Do you agree with number 1?

I like this list that a friend of mine posted of the 100 Greatest Writers of All Time.  Many fantastic poets are included along with some interesting facts and photography.  I like the Saul Bellow photo myself. 

A few excerpts:

Of Ezra Pound:  "Somewhere between the worst person who was a great poet and the greatest poet who was an asshole"

Of Emily Dickinson:  "She is in every poet we read, every word that is written. Even when she is not, she is there, in her lacks."

Of Ovid:  "Invented eroticism."

They call me Slug Savior.

Yesterday morning I woke up and there was a slug on my bathroom floor!  My first reaction was, That is a slug.  My second reaction was, Huh, I guess I'm not that bothered by it.  I mean, slugs are not known for speed.  I had plenty of time to pee and think about the slug situation before I actually had to deal with it.  It was then that I decided I wanted to save it. 

This was new territory for me.  I'll be the first to tell you that I'm a big wuss when it comes to creepy crawlies.  I have genuine arachnophobia.  The very sight of even a fake stuffed Halloween spider sends electric currents down my back.  It's something about the legs that freaks me out.  Ew, just writing about it gives me shivers.  Okay.  Deep breaths.  So whenever the spiders find me--and they always do--my two options are to either drown them in Raid or alert my roommate, who, being the adult person that she is, will calmly handle the situation and take the spider outside to let it live and procreate and GAH GROSS!

Okay, enough with the spiders.  Back to yesterday's slug.  I felt instinctively that since I did not recoil at the sight of it, I was emotionally equipped to handle said slug disposal myself.  I've always had a theory that since leggy insects bothered me, I could handle slithery things like snakes and worms.  This was my chance to prove it. 

My plan of action was to get a piece of paper out of the printer, lay it down on the ground, and wait for the slug to creep its way onto it.  It didn't take as long as you would think.  The slug was actually pretty keen.  Maybe because the piece of paper that I grabbed had a recipe for West African peanut soup on it, I don't know.  Anyway, phase one of slug removal was completed.  Phase two was to transport the slug paper through my bedroom, around my bed, through the hall, through the living room and out the front door.  At first I thought I would wear gloves, but then I realized the thing about slugs is that they will cling to anything for dear life.  Once that became evident, I did not worry about the slug sliding around onto anything, namely me. 

Phase three was to put the slug outside, thereby releasing it into the wild and hopefully saving its life.  This proved slightly more challenging due to the aforementioned slug grip on the paper.  I tried to angle the paper so he would just slither off, but he kind of went into a ball of fear, so I just set the paper down outside the door and figured I'd check back later to see if he was gone.  I then proceeded to accost my roommate in the middle of her getting ready for work with the tale of my heroic slug rescue.  It went something like this:  "Omi, there was a SLUG in my BATHROOM and I saved it!  Me!  I saved it!!!"  Oh, the humility. 

She was suitably impressed and wrinkled her nose at the prospect of the slug in the apartment.  She, Savior of Spiders, is not so much a fan of the leg-lacking creepies.  I told her I put the slug outside.  She opened the door to go to work and saw the paper.  Omi:  "Why is there a recipe outside our door . . . OH.  EW!"

We are a great team, don't you think?

Wild Gratitude

Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
And put my fingers into her clean cat's mouth,
And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens,
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
In everyone of the splintered London streets,

And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke's
With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude,
And his grave prayers for the other lunatics,
And his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry.
All day today—August 13, 1983—I remembered how
Christopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759,
For its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience.

This was the day that he blessed the Postmaster General
"And all conveyancers of letters" for their warm humanity,
And the gardeners for their private benevolence
And intricate knowledge of the language of flowers,
And the milkmen for their universal human kindness.
This morning I understood that he loved to hear—
As I have heard—the soft clink of milk bottles
On the rickety stairs in the early morning,

And how terrible it must have seemed
When even this small pleasure was denied him.
But it wasn't until tonight when I knelt down
And slipped my hand into Zooey's waggling mouth
That I remembered how he'd called Jeoffry "the servant
Of the Living God duly and daily serving Him,"
And for the first time understood what it meant.
Because it wasn't until I saw my own cat

Whine and roll over on her fluffy back
That I realized how gratefully he had watched
Jeoffry fetch and carry his wooden cork
Across the grass in the wet garden, patiently
Jumping over a high stick, calmly sharpening
His claws on the woodpile, rubbing his nose
Against the nose of another cat, stretching, or
Slowly stalking his traditional enemy, the mouse,
A rodent, "a creature of great personal valour,"
And then dallying so much that his enemy escaped.

