Furious Cooking

If I were doing the Sealey Challenge this year, I would embark on a re-reading of the Maureen Seaton books in my possession, having just learned of her death. I met her in Chicago and took a seminar with her, and she was an inspiration. She encouraged me to send some prose poems to Quarter After Eight, where they were taken. It became a favorite journal of mine, full of the challenging and unexpected. 

I would probably start with Furious Cooking.

Sadly, I am not doing the Sealey Challenge this year--voraciously reading a book of poems a day in August--because daily life has gotten a bit too complicated by caregiving, though resting with poetry might have helped. The heat wave did not. Now I think of throwing my ivy comforter on this wooden glider, putting the stack of Seaton books beside me, and at least leafing through, pausing here and there to concentrate on a poem. But the afternoon is spoken for.

Yesterday morning, I tabled for the local Democrats at the annual Sweet Corn Circus, having many great conversations with people who stopped by, and giving away a lot of children's sunglasses, pencils, pens that are also styluses, and buttons. We heard the whistle that meant the sweet corn was cooked and ready for eating. Gammi Phi Circus performers stopped by our booth for candy. On my way out, I saw their performance space, with young kids rolling around their pool inside giant blow-up plastic balls. It was a delight. Then I took my mom to Urgent Care, as when I went to change her wound dressing, I found the wound was infected. Sigh....

That's kind of how each day goes now.

Here, at least, are some random poem titles from Furious Cooking, to give you a sense of, well, everything. And its pertinence:

"After Sinead O'Connor Appears on Saturday Night Live, the Pope"

"A Constant Dissolution of Molecules"

"Self-Portrait with Disasters"

"The Man Who Killed Himself to Avoid August"