Iowa in the ATL...

Last night, Pieta came to town, along with the amazing Bo Ramsey, and the fabulous Greg Brown. They played the Variety, and the show was grand grand grand!!!


But mostly, Pieta came to town!


It's amazing, what a few hours with a friend you've missed can do. There was hardly time to catch up, but just seeing her face, hearing her giggle... it was good for my soul. I need a longer visit. Perhaps timing will allow in the spring. Perhaps we'll end up living in the same place again somewhere. These are those visits when you think, "How can I get all my friends into one place..."


And you know you can't, but still you dream of buying a town on a rural swath of land, and populating with the most creativie, funny, loving people you know.


Pieta is a poet, wrote poetry for a long time before making the switch to music. And it shows. Her music is spare, but full. Rough but smooth. Rural but gritty/urban. If you like the blues, guitars, melancholy... lilting but strong female voices...


I (of course) think you should all put her new CD "In the Cool" on your Chrismakah lists.

For posterity...

And at the specific request of A.D.


May I present...


PIGDOG!



Pigdog has a rough life, by "pet" standards... but seems pretty happy. We feed him daily, and try to keep an eye on his gimp leg.


I'd catch him, if I thought he was "adoptable" but I fear that caging him would mean the discovery of a medical condition that would require "humane treatment" at the hands of a shelter...


Been down that road before.


As long as he remains the mild-mannered Pigdog we know and love, he's welcome in my yard, behind my hedge, etc.


Battle on, Pigdog!

Breaking up is hard to do...

Oh my. I have three good friends going through massive breakups right now. Which means that I'm thinking about the subject of relationships a great deal, talking it over. Sometimes in a helpful way, and sometimes in a not-so-helpful way.


(To my 3 friends, I apologize if I am sometimes too blunt, or totally wrong)


But it's interesting, from where I stand, to think about "relationships" and "dating" and "breakups." As a woman about to have an absolutely unavoidable unbreakable relationship for the first time, with this creature inside me... whether I like him or not!


And it's interesting, to remember 5 years back, to that crazy girl I was in those years... remembering what it was like to wake up in the morning, in a shaky relationship, wondering if this *might* be the day he dumped me... to watch for symbols of devotion, or symbols of the wind-down. To be nervous, which also meant excited some days. To think about the future, entertain imaginings. Everything felt intense and opening, but also dark and fearful. Everything tasted strongly of something. Everything made me cry.


And then, when it fell apart, to feel the belly scooped out. To lose weight from too much coffee and Camels, and no food. To kiss strangers as a recovery tool. To drink and drink and drink. To listen over and over to Lucinda Williams records, making myself nuts with longing.


I remember it today. I kept records of the darkness, pictures and words, and so I can read it over and over whenever I want. Often, I want.


But what all this has me thinking about today is the percentage of ourselves we give to relationships. How is it that another person, someone we might only have known for a year or two, can jump ahead of family/ career/ art/ politics/ personal emotions/ the self... and become like, 99% of what we feel? Why does that happen?


It seems wrong. It seems like in a a practical way, the other person should only constitute a small percentage of our pie-chart-of-life. And when we lose that person, we should lose that percentage, sure... but then be able to regroup and focus on the rest of ourselves... until such time as that sliver of the pie can be replaced.


But it never happens, does it? The lost person moves to fill every corner of the soul. We feel 100% lost and hurt and angry and like we'll never care so much about anything again. Sigh.


I have cried a lot in my life, over men. I have missed a lot of people when I left them/ they left me. But of the 8 men I've been "in love" with... I only miss one, really. Only one lingers ever, pervades my days on occasion. And even with him, it only happens when I hear certain songs in certain moods.


And even then, it doesn't feel "real" but rather like a phantom... like the way, when I see red leaves on the trees, I always want to buy a pair of penny loafers, not because I actually wear penny loafers... but because once upon a time I was a little girl who got new shoes in the fall. And I like to remember that girl.


Relationships... Now, married and with a baby on the way, it all just seems so HARD.


