Thanking You All!

Day 290 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and today I am thanking you all for stopping by my blog since I started this book project, and offering you my goofy State of the Blog Address!  And confessing that, yes, I have already started reading Other Voices, Other Rooms, by Truman Capote (a second printing of the first edition, with a little preface by him, and a copy discarded from a school library).

I also offer today one of the beautiful images by Pamela Callahan, a painter I met at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, who has given permission to share these paintings with you, for which I am so grateful!  You can see more at WMG or her website with her husband, Otter Creek Arts.

OK, the State of the Blog Address, a list of the blog entries that have received the most hits!  I have watched in amazement and laughter as any blog entry with sex or sports in the title advanced high in the stats!  And even more amazement as origami overtook them all.  (I think the Christmas shopping season may also be origami season.)

This would be a top ten list, but the monthly stats tell a slightly different story than the all time stats, so I include a few extras:

My Brain is Origami (my brain is origami)

Intercity Volleyball (spiked--heh heh--when we were all looking for scores and standings at state tournament time, but so not about volleyball I fear for the sanity of those who clicked it by mistake)

Of Boobies and Baseball (grand slam in summer, overtaken in fall by volleyball)

Book Burning & Book Banning

Loving Pillsbury (probably involves recipe searches more than architecture)

A Walk in the Cemetery

More Party Girls  (uh huh, you know why this is a top hit)

Redneck Yoga (part 2 of an interview with Tim Hunt)

Evening Primrose (just out on DVD, Stephen Sondheim!)

Fault Lines & Risk Taking (stats might be about earthquakes, but it was also added to ISU media site, as part 1 of interview with Tim Hunt)

Lucky Ducks (nobody eats rubber ducks for Thanksgiving)

Sexy Book of Sexy Sex (uh huh, and she knew when she titled her book that it might be popular)

What Would Epictetus Do? (ancient Stoic philosopher comes into his own)

Train Window (partly written "on the road")

Thank you for reading my blog, and feel free to reinforce or upset the statistics by clicking away at anything you like, or like better!

Poems and Plays

Day 85 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project. I am reading Poems & Plays, because I'm in it! I do love to have poems in a literary journal, because then, when the contributor copy arrives, I get to read poems and stories and essays by all the other writers in it, too, or, in this case, poems and plays!

Yesterday's entry included a gushing of lush spring beauty, and this one must include a gushing of praise for both the contents and the cover of this issue. You see the gorgeous roses, but this is full summer's lush beauty, fading and wilting, after being cut and enjoyed indoors in glass. Oh, the gorgeous dripping of the helpless petals. Ah, vanitas!

In fact, vanitas seems to be shedding the only light on the subject of roses, by way of a pull chain! This cover is a painting by Barry Buxkamper called Vanitas: Flora (2009, watercolor on paper), and I hope it is OK to reproduce it here! (I guess he or the Poems & Plays editor, Gaylord Brewer, will let me know if it isn't, but generally people want to get magazine covers out there to entice people to buy the magazine! And/or the painting! Which, if I could afford it, I would buy! Hmm...it is possible to buy paintings over time. I remember a young woman bought one of my husband's paintings over 5 years, in faithful random installments! And I bought one of Lauren Levato's paintings that way, thanks to an arrangement with Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, where it was exhibited. All is not vanitas! One can enjoy beauty, and find meaning in it! And have I mentioned how much I love watercolor?--the perfect medium for these fading petals, this blurry light...sigh....)

Anyhow, now to gush on the book inside the cover. I was delighted to find one of my poems, "Excursion into Poetry," across the way from James Doyle, "Meeting Under the Streetlight," a sly, sexy poem that ends in a delightful faithfulness. We took some James Doyle poems for RHINO, back when I was an editor there, and I also got to review his book, Einstein Considers a Sand Dune (Steel Toe Books, 2004). His wife, Sharon Doyle, is also a wonderful poet!

