What I am Reading:
Ange Mlinko's Shoulder Season. In three words, I love it. Win-Win is one of my favs. She has this cool and fun and cerebrally pleasing way of moving from straightforward statements of fact about her life to totally wild and wonderfully unexpected images, metaphors, & word play, and back again. Her poem Treatment is a perfect example of that. No small wonder Paul Muldoon loves her.
What I am Listening to:
Having a bit of a 70s nostalgia thang:
Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe"
Paul McCartney & Wings' "Bip Bop"
What I am Researching:
Names of stars (did you know that most common names for stars are in Arabic cuz Arabs were the first to name all the shiny objects of the heavens), bizarre town names (there's a place called Why, Arizona--I am trying to imagine someone saying "Wanna go grab a beer in Why after work?"), literary names for dogs (my favorite is Dashielle, but I also like Faulkner and Chaucer).
What I am Thinking:
1. I wish Cher didn't get her nose fixed.
2. Tsumanis are scary because they are sudden, unpredictable, take a supremely serene place and turn it into a death zone. I have never been at 10 feet above sea level during a tsunami warning, have you? If so, please share. I barely slept last night. Every time I heard the wind through the trees it sounded like a giant wall of water.
3. Of all those in Japan hurt or who lost loved ones.
4. Chihuahua puppies are v. v. cute.
What's for Lunch?
Probably a turkey sandwich on wheat.
Posts
3 comments:
Bit of synchronicity: The Writer's Almanac has Dorianne Laux's poem about Cher as the poem of the day today. Go here to hear/read it: http://www.elabs7.com/functions/message_view.html?mid=1206738&mlid=499&siteid=20130&uid=6b6639af8d
Intriguing names of towns to add to your list:
Lickskillet, Tennessee
Prosperity, South Carolina--not strange itself, unless you've been there and have a chance to reflect how economic prosperity has bypassed this town.
Prosperity used to be named Frog Level. It was changed in the
1870's.
I live at sea level and the ocean is right outside my window. Last night I slept well, but the night before we watched the news about Japan, checked the estimated time of landfall in Hawaii and our coast and went to bed. I would have slept through and begun packing up in the morning, but a well-intentioned elderly neighbor called to alert us at 2am and so we were up three hours early.
Well before the time a wave was expected, we had packed up and evacuated ourselves and our pets to St Peters' parking lot. There we waited until an hour past anticipated landfall for the first wave and then we went back home and unpacked.
There is a stretch of flat road I often run, and when I am headed toward the ocean the roar comes up so strong like an animal rearing up over my head. I always think of tsunamis, where I would turn to find high ground, and that I do not have time to escape that massive rush of water.
Jan: I feel for you. We were lucky this time here on the West coast, but we all know it could happen any time.
Kristin: I almost posted the Cher poem again, but I've already posted it on my blog. I am not surprised about the synchronicity, of which there always is a ton when i start focusing exclusively on writing poems. Last night I read RADIATION, a book by Laura Redniss on the lives of Marie & Pierre Curie--all about nuclear fission, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and the Nevada test site. And then I wake up to the horrifying news of nuclear meltdown in Japan.
I came across Skilletlick yesterday. Almost used it in a poem, in fact.
Cool stuff. I hope you are well.
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