Salt

Today in the news there is an article about salt.
It says don't eat so much of it.
It says salt is bad for your heart.
You will die younger
and young of heart
if you eat loads of salt.
Ah, but what if you love salt?
Heart and soul? I mean, what if
you REALLY LOVE salt?
When I was a girl, I loved salt so much
I would pour it on my hand and lick it.
I'd lick the tops of crackers
or suck them just for the salt.
I liked the taste of sea water.
And sweat.
If I wouldn't eat something,
my dad would pour salt on it
and I'd suck it right down.
I'd even lick the salt blocks
in the cow pasture.
Those are for the heifers, Mom would say
whenever she caught me.
After a while she just said,
those are for the heifers and Nin.
(She never worried
when I shared things with her cows.
She liked us about the same.)
She figured we were farm kids,
immune to germs, unlike those delicate urbanites
in their antiseptic homes.
What do they do in there,
she'd ask sometimes when we drove
through the burbs, the TV lights flickering.
We didn't own a TV.
And Mom could never sit still anyhow
or stay inside.
She liked being in the garden or fields.
And she liked cows.
I never understood how anyone could like cows.
They're dumb and smelly.
They fart and shit and eat all day long.
But Mom used to say
we have a lot in common with cows.
We, too, like to eat and eat and eat.
All day long we like to eat.
And we like salt.
She admitted she liked salt too.
Once I even got her to lick a salt block
herself. Admittedly it was a new block,
not one that had been in the fields yet,
not yet softened and smoothed by cow tongues.
She said it wasn't so bad.
She even agreed when I said salt licks
are some of the best-tasting salt ever.
I suggested we could serve something like it
as an appetizer. Little cubes of cow salt
for guests. I thought about it for years.
How you could hold the cubes in your mouth
and suck them down like sugar.
That way I, for one, would be sure I died
when I was still young at heart.
Who wants to die with an old heart?
Not having enjoyed the salt of life?

Never been to a mall

My daughter, Suzanne, took Marecela, the girl in this photo, to register for college on Monday at the Universidad Tecnologica in San Salvador. Marecela is one of the recipients of a university scholarship (from a scholarship program set up by S and another Peace Corps volunteer). Amazing experience, I imagine. After registering, they went to a mall where they were to meet their ride. M. had never been to a store before, much less a mall. She sat on a bench and just stared . . .

Blowing in the wind

pic. by my son, Jimmy

Oh my God, I forgot my helmet and now look at my hair!

Congrats to Jimmy for publication of his story, "Chick Magnet," and for having his computer game, "Mr Heart Loves You Very Much," selected by Montreal's Game Competition. (I'm not sure what the event in Montreal is called).

Reading November 29

Yep, it's my last scheduled reading for 2007.
At Kent State . . .
at the Kent Stark Campus
at 7:30
in the Library Conference Room
(which is right in front of you
when you enter from the Frank Road entrance).

Robert Miltner,
(one of the nicest humans on earth
and a really great poet)
invited me to read
with Kirk Nesset,
who just won the Drue Heinz Award.

The address:
Kent State University Stark
6000 Frank Ave NW
Canton, OH 44720

Class

These are from Suzanne's classes. I've yet to unload my photos . . . But the school is tiny, and it takes in about 360 kids a day in 2 shifts. The first shift is 8:00 to 12:00. The second is 1:00 to 5:00. The same teachers teach both shifts. Everyone packs into the little cement rooms. It's hot! Maybe high 80s. And really humid. I was soaked with sweat, but everyone else seemed chill. The first time I went there (last March), I had this idea I'd wash up before meeting the teachers. I forgot . . . no running water, no real bathrooms . . . Suzanne, teaching environmental education, finds ways to stay outdoors.

Travel Fatigue

I am so glad I don't have another trip for a while. When I have to travel a lot, I feel as if I never really land. I am always thinking of my next take-off date.

I am reminded of the story about the man who was afraid of flying . . . One day he finally had to board a plane. Afterwards, when asked how it went, he answered that it was just fine. Why? Because he never put his feet down.

My pathetic Spanish has finally gotten to the point where I can understand a bit but am way too slow to answer as effectively as I'd like. I can hear people talking about me. Like the man ahead of me in line saying to his pal that all gringos look alike. Like the woman, looking at my daughter and me, commenting that American women are really skinny but sure can eat a lot. And another man asking his friend why my husband would let me travel alone. American men let their wives do all kinds of things . . .

I actually spoke more Spanish in Miami. The Miami Book Fair is a mad house. But Denise Duhamel and Nick Carbo are the nicest, greatest poets and people ever.

I found two new authors to love madly: Abigail Thomas and Marlena Morling.

About El Salvador: there were some icky things . . . the armed guards with their big guns, the heat, the poverty, and the smell of burning plastic. (How else, folks ask, are we to take care of the garbage problem? The smell is nauseating.) Also, I never knew a cockroach could grow as big as my hand . . .

Good things . . . the beaches of El Salvador are beautiful. The village where Suzanne works is really pretty . . . up in the hills, and everyone is so friendly and welcoming. (Okay, so they all come to their doors and stare.) And I loved the kids in our poetry class. The kids were so happy to have their own packet of poems to take home, to have a chance to write their own poems . . .

When Suzanne and I went running, the kids from every house raced out into the streets and ran with us. Packs of kids . . . ending back at her house for water and giggles.

Poemas

Back from El Salvador at last! A few poems below from the school kids. They were beautiful. No two ways about it. One assignment (which we never got to because we ran out of time) was to write the exact details of today. I told them that when they were as old as I was, they would not remember today. They giggled. Clearly they could not imagine it, being old like me. I remember as a girl, thinking I would never ever turn into a woman, esp. an old woman.


