Pencils & Punctuation Potpourri!

Day 219 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and, while I have finished reading The Correct Spelling & Exact Meaning, a book of poems by Richard Jones, I cannot part with the pencils!  You can click on sample poems on either of those links to book or poet at Copper Canyon Press.

I am preparing a poetry feature on Jones for Escape Into Life, where you can see all sorts of fabulous art and read wonderful essays.  Today's poetry feature is Diane Lockward!

As Wednesday is usually my hump-of-the-week hodgepodge of coincidii, today we get a pencil & punctuation potpourri:

1) Richard has a poem called "The Napkin." (So do I!) In it he mentions the Wailing Wall.  (So does Sue Monk Kidd, in The Secret Life of Bees, which I just finished!  In both cases, sad individuals cope by writing their troubles down on scraps of paper and tucking them into the cracks between stones.  Personal versions of the actual Wailing Wall.)

2)  Richard has a poem called "Walking in a Cemetery, My Children Ask about the Markings on Tombstones."  I have been in rehearsal for the annual local cemetery walk, and one year the guides focused on what the markings mean, and I have handled booklets about that where I work.  The poem is wonderful, of course, and does it in a poem-y way.

3)  Richard has a poem called "Affronts" that begins with a list of dislikes: "weeds, litter, graffiti, tattoos."  Of course he goes on to praise those things and would even forgive me the terrible affront of a word like "poem-y."  But the coincidence that tickles me is that he calls those blue roadside flowers at the edge of fields "cornflower," as do I.  They grow beside corn!  Officially they are chicory, but they are familiarly known as cornflower and are the cornflower blue of the Crayola crayon.  Another plant, also known as habry and bachelor's button is the official cornflower, as I understand it.  But I can tell from this poem that this "spindly yet thick-blooming blue weed" is the same one I know and love.

4) Many of the poems are about reading!  Reading the dictionary, for example.  And/or actual letters of the alphabet.  (See pencil alphabet above!)

5) There are short poems in the center of this book in tribute to and titled with pieces of punctuation:

&()!;:<>?-[sic]

I swear!

Euphorigami

Day 212 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and I continue to find, in a brain-folding origami kind of way, what people are reading in books.

For instance, in Like Happiness, a book of poems by Michael Hettich that I am still reading, he is reading The Winter Sun, by Fanny Howe, in the poem "The Burning Door," which I should have known from the epigraph:

If a bird has a problem with its whistle,
it has to whistle to fix it.

--Fanny Howe

...But which I did not actually realize until section 9 of this long, amazing poem. So now, of course, The Winter Sun, a memoir, subtitled Notes on a Vocation, is on my wishlist.

Pause to digress, and fold brain: I have a poem called "Silver Sun," based on a painting by Arthur Dove, and published in an ekphrastic magazine called Beauty/Truth, which, with its editor, suddenly dropped off the edge of the earth. I worry about that guy.

I have a poem called "Virga," and so does Diane Lockward, in her book, What Feeds Us. They are completely different--hers is about the virga of snow, mine about the virga of rain--and this kind of coincidence, of title and topic in poems, happens frequently, no cause for alarm, only for astonishment, joy, and brain-folding.

I missed church on Sunday, staying home with my family, my son home from college for the Labor Day weekend, then going off to work, seeing the man on the bicycle who wants to read Franzen, etc., but I read the reflection later online, so I know Susan was reading A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What You Were Born To Do, by Thomas Moore, a book that has been on my wishlist so long I finally took it off, figuring I'd get it at the library.

Notice how the subtitle folds the brain back to Fanny Howe...

And on the morning drive to the high school (deprived of school bus, thanks to redistricting, though one reason we moved here to central Illinois was safe, free public education and free school transportation with non-drug-using-non-drug-dealer-non-pimp school bus drivers) I pondered, in addition to opium-financed terrorism (NPR story on NATO), the fact that Helen Degen Cohen's chapbook, On a Good Day One Discovers Another Poet, is entirely about what she is reading--poetry, mainly, but also film--an intertextual, brain-folding, saddle-stapled work.

