Vague hiatus...

Heading bewildered into an unknown land... wandering into a dark forest...


Now that I'm home and have showered off the sticky, necessary and questionable (albeit fun) dirt of book-tour publicity... I have a slew of projects for summer.


In (nearly) descending order of importance:


Mose and all things Mose-related
Visit Grandma
Novel revisions (Scratchy Mountains)
New book of poems in order (Truth & Other)
Send things to agents
Construct a bannister for the stairs
Rip out ugly-ass carpeting
Paint floors upstairs
Paint bedroom walls
Yard (basic care of)
Find a coffee table devoid of sharp corners
Paint front door a non-purple hue
Install ceiling fan
Edge borders in yard with stone


I'm certain there are other projects, but this is plenty to begin with. And getting it all done is going to be a feat. Today I managed to attend to Mose, send out some poems, floss my teeth, make dinner, clean a little, and plant some basil. At that pace, I'll never get it all done.


But I am lucky as hell, because the things I will be doing all summer are the things I want to do, will enjoy doing. The things that (until recently) I used to fit in around other things I hated doing. I may not be able to afford a vacation or anything, but I like my life and the tasks that make up my life... so it's good!


However, in a huge effort to get my interweb-addicted self refocused, writing, and living in the house as I'd like it, I am hereby imposing a ban on wireless. My dark hall. My lost-in-the-woods. My lonely voyage into the land of solitude. My hole.


Starting July 1, I will check email and blog for one half hour a day, during Mose's morning nap, from the desktop in Chris' office. My laptop will be internet-disabled.


So there we are. Less blogging, and more physical labor and writing. I'll still be here, just less often.


It's a good thing... and if I get my work done, I'll be back and addicted again on Sept 1. Meanwhile, you can come and visit me. Kay? I'll make gazpacho or hotdogs or something. We'll chat!


(In closing, check out the amazing art of Jaime Zollars above. She will soon be a very important person in my life. A partner in crime! Zollars and Snyder. Snyder and Zollars! Coming to a children's bookstore near you in 2007!)


xo

Notes from the (seemingly endless) road...

If you want to know what a book tour looks like, when one is carrying a 7 month old (and squirmy) piece of baggage...


You can see for yourself over here!!!


Yes, we did it!


Mose and Momma hit the Bowery Poetry Club, The Anchor Bar, the KGB Bar, and all manner of other fun joints. Diners and taxicabs and studio apartments and streetfairs. Carrying strollers and carseats and diaperbags.


And we lived to tell the tale.


(Just barely...)


But we couldn't have survived it without you!!! YOU! Yes, you!


All of you who held Mose while I went to the bathroom, put us up for a night, carried the stroller up a flight of stairs, drove us somewhere, left a party early, carried the stroller down a flight of stairs, mashed a banana, carried the stroller accross a subway platform, changed a diaper... all of you made of of this possible. So we want to thank you!


Especially my mom, and Susan. You guys deserve something special. You guys rock!


But to everyone. Thank you thank you thank you!!!

Home sweet home...

Nice to drink one's own coffee in one's own house. Nice to put one's baby in a crib for a change, sit down to blog at one's own keyboard.


Makor was an amazing event. A wonderful note to end on (though I'm suddenly getting requests for speaking events in january, so maybe it's not over just yet).


Thank you to everyone, everyone, everyone.


Time to go dig in the garden. Literally. Figuratively.


*** In other news, Duck and Herring is podcasting !!!!

One tired chicken...

It's been a long week, and Mose an I are plumb tuckered out. But yesterday we got to visit with some friends, new and old, and that was very very fun. I read poems for a change, which felt nice, at the Anchor Bar, and saw Mike Schiavo (who has some very exciting news, but I'll let him tell you) and met Edward Schwarzschild and Elisa Albert (who are very very cool people) and for the first time I got to hang out with John Spalding in person, who is great!


Then today my mom (along for some Mose-time) and I headed to John's house in CT for some time by the water, and to meet John's twin boys. It was a lovely day, complete with all kinds of nature... snakes and redwing blackbirds and wildflowers and shells. It's always amazing to jump into someone else's life for a minute, and get a taste for who they are in their own home.