Poemas

Centro Escolar San José Carrizal

Primer Taller de Poesía, Martes 13 de Noviembres


El sol y la luna y los girasoles

Kendy de Lourdes Cerón, 10 años


Todas las noches

los girasoles despiertan…


Para aprender lo que

La luna en lo alto de las nubes enseñaba

Pero la luna solo les enseñaba la vocal “o”.


Los girasoles ya estaban

Aburridos de la vocal

Un día aunque no había luna

Apareció el sol que les dijo

Yo les enseñare y les enseño

Todas las vocales.

Un girasol le pregunto

¿De que palabra viene la

Letra “e”? y respondió la letra

Viene de la palabra tierra.


The sun and the moon and the sunflowers


Every night

The sunflowers awoke…


In order to learn what the moon

In the height of the clouds would teach them

But the moon only taught them the vowel “o”

The sunflowers grew bored

Of the letter.


One day although there was no moon

The sun appeared and told them

I will teach you and then taught them

All of the vowels.

One of the sunflowers asked:

What word does the letter “e” come from?

And the sun answered: The letter “e”

Comes from the word earth.





Una mañana tan hermosa

Un sol iluminaba muchas arboles,

Muchas flores hermosas

Y un aire tan fresco


En una noche tan linda

La luna iluminaba la tierra

Los niños desde sus cassas miraban

Las nubes y las estrellas



One beautiful morning

A sun illuminated many trees

Many beautiful flowers

And a cool breeze


In one beautiful night

The moon illuminated the earth

The children from their houses watched

The clouds and the stars

Miami and El Salvador

I leave for Miami tomorrow . . . a weekend at the book fair before flying to El Salvador for a week. I have my Spanish poems in hand and my lesson plan to teach a class with Suzanne, but all the Spanish I know has suddenly abandoned me . . .

What do you do?

Sometimes, when asked, I tell people I'm a poet. Usually I try to think up another definition for myself. Dreamer, cow whisperer, harpoonist, griddler, lemming. If I say I write, I dread these two familiar responses . . . Why do you do that? Meaning you can't get rich that way, now can you? The other: I write too. Would you like to see my poems?

Maybe it's a little unfair, but I love it when Jim, a physicist, has a similar problem. My two favorite responses to his profession . . . Wow, so you can explain string theory? And: I have this idea for a perpetual motion machine. I'm sure it will work. My only problem is that I never studied physics so maybe we could talk and . . .

The Runners

I leave for Miami for the book festival this coming Thursday. Then I'm off to El Salvador to visit Suzanne. We'll teach a poetry class in her school, and maybe I'll take run with her team of young runners. Here they are pictured with their new shoes.

pic by Jimmy

The Bird Man

Do you ever remember a story your parents told and look for it years later,
only to wonder if they made it up?

There's a story my father used to tell me when I was sick. Now I can't find anywhere . . . A kind of fairytale about a bird man. If I asked him, he would take a pen and draw a picture of the bird man in the story.

The bird man had this problem. You see, he plucked his feathers out. Why? Nobody knew for sure.

But there were three possible answers.

One, he was an artist. It was only by pulling out his feathers that he could weave them into a beautiful tapestry that told the story of his life.

Two, he was a scientist. It was only by taking out his feathers and examining their structure that he could understand how he flew.

Three, he was man. It was his nature to tear himself apart one feather at a time so he would never soar too high and would always live close to the ground.

In any case, according to the story, we descended from the bird man. That's why we still dream of flight and angels.

Hostess would like you to know

Twinkies do not last for eternity.
Out of the packaging,
they only stay fresh for 25 days.

Dear Diary,

I bet you've missed me. I've been gone a whole week. I had my eyes operated on. Now I have to wear a patch for weeks, and I can see the little stitches where they sewed up my eye balls. Gross.

That was an entry in my grade school diary. Usually I just told my diary what I wanted most. Like snow. Please make it snow.

I wonder whom I thought I was writing to then.

I wonder that now sometimes too.

It is not an urban myth?

Okay, so I was telling my husband and friends at dinner that a woman found a python in her toilet, and they started teasing me. I thought maybe I was nuts, but it's true. At least if you believe the news.

I've been thinking about what that would be like. To find yourself seated over a python . . .

Preciosa Dumlao - AHN News Writer
Brooklyn, NY (AHN) - A 38-year-old restaurateur found a 7-foot-long python in her toilet while she was washing her hands early Monday. She said most of the venomous python's body was hidden in the pipes and was trying to come out of her bathroom.

The New Yorker Nadege Brunacci said, "I turned on the light and screamed. It still makes my heart race."

According to Brunacci, when she saw the snake, she yelled for help.

Her landlord came to see what happened and plumbers had to tear down the pipes to trap down the snake.

She said it is questionable how the snake got into her bathroom pipes.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7008867591

Radio and embarrassing moments

Last night I did a radio reading. I could hear myself echo back into my ear, as if my words were making fun of me.
I think they were.
I felt as if I were talking to the air, and only I was listening. An eerie feeling.
As soon as it was over, I wanted to fix it, make it better.
So much of conversation is like that. So many words get sent out into the air, wishing they had a second chance . . .

At night I dreamt I was back in first grade. I had a solo, and I started singing all the wrong words. I woke up in a sweat, remembering the concert exactly. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I was all dressed up in black velvet with silky red ribbons in my hair. I felt like a movie star, and I wanted to be sure everyone heard me. So I sang as loud as I could: I had grits and eggs for breakfast. My cow, Mildred, died last week. She got the bloat.

I think I was supposed to be singing Deck the Halls . . .

That night my mother told me it's eggs, not aay-eggs. My father phoned Mrs. Wallace, my first grade teacher, and asked her never to give me a solo again.

The Spartans

The Spartans have always fascinated me. My mother used to read me tales about the Spartans, esp. the one about the boy-warrior who had a pet fox who ate his entrails . . . But I'll save that for another time.

