Tangents

Today's subject line comes from An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovksy In A Summer Cottage, which I recently learned was the source poem for Frank O'Hara's A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island. Here's a choice morsel from the Mayakovsky:

Give me tea, poet,
spread out, spread out the jam!

I baked bread tonight, which surprised me by rising higher than I'd expected...



... and provided both satisfaction and entertainment. It smelled good, made the BYM smile, and then there was this:

The BYM: *comes out of the shower, bows to the kitchen counter*
Me: *raises eyebrows to ask, "You are genuflecting to the tortillas?"
The BYM: It looks like an altar.



OK. There is something of the sun about it. ;)

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/152748.html.

1 heirloom tomato bigger than my phone



1 rose stem tied to a stake

some of the rosebushes pruned

countless falls into the pool (Glidefit bootcamp. Just in case I thought I knew how to stay on a board...)

1 hour on a kayak

around 4 hours on a paddleboard

2 premature attempts to leave the shore (third time = charm. aka hand-pumping to 15 psi. gonna have Popeye arms by next summer.)

1 party attended. And the BYM remembered to warn me to wear pants ("parking sucks" = getting there by motorcycle) hours in advance. The hosts got married in Italy a few weeks ago, so there were an array of spritzers (amaretto, aperol, strawberry limoncello, and negroni) and tasty bites. Oh, and moonshine.

3 temporary tattoos applied

4 actual tattoos discussed

2 mosquito bites

1 unexpected farewell message

1 new person to ping when I next get to New York

2 library books skimmed (one, a trilingual survey on Julius Shulman's oeuvre; the other, Jerrelle Guy's Black Girl Baking)

1/4 blackberry-cherry pie left

1 tanka published

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/149669.html.

A few weeks ago, I tossed a couple of sandwiches and a half-eaten cucumber into a bag that I took with me on a work trip to Atlanta (the photos in this entry are from the visit to the High Museum). I ate the sandwiches and part of the cucumber. The bag still isn't fully unpacked, but I fished out what remained of the cucumber early last week. Thank goodness for solid ziploc seals.

It took me most of another week to drag the compost pot to the yard, which encapsulates it being cold, me being sick, and things being hectic. (I added "club soda" to my mental shopping list earlier tonight, and just a few minutes ago noticed the two-liter bottle of club soda I'd brought home last night and completely forgotten about. And -- as if in reproach -- it promptly fizzed all over half the kitchen when I opened it. Some days the comedy is everywhere.)



Anyway, some things are getting done, and some new poems are online -- "Lost Wax" over at varytheline.org and a sestina over at the CDC Poetry Project.

Last month Sidekick Books published an Advent calendar of window poems; mine was on Day 2: http://sidekickbooks.com/booklab/2017/12/sidekick-aperture-poetry-advent-calendar-day-2-peg-duthie.html/.



Today's subject line comes from Maxine Silverman's Shiva Moon (published by Ben Yehuda Press, which is bringing out my friend Rachel's Texts to the Holy next month), in a poem titled "A Small Craft Advisory," which I bookmarked earlier this month even though at this point there's nothing subconscious about references to 1930s Germany and 1940s treatment of Japanese Americans bleeding into and all over my drafts and correspondence. Silverman:

Years back if the S.S. crashed a poem
at once I'd rub them out. . . .

Nazis aren't subconscious anything.
Generations after Auschwitz, they still have their way
with us, show up when you least expect. That is the poem.
The rest -- commentary.

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/145712.html.

There is a mental metric ton of paperwork I must plow through tonight, and I don't wanna, plus the US Open women's singles final was this afternoon, which means the garbage bins are significantly cleaner (and I even went at some of the grodier corners with q-tips), some ancient dog shmutz has been scrubbed off a kitchen window, some recent hackberry shmutz has been wiped off the car windows and handles, leftover tiles from our 2009 bathroom renovation delivered to Turnip Green, and assorted leftovers incorporated into tastier hodgepodges (the last of the white wine from the freak bottle that sent glass into my cleavage has been blended with bargain-bin oranges and fruit salad dregs; the asparagus I defrosted and then forgot about has been scrambled into some eggs), and while I shall desist from dealing with the nearly-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-compost-bowl potatoes until tomorrow (possibly putting them into a lazy woman's version of potato nik), there is bread dough rising on the other end of the kitchen counter.