I don't think I ever stopped digressing, so now that I've got my panties brain in a bunch, it's time to return to the ongoing euphoria of blue morning glories in my own backyard.

A Lovely Tumble

Day 205 of the "What (as in books, print magazines, and/or coincidii) are you reading, and why?" project, and this, as you can guess is a coincidii hodgepodge hump-of-the-week post.

Or, as I refer to this particular morning glory photo, a lovely tumble.

Mary, a great reader of books, actually ran out of books on her birthday and 1) requested The Cookbook Collector at the library and is on the waiting list and 2) is catching up on her magazines.

Speaking of magazines, 1) my guilty pleasure* subscription to Vanity Fair ran out, and I am not renewing it, 2) literary magazines keep me busy, and 3) I just re-read "Riding the Happy Train," by Judith S. McCue, a review in The Common Review (print magazine with online presence) of Generosity: An Enhancement, a novel by Richard Powers, because of the word "hyperthymia," defined by a character in the book as a condition of being "excessively happy."

OK, 1) I am excessively happy, and 2) this is an actual condition, a feeling of serene wellbeing, possible if your thyroid is whacked out, as mine is occasionally, that is, whenever I am reading my Merck Manual, 8th edition, 3rd printing, March 1951.  Don't ask me why.

OK, I'll tell you why.  Thyroid vulnerability runs in my family, and is rampant in the Great Lakes region of the Midwest, where I grew up.  Put the two together and you get goiter, especially if sometime in the past a houseguest left a canister of uniodized salt in the house, and you and your family just used it as regular table salt, until stress on the body (childbirth) caused a little fever, then, and thyroid enlargement, later, together with a brief interlude of hypochondria induced by reading an outdated Merck Manual.

Fear not!  1) We now have plenty of iodized sea salt; iodine is the prevention and cure for most of this kind of thyroid problem 2) I am already over my hypochondria 3) and, while I did look like a cross between Nikita Kruschev and Buddy Hackett as a baby, I was not, as my mother had at first feared, a cretin, which is a serious thyroid problem, and 4) I am still excessively happy, but I consider this a spiritual state.  Plus there is some really, really old iodine in the medicine cabinet.  If I have to, I'll drink it.

Wait!  I have a topic?!  Oh, yes, books.

Speaking of guilty pleasures*, I was eating/reading What Feeds Us, by Diane Lockward, at the rate of one chocolate/poem a day, and then I gorged on it and finished it today, while my computer was doing a full scan for whacked out thyroid problems.   It is a lovely book, full of beautiful food, funny and human moments, and a lost boy that keeps breaking my heart.  Plus fiery breasts.  There are bees on the covers, on peaches and sunflowers, and scary bees stinging people intermittently.

Coincidii of the bees: 1) one is crawling down the throat of yesterday's morning glory 2) bees form a vestment in Sarah J. Sloat's poem "Vestment," announced in her blog yesterday as being taped for Whale Sound, which you can find at the right on my blogroll.

Coincidii of the blueberries: 1) when I resumed reading What Feeds Us today, it was with the poem "Blueberry"--Be a glutton and stuff in a handful, your tongue,/ lips, chin dyed blue, as if feasting on indigo--2) soon after reading about blueberries in Mythology and Milk.

Wait!  Is that a mulberry rearing its annoying branch up through the morning glories?  Yes.  I hope they strangle it.

Extra, Extra + Glory, Glory

More of Lorel's morning glories, plus more particular beauty, sadness, sweetness, edge, and punch in the literary line.

The new issue of Blood Lotus is up online. Clickable here in this post or on the web log at the right. What a beautiful site it is, with all issues available, in page turning mode. OK, it's not a book, but it's like a book. And it lists books by its contributors on the right.

And my Diane Lockward poem-of-the-day broke my heart and ended the first section of What Feeds Us. "A Change in the Air."

