Is it already time???

To think about AWP???


Oh, I'm just a whore for the AWParties,
All the drunks and ex-punks, also assholes and smarties.
All the hotels and motels where I like to shmooze,
And oh... yeah.. the poems. I like poems, & BOOZE!


At AWP all the writers will gather
To smacktalk each other, but above all the chatter
No one understands what the other guy said,
So it's hardly an issue, now get into bed!


Yes there's fun to be had, at the big lit-fiasco,
With the PROSE, and big HOs, this shit's hot like tabasco.
So get you some poems, and get you some wine,
And then get you a roomkey, oh you'll have a time!!!


And it doesn't much matter that you're getting older,
Though the undergrad gals are just getting bolder.
Becasue , one of these days, you'll kiss the right ass,
And end up with tenure, won't that be a gas?


And then all this fun stuff will just be a memory,
You'll settle right down with a sculpter named Henry,
In some small town in Kansas, or maybe upstate,
And we'll miss you, or diss you, and tell you you're great.


But all this is blather, and really to say,
That I live here, in Georgia, so come panel and stay,
At my place, in East Lake. I'm calling all whores!!!
*My* panel's accepted, so how about yours?

Looks like...

I just agreed to do 2 sections of teaching in the fall, and now I'm scrambling to find a place for Mose to go on T/Th, and looking for a place to put my feelings aout leaving him.


Excited to teach again, but OH!

New Poem/Theology...

Intelligent Design


God is conflicted, must admit.
God would prefer to support local
And independent businesses, but


“Starbucks is so darn handy,” says
The Creator. God did not make the world
Handy. God is new to the idea


Of convenience. He sighs. “Once
You’ve gotten used to a dishwasher,
There’s really no going back,” says God.


He throws up his hands.
When confronted, God must be honest.
“I created in my image,” he says,


“I wasn’t thinking, just curious. So—”
We get curious. We aren’t thinking.
His curious image. His need to tinker.


“And I handed you the fucking knife—
Go to it! I said, as you carved off little
Pieces. Remember? Your own flesh.


There was blood. My sad brittle image.”
We did it. Cut at ourselves, remade
The image, made it better, ours, and so


Fulfilled something. The smallest bit of skin
And everything was different. The line between
Child and complicit. We finished his creation.


For him. Drew the line between child and control.
Painted the picture, completed the work.
The fall. The knife. The paint-by-numbers.


Our influence, slight, and irreversible.
God, we made God. A weak one. We made
Man better. We made a mistake?


Revision is the process of taking away.
Revision is the process of moving forward.
“And now,” sighs God. “It all looks—


Unfamiliar. I hardly recognize the world.
Myself.” There was a mountain once, I believe
There was. But now—the everything is new.

DO THIS!!!

Go make a donation to OBSERVABLE.


For Pete's Sake, it's only a dollar, and you can use Paypal. You'll NEVER miss it. NEVER!


Help them get their match.


Support indie publishing, yo. Or quit pretending you care.

I might be tired now, but...

If you live in one of the following cities, I will see you this fall/winter. Some of these dates are readings and events (poems and Half/Life too) and some are for more personal reasons... in either case, there's time for us to grab a beer, right?


Hurrah!


September--


Decatur, GA (2)Washington, DC (12)
Atlanta, GA (13)


October


Portland, OR (11)


November


San Francisco, CA (twice!!! dates TBA)
Iowa City, IA (26)Atlanta, GA (date TBA)


December


Boulder, CO (date TBA)
Baltimore, MD (date TBA)


January


Easton, PA (5-7)
Hoboken, NJ (date TBA)

They're done...

Which is not to say "finished" because I could not afford to "finish" them.


But $50 bought enough paint to keep me from losing my mind.


Bye-bye, nasty berber carpet. Hello, painted hardwood/plywood floors.


I think it looks "rustic" like a farmhouse in upstate NY or something.


As you can see... Mose isn't quite so sure he agrees.


Eh?

Poem...

The creature


The creature can stand, almost. The creature can almost, almost. Many things the creature can almost.


The creature can stick out his tongue, can make a clicking noise, can call out.


