Dear Professor,

Dear Professor,

I sometimes think that physics professors
don't even live in the real world.
It's like you live
in some hypothetical world.
Do you ever look out of your window
and see a hypotheses?

I love this question because I think it's the reverse. I think most of us non-physicists live in a hypothetical world, or rather a world made up of misconceptions about how things actually work. I suspect that physics professors have to spend a lot of time trying to get their students see what they are actually seeing.

I remember a drawing class in college in which the professor had us draw without looking at the page. He wanted us to learn to look, really look, and trace what we saw, as it is, not as we think it is or should appear.

To quote Einstein:

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

Einstein also said:

"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

The Karen and Nin Show

Karen Schubert and I are the featured readers today at Shawnee State University for the release party of their Women’s Center journal, Tapestries. We love to read together, so we're pretty excited.

I haven't had the chance to hear Karen read for a while. She's such a talented reader and poet. Here's a taste:

The rest of Karen's poem can be read here:

Karen's blog is In This Light.

I am not absolutely certain what I will be reading, but I promised to read a few from The Book of Orgasms. A few years ago, I announced at a reading that there would be no more orgasms and that I meant it. The audience was really unhappy with me.

Neil Carpathios's poem, "The Future of America"

Karen Schubert and I are going on the road today. We will be giving a reading at Shawnee State University where Neil Carpathios teaches. I love Neil's poetry. He's a poet whose work I have been following for years. I am so thrilled we have been invited to read there.
Above I've posted the beginning of one of his newer poems. The rest of the poem can be read in Mayday Magazine

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet

I am trying to figure out what Twitter is all about. I have my account at @NinAndrew, but I don't know what I am supposed to tweet . . .

Dear Shirley Temple,

Do you ever read an entire novel and, years later, remember only one odd detail?

I read Carson McCuller's Reflections in a Golden Eye over summer vacation when I was in seventh grade. All I remember was this line about a corporal who wrote Shirley Temple a letter every day. I was completely interested in that letter. What did he write? What would anyone write to Shirley Temple? I even tried to compose that letter but could not myself that I done a decent job.

I thought of this for some odd reason, now that the post office is in bad shape, now that my mother has passed away, and I no longer have anyone to write letters to.

I love letters. I love writing them. I love how they create an intimate small space. I love poems that are letters, post cards, or even notes left on the refrigerator for loved ones. Even if they are letters written to the world that never writes to me.

Which brings me back to Shirley Temple who, I am sure, never wrote back to the corporal.

Funny to think-- as a girl I barely knew who Shirley Temple was. There were silly quotes I sometimes heard attributed to her, like the one above. And all of those terrible perms we girls got, thanks to her. I remember trying to figure out if it was my hair that smelled or the recently skunked dog.

Of Poets and Angels

I tried to draw the look the people had who were listening to Tim Seibles reading last Tuesday night in the Jones Room at Youngstown State University.

It's a strange thing, but I swear sometimes you can hear people listening.

And it was such an incredible reading. I felt transformed afterwards. I know that sounds a little hyperbolic, but I wasn't the only one who felt it. One friend turned to me and said, he makes me want to write and write and write. A man seated behind me said, I think I could change the world if I felt like this all the time.

As he writes in his poem, "Familiar," in his new and wonderful book, Fast Animal

Familiar
Some are marked, some . . .

So many words, such fever: the names
of the strained inhabitants moving

around, waiting to be called--
my own life: the bending

of a man into something
else: did I change? Are you

changed? I'm sure
it happens. Yes, I believe it

has happened:

I am still spinning from that reading. I am still feeling inspired and moved. But I was also reminded of my time at Vermont College when one of my friends turned to me and said this funny line --
I thought poets were like angels. And I came here to study with my angels and they turned out to be a bunch of self-promoting, gossipy, cliquey, egotistical, sexist . . . She said this after overhearing after one of her mentors informed her that there were no women poets at VC worth studying with.