This morning I volunteered for the dragon boat festival, a fundraiser for the Cumberland River Compact. I ended up helping one of the Buddhist temples set up their tent, distributing oars, helping rowers in and out of boats and (un)tying said boats from the docks, and ferrying lifejackets to and fro. It was a good fit for what my brain and body needed after this week (which included one editing push that went past 4 a.m. and another work-thru-lunch-and-dinner haul yesterday), especially since I'm still coughing too much to dance or go to shows. After my shift, I played cornhole with one of the "Best Little Oarhouse in Tennessee" paddlers and a mother-daughter pair, and watched some of the dance-offs. One emcee was beside himself when a temple team busted into a rehearsed version of The Wobble. Next year I'll try to plan the day so that I have time to fly a kite.

It was likewise tempting to continue avoiding the paperwork put in much more time on the yard, but I confined myself to adding water where needed and clearing enough of a bed to plant the "whirlwind" anemone into its new spot (as well as putting the rosemary and thyme into proper pots):



When I checked on planting distance and depth, I had to look up the word "friable." Which was enough to get a new poem going as well.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/143137.html.

I lugged a contractor bag to the bin earlier today, having detected two kinds of infection among a half-dozen pepper plants. A plant we hauled home from New Orleans in December is doing fine, though. I call it "my geranium from Desire," since it was dug from a flourishing patch on Rampart that had been started with a cranesbill clump from a few streets over, on Desire.



Some days I rock the "It was _______, but it had to be done, and she did it" roll, and once in a while I stay up binge-reading Grace Burrowes novels, which last time induced several rounds of ugly-crying-on-the-way-to-enjoying-a-happy-ending, which happened to be what I needed to get past the out-of-sortedness I can get mired in when too many things are out of order.

Broadsided Press just published a series of downloadable poem-posters about Standing Rock, with my "Snake Dance" among them. The link: http://www.broadsidedpress.org/responses/2016dapl/

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/139792.html.

My offer: buy my book for yourself or someone else you're fond enough of to spend 5 USD on (at Amazon</> or elsewhere elsewhere), send me some indication of the purchase (order #, screencap, whatever...) by 12:01 a.m. CST on December 26, and I will donate $2 per copy to The Flint Water Fund.

Alternatively: mention my poem "Look at that, you son of a bitch" on one of your social media platforms by 12:01 a.m. CST on December 26, and I will likewise donate $2 per mention.

What's the cap? $200.

Why the offer? A sudden urge to goose up my royalty/readership figures.

Why $2? Because "useful, oddly very crisp," and categorically queer (for certain iterations of "categorically" and "queer") could well be used to describe me.

Why December 26? It's the Feast of Stephen. The first Christmas carol I ever learned to play on the piano was "Good King Wenceslas," which is but one of the reasons it's deeply embedded in my blood and bones -- if there's a carol I can sing in my sleep, it's that one. And as my friend M'ris might could tell you, there are a multitude of ways to sing and hear about the snow so deep and crisp and even. (And about what we know to tell, for that matter. Hence the subject line.)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/137939.html.

["Under the oak leaves" - a line from "Au clair de la fontaine" (By the clear fountain)]

The senior minister at my church is on sabbatical, and Rabbi Rami Shapiro is visiting monthly as a guest preacher. On September 11, he brought with him a shruti, which he played as the congregation learned a new round:



Longtime readers/friends may recall that I do have a thing about fountains... though this past month my scant spare time has been more on lake and river. My Labor Day getaway plans having fallen through twice, I decided to get on a paddleboard four out of my five days off, and last Friday I watched the full moon from my lantern-lit plank on the Cumberland.