And only then did I understand
It is Jeoffry—and every creature like him—
Who can teach us how to praise—purring
In their own language,
Wreathing themselves in the living fire.

-Edward Hirsch

Poetry meet art. Art, poetry.

My dear friend Angela is coming to visit me in a couple weeks!  I'm so excited to see her, it made me open a box of pictures that she had drawn for me one birthday.  More than a few years ago, she illustrated some of my poems as a gift, and I had them framed and hanging on my wall in my old apartment.  Since The Great Move of 2010, I haven't put them back up yet.  I was trying to figure out why and I wonder if it's because I don't want to commit that much to this new place.  I like the apartment okay, but it's just a place to live, not a home like the last one.  Possibly this is because I haven't put up any pictures.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take photos of her artwork and post them here.  At least I'll feel at home on my blog.

This one accompanies a poem written about a trip to Venice I took with my family.  It's called "A Native's Dream":

 

This one is "Through the Keyhole," written at a particularly angsty time in college:

 

I realize it might be hard to read, which makes me thankful for my shoddy photographic skills.

And finally this one you might be familiar with already:

 

 

A Native's Dream

Rain ruined my first impression 

of Saint Mark's Square, flooded

enough to force people to balance, elevated

on wooden boards while we sought refuge

in the cathedral, guarded 

by bronze horses,

with my father, quite taken 

by the mosaic tile floors

slanting toward the altar.

"How long do you suppose," 

he asked, head bowed, 

"it took them to piece this place together?" 

I forgot to answer

in awe of those flashing cameras.

We struck out again into December

toward jade-colored waves that spilled over

concrete docks on the Grand Canal.  

Gondoliers stood in the wet drops like needles

and called to us, offering

special deals "for only today."

One young man in a black cap promised

in exchange for 80,000 lira

to wipe down the vinyl seats on his gondola himself.

My father agreed, making his familiar declaration

that this was "his city" because he came from

a full line of Venetians with trademark blue eyes, dark hair.

Our guide squinted his brown eyes and held out his hand.

We sat rocking in the boat under our huge umbrella,

the young man at the helm like a tired god

informing us that he was also a fireman.  Luca 

told my father how one could only be a gondolier

if he father was, and his father before him.  

As we passed under the Bridge of Sighs, 

the trail of my fingers swirled the canal like marble.

I'm like that guy who wrote a love letter about his typewriter except about food.

Yesterday I gave a pasta-making demonstration to some people I work for.  I was kind of nervous about it because I wanted to show them how to use their hands to mix the dough and not a food processor, which is something I've only done once but I think it tastes better.  Yeah, I probably should have practiced, but I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal.  Instead I went with talking about the process of making pasta and putting off actually making it for as long as possible.  I figured maybe they would forget why I was there?  I don't know.  Anyway, it didn't work, and while they were looking at me expectantly I took the first step and measured out the flour.  It's funny how something so simple can calm you down.  Measuring flour I know.  Cracking eggs?  Old hat.  Next came the tricky part of incorporating one into the other.  You make a "well" and sort of pinch the flour into the eggs.  As I was doing that I realized that I needed to be explaining as I went along.  One of the people got out a video camera.  My very own cooking show!

The thing about pasta as I've said before, is that it's not difficult to make really.  It just takes a lot of time and upper body strength.  Maybe I was more anxious about that last part, but as you knead the dough you think, wow I'm really earning this meal!  And the great thing about teaching is that if you show them how to do it once, you can make the students do the rest of the work. 

One of my "students" made an excellent point about the process of learning from a *cough cough* expert in a craft.  It's a shared experience doesn't happen often enough these days.  People teach themselves how to do things all the time using the internet or TV, but when another person takes the time to show you something, then you will always associate them with that process.  What a nice idea.

All in all, we came out with two great batches of fresh pasta, one of which we ate for lunch.  As the Barefoot Contessa would say,"How bad can that be?"

You Begin

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

-Margaret Atwood

The error of my Wei

I was trying to find a poem I remembered reading a long time ago by the Chinese poet Wang Wei.  The teacher who introduced him to me used to pronounce his name as if it sounded like "wrong way," which she thought was hilarious.  It's been maybe 12 years since I last saw the poem, but the imagery struck me at the time.  I even recall copying it into a notebook.  I don't know where the notebook is now- probably rotting in a box full of angst-ridden verses- but I think this was it:

Stopping at Incense Storing Temple

I did not know the incense storing temple,
I walked a few miles into the clouded peaks.
No man on the path between the ancient trees,
A bell rang somewhere deep among the hills.
A spring sounded choked, running down steep rocks,
The green pines chilled the sunlight's colored rays.
Come dusk, at the bend of a deserted pool,
Through meditation I controlled passion's dragon.