It's a funny thing, but I do think of certain poets as angels. Tim Seibles, Claire Bateman, and Tom Clark are three who come to mind right away. And all in their own unique ways--

I have been thinking of Tom a lot lately. A prolific writer and a brilliant mind, I swear his heart is bigger than the world can hold. His blog Tom Clark is like a little taste of heaven. Art, poetry, essays, insights, you name it . . . He was in an accident this week, and my thoughts are with him.

A poem by Tom that I love--I especially love that beatific strawberry.

Experience (Inside)

With this living hand this moment I was writing, and with the other holding to my mouth a nectarine--good god how fine--it went down soft pulpy, slushy, oozy--all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large beatified strawberry.

What I liked best to feel is the inside of a billiard ball, or the luscious spheroid of a plum.

What I liked best to look at, when I am out walking, are the waves the wind makes in the wheat when it moves across the fields above the ground.

from Junkets on a Sad Planet, p. 36

Interview with Carole Stone, Author of American Rhapsody

I interviewed Carole Stone for CavanKerry Press. She's a fascinating woman and a beautiful poet. Her parents died when she was a child, and much of her poetry is a reinvention of their lives. She talks in the interview about the nature of obsession and how it is an integral part of many poets' lives.

Part One
Part Two

Dear Professor Comics for Physics Friday

This is the comic I forgot to include in the series below. Flying these days is a little scary. It's especially scary when the stewardesses start doing something like pulling baggage from the cargo hold and placing it overhead in order to make weight. Or moving passengers around to balance the plane. I am told by a pilot that yes, they can feel it when the heavy passengers get up and move to the back of the plane.

Ah well. I am glad I am not flying anywhere for Easter.

And yeah, this plane looks a little odd. Planes aren't my strong suit. Drawing them or flying on them or even thinking about them.

Dear Professor Comics for Physics Friday

Dear Professor,

I was on this very small airplane
from Charlotte to Richmond,
and this XL man sat in the back
until the stewardess made him move
to the middle "to balance the plane."

I was pretty nervous
when he went to the bathroom.
But the stewardess said not to worry . . .
as long as he doesn't stay in there too long.
How long would that be?

Dear Professor,

I was on this plane, waiting for take-off
when the stewardess announced
that the airplane cargo hold was over its legal weight
so they would be taking bags from below
and stuffing them into the overhead compartments
and into the front closet.

Is that safe?

I posted one of these comics before, but I thought I would post a few physics comics on Fridays. And I wanted to post all of the questions about flying together, though I am suddenly remembering one more. Ah well.
These comics come from questions folks ask professors, usually my husband. And I keep wondering about writing an expanded edition of my Dear Professor collection.

An Ulta Store in Ohio after Allen Ginsberg

An Ulta Store in Ohio
after Allen Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Allen Ginsberg, for I have driven the rain-soaked streets of Youngstown, Ohio.

And in my despair, and longing for companionship, for someone to fill the ever-expanding void in my soul, I went into the neon Ulta Store, pondering your epic effusions.

What hair dyes and bleaches! What displays of shampoos and conditioners and mousses, Allen! Whole families shopping for body lotion, nail polish, and shaving creams at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the salon, getting their hair permed, babies crying! – And you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the shampoo bowl, massaging a blond boy’s scalp?

I saw you, Allen Ginsberg, childless, lonely old codger, poking among the eye shadows and lip liners, eyeing the male hair dressers . . . . I watched you tweeze your beard, your eyebrows, and nose hairs in the aisle.

I heard you asking questions: Who killed that woman’s hair? What price is beauty? And to the newly coiffed Don Juan, Are you my Angel?

I thought of this parody when I was shopping at the Ulta Store one night in the midst of a rain storm. The store was packed, and I saw this bearded fellow that reminded me so much of Allen Ginsberg. Suddenly I missed him. I so love his poem, "A Supermarket in California."

The rest of this poem and a few more of my poems are in Mipoesias at http://mipoesias.com/
The editor Didi Menendez is a talented portrait artist as well as editor, poet and writer.

If the link doesn't work well, try this in your search: http://mipo.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/mipoesias2.pdf

A First Literary Love

So who was your first literary love?

Harold. Harold and his purple crayon, those books by Crockett Johnson.

As a girl, I wanted a magic crayon to first draw the world
and then, to enter it.

