(I wasn't online at home at the time I wrote this, Saturday afternoon, but thought I'd post it now)
it’s raining today, a steady, cooling, soaking rain, with some light thunder, the day after I noticed how low the river was and how sad the mudflats looked in the center of it. I felt a little guilty for wanting nothing but sunshine this summer, and now we’re getting rain on a day when I had no outdoor activities at all planned. again, it is perfect. perfect, perfect, perfect. overwhelmingly so, and scarily so, and I just want to live up to it all.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Yay, COTA
Reasons I like riding the bus:
1) seeing the pregnant mom with three young children and being glad it's not me
2) accidentally eavesdropping on a cell phone conversation and realizing that I still understand more Spanish than I thought I did
3) not having to drive, or think, or pay attention to anything for a little while. feeling like i'm "supposed" to be just reading or daydreaming or playing games on my cell phone.
4) no parking hassles
5) no parking tickets
6) relinquishing control and my obsession with being on time
1) seeing the pregnant mom with three young children and being glad it's not me
2) accidentally eavesdropping on a cell phone conversation and realizing that I still understand more Spanish than I thought I did
3) not having to drive, or think, or pay attention to anything for a little while. feeling like i'm "supposed" to be just reading or daydreaming or playing games on my cell phone.
4) no parking hassles
5) no parking tickets
6) relinquishing control and my obsession with being on time
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Summer Reading Part 3
Yesterday was a deliciously book-filled day. After work, I walked up to the library. I returned Autobiography of Red; I'd meant to re-read it carefully, but after re-reading a few sections, I decided not to. While I appreciate that it's a very smart, very unique book, and while the story did stick with me, the poetry of it, the language of it, didn't really connect with me. So I returned one book and picked up four more, including Czeslaw Milosz's Selected Poems which I absolutely love, then I took the bus up to Clintonville to spend my gift certificate at Areopagitica Book Store. Oh, I love that place! It's a used bookstore, in all the best ways: it smells of old books, it's usually empty, you can stumble across all kinds of hidden gems, and the proprietors lurk quietly and can tell you where anything in the store is. I got there right around 6:00, only to see on the sign that they are supposed to close at 6:00 on Mondays. The door was still open and the shelf of clearance books still on the sidewalk, so I walked in and asked if they closed at 6:00 and the man behind the desk said he'd decided to stay open that evening. So I wandered a bit, picked up Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet (which I've read before but need to own) and The Delicacy and Strength of Lace, letters between James Wright and Leslie Marmon Silko, and I ordered a copy of A Wild Perfection (the collection of James Wright's letter that I have from the library right now). I've always enjoyed James Wright's poetry, but reading the letters is just so interesting; I'm maybe a third of the way through the book and there are so many things I'd like to go back to read again and think about.
Then I had a nice coffee break with Sam, then went home, had a veggie chili dog and a spinach salad for dinner, then read and read some more. I am so in love with Milosz! If there is one critique I could make of my assigned reading in college, it is the almost complete lack of poetry in translation. I never read Neruda or Paz or Akhmatova in college; I've discovered all of them later, through friends or my own reading. I did read and fall in love with Rilke (thank you, John Wylam, for including one of the Elegies in the English 205 course packet), but his is the only translated poetry I remember reading in college. Anyway, Milosz is wonderful: poignant and smart and visual and just altogether lovely. So I read a bit of that, then I finished the novel I started last week: The Shadow Lines, by Amitav Ghosh. The second half was better than the first. The whole novel jumps around frequently in time, all through the childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood of the narrator; it can be confusing, especially early on until the reader gets a handle on the basics of what happened when and where. By the second section, one plot point has been resolved and the reader has a decent grasp on the overall arc of the story, so the second half reads easier than the first. I enjoyed the book, and it's a worthwhile read, but not super-outstanding.
I need to write. I want to write. I get ideas for poems, but I am embroiled in some strange sort of conflict with myself over actually sitting down to write them. I think on one hand, I want to save my writing for once I get to grad school, as though I'm afraid if I write a lot this summer, I won't have anything to say in the fall. On the other, I feel like I really should get into the habit of writing, but I'm dragging my feet against that obligation; I don't respond well to pressure or obligations, and telling me I "should" or "have to" do something is one of the best ways to keep me from doing it.
Then I had a nice coffee break with Sam, then went home, had a veggie chili dog and a spinach salad for dinner, then read and read some more. I am so in love with Milosz! If there is one critique I could make of my assigned reading in college, it is the almost complete lack of poetry in translation. I never read Neruda or Paz or Akhmatova in college; I've discovered all of them later, through friends or my own reading. I did read and fall in love with Rilke (thank you, John Wylam, for including one of the Elegies in the English 205 course packet), but his is the only translated poetry I remember reading in college. Anyway, Milosz is wonderful: poignant and smart and visual and just altogether lovely. So I read a bit of that, then I finished the novel I started last week: The Shadow Lines, by Amitav Ghosh. The second half was better than the first. The whole novel jumps around frequently in time, all through the childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood of the narrator; it can be confusing, especially early on until the reader gets a handle on the basics of what happened when and where. By the second section, one plot point has been resolved and the reader has a decent grasp on the overall arc of the story, so the second half reads easier than the first. I enjoyed the book, and it's a worthwhile read, but not super-outstanding.