In today's encore excerpt from Delancey Place, the rigors and rituals of Spartans, the fiercest warriors of the ancient world, circa 560 B.C.:

"Even the newest-born baby was subjected to the proddings of old men. Should an infant be judged too sickly or deformed to make a future contribution to the city, then the elders would order its immediate termination. ... A cleft beside the road which wound over the mountains to Messenia, the Apothetae, or 'Dumping Ground,' provided the setting for the infanticide. There, where they might no longer shame the city that had bred them, the weak and deformed would be slung into the depths of the chasm ...

"[I]t was the goal of instructors not merely to crush a boy's individuality, but to push him to startling extremes of endurance, discipline and impassivity, so that he might prove himself, supremely, as a being reforged of iron. ... Denied adequate rations, the young Spartan would be encouraged to forage from the farms of neighboring Lacedaemonians, stalking and stealing like a fox, refining his talent for stealth. Whether in the heat of summer or in the cold of winter, he would wear only one style of tunic, identical to that worn by his fellows, and nothing else, not even shoes. ...

"[A]t the age of twelve, he became legal game for cruising. Pederasty was widely practised elsewhere in Greece, but only in Sparta was it institutionalized-- even, it is said, with fines for boys who refused to take a lover.

"Just as boys were trained for warfare, so girls had to be reared for their future as breeders. The result--to foreign eyes, at any rate--was an inversion of just about every accepted norm. In Sparta, girls were fed at the expense of their brothers. To the bemusement of other Greeks, they were also taught to read, and to express themselves not modestly, as was becoming for women, but in an aggressively sententious manner, so that they might better instruct their own children in what it meant to be a Spartan. They exercised in public: running, throwing the javelin, even wrestling."

Tom Holland, Persian Fire, Abacus, 2005, pp. 81-85. From delanceyplace.com

Familiar Story

Last night Suzanne called to tell of a friend in El Salvador,
a high school girl, who was beaten by her dad
so badly she had to go to the doctors
and to the police. Of course the police did nada.
She is such a great kid,
Suzanne said. Never in trouble.
Always trying to be helpful.

The kind who always does whatever her daddy says
because, after all, he brought her up right, right?
Didn't I bring you up right?
he shouts sometimes late at night.
The neighbors hear him (don't they?)
though no one ever complains.
Maybe they hear the wife saying,
stop now, stop.
But he keeps shouting . . .
And don't you make a fool of me . . .
Don't you ever run around
in the streets with boys like those other girls . . ..
But she's a smart girl, this girl.
She knows if the boys don't abuse her,
her daddy will . . .

Why is this story so familiar?

Q and A

I always hate the Q and A part of a reading. It takes all my mental energy to stand up and read, and there isn't any left to answer questions. A well-meaning aspiring poet might ask those seemingly simple questions. For example, why is a prose poem a prose poem, esp. the one you read that sounds like it has an internal rhyme scheme? Is it just a question of line breaks?

Instead of answering I wish I could ask my own questions.

1. Tell me, Darling, what is your relationship with structure and meaning, form and message? Does your body and face tell who you are? Are you sure, or are you lying even now? Where is your soul, and does it fly?

2. Can you explain to me the magic of your favorite lines of poetry? Do you know what a satori is? Or what meaning means? Is this just this?

3. Can you define the relationship between the divine and silky mauve shirts? Or tiramisu, sepia photos of the dead, and fountain pens, the kind with just the right ink flow. Not too much, not too little. Only black ink will do . . . And the right kind of porous stationary . . . .

4. Do you have a favorite wish? Lust? Lie? If so, do you know you should never say it aloud? And what will happen if you do? And why?

Female Athletes

I love female athletes. I get such a high from watching women compete. Somewhere in the back of my head, I can still hear Dad's voice . . . "Back in my days men wouldn't care for a woman with legs like yours. Too many muscles . . . It just doesn't look right." But listening to Marion Jones weep and confess after all of her bold claims of innocence was so depressing. Those performance enhancing drugs, I believe, are here to stay. Sad.

Also sad to see are the number of anorexic runners, like the girl on Suzanne's team who couldn't believe that Suzanne didn't mind being "fat." Her coach told me once that he couldn't allow some of his faster runners to compete in the steeple chase or the longer track races because they didn't eat enough, over-trained and generally didn't take care of their bodies. Female runners, he said, have a higher injury rate than football players.

Hurdles

After one hurdle, there's always another. And I thought I was going to rest between the jumps?

Haven't I learned anything yet?

Track Side

Lately I've been walking the dogs past the football field, seeing the boys ram into each other, the girls cheer, the parents on the side, shouting and cheering. I've never been a football fan, never cared for cheerleaders, but I spent years and years track side. I never really thought I'd miss it, but now sometimes I get a little ache for that thrill of watching a kid put all of his or her energy into a competition. I remember a coach sobbing one day when my daughter, Suzanne, broke a college record. He came over and shook me. There's nothing like it, he shouted. Nothing like it. Watching it all happen and in a matter of a few minutes.

There is something amazing about it. But it's not just in sports. Watching people I love succeed makes me feel so proud, so high, I sometimes feel I as if I'll burst open. Watching my life-long friend, Anne Marie Slaughter, on the Colbert report was one such high. (She was awesome!) Reading my friend, Mary Beth's, first published poem was another. And watching my son graduate made me cry even if I thought the ceremony would never end. I sometimes think it's easier to be really happy for someone else than for oneself . . .

Another beautiful poem by Kelli

I have to add one more Kelli poem to my blog, a poem about death and birds. I've always wondered about the link between birds and death in our minds. Of course I understand the wings, the angels, death and so forth. But the beliefs are so strong. A few years ago when we were having our house worked on, I came home to find two burly carpenters outside, afraid to re-enter the house. Why? Because there was a bird inside. Evidently, they'd left the door open, and a robin had flown in. The poor robin was beating against the windows, trying to escape. The men warned me that death would soon follow the bird.