Now, back in NY, and tuckered out. Tomorrow is the Makor reading, but first I get to see Iowa friends, Pieta and Constie, who happen to be in town!


In other news, the Forward has done a fabulous review of Half/Life! And in case you are living under a rock, contributor Katharine Weber's new book, Triangle, is tearing up the town. And well it should. I've read the first half, and it's amazing. Go buy it!


See you tomorrow night, at Makor (67th and Columbus), at 7 PM?

Reminder...

I love ATL... I love ATL... I love ATL... I love ATL...


Must remember my marigolds, my 4 bedrooms, my lazy southern walks, my amazing mom-friends. Must remember that it's a good good life.


Becasue NY just rocks. Yesterday Mose and I walked to the Bowery Poetry Club, to hear Shanna read with Jen Benka and CA Conrad. It was goooood and on the way we bumped into a streetfair. Mose got lost in colorful curtains and made friends.


Then Emma showed up and we drank a beer, and after that we ate in the weirdest place in the world, Chez le Chef. Truly bizarre, and the food sucked, but it was worth it for the experience. Germany does French poorly, with amazing moustaches. The only thing French about the experience waas the surly leering waiter.


With tough meat and vinegar. Where plastic flowers go to die. No wonder the place was empty at 7:30 on a Sat. night in midtown.


A good day, though I did not get my giant sandwich. Maybe tomorrrow. It's there, waiting for me, somewhere on Mott. But I did not find it today.


After all, even NY is not perfect.


Though it felt like it today, when I sat around all afternoon catching up at long last with my friend Lucy, who is wonderful. And then bumped into the same street fair again.


The streetfair is following me. There is nowhere I can hide.

Arriving in New York...

And having a ball. I read on Wed night at the KGB Bar, and it turned out that the owner is half-Jewish! Mose and he bonded, and they even let Mose sit on the bar. (Don't tell the authorities). Superfun!


Katharine Weber and Jeff Sharlet read with me , from the book, and they were amazing (of course) and a good time was had by all (of course). Jill Vogel, a friend from Chattanooga (and Haifa) showed up, and Alana Newhouse, Jewish (Forward) book maven and the host of the Novel Jews series, turned out to be the coolest woman ever. The lovely Renee Kaplan came and I'm sad we didn't really get to talk to her, though such is the way with readings, I've discovered.


Other wonderful folks in attendance: Bob from Parabola, Julie and Paul from JOI, Sian from Slate, Kristen and Luke from Soft Skull, and also many friends... especially Susan, the best friend of all... with whom Mose and I stay when we visit this apple.


But then Susan had to leave for NC, and so Mose and I holed up alone yesterday, in Murray Hill... where we like to sit and watch TV (Susan has HBO on demand and I am a weak weak woman when it comes to the Sopranos) except when we're walking around the city with our arrowroot biscuits and our diapers.


Yesterday we ambled accross town to the Ars Nova offices, to meet the cool cast (and cats) of Jewcy Magazine (coming in August! Watch for it!) and then we had lunch with our Hillel friend David Wolkin, and last night we had dinner on the upper east side, with old friend Diane Cole (who is a force to be reckoned with, a heroine if ever there was one, and a talented writer). And today we headed for Park Slope to meet Maya Gottfriend (who rocks!) at Tea Lounge, where Mose listened to some music and I drank some coffee. Finished the afternoon on President Street with Paul, who is my dad's best friend and Mose's newest fan. Paul dandled me on his knee, back in the day, and today he dandled Mose.


Tomorrow marks the arrival of my sister, Emma, and I have a plan to eat a giant sandwich.


What kind of sandwich, you ask?


Tune in and find out?

Call for Subs...

For the ladies:


LIVE THROUGH THIS


Cutting, anorexia, drug abuse, …there is no end to
the list of ways intelligent and creative women can
self-destruct. But what happens when women take the
same energy, discipline and conviction it takes to
destroy, and turn it towards creation?


“Live Through This” is anthology of hope from strong
women artists who’ve walked the razor’s edge of
self-destruction, and made it safely to the other
side. It will chronicle artist’s experiences with
depression, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse and
other self-destructive habits, explore alternative
coping methods, and reveal how these experiences
shaped their artistic process.