There was a change in the air around here, thanks to a rainstorm last night. The balsam out front that had flattened itself on the ground in protest of the heat is standing up straight again. The back yard balsam is in better soil, and holds water better, too, so it was still standing, but is happier now. The impatiens is restored in patience. The sweet autumn clematis spreads its anise scent despite the tiny yellow bugs clustered all along the vines. I'm saving seed heads of the black-eyed Susans for Kim, and the coneflower is coning. All my pastel daisies are opening, taking over the bed given to perennial wildflowers.

And my son, who goes back to college tomorrow, let me stand and hug him in his bedroom as he packed. Hug him for a long time. An unmeasurable moment.

The Particular Sadness of Literary Magazines

Day 193 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and someone is reading The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender, but who? Did I just delete the answer to this from my email? Was it at another blog? Did I hear something about it on NPR? It's just one of those days, of loose ends, heavy humid air particles, sparse rain, squished brain cells.

Anyway, a lot of people are reading it, as it's on a number of bestseller lists, so I needn't worry about the why, even if I've temporarily lost the particular who.

Meanwhile, there is trouble, and particular sadness, at the Virginia Quarterly Review, where a managing editor committed suicide and his boss is accused of being a bully. What a sad thing. I wonder if this will end up in a future "literary feuds" book, or if the grief and anger in this situation will flare up, then turn to ash. I feel sorry for everyone involved.

Literaries in the mail this week include The Comstock Review and The Sow's Ear Review, both nice magazines with a wonderful variety of fine poems by new and established poets. I am particularly taken with a center art section in Sow's Ear, Book Sculptures by Samantha Y. Huange, which you can see here at her page at Art Review or at flickr. It's really gorgeous, in black at white in Sow's Ear, in color at these websites, and there's a particular sadness, perhaps, in the beauty that comes from the artful "destruction" of these old books. But, of course, they have here a new life.

Artists and interior decorators come to Babbitt's now and then, wanting old books to use as art, to cut up for collages, or to cut out the centers of to hide things in, or to place on shelves, in cabinets, on little end tables as decoration. I went to a funeral home recently that used old books as decoration on shelves of its large coat closets and in glass knick-knack cases along with the dishes and figurines. Even I have been known to cut up books--that were already falling apart--to make collages (or to recycle appropriately by removing the covers) or to stack books in a somewhat sculptural way....

Even the indulgence of two poems from What Feeds Us has left a lemony sweet taste of sadness. "Heart on the Unemployment Line," by Diane Lockward, ends "Even in grief, it keeps beating." And "Wren House" ends, "We had waited like this once before, / wanting some soft creature to fly in." And so the sadness continues.

A Wonderful Book

Day 192 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project and my friend Kim is reading The Used World, by Haven Kimmel, I think because she has liked Kimmel before--The Solace of Leaving Early, a novel, and A Girl Named Zippy, a memoir. Everything is set in small-town Indiana.

Kim says it is a wonderful book. That was the actual subject line of her email. A wonderful book.

She is reading it at the beach, or was when she sent the email, from her handy laptop: "I'm reading The Used World by Haven Kimmel this vacation. It's great. The story involves 3 women who work together at a used furniture place. The story takes place in Jordan, Indiana, and Amos Townsend, the minister from The Solace of Leaving Early, is a minor (so far) character in the book, so some little bit of overlap with that book. I'm about halfway through. You would definitely dig this book, too. If you're looking for something to read. Or blog about. I got it from the library so you could check it out after I'm done (soon) if you don't have a copy at Babbitt's for cheap."

We don't have a copy cheap, alas, at Babbitt's--I looked--and no doubt Kim only read the library copy in the motel room, not actually at the beach, with sand and sunscreen, and red-flagged or yellow-flagged huge dangerous or semi-dangerous waves and small children to run after and save. With a handy laptop.

Used furniture! Meanwhile, I am reading our next book group book, The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman, and we are back to the used and rare cookbooks! And what's got to be a dark turn in the plot. And some twists in the love stories...

Speaking of love, the Lockward chocolate of the day, from What Feeds Us, is witty, clever, fun--and a ghazal--"Love Test: A Ghazal." The ghazal is a Persian poetic form with a repeating rhyme on the second line of every two-line stanza (or couplet)--a sort of perfect form for its original theme and the meaning of the word ghazal: "the talk of boys and girls." Ghazals were about flirtation, love, and drinking!