When Women Die, Waxwings Appear

By evening, the tips of their wings are dusty
from footsteps of men who don't know
what to do with themselves,

from children jumping rope
in an abandoned lot unaware
that anything has changed.

Waxwings appear in the madrona.
Someone has died and they try to carry sadness
to a bed of twigs, search for string and straw,
small branches to weave into edges.

By nightfall, the tips of their wings are arrows
for the men who don't know where to go,
for children looking for their way home.

At times, a bird will steal tissue from the hand
of a mourner, cover its nest to keep grief
from slipping back into families living below.

These days every limb contains a nest;
there are never enough wings to hold the men
who try to comfort their children who linger
with hope of finding a new home.

from Small Knots by Kelli Russell Agodon

Don't Worry. Be Happy.

Just when I was beginning to think, don't worry, be happy, Bill sent me an article from Patagonia to remind me of the bad news about plastics . . . How it's everywhere and in everything, esp. in our bodies.

Add to that, today I was at the hair salon, and the woman next to me started telling me how she was sure her daughter's breast cancer came from plastics. An elderly woman, she said her daughter was from the microwave generation. So she never cooked anything because it took too long. Instead she microwaved it. The plastic on the top of the frozen foods she microwaved melted into the food and into her body. And all that microwave cookware, you know that stuff isn't natural. Whatever it's made of shouldn't be near food . . .
If she's just learned to cook rather than to microwave, she might still have her breasts.

She reminded me of the article:

" . . . bisphenol A seeps out of polycarbonate plastic when it's heated or exposed to acids and also as it ages. Sometimes labeled , Recycler Image 7, polycarbonate is used in baby bottles, transparent reusable water bottles (but not the bottles water is sold in), food packaging and utensils, coffeemakers, kitchen appliances, and numerous other products. Bisphenol A also forms the epoxy resins used to line food cans and is in dental sealants. It mimics the effects of estrogen and has been linked to prostate cancer and precancerous breast tissue in animal studies."

The article said a lot more too. I'm too depressed to post more of it here today. I can rest assured that corporate America doesn't want me to worry about this. I can hear it singing, don't worry. Be happy.

from Practical Values: Hard to Break
By Elizabeth Grossman

Kelli Russell Agodon

I just started Small Knots, this beautiful book of poems by Kelli Russell Agadon. I am totally in heaven, just where I want to be with a book, any book . . . I who always want to leave this world and find another. This is just one of my favorite poems so far:

A Mermaid Questions God

As a girl she hated the grain of anything
on her fins. Now she is part fire ant, part centipede.
Where the dunes stretch into pathways, arteries appear.
Her blood pressure is temperature plus wind speed.

Where religion is a thousand miles of coastline,
she is familiar with moon size, with tide changes.
She wears the cream of waves like a vestment,
knows undertow is imaginary, not something to pray to.

Now her questions involve fairytales, begin
in a garden and lead to hands painted on a chapel's ceiling.
She wants to hold the ribbon grass, the shadow of angles
across the shore. She steals a Bible from the Seashore Inn;

she will trust it only if it floats.

The Male Brain

I had to laugh at Friday's entry from daily@delanceyplace.com. So I guess it's true what they say about the male brain being a sex organ, and the female brain being just a blabber box. And I thought those were just urban myths and/or stereo types.

"Under a microscope or an fMRI scan, the differences between male and female brains are revealed to be complex and widespread. In the brain centers for language and hearing, for example, women have 11% more neurons than men. The principal hub of emotion and memory formation--the hippocampus--is also larger in the female brain, as is the brain circuitry for language and observing emotions in others. This means that women are, on average, better at expressing emotions and remembering the details of emotional events. Men, by contrast, have two and a half times the brain space devoted to sexual drive as well as larger brain centers for action and aggression. Sexual thoughts floats through a man's brain many times each day on average, and through a woman's only once a day. Perhaps three to four times a day on her hottest days. ...

"The numbers vary, but on average girls speak two to three times more words per day than boys. ... Girls speak faster on average, especially when they are in a social setting. Men haven't always appreciated that verbal edge. In Colonial America, women were put in the town stocks with wooden clips on their tongues or tortured by the 'dunking stool,' held underwater and almost drowned--punishments that were never imposed on men--for the crime of 'talking too much.' ...

"There is a biological reason for [this female talking] behavior. Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers in a girl's brain. Sharing secrets that have romantic and sexual implications activates those centers even more. We're not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It's a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm. Dopamine is a neurochemical that stimulates the motivation and pleasure circuits in the brain. Estrogen at puberty increases dopamine and oxytocin production in girls. Oxytocin is a neurohormone that triggers and is triggered by intimacy. ...

"Why do ... boys become so taciturn and monosyllabic that they verge on autistic when they hit their teens? The testicular surges of testosterone marinate the boys' brains. Testosterone has been shown to decrease talking as well as interest in socializing--except when it involves sports or sexual pursuits. In fact, sexual pursuit and body parts become pretty much obsessions."

Louann Brizendine, M.D., The Female Brain, Broadway Books, Copyright 2006 by Louann Brizendine, pp. 5, 36-39.

About Plagiarism

I've been having fun looking for poems in Spanish
that would be good for ninos and also for muchachos.
I found a section of this one, "About Plagiarism," for the muchachos . . .
(I still have to figure out how to make accents on the computer.)

". . . when we like a woman, we tell her so
by stealing poems from the great poets.
The women fall disastrously in love with the poem
and even though they smile, looking into our eyes,
they never believe in our lyrical prowess,
yet they admit they've never read anything like it.
Sometimes they ask in a whisper how we came up with these things.
Fortunately, they don't wait for an answer."

