Things I've Been Enjoying Lately

1. Sugar snap peas with hummus from our favorite corner store.

2. Tom Clark's nature poems on Beyond the Pale.

3. Sara Larsen's Novus.

4. Watching sleeping dogs dream in tandem.

5. Reading Catullus in Esperanto.

Reading Recap

Yesterday, Brian and I cohosted, along with our friend Erik Noonan, the first of what we hope will be many outdoor pairings of poetry and visual art.

This first 'Reading in the Garden' featured two local poets, Sara Larsen and Jason Morris, reading alongside Brian's artwork. Jason and Sara were wonderful, and I couldn't be happier with how the first 'Reading in the Garden' played out.

Sara Larsen reads from 23 Chromosomes

Jason Morris, post reading

Mark Your Calendars

Next Saturday, May 16th, we'll be hosting a reading in the garden behind Brian's studio at 2221 15th St in San Francisco. Come hear readings by Sara Larsen and Jason Morris, visit with Brian's art , and have some snacks (will I make gougeres? I just might!).

You can find out more about inspiration at your local library

"Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration."

Steve Martin, from "Born Standing Up"

Leto's Children

So, last night, I participated in a reading at the Lutecium here in San Francisco. I read a piece that I've been working on for a while, inspired by the lives of siblings William and Caroline Herschel and their imagined similarity to the twin gods Apollo and Artemis. It's an odd little thing, one of those works-in-progress that never seems to get finished, but for some reason it's my favorite piece to read aloud.

This being the internet, I can't read it aloud to you. So the written version will have to do for now.


Leto’s Children



“We’ll live on the moon,” says William, “as soon as we’re able.”

He is holding on to grandmother’s front gate, his feet wedged against the base of the frame and his body bent and then straight like a windshield wiper as he pulls back then thrusts forward, making iron hinge music. It’s almost so dark that we’ll have to go in. William is thinking about this, too, because he says, “On the moon, it is never dark. The ground glows at night. During the day, too.”

From where I’m sitting, in the dark shadow of the hedges, William’s hair stands out against the darkening sky, like clouds in front of the moon. When the light shines pink through the clouds, we say that it’s the fruit trees blooming in heaven, and I wonder what makes William’s hair shine so coldly. Maybe it’s the bones in his skull.

There are thirty-one bones in our heads, but they grow together, binding as we get older. I like to think about William and I, and how we might have super powers. Like maybe we’ll never get old, or if we do, our skulls will stay flexible. We could end up smarter than anyone.

I imagine our skulls opening like water lilies, turning like music boxes. I imagine our skulls flexing, gathering light. I imagine us dead, discovered by archeologists.

“They’re perfect,” they’ll whisper. “Each like the other, the pinnacle of their age.”

Sometimes I wonder if we were even born. Will says he remembers it, that mom cried like a wild thing while she had me, then laughed as he arrived. But I don’t believe him. We’ve been just like now forever.

“On the moon,” says William, “the language is music. This fence right now is speaking Moonish.” He pulls back with gusto. The gate sighs reluctantly.

Grandmother’s house is in the country. When it gets dark here, no streetlights come on. The stars are bright and clear and go on forever. I lie back onto the grass and it looks like they’re just above me, as if there is no sky. There are just lights, an arm’s length above me, set in dark blue corduroy. If I don’t move, they’ll be inches from my eyes forever. But soon it’s dinnertime, and when I get up the sky is far away again.

My bedroom is below William’s, and at night he drops notes and pictures through a hole in his floorboards. I can’t reply, because the knothole is too high for me to reach even if I stand on the dresser. After a while, I just watch out the window, listening to the whisper of papers dropping from the ceiling. There are deer in the meadow.
Just before midnight, I see a tree moving towards me, out of the forest. It’s massive, and moves deliberately, unhurriedly. Its branches are thick and ancient, hung with moss. I’m embarrassed. I don’t want to witness something so strange, so unique. I don’t want to be singled out by the gods, or by magic or whatever. When it pauses at the edge of the meadow, I realize that it was only a moose.

Climbing back into bed, I brush one of William’s letters to the floor. “The earth is round,” it says. “There are stars beneath us, too.”

One winter’s night, our father took me out into the street to show me the stars. The air was sharp and cold inside my nose, and the breath in my chest felt hollow and alive. He named the constellations as I watched, calling the sky into order.

“Our father was made of minerals in the darkness under the earth,” I write, alone in my bedroom, William awake above me. “He never lost his baby teeth. He was created whole.”