An early favorite poem, because it reminded me of Harold and the Purple Crayon, Walt Whitman's "There Was a Child Went Forth."

Every time I read this poem, I think of Harold. I still love Harold.

There Was a Child Went Forth
Walt Whitman

THERE was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him . . .

What are your artistic goals?

I just read advice on what one should do for day 2 in order to become a better writer, or rather, a writer with a better platform.

For day 2: one should make a list of one's goals.

I like writing down my goals. I just don't like doing them.

The top of my desk is covered with lists of must-dos. I am sure I must do so many things. I am equally sure I won't . . .

The best made plans of mice and men
and me
swing aft and forth
and windward and hard to lee

But I suppose it's true . . .

as the best laid men say
foresight sometimes . . .
just sometimes
promises joy

But I do feel for that mouse
for whom the present only toucheth . . .

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e.
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

Who Am I?

So it's National Poetry Month, and I keep getting emails about all the events happening. One is the writing challenge, NAPO, to write a poem a day from prompts. If only I could write that fast. Another from Poets and Writers--is to build a better platform for marketing oneself. I am so unskilled at marketing that I can only stare at the first day's prompt: to define who I am. And now it's day 2 and I am still stuck on day 1.

I love the question, but the answers are always so unsatisfactory.

After years of philosophy and religion classes, I still have no clue . . . Two answers come to mind. One from Socrates (but of course):

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

And there from Bonhoeffer, whose works I loved, back when I read theology enthusiastically. I am reminded of his famous poem, "Who Am I?" The last stanza:

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.

—-
Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his cell in Berlin as the last days of his life and the last days of World War II ran out together.
As quoted in The Call by Os Guinness, p25.

Sayings after Philip Larkin

I think about this sometimes when I am writing and I find the familiar sayings filling in for the void in my logic . . .
Not that my parody does justice to Larkin, the great librarian-poet and jazz critic.

But really, I find myself asking . . .

What are these clichés for,
all these familiar sayings
about where we live, who we are, what we do . . .
They come, they speak to me and for me
time and time again . . .

Days
by Philip Larkin


What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Museum of Beautiful Humans

Musée Des Beaux Animaux

The human position, we already knew: a global crisis
was taking place while we were eating lunch . . .

It was only natural, perhaps, how everyone turned away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; a man on an oil tanker
Might have heard the last splash, the animal bark or cries . . .
But for him it was unimportant--or perhaps it was just
A small price to pay, a few animals disappearing forever
beneath the waves as the expansive ship glided by.

Musée des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Another Climate Change Comic

A first post for a week of Climate Change Comics

Two Types

from Carson McCullers

“Listen,” F. Jasmine said. “What I’ve been trying to say is this. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that I am I, and you are you? I am F. Jasmine Addams. And you are Berenice Sadie Brown. And we can look at each other, and touch each other, and stay together year in and year out in the same room. Yet always I am I, and you are you. And I can’t ever be anything else but me, and you can ever be anything else but you. Have you ever thought of that? And does it seem to you strange? ”

― Carson McCullers, Member Of The Wedding

It's so hot already! I know that when everyone talks about climate change, they compare us to the proverbial frog in hot water. I am beginning to feel more like a lobster dropped into boiling water.

305

Emily Dickinson

The difference between Despair
And Fear – is like the One
Between the instant of a Wreck
And when the Wreck has been -

The Mind is smooth – no Motion -
Contented as the Eye
Upon the Forehead of a Bust -
That knows – it cannot see -

Dear Professor

Dear Professor,

I was on this very small airplane
from Charlotte to Richmond,
and this XL man sat in the back
until the stewardess made him move
to the middle "to balance the plane."

I was pretty nervous
when he went to the bathroom.
But the stewardess said not to worry . . .
as long as he doesn't stay in there too long.
How long would that be?

And little town . . .

What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

from "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

I think of these lines when I think of towns like Cheshire, Ohio, towns which are emptied of people, but the residents could neither return nor talk of what happened there.

The same, it seems, happens to people whose water is contaminated due to fracking fluids. Once they settle their law suits, they are silenced. As a consequence, the radio is full of bold claims that no one's water has been contaminated.

