Poem After the Arizona Shootings

Helpless in the Face

of technology, I am competent still

at a number of things,

but this doesn’t matter.  It’s so unreal,

the shooting, the silence

as she sat up against the wall, a bullet

gone clean through her brain.

How can anyone grow up

thinking it’s an option to kill innocent

people, a child, passersby?

We all know the answer/s,

the disconnect and its distinct click

so like the snap of a mousetrap.

It gets harder and harder to accept

the death of small animals

in my own house, or insects, even as five

thousand or five hundred birds

fall from the sky.

But in one movie, death is easy.

In another, a police officer cannot face

the fact of his bullet,

his own gun following perfect orders.

The dead man was a criminal.  He did it,

but the officer is helpless

forever after.  Likewise, war.

We cannot make sense of our own times.

There are many kinds of people.

Some of them kill, some cannot.

Some believe in, some mock the apocalypse.

Some see it happening inside

everyone, at some time or another.

My husband takes the mouse out

into the shining snow.  My son goes

back to college today.  Everything shows

on me.  I am helpless

in the face.

Kathleen Kirk, January 9, 2011

Hand painting by Tony Rio

Literary Mayhem

Day 334 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and Harry is reading a couple of thrillers, for fun, and brought in some Cormac McCarthy, not exactly fun, and David Sedaris, very, very fun but not Harry's cup of tea, in exchange for them.

I think Dani (of Dewey and Dani) picked up the Sedaris, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, which sounds like it could do a lot of mayhem in the animal world.

And I have just finished The Fine Art of Literary Mayhem, by Myrick Land, A Lively Account of Famous Writers & Their Feuds.  It was a lively account, and I liked it even more than Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels, by Anthony Arthur.  But they both sort of freak me out, and they worked into my conversation with Harry, a philosopher who has lived through postmodernism and beyond.

One wants to hear Buzz Lightyear say that!  Or, as a literary critic might render it, Buzzword Lightweight!

No, really, Harry and I were discussing the harm literature and criticism can do one another if each is struggling to elevate itself above the other.  But while there were certainly feuds between rival writers and critics and writers, this Literary Mayhem book is also remarkable for conveying that sense of respect and responsibility that writers and critics have felt toward one another at various times.

And it made me look up the word "mayhem" which I had associated with riotous disorder and wild confusion but which actually means "the offense of wilfully crippling or maiming a person," which, indeed, some of  the feuding writers did, figuratively, to one another.  And there were some fistfights.

Or "wanton destruction" which makes us think of the streets after the Michigan vs. Ohio game.

A milder example of mayhem given by my American Heritage dictionary is children in the garden, but then ponder all those broken stems and beheaded flowers, and we are back to the maiming.

"Ah, love, let us not maim one another."  Uh oh, I've just maimed Matthew ("Sweetness and Light") Arnold.

For "Dover Beach," read by David Kirby, go here.  For more on Matthew Arnold, go here or here. And now off I go to a volleyball tournament, where I hope there will be no mayhem of any sort.

Dewey and Dani

Day 333 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and Dani is reading Dewey the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, by Vicky Myron with Bret Witter, because I mentioned it, because she had been playing with Babette the Bookstore Cat, here seen as Babette in a Bag, and because Karen had just mentioned it in her Scrapper Poet blog, so it was on my mind.

Karen had read the book in one sitting and identified strongly with the small-town aspect, as you can see for yourself in the entry called Starting the New Year Off On a Sappy Note.  Sandy, another friend in the blogosphere, and another sap, like Karen and me, read the book sobbing, and actually grew up not far from Spencer, the actual setting for the book.  And you'll notice here and above that I've linked you to the Spencer Library's Dewey pages, which include the library's hours.

As I told Karen and Dani, I have handled the book at Babbitt's but never actually read it, because it goes out again fast, so I did not realize a copy of the Dewey book was part of our current cat-book display, inspired by Babette.  The last time we had a copy, a former librarian bought it, as it had been popular at her library and now she wanted a copy of her own.

Dani was having a wonderful time in the store.  She had a handful of 4 or 5 hardbacks, so I encouraged the usual book-lover stacking practice.  "You can leave them here on the counter while you keep looking."  And then she found 4 or 5 more including Dictionary of the Khazars, a Lexicon Novel, by Milorad Pavic.

"Do you know anything about this book?" she asked.  "Because I want to know which one I should take."  Hmm, I did not know anything, but I could see that one was a hardback, and one was a paperback.  (Both were $4, I might add.)  On closer inspection I learned what some of you already knew: one is the female version and one is the male version, with a difference of only one paragraph.

As the cover of the book states, "The choice is yours."

"Oh, take the female!" I said.  So she did.  (And now I am troubled by making her choice* for her.)