Because we are twins, William and I guard each other jealously. Once we had a birthday party, and a man had a balloon for William, but not for me. William handed it to me, and I drove my heel into it until it popped. “Helium,” William says, “was made by the sun god Helios. It wants to return to the sky.” I agree. There’s room enough in the sky, and no need to stay here without reason.

Our father’s father was made of stone, minerals forged deep down inside the earth. He could sand wood smooth against his cheeks. You couldn't get a straight answer out of him, and when he told you things there was a bit of sandpaper hidden inside or maybe a smooth bit of stone, so if you tried to eat it then you had rocks inside you, too.

In the afternoons, we tromp through the forest, setting traps. Once I caught a mink, and kept it as a pet. One morning William and I went to the river, and he dared me to shoot a duck that was far out on the water. I’m known for my sharp eyes, and had no trouble hitting it, even though it was little more than a dark shape. Later that night, my poor mink washed ashore.

Our grandmother is made of smallness. “Grandmother weighs less than nothing,” William says. “Literally.” Her house is in the country, and the sky is set in corduroy. At night, she looks out the window, and is she made of looking.

We play music every night after dinner. William conducts, and I sing, or he plays on the piano while I polish the mirrors that hang at the bottom of the stairs. “On the moon,” William calls to me, “beauty is prized above all things.” The piano soars up, up, up, like city lights on a hillside. I look in the mirror, and the sky falls open behind me.

Happy Birthday to my Mother

For this extra-special Poetry Thursday, here's some Horace, by way of Ezra Pound.


This monument will outlast metal and I made it
More durable than the king's seat, higher than pyramids.
Gnaw of wind and rain?
Impotent
The flow of years to break it, however many.

Bits of me, many bits, will dodge all funeral,
O Libitina-Persephone and, after that,
Sprout new praise. As long as
Pontifex and the quiet girl pace the Capitol
I shall be spoken where the wild flood Aufidus
Lashes, and Danus ruled the parched farmland:

Power from lowliness: "First brought Aeolic song to Italian fashion"—
Wear pride, work's gain! O Muse Melpomene,
By your will bind the laurel.
My hair. Delphic laurel.

Happy Birthday, Robert Graves

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

I first read this poem in high school. I'd just devoured I, Claudius and Claudius the God, and I wanted to be Robert Graves when I grew up. It was, quite simply, the most shockingly sexy thing I'd ever read [and I'd read Clan of the Cave Bear!].

Poetry Thursday: Rupert Brooke

Menelaus and Helen

I
Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke
To Priam's palace, sword in hand, to sate
On that adulterous whore a ten years' hate
And a king's honour. Through red death, and smoke,
And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode,
Till the still innermost chamber fronted him.
He swung his sword, and crashed into the dim
Luxurious bower, flaming like a god.
High sat white Helen, lonely and serene.
He had not remembered that she was so fair,
And that her neck curved down in such a way;
And he felt tired. He flung the sword away,
And kissed her feet, and knelt before her there,
The perfect Knight before the perfect Queen.

II
So far the poet. How should he behold
That journey home, the long connubial years?
He does not tell you how white Helen bears
Child on legitimate child, becomes a scold,
Haggard with virtue. Menelaus bold
Waxed garrulous, and sacked a hundred Troys
'Twixt noon and supper. And her golden voice
Got shrill as he grew deafer. And both were old.
Often he wonders why on earth he went
Troyward, or why poor Paris ever came.
Oft she weeps, gummy-eyed and impotent;
Her dry shanks twitch at Paris' mumbled name.
So Menelaus nagged; and Helen cried;
And Paris slept on by Scamander side.


Ok, so I'm a bit obsessed with the Trojan War. Which translates fairly naturally rather roundaboutly into a mild obsession with Rupert Brooke. It lessens a bit, as I get older and my affinity for youth and tragedy and tragic beauty wanes, but there'll always be room in my heart (and my lectures) for ol' Rupert.

So, Brian and I are in the studio today, and, as usual, he has the TV on while he's working, while I, as usual, have my headphones on and the music turned up as far as I can so that I can write and ignore him.

Until M*A*S*H comes on, that is. M*A*S*H is a show I used to sneak off to watch in our all but TV-free household, a bit of childhood memory-ville I find particularly hard to tune out. Especially when it awakens my other obsessions. As with this particular episode, which opens with Klinger lying out in the Korean countryside, reading Rupert Brooke.

"I love Rupert Brooke," I said to Brian.

"Hm?"

"He's so tragic. He died on the way to the battle of Gallipoli, you know."

"How?"

".....Rhumatic fever? I think? Maybe?"

"Romantic fever?"

"That's more likely."

It was sepsis from an infected mosquito bite, actually.