Maybe it was the bell that got me.  You all know I love a good bell ringing.  Looking at this poem now, though, it's just not living up to the impression I had of it.  Luckily, I stumbled onto the writings of the lovely Japanese poet Izumi Shikibu, which cheered me up.  Despite lacking the heterography of Mr. Wang's name, I find her delightful. 

Here's one for the people of Japan right now.  Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

“Although the wind ...”

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.

It's probably a good thing I'm no longer a copy editor.

Some days I feel like my brain just doesn't have time for my crap, so it makes up its own shortcuts when I'm writing.  For instance, as I typed that last sentence it decided that combining the words "my" and "brain" would be easier, so I typed "I feel like by just doesn't have time." 

And sometimes my brain decides that the word "of" would look prettier with a "v" like this: ov.  It was funny the first few times in college, brain, but now not so much when I have to correct all my emails. 

What really concerns me are the days when my brain thinks with an accent.  Like when I had to write the word "wives" yesterday and it came out "woives."  That's not a typo.  I'm actually thinking "woives."  What is that, cockney?  I like England, too, brain, but no one understands your dialect.   

I get the idea of thinking phonetically when you're just learning a language, but words like "of" should not be tripping me up at this point in my life.  Is this some kind of latent disorder that's emerging or am I just really tired?


The Local Language

The way she puts her fingers to his chest when she greets him.

The way an old man quiets himself,

or that another man waits, and waits a long time, before speaking.

It’s in the gaze that steadies, a music

he grows into—something about

Mexico, I imagine, how he first learned about light there.

It’s in the blank face of every child,

a water that stands still amid the swirling current,

water breaking apart as it leaves the cliff and falls forever

through its own, magnificent window.

The way a young woman holds out a cupped hand, and doves come to her.

The way a man storms down the street as if to throw open every door.

And the word she mouths to herself as she looks up from her book—for

that word, as she repeats it,

repeats it.

 

- Ralph Angel

Fat Tuesday

My freshman year of college we were trying to decide what to do for spring break.  My friend pointed out that it just happened to fall on the week of Mardi Gras.  We were at school in Memphis:  what if- and she was just throwing this out there- what if we drove down to New Orleans to see what it's all about?  It's about an eight hour drive.  So we did it, the two of us and another friend.

To this day I have no idea how we got a room at the last minute in the center of town.  We could walk to Bourbon Street and see all the festivities.  This was pre-Katrina.  There were random parades happening all the time.  It's all kind of a blur to me, not because I was wasted the whole time but because there was so much going on.  I wish I could go back now and do it over because for some reason we were eating at places like the Hard Rock Cafe and not really taking advantage of the culture down there.  Everywhere there was music.  The whole city was one big party.

There was this one store we went into that had a song playing that I loved immediately.  It was what could only be described as zydecajun music.  This was around the time of the dawn of Napster.  As soon as we got back to school, I tried to find this song and download it.  Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be found.  It has haunted me for years, and sometimes I wonder if the internet had been too young or if I just didn't have enough information to find it.  Guess the only thing to do is to take another trip to New Orleans and retrace my steps, hoping that that same store is there, still playing that same old CD.

Slim Greer in Hell 

by Sterling A. Brown

I
 
Slim Greer went to heaven;
St. Peter said, "Slim,
You been a right good boy."
An' he winked at him.

"You been travelin' rascal
In yo'day.
You kin roam once mo';
Den you come to stay.

"Put dese wings on yo' shoulders,
An' save yo' feet."
Slim grin, and he speak up,
"Thankye, Pete."

Den Peter say, "Go
To Hell an' see,
All dat is doing, and
Report to me.

"Be sure to remember
How everything go."
Slim say, "I be seein' yuh
On de late watch, bo."

Slim got to cavortin'
Swell as you choose,
Like Lindy in de Spirit
Of St. Louis Blues.

He flew an' he flew,
Till at last he hit
A hangar wid de sign readin'
DIS IS IT.

Den he parked his wings,
An' strolled aroun',
Gittin' used to his feet
On de solid ground.

II

Big bloodhound came aroarin'
Like Niagry Falls,
Sicked on by white devils
In overhalls.

Now Slim warn't scared
Cross my heart, it's a fac',
An de dog went on a bayin'
Some po' devil's track.

Den Slim saw a mansion
An' walked right in;
De Devil looked up
Wid a sickly grin.

"Suttingly didn't look
Fo' you, Mr. Greer,
How it happens you comes
To visit here?"

Slim say---"Oh, jes' thought
I'd drop by a spell."
"Feel at home, seh, an' here's
De keys to hell."

Den he took Slim around
An' showed him people
Rasin' hell as high as
De first Church Steeple.

Lots of folks fightin'
At de roulette wheel,
Like old Rampart Street,
Or leastwise Beale.

Showed him bawdy houses
An' cabarets,
Slim thought of New Orleans
An' Memphis days.

Each devil was busy
Wid a devlish broad,
An' Slim cried, "Lawdy,
Lawd, Lawd, Lawd."

Took him in a room
Where Slim see
De preacher wid a brownskin
On each knee.

Showed him giant stills,
Going everywhere,
Wid a passel of devils
Stretched dead drunk there.

Den he took him to de furnace
Dat some devils was firing,
Hot as Hell, an' Slim start
A mean presspirin'.

White devils with pitchforks
Threw black devils on,
Slim thought he'd better
Be gittin' along.

An' he says---"Dis makes
Me think of home---
Vicksburg, Little Rock, Jackson,
Waco and Rome."

Den de devil gave Slim
De big Ha-Ha;
An' turned into a cracker,
Wid a sheriff's star.

Slim ran fo' his wings,
Lit out from de groun'
Hauled it back to St. Peter,
Safety boun'.

III

St. Peter said, "Well,
You got back quick.
How's de devil? An' what's
His latest trick?"

An' Slim Say, "Peter,
I really cain't tell,
The place was Dixie
That I took for hell."

Then Peter say, "you must
Be crazy, I vow,
Where'n hell dja think Hell was,
Anyhow?

"Git on back to de yearth,
Cause I got de fear,
You'se a leetle too dumb,
Fo' to stay up here. . ."

"I'm going to the nut shop where it's fun!"

So there's this grocery store in my neighborhood.  I used to drive past it every morning when I worked in Century City.  It's on a stretch of Pico Blvd. that houses mostly kosher shops and restaurants.  It also happens to be next to an establishment called the Nut House, which is I think what captured my attention in the first place.  Also, the Nut House looks like this:

Nuts, candy, ice cream and wine???  This place must be heaven.  And it always makes me think of You've Got Mail when Steve Zahn's character says, "This place is a tomb.  I'm going to the nut shop where it's fun."  For years I've wondered, what nut shop?  Why is it fun?  What do they do there? I guess this would be the answer.

Anyway, it's really the grocery store next to the Nut House that has intrigued me for a while.  The grocery is called Elat Market.  It was rumored to be this magical land full of the freshest of fresh and the cheapest of cheap produce and meats.  It supposedly housed all sorts of Middle Eastern delights and spices.  I'd read about it on food blogs.  I'd stalked its page on Yelp.  And now that I live about 5 blocks away from it, you might ask why I haven't ventured in yet.  Well, just like every hero must have a weakness, this shop supposedly has crowds of cutthroat old ladies with big carts.  I'd read horror stories of people stealing out of each other's carts, arguments erupting in Farsi, and customers elbowing each other in the face over iceberg lettuce.  Let's just say I've been psyching myself up to visit for a lonnnnng time. 

Suddenly, my intrepid roommate decided that today was the day that she would venture to the Elat Market.  She returned about 45 minutes later, eyes wide and veins pulsing with bloodlust.  No, I'm just kidding.  She loved it.  She took a detour to the Nut House and made friends with Amir who worked there.  Then she skipped into Elat and bought sugarplums.  I'm not even kidding.  In case you needed further proof:  Coward = Me.

A Poem, on the Supposition of an Advertisement Appearing in a Morning Paper, of the Publication of a Volume of Poems, by a Servant-Maid