We want women artists strong enough to admit the time
they weren’t. Did you stop cutting yourself and fuel
your rage into a punk band? What made you stop
looking at the bathroom scale and start looking at a
blank canvas? Tell us about the time you put the
bottle down and picked the pen up.


We’re looking for your personal stories, first
person essays, photo-essays, and comic strips about
the time you used art to survive yourself. “Live
Through This” is an anthology of triumph which will
reach out to women currently struggling with
self-destructive tendencies and show them the power of
self-preservation through artistic expression.


Please send a story pitch and short bio to
Sabrina at cliterature2005@yahoo.com


Editor: Sabrina Chapadjiev is editor of the zine,
“Cliterature:18 interviews with women* writers.”


*anyone who’s had the experience of being a woman

YANK Magazine...

Some of you will remember that my grandmother died last spring, and that I "got" to go clear out her revolting house and visit with lawyers and morticians. Yay!


Well, one of the perks was that I brought home piles of old moldy papers with me, stuff I didn't have time to weed through.


It turns out that some of what I brought was piles of YANK Magazine!


Like the GI army that spawned it, YANK magazine was temporary -- for the duration of the war. Most of World War II's servicemen were civilians at heart, serving in uniform only to win the war. YANK was conceived as the voice of those millions of citizen soldiers. Distributed around the world, YANK served the army until the war's end and then went out of business after its GI readers went home. To the end YANK lived up to its motto, "written by the men... for the men in the service."


Very very cool!


Offensive racial cartoons, pinups young soldiers sent in of their wives and girlfriends (for other guys to fantasize about I guess. Weird!), interviews with POWs, about their perspectives on the war and fascism, and "news from home" which is pages and pages of newsbites from each state in the union. Plus old pictures of tanks and planes.


Seriously, YANK is really an amazing historical artifact. Potrait of a war.


I wonder what such a publication would look like today. What would "our boys" have to say...?

In case you don't know...

There's a shitstorm over at Reb's blog.


Basically, I'm a judgemental person. Which is why I sometimes get paid to rant. An editor recently said to me, "We like that you don't mind saying things that piss people off." Which is cool, but...


But I kinda do. I generally reserve my rantiness for times when I think the rant is earned. Sometimes I screw up, and end up apologizing.


Apologies are so good! Clean slates... good.


But really, I've worked hard to learn the art of keeping my big mouth shut in personal situations. ESPECIALLY when it comes to parenting.


Don't be fooled, I'm still judging you, just more quietly...


Yeah, I pretty much disagree with everyone all the time. And whatever you think avout whatever you're thinking, I'm sure I disagee with you too.


Reb and I are both on Arielle Greenberg's mom-poets listserve, so I know her thoughts on many mom issues, and I also know that I agree with Reb more than I agree with a lot of people. But not always...


I'm not opposed to spanking in all cases. I don't care too much about organics. I think kids should have jobs as soon as it's legal. I do NOT think they need cell phones or cars, and I think a "dangerous neighborhood" can benefit a person. Plastic is handy. Pro-public schools, pro-religion, pro-conflict/yelling. Pro-cussing. Pro-public-nursing, pro-beer-in-breastmilk. My kids will do lots of chores and I'll expect them to help pay for college.


Bring it on!


But this particular debate at Reb's has been curious for me, because the insane ranter "Harrlynne" who accosted Reb in comment-box form is probably someone I'd agree with about some issues. I'm very frugal, a believer in fiscal responsability. I think our generation is wasteful and selfish and self-involved... and I think Harrlynne's comments stem from a response much like my own responses. I'm someone who thinks *you* spend way too much on your car/vacations/gourmet palate. I think I spend too much. I think we all suck, but most of the time, I don't tell you that... I have Harlynnsque inclinations I think.


Harrlynne is jealous and upset that Reb "gets to" raise her son full time, and then on top of that, can afford to put him in daycare part-time, to work on poetry. And instead of saying, "NO FAIR!"... she said, "You're a bad parent."


Which is something you just don't say, unless there's physical harm happening. No good ever results.


Word?


Word!


I think, if I understand correctly, that Harrlynne is most upset that money is being "wasted" and that Reb's son "has to" go to daycare.