A trip through the archives

There's nothing like a long to-do list for stirring up the ol' busywork. So, I just went through my November 2006 archive and added the "Nablopomo" tag, just in case the cyber archaeologists of the future need help sorting out which months I blogged every day, and why. I don't usually like reading through things I've written here (so self-absorbed! So poorly proofread!), but in this case, it was kinda fun.

One entry was oddly timely, as I've just discovered this video on youtube, answering the age old question, "Is that something I saw as a kid, or did I make it up?"



I also added tags so that you can track entries on the cat or my neck lump surgery. Oh, and here's a bonus, of sorts: I also tracked down this old secret blog that I'd nearly forgotten about, which I started before I told my parents about the mysterious lump in my neck (I didn't want to worry them, see?). You can witness my thinly disguised panic here: NoraBora.vox.com

And I'm still on the Vicodin, so this may not be all that cogent

So. This past Tuesday, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges announced that it was terminating New College of California's accreditation. As most (if not all) of you are aware, New College is where I earned both my masters degrees, where I finished my bachelors, and where I taught as an adjunct from the fall trimester 2006 to fall 2007.

I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this. No, wait, scratch that; I have plenty of feelings on the subject -- they just don't sort out well.

A big part of me is just crushingy embarrassed. In this thoroughly modern age, when we all get our news of the internets and it's just as easy for people to make their opinions known in the comments section of the San Francisco Chronicle as it is on this lovely little blog o' mine, I can't help but be aware of how stupid we all look. And I can see how tempting a target it is: the hubris of it all! The stupid, willfully wide-eyed optimism of running a school as if ideals were all that mattered! As if all you needed were a building and a bunch of good intentions.

But the truth of the matter is, the ideals weren't what did the place in. Neither were the smart, starry-eyed utopians who were fool enough to learn and teach there over the years. It was just poorly run, poorly overseen, and didn't have the time or money to right itself before the end came.

One of the things I keep coming back to, though, is how happy I am with the education I got there. New College was the third school I attended full-time (the fifth I attended for any time at all), and, with its strong social justice angle, was the perfect top-off to my more previously literature-and-tweed-heavy academic career. I really did learn a lot there, as both a student and a teacher. And isn't that the true worth of my degrees? The effect upon my noggin?

Still, though, it's sad, and shaming, and just... yeah. Sad.

In other but not unrelated news, I ran an errand recently for an old poetry prof of mine (also recently cast adrift by New College). He gave me this poem as a thank-you.



Just in case you can't read it:

After Wang Wei


Chilling down by the water
stopped to watch clouds drift
clouds drift clouds drift
bumped into mr. green
talked laughed forgot
it was time to go

The Reason You Want to Carpe Your Diems

How did the reading go? I honestly can't tell.

And this article from the Chronicle for Higher Education explains why not:

"It's like we have this trick scale... Here's how that scale works: Self-doubt and negative feedback weigh heavily on the mind, but praise barely registers. You attribute your failures to a stable, inner core of ineptness. Meanwhile, you discount your successes as accidental or, worse, as just so many confidence jobs. Every positive is a false positive."

And the worst part is? It's annoying. I become annoying, socially inept. I can't trust praise. I can't trust people. And so I end up this stuttering misanthrope, rushing out the backdoor after I'm done reading, afraid to confront, or even acknowledge, my audience.

Stupid cat germs.

About that thing

So, I'm reading tonight at the Bazaar Cafe on California St. here in San Francisco, between 21st and 22nd streets. The reading starts around 7:30ish. Ish because I'm coming from work, and god knows how I'll get there on time.

Poetry Thursday

from Unforseen

Evocation
by Micah Ballard

From the burial
grounds of Old Metairie
& hallways thru pyramids

with unnumbered bones
to the 3 St. Louises
& live oaks of Cypress Grove

onward we carry
whatever has traced our
way. So might the soil

turn over -- Apparitions
come forth, this path
hath only one following

one way to get away.
East of these walls
& never to be returned

let it be said
the oath has been told
sold for the taking. Not

again will these vaults
faces hide, never
to end their dens

which do not stop
but drop to that final place
where all is erased.

Another poem

The White Fires of Venus
by Denis Johnson

We mourn this senseless planet of regret,
droughts, rust, rain, cadavers
that can't tell us, but I promise
you one day the white fires
of Venus shall rage: the dead,
feeling that power, shall be lifted, and each
of us will have his resurrected one to tell him,
"Greetings. You will recover
or die. The simple cure
for everything is to destroy
all the stethosscopes that will transmit
silence occasionally. The remedy for loneliness
is in learning to admit
solitude as one admits
the bayonet: gracefully,
now that already
it pierces the heart.
Living one: you move among many
dancers and don't know which
you are the shadow of;
you want to kiss your own face in the mirror
but do not approach,
knowing you must not touch one
like that. Living
one, while Venus flares
O set the cereal afire,
O the refrigerator harboring things
that live on into death unchanged."

