Major League

Today was Lash's first real baseball game. He did all right. Playing right field he was only part of one play during fielding, but he did that play well enough. He had two times at bat: the first time he struck out, the second time he was walked, and eventually scored a run. He had a good deal of fun. I had a good deal of crying baby so had to watch from the car where things are far less exciting.

In case you missed it, didn't read the labels for the last post, whatever, it was my poor attempt at being subtle in my April Fool's prankery. The previous post, saying it wasn't an April Fool's post, was an April Fool's post. I only feel the need to point this out further because some people have let me know they've taken it a bit too seriously.

I'm in a great mood for cookies and have none. Grrr.

I've been feeling on the cusp of writing a new poem or some new poems. Something seems to be blocking my ignition, but they're there, pushing, percolating, pulsing, waiting to be freed.

In that vein, April being National Poetry Month, here's one of my favourites, one that's been on my mind lately, by e.e.cummings:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                  i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Paint it Black

50 Book Challenge #10: What Lies There by Adrienne Rich. I likely screwed up the title, which serves me right for blogging at school instead of home. This is the new edition of the book (2003) which includes a new preface and a ne essay not present in the original version published in 1993.

The book's major focus is poetics and the art of poetry and role of the poet. A lot of attention is paid to the role of the poet and the need for activist poetry to be at and stay at the fore. I have to agree with this notion. America is the only nation that pretty much universally devalues poetry and the arts, whereas being a poet in many other countries could lead to political incarceration due to the nature of a person's activist poetics. She argues for an increase in such poetic activism in the US, which I tend to agree with.

Format-wise, given this message of the book, I found her new essay, tacked on at the end of the book, to be less impactful than the previous essay (the one that closed the book originally) and wish that it had been placed somewhere else in the book (like right before the preceding essay) in order to keep the flow of the book pushing towards the blatant call for revolutionist poetry that ends her essay "What if." Being the most recent essay doesn't mean it should necessarily be placed last due to chronology. Ruminating on the post 9-11 political climate is good and necessary, but less resonating as far as its message than it could have been.

(I'd Rather Be a) Rockstar

50 Book Challenge #9: Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft by Tony Hoagland.

I'll just start off by saying that I first encountered Hoagland by reading his book of poetry, What Narcissism Means to Me in my writer's workshop last Fall. I really enjoyed his poetry. There is a lot of fun and irreverence in tone in his work, which I dig.

You get a good smattering of that in here too, but usually just in essay titling. There's still some of his poetic tone present, but in many places it's subsumed by the typical serious tone of the literary critic (which makes sense when realizing these essays all had been previously published in various scholarly journals).

As for content, he does really well in discussing some matters of style, metaphor, poetic obsession, etc. but I don't feel, walking away from it, that as a student of the craft I really found it at all instructive.

G.I.N.A.S.F.S.

Come Again

I held you in my eyes before

in my arms. I wanted you to make

the move. And so I turned away—

meandering around

in the bar, as if I simply

couldn’t be sure you

were what I was looking for.

And then you played me—turned away

with some other man—you won.

I was so tired of cruising you. Then

we lived some great pornography. Until morning.

I gathered my clothes while you slept.

I didn’t know what to say.

The rumpled sheets, the bottle

of poppers, the well-used

tube of slick glycerin lube—those

were the props

of the one night play

we rehearsed more than once

that night. I moved along

to new players, new games. Forgot you

‘til you called; I thought you were someone else.

We would have to reinvent the sequel

before I would swallow you in again,

in another place and time.

Blah-ditty-blah-blah

For some reason (the day is DULL), I'm watching Tyra Banks. It caught my attention as I surfed--she was telling the media off for the way they make women feel about their body image; told them to kiss her fat ass. So I stopped. . .and then dealt with her self lovefest over her recent photoshoot, pointing out how imperfect she is. . .though she, to her credit, did spend the rest of the time defending heavier as healthier than too-thin. Bleh. It was a bit vapid; not my thing.

My vapidity: I'm hating on my profile photo, but have no good self-pics (no one uses my camera but me, so few shots of me...). I'd love to replace it with a photo headshot of me any of you might have, or even an artistic rendering. Help me out. E-mail me a new profile pic and we'll get a new me on.

Yesterday we had to write a ten minute Cento in my poetry class (I'll be evil and make you look up a definition of the form). It was more fun than I expected.



This Is The End Of Them

(a Cento)
by D. Evan Peterson



The sea was a botch of red and whites,

the heavy surf still breaking violently,

spouting out blood and water as it rolls

where mariners had fabled news of its corruption,

stretching beyond us to the blue beard of God.




With you, my cousin, guns cradled on the tide,

this is the end of bilge and backwash,

hurdling muscles heavy with sand,

of the red flag hammered in the mast-head.

Cry out in the long night: "If God Himself had been by our side."




This is the end of running to these Atlantic shoals

the entangled, screeching mainsheet,

sailors who pitch its hell-bent deity

if God Himself had been on our side.




So, it's a first draft, and Denise doesn't get it.