The Last of the PT Posts

It's more than a little bittersweet posting my last Poetry Thursday post ever. I think that Dana, Liz, and the entire PT community should be commended for the coolness that they created. I will definitely miss it... until the next project surfaces.

Here is my poem -- this is what immediately occurred to me when I read the trigger of "open a window." I don't know what it means, and it's awfully rough, but here it is.



After the Well

I remember bottles of potions, arrays
of sweets, all displayed within my reach.
Their tags, "Eat Me, Drink Me"
sang in soft tones. I remember
being so small, I could squeeze
through doll-sized doors and tiny keyholes.
This was okay, this insignificant size
until everything

loomed large around me. I was a small
seed, ready to sprout. Hours later,
wiping frosting off my lips, I was
expanding ever so quickly. I remember
my arms ached with growing pains, muscles
taut from so much stretching. I was
an unraveling vine, a creeping myrtle,
bursting with shoots, tendrils and leaves.

Before my snack, I fell asleep in fetal position
on the ground, dwarfed by furniture legs
and pebbles. As soon as I ate, I shot
forward, fast and against my will, crowding
the too small house. Chairs and tables
pressed into my flesh, swallowed by
soft folds of my skin.I thought

I would burst at tiny seams; I thought
I should open a window
or door, make room for myself. Just then,
my elbows shattered four panes of glass,
breaking the confines of my too small house.
I remember thinking, Oh bother,
now I'll never get home. This was the least
of my many young worries.

for ee cummings fans like me

I am a pretty big e.e. cummings fan. I teach his poem Buffalo Bill's in my lit class, much to my students' dismay and chagrin. In college, I taught a poem of his to seventh graders, who actually liked it! Once, I even went to a party in a costume inspired by his poem, "i like my body when it is with your.". But, I never knew he wrote prose. However, I just learned that WW Norton is reissuing his travelogue of his experience in Russia, entitled EIMI. This sounds like an interesting read, although I am a little scared as to what his prose reads like. I pray for punctuation.

Mail Call

Yesterday, I received a package from my mother in the mail, that I am really excited to have.

For the past 3 years or so, my mother has been living in Sacramento, in her mother's old house. (My grandmother passed away when I was a senior in college.) She has been slowly cleaning the garage out and finding homes for all of my grandmother's belongings. This has been a hard process for her, because she wants to be pragmatic -- there's stuff that she wants to save and stuff she wants to trash. But also, as she cleans, she is literally combing through memories of her mother's life. It is an arduous process for her.

Earlier this month, she found two of my grandmother's old poetry books. I don't remember this, but my grandmother loved poetry. According to my mother, she was able to quote Browning and Shakespeare at the drop of a hat. Well, my mother found two first edition Edna St. Vincent Millay books. The first is Fatal Interview, published in 1931 and the second is Make Bright the Arrows, published in 1940.

I'm glad that my mom sent me these books now, when I can appreciate both Millay's delicate and subversive style (I hated her in college, loved her in grad school), and the provenance of these books. In the note my mother wrote to me with the package, she said that because of my grandmother's love of poetry, I came to my vocation honestly. I'm pretty proud of this small legacy.

Poetry Book Club Selecton...Drumroll, please!

Frank Bidart's Star Dust is the September Poetry Book Club Selection. Bidart's book won by a landslide, 4-1, but don't feel bad for the rest of the books. Any book that received a vote will be included in next month's poll, and I will include 2 new books into the mix.

I will host a discussion post for Star Dust on September 24, so we have a little less than a month to find it and read it. Enjoy!

One Less Scrappy Woman In the World

Unfortunately, Grace Paley, noted feminist author and poet, died on Wednesday after fighting breast cancer. (Why do all the good feminist writers get breast cancer?) The New York Times published a fantastic article on her life and times in today's paper. She will be sorely missed in the writing world, not only for her work but for her teaching and activism.

While Paley is more well-known for her short stories, she began her career as a poet. After searching around for a little while, I found a poem of hers I remember reading in college, The Poet's Occasional Alternative. I don't know whether to bake a pie or write a poem in her honor.

The Books That Are Left Behind

I have been haunting the bookstores lately, as I am in between books and searching hungrily for the next one. It's a panicky feeling, having no book to read. I keep scanning my bookshelves, looking for something to catch my eye. I struck out at home, so I ventured to the two big bookstores, looking for something new.

It had been awhile since I had ventured into the big box bookstores. I've been hanging at my local independent bookstores, and striking out, so I've been to two larger bookstores in my area, to try them on for size. Rather than notice what they had, I was busy noticing what they didn't have.

My first beef: the lack of poetry sections.

When my husband worked at a big box chain, they had a kick-ass poetry section. It could have been due to the neighborhood, or due to the diligence of their workers. But it rocked -- it had old stuff, new stuff, local stuff.

At one of the big-boxers-who-shall-remain-nameless, I wandered for 20 minutes to find the poetry section. When I finally asked an employee, she guided me to a section adjacent to the sex books. It was only 1 eight foot tall book shelf high. That wasn't even the worst part.

The worst part was the books that it contained -- past their prime anthologies in the "Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul" style, aging rock/pop stars' books, and the "classics." Oh, and the "how to write poetry" books. This selection (or lack thereof) brought to mind two issues: first, why would anyone want to write poetry with these books as their only examples? Secondly, isn't the best tool for learning to write poetry reading current poetry? Grrr...

My second beef: remaindered books

While I am all for cheap books (who isn't?), the variety and depth of both chains' remainder section was astounding. It felt like the reject wall at a junior high dance. A Mary Cheney memoir sat next to a Hilary Clinton bio, special edition selections of Dostoevsky slumbered with their Jane Austen cousins, bargain priced art books gathered dust in the corner. I felt bad for the books, with their embarrassingly low prices and their precariously over stacked piles. But at the same time, I didn't want to buy them. I was lured by their prices, but then turned off by their content.

These two beefs lead me to a question: what does the publishing industry value? It seems, with these two highly unscientific case studies, that there is a value of quantity over quality, conformity over diversity. Of course, publishing is a business, and a not very lucrative one at that, but this side of the business is unseemly. Rather than print zillions of "hot for the moment" memoirs that will eventually be remaindered and forgotten, why not publish quality work that people will pay to read?

The Poetry Book Club Poll Is Up... Sort of

Okay, so the poll widget is cool, but not as cool as I thought it would be.

It doesn't allow HTML tags in the poll, so I cannot have cool links to Amazon for descriptions of the books on the docket. So, here are the nominees with links to Amazon:

Fever Almanac by Kristy Bowen
For the Confederate Dead by Kevin Young
Migration by W.S. Merwin
Stardust by Frank Bidart
Frail Craft by Jessica Fisher

Out of the grouping, I've only really read Kevin Young deeply, and I really like him. However, I'm open to any of the above books.

Please vote for your choice... the poll closes Sunday!