I can't entirely remember how and why I chose the Simic lines, top, for this blog, except that the book "Night Picnic" sits on my shelf and I knew it to be pithy when pithiness was called for. (Though I do like the synergy of the stanza with my blog title, which I had chosen well before the epigraph.)
I'm not a huge Simic fan--have never felt like I was slipping or being slipped into another world when I read a poem of his. Still, I think he's a fine choice for Poet Laureate, the nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans.
My book is inscribed "For Angela, Charles Simic"--but I don't really remember getting it signed.
Some years ago, I interviewed Simic by email for an article in a weekly magazine, in advance of his reading here. I scribbled and thought and crossed out and hawed for days, trying to strike the right tone somewhere between witty and bland. I had been writing for papers just long enough to know that clever can backfire, but had not been out of an MFA program long enough to be cold to the lure of fame's proximate heat.
I'm glad to rediscover, based on the notes that fell out of the back of Night Picnic, what I did NOT ask, but darned if I can remember what I did. Can't find the archived article online, too lazy go go upstairs to clips file. Can't remember much about the reading, can't remember approaching Simic afterward to have book signed, can't remember whether I confessed that I was the same Angela who interviewed him. I don't think I did; too nervous and shy.
Good thing I was such a low-voltage writer.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Distant Song
I wrote this poem 4-some years ago, when I was pregnant with 2 and the U.S. was preparing to begin war on Iraq. I have not been very outspoken against the war, and I regret that.
The Unborn Child Hears a Distant Song
One ear to the wall, she’s been listening
for months, the world concave around her.
This is what she knows: the world is dark,
it makes noise. So mysterious, so familiar,
what each grain of sand hears
as it rushes toward the neck of the hourglass,
what a bullet hears as it lunges down the barrel,
aimed for something it will never see whole.
In her chambers, she tucks her head
and dreams in sound.
The round
repeats, the parts
stave each other off,
the music shudders
and contracts, the child is
born screaming the same song.
The Unborn Child Hears a Distant Song
One ear to the wall, she’s been listening
for months, the world concave around her.
This is what she knows: the world is dark,
it makes noise. So mysterious, so familiar,
what each grain of sand hears
as it rushes toward the neck of the hourglass,
what a bullet hears as it lunges down the barrel,
aimed for something it will never see whole.
In her chambers, she tucks her head
and dreams in sound.
The round
repeats, the parts
stave each other off,
the music shudders
and contracts, the child is
born screaming the same song.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Walking without the cart
I tried to go to a weekly writing group for a while, but I never caught on to the performance aspect of it: everybody writes in each other's presence for 20 or 30 minutes, then reads aloud and... then things are said.
Here's something I wrote then. It's loosely based on reality.
----
Jimmy had a shopping cart. He kept it in the empty yard beside his house, and no one ever took it. Mostly he carried aluminum cans in it, sometimes glass bottles if they were pretty blue, then he’d take them to his sister-in-law over on Pine Street.
Every morning he’d shake the fog from his eyes and eat a bit of bread and peanut butter, then head over to Pine Street for some coffee with his brother, pushing his cart. Roger had a nice house and a clean old car; he was a deacon at the church. But Jimmy just somehow couldn’t do those same things Roger did, have a job, get married. He knew he wasn’t smart, he just didn’t know why. Things were harder for him. And recently his insides were hurting a whole lot. Roger’d taken him to the doctor once, but the medicine cost so much.
This old cart was getting pretty stiff and squeaky. Roger let him put some grease on it any time he wanted, but something gets so old, grease doesn’t help. But Jimmy never had to be anywhere fast, so he just walked slower. When he had a load of cans, they rattled around anyway, so it didn’t matter about the squeaks.
People all around the neighborhood would put their cans in a bag for him, tied onto their front gate or looped over a picket of a fence. Mike Wilton’s boys just threw their coke cans out in the yard. They just didn’t know it was getting harder for Jimmy to reach down and get them.
It wasn’t a big neighborhood, but it took Jimmy a couple days to get through the whole thing. In the summer, he also went down to the playground where kids hung out at night. Usually they just left 40 ounces, but sometimes he found a pile of cans. When his cart was full, Roger would haul him over to South-Central where they paid 42 cents a pound for aluminum.
One morning, early fall, Jimmy hurt worse that usual and he didn’t feel like eating breakfast. He left his cart in the yard and walked over to Roger's house. It took him longer than usual. He didn’t walk so much without the shopping cart anymore and he wasn’t so steady on his feet, first thing in the morning like this.