Of course, there are days when, talking to a single friend, I want to be going to bars, flirting with boys, having a first kiss with a new person. There are days when, after a dinner of tuna melts at the kitchen table, while hubby runs off to band practice and I watch bad syndicated TV, I think and remember and feel longingly for those memories... for the person I was then. For the life in which you don't know what might happen next.


But mostly, thinking about it just makes me tired.


At the same time, it often seems like the people I know who are single are still reaching for things to be always exciting intense, wonderful, fun. Those same people are often the people who, when a relationship turns to tuna melts, ask me, "Do you think we should break up?" They worry that the sex is less frequent, that they don't always have things to talk about, that the other person doesn't always seem "there."


And I want to say, "Guess what? That's what happens in life." I want to tell them that they can't have the perpetual excitement and the stability together forever. That spending too much time thinking like that will doom the stability, and probably the excitement as well.


I'm just nattering now, but it is interesting to me, to think about how you can't ever have it all at once.


To think about how once the pain leaves, you're always fine.


To think about what a person gives up (in "excitement") in order to feel safe, to build a family, to start living a more simple life. To refocus on themselves and the next chapter.


And for me, what makes the stability so great is that my "other half" is just that. He may, in fact take up MORE room on my pie-chart... but he doesn't swell to fill my whole self. There's a lot of room left for me. Which is, I think, a direct result of the lack-of-excitement.... so that the lack-of-excitement equals a finished book, a trip with a friend, long talks with my sister, a baby. I wouldn't have room for any of that if I was obsessed with my husband.


Not sure if this is making any sense... or why I've written it, but as I think about "dating" I can't help thinking about "marriage" because most of the friends I have who are "dating" are telling me they really just want to "settle down."


And I want to offer a piece of advice. From where I stand, in order to do that, you need to try "dating" a man (or woman) who also wants to "settle down". Someone who can sustain a simple life. Someone who isn't looking for the excitement, but rather for the "other half."


Hard as that can be.

Yesterday, nada...

But today, Ka-CHING!

My blog is worth $33,872.40.
How much is your blog worth?

And an update: Pigdog ran away...

I trapped the Pigdog...

As some of you will recall, I find a lot of dogs in my neighborhood. Most of the time, I give them some food and they go away again (Wendy, Scabby, Mite Mite). Some of the time I take them in, love them, spend lots of cash on them, and they die horrible deaths anyway (Kareem). But there has been one dog, one constant, who has neither left nor allowed me to catch him.


Until now!


Yesterday, Pigdog followed me into the yard. Pigdog, a terrier mix of some kind, has been living behind my hedge for over a year now, and I feed him daily, but he never lets me come close.


Don't get me wrong... he still won't, but now he's got a water dish, blanket, food dish, and a few toys. He's carved out a little place for himself behind a bush near my back fence, and while he doesn't want to play with Dave or cuddle me... he seems ok. Not too upset about the change of scenery. He likes tuna juice. He rarely barks. He likes to lie in the sun.


Will he become a pet? Will he run away? Will he bite me when my back is turned?


In other news, I am still fat and pregnant. I made a really good pot of beef stew because it is cold enough to eat such things, though I burned the muffins. I am drinking ginger tea, reading, sending out the October birthday gifts (everyone is a Libra or a Scorpio!) and taking a little breather.


Oh, and I sent out the kiddie novel to an agent... at long last. Wish me luck?

My kid...

Refuses to stop doing the "humpty dance" inside me. Not as cute as it would be if he were two or three (and no longer inside me, but like, at a party in front of my tipsy friends).


Unrelated: last night I had a dream that the kid was already born, and we were at the beach, and he was a normal infant and all, but could talk like an adult. So there I was, on the beach, feeding him and diapering him and all that noise, and he was yammering at me the whole damn time. Just talking talking talking. Blah blah blah.


So I said, "Mikey (not really his name), you stop it this minute!"


And he looked at me and replied, insisted... "My name is not Mikey. My name is Jeremy!"


And I was so confused, because indeed, when one births a child that can talk, it seems only right that the child (who can talk) should be able to veto his name, if he hates it. It seems dictatorial to saddle a kid who can talk with a name he hates.


