Workin' on my thesis? Oh, yes. Workin' hard.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Poetry Thursday: Brian Teare
So I just found out about Poetry Thursday over at be present, be here, and decided that, it being Thursday, and poetry being on my mind, hey! I might as well join in.
This is a poem I just recently found online over at Blackbird. It's by Brian Teare, who just happens to be one of my favorite teachers over at New College, and whose work is just absurdly, intimidatingly good.
---
Lent Prayer
The way prayer is root to precarious : two crows creep
the steeple. Not winter,
not spring. Given a chance,
a season out of season will write
bastard pastoral, elegy
full of errant splendor and spent sheets of sleet, rain all spondaic
and unrelenting. Pallid nouns look familiar
but they're dead :
after thaw, after crocuses, even tulips : new snow, and robins
caught on a border without name, lost
to a scrim of frost, dozens
dead, each a lace of lice. The way soul has
no certain etymology, how weirdly what's rootless goes
wrong-like, fog
erasing syntax that holds
nouns in the sentence called landscape, looks like : streetlight tree
snowdrop stray-cat tow-truck leaves sidewalk snowmelt : except
what's visible
shifts, wind
arranging things,
the neighbor's lit window gone down the block like a dog
off its lead.
But all the small-town lights have left
for the Susquehanna
where they lean over water and rinse long-
billed birds into shallows, cattails
that shiver
the river like quills
sunk in dark ink. If I bring
to the banks what nouns I've found,
what of it?
Clean of scene they shine
in the mind like fish flick water open, switchblade-
quick : weathervane
horse-cart milk-pail police-tape
farmhouse snowplow : if
I put them back, I'll hate the tableaus
they make : cows
crapping in crabgrass; on Market St.,
little flags flapping; or two Amish girls
pressing curd through cloth;
dirty water. It's written :
the opera house burned
in 1906. What is it goes on living
in a town like this, between penitentiary and nicotine, the way form lives on
in both feign and fiction : arson
or accident, the plaque says this
is the original cornerstone : because
the root of error is wander,
who wouldn't want
out of a town so wrong? The current's fed under the bridge
like fabric to a sewing needle, each light
a small satin boat
stitched slow in folds.
Who wouldn't want to go
to them,
the lights? As prayer is
route to precarious, the river trembles on its treadle.
This is a poem I just recently found online over at Blackbird. It's by Brian Teare, who just happens to be one of my favorite teachers over at New College, and whose work is just absurdly, intimidatingly good.
---
Lent Prayer
The way prayer is root to precarious : two crows creep
the steeple. Not winter,
not spring. Given a chance,
a season out of season will write
bastard pastoral, elegy
full of errant splendor and spent sheets of sleet, rain all spondaic
and unrelenting. Pallid nouns look familiar
but they're dead :
after thaw, after crocuses, even tulips : new snow, and robins
caught on a border without name, lost
to a scrim of frost, dozens
dead, each a lace of lice. The way soul has
no certain etymology, how weirdly what's rootless goes
wrong-like, fog
erasing syntax that holds
nouns in the sentence called landscape, looks like : streetlight tree
snowdrop stray-cat tow-truck leaves sidewalk snowmelt : except
what's visible
shifts, wind
arranging things,
the neighbor's lit window gone down the block like a dog
off its lead.
But all the small-town lights have left
for the Susquehanna
where they lean over water and rinse long-
billed birds into shallows, cattails
that shiver
the river like quills
sunk in dark ink. If I bring
to the banks what nouns I've found,
what of it?
Clean of scene they shine
in the mind like fish flick water open, switchblade-
quick : weathervane
horse-cart milk-pail police-tape
farmhouse snowplow : if
I put them back, I'll hate the tableaus
they make : cows
crapping in crabgrass; on Market St.,
little flags flapping; or two Amish girls
pressing curd through cloth;
dirty water. It's written :
the opera house burned
in 1906. What is it goes on living
in a town like this, between penitentiary and nicotine, the way form lives on
in both feign and fiction : arson
or accident, the plaque says this
is the original cornerstone : because
the root of error is wander,
who wouldn't want
out of a town so wrong? The current's fed under the bridge
like fabric to a sewing needle, each light
a small satin boat
stitched slow in folds.
Who wouldn't want to go
to them,
the lights? As prayer is
route to precarious, the river trembles on its treadle.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Keep your fingers crossed
I just submitted some undergraduate course proposals for next semester. And I have so much bad undergraduate karma to work off, I don't even want to think about it. So wish me luck! Time spent teaching undergrads = less time in Purgatory.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Crazy, definitely crazy
So I've had this habit, for pretty much my entire academic life, of going completely stark raving bonkers as soon as any project nears completion. I sit around for hours, obsessing over my manifold failings: all the things I should have said but didn't, all the things I said and did that I shouldn't, the way my butt looks in these jeans, which are awful comfy, but sheesh, what am I thinking?
And so it is that now, as I'm scrambling to finish my thesis, which is due in less than a month, and get my reading done for this weekend, and I need to type up a paper for the class I'm taking with ZZ Packer(name drop! Woo hoo!), and write the course proposals that my poetry professor suggested I do (which I just found out must be in by this time next week), I find myself trolling through myspace and friendster, and friends blogs, and friends of friends blogs, and just wanting to send out a mass email screaming I'm just so sorry for not being the friend you wanted or needed. And I'm so sorry to have bothered you with this here apology. And this one, too.
Yup. Weirdo!
And so it is that now, as I'm scrambling to finish my thesis, which is due in less than a month, and get my reading done for this weekend, and I need to type up a paper for the class I'm taking with ZZ Packer(name drop! Woo hoo!), and write the course proposals that my poetry professor suggested I do (which I just found out must be in by this time next week), I find myself trolling through myspace and friendster, and friends blogs, and friends of friends blogs, and just wanting to send out a mass email screaming I'm just so sorry for not being the friend you wanted or needed. And I'm so sorry to have bothered you with this here apology. And this one, too.
Yup. Weirdo!
Friday, March 10, 2006
And this is how I feel right now
Unfocused at best. All eyes and no brain. An empty something something something.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
HAHAHAHA
This mural is on the side of one of the grocery stores in our neighborhood. It always makes me want to cackle in solidarity. Because I love bannanas and grapes too, and if I could enjoy them while busting through a wall, you know I would.
Friday, March 03, 2006
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