The dark criss-crossing of moss between bricks in the sidewalk looked like letters on a big sign, Jimmy thought. He didn’t usually see the sidewalk straight on like this. What would the sign say? Jimmy, you old man. Jimmy, what will they say about you when you’re gone?
He saw a Dr. Pepper can up ahead, but he figured he could leave it be until later, when he was feeling better. Or maybe someone else would get it, those other guys who came into the neighborhood with their big bags, picking up cans.
Just beyond the can, the sidewalk hit a new patch. The moss left off its scrawl. But Jimmy was still thinking about letters, and he was thinking that he wanted to write something. He thought he’d ask Roger to write down a few things for him, about how he appreciated people saving their cans for him. About how he still thought about his mother and the day she put her hand on the top of his head and told him he was God’s child. About his idea for a new shopping cart chassis that made it easier to get over curbs. Yes, he should get Roger to write that down.
Here's something I wrote then. It's loosely based on reality.
----
Jimmy had a shopping cart. He kept it in the empty yard beside his house, and no one ever took it. Mostly he carried aluminum cans in it, sometimes glass bottles if they were pretty blue, then he’d take them to his sister-in-law over on Pine Street.
Every morning he’d shake the fog from his eyes and eat a bit of bread and peanut butter, then head over to Pine Street for some coffee with his brother, pushing his cart. Roger had a nice house and a clean old car; he was a deacon at the church. But Jimmy just somehow couldn’t do those same things Roger did, have a job, get married. He knew he wasn’t smart, he just didn’t know why. Things were harder for him. And recently his insides were hurting a whole lot. Roger’d taken him to the doctor once, but the medicine cost so much.
This old cart was getting pretty stiff and squeaky. Roger let him put some grease on it any time he wanted, but something gets so old, grease doesn’t help. But Jimmy never had to be anywhere fast, so he just walked slower. When he had a load of cans, they rattled around anyway, so it didn’t matter about the squeaks.
People all around the neighborhood would put their cans in a bag for him, tied onto their front gate or looped over a picket of a fence. Mike Wilton’s boys just threw their coke cans out in the yard. They just didn’t know it was getting harder for Jimmy to reach down and get them.
It wasn’t a big neighborhood, but it took Jimmy a couple days to get through the whole thing. In the summer, he also went down to the playground where kids hung out at night. Usually they just left 40 ounces, but sometimes he found a pile of cans. When his cart was full, Roger would haul him over to South-Central where they paid 42 cents a pound for aluminum.
One morning, early fall, Jimmy hurt worse that usual and he didn’t feel like eating breakfast. He left his cart in the yard and walked over to Roger's house. It took him longer than usual. He didn’t walk so much without the shopping cart anymore and he wasn’t so steady on his feet, first thing in the morning like this.
The dark criss-crossing of moss between bricks in the sidewalk looked like letters on a big sign, Jimmy thought. He didn’t usually see the sidewalk straight on like this. What would the sign say? Jimmy, you old man. Jimmy, what will they say about you when you’re gone?
He saw a Dr. Pepper can up ahead, but he figured he could leave it be until later, when he was feeling better. Or maybe someone else would get it, those other guys who came into the neighborhood with their big bags, picking up cans.
Just beyond the can, the sidewalk hit a new patch. The moss left off its scrawl. But Jimmy was still thinking about letters, and he was thinking that he wanted to write something. He thought he’d ask Roger to write down a few things for him, about how he appreciated people saving their cans for him. About how he still thought about his mother and the day she put her hand on the top of his head and told him he was God’s child. About his idea for a new shopping cart chassis that made it easier to get over curbs. Yes, he should get Roger to write that down.
Saturday, October 7, 2006
Rooftop Ephemeron
July, 1993. Kansas. I'm living on the top floor of a shambly, student-filled house with two friends. We have no kitchen, just a hot plate and a fridge which must have grown up out of the floor boards because it seems impossible that it should have been carted up the narrow, angled staircase. We wash our dishes in the claw-foot bathtub.
The fire escape is a rope tied to a steel loop bolted into the floor beside our front window. It's great for party entertainment--rappelling down the front of the house and over the porch roof into the bushes below. I mention this only because it should not be forgotten.
J- and I eat so much garlic in an attempt to repel mosquitoes naturally that when we lay down to sleep, we can smell the hot scent of garlic breathing up through the skin on our arms. We take afternoon naps in order to have more dreams.