I need to write. I want to write. I get ideas for poems, but I am embroiled in some strange sort of conflict with myself over actually sitting down to write them. I think on one hand, I want to save my writing for once I get to grad school, as though I'm afraid if I write a lot this summer, I won't have anything to say in the fall. On the other, I feel like I really should get into the habit of writing, but I'm dragging my feet against that obligation; I don't respond well to pressure or obligations, and telling me I "should" or "have to" do something is one of the best ways to keep me from doing it.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Summer reading Part 2, and etc.
So, I think last night's post may have been my first drunken blog update. Fun. I had taken the day off yesterday, to recover from the weekend, so I slept late, walked the dog, then spent a couple hours at a coffee shop. After dinner, I decided to drink some wine that was left at my apartment a couple weeks ago and read poetry, which is what I was doing when I got the text inviting me out on a Monday. If I hadn't already been drinking, and/or if I wasn't still in weekend mode, I would not have gone, but as it was, I did, and it was fun.
Anyway, on the reading update I meant to give... I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being last week. Read Autobiography of Red yesterday, and will re-read it soon. As I was reading, I didn't love it; much of it really did not read as poetry for me, more like chopped up lines of prose. But the images and story have stuck with me, and I am looking forward to re-reading it. What else? I finished Late Wife and loved it. Still working on the James Wright letters. Oh, and I read Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire (of Wicked fame) - I'd read his Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and found it lacking, and this wasn't as good as Wicked either, but better than the other.
Thinking a lot about this summer and these three holiday weekends in a row and how different they are. Pride is a celebration of community, a defiant assertion of identity, and (for many of us) a cathartic, Dionysian, revel where we can drink and dance and kiss and fuck our sorrows and issues away in a safe place. Comfest is a "party with a purpose" as the slogan goes; it is idealistic and rejuvenating, an escape into an idyllic mindset for a weekend which can inform and inspire and anchor us as we go back out into reality. And now this coming weekend is the dichotomy of Red White & Boom on Friday (the patriotic, mass-culture, traditional display of fireworks downtown) and the DooDah parade on Saturday (complete anarchy and irreverence).
Next week, I'll start planning my move. And my going away party.
Anyway, on the reading update I meant to give... I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being last week. Read Autobiography of Red yesterday, and will re-read it soon. As I was reading, I didn't love it; much of it really did not read as poetry for me, more like chopped up lines of prose. But the images and story have stuck with me, and I am looking forward to re-reading it. What else? I finished Late Wife and loved it. Still working on the James Wright letters. Oh, and I read Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire (of Wicked fame) - I'd read his Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and found it lacking, and this wasn't as good as Wicked either, but better than the other.
Thinking a lot about this summer and these three holiday weekends in a row and how different they are. Pride is a celebration of community, a defiant assertion of identity, and (for many of us) a cathartic, Dionysian, revel where we can drink and dance and kiss and fuck our sorrows and issues away in a safe place. Comfest is a "party with a purpose" as the slogan goes; it is idealistic and rejuvenating, an escape into an idyllic mindset for a weekend which can inform and inspire and anchor us as we go back out into reality. And now this coming weekend is the dichotomy of Red White & Boom on Friday (the patriotic, mass-culture, traditional display of fireworks downtown) and the DooDah parade on Saturday (complete anarchy and irreverence).
Next week, I'll start planning my move. And my going away party.
Monday, June 29, 2009
The tail end of a long weekend
(or the most perfect summer)
It it late, but I can not motivate myself to go to bed. I only have a three-day work week, so it's a little hard to care about a lack of sleep. I, against my better judgement, accepted an invitation to meet J for drinks tonight, on a Monday, and am now, slightly tipsily, taking advantage of the miracle that is internet access at home.
Comfest was last weekend. It was perfect. It was hot and sunny and sweaty and dirty and crazy and drunk and sad and amazing. I love my life here, I love it so much and am so very grateful for it and for everyone who makes it what it is, and it is so very very hard to think about voluntarily leaving all of this, BUT I am still so excited to be going to school and to be doing an MFA and I KNOW it is the right decision.
The weekend before was Pride, which was also perfect, in all the same hot, sunny, drunk, friends-I-adore ways.