. . . cuando nos gusta una mujer, para decirselo,
robamos los poemas de los buenos poetas.
Ellos fatalmente se enamoran del poema,
y aunque sonrien mirandonos los ojos
no confian jamas en nuestra lirica aptitud,
mas reconocen que nunca hablan leido asunto semejante.
En ocasiones susurran preguntando como se nos ocurren esas cosas,
y no esperan respuesta por fortuna."

from "Acerca de los plagios"
by Eduardo Langagne from Ruido de Suenos

Mamees

Here Suzanne is giving a charla in her school on the importance of composting. I keep looking at this photo, imagining the two of us teaching poetry instead. The kids were fascinated by our presence there.

After Suzanne's presentation, all the kids ran outside to start their own composting project. A few were more interested in picking mamees and handing them to us. A mamee is a fruit that tastes like a papaya crossed with an orange. I'm not sure how you spell it, but I learned the hard way, one must not eat too many mamees in one day . . .

This is a pic of Suzanne and me at Suchitoto, one of the few tourist spots in El Salvador. We spent some time today talking on the phone about our Spanish poetry day in her school near Santa Maria Ostuma. I'm getting excited about it and am finding some fun Spanish poems and bilingual books for kids. Suggestions are welcome.

I love this one from Octavia Paz from "Duration":

I will speak to you in stone-language
(answer with a green syllable)
I will speak to you in snow-language
(answer with a fan of bees)
I will speak to you in water language
(answer with a canoe of lightning)
I will speak to you in blood-language
(answer with a tower of birds)

from The Tree is Older Than You Are
selected by Naomi Shihab Nye
(one of my all-time favorite poets)

October Readings, Etc.

I have readings this fall! Please come if you are in town! And check out the The Montserrat Review’s best picks below. You can buy my book and the other BOA books at boaeditions.org/boastore/. I'm thrilled to be on that list, and I have already read and really, really liked Peter Conners' and Tom Ward's books. Now to check out the rest!

October 9) I will be reading with Adele Steiner and Willa Schneberg for the Library of Congress, Poetry at Noon Series at the Pickford Theater, 3rd Floor, James Madison Building, 101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington D.C..

October 9)Richard Peabody and I will read at 7:30 at The Writer's Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815. Phone: 301 654-8664, Fax: 801 730-6233
http://www.writer.org/

Oct. 13 and Oct. 21) I will be teaching a workshop from 1:00 to 3:00 on prose poetry and short fiction at The Poets' and Writers' League of Greater Cleveland, 12200 Fairhill Road, Townhouse 3-A, Cleveland, OH 44120
(216) 421-0403
http://www.pwlgc.com

Oct. 25:) I have a reading with Sean Dougherty and John Menaghan at 7:00 at the Oakland Center for the Arts, 220 W. Boardman Street, Youngstown, Ohio.

Oct. 27: ) The one and only Phil Brady and I will read at 5:00 at Mac's Backs, Books on Coventry, 1820 Coventry Rd., Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118. 216-321-2665

The Montserrat Review Picks

Best Books for Fall Reading, 2007
By Book Review Editor Grace Cavalieri

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Montserrat Review Picks Its Favorite Reading (in no order)
Selected by Grace Cavalieri, Fall 2007.

Best Books of Poetry

Old Heart by Stanley Plumley. W. W. Norton & Co, Inc, c2007. 96 pgs.ISBN: 978-0-393-06568-8

Still to Mow by Maxine Kumin, c2007, W. W..Norton & Co, nc. 93 pgs. ISBN: 978-0-393-06549-7

Whiskey in the Garden of Eden by Sarah Browning, c2007. The Word Works. 77pgs. ISBN: 0-915380-668

Disclamor by G.C. Waldrep, c.2007. Boa Editions, Ltd. 99 pgs. ISBN: 978-1-929918-97-3

The Matter of the Casket by Thom Ward, c2007. CustomWords 80 pgs. ISBN: 9781933456690

Edge by Edge, The Quartet Series, c2007. toadllily Press. pgs. 67. ISBN: I-978-o-9766405-2-3

Of Whiskey and Winter by Peter Conners, c2007. White Pine Press. 81 pgs. ISBN: 978-1-893996-89-2

In line for the Exterminator by Jim Daniels, c2007. Wayne State Univ. Press. 114 pgs. ISBN: 978-0-8143-3381-5

Encouragement for a Man Falling to his Death by Christopher Kennedy, c2007. Boa Editions, Ltd. 68 pgs. ISBN: 978-1-929918-98-0

Sleeping with Houdini by Nin Andrews, c2007. Boa Editions, Ltd. 86 pgs. ISBN: 978-1-929918-99-7

The Kimnama by Kim Roberts, Vrzhu Press, c2007. 48 pgs. ISBN: 978-104303-1407-3

More Than Anything by Hiram Larew, c2007. Vrzhu Press, 52 pgs. ISBN: 978-1-4303-1406-6

Best Chapbooks:

The Good Body by Anne Becker, c2007. Finishing Line Press. 29 pgs. ISBN: 978-1-59924-165-4

A String of Blue Lights by William Palmer, c2007. Puddinghouse. 30 pgs. ISBN: 1-58998-529-X

Best Novel:

Vivaldi's Virgins by Barbara Quick, c2007. HarperCollins. 281 pgs. ISBN: 978-0-06-089052-0

Best Anthologies:

American poets in the 21st Century, edited by Claudia Rankine & Lisa Sewell, c2007. Wesleyan Univ. Press. 388 pgs. ISBN: 978-o-8195-6727-7

Kiss the Sky, edited by Richard Peabody,c2007. Paycock Press,420 pgs. ISBN: 0-931181-24-0

Best Literary Magazines/Journals

Best Annuals:

Paterson Literary Review # 36, edited by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, c2007. Passaic County Community College. 360 pgs.