D- shaves his head so he can save money on shampoo and stays up until 7 in the morning playing Sim City. He disappears for stretches of time to work on mysterious projects and do laundry at his parents' house. He has hung a Russian flag from our front window with antagonistic hopes of fetching a hostile response from town residents.
I'm working odd hours at the college cafeteria, cutting apples in half and spooning corn into little white bowls. Once, the manager walks by as I'm working and snaps, exasperatedly but not unkindly, "Use both hands!"
I spend hours in the library, half-heartedly attempting to make headway on my poorly defined senior thesis. I have one more semester of college, and no idea what to do next. (That fall, my advisor--a woman I admire so deeply I'm not even aware of it--will tell me, "You don't seem to be suited for the sort of research required in graduate school. You should get an MFA and teach poetry at a ju-co." This is "junior college" in Midwestish.) As my summer wears on, I collect an assortment of disorganized notes on the backs of pages from the recycling bin, but no clearer sense of what original thing I can propose.
One day, I am alone in the apartment, trying to write thoughts or poems in a notebook. The air is thick and the sky glares grey with thin clouds. Suddenly I realize that I don't want to be alone, writing in a notebook.
I find some red poster paint and a brush and climb out the window, past the Russian flag and around the gable to the roof. The pitch is quite steep and there is another dormer window at right angles directly around the corner, but we've all done this before. Sitting on the ridge and forming capital letters upsidedown, I paint, "I don't want to write. I want to talk, and I want people to listen to me."
I'm a little choked up and weepy at first, but the effort of painting and balancing sobers me up. When I finish, I straddle the ridgepole and look at red letters and the mottled black roof and the close sky. I wonder if anyone can see the words from the street; I'm not sure if I want them to be seen or not, but it doesn't matter, since raindrops begin to fall. I slide back into the house as fast as I dare and get my camera.
Somehow, leaning out the window and hanging onto the frame, I get two shots. By now, I feel good, as if I had settled something.
When the pictures are developed, I put them in the notebook.
The next spring, I lose the whole book on the DC Metro. I call and leave a message at a Metro office. Nothing comes of it.
The fire escape is a rope tied to a steel loop bolted into the floor beside our front window. It's great for party entertainment--rappelling down the front of the house and over the porch roof into the bushes below. I mention this only because it should not be forgotten.
J- and I eat so much garlic in an attempt to repel mosquitoes naturally that when we lay down to sleep, we can smell the hot scent of garlic breathing up through the skin on our arms. We take afternoon naps in order to have more dreams.
D- shaves his head so he can save money on shampoo and stays up until 7 in the morning playing Sim City. He disappears for stretches of time to work on mysterious projects and do laundry at his parents' house. He has hung a Russian flag from our front window with antagonistic hopes of fetching a hostile response from town residents.
I'm working odd hours at the college cafeteria, cutting apples in half and spooning corn into little white bowls. Once, the manager walks by as I'm working and snaps, exasperatedly but not unkindly, "Use both hands!"
I spend hours in the library, half-heartedly attempting to make headway on my poorly defined senior thesis. I have one more semester of college, and no idea what to do next. (That fall, my advisor--a woman I admire so deeply I'm not even aware of it--will tell me, "You don't seem to be suited for the sort of research required in graduate school. You should get an MFA and teach poetry at a ju-co." This is "junior college" in Midwestish.) As my summer wears on, I collect an assortment of disorganized notes on the backs of pages from the recycling bin, but no clearer sense of what original thing I can propose.
One day, I am alone in the apartment, trying to write thoughts or poems in a notebook. The air is thick and the sky glares grey with thin clouds. Suddenly I realize that I don't want to be alone, writing in a notebook.
I find some red poster paint and a brush and climb out the window, past the Russian flag and around the gable to the roof. The pitch is quite steep and there is another dormer window at right angles directly around the corner, but we've all done this before. Sitting on the ridge and forming capital letters upsidedown, I paint, "I don't want to write. I want to talk, and I want people to listen to me."
I'm a little choked up and weepy at first, but the effort of painting and balancing sobers me up. When I finish, I straddle the ridgepole and look at red letters and the mottled black roof and the close sky. I wonder if anyone can see the words from the street; I'm not sure if I want them to be seen or not, but it doesn't matter, since raindrops begin to fall. I slide back into the house as fast as I dare and get my camera.