It's hard to be so happy. It's hard to see someone I was happy with be with someone else. It's hard to be disappointed but not heartbroken, to know things work the way they're meant to work. It's hard to feel so lucky to have been with her, and to have the people in my life that I do. But I'm lucky that these are my difficulties.
I am lucky. I am happy. This truly is the summer I wanted. The most perfect summer I can conjur. I am like the child whose world revolves around her; I wanted a perfect summer to say goodbye to Ohio, and I am getting it.
It it late, but I can not motivate myself to go to bed. I only have a three-day work week, so it's a little hard to care about a lack of sleep. I, against my better judgement, accepted an invitation to meet J for drinks tonight, on a Monday, and am now, slightly tipsily, taking advantage of the miracle that is internet access at home.
Comfest was last weekend. It was perfect. It was hot and sunny and sweaty and dirty and crazy and drunk and sad and amazing. I love my life here, I love it so much and am so very grateful for it and for everyone who makes it what it is, and it is so very very hard to think about voluntarily leaving all of this, BUT I am still so excited to be going to school and to be doing an MFA and I KNOW it is the right decision.
The weekend before was Pride, which was also perfect, in all the same hot, sunny, drunk, friends-I-adore ways.
It's hard to be so happy. It's hard to see someone I was happy with be with someone else. It's hard to be disappointed but not heartbroken, to know things work the way they're meant to work. It's hard to feel so lucky to have been with her, and to have the people in my life that I do. But I'm lucky that these are my difficulties.
I am lucky. I am happy. This truly is the summer I wanted. The most perfect summer I can conjur. I am like the child whose world revolves around her; I wanted a perfect summer to say goodbye to Ohio, and I am getting it.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
a snippet
Where is the line between
sun and shade? It moves
you know as an afternoon
flows on. We start in the sun
and end in shadow, pinked
and chilled in the evening.
sun and shade? It moves
you know as an afternoon
flows on. We start in the sun
and end in shadow, pinked
and chilled in the evening.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Lit survey (from a facebook friend)
1) What author do you own the most books by?
Without looking at my bookshelf, I can't be sure, but I think it's probably Anne Rice. I know, that's embarrassing. I went though a vampire phase when I was younger, what can I say?
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
I don't own more than one copy of any book. There are plenty of short stories and poems that appear in more than one anthology I own, but no single book appears more than once in my collection.
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
I didn't notice it, but now that you mention it......
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
hmmm, I guess I'm pretty good at separating fiction from reality ;)
5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
I'm not sure. The Vampire Lestat, by Anne Rice. Or Tolkein's LOTR trilogy (since I read it the first time at a young age). I go back to escapist favorites like that, with their associated memories of the past, when I'm bored or depressed.
6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Probably something by Betsy Byers.
7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
hmmm.... Probably a scifi novel I picked up at the library solely for it's title: Till Human Voices Wake Us. I loved the Eliot reference, but the book did not interest me at all.
8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
I am loving Claudia Emerson's poems in Late Wife!
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
That's not my style. Read what you love.
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
uhm, I feel like I should probably have an intelligent suggestion here, but I don't.
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Nothing comes to mind. I generally don't like book to move adaptations.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Anything by Dan Brown. Keep him away from me and next to airport toilets! Gracias! (Lol! I'm keeping this answer directly from Tory, because it's funny, and I agree!)
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
hmmm..... none come to mind.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
I read plenty of fantasy and scifi, "genre fiction" if you will. Can't say just one book. I did read the Harry Potter series, but I have however NOT read Twilight. I grew out of my vampire phase when I was about 19.
15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
oooh, good question. Uhm, The Sound and the Fury, or Vanity Fair? Those are the first that come to mind.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
hmmm, I've never seen anything too obscure. Maybe Much Ado About Nothing?
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
French.
18) Roth or Updike?
Roth, definitely.
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
That is a toss-up. I've really not read much of either.
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare, of course!
21) Austen or Eliot?
Eliot. Go ahead and take away my chick card. It's okay. I admit it: I don't love Jane Austen.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Probably Medieval/Renaissance. And nonfiction. And my complete lack of a background in theory. I fear this will haunt me in the coming years.
23) What is your favorite novel?
The God of Small Things, by Arundahti Roy. If I have to pick just one.
24) Play?
A Doll's House, by Ibsen. Maybe. Or, this isn't a play per se, but Twilight Los Angeles, by Anna Deveare Smith, is absolutely brilliant, and a crazy-important historical document about race and class and violence in the 90s.
25) Poem?
How about book of poetry? Rilke's Duino Elegies (David Young's translation). Hands down. Going back to question 9, if I could tell everyone to read one book, this might be it. It speaks so beautifully about life and death and what it really means to be human and to be an artist.
26) Essay?
"A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf, if I have to pick one. That's a classic. I read a lot of contemporary essays on politics, culture, gender issues, gay issues, globalization, environment, etc.
