Shanna and Jordan...

Shanna and Jordan will both be panel-ing in Austin come March. This means that Austin is where the fun is...


It seems others are also attending, and I have suggested that AWP stand for Awesome-Wicked-Poets this year. I have suggested to Tony that we hold a private soiree of some sort, at which New Sincerists might plot the plotty things they so enjoy plotting.


I will be there, both maternal and shnockered. That is the plan. March willb e my coming out partay!

Swanky...

Many things are swanky. First of all, right now, the super-swanky hotel where I am currently sleeping, the SOHO Grand. They'll bring your dog warm milk. The shampoo samples are European. HIGH thread count and HOW!


Also swanky, Sonya Nauman, the swanky gal who took the picture below.


Also swanky, the salad I ate for lunch (asparagus and strawberrries-- this must be New York).


A little weekend of swanky means a lot to a big ol' pregnant lady like moi.


Speaking of which, CONGRATS! TO DEBORAH! Olive, you are swankiest of all!!!

What do you think???

This is for everyone but Jimmy, cause we all know how he feels about author photos....


(Though if you're reading this Jimmy, you can go ahead and give it to me now!)


Trying to pick my author photo. Does this look silly? In the pics where I'm smiling big I'm ALL tooth!


Please tell me!

Dear Bruce Springsteen,

I'm leaving for New York tomorrow, and I was thinking that if you aren't busy, we could maybe grab a cup of coffee? I'd come out to NJ to see you instead, but I'm only in town for a few days, and I'm super-busy meeting with people.


No need to commit to anything, or make a plan, but if you have time, give me a call! You have my cell #, right?


Also, I was trying to learn the chords to "The River" last night, and it made me think about my dad, about being a kid and listening to that record with my dad. About how we'd listen to it in the living room, while I played with paper dolls on the floor. I'd open the record up and use it for a backdrop, and my paper dolls would talk to the paper lady (was she a bride?) on the inside of the album jacket.


That's sort of what you are for me, Bruce... a backdrop, an environment, one of the few that has never changed or flustered. You've always been there for me, a soundtrack to my every damn thing. No irony. No apologies. Not even in the eighties.


If you can't make it this weekend, it's totally fine, but I'd love to see you. There's a great Karaoke place in Koreatown...


Love,


Laurel

Dear Bruce Springsteen,

I feel I can write this letter to you, tell you that I'm excited tonight, but that I can't say why. I think maybe you'll understand...


Things are happening for me right now, wonderful things... but things that aren't solid enough yet to stand on, so I don't want to call them by name out loud, jinx them. Did that ever happen to you?


Did you ever lie in your lumpy bed on certain nights, dreaming of next month, next year, someday? Did you ever just know there was magic afoot, feel it like a tingling? Like the little green worms had just wiggled into the root system of your old peach tree?


Did you ever count your chicken, knowing it was a dangerous game? Did you ever spend money you'd yet to earn? Did you ever tell the girl you loved her when you knew she wasn't quite ready to love you back?


Oh Bruce, it's so hard to be patient. But if you could do it, I can do it too... Thank you, Bruce! What would I do if I didn't have you?


It's just.... it's just that...


It's lying out there like a killer in the sun, and I know it's late but we can make it if we run....


You know? Yeah, you know...


Love,
Laurel


PS. My sister says hi too!

My brilliant sis...

Is being brilliant today for my benefit, over at KtB!


Read her dispatch from China, about peeing in the woods, HERE!


And then get thee over to Nextbook, where we're trying out something new. This week, instead of an interview with a Jewish author, we've got an interview with a Jewish family in Brooklyn, with a 6 year old boy who's suddenly obsessed with religion-- Hinduism, Judaism, and drawing crosses... it's pretty funny stuff, actually. Makes ya think!

Oooh ooooh!!!

Gone a few days, and look what happens!

Eduardo comes BACK!!!!


And Stuart is a PAPA!!!!

This week...

I interviewed Robert Pinsky yesterday for an upcoming podcast over at Nextbook! He's just written a book about the life of David (as in "King David"... as in "David and Goliath/Bathsheba"... as in "City of--") The interview was fun and the stories gruesome.


Did you know that David collected the foreskins of 200 dead Philistines, to earn a bride? Can you imagine what that was like? Ugh!


And when Pinsky read David's "Elegy for Saul" I was really moved... The bible is good shit!


If you haven't subscribed yet to my podcasts, you really really should! If you don't know how and need help, backchannel me...


In other news, it's been nice to be in Iowa, but I miss my dog.

Re-opening the worm can...

I've known for some time, ridiculously, that I'm considered by a certain element to be a "Fo-et" because I've used my many sleazy academic connections to amass books, fellowships, teaching job...


At this point, I don't care what anyone thinks on that front, because I've got my Pulitzer, my National Book Award, my eye-candy-young-students to bed, and my ivy league tenure to keep me warm at night...


Right?