The Secret Life of Mannequins

The Secret Life of Mannequins

My new chapbook is out from Kattywompus Press. I love chapbooks, and I really like the editors of this tiny new press in Cleveland. I love the brevity of chapbooks. I think of them as test-runs, and I feel more free to print whatever I feel like at the time. I think everyone should write a few chapbooks in between their larger works.

This particular collection has a few of my semi-essays in it. By semi-essays, I suppose I mean what most people call creative nonfiction, a term that has always troubled me. How much is creative and how much is nonfiction? Sometimes I read samples of creative nonfiction in magazines, and the pieces seem to have nothing to do with reality, and everything to do with creativity . . . I am not sure what to make of them.

A few examples from my chapbook:

Stock Market Cycle

And a poem (which I have since edited a bit):

"Learning to Write the MFA Poem"

The Fiddler from the Boonies

The Fiddler of Dooney
by W.B. Yeats

WHEN I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Moharabuiee.

I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.

When we come at the end of time,
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With ‘Here is the fiddler of Dooney!’
And dance like a wave of the sea.

The Man with the Blue Guitar

The Man with the Blue Guitar
by Wallace Stevens

I

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

Brady's Leap will be playing at Kravitz Deli on Belmont this Thursday from 6:00 - 9:00 and at Kravitz Deli at the Poland Library on Saturday from 4:00-7:00.

On a Stationary Bike by the Window

On a Stationary Bike by the Window
by Eric Anderson

The exhaustion on the face of the man;
Pedals on, still not there.

In a Station of the Metro
by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

What's in my Pocket

What Do I See
by Gertrude Stein

A very little snail.
A medium sized turkey.
A small band of sheep.
A fair orange tree.
All nice wives are like that.
Listen to them from here.
Oh.
You did not have to answer.
Here.
Yes.

Beloved Ape and Judging Book Contests

I was asked to judge another contest, but alas, I can't do it this time. How could I? I who usually hate winning books. I who love runts, loose ends, mistakes, half-baked books full of fragments and lost souls.

I was reading for a contest once, and there was book with a drawing of an ape in the middle with the words, You call that evolution? You humans are a MISTAKE! There was also a handwritten note taped into the manuscript -- an apology from God for the creation of mankind. Every poem was in a different font, and some were double-spaced, some single- spaced, some hand-written. In script no less. I love script. Beautiful script--obviously written with a fountain pen.

That book was my secret winner. The book was called Beloved Ape.

I sometimes dream of starting a press. I would call it Beloved Apes.

Interview with Judith Hannan

interview

interview part 2

Women for Rick Santorum

Okay, so it's election day. I have been trying to stay away from politics (not sure I will keep that up), but why is it that the more fundamentalist a religion is, the more misogynist it is?

Did you know there are Burka Barbies?

DEAR _________:

Am I the only one who receives these emails?

Clearly I have some exciting things going on, whoever I am!

Away for a week . . .

I will be away from the blogosphere until next week.
My mother's service is this weekend.

A Certain Style of Hair

There are certain styles of hair,
("Up-dos" they call them)
At Darlene's Salon,
That impresses, like the heft
Of cathedral tunes.

After Emily Dickinson:

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

These updos are really popular around here around weddings and prom times. All kinds of updos--like high rise apartment buildings--on top of young girls' heads.

I have a habit of imagining each hairdo as a kind of music or poem. From folk to classical to rock. Today, at the salon, I saw folk music turn into classical.

And there's always country music . . .

A Few Ways of Looking at a Hairdo

5.

At the sight of her hair falling,
A young girl cries out sharply.

6.

A woman is moving.
A woman's new hairdo is not moving.

7.

So which one do you prefer:
The beauty of anticipation,
The beauty of suggestion,
(This will look just real fine on you . . . )
Or the reality of reflection
When you hair is scattered across the floor?

8.

O thin ladies at Darlene's Salon,
Why are you all platinum blondes?

9.

I know your local accents
Your slangy rhythms and double negatives:
I don't know nothing!
You say. You who are involved
In all the knowing of this town.

(after "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens)