So pleased to have two poems in the most current issue of The Normal School. (Saw it at Borders today!) Aannd extra-pleased too be in the same issue as D.A. Powell - great poet & teacher & a sweet friend.



From an interview with Gerald Stern, at The Rumpus :

"...there are hundreds of prisons—sexual, political, cultural. But being a prisoner also gives you impetus. The artist looks for a subject. You know, a lot of new poets don’t seem to have a subject. I don’t totally understand that. I did a reading recently at The New School for Best American Poetry; I published a poem there this year. Anyway, there were some very good poets at this reading, but there were also some who seemed more interested in being funny and making cute jokes and writing endlessly about nothing. It was narcissism, indulgence, no social consciousness, no sense of… We’re destroying the earth! We live in a country that’s governed by confusion and lies and that operates through greed and selfishness and cruelty. We’ve killed or forced into exile two million Iraqis. Where is the poetry? What are our important poets doing?"


Hope you're enjoying your weekend, chickadees.

The search for equilibrium is bad because it is imaginary.
- Simone Weil

a.) the hug - nan goldin b.) galveston beach c.) paul thek d.) a hard day

you and me both, kid

You, Darkness

You, darkness, that I come from,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes
a circle of light for everyone,
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything;
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them!—
powers and people—

and it is possible a great energy
is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

Rainer Maria Rilke

(via Kimberly Gray. Thanks.)

	The New Pornographers - Failsafe .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

c'mon, darling

enchanting music blogger becca darling is: the beecharmer
& she's curated today's guest post!
swoon with me:

st vincent & the national // sleep all summer

yeah yeah yeahs // little shadow (acoustic)

neko case // star witness

cat power // lived in bars

the shivers // just didn't need to know

pj harvey // sweeter than anything

.....&.......&......

Economically, not

emotionally this
color is connected
to that color
the waves
break

they really
do.

I hold on,
I hold on to you

by Eileen Myles - "The Beach"

.......&.....&.....&.......

run through the west village in flames (mishearing)

Insect Life of Florida
by Lynda Hull

In those days I thought their endless thrum

was the great wheel that turned the days, the nights.

In the throats of hibiscus and oleander

I’d see them clustered yellow, blue, their shells

enameled hard as the sky before the rain.

All that summer, my second, from city

to city my young father drove the black coupe

through humid mornings I’d wake to like fever

parceled between luggage and sample goods.

Afternoons, showers drummed the roof,

my parents silent for hours. Even then I knew

something of love was cruel, was distant.

Mother leaned over the seat to me, the orchid

Father’d pinned in her hair shriveled

to a purple fist. A necklace of shells

coiled her throat, moving a little as she

murmured of alligators that float the rivers

able to swallow a child whole, of mosquitoes

whose bite would make you sleep a thousand years.

And always the trance of blacktop shimmering

through swamps with names like incantations—

Okeefenokee, where Father held my hand

and pointed to an egret’s flight unfolding

white above swamp reeds that sang with insects

until I was lost, until I was part

of the singing, their thousand wings gauze

on my body, tattooing my skin.

Father rocked me later by the water,

the motel balcony, singing calypso

with the Jamaican radio. The lyrics

a net over the sea, its lesson

of desire and repetition. Lizards flashed

over his shoes, over the rail

where the citronella burned merging our

shadows—Father’s face floating over mine

in the black changing sound

of night, the enormous Florida night,

metallic with cicadas, musical

and dangerous as the human heart.

Vampires

The other day I went to a reading, where one of the two featured poets did not vary his tone at all. In his half hour reading, he gave the same weight to nearly every word, the same pause, the same pitch. Every so often a word would jump out at me - vampires - - factory - - pastries -- and then I'd sink back into the effort of merely trying to make coherent what I was listening to. It was very disappointing. It made me feel good about my self-conscious effort to read well, to record myself before giving a reading. I don't much like to give readings, but as long as I'm giving one, I care about the audience, and our communication.

Speaking of communication, some kind journal has nominated me for the Best New Poets 2011 anthology. I was notified of the nomination, but not of the nominator, so it's all very sweetly mysterious. Thank you, mystery journal! (If you haven't been nominated, you can still enter the open competition for a small reading fee.)

My poetfriend John Sherer recently sent me a poem he liked by Zbigniew Herbert, which you can find here. John and I share the habit of occasionally handwriting or typing up poems of others, just to get a sense of their motion. A few years ago, I was fascinated with a poem by Raymond Carver called Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying To Get Back In, and typed it up many times. Here it is, in full :

Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying to Get Back In

by Raymond Carver

You simply go out and shut the door

without thinking. And when you look back

at what you've done

it's too late. If this sounds

like the story of a life, okay.

It was raining. The neighbors who had

a key were away. I tried and tried

the lower windows. Stared

inside at the sofa, plants, the table

and chairs, the stereo set-up.

My coffee cup and ashtrays waited for me

on the glass-topped table, and my heart

went out to them. I said, Hello, friends,

or something like that. After all,

this wasn't so bad.

Worse things had happened. This

was even a little funny. I found the ladder.

Took that and leaned it against the house.

Then climbed in the rain to the deck,

swung myself over the railing

and tried the door. Which was locked,

of course. But I looked in just the same

at my desk, some papers, and my chair.

This was the window on the other side

of the desk where I'd raise my eyes

and stare out when I sat at that desk.

This is not like downstairs, I thought.

This is something else.

And it was something to look in like that, unseen,

from the deck. To be there, inside, and not be there.

I don't even think I can talk about it.

I brought my face close to the glass

and imagined myself inside,

sitting at the desk. Looking up

from my work now and again.

Thinking about some other place

and some other time.

The people I had loved then.

I stood there for a minute in the rain.

Considering myself to be the luckiest of men.

Even though a wave of grief passed through me.

Even though I felt violently ashamed

of the injury I'd done back then.

I bashed that beautiful window.

And stepped back in.

another song

For a limited time, you can buy Glenrose, the beautiful, home-recorded 4 track album of my friend Brendan Little. His band is The Painted Lights


It's National Poetry Month. I want to tell you not about a great poet, but about the first poetry I really felt was mine. I was 17 years old, in New York City & nobody who knew me knew where I was. I was in a bookstore on St.Marks. I picked up a little book called Living at the Movies & read it all day in the park, smoking cigarettes, watching people who seemed to know themselves & their skin & move easily through the world & suddenly I felt more like them, felt for a moment very real. It's not that I hadn't read poetry before - I'd read Frost & e.e. cummings, & Ferlinghetti, & Dickinson, & a handful of others. In Pittsburgh, I'd write poems on the bus afterschool, going Downtown to my dance classes. It's not that Jim Carroll's book was great, but it was that I'd found it and felt that it'd found me. "look out Manhattan" it said "your prince's sorrow / might be back again tomorrow." And that seemed to make sense.

when you can't speak

The Beecharmer is back. Go get the April mix. Some recent favorites of mine on there, including Cannons by Little Scream, and Forget That You're Young by The Ravonettes (who I am going to see in two weeks!)


My musical theater geekheart has re-emerged with a second look at the work of Kerrigan & Lowdermilk. I really can't help myself. Their songs are funny & sweet & totally heartbreaking, & musically interesting. Here's a song about road trips i.e. Freedom. If you like that, then you might want to watch the following, which has been in my head & weepy heart for a few days:


These are split days, & each day a little closer to The Unknown aka summer. I just sing, & keep going. Sometimes there's nothing you can do but sing.