A NOTE

A new poem of mine up at the Pebble Lake Review. Happy to be in some amazing company!

**

More soon. Too busy selling hats to think about anything. Moving so soon, and I have a lot to get in order.

JUST ONE BOOK

Just back in from Scotland, where I heard some horrible things about the UK's largest poetry (and short fiction, and crit...) publisher going under.

A plea here.

Please think about buying just one book from their massive catalog to help keep them in business.

OH WOW

CATHERINE PIERCE

This Is Not an Elegy, from Blackbird

At sixteen, I was illegal and brilliant,
my fingernails chewed to half-moons.
I took off my clothes in a late March
field. I had secret car wrecks,
secret hysteria. I opened my mouth
to swallow stars. In backseats
I learned the alchemy of guilt, lust,
and distance. I was unformed and total.
I swore like a sailor. But slowly the cops
stopped coming around. The heat lifted
its palms. The radio lost some teeth.

Now I see the landscape behind me
as through a Claude glass—
tinted deeper, framed just so, bits
of gilt edging the best parts.
I see my unlined face, a thousand
film stars behind the eyes. I was
every murderess, every whip-
thin alcoholic, every heroine
with the silver tongue. Always young
Paul Newman’s best girl. Always
a lightning sky behind each kiss.

Some days I watch myself
in the third person, speak to her
in the second. I say: I will
meet you in sleep. I will know you
by your stillness and your shaking.
By your second-hand gown.
By your bruises left by mouths
since forgotten. This is not
an elegy because I cannot bear
for it to be. It is only a tree branch
against the window. It is only a cherry
tomato slowly reddening in the garden.
I will put it in my mouth. It will
be sweet, and you will swallow.

STOP THE PRESSES

Why the UK is such a good place to be a poet.  Can you picture this spread in the New York Times?  I think it's absurd that we have so many national publications trumpeting the death of poetry rather than examining the state of its nation -- I mean, last time I checked, most of us were still kicking. Someone want to remind the public of that?

*

In Panera. Actually writing, for the first time in weeks, but of course I have no time left on my computer battery.   This is naturally why I've decided this moment to update my blog.

NO HIDDEN TRACK

My apartment in Madison (my apartment! in Madison!) has a claw-foot tub, French doors, and a fireplace.  This morning, I drove two hours there, handed the landlord my security deposit, and then drove the two hours back.  This is serious business.  So are the lace curtains I just ordered online.  Don't tell the boy.  He's thinking about applying for a visa to move in with me this fall.  He doesn't know about my secret cache of pictures like this:

or that he's going to drown in doilies and florals.

*

Congratulations to Nick on winning the Fulbright!  You're going to have an amazing time in Slovakia.  Now update your damn blog.

*

Reading again. Writing again. Well, reading again, anyway. I've taken a second job at a restaurant in town, and tonight is my rare night off -- spending it in bed, thumbing through a Wayne Miller collection, trying not to dog-ear every page.

From "Dear Sappho [In the vast history between us]":

Please believe me: we haven't

forgotten you--we walk

on our syllables (these shadows

of footsteps), we land 

deep in beauty at the expense

of ourselves.  Like color,

the stars keep arriving 

into their presence--arriving

from so long before you.

(from Only the Senses Sleep)

*

I am determinedly trying to grow this blog up.  With capital letters.  And links.  And less $*&^%#@ swear words.  Really the original purpose was to collage the things I love - scraps of poems, my days in words, the occasional claw-foot tub. (I am so ready for this claw-foot tub.) And after all the twitchy fervor of application season, I need some air.  So let's try a civilized format & see if it makes my content mind its manners.

IT'S OVER, AND

i'm headed to the university of wisconsin this fall!!

SOME GOOD NEWS

in the midst of all this - i just heard from pebble lake review, and they're publishing a poem of mine (an older one, and probably my gun-to-my-head favorite) in their health & illness issue this may.

looking at some workshops, maybe at the poetry center of chicago, that i could enroll in this summer, a way to brush up on things a little. heading out to visit illinois and wisconsin's programs in the next two weeks. repeating chin up, chin up, chin up...