Pembroke Magazine #39, edited by Shelby Stephenson, c2007. Univ. Of North Carolina at Pembroke. 289 pgs.

Best biennial:

Connecticut Review, edited by Vivian Shipley,c2007. Conn. State Univ. System, 208 pgs. ISSN: 00106216

Best Quarterly Magazine

New Letters, edited by Robert Stewart, c2007.Univ. Missouri-Kansas City. 165 pgs. ISSN: 0146-4930

Best Monthly Literary Magazine:

Ocho;MiPOesias Print Companion.# 12, DiDi Menendez, c2007. A Menendez Publication. 85 pgs. ISSN:1939-4985


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Grace Cavalieri is a poet and playwright. She produces and hosts "The Poet and the Poem" from the Library of Congress.

http://www.themontserratreview.com/BestofFall2007.html

Superstitions

Last night I dreamt that my father was alive, and when I woke I was thinking of all the superstitions he practiced and taught me. He believed in premonitions and ghosts, too. He and my southern cousin, Hadie, loved superstitions and loved to tell them to me. Some they laughed about, but others they practiced. My father, for example, never passed the salt hand-to-hand. He said it was bad manners to do so. Here are a few of their superstitions. I know there are more, but I can't remember them now . . .

1. Never pass the salt hand-to-hand. If you do, you might spill it. Spilled salt, everyone knows, is a bad omen.

2. If you spill salt, toss a pinch of it right hand over left shoulder. If you don't, bad luck will happen to you or someone you love.

3. If you wake up before 7AM on the first day of the month, you have to say bunny, bunny. Say this before saying another word. If you don't, you will never escape the mean kids on the playground or the bad luck that is already blowing your way.

4. If you are at a party, and suddenly everyone is quiet, start your watch. Take note. Because this happens every twenty minutes. Yep, every twenty minutes, the world goes silent, but just for a second. That's when the dead trade places with the living.

5. Hold your breath while passing a graveyard, or the dead will listen in on your secrets and dreams.

6. If you leave flowers on a bus or a train, your future love will find them and know you are thinking of him.

7. If a bird flies in the house, death will soon follow.

8. If you see a ghost walking by the sea, a hurricane is brewing. Leave immediately, or you will be washed out to sea.

9. If you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, you must remember your dreams. Otherwise your dreams will stalk you, ruining your life for days, weeks, months . . .

10. If you are eating a piece of pie, always eat the point last. You can wish on it, and the wish will come true, but only if you don't eat another bite until dinner time.

11. If you listen to your heartbeat for a long time, the distance between one beat and the next will lengthen. In this way you can slow down your life.

Oh man. It's hot again today. I have the fan on high. My legs are sticking to the chair, and my head feels 100 degrees because the little engines in there are stuck in one place. I keep taking out and putting back in the same stupid line. And I know I will do that from now until this poem is published or thrown out. Whine. But I can't wait until fall is really here. My sister sent me this photo from Maine to make me jealous. Just looking at it, I can taste the salt in the air and smell the pines. I bet it's a Northwest day, cool enough for a sweater . . . If it's not, I'll put on a wetsuit and take a dive in the ice cold water . . .

Of course I have nada to complain about. Suzanne calls from El Salvador where there are no seasons. It's either hot or hotter.

The Man with the Hole in His Head

by Rick Bursky

I'm reading at the Library of Congress on October 9 at noon. The topic is magic and magicians. I get to read my own and others'works. This is one of the Bursky poems I plan to read.


He doesn’t mind the whistle of pain
being sucked from his head by a breeze,
though occasionally he wears a hat.
It’s the way he surrounds himself in solitude
when his hair grows weary of responsibility
just as a field of prairie grass
tires of hiding a damaged landscape.

He knows the difference between a crutch
and a bowl of soup: a crutch is a wooden stick
a ruined man uses to poke at the world;
a bowl of soup is the mirror he stares into on Thursday night.

If the phone rings while he’s doing a crossword puzzle
the man might put his pencil in the hole then forget
where it is until it falls when he bends to tie a shoelace.

At a costume party, a rose stuck down in the hole, thorns taped to his shirt.
Each person asks how it happened and gets a different answer:
automobile accident, war wound, birth defect.

He knows more about empty spaces than anyone you’ll ever meet.
For instance, a hole, he wrote to a friend,
weighs twice as much as whatever it once held.

(from The Soup of Something Missing)

General Petraeus

copyright 2007

Rick Bursky sent me this photo of the General. The photo is copyrighted, so please don't use it without Rick's permission. But if you don't know of him, Rick is an amazing poet. Whatever he writes, read it. My favorite is his book, The Soup of Something Missing. This is what he wrote about the photo:

"I found this photo I took when I was in the army. It's General Petraeus when he was just Lieutenant Petraeus. We both were in the 1st of the 509th Airborne Battalion Combat Team stationed in Northern Italy. The photo was taken in France, 1976. Petraeus and I were part of a small group of paratroopers were sent to the French Army paratrooper school. The house behind him is a chateau in the Pyrenees Mountains in which we had dinner the night before."

Brady's Leap

Brady's Leap has been playing better than ever lately. I hope they do a new CD soon. Phil Brady can recite poetry like no one I've ever heard. And Kelly Bancroft has the voice of an angel. Listening to them play . . . it's so much fun. Maybe they'll play at AWP again this year. Or better yet, get a gig in the city at the same time at some cool place . . .

Sleeping with Houdini

My new book will be out so so soon! You can even order it on Amazon if you are, well, part-saint. Oh please! I always feel a kind of panic when a book is done. I look at it and immediately find something to change . . .

