Guns and Swears and Vermont

So I applied to Bread Loaf for the first time. I didn't think my credentials were up to snuff for the straight-up scholarship, so I applied for one of the waiterships. I can't afford to go without some sort of moneys and don't mind slangin' some plates. Plus, friend and former professor Aaron Baker told me there would be bonfires. The prospect of a week-and-a-half in a Vermont valley filled with writer-types gathered around a fire sure has me smiling. But I'm counting chickens that haven't yet hatched. For now, I wait and patiently hope.

Any other folks out there in the blogosphere thinking about a conference this Summer? (I would love to go back to Sewanee, but can't afford that one either and I've already been a scholar there once...).

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Speaking of writerly to-dos: I finally found out I got time off from teaching to attend AWP in Denver. I'm excited to attend (this will be my first one...), half to see what it's all about, half to see some great old friends in the city. I'll be staying with them: will I be missing anything by not staying in the conference hotel? Anything I should make sure to bring? (flashlight? latex gloves? white noise machine? life-size cut-out of a picture of myself giving a thumbs up?)


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Killer first line of the moment:

"I am worn out with dreams;"

from W.B. Yeats' "Men Improve with the Years"
(The Wild Swans at Coole, 1917)


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I wrote this poem the other day. It's about an experience I had a few weeks ago shooting a .357 with our art-teacher. I probably just ruined the poem for you. Posting it underneath a Yeats' line probably didn't help either. Not sure how I feel about the poem, though I'm happy that it seems to be a departure (also, it's my first poem with a swear). Why I'm posting it here? No idea. Anyway--to disappear shortly:

*plish*


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Congrats (again!) Lisa Fay!


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Oh yeah. We got 13 inches of snow here. Boone likes it. (Excuse the fuzziness, the picture was taken through the screen door).

January Surge

Drafted a new poem today. My second this month, hereby obliterating my productivity-rate of the last several months. It's such an amazing feeling to get in that zone. C.Dale speaks much more eloquently about this at his blog, but it reminds me how much I need this, how everything seems to pale in comparison to the act of writing the poem once it finally starts to emerge. Hell, I skipped American Idol to keep drafting! (truth be told: it's being DVR-ed). Mayhaps said draft will blip on-and-off this very blog sometime soon...

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Big-time congrats to Gary! It's never too early to pre-order! (In this case, it actually is, but mentally you should certainly add this to your pre-order list...)

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Killer first line of the moment:

"Like a far-off scream, like a mannequin leaning back-seat"

from Major Jackson's "Maddeningly Elusive, Yet Endlessly Tempting"

(Hoops, W.W. Norton, 2006)

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The bandleader, a surly cellist, refused to make eye contact with anyone and hissed at a young girl who tried to clap along. As the music sputtered to a flaccid conclusion, thick jets of foam were dumped on the audience from hidden ceiling ducts. As people wiped the stinging lather from their eyes, Mr. O'Brien jumped out from behind a curtain and cheerfully quipped, "Ha, ha, you're all foamy!"

-An Op-Ed from 1993 written by none other than Conan O'Brien, regarding his debut as the host of the Late Night Show. By the by, I loved his last show: both funny and tender-hearted. If you missed it, read about it/watch bits here.

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Not because it's significant, but because it's a good song.

Feeling Nostalgic

Puppy/dog picture-of-the-week. It's pretty much Boone's bed now...

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Golden Globes tonight. I'll probably watch as it's Sunday night and HBO is showing re-runs. So, this begs the question: who do you like? I've only got a few that I'm rooting for: I desperately want Fantastic Mr. Fox to win the best animated (watch out, Pixar...) as that was my favorite movie of the last year, I'd also like to see The Hangover win best comedy, and Neil Patrick Harris for best supporting actor in a comedy series. Beyond that, not many horses in this race. I've only seen 3 of the 5 nominated for best motion picture, but of those I guess I enjoyed Avatar the most, though I'm not sure if it's the stuff of 'best picture.' Anyway...


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Killer first line of the moment:

"Twenty men stand watching the muckers."

from Carl Sandburg's "Muckers"
(Selected Poems, Harcourt Brace, 1996)


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Start my P90X program tomorrow. It'll be strange as for the past 3 years I've been running 20+ miles a week with not much focus on building muscle. Should be interesting to switch gears like this...


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As far as the Tonight Show debate goes, I'm a soldier in the Conan O'Brien army, but Jimmy Fallon won major points with this...

Number 100

This is my hundreth post in this space, something which is a bit surprising to me. I started this in August of '07 as an unpublished wanna-be-poet entering the MFA program at Hollins. I think the blog has evolved on some levels: more music, more links, more gimmicks (don't worry, next week we'll have a picture of the puppy); though, I still consider myself a wanna-be-poet and I still think of this space as a forum in which I can attempt to work-out my uncertainties, both as they relate to PoBiz and to life in general. It's also a nice way to keep track of what's happened over the past 2 and a half years--it's strange to see the posts I came up with in the midst of life-changing events. Anyway--many thanks to anyone and everyone who takes the time to peruse this space. It's fun for me to make these posts and I hope they haven't been a complete waste of time for anyone reading them.