Poems by Albert Haley--"The Bottom Line Is" and "Reduction in Force"--work not only as poems but also as social criticism, and the man fired ("crucified") in "Reduction in Force" reminds me of all those people who lost their jobs in the U.S. recently, and on the big screen in Up in the Air. Likewise, Suzanne Roberts let us imagine "Apocalypse at the Safeway," with its looting of exotic vegetables.

As the title tells us, this journal also carries short plays, so we have The Crucifixion of Moe and Ira, a 10-minute play by Lynn-Steven Johanson, and Geek, by Crystal Skillman, which takes place at a comic book convention.

And Poems & Plays publishes within it the winner of the annual Tennessee Chapbook Prize, this year, The Hard Grammar of Gratitude, by Judith Sornberger, which indeed finds many hard things to be grateful for, because life isn't easy.

I had picked up my mail as I headed to work the other day when this issue arrived, so I showed it to my boss, who said, "Oh, William Trowbridge! I know him," about one of the contributors. I leave you with a couplet, the opening image, from his poem, "A Small Bouquet of Poets":

Here's Roethke: big pink

peony bouncing in the breeze.

Because peonies are in bud and will be bouncing in the breeze very soon!

Girl, Please! (A return to chick & dick lit)

Day 32 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project.

Tom, who was reading Misfortune, the Wesley Stace book about a boy raised as a girl in the 19th century, tried to comment on this blog earlier, sent his thoughts to me another way, and I saved his comments on chick lit and dick lit for later.

Later is now:

"Hmmm, here's one gay male perspective. I would have thought Chick Lit would have fallen in the same general category as Chick Flicks, which by my definition are not necessarily by or even about women, but of a certain genre deemed too 'feminine' to appeal to men. My partner and I are always at odds when it comes to films because he tends to like gore and slasher/suspense films (guy flicks), while I am more drawn to more serious, 'thoughty' films, along with romantic comedies and romance in general (chick flicks).

"It tends to be the same with books, he likes true crime and I like books, mostly by women authors (including mysteries by women authors with female detectives), that have a more thoughtful bent to them and are more language oriented. I'd have referred to my taste as more chick lit oriented, but that wouldn't fall under your definition. I hadn't thought of either chick lit or chick flicks as having been necessarily lighter or funnier, but literature that would by a stereotypically male definition, would appeal more to women.

"By the same token, I'd refer to Hemingway and even Stephen King as dick lit because both authors are so prodigiously 'male' in their attitudes that I don't connect to them at all. Which is not to say I'm not male or relate to male authors or subjects, just that I don't relate in any way to that kind of machismo.

"And where do strongly gay male visions like Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris fall? Chick or dick? Or somewhere in between. This has been a very enlightening discussion. Thanks for sharing. "

I've got to say that Burroughs and Sedaris are very popular on the Selected New Arrivals shelf by the door at Babbitt's, and all the recent buyers have been women!

Rupaul offers a way to look at being human in this Woman Made Gallery Call for Art:

"We are all born naked, the rest is just drag."

Woman Made, as its name will tell you, is a gallery dedicated to exhibiting and promoting work by women artists to help correct a historical imbalance in their representation in the world, but for some theme-based group shows it calls for art from men as well. This is an all gender call, and defines gender this way:

"Gender is a performance, an act that is perpetuated and maintained by societal norms and expectations, but how, and to what extent does it define us? 'Girl, Please!' seeks to push and transcend the definition of gender while also exploring its relation to individual character amongst collective expectations. Bearing in mind Rupaul's statement, drag in this case is not disco, but rather an illustration of feminity and masculinity in shades of grey."

If you are an artist interested in this theme and in submitting work to this show, click the Woman Made link above to learn more about how.

If you want to return to the chick lit/dick lit dicussion or pursue these other ideas on what we mean by "gender," feel free to comment.

Interesting that Tom mentions Hemingway, one of those boys dressed as a girl for a time in childhood, which was fairly common practice, I understand, as one of those 'male' writers.