But I wanted to call him Mikey! And after all, he was my baby. Right?


Sigh.


This motherhood thing is hard already...


In other news I discovered (at last) a really great Indian (vegetarian) restauraunt in Atlanta.


In still other news, I have been wildly homesick for Baltimore.

Kickass Review...

Of Bruce Covey's Coconut, up today at VERSE!


My poems are funny? My poems are Chaplinesque? I'll take that! Yeah!

Catching up...

Hey gang...


I just thought I'd take a minute, after reading all of your blogs today , to bring you up to speed on the life of the pregnant-poet-pud...


Ever since the "held up at knifepoint" incident, I've been feeling pretty winded. The gestational diabetes makes it hard to get enough calories, and so all I do is read, sleep, eat low-carb foods, try to find a way to sit comfortably on the couch, consume vast quantities of sugarfree popsicles, and try to wrap up projects (for fear I won't finish them if the baby comes first). I'm not complaining (or I don't mean to be, anyway), and in fact, I feel damn lucky I have a set-up that allows the aformentioned lifestyle. I can't even imagine dealing with all of this while working my old job...


I think of pregnant women down in salt and coal mines, or working in sweatshops, and feel really lucky. Then I feel really bad for being so lucky. Then I watch more Court TV.


But inside my head I'm super good! I think I've (finally) finished the second draft of my kiddie novel ("Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains"). "Half/Life" is DONE and out of my hands (for the most part). You'll be able to buy it in a bookstore near you in April, just in time for (ulp) East-over. And "Daphne and Jim" is completed, and in to the press. We're just tinkering now, trying to decide (after an interesting conversation with Shanna) whether I want to use blurbs or not, include an epilogue, etc.


So I'm using this stretch to fine-tune the "Scratchy Mountains" before sending it out in search of a kiddie agent (my agent won't handle kiddie writing, will yours?) and I'm (of course and ARGH) sending the poems out for one more ring-around-the-rosie in contest land. I assume you are too, and good luck to you all.


If you are now thinking, "This chick is INSANE!!!! She's having a kid in a few weeks and won't stop working!!!" then you should probably call my mother and tell her you think she's right (which she always is).


But think about it like this... in a few weeks, my life will change forever. In a few weeks, my schedule will be arranged around diapers and breastfeeding and I'll be on a two-hour-at-a-stretch sleep cycle. I can't help feeling like this last hard PUSH will make it a lot easier for me to give in to the new system.


Like, as long as I know I've done my share of ass-busting for this fall and winter, I'll allow myself to slip, without so much guilt, into just loving my kid and sleeping when I can, and so on... and so on....


Eh?

In Reb's footsteps...

A few years back, I was sitting on my porch and I thought... "I will go find a stranger, and model my life on the stranger's life." So I did.


I married a guy named Chris.


I got myself pregnant (well, I had help).


I began publishing in ezines and blogging like an addict. I started cussing a lot online.


I pissed some people off.


Then I took a bunch of online quizzes, and rigged the scores so that I might appear to be...


REB!


And now I'm up at Happy Booker, because I can be.


Hey, let's not kid ourselves... I'm stalking the lady. So what?

Soft Skull...

It's a pretty cool thing... when the coolest press you know is also YOUR press. And indeed, I now get to officially call Soft Skull "my press".


Half/Life will be out in April, and I'll be chatting about it a lot (too much).


In the meantime, check out the new SSP blog!!!!

Up at Silliman's place...

Silliman does not think I'm a well-known blogger and he's right. Nobody leaves comments here. And I don't talk theory...


But he does seem to like my podcasts!!! Thanks, Ron... it's a new thing, and I'm loving it.


But seeing this online reminded me that I haven't been plugging recent Nextbook interviews. Been too muddle-headed with pregnancy woes, holdups, and book revisions.


And I so SHOULD be telling you about these...I get to talk with some amazing guests, and my producers are fabulous. Why, today I'm hanging out with National Book Awardee and author of "How We Die", Sherwin Nuland!!!