The creature cannot yet call in. Cannot yet take a step. Cannot yet “speak.”


The creature is a mess, a motion, a fuss, a piece of the whole.


The creature is not a man, woman, bird, cat, but he is some of them. The sum of them.


The creature can wave, is not a wave. Can scream, is not a scream. Can plant, is not a plant.


His feet. The creature can scream his feet.


The creature has sounds, hands, power. The creature has no words.


If the creature can roll his tongue, but not while standing. If the creature can stand, but not for long. If the creature can long, but not for beyond. If the creature can beyond—


There is no beyond the creature. But there will be.

New poems simmering...

A series called "Word Problems."


Like the ones on the SAT. Yeah, like those...


And meanwhile, I have 3 hours a day that Mose sleeps while I'm awake. Each night, I promise myself I'm going to use the time to REVISE the NOVEL and each day I end up scribbling poems, ripping up carpet, and talking on the phone.


I am a bad girl.


And also, when I began ripping up the carpet I found oak hardwoods. Yay! Got 3/4 of the way done and found PLYWOOD. Boo!


My solution, after pricing new floors, which we cannot afford even remotely becasue we're BROKE AS HELL?


Paint. I'm painting all the plywood and all the oak and moving all the furniture and rugs around to cover the ugly part. A big white painted room with strategically placed rugs.


Cover up the ugly. That's the way the world works.


I am poor. I don't mind my bare bones so much, as long as I know other happy poor people. I even like the aesthetic of my poverty. I don't mind my old clothes. But I can't help that I wish I could have a new floor, some bookshelves... maybe even bookshelves that aren't from a thriftstore...


Luxury=extra. Not having to stack your books in double rows on the old bookshelves you inherited from a roommate who left.


Although the truth is this is CRAP and I should be ashamed. When the poverty threshold in Georgia is 16,600 for a family of three. I am lucky lucky lucky...


Back to the novel...

And perhaps...

I *have* become a natterpus.


Damn!


Oh well, all a person can do is learn.


Here I go, off into the wild blue summer, trying to learn...


I'm heading upstairs to rip up the carpets. Groan. My punishment.


In future, you will find no gloating about publishing laurels (pun intended) here at JewishyIrishy.


Just gloating about MOSE!


That's okay... right?


(Genuine thanks to Mishkin2. Honest, but not cruel. You're a good commenter.)

Something to think about...

CRITICISM!


Last week I got a spanking at the New York Observer. One of their bloggers, Phil Weiss, had attended a Half/Life reading, and as a result, he called me a "Natterpus" and suggested that I was too focused on networking and not enough on spirituality.


While this particular criticism is likely true (considering that most of us are guilty of such a sin) I found some real inaccuracies in what Weiss posted (including the fact that Mose was circumcised at the hospital). So I tried to comment on his blog post, and the moderator (it turns out Weiss does not moderate his own comments) refused or neglected to make my comment visible.


Katharine Weber, who received an even harsher set of snarks in the same post, also tried to comment and her remarks met with the same fate. They fell away into the aether. Of course, we assumed that Weiss was intentionally avoiding our corrections of his post.


So the other night, after a few beers, I got to thinking, and wrote Phil a letter.


To his great credit, he responded to me immediately, graciously apologized, posted my letter on his site, and we've been corresponding ever since.


Now... why am I telling you this?


Because the incident has me thinking about what it means to be a critic, what it means to be a blogger, and in particular what it means to be a blog-critic, to write criti-blogs (if that's a word).


The way Phil responded to me was open, warm immediate, personal. He made use of the best facets of the web. But in his initial post he fell prey to the very worst aspects of the aetherworld.


He responded immediately. Without fact checking, without considering how (particularly if he was wrong) his words would feel/sound. He was unintentional, careless.


No surprise there. Because blogging REQUIRES immediacy, a constant deadline, a quick draw. And so sometimes, bloggers are focused on speed and impulse rather than consideration and accountability.


Sometimes this leads to good, instictive, raw writing. Sometimes it leads to a sloppy mess.


Look, criticism is critical. Of course it is. Fine. But you want to make sure that when you rant, you can stand behind your rantings. You want to check your sources and ask yourself if you really will want to have said what it is you want to say.