In fact I never stop changing my work. I can't read from my poems from books. I have to print out the pages so I can keep changing and changing them. No wonder I'm a poet. If I wrote a novel, the ending would change every time I thought about it.

Ah well, enough on anxiety! Houdini is almost here. Houdini, my childhood hero. I thought of him as a kind of god, or someone who dared to be like a god. I could never understand why someone would punch him in the stomach, just to prove he was human. I guess it's true what my mom always said. We people don't really like our gods.

General B.S.-us

How is it that General Betray-us claims
there is evidence the surge is working . . .
How about the military's definitions and methods for taking statistics?
I particularly like this distinction I read in the Washington Post:

“If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian.
If it went through the front, it's criminal."

Ergo: sectarian violence is on the decline!
Amazing.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/05/AR2007090502466.html

Los Tortugueros

For her birthday Suzanne slept on the beach with friends and watched for sea turtles (tortugas) to come up and lay their eggs. They didn't see any sea turtles, but they met a poacher who had gathered a sack of eggs. He showed off his eggs proudly but didn't appreciate their lack of enthusiasm or their efforts to make him give the eggs back. (Usually the eggs are taken to a preserve where they can be reburied and guarded.) Sea turtle eggs are such a delicacy there, they are worth some money. And where poverty is the norm, the folks who work to protect the turtle eggs are no match for poachers, or los tortugueros.

from the essay: "How I Came to Meet and Work with the Great Poet, Henri Michaux"

by Louise Landes Levi
in the intro of Someone Wants to Steal My Name

(Oh I wish I could have met Henri Michaux!)

. . . He never let his picture be taken . . . He didn't want to be recognized . . . Michaux understood poetry as a tool. He liked the phrase, "monastery of the mind," . . . I thought of him as a kind of Dzogchen master, who, through the dialogue of his absolute medium, tore open the illusion of the subjective world, and explored its limits, like a gifted child in an unexpected universe . . . He did not want his photo taken, but was happy when the Dalai Lama saw his photo. Now I'm in the Dalai Lama's mind, he said, beaming.

Con esas tetas

These are two of the El Salvadorian boys in Suzanne's youth group. One has on an Abercrombie t-shirt. The other has a black t-shirt with these words:

con esas tetas que tienes lo que no quiero es ser tu amigo

With those tits you have, what I'm wanting
isn't to be your friend.

Nipple Head

Sometimes those word-a-days
(like the one posted below)
get into my brain
and then I can't stop thinking
about them . . ..
Esp. when I've been writing so long,
my neck hurts and my head feels so heavy
I swear it will fall right off,
and I'm hungry and tired and insane . . .

So now I'm thinking of having a napple
which is either a small nap
or a small apple
or a sleeping apple,
or an apple I dream of but never eat
or the nap I never take
but only imagine . . .
or maybe it's a misplaced nipple
or an insult.
My brother used to call folks
nipple heads. George Bush
for example, would be a perfect
example of a nipple head. Now THAT
was an insult back then, up there
with wiener. I mean nobody
ever wanted to be a wiener.

Words

I love this entry from Word a Day:


"What's common among an orange and an omelet... and an uncle and an umpire?
Earlier all these words used to take the indefinite article "a", not "an".

They were coined by a process called false splitting. Let's take
orange. The original word was Sanskrit naranga. By the time it reached
English, the initial letter n had joined the article a, resulting in
"an orange". The word for orange is still narangi in Hindi, naranja in
Spanish, and naranj in Arabic.

This false splitting caused what should have been "a napron" to become
"an apron". The same process transformed "a nadder" into "an adder", and
reshaped many other words.

The n went the other way too. "Mine uncle" was interpreted as "my nuncle"
resulting in a synonym nuncle for uncle. The word newt was formed the same
way: "an ewte" misdivided into "a newte".

Could false splitting turn "an apple" into "a napple" or "a nail" into
"an ail" some day? Before the advent of printing, the language was primarily
oral/aural, resulting in mishearing and misinterpreting. Today, spelling
is mostly standardized, so chances of false splitting are slim, though
not impossible.

This week we'll look at a few more examples of words formed by false splitting.


eyas (EYE-uhs) noun

A nestling, especially a young falcon or hawk.

[By erroneous splitting of the original "a nyas" into "an eyas". From Latin
nidus (nest), ultimately from the Indo-European root sed- (to sit) that
is also the source of sit, chair, saddle, soot, sediment, cathedral, and
tetrahedron.]"

from Wordsmith

How Dumb Is He?

The man never ceases to amaze me. This article from Grist is just one more reminder of who is leading the country and where we are heading . . .

We'd Blame Jet Lag, But ...
Bush makes gaffes at APEC gathering, forum sets weak voluntary climate targets

In Sydney, Australia, late last week at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, U.S. President George Bush referred to APEC as OPEC, then tried to cover up his gaffe by explaining that Australia's prime minister had invited him to a summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries next year. Unfortunately, Australia has never been part of OPEC. Bush also called Australians "Austrians," mispronounced leaders' names, walked the wrong way off the stage, and, when asked whether there had been any new message in his speech, bristled, "Haven't you been listening to my past speeches?" Which is all far more interesting than the climate-change statement the 21-country forum's leaders agreed to this weekend, which touts non-binding "aspirational targets" to reduce "energy intensity" 25 percent by 2030. Energy intensity is the amount of energy needed to produce a dollar of gross domestic product.