27) Short story?
I haven't read much short fiction lately, so I'm not sure I can answer this. I will say though that I read "Brokeback Mountain" years before it was made into a movie and found it a wonderful, moving story. This is an improper comment for a writer, but short stories are perhaps my least favorite genre. I much prefer my fiction at novel length.
28) Work of nonfiction?
Kurt Vonnegut, Man Without a Country
29) Who is your favorite writer?
Oh, goodness.... Most anyone I've mentioned here already. Plus Whitman, Yeats, Edith Wharton, Michael Chabon, Salman Rushdie, Richard Hugo, James Wright, Carolyn Forche, uhm, etc, etc, etc.....
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Meh, everyone sees value in different things.
31) What is your desert island book?
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Plenty of variety, and thousands of pages, to keep me busy.
32) And... what are you reading right now?
Late Wife: Poems, by Claudia Emerson (wonderful)
A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright (wonderful)
American Sublime, by Elizabeth Alexander (meh)
Without looking at my bookshelf, I can't be sure, but I think it's probably Anne Rice. I know, that's embarrassing. I went though a vampire phase when I was younger, what can I say?
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
I don't own more than one copy of any book. There are plenty of short stories and poems that appear in more than one anthology I own, but no single book appears more than once in my collection.
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
I didn't notice it, but now that you mention it......
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
hmmm, I guess I'm pretty good at separating fiction from reality ;)
5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
I'm not sure. The Vampire Lestat, by Anne Rice. Or Tolkein's LOTR trilogy (since I read it the first time at a young age). I go back to escapist favorites like that, with their associated memories of the past, when I'm bored or depressed.
6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Probably something by Betsy Byers.
7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
hmmm.... Probably a scifi novel I picked up at the library solely for it's title: Till Human Voices Wake Us. I loved the Eliot reference, but the book did not interest me at all.
8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
I am loving Claudia Emerson's poems in Late Wife!
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
That's not my style. Read what you love.
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
uhm, I feel like I should probably have an intelligent suggestion here, but I don't.
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Nothing comes to mind. I generally don't like book to move adaptations.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Anything by Dan Brown. Keep him away from me and next to airport toilets! Gracias! (Lol! I'm keeping this answer directly from Tory, because it's funny, and I agree!)
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
hmmm..... none come to mind.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
I read plenty of fantasy and scifi, "genre fiction" if you will. Can't say just one book. I did read the Harry Potter series, but I have however NOT read Twilight. I grew out of my vampire phase when I was about 19.
15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
oooh, good question. Uhm, The Sound and the Fury, or Vanity Fair? Those are the first that come to mind.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
hmmm, I've never seen anything too obscure. Maybe Much Ado About Nothing?
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
French.
18) Roth or Updike?
Roth, definitely.
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
That is a toss-up. I've really not read much of either.
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare, of course!
21) Austen or Eliot?
Eliot. Go ahead and take away my chick card. It's okay. I admit it: I don't love Jane Austen.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Probably Medieval/Renaissance. And nonfiction. And my complete lack of a background in theory. I fear this will haunt me in the coming years.
23) What is your favorite novel?
The God of Small Things, by Arundahti Roy. If I have to pick just one.
24) Play?
A Doll's House, by Ibsen. Maybe. Or, this isn't a play per se, but Twilight Los Angeles, by Anna Deveare Smith, is absolutely brilliant, and a crazy-important historical document about race and class and violence in the 90s.
25) Poem?
How about book of poetry? Rilke's Duino Elegies (David Young's translation). Hands down. Going back to question 9, if I could tell everyone to read one book, this might be it. It speaks so beautifully about life and death and what it really means to be human and to be an artist.
26) Essay?
"A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf, if I have to pick one. That's a classic. I read a lot of contemporary essays on politics, culture, gender issues, gay issues, globalization, environment, etc.
27) Short story?
I haven't read much short fiction lately, so I'm not sure I can answer this. I will say though that I read "Brokeback Mountain" years before it was made into a movie and found it a wonderful, moving story. This is an improper comment for a writer, but short stories are perhaps my least favorite genre. I much prefer my fiction at novel length.
28) Work of nonfiction?
Kurt Vonnegut, Man Without a Country
29) Who is your favorite writer?
Oh, goodness.... Most anyone I've mentioned here already. Plus Whitman, Yeats, Edith Wharton, Michael Chabon, Salman Rushdie, Richard Hugo, James Wright, Carolyn Forche, uhm, etc, etc, etc.....
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Meh, everyone sees value in different things.
31) What is your desert island book?
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Plenty of variety, and thousands of pages, to keep me busy.
32) And... what are you reading right now?
Late Wife: Poems, by Claudia Emerson (wonderful)
A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright (wonderful)
American Sublime, by Elizabeth Alexander (meh)
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