I have heard two main pronunciations of ghazal--gah ZAHL and GUZ zle. The first is more graceful; the second, more drunken!

Hafiz and Rumi were famous for their ghazals, and Diane Lockward has a lot of fun with hers! One fun aspect of the ghazal is that the poet incorporates his/her own name in the last line. Yep, she does it!

Hocus Pocus & the Lockward Chocolate

Day 190...and two random strangers are reading Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut, because

1) her sister loved Cat's Cradle

2) he loved Slaughterhouse 5

Another random stranger is reading Slaughterhouse 5, because, amazingly, we had a copy at Babbitt's. The sister who loved Cat's Cradle still needs a copy of that because she loaned it to someone and never got it back. Which seems to happen often with Vonnegut.

Now you see it, now you don't!

I was fascinated, in my mini-pseudo-research on this topic (Wikipedia, Amazon.com) to learn that "hocus pocus" may derive from the ritual and Latin of the Eucharist, a sort of hoc est corpus corruption, or from a Norse sorcerer, Ochus Bochus (sounds good to me), or from the Welsh for "hoax," which is Hovea Pwca, the second part pronounced Pooka, from which we also get Shakespeare's Puck (a personal favorite), or, perhaps some combination of all these into random coincidii form!!! I love words, and word origins, even if they are far-fetched.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows....

Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus is structurally interesting, being a nonlinear collage of fragments by main character Eugene Debs Hartke (college professor/prison inmate) "assembled" by Vonnegut into this piecemeal satire.

I love Vonnegut. I remember reading the short story collection titled God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater as a mere teen, beside my hometown pool. OK, I was weird. But surely other teens I knew loved Vonnegut, too!

My Diane Lockward "chocolate" for the day, from What Feeds Us, actually has a chocolate in it, with a date inside instead of a cherry or apricot. (Hocus pocus, an unanticipated fruit! But I'm so weird, I love dates!) Anyway, it is a lovely and funny prose poem about...ah! dating!...that contains the phrase "Yesterday a letter appeared in my mailbox..." which sort of freaks me out, as I am just now proofreading a prose poem that takes place in the foyer and involves a letter in my mailbox!

On the other hand, it is always nice to find a kindred spirit.

And, to further the random coincidii, a fellow came in the store today who is someone I hope someday to set up with my accidentally celibate friend...who shall remain nameless.

But first, both of them need to read The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex by Kristen Schaal and Rich Blomquist.

The Solace of Coincidii

Day 187 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project and Cynthia is reading Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich, for her book group. In fact, she is generously gathering used/affordable/recycled copies of the books at Babbitt's, where we can put them on the Local Hold shelf for her temporarily!

Before my time, Brian Simpson, the owner of Babbitt's, featured in yesterday's blog and in the Illinois State Alumni Magazine, used to offer a "wishlist" at Babbitt's, but it got too unwieldy. Who knows, though? If we can add t-shirts and tote bags, maybe we can also revive the wishlist someday!

I read excerpts from Nickle and Dimed when they were published in Harper's and other periodicals, and it was good to know the nitty gritty about how hard it is to survive in the United States on limited income. (Which I have also known firsthand, at various stages of my life!) Some of the details reminded me of a film called Ruby in Paradise, about a young woman trying to get a good job in Florida--a coming of age story, not social criticism or economic critique, but definitely about personal insight and responsibility. Googling Ruby for you, I realize it stars Ashley Judd, early in her acting career. No wonder I loved it!

Meanwhile, I read on in In the Next Galaxy, by Ruth Stone, and a poem a day, my chocolate indulgence, in What Feeds Us, by Diane Lockward.

Diane's poem is "The Summer He Left" in which yellow takes over the world, turning to gold. It begins, "The lawn filled with dandelions," which the speaker finds beautiful, coinciding with my love of the modest, nutritious "weed," poet Martha Silano's respect for edible weeds, and my neighbor Karen's love of the beauty of dandelions in blossom and in wish mode.