They know all about us on Andromeda,
they peek at us, they see us
in this world illumined and pasteled
phonily like a bus station,
they are with us when the streets fall down fraught
with laundromats and each of us
closes himself in his small
San Francisco without recourse.
They see you with your face of fingerprints
carrying your instructions in gloved hands
trying to touch things, and know you
for one despairing, trying to touch the curtains,
trying to get your reflection mired in alarm tape
past the window of this then that dark
closed business establishment.
The Andromedans hear your voice like distant amusement park music
converged on by ambulance sirens
and they understand everything.
They're on your side. They forgive you.

I want to turn for a moment to those my heart loves,
who are as diamonds to the Andromedans,
who shimmer for them, lovely and useless, like diamonds:
namely, those who take their meals at soda fountains,
their expressions lodged among the drugs
and sunglasses, each gazing down too long
into the coffee as though from a ruined balcony.
O Andromedans they don't know what to do
with themselves and so they sit there
until they go home where they lie down
until they get up, and you beyond the light years know
that if sleeping is dying, then waking
is birth, and a life
is many lives. I love them because they know how
to manipulate change
in the pockets musically, these whose faces the seasons
never give a kiss, these
who are always courteous to the faces
of presumptions, the presuming streets,
the hotels, the presumption of rain in the streets.
I'm telling you it's cold inside the body that is not the body,
lonesome behind the face
that is certainly not the face
of the person one meant to become.

Quiet

I'm having trouble sitting still. There are -- let me count them -- seven windows open in my browser right now, one unfinished email waiting (five if you count the ones I'm intending to write, but havent started), and (if we might go outside my computer screen for a moment) two open books and a magazine perched on the armrest next to me. I can't concentrate on any of them, but I can't put any of them away, either. I'm just too restless, too unsettled, and I can't let them go.

So, here's a poem to quiet me down:



In the Garden, by Anne Pierson Wiese


On the edge of the pond a great white
egret catches catches five-inch fish, it's trick neck
now a bone-china handle just thick
enough to curve without cracking -- sleight

of spine and cup -- now a javelin in flight
traveling with frugal grace: quickness
made slow by the instinct that missing
what's aimed for's what comes of haste, or eyes

too big for your stomach. Among the weeds' dead
shoots giant carp feed--a tea party of stiff-
tongued brutes sipping algaed shadows, exempt
by size from a predator whose slight kisses
yield up what's small enough to swallow instead
of choking alone on a single wish.

More towards the top ten

5.
Light and Shade: New and Selected Poetry, by Tom Clark

Vagabondage

Summer night
klang of stars


inner acoustic


water diamonds
around
the oars

Another poem today, because I'm working

Gnosticism VI
by Anne Carson, from Decreation

Walking the wild mountain in a storm I saw the great trees throw their arms.
Ruin! they cried and seemed aware

the sublime is called a "science of anxiety."
What do men and women know of it? -- at first

not even realizing they were naked!
The language knew.

Watch "naked" (arumim) flesh slide into "cunning" (arum) snake in the next verse.

And suddenly a vacancy, a silence,

is somewhere inside the machine.
Veins pounding.

Chiasmus

by Tom Clark, from Night Sky

Black doldrums, then a stir, then tackle snapping —
Which would you prefer, the calm after, during
Or before the storm? Anxious news flutters
Its broadsides across our ragged, tattered
Sails; lightning darkens, and it rains more
Than if the sun, drunk the night before,
Staggered by a wave, fell below the hatches;
While the moon, tossed overboard, washed ashore
On that island which no sailor reaches,
Returns to haunt our sea-locked ship, and night
Comes back to unsettle restive stagnant day.
A rotten state, finally, bearded by flies,
Dogged by the death of the wind at noon
And the breathless simoon at evening;
Black doldrums, then a stir, then tackle snapping.

No prayers for November to linger longer

Actually, I'm rather enjoying the rain. But, gah! has it rained a lot the past few days, that chill-bone, tree-stripping rain particular to November. Today was just so chilly and wet, which made the poem we read for Keats class seem as if it were written for an entirely different season (and to be fair, it was written in September, which is a season unto itself):

Ode to Autumn, by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.


And speaking of Keats and other heroes who died too young, Achilles by Elizabeth Cook is proving to be brilliant. Definitely reccomended for the literature dork in your life.