Somehow, leaning out the window and hanging onto the frame, I get two shots. By now, I feel good, as if I had settled something.
When the pictures are developed, I put them in the notebook.
The next spring, I lose the whole book on the DC Metro. I call and leave a message at a Metro office. Nothing comes of it.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
The livery of misery
I'm reading Oliver Twist now, and though I really want to finish it, if only to prove to myself (and, oh yes, the world) that I can, I'm not sure I will.
I wasn't prepared for such a dark world. The book is so unrelentingly and also so transparently miserable, I can barely stand the thought of 300 more pages. Of course Oliver is not going to return to Mr. Brownlow's house when he offers to take the books back to the bookseller's stall!
Who read this story when it first appeared? I've been trying to imagine the women and the men who took up the magazine, shook it out, folded it over, read, licked their forefinger to turn the page... what did they think? Were they shocked, and satisified to have been? Did they dread the next installment, or look forward to it? Did they have any hope for a happy ending?
I'm not the sort of person to read happy books, especially. So I'm having trouble figuring out what bothers me so much about this. I think, really, this book is far more explicit in its portrayal of evil wrought on children than anything being written today. And yet at the same time, it's so overbaked by today's standards of writing that one can hardly help feeling a bit of mockery towards it. So I have two conflicting emotions every time I read.
Here's a passage about Dick that really ate me up:
The child was pale and think; his cheeks were sunken; and his eyes large and bright. The scanty parish dress, the livery of his misery, hung loosely on his feeble body; and his young limbs were wasted away, like those of an old man. ...
"I should like," faltered the child, "if somebody that can write, would put a few words down for me on a piece of paper, and fold it up and seal it, and keep it for me, after I am laid in the ground. ...
"I should like," said the child, "to leave my dear love to poor Oliver Twist; and to let him know how often I have sat by myself and cried to think of his wandering about in the dark nights with nobody to help him. And I should like to tell him," said the child, pressing his small hands together, and speaking with great fervour, "that I was glad to die whan I was very young; for, perhaps, if I had lived to be a man, and had grown old, my little sister who is in Heaven, might forget me, or be unlike me; and it would be so much happier if we were both children there together."
I wasn't prepared for such a dark world. The book is so unrelentingly and also so transparently miserable, I can barely stand the thought of 300 more pages. Of course Oliver is not going to return to Mr. Brownlow's house when he offers to take the books back to the bookseller's stall!
Who read this story when it first appeared? I've been trying to imagine the women and the men who took up the magazine, shook it out, folded it over, read, licked their forefinger to turn the page... what did they think? Were they shocked, and satisified to have been? Did they dread the next installment, or look forward to it? Did they have any hope for a happy ending?
I'm not the sort of person to read happy books, especially. So I'm having trouble figuring out what bothers me so much about this. I think, really, this book is far more explicit in its portrayal of evil wrought on children than anything being written today. And yet at the same time, it's so overbaked by today's standards of writing that one can hardly help feeling a bit of mockery towards it. So I have two conflicting emotions every time I read.
Here's a passage about Dick that really ate me up:
The child was pale and think; his cheeks were sunken; and his eyes large and bright. The scanty parish dress, the livery of his misery, hung loosely on his feeble body; and his young limbs were wasted away, like those of an old man. ...
"I should like," faltered the child, "if somebody that can write, would put a few words down for me on a piece of paper, and fold it up and seal it, and keep it for me, after I am laid in the ground. ...
"I should like," said the child, "to leave my dear love to poor Oliver Twist; and to let him know how often I have sat by myself and cried to think of his wandering about in the dark nights with nobody to help him. And I should like to tell him," said the child, pressing his small hands together, and speaking with great fervour, "that I was glad to die whan I was very young; for, perhaps, if I had lived to be a man, and had grown old, my little sister who is in Heaven, might forget me, or be unlike me; and it would be so much happier if we were both children there together."
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Swords and pens
On Monday, July 10, The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page piece (column 4, quirky story placement) titled, "For Afghan Cabbies, A Poetry Tradition Spurs War of Words." The headline after the jump used the phrase "Fight a War of Words."
Briefly: two associations devoted to the recital of Afghan poetry exist in Washington, D.C. One takes a more scholarly approach, primarily discussing classical works rooted in Sufisim; the other spends more time in performance of contemporary Afghan poetry.