The tea-kettle bubbled, the tea things were set,
The candles were lighted, the ladies were met;
The how d’ye’s were over, and entering bustle,
The company seated, and silks ceased to rustle:
The great Mrs. Consequence opened her fan,
And thus the discourse in an instant began
(All affected reserve and formality scorning):
“I suppose you all saw in the paper this morning
A volume of Poems advertised—’tis said
They’re produced by the pen of a poor servant-maid.”
“A servant write verses!” says Madam Du Bloom:
“Pray what is the subject—a Mop, or a Broom?”
“He, he, he,” says Miss Flounce: “I suppose we shall see
An ode on a Dishclout—what else can it be?”
Says Miss Coquettilla, “Why, ladies, so tart?
Perhaps Tom the footman has fired her heart;
And she’ll tell us how charming he looks in new clothes,
And how nimble his hand moves in brushing the shoes;
Or how, the last time that he went to May Fair,
He bought her some sweethearts of gingerbread ware.”
“For my part I think,” says old Lady Marr-joy,
“A servant might find herself other employ:
Was she mine I’d employ her as long as ’twas light,
And send her to bed without candle at night.”
“Why so?” says Miss Rhymer, displeased: “I protest
’Tis pity a genius should be so depressed!”
“What ideas can such low-bred creatures conceive?”
Says Mrs. Noworthy, and laughed in her sleeve.
Says old Miss Prudella, “If servants can tell
How to write to their mothers, to say they are well,
And read of a Sunday The Duty of Man,
Which is more I believe than one half of them can;
I think ’tis much properer they should rest there,
Than be reaching at things so much out of their sphere.”
Says old Mrs. Candour, “I’ve now got a maid
That’s the plague of my life—a young gossiping jade;
There’s no end of the people that after her come,
And whenever I’m out, she is never at home;
I’d rather ten times she would sit down and write,
Than gossip all over the town every night.”
“Some whimsical trollop most like,” says Miss Prim,
“Has been scribbling of nonsense, just out of a whim,
And, conscious it neither is witty nor pretty,
Conceals her true name, and ascribes it to Betty.”
“I once had a servant myself,” says Miss Pines,
“That wrote on a wedding some very good lines.”
Says Mrs. Domestic, “And when they were done,
I can’t see for my part what use they were on;
Had she wrote a receipt, to’ve instructed you how
To warm a cold breast of veal, like a ragout,
Or to make cowslip wine, that would pass for Champagne,
It might have been useful, again and again.”
On the sofa was old Lady Pedigree placed;
She owned that for poetry she had no taste,
That the study of heraldry was more in fashion,
And boasted she knew all the crests in the nation.
Says Mrs. Routella, “Tom, take out the urn,
And stir up the fire, you see it don’t burn.”
The tea-things removed, and the tea-table gone,
The card-tables brought, and the cards laid thereon,
The ladies, ambitious for each other’s crown,
Like courtiers contending for honours, sat down.

-Elizabeth Hands

bgbm

So my roommate and I decided that Oscar weekend was the perfect time to venture out and see a film that received only a 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  That film was The Roommate.  While we love bad movies, it's not often that we pay to see them in theaters.  Usually we and some other friends relegate them to something called bgbm.  The "bgbm" stands for "bad girls, bad movies" and while I'm still a little unclear about the bad girls part (maybe because we make rude comments?), the bad movies began in 2007 with 50 First Dates and have gone on to include It's Alive, The Room, I Know Who Killed Me, Troll 2, Gymkata, Leprechaun 5: In the Hood, and even one called The Oscar.

Some were not so bad (Death to Smoochy, Spice World).  Others were so terrible they could only be categorized as mind-numbingly dull and not even worth making fun of (*cough Glitter cough*).  And yet others were remarkable because of the discovery of people who are famous now but at one time were attached to schlock like this (google The Apple and Nigel Lythgoe).

While we're on the subject of bad movies, might I also suggest that there is a fourth category which could be labeled "Movies I Am Ashamed to Admit I Love"?  These are movies that I acknowledge are not paragons of cinema, yet every time they are on TV I have to watch or record them.  You could also call it Jurassic Park Syndrome, but that movie is EXCELLENT.

For me, probably the best example of MIAATAIL would be Where the Heart Is.  That movie . . . where do I even begin?  It has everything:  an all-star cast, babies born in Wal-mart, tornadoes, kidnapping, children named after snack foods, bad southern accents, librarian alcoholism, deadbeat dads getting hit by trains . . . and I love it.  It fascinates me.  I will never get tired of watching this movie.  The only reason I would ever change the channel when it's on is if my roommate walks into the room, and even then I usually make her watch about 10 minutes of it, depending on if Natalie Portman had the Wal-mart baby yet.

So there you have it.  If you, too, would like to start your own bgbm (or bbbm), email me and I'll give you a starter list of movies free of charge.

Oh and hey!  Today is Dr. Seuss's birthday!  Enjoy:

Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave
Had twenty-three sons, and she named them all Dave?
Well, she did. And that wasn’t a smart thing to do.
You see, when she wants one, and calls out “Yoo-Hoo!
Come into the house, Dave!” she doesn’t get one.
All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run!
This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves’
As you can imagine, with so many Daves.
And often she wishes that, when they were born,
She had named one of them Bodkin Van Horn.
And one of them Hoos-Foos. And one of them Snimm.
And one of them Hot-Shot. And one Sunny Jim.
Another one Putt-Putt. Another one Moon Face.
Another one Marvin O’Gravel Balloon Face.
And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate…
But she didn’t do it. And now it’s too late.