But recently it came to my attention that there are a few people out there who think I'm actually a PART of the website-that-shall-not-be-named. I don't know how this happened, or how I could possibly be both a Fo-et and a Fo-et hunter (like BLADE, or ANGEL?) but I want to set the record straight.


I am NOT a supporter of that site, and I think they are cruel and callous people. Small jealous people who would do better to find something like gardening or bowling... anything to keep them happy and busy.


That site has made me cry, has attacked me personally, sent me emails, raided my comment boxes, and satirized me. I am in no way connected to that site, and I think they are going to a special circle in hell, populated by fire-ants, perpetually mis-shelved books, and lumpy gravy. Also constant and horrible root canals. Without anaesthesia.


In fact, the cruelty of that site reached such levels that the effect on me was exactly the opposite of what (I think) the site intended... Rather than coming to truly hate the folks in the ivory tower... I was prompted to write letters of apology to a few choice people (with p.o. boxes in the vicinity of the ivory towers)I feared I may have harmed/insulted over the years.


Becasue of that site...I found myself sympathizing with the very people I'd envied/ resented/ drunkenly cursed...


Whatever my initial thoughts may have been when I heard about the site's original intentions... I see the site as ONLY cruel, and EXCLUSIVELY stupid.


For more reasons that I care to go into. Because I'm busy... writing a third unpublishable manuscript, making a baby, working on a novel-type-thing, being happy.


But I want to tell YOU now... if you've at any point feared I was somehow a secret part of the evil clan... rest assured. I am NOT. I am too busy with other, unrelated, secret clans.


(And if you're the person I think you might be, who prompted this email, who made it worth it to re-open this awful worm-can, who's a dear friend of a friend... I just want you to know that I think your work is absolutely amazing, souldful, sincere, smart, real. I want you to know that I have read you and given you to others to read...


And if you aren't the person I think you are, if you're someone else instead... you're probably a good person anyway... and I wish you the best!)

Getting to Gaza...

I haven't discussed Gaza here, though I've been mulling over it, as most of us have... I don't think I want to discuss it at length on this blog. It's too easy to offend/ hurt people I have no interest in hurting... but I'll say this:


It is possible to love Israel, support the fact of its creation, and dislike recent modes of operation. Whichever recent modes you choose to dislike.


It is possible to be proud of early Zionism, and also ashamed of the way most American Jews react to the notion of the Jewish state.


The best thing (or at least my favorite thing) about Judaism, the thing that-- for me-- makes it different than most other ancient faiths... is that Judaism holds a great love for uncensored dialogue. Judaism believes in disagreements. Judaism will not fault you for asking the hard questions. Judaism supports iconoclastic thought, even when the icons are our own. The Talmud is built around that fact, as is the demeansor at our Shabbat dinner tables. Dispute as participation, as prayer, as law.


Israel, much as I love it, has become an icon. A golden calf for contemporary American Judaism. That scares me. Dogma scares me. When thinking Jews begin to deny other thinking Jews the right to their ideas, that scares me. On all sides. Not so much in Israel, but in America, there is a RIGHT way for Jews to address Israeli issues. I shiver...


I love Israel, but I love Judaism more.

If there is one place...

...I can truly relax, it's here, in the wonderfulness that is the home of Thisbe Nissen and Lee Klein.


Two days of what feels like thereapy. My favorite pizza (pistachio, pesto). Strolling in the garden (so tomato-full as to be insane), reading on the porch (Joyce Maynard), collaging to my heart's content (house-warming cards). Thinking and talking about the writing things that matter, and disparaging (in a laughing way) the writing things that don't, with people who-- more than anyone I know-- GET IT!


Iowa is feeling small and wonderful. I'm feeling rested and happy. I'm ready to apply, again, to grad schools. I'm ready to get back to work. I'm ready to see what happens next...


In other news, some exciting (and secret-for-now) small developments.


In still other news, I'm big as a whale... and getting bigger.


Do you know? Do you know how good a fresh-picked tomato smells?

Buried in the comments...

Tony is saying something important lately...


When the New Sincerity movement began to begin, I thought it was a joke. I generally think movements mean to be jokes... because it's hard to take yourself (or anything) seriously enough to call your thoughts and actions "a movement." I'm not used to poets putting themselves out there like that, meaning things right out loud.


That what italics are for.


When people are willing to do so, they generally remind me of my ex (briefly) boyfriend john johnson, who spelled his name in lowercase because he "didn't believe in capitalism." Laugh if you want, but john is/was amazing, someone who really did what he said he'd do, moved off the grid, ate things he grew and gathered, got arrested A LOT.


I was a snarky college student at the time, and so I was a little embarassed by john's sincerity. I loved his passion, lifestyle, choices, but couldn't handle his style, his lack of self-awareness. I'm older now. And while I shave my legs these days, and have no plans to go solar... I admire him from a distance of years.


I've rambled now, but the point is that we could all use a dose of that... honesty, meaning, sincerity. We could all use some passion, some tears. We all get our hearts stamped on. We all want to be friends with the cool kids. We all hope we'll go somewhere nice when we die. To pretend otherwise is to waste time on pretending... in a way that isn't worth it.