Yellow is everywhere, in weed and flower and beyond, and this poem made me turn back to Ruth Stone's poem "White on White," in which white flowers are present alongside other white things--Chablis, "old woman's piss," "white pear bottoms," and"[w]hite mucus from healthy vaginas." Stone's poem evokes, but is of course strikingly different from, Robert Frost's sonnet, "Design," about a white spider on a white heal-all.

But, for me, the other freaky coincidence with stumbling upon "White on White" this summer was that I'd just drafted a sort of list poem about all the white flowers I'd accidentally arranged (not by design) in my own back yard this summer. When I get back to it, it will be deepened by awareness of the other poems, but must be its own "new" thing.

And now, solace. This morning in my inbox, I found the proofs and contract for works submitted to an anthology on solace that Ellen Beals began shaping in response to 9/11. It will finally be published now, in ebook and POD formats, and I'll tell you more about that later; there will be a blog, etc. The solace is of various sorts. We have lived through, mourned, and considered the events of 9/11, as a country and as a world, and we seek solace for all kinds of things all the time, and Ellen's book is a repository of solace.

My essay on what I was reading for solace at the time mentions Mary Ber, editor of Moon Journal Press, from whom, coincidentally, I received an email yesterday morning, as, recovered from cataract surgery, she'd had a chance to read my chapbook, Living on the Earth. The book somehow comforted her in her recovery, and coincided with her recent experiences on earth in the second half of her life. I feel honored.

Nostalgic Potpourri

Day 149 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project and today, Garbage Day on my particular street and Hodgepodge Day in my meandering mind, I will report that several random strangers are reading wonderful books they remember from childhood or youth! (These are random strangers in a vintage bookshop, so not entirely random.)

A young woman caressed that pale lavender paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, saying, "I used to read this over and over, and now I don't think I have it in my house," so she bought it, so she would. The fondness for the book was so sweet, and her nostalgia almost had the aroma of lavender. Plus, that background uncertainty--where is that book?--suggesting various leavetakings from various homes. Sigh....

A man returning to the area for the summer, on break from a professorship in the Middle East, visited the bookshop for old times' sake, bringing his wife and two young children, looking for books from his own childhood to give to his kids--particularly Dr. Seuss, and he found some. Meanwhile, his kids were vocal about their own non-Seuss finds, and he eventually gave in and got 3 books, one for each child, including his "inner child."

And a young man bought 100 Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a nostalgic favorite of mine, because people keep telling him to read it, so now he will. I love that book. I'm holding (well, now I'm typing, but I was holding) my mildly dampstained Avon Books paperback copy, 16th printing, in my cupped hands, as the lovers caress in their intense red and green jungle on the cover. Ah, 100 Years of Solitude. When I least expect it, the beautiful bald girl ascends to heaven in my mind.

And last night, I grew nostalgic for books I don't even have yet!--a paradoxical emotion. Just arrived from Amazon, where it waited on my wishlist till I had saved up, is What Feeds Us, by Diane Lockward, a poet I enjoy every time I find her work in the journals. Finally, I have this book. But her latest, Temptation by Water, is just out, and now I lust after that one. I say "lust" appropriately, I think, as this book seems to be about desire! And water, where I feel at home. And I still desire another Lockward book, Eve's Red Dress

Likewise, I yearn for The Alchemist's Kitchen, by Susan Rich, which sits in my cart till I save up again for poetry! But these two wonderful poets have given us all a treat. Diane interviewed Susan in her own blog, Blogalicious, which you can click on my bloglist, and you can read the interview, a poem, a meditation on the poem, and hear Susan read another poem via a link to youtube! (Or you can click Susan's blog, The Alchemist's Kitchen, on the bloglist, and find her link to the interview. Ah, the wonders of technology. Which reminds me, I signed up for Goodreads but haven't done anything there since. Sigh....)

Bloglists, aka blogrolls, are great. You see the latest entry, and they're so adorably clickable. Blogrolls sound edible.