This is silly. Would it be better if Reb had no time to write? Will Gid (the son) be in some way damaged by daycare?


Know what I think is really going on? I think Reb is screwed by the fact that she has luxury. Artists are often afflicted by 1) poverty, 2) self-righteousness, 3) competitive jealousy, and 4) delusion that luxury=sloth.


Some people with the luxury of time are extremely busy/productive.


I think Harrlynne imagines Reb as a Desperate Housewife, Mrs Robinson type. I think she is jealous and upset at the idea of wealth. I think she finds it bewildering that an artist is not slaving/starving, selling out as a corporate writer, teaching, etc.


Most of all, I think that if she had the opportunity to spend her day at home, Harrlynne would be unlikely to accomplish as much as Reb. I think few of us would.


Now, what part of my list of parenting ideas pissed you off the most?

The perfect post...

I wish I could think of the perfect blog post, a post that would fill you in on my personal world (meaning the wonderfullness of playing with Mose, and the regularness of trying to clean the house around him) and my writing world (meaning the difficult process of revising my little novel, and my newfound delight in writing new poems again) and my promotional/professional world (meaning the readings you might want to attend and the reviews as the come out) and... and... and...


I wish that the perfect post could integrate these parts of my life, and also be lovely, and illluminate something. But I don't know what it might illuminate.


More than that, I am sick to death of book promotion...


And rather than write *about* poems, I want to write poems.


As for Mose, you really have to see him to believe him.


So instead of writing the perfect blog post, I'll just say this...


I tend to work in cycles, and the last few years have been (obviously) heavy on the interactive/communicative for me, less interior. I think that's a lot of why I haven't written many poems. Which was fine...


But this book promotion has pushed me into feeling the opposite, into feeling ready to hibernate, think, write, interact primarily with the people in my immediate world, myself. I need to get quiet for a bit, find out what I really want to say, and also who I want to say it to. I need to quit google, technorati. I need to stop making "pitches." I need to refocus on the content, the work that matters. I need to save up my chi, as it were. I don't want to spam the world.


So if I'm sharing less, please know that there's nothing you need to worry about. I'm still here. Everything is very good. And I'm thinking of you, still at the show, just not standing in the front row.


I'm going to the balcony for a bit, to listen...

Quiz!!!

Do you pay someone to install a termite bait-system in your yard because you are:


A) a grownup?


OR


B) a sucker?


There are all of these things nobody tells you how to do. You don't get a "how to be a housewife/yuppie book, and the internet offers TOO MUCH information. So you just bumble along... hoping you aren't making terrible mistakes. At once nervous you're turning into a yuppie, and at the same time afraid you aren't being a good enough yuppie.


I'm just being honest here.


Do I really need to install joist supports when I put in my ceiling fan? Do I really have to get the oil changed in the car *that* often>? What is the difference between a diaper bag and the Believer bag I got for free at BEA? How much debt is too much debt? Is there really *good* debt?


Lately, I'm very aware of becoming a grownup/sucker. A friend hurt my feeling recently when he told me that babies are "so fu*king trendy" and meanwhile, Jimmy has this to say, regarding marriage/kids/aging, and I fear he's not entirely wrong... because I am sorely prone to self-doubt.


Now, please understand. I love my husband, baby and house. I would not for a million gazillion dollars trade in my life to go back to grad school, or to work a crappy job and drink nightly, or to once again "date" (horrors!) I don't miss the drama or the "passion" of single life and truly, my bullshit happiness is the happiness I want.


But termite bait? Cars expensive enough they need to be financed? Life insurance?


These things scare me. Not just becasue they bewilder me, but becasue they mean I'm changing.


Being scared isn't really a bad thing, but it's scary. You savvy?

In other news...

I'm reading in NY next week, and in CT too!


June 14, KGB Bar


June 20, Anchor Bar


June 22, Makor


Come meet Mose!

Home, again...

Something happened.


I was in Oakhurst Village, having a sangria at Billy Goat's Cantina, with Mose, and my friend Aimee.


There were cedar chips soft below me, and a strange weave of kudzu and Xmas lights above, and there were dogs and babies, and the city lights a few miles off, and a rundown shed in the distance. And suddenly I realized that I'm finally falling for Atlanta!