Says me. There are so many GOOD ways to pretend.


Anyway, The New Sincerity, whatever it is, seems to be a move towards the real, a push away from encoding and hiding. But a push mediated to some degree by an awareness of the abstract, a need for intelligence, a hunger for style, a willingness to test emotions, accept our own silliness, cop to the smallness of one person's needs.


But also the bigness. My feelings are big. And I'm willing to say that too.


I'm a big fan of Tony right now. He's putting it out there, smartly and carefully, with thought and feeling. He's putting it out there. I just want to ride in his carpool.

In two days...

I'll be in Iowa, sitting on porches, talking late with friends, eating "family style" at the Colony Inn (in the midwest, that's what they call "too much").


I really need a slice of life, of getting out of the house, away from the aether, and into the humid summer of evenings and raised voices, music, walking, and laughing a lot.


This year in Atlanta has been good for me, made me productive, kept me focused.


Loneliness will do that.

At Chez Jewishyirishy...

The joint is jumping!


Got the first thoughts on cover art for Half/Life yesterday, and they are amazing! A long way from finished, but so fun to see it, and think, "This is REALLY going to happen!"


Also, I'm interviewed today at Bookish, on podcasting and related matters. Interviewed? Like, as though I know some things about some things...


When did I turn into a grownup?


In Jewishy news, did you guys hear about the man in Georgia who just won a court battle... so that he can wear his yarmulke in prison, where he'll be spending his life?


Really interesting dynamics to this story...

Lines from Brenda...

Reading Brenda Hillman's Cascadia very slowly.


Found some lines today that I can't shake off, from The Shirley Poem.


That's what a body is, an
opportunity, hills dismantled geologically, shifting into
twiceness now, it's wishes hearing--

a landscape full of an original
chaos but not in itself divine.


In other reading news, I finished The Half Blood Prince. So I'm thinking about the Hary Potter books a bit, wondering, as I revise my own kiddie novel, why they hit so big.


They are absolutely FUN reading, but has anyone else noticed the absolute lack of depth? The writing is great, and the plots are something I could never manage, super-complicated... with fun characters. These are good books. But there's no substance, nothing beneath.


If you measure them against The Once and Future King, The Narnia Chronicles, The Dark is Rising, The Lord of the Rings, Mary Renault, Wrinkle in Time, Wizard of Earthsea, Roald Dahl--they fall absolutely flat. Because they have no themes, nothing to be learned.


Those other kiddie-books are books with HUGE amounts of layering, books I can learn new things from on my 67th read-through... and so they are books I reread often, go back to, the way I go back to Salinger, Stegner, Steinbeck. But Harry Potter has nothing to offer, once you've hit the ending once... just like genre fiction. They offer nothing deeper.


Except, quite literally, one practical lesson:


"If you happen to be a wizard whose parents were killed by a terrrible evil wizard and you somehow survived that awful event, be very careful and watch your back."


Which is, I suppose, helpful in its way, especially if you happen to be a wizard...

And for no good reason...

Man, this is a fun toy!

Podcasts are the shizzle...

But how to sell them?


It's tricky, driving folks to use new technology. How many of you subscribe to a podcast? How many of you know what "podcast" really means.


Give it a year, you will!


But in the meantime, anyone willing to blog about my podcasts at Nextbook? I'd love a shoutout on your blog, if you dig what I'm doing... This week's interview is really going to be something special!


C'mon and link me? Maud Newton did it. Now, who doesn't want to be like Maud?


Don't make me resort to tactics like the above pic...


Though I offer many wicked thanks to Kasey for the GENERATOR It's a Buddha-killer's dream!


And in reprint news, The Chicago Sun-Times will be reprinting my recent KtB story, "Slut for Faith" in Sunday's paper.


Watch out world... I'm busting into the mainstream....

I'm back...

Been super-crazy-busy. Posts are likely to be briefer, more writing-related, less frequent in the immediate future. I love the blogosphere, but sometimes a girl's got to clean her house. You know?


I think that my pregnancy is really pushing me to write, work, publish. There's a fear in me, a little demon fear, that I won't get anything done for the next few years, so I want to set goals for myself, raise the bar now...


And in Laurel lit-news...


Exciting interviews afoot at Nextbook.


Up this week: Shalom Auslander on porn shops and Leonard Michaels.


Coming next week: Jonathan Rosen on incest and Henry Roth.


Who knew Judaism was so dirty?


In other news, I've got a new bit up at Killing the Buddha, a rant about eloping to Vegas, and why I thought YOUR wedding was ridiculous!


And in poetry news, I just found out that Drunken Boat published some of my poems in February! Did you know? I didn't know, but it's a good issue. Check it out!


Trips planned to both Iowa City and NYC in coming weeks, before my doctors begin enforcing the "no travel" laws. If you're in one of those palces, back-channel me... I'd love to consume something with you, something non-caffeinated, non-alcoholic, non-smoking, well-done.


Anyone seen "Hustle and Flow?"