Sperm Sermon

Suzanne called last night from El Salvador because she had just returned with her youth group from some kind of religious event. The minister had given a sermon on the difficulty of getting into heaven. She called it his sperm sermon. Between giggles Suzanne quoted him:

Do you know how hard it is to get into heaven, the minister asked.
Do you know how bad the odds are for any one of you?
Well, let me put it in terms you teenagers can understand.
I know what's on your minds.
Sex.
So let me tell you about heaven and sex.
Because I'm talking about sperm here.
Yes, sperm. And I want each of you to imagine
how many sperm come out of a single ejaculation.
60,000 is what I've read. Yep. Imagine that.
Now imagine all those sperm trying to fertilize one egg.
But only one lucky sperm ever becomes a man or a woman.
That's right, each one of you here today is one of the lucky sperm
walking around on human legs.
Many times not even one of the 60,000 even make it
through those Pearly Gates.
Have you ever wondered why?
No, I bet you haven't.
Well, I have . . .

Sick Pup

Nothing like a sick dog to take over your week. Sadie ate something nasty in the woods, and the vet was afraid it might have been chemicals of some kind because her reaction was so violent. She had to stay overnight in the animal hospital. Froda whined and whined for her. We all did. Now she's home, and both dogs are dining on chicken and rice like queens. (Froda won't stand for dog food if Sadie's over there chowing down the gourmet stuff.)

Last lines

I used to think novelists didn't have to worry about last lines. For a poet there's so much pressure on that last line.

But lately I've been noticing the last lines of chapters. Some are like the moment before the soap opera ends. They have to keep you tuning back in. There are always those almost revelations, dead bodies, what ifs . . . I don't think I'll ever write a novel, but I've been thinking of last lines for chapters. Here are a few. I keep thinking of more.

1. But when I opened my eyes the next morning, nothing looked the same. I had no clue where I was. Who was this man looking down at me?

2. If I said it three times, it would have to come true.

3. This is your brother, he said, pointing to the dead body at the door. But it wasn't. It wasn't anyone I knew. But where was my brother?

4. I knew it was just the end of Act I, and I had lost. Or had I?

5. I was careful. Each day I made sure I left no evidence.

6. Even when I stole a glass of water (I was so unbearably thirsty then, I couldn't resist that cold filtered water ), I washed the glass and sprayed it with Glass Plus, erasing all fingerprints.

7. But still I sensed that someone was watching, as if my body were being traced by someone I could never see.


8. But what if they looked too closely at the girl walking down the street in his daughter's clothes?

9. Did anyone anyone notice that she was a little taller, thinner, that a few blond hairs sometimes strayed beneath her cap?

10. Did they think she was just some foreign relative, or someone who had a reason to be here after all, in this place where no one had a reason or a place to be or an after all.

11. She told him exactly what he needed to do. She told him his life depended on it. But would he listen? No, of course not. Instead he walked right into the burning house without a backward glance.

Managing Perceptions

1. When I was girl, I loved Coke. Coke in a green bottle, which I called Cocola. Then one day my dad told me it was brown sugar water. That if I put a tooth in it overnight, the tooth would dissolve by morning. I never liked Coke again. I imagined I could taste my tooth decaying.

2. I grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia. When I was child there, Charlottesville was a sleepy nowhere town. People complained of the heat and the ticks. Now Charlottesville is THE place to live. Every time I go back to visit, a new glitzy shop or hotel or business is going in.

3. The other night I read a story about about a Pakistani woman who was all set to marry the man of her dreams. Then the guy heard a rumor that she had kissed another man when she was twelve. So he decided she was no longer the woman he thought she was. One kiss had changed her in his eyes forever.

4. The US agricultural dept. is afraid to allow Creekstone Premium Beef to test all its cows for Mad Cow Disease. It doesn't want any beef company to be able to claim its beef is safer than other meat. Then American might begin to question the safety of their burgers. After all, Americans now believe Mad Cow Disease only takes place in England and Canada.

5. My daughter's best friend used to have a sound machine. She couldn't sleep without the sound of the ocean. Then one night Suzanne spent the night. Why do you listen to static all night long? Suzanne asked. After that the friend's mom told me her daughter couldn't sleep for a week. The waves were no longer waves.

6. Sometimes I go to the bookstore and read the best sellers. I read the books that other people say are good reads. I don't necessarily like them. But the word, "best," promises me something. And I can almost imagine I am getting it, even if I am not. I have this feeling that's a metaphor for my life.

7. My sister gave me this CD that is supposed to help you calm down, love the world, be at peace. It makes little rain and binging noises. The directions warn that it won't work if you fall asleep. The minute I put it on, I fall sound asleep. I use it as a sedative. It's audio-Sominex.

8. A few years ago, I told a friend I didn't know how to kiss. I never felt sure what to do with the tongue. She gave me this book with deep kissing exercises. One of them was to pass a piece of candy--or some kind of sweet- from mouth to mouth. Ever since then I've kept my lips sealed tight. I don't want anything to do with kisses like that. Makes me think of left overs burped up.

9. When Bush was first elected, I remember thinking he might not be as bad as I feared. I had a friend who convinced me he'd be okay because he hired Rumsfeld.

10. I have this book by Pema Chodron called ALWAYS HAVE A JOYFUL MIND. The title reminds me of this story about the Harri Krishnas. They had this devotee who was always blissed out. They thought he was almost enlightened. Turned out he had a brain tumor that was turning him into a human cabbage.

11. I used to think of Zen as peaceful. Now I think of white noise and sandalwood incense, which makes me sneeze.

Blurble

I've been thinking maybe I should write a blurb collection.
Just in case anyone needs one.

One blurb could start very Zen-like. Like one of those Hirshfield poems.
(Does anyone really live like that? Like all Zen?)

Within this book is another book. An invisible book which is not the book but has the same cover, title, font, page numbers . . .

Ah . . . such BS. There is no other book. I up to my nose in BS today.

Messing with my cookies

Strange things have been happening. I mean

just a bit ago I was trying to access my blog
and I got this little note from blogger headquarters

Someone has functionally disabled your blogger cookies.

I couldn't get in here for a while.
What's this with my cookies?