The author of the article, Masood Farivar, clearly doesn't trust WSJ readers to be interested in a story about Afghan poetry. I imagine a thought process along these lines: "Hmmm, where's the source of tension? Two groups, they're different, difference produces conflict... fighting poets, that's it!! I've got the story!"
(Too, he seems to be playing into U.S. perceptions of Afghans as never having left behind their warring clannishness: "But having given up battling over the merits of the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, exiled Afghans here have found a new outlet for factional debate: how to celebrate the ancient Afghan art of poetry reading.")
The real story isn't about the conflict. Of course people who are passionate about something, who love poems that reach deep inside them on emotional, cultural and intellectual levels, will occasionally passionately disagree about what they think is the best or right way to honor poetry. But I'm sure that the number of people who even perceive these two groups as seriously in conflict--let alone "at war"--is small compared to the total number of people who attend the poetry readings. Maybe Farivar thinks readers will be amused by the thought of poetry-lovers fighting. And maybe he's right. But he lost the chance to find and tell the real story.
Here's the part that interests me: In the early 80s, "At the end of 12-hour [cab-driving] shifts, dog-tired and sometimes hungry, they'd sit cross-legged in a circle. Over cups of tea and candies, they tackled some of the most technically difficult poems written by the great Sufi poets.... Every now and then, when they found themselves stumped, they'd call upon a ... former Kabul University professor... chipping in 25 to 50 cents each, they'd buy a phone card and hunch over the speakerphone as the professor brought the poems to life."
Was this act of reading and studying poems so important because the readers were tired, isolated in a new country, lost in jobs they never thought they's have to take? How was the ex-patriate Afghan community different 20 years ago compared to now? Who goes to the "contemporary" readings now? How much money do they make? How old are they? How long have they been in this country? Who goes to the traditional group's events? What occasions now do Afghans in this country have to chip in a quarter to a common goal?
***
I could not have said, 10 years ago, that one day I would be reading the Wall Street Journal. We get it free, you know, from airline mileage points, and sometimes it piles up in the recycling bin for days at a time. But I've come to appreciate much of its coverage. And really, how can I complain about poetry on the front page of ANY paper?
Briefly: two associations devoted to the recital of Afghan poetry exist in Washington, D.C. One takes a more scholarly approach, primarily discussing classical works rooted in Sufisim; the other spends more time in performance of contemporary Afghan poetry.
The author of the article, Masood Farivar, clearly doesn't trust WSJ readers to be interested in a story about Afghan poetry. I imagine a thought process along these lines: "Hmmm, where's the source of tension? Two groups, they're different, difference produces conflict... fighting poets, that's it!! I've got the story!"
(Too, he seems to be playing into U.S. perceptions of Afghans as never having left behind their warring clannishness: "But having given up battling over the merits of the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, exiled Afghans here have found a new outlet for factional debate: how to celebrate the ancient Afghan art of poetry reading.")
The real story isn't about the conflict. Of course people who are passionate about something, who love poems that reach deep inside them on emotional, cultural and intellectual levels, will occasionally passionately disagree about what they think is the best or right way to honor poetry. But I'm sure that the number of people who even perceive these two groups as seriously in conflict--let alone "at war"--is small compared to the total number of people who attend the poetry readings. Maybe Farivar thinks readers will be amused by the thought of poetry-lovers fighting. And maybe he's right. But he lost the chance to find and tell the real story.
Here's the part that interests me: In the early 80s, "At the end of 12-hour [cab-driving] shifts, dog-tired and sometimes hungry, they'd sit cross-legged in a circle. Over cups of tea and candies, they tackled some of the most technically difficult poems written by the great Sufi poets.... Every now and then, when they found themselves stumped, they'd call upon a ... former Kabul University professor... chipping in 25 to 50 cents each, they'd buy a phone card and hunch over the speakerphone as the professor brought the poems to life."
Was this act of reading and studying poems so important because the readers were tired, isolated in a new country, lost in jobs they never thought they's have to take? How was the ex-patriate Afghan community different 20 years ago compared to now? Who goes to the "contemporary" readings now? How much money do they make? How old are they? How long have they been in this country? Who goes to the traditional group's events? What occasions now do Afghans in this country have to chip in a quarter to a common goal?
***
I could not have said, 10 years ago, that one day I would be reading the Wall Street Journal. We get it free, you know, from airline mileage points, and sometimes it piles up in the recycling bin for days at a time. But I've come to appreciate much of its coverage. And really, how can I complain about poetry on the front page of ANY paper?
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