But until that goes online, some recent casts include a story on Algerian music with a Bay area performer, Jewlia Eisenberg, and an interview with the Pseudonym of someone you just might know (wink wink) as well as (coming up in a few days) Charyn's take on Isaac Babel...


Check em out?


In other news, it's finally feeling a little fallish, and I painted a room deep blue yesterday, and I'm revising the kiddie-novel, and what else? Life is good.

Damn funny....

Hariet Miers' Blog


With a special Yom Kippur message. How sweet.

SoQ or Post Avant???

Bemsha Swing responds to my comment/question... but I'm still bewildered. If I use this quiz, I'm smack dab in the middle.


I read/love work from many corners of the poetic globe, but I'm not sure if/why what you READ should determine where you fall. Like, Keats wasn't a Romantic because of what he READ, was he?


And then too, there's HOW you read. I'm a huge fan of Oppen, but I consider him highly narrative. I read him as a sequence of tiny stories. And I love Simic, but my favorite thing he wrote was simply a book title, a fragment.


What makes more sense is to judge on my work.... but I can't do that, since I don't understand the rules. So will you help me? As a test I'm posting a poem I published in the Iowa Review, which is, I think, a SoQ publication (according to my dim understanding). What do you think? Am I Quietudinous? Either way it's fine... but I'm curious.


Sense


Nothing stops the peacocks from crying in the yard.
We can’t see them, but we have ears, and they’re awful,
So bright and everywhere.


Loud across the lawn.


Their weeping, their plumage, their blue—
Louder than anything should be. We can’t get our work
Done inside that racket! But hey— that’s a peacock for you.


Gaudy as hell.


The sycamore tree was blossoming, but now it isn’t.
It’s bearing weight—it’s bearing fruit. Green fruit.
Pears. There are pears falling all around us,


Heavy in the grass.


They don’t belong on the tree, and they know it.
So they jump. Stupid pears haven’t got the sense
God gave them. Don’t know how lucky they are.


Meanwhile.


What else is there to do? The pears are thunking
Against the earth and the peacocks are screaming
Louder than before. A girl could run away.


Or she could lie.



Down she goes, like a pear, down. Screaming
Like a peacock. Down she goes, into the grass, heavy
With all her intentions, her various sanities.


Thunk she falls.


And from there only the sky and the bare brown branches,
looking for all the world like sycamore branches. And grass
tickling both her cheeks. And the peacocks are sleeping.


Quietly she lies.

Here we go...

Into Yom Kippur.



Two years ago, I wrote this.


And then, for the next two years, my role at the holidays (all the holidays) was a public role. I was the catering service/ cantor/ cook/ cleaning lady, etc. Which was comfortable for me. It's nice to have a job to do.


Now, living in a new city, no longer working for Hillel, I'm having to carve out what it means to be Jewish, apart from my job-in-Jew-land, and my family, and the communities I've known. Last week, for Rosh Hashanah, I ate dinner with a table of strangers. Yesterday I called mohels, seaching for the right guy to carve up my bambino. Tonight and tomorrow I'll be in a temple I've never seen, surrounded by faces I've never seen, perhaps using a prayerbook I've never seen.


But all of this comes after finishing Half/Life... which is, I think, about the Jew I really am. It's funny that this year closes/opens as I close/open. My single life/my motherhood. My book. I think I've learned a lot this year, about faith and the individual, faith and the community, justice and the individual, justice and the community. Culture and its meaning for me.


I think I've learned a lot about how to claim my own birthright... to be proud of the very things which make me insecure.


Community can be a great blessing, but also a curse. It creates a status quo, a safe place. It also creates the illusion of a standard. This year, I've had to embrace, and also fight that standard. It's not a duality, but a functioning paradox. That's a hard way to live, but it offers great meaning. I'm learning.


To all of you, if you observe this holiday... may you have an easy and a meaningful fast.

Oh my...

A visit from Mom, after a visit from friends, on top of the High Holidays, and getting held up at knifepoint....


Can take the wind out of your sails.


