Pinion & Pink

Day 227 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and I am reading Pinion: An Elegy, a book of poems by Claudia Emerson, borrowed from the same woman who let me read her copy of Late Wife by the same poet.  Beautiful, beautiful work.  And perfect for Ginny, my friend, who grew up among tobacco farmers, who feature in Pinion.

The cover is a gorgeous bird wing, but the actual poem "Pinion" is about a man pinioned by a tractor, during an accident with a tree stump.  It's a riveting poem.  He gets to see the world, to understand something about it, and death, and life all around, and the river bank into which he's fallen allows him to breathe, because it, made of earth, wet earth, can give, where the tractor, a machine made of metal, can't.  There's lots more in "Pinion," but that gives you a hint.

I blog tonight after Volley for the Cure, three exciting matches at a local high school, everyone wearing pink.  My daughter played, my husband coached.  There was much cheering and clapping.  Funds were raised to fight breast cancer.  We did it early, as October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I don't fool myself that wearing a pink t-shirt and a pink bracelet actually helped anyone, but I appreciate that gymful of moral support.

Two powerfully moving things:

1) The moment of silence.

2)  The group singing of the national anthem.

Neither was fake or showy.  The silence was real.  The singing was together.

Save the Scrimshanders

Day 121 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and this is one of those entries following up on previous entries, including random coincidii (made up plural of coincidence, which has its own perfectly good plural) and other whimsy.

Like Emily Dickinson, I love words. And, like myself, I love coincidii. Yesterday I told you about Late Wife, a book of poems by Claudia Emerson. Early in the book, in the "Divorce Epistles" section, is a stunning poem called "Photograph: Farm Auction" that focuses on a hayfork that resembles "a plate of baleen / from the mouth of a whale." So today it is the word "baleen" that I love, a synonym for "whalebone" in one of its dictionary meanings, but specifically the plates in the mouth of the "right whale," the kind of whale it was "right" for whalers to catch because of its abundance (and therefore profit potential), baleen being the whalebone of whalebone stays in women's corsets (for which there is a less of a market these days. Save the whales!) They are also called baleen whales, or just whalebone whales.

Also yesterday, in the bookstore, I handled a book called The Yankee Scrimshanders, by Fredericka Alexander Burrows, about the art of scrimshaw, or carving on whalebone, with images of the carvings on whalebone stays for women's corsets! (Save the scrimshanders!)

The coincidii just continue. We got another copy of The Technology of Orgasm, by Rachel P. Maines, a paperback for $5, shelved in Women's Studies, and it sold immediately, as I knew it would, so I didn't even try to talk about it here, or provide a link to our search page.

I had bought the hardcover a while back...then couldn't find it in my house and wondered if I'd hidden it or loaned it out, but it is just that the lettering on the spine is squeezed in such a way as to make it not immediately readable, sort of like camouflage, I think. Anyhoo! I found my home copy. This ties in because the technology of orgasm, those machines doctors could use to relieve the "hysteria" of women, so they didn't have to do it, er, manually, or keep hiring midwives and other female assistants to do it for them, was big in the age of women's corsets! As explored in Sarah Ruhl's new play on Broadway, In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play. (Save the orgasm!)

Speaking of hayforks, my little Poetry at Babbitt's workshop will be reading poems about farming implements and the Farmer's Market and statues of Abraham Lincoln, at "Fresh From the Farm," an event Saturday morning, June 26, 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., during the Bloomington Farmers Market on the square, in the McLean County Museum of History. (Save the small farms!)

I should stop now.

Claudia Emerson, Late Wife

Day 120 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and I am reading Late Wife, by Claudia Emerson, because the same poet friend who wanted me to read The Painted Bed, by Donald Hall, wanted me to read this, so I borrowed it, and now I don't want to give it back. Sigh...but I will.

This won the Pulitzer Prize, and those Pulitzer prizewinners are good! The Wild Iris, a favorite of mine by Louise Gluck, also won the Pulitzer Prize.

I am about to start the last section, the actual "Late Wife" section, which 1) is subtitled "Letters to Kent," so it is epistolary, as was the first section, addressed to an ex-husband and 2) begins, I see, with sonnets. Googling, I found plenty of info on Emerson, and blurbs that tell me Kent is the new husband--first section was "Divorce Epistles," second was "Breaking Up the House"--and that Kent is the one with a "late wife," as in dead wife, though the first two sections of the book make the speaker into a "late wife" of her first marriage, too, dead and resurrected, in a way.

You can read "Artifact," the first sonnet in the "Late Wife" section, or book the author to speak, here at Blue Flower Arts. This is one of those lovely random things for me, as I am working on a poem with a quilt in it, too!

You can also read "Biology Lesson," about the link between the turtle and the bird, a poem from her next book, Figure Studies, which will now call to me as I love science as well as poetry, and here I get two, two, two mints in one! But I am a bit astonished at the number of typos in the poem on the Blue Flower Arts website--hope they fix that! Of course, I see how it can happen, as my pinky often does the same....

Here, at her own website, are Emerson's other books. Look at the gorgeous cover on Pinion. Oh, there is so much poetry I want to read. I have friends' books yet to order, and now these. How will I ever keep up? Many thanks for these borrowed books!

Holy cow! Her new husband is a musician, and she also writes songs with him and performs! Yay! Folk, bluegrass, jazz, blues, and more.

For the rest of the day, I will be musing on my own imagined band, Midlife Crisis. It could happen.