Online, no matter what you do, you're gonna piss someone off. But you should make sure you're pissing people off for the right reasons...


Why am I going on and on about this? Becasue I've done just what Phil did, many many times. I'm also a ranty blogger, and I've had to apologize a lot, and learn a bit about posting, then sitting on my post, checking my facts, and waiting to publish for a few hours... until I'm ready to back my shit up. Until I know that I want to go on the record as saying what I've decided to say. The more snarly I feel, the longer I wait to hit that "publish" button.


It's all about commiting. Committing words to the page is committing to your words. This is an area where the ease of online publishing is hurting us all, diminishing the quality of what we write. Cutting out the middleman of careful revision.


And he's an important man, that middleman. Maybe we could all stand to take a lesson from print media on this one. Like, if it actually cost you MONEY to print your post, would you still think it was worth saying? What does your post contribute to the world? And if it doesn't contribute, why bother saying it, when you could be playing frisbee or something, drinking a beer instead...


So to Phil Weiss, many many thanks for your openness and willingness to dialogue. And many thanks for helping me remember a lesson I'd do well not to forget in the future. It was important for me to feel this side of the wily criti-blog.


For the rest of you, if you've read this far... GO AND READ MY LETTER!

Ladies and gentlemen...

Watcha doin tomorrow night?


Cause I'll be reading poems right here in the ATL!


7:30 at the Portfolio Center, in Buckhead, with me and your most gracious host, Collin Kelley!


And um... Jazzy Pha. Yeah, it's a Jazze Pha Production!!! Collin and Jazze. So come on out. Ciara will be there too. We'll all get CRUNK! (except Mose)


But even if Jazze doesn't come, I know *you'll* be there!


Right?


In other news, I've been painting some old chairs and an end table. Yellow. I think it might have been a mistake. The yellow, that is. But maybe I'll get used to it, even though it doesn't match anything.


Sometimes a girl has to take a risk.

Begging bowls...

If you pay a visit to Killing the Buddha right now, you'll discover that we're asking for donations.


Why?


Because KtB runs on good will, idiocy, and hope... and while we have plenty of that kind of currency to spare, it turns out our web hosting service requires actual American dollars. And our pathetic coffers are bare.


We've recently had babies. We're technically a non-profit. Our discretionary funds have given out.


It's true. Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau have gone majorly into debt over the last 6 years, to bring true, hard, honest, angry, surprising, faithful, funny, and lovely words about religion to you, the world. And I've done my bit for the last year too. Nobody has made any money, though we've established a loyal readership of about 50,000 people.


People who think these kinds of perspectives on faith are important. People who care and maybe even *need* KtB.


But we're broke now, in the red, and so anything you can share would mean a great deal.


It would be very sad to see KtB die for lack of a few sheckels. But that might, in fact, be what happens if we can't pay the rent on our URL.


So help us? Please? We'll send you some great books as a thank you gift (details on the site)! And if you make a really huge donation, I'll bring Mose to visit you and sing you a silly song, written just for you! With your name in it and everything!


Now, who can ask for more than that?


Cmon, What Would Jesus Do?

Wonderful review!!!

From the Jerusalem Post!


Half Life: Jewish Tales from Interfaith Homes is a timely collection of essays about growing up - as it is called in this anthology - half-Jewish. The editor, Laurel Snyder, chose 19 young writers who divulge their life stories eloquently, allowing for a revealing glimpse into the heart of interfaith child-rearing, and in many ways into what it means to be a Jewish-American.


Thank you, Jerusalem Post!


In other news, I installed my ceiling fan (with Hubby's help, to my chagrin) today, and I added the floral pulls from Sarah's Iowa kitchen. A memorial to Sarah's kitchen. She gave them to me when I visited her last month, as she was beginning to clear out her house.


Because Sarah moved TODAY, left the house I spent sooooo many hours in. Good for Sarah! who is starting a new life in Chicago... but... It made me a little sad. So it goes. Life moves on.


Though the fan makes Mose happy!!!!


And now I must go... as my 30 minutes of online time are over for the day. Ouch!


(I love you SAT!)