Last night I fell asleep at 7 pm. Woke up today, ate my raisin bran, and was asleep again at 8 am. So as of tomorrow, with the exception of birthing classes and walking the dog, I'm writing in bed all day. Kicking it old school, with actual paper and pen. I think that's the likeliest bet for getting the kid-novel revised before the baby arrives.


In other news, though I'm not buying baby stuff as a rule, I DID find an amazing basinette out thrifting yesterday. Turquoise and white wicker, with wheelie legs that fold up and a removeable hood for $45!!! If you come to my bris you can see it. Come to my bris? Everyone who is anyone will be there!


In still other news, I'm hunting blurbs this week for Half/Life, and sending out the poems one last time. Damn book contests. Damn manuscript. So if you want to blurb my anthology, or you happen to be buddies with a famous author who'd like to blurb my book, call me?! And if you own a poetry press and you want to publish, "The Myth of the Simple Machines" this is your last chance. Now that all the poems are individually published, I'm retiring the old mare. One last season. One last shot at the brass ring. The blue ribbon.


And in STILL other news... Isaac Babel was a nutcase.

Tiny thought...

That which does not kill us...


Turns into "creative nonfiction."

Here is what happened...

I went to the hospital yesterday to meet with a dietician, because I've been having a hard time with my (temporary, we hope) diabetes. After my appointment, I needed to eat a snack (blood sugar was 40 and I was feeling awful) and to get cash to run errands. So I went to the ATM cubicle, a glassed in room under the escalators in the lobby, where there are also soda and snack machines.


There were four other people in the room. Three woman in line for the ATM, and a man on the "courtesy phone".


I waited my turn for the ATM, chatting (I'm a chatter) with the ladies. Then the last of them left and it was my turn for the ATM. I took out 100 dollars, and turned around to leave.


Behind me was the man from the phone, holding out a knife at my belly. "Give me your money."


I could not help it one bit, total adrenalin freak out automatic insanity. I started to make these loud whimpering noises and slid down the wall, into the corner behind the machine. I could see through the glass, a woman watching me slide. I screamed a bit, without even meaning to.


"No. No. Don't." said the man. His eyes were very wide and his hand was shaking. He was scared too. "Give me the money."


So I did. He took off, and I began to SCREAM. Then there were people running every which way, but not fast enough, or in any particular direction.


End result. I'm ok. The man got away with my money. I spent two hours with the cops, driving around looking for him, visiting the homeless shelter nearby (in sad hot pursuit). Giving them a description, etc. It was pretty pretty awful on a lot of levels.


Then I went to my car and called Chris, broke down for a bit. Then I came home, ate some dinner, went to bed.


But a few things stand out after this experience. I have learned a few things about myself and the world and I would like to sahre them:


1. You might be as safe in the places you think you are NOT safe, as you are in the places where safety seems sure. The hospital, full of police and security guards, in broad daylight, would seem as safe as you can get. It is only as safe as the world is logical, and a desperate hungry man who cannot think is far beyond logic. This is not a reason to feel less secure in the world, but it is a reason to stop making logical assumptions.


2. I am, whether I feel like it or not, a real mother. When that knife was pointing at my belly, all I could say, over and over, in my whimpering state was "My baby. My baby. My baby." There is something physical about it, something biological. I know that now.


3. I am, for better or for worse, a bleedingheart. An hour in a cruiser with a detective, staring at the vacant faces of crackheads, scoping for my criminal, proved it. It was the hardest part for me. All I could think was that NONE of those people, asleep in the street, waiting for the mission to open, were the people they'd been born to be, and a lot of them could have (probably have) committed similar crimes. But NONE of them are the people they were born to be. There is little left that we can see in their faces... of the a seven year old child swinging a lunchbox, the teenager kissing for the first time... which is why its so easy to hate/fear them.


Maybe my "perp" was good at geography in middle school. Maybe he liked to make model airplanes. He was probably born during WWII. Can you imagine who he was before he was this? How did he get his limp? Does he remember himself?


The drugs and abuse and poverty that have made all of these people into sets of hollow eyes in sleeping bags waiting for the mission to open... are the criminals. And that's the saddest thing I can think of.