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Where there is suffering, which is to say, where there is human life, there is art. But art doesn’t merely mirror the bad things that happen to us. It shapes what happens into meaning. And there is always great joy and pleasure, even happiness, in the fundamental human act of shaping. It’s not, as Plato believed, that some part of the soul desires to weep for itself; it’s rather that the soul possesses a stubborn need for pleasure; it urgently desires to convert weeping into laughter, the sorrow of subject matter into the joy of form. It is a uniquely human instinct—to bring the greatest degree of childlike exuberant playfulness to bear upon the harshest and most difficult realities, answering the tragic gravity of life with the comedic grace of imaginative transformation, shaping life into a vitally clarifying or comprehending image of itself.

--Alan Shapiro in VQR

Stumbled upon this essay the other day, found it achingly beautiful and, more importantly, true.


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Killer first line of the moment:

"Thirty-one days of October the opalescent monsoons"

from Sandra Alcosser's "He Paints the Kingdom of Decay: His Goddess Escapes"
(Except by Nature, Graywolf Press, 1998)

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Wrote a new poem today. First one in months. Pleased with it, though it probably needs to go through a wringer or two before I try and find a place for it in the manuscript. Speaking of, I made a few deletions and re-arrangements over our Christmas break that I feel have really strengthened the collection. I recognized some things I hadn't seen before. Progress, slow and steady, yes.


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A taste of my New Year's Eve experience in Denver:



If you're interested, find the whole show (fo' free) here. Some great covers during the show: Grateful Dead's "Reuben and Cherise," Talking Head's "Girlfriend is Better," Robert Randolph's "Good Times."

Big Time Christmas Scarf Awesome

Happy Christmas, all! Hope everyone has a joyous and safe holiday. Every year, at least a few times, I find myself feeling abundantly content with the world, more or less optimistic about the state of humanity. Christmas is almost always one of those instances. A fine day. Hope yours was whatever you needed it to be. Thanks to Deedie for the very cool scarf. I don't usually wear scarves. Not really a scarf guy. But of any on the calendar: Christmas is a scarf day. Also: New Year's. Holiday scarf.

Lots of poems to get to (both my own and others', the latter will receive preference for the time being); need to pack for New Year's trip to Denver; residency applications to finish; fellowship applications to continue; but for now: a tuckered-out Redbone Coonhound and some great new books. Thanks everyone, for stopping by, for having an interest, for rocking and/or rolling at more or less appropriate times.

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Now Winter Nights Enlarge

Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o'erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine!
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques and Courtly slights,
Sleep's leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
With lovers' long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.

--Thomas Campion
(1567-1620)


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I thought this movie was funny. Watched with Dad the other night. I laughed louder and more often than he.



Also received a copy of The Last Waltz. Big time awesome.

Sewanee Notebook

Does anyone else do this? Every Christmas I end up browsing through the Moleskine I keep in my back pocket and finding jottings of every stripe and shape: to-do lists, dates to remember, lines of poetry, quotes, restaurant names, and generally indecipherable fragments. I present a slice of the 'Sewanee' section of the notebook, with some strange and brilliant insights from some people much more talented than myself, presented in the form they were written:


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Galvin

when we say, what a shame, /
whose shame do we mean?

Wilbur- 'Crows Nest'
a poetry 'to make our
terrors bravely clear'

'Hamlin Brook'
-How can I drink
all this?

How should we dream
of this world w/o us
-Advice to a Prophet


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Ammons--This is only
a place, the reality
we agree with
that also agrees with us


'forays into the
known to go past the
known'--Bausch


'Passion is all, even
the sleaziest.'
-Robert Penn Warren


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DS [Dave Smith]
writing poetry is about
sex and death [big check mark next to this one]
07/17/09

-form is a window, beyond
which, half-seen, lies the poem

-past potential endings,
gaining momentum







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Sawyer

Saw dust edging
out from the hand.

DS-every poem must
have some threat

CE [Claudia Emerson]
Risk of asking questions
in poems is that we won't get
the answer we want


"Every once and awhile, say
exactly what you mean'
-Betty Adcock



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-coital inexclusivety-
Hudgins

'beauty is beauty
because of its flaws'
-DS


'the distance between
what the language says
and what we want it
to say'
-DS


Golden spoons [underlined twice]

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That's all for now. Perhaps more if people enjoyed this one. If not, here's a picture of puppy Boone in the snow:

Snowed In

There's a foot of snow on my porch. The dog's already curled himself into a wool blanket.  I think this poem is beautiful:

Falling

Snow buries cars and yews and garbage cans
Beside the dirty beige garage sits so
Delicately on the unwavering maple limbs.
A girl of ten who cannot sleep for
The excitement and enchantment of it
Watches the great specks falling through the globe
Of yellow light that is the streetlight nearest
To her house, the house in which she lies in bed
Protected from the dreamy descent of endless sky,
Protected from the wet and cold. Safe.

She feels her heart beating and it seems loud,
Louder than it should be but then she thinks how
It's something she never truly listens to, she's never
That still or the world around her isn't that still.
It's scary, this heart inside her chest that lives
Its own life, that one day will stop and she,
As they say in the tales she reads, will be no more.

Come morning, it may still be snowing.
A friendly important man on the radio
Will announce there is no school today.
She will be free to sculpt the drifts
And prairies into igloos, tunnels and walls,
To place snow on her tongue and taste
The cool airness, to feel the sting
Of wind-sifted flakes on her face.

Now, though, she goes to the window
And stares and stares. The snow feels like the heart
Of the whole world, falling, falling and perfect.

--Baron Wormser
from Scattered Chapters (Sarabande Books, 2008)