these sumptuous suckers, called the "inspiration award," for which I am grateful.

The rules:
* Put the logo of the award on your blog
* Link to the person from whom you received the award.
* Nominate other blogs.
* Put the links of those blogs on your blog.
* Leave a message on their blogs to tell them.

Here are some who inspire me:
1) Always Winter - Because she's colder than I am, but manages to write all the time. Plus, she's made it beautifully through a rough period.

2) Stupid and Magnificent - Helps feed my music addiction.

3) 12 easy pieces - For unfailing candor and very little BS.

4) Moria in Excelsis - Just because she's there. Again.

What writing a poem feels like.

A constant irritant, like a finger tapping, tapping, tapping on the forehead, which continues underneath all other daily activities. For months on end. Going to the supermarket? tap tap tap. Chopping chard? tap tap tap. Driving to school? tap tap tap. Perpetual and insistent, until the words click into place and the tapping stops. For that poem. The ones in progress keep tapping.

Or,

A strand of orange pulp stuck between the teeth, that the tongue keeps worrying throughout the day, whether the mind is conscious of it or not. The tongue can't stop worrying it. One pulp-strand per poem. Sometimes a whole mouth full of them.

The stream a little mightier today.

"...There is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream...."
August 28, 1963

When good writing goes bad....

As part of my renewed commitment to getting some damn scholarly work done, I'm reading a lot of essays these days on Herbert. Last night before bed, I read one that kept me awake like a horror movie, not because of its gripping argument but because it was written SO ABOMINABLY that I couldn't look away. It was like watching chaos unfold before my eyes. Its sentences were incomprehensible, its vocabulary limited. One paragraph used the phrase "the principle of" EIGHT TIMES, and not wisely but with the effect that it was the author's stock fallback piece of jargon. The argument of the piece was erratic and unfocused. If a student of mine had handed in that essay for class, I'd have given it something like a C+ or B-.

I think such horrors are a natural consequence of the publishing fetish in contemporary academia. Administrators, and increasingly colleagues, rely upon the imprimatur of publication to measure the quality of faculty research, but it's really not a good indicator. I've read a number of badly-written monographs in the last several years--one so terrible I routinely use it in class to demonstrate the patent fallibility of the published (for students who sometimes are reluctant to advance their own argument against the authority of the published text).

When I was getting an MFA in the mid-90s, I had a fellow-student with whom I'd sometimes end up walking to school out of the accident of our geographies. He would boast, every day, about his prodigious output. "I wrote a poem last night." "Wrote another poem this morning." After this had gone on for some time, I couldn't resist. "I write a poem a day!" he grinned one day, to which I responded, "It shows."

Maybe I'm just trying to justify my own slowness in writing of all modes and genres, but I'd rather people published less, and better. It's too bad the business of academia has pressed material and ideas into publication that aren't yet ready for the eyes of the world.

Feeling sheepish, but I did promise....

Five swoony things about Neruda:

1) He makes me call him when I go running, and then when I return home. And it's worth remembering that I run very late. And he lives two time zones to my east.

2) He calls while I'm in class and reads poems onto my voicemail. Not his own (though he is Mr. Hotstuff Young American Poet Dude). Donne's "Canonization." James Schuyler's, "Letter Poem #3." His namesake's "Your Laughter."

3) He once proved, in an argument with me, that Prufrock is a seduction poem. Which he did by lingeringly murmuring the entirety of it into my ear, in a crowded restaurant, on one knee.

4) When he proposed, he promised to make my boys' happiness his first priority.

5) He claims to love me not despite my many foibles but because of them.

B-Day fun

Happy Birthday to Me!

38, baby. And I don't feel a day over 15. Except on the days when I feel 90.