It's weird, not quite like the way I've fallen for other places. It's slow, gradual, seeping in.


It's about the combination of things I have here: a 4 bedroom brick house CHEAP, less than 2 miles from friends and cool places to go, summer heat, the tangled overgrowth of green that means "the south" to me, mountains, waterfalls, jobs and city life, inexpensive easy airfare, friends.


It's a combination you can't find everywhere... cheap good food and lots of trees and a few hours to the beach, and a few hours to the mountains, major industry and universities and the ability to buy a home in a city of 5 million


New York will always be cooler, but I'd be living in a studio with a screaming baby and a frustrated dog.


Baltimore will always be my hometown, but there aren't the same opportunities there, and Chris wouldn't be happy.


Iowa will always be calmer, easier, but it's tiny.


So for now... Atlanta is feeling really really good. Not just as a compromise, but as a place I'm learning to love.


It really does feel like an organic growth is happening here, like things are building, and I'm a part of it.


Very very good.

Poetry...

Finally, I am back in poetry land, working on poems. Feels good.


And as my reward, an acceptance from the Iowa Review. Two poems about parenting!


Another from Black Clock. One poem, a thing I wrote in blogger a letter to Springsteen!


And I have-- at long last-- a draft of a new ms. 60 pages, with the Daphne & Jim poems woven throughout, in such a way that you can read the chapbook straight through. I'm excited about it! It's called...


The Truth & Other Stories.


And it is!


So now I have TWO finished unpublished books of poetry...


But that really feels pretty good. Huh!

I'm MAD!!!

I hate ANR Realty.


Two years ago, I moved into my house... and when I did, the house next door, a lovely (if overpriced) renovation was also for sale, at an asking price of 255K.


It is still for sale.


The asking price was so high that nobody ever even came to look at the house. There was just NO WAY anybody was going to consider a house in this neighborhood for that amount.


This is the nature of investment real estate.


So what happened?


Well, the asshats at the out-of-town chain realty office let the house go to seed. Weeds grew up. Trash piled up.


I called them, begged them to deal with the mess. No dice.


I called the police, filed a complaint. I called some more. More weeds, more trash.


Then, it would seem, a squatter moved in, who promptly set a fire in the house. (or maybe the asshats burned it for the ins. money, who knows?)


So now I have a formerly-lovely, well renovated, fire-scorched vacant house next door.


Today I called the asshats again.


"What gives, asshats?" I asked the asshats.


They explained that they're waiting on ins. money, and that they've done nothing wrong.


"What could we have done to keep some vagrant from torching the place?"


"Well, isn't it your job to cut the weeds, pick up the trash? Wouldn't the house be more likely to sell if you maintained it? It's dangerous!"


The asshat response: "Your neighborhood is dangerous."


"No," I said. "Vacant houses in the neighborhood are dangerous, when every crackhead for miles can see that nobody ever visits the house, that the house is abandoned... that the realtor is in VIRGINIA!!! but my neighborhood is fine."


I yelled at the asshat, lost my temper. Smarmy boy-realtor in some stripmall office in Virginia. Sean! Asshat!


He was so rude, so dismissive.


This is what gets me... that nobody is accountable. Not the owner, who inevitably owns 47 such properties and himself lives in a McMansion outside the perimeter.


Not Sean the Asshat, who likely wears brightly colored button-downs and hair gel, and likes to drink hard and bang women with blond hair. Who doesn't read books, but likes to go on cruises. Who has never been to my neighborhood.


And honestly, not the crackhead, because hey, he's acrackhead and he saw a vacant house. I'd have done the same were I a crackhead.


But most infuriating is that I can't SEE any of these morons. They are none of them real to me. They do not live here and they have no idea how high the weeds have grown.


I suggested to Sean that perhaps his "landscaping team" realized that nobody ever visits this house and started skipping it altogether, but kept sending him the bill. This seemed the only part of my complaint Sean could visualize.


Which says something.


I am thinking I will pitch a story on how investment houses make neighborhoods more dangerous. Blocks of vancant homes around the city. Any thoughts on the right magazine for such a story?