And I have brought home the male, to blog about, and now that I know more about it, thanks to Wikipedia, I am going to have to buy it and read it.  In fact, I think people have told me about this book before, maybe even here, because of its hypertext/metafiction dictionary format and its comparative religion/culture contexts.  I think I will learn a lot, and will have to stick it in a fold of my brain tightly closed but still sore and tender at the edges since reading a particular essay by Catharine MacKinnon about Serbian violence against Croatian and Muslim women.  Oh, dear, and I have the male version.

*(Dani, we can trade later, if you like!)

There were other fine conversations about books in the bookstore yesterday.  The one with Harry will turn up later, but I will mention the one with Melissa, just returned from Austria and Berlin and living between languages, so when I asked her if she'd seen some of the "stumbling blocks" in Berlin, she said she had but could not think of the German name for them.  Stolperstein, Melissa, is one name!

Melissa had come in to see Babette, as she had been following the story of her arrival on our Facebook page.  Babette was nowhere in sight, and then I remembered I had put a big paper bag on the floor for her.  Yes, she was in it, curled up and napping.

But she was happy to wake up and play with Melissa, and then, when Melissa had gone, to play with the bag.

Epiphany

Day 332 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and earlier this week a young woman bought Dubliners, by James Joyce, and I mention this now on Three Kings Day, or the Feast of the Epiphany, which is the cause for celebration in the party taking place in "The Dead," one of the stories in this beautiful book.

For good summaries of the feast day, Joyce, and the meanings of "epiphany," be sure to visit today's Writer's Almanac, and, while you are there, be sure to read and/or listen to the heartbreaking poem, "The Lovers Leave by Separate Planes," by Maxine Kumin.  (When I read a poem like that, I want to write a poem like that.)

Today is the day my husband, as a little boy in Cuba, would receive his Christmas gifts, so I always leave the tree up at least that long. (OK, last year I left it up till Valentine's Day, reducing and replacing its decorations appropriately to fit the new red holiday, and I liked that, so I will probably do it again.)

I have at hand Epiphany School, poems by Chris Green, and also, finally, The Alchemist's Kitchen, by Susan Rich, and Among Women, by Jason Shinder, and I hope to have little revelations while reading these, but I am still enjoying the revealed world in Blood Almanac, by Sandy Longhorn, for now.

And the January issue of The Sun has arrived, a gift from my friend Kim, so I have read the revelations in the Readers Write section and the poems already! People are so wise and wonderful, so vulnerable, so generous. When we can make this manifest--our combined vulnerability and generosity--ah! that is a world to live in.

But over at Facebook, S. Jane provided a link to a devastating short film on our Chernobyl Legacy, at Mediastorm, which reminds us of the other things we have made manifest in our world. So view this for epiphany, as well.

Moleskine

Day 331 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and my brain has a bunch of tiny yellow post-its stuck to it.  So I got myself a Moleskin weekly notebook, a full calendar with a week on the left side, lined note page on the right side, extra note pages at the rear with those thumbed tabs so it can be an address book if it needs to be, and a pocket for carrying, in my case, a bunch of tiny yellow post-its.

Post-its are what I use at work to put the stock number inside the books we list online, and also what I use to make tiny notes on what people are reading.  Then I stick them to various things--now, the Moleskin, perhaps--and collect my thoughts concretely for this blog.

Some of the post-its are figurative instead of literal (see above) and on some days all post-its are lost, and the brain is oatmeal.  Without melted butter and brown sugar.

But I can tell you that a birthday girl is going to be reading a collection of Edgar Allan Poe soon, because her friend just bought it for her, along with a non-fiction book on ghosts and hauntings. And before Christmas, another fine Poe collection went out as a gift for a young woman. Poe is a perennial favorite, to be sure.

And I can tell about the Moleskin Project at Escape Into Life, where artists and writers are creating image and word journals as works of art! If you are interested, you can join at any time.

And just up today at Escape Into Life is a poetry feature by Nic Sebastian, with marvelous art by Ruud Van Empel! Nic Sebastian is a poet who also does wonderful work reading aloud the works of others at Whale Sound, blogs at Very Like a Whale, and runs a community blog at Voice Alpha, always clickable in the blogroll at right.

I got my Moleskine at Borders, half price in the half-price-on-all-calendars sale, also using a half-price coupon on an Illinois road map picked out by my husband, so he can put an updated Illinois on the wall above the phone for ease in navigating road trips to away volleyball tournaments. Alas! We opened it up and Illinois had been cut in half! Northern half on one side, southern on the other. No good, no good!

I looked for words on the outside of the map, warning of this, and there were none. So back to Borders he will go, with the receipt and my credit card, and there may be no way to know if Illinois will be whole on the wall.

Meanwhile, Borders is also in woe, and might end up a hole in the wall.

And, speaking of moles and holes, yesterday I handled an ex-library copy of The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, illustrated by Tasha Tudor.  I am very fond of Mole in that story, but have only played a weasel, a field mouse, and the barge woman in a musical adaptation of it.

Maybe someday, I can play Mole!

An unlikely post-it.