Does this mean I won't ID my "perp" if they catch him after they go through the surveillance tapes? No... of course not, because at this point he's desperate and lost and sad enough to do far worse to someone else next time. But if they do catch him, I'll feel for him. I'm not angry at all, just scared for the world in these moments...


Be careful. And Happy New Year.

Who does that...

Holds a knife to the belly of a pregnant woman (inside the hospital) and says, staring into her eyes...


Give me your money!


It has been one helluva day.

L'shana tova...

Another year come and gone.


I look like an apple and I can't have honey (gestational diabetes) but I should say that I am one lucky lucky girl.


As we head into the days of awe, as I think about how I would like to be inscribed in the book of life this year... I'm at a loss. I have so much, with this baby on the way, and the opportunities that I've been given to write and think and edit work of value. With a supportive amazing husband I love, and who loves me. I feel overfull, fortunate beyond belief.


So I am going to take the days of awe seriously this year, and think about the ways in which I can be a better person, live a better life. I'm going to consider my mistakes, the wrongs I may have done this year, and try to learn from them.


There is so much to do...


In other news, Shanna and Jen were here for a visit yesterday and the day before, and what can I say? They are just about the most fun, most entertaining, houseguests and poets I can imagine. Their reading at Java Monkey blew the crowd away. People were crying in laughter. And the Emory reading (with the incomparable Danielle Pafunda) was equally incredible, though not quite so raucous.


A sheer pleasure to have them in town, and if you missed it, you'd best drive to Athens tonight.

The Corrections...

Reb spanks me, suggests that we (Killing the Buddha) have been misinformed about Best American and Pushcart. She addresses a podcast I did last week, an interview with Richard Peabody for Miporadio.


KtB looked into submitting essays and stories (no poems on our site, to speak of) a while back and was incorrectly (I guess) told that a website doesn't qualify.


This is a correction of the happiest sort, and I will get to work tomorrow, try to figure out how to submit essays from our wonderful site to such contests...


But regarding the issue of backlash, which I did indeed suggest... that there might be a backlash by the "traditional" poetry world to the blogosphere...


I think my point was simply that whenever you build an in-group.. as we (so wonderfully) have here with our blogs... there are bound to be people who feel excluded by the presence of that ingroup. The fact that we (bloggers) tend to hang out together at AWP, publish each other when we like the work, etc.... is the kind of thing that might make folks nervous...


Not becasue there's anything wrong with it, but because whenever you have a club, there's got to be someone who isn't in it. Otherwise it isn't a club. I think that this is why the New Sincerity has been minunderstood... why Tony is forever having to explain to people that we don't mean to exclude anything... that we don't have a position, per se.


That's all I mean by backlash... that people, when they see a club forming, are sometimes put off if they didn't get an invitation...


Even if there were no invitations sent out.


Finally, regarding the book/site hybrid issue... In the interview I suggested that we may end up all moving to a hybrid model. Who knows if this is true, but my point is simply that it might offer the best model.


Because Reb's right. A website can simply reach more readers! Killing the Buddha averages 1,300 hits a day, and on our best day we had over 30,000 hits!!! Can the Paris Review imagine such a thing? Also, the method of publishing is cheap and fast. Also, it's interactive.


But there IS something about a book. There is something about cracking the spine for the first time, the smell of the paper... sending it to your grandma to read...


Or that's what I think, anyway...


I don't think I need to explain to people that I meant no attack on blogs or webmagazines. Lord knows I love 'em...

Let THEM eat cake...

Shanna blows into town tonight with Jen Knox. Huzzah! Be at Java Monkey tonight at 8, or feel my wrath.


And today I baked an apple cake I can't eat (due to my gestational diabetes. Grrr.) But it's Rosh Hashanah this week, and it can't be Rosh Hashanah without apple cake smells, at the very least.


In other news, I found a flea on my poor puppy, and so had to wash every linen in the house, clean the place from top to bottom. No fun, but it's nice to have the place shiny.


In still other news, I'm getting tired. When I walk the dog at night I have to stop halfway for a breather... This kid is already cramping my style!!!