Elsewhere and elsewhen: Paying work. Housework. Homework. Paperwork. Footwork. Speaking of--
Dancing: hip-hop, flamenco, Afro-Cuban (orishas), English country.
Friends: Visiting from France and elsewhere. Running for office.. Organizing campferences. Selling taco + lesbian farmer buttons (coupon code here, btw). Preparing for High Holy Days. Coding. Cajoling. Caretaking. I could go on ... in short, inspiring me.
Harvesting: peppers.
Deadheading: zinnias.

Recently published:

At unFold: Spacing for Sky, with typography by J. S. Graustein

At Folded Word: "O Margaret, Here We Are Again"

At 7x20, a weekful of polished micro-poems: 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5

There is more to say and write, much of it off-blog, but a guest arrives tomorrow, so for now it's back to cleaning. Onward!

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/137107.html.

The subject line's from Marianne Moore's Baseball and Writing. The two quotes below are from Elizabeth Bishop to Lowell. July 10, 1967:

Well -- the Village will rejuvenate me, no doubt. I never appear without earrings down to my bosom, skirts almost up to it, and a guitar over my shoulder. I am afraid I am going to start writing FREE VERSE next . . .

July 27, 1967:

Just as I came in now Bob G called inviting me to lunch next week to meet R Straus (whom I've met, but no one, including me, remembers the meeting at all) and the famous Miss Sontag . . . This is almost too much for one day, particularly as I have to be bright and energetic for idnner with Anny that same night. I thought in the SUMMER in N.Y. one could avoid this kind of thing, but apparently not. I do think that was marvellous -- Marianne demanding a "house call" and almost unable to speak at 12 noon, yesterday, and then refusing all help and going to a baseball game. I don't think I can bear to tell on her . . . I always thought she'd die one day on the Brooklyn Express; now I think she'll die in the bleachers.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/134856.html.

(First set of notes here)

Second-half standouts:

Ruth Madievsky, "Paragard": "I was in a lecture hall, explaining how the copper IUD works..."

Brendan Constantine's conversation with Alan Fox. Among BC's provocative statements:

I just had a conversation with a poet I can't name, who was very angry because they felt that the internet was flooded with lots of mediocre poetry. Now anyone can put a badge on their shirt that says "Poet" and communicate with ohter poets and have all this great access, the world, the media, the "readers" are overwhelmed with bad work, and thus can't find or recognize where the "good" work is. That is a paranoia I don't share. It's an argument I've heard, over and over, that bad poetry somehow diminishes our joy and plight. That if the "bad" poets are allowed to publish, it destroys connoisseurship. I don't see that to be the case. I think that every great artist, like every great art critic, will die ignorant of most of the good art in their time. That's been true of virtually every generation. I mean, why else does it seem that half the work that ultimately "comes to define a generation" is discovered posthumously.

And also:

If you're lucky enough to live a good long life, you're going to see most of your cherished profundities reduced to trivia, and virtually every banality celebrated.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/133170.html.

A farm girl and poet from Chardon, Ohio, [Grace] Butcher won the national championship for 880 yards in 1958. In 1976, just past her 40th birthday, she made a solo 2,500-mile motorcycle trip through New England, and wrote a feature article for Sports Illustrated. In it she noted, "What life is for, if it is for anything, is to find out what you do well, and then do it, for heaven’s sake, before it’s too late."

Like Butcher, other first ladies of running did many things well. [Bobbi] Gibb is an accomplished painter and sculptor who also worked in the lab of the famed M.I.T. neuroscientist Jerome Lettvin. Julia Chase, the first woman to run a road race in the United States, in 1961, received a Ph.D. in zoology, studying bats and chimpanzees in the field. A quarter-century later, she earned a medical degree at 53 and switched to psychiatry.

-- Amby Burfoot in the New York Times

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/402407.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.