518

Some recent articles on the shifting world of books:

- New York Times: In Digital Age, Students Still Cling to Paper Textbooks: I know some loads can be heavy, and the searchable features on electronic books are pretty amazing, but I still love that intimate contact with a book. And as an instructor in the literature and literature-related fields, I think we can stand to stick with the paper versions for some time. I know some universities have textbook rental, which is a nice, cost-efficient alternative.

- New York Times: Picture Books No Longer Staple for Children: No need to rush our minnow. She'll be inundated with all sorts of clever picture-books from our end.

- Wall Street Journal: New Libraries Technologies Dispense with Librarians: I'm grateful to read that our local librarian has spoken out against the shift. I love being able to wander through the aisles, going for one thing and coming away with another. And story hour and coming home with a stack, library days when I was little at the hat-library in Chattanooga. I want my own children to have affection for this place, their local library, and not a book-locker or a vending machine.

510: book club

Two nights ago I hosted book club at our home, a little mussed, quite humble, but always so good. After they left, I confessed to Ryan that even after the minnow is born, I certainly want to continue on with the monthly tradition of book club--I need it, in fact--because even though I am having a little girl, she will not be able to provide that estrogen-time I will so direly need.

We read the eerie We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is incredibly heavy on the development of an unstable narrator. I read it long ago, as an undergraduate, in a class called Weird Books by Women, and I adored it then. I still skated through my reading, though I think one thing that has ruined my reading since then is the seeking of a "twist," which clearly wasn't the point of this slim novel. (I forget things, including book plots, very easily, so reading this again was as if reading it for the first time. This can make for awkward conversation if someone asks if I've read something and I say yes, because I cannot carry on an accurate review with that recently-read companion as all has leaked from my brain, love it or not. And pregnant? Forget it. I can barely remember if I shampooed and conditioned my hair halfway through the shower.)

Another quirk of mine is that I tend to vacillate in interests and sometimes, something I love more than anything in the world, must remain dormant. (Love for friends and family and pets and home and whatnot somehow escapes this categorization; perhaps what I mean is what-I-do-with-my-spare-time that can come and go in strong pulses.) I had been knitting myself into a wrist brace and frustrated with graduate school, but upon settling into the sofa, a deadline for reading my book club book, the hunger for devouring books like some great Godzilla rose up within me again. I suppose those fiber projects will collect a bit of dust while I read myself into a coma. I managed to finish Dave Eggers' Zeitoun after the ladies departed, which is a narrative of one family surviving Hurricane Katrina, told very much in a New Yorker piece style. I also started a 42-disc book on CD (My Life by Bill Clinton) yesterday and managed to not flip between The Current and the book as I had with the last two, in true ADD-style.


Our dinner--
Vegan Butternut Squash Soup:

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 carrots, sliced
• 3 stalks celery, diced
• 2 small or one large butternut squash, peeled and chopped
• 5 cups vegetable broth
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh sage
• 1/2 cup soy milk
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

In a large soup pot, sautee the onion and garlic in olive oil until onions turn soft, about 3 to 5 minutes.

Add the carrots and celery and cook for another 3 to 5 minutes.

Add the squash and stir just to coat, then add the vegetable broth and sage. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a slow simmer. Allow to cook for at least 25 minutes, or until squash is soft.

Using a potato masher or a large fork, mash the squash until smooth, or, alternatively, you can puree the soup in a food processor or blender.

Stir in the soy milk and season with salt and pepper to taste.

487: two anthologies

There are two anthologies I want to call your attention to:

1. From Orchards, Fields, and Gardens, edited by Kerstin Svendsen, which will be available in mid-August and is $4 off pre-orders. Of course, I'm extra-excited about this project because I have three poems inside: the title poem to my chapbook (which is still making rounds, but I promise an update, even when it's a bridesmaid again) "The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake," as well as "Kitchen" and "Palming Earth."


2. The other is a collection being published by Harper Perennial, and my tattoo, done by the lovely and talented Shawn Hebrank, will make an appearance in its pages. You can read more about my specific tattoo in this post, and you can check out the book's webpage here. It will be released October 12th.

452: bookclub

Tonight, a quiet evening with a good group of girl friends, where we discussed Flow, which is up available on bookswap, and I learned a good handful of scintillating facts regarding that monthly, which I still think can provide great moments of embarrassment and disgust, as the book hoped to convince me otherwise, and I do think my body-bookclub-book my heart belongs to is Woman: An Intimate Geography. So good.

Our book club has expanded in the past few months; for a while it was just me and Angie and Emily holding down the fort, but Chris rejoined, and Meryl folded herself in, bringing her sister (who has "popped!"--and is due in July) Casey along. It's a good six, and I adore these girls a great deal. (Now, if we could only convince that Kelly to join again...)

Happy Sunday evening. Night sounds of laundry and crickets, watching a recorded episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, trying to finish a young adult novel version of Emily Dickinson's life.

442: page turning again

A week has drifted by, a full, plump week, with poetry get-togethers, a calming inside of me, a return of a husband who spent seven days in California, a cold that has ripped through my students, my friends, my Ryan, a putting away of knitting needles and return to the page.

As I age, my attention swings more and more pendulously: for months, all I can think of is the workings of my body, the frustrations therein, and then, I wake on a Saturday morning, not even stepping foot into the Loft offices, and poetry has filled me again, up to the brim, and all I want is to settle into a comfortable chair, or, perhaps, on the sunniest of days, on a blanket in the yard, and read until the world slips away, until I am fully ensconced in that new and fresh place.

I just started The Echo Maker by Richard Powell, who is visiting our campus in two weeks (and I will be photographing the event). I'm only a slim trail of pages in, but the language is lush, on the tails of the Miep Gies memoir (which was so sweet, so tender, which was written so plainly, and made me cry on more than one occasion).

401

"These then are spiritual exercises: walk don't drive, when you do drive, drive slowly, make room for the one behind you, when you drive don't read, listen: when you read, read poetry."

-- Wright, CD. Cooling Time. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2005. 76.

(There's more being said, together, in conversation. Also: I love this book.)

339

I love Eireann's words, and I love that I can connect with her quietly on her blog sometimes. I wish I could pull England closer to here, a long rope across the pond. Today she posted a quote which has resonated with me, and I wanted to share a bit of it with you:

You may not have perfect taste; there is no perfect taste; but you'll have taste and it will be yours, not somebody else's, but your very own; and you may not be able to lecture on it any better than I can, but you will have a feel for the painter's art, which is a fine art.

From The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens: Volume I: A Boy on Horseback and Seeing New York First. Harcourt, Brace: 1951. p 130.

You see, I'm in the midst of a hefty independent study, which has me reading these books that could build cottages in the woods, heavy stones of books, thick and collapsing. I'm reading Emily Dickinson, and there are moments when her words shine right off the page, but there are others where I feel I'm slogging through a sing-songy mess, and what has begun to frighten me (and has always frightened me) as a reader and editor of poetry is that I might not recognize a good poem--what if I rejected one of Dickinson's poems? What if I don't understand why they are so celebrated? (I do, in some ways, and in some ways, not as much.)

And perhaps I want to be the kind of reader and editor that can celebrate a myriad of poetry, just as I want to celebrate a full life, but maybe I need to also recognize that trusting myself is important too. It's OK to vary in my aesthetic, to allow my tastes to change, and to think something is good when others don't (and vice versa). It's OK to develop my own canon.

---

I've been feeling the pressure of the semester this past week, and I'm in a place where I need to pull back, to not take on more until less is pulled off the top. What I want more than anything is to have quiet, both inside and out.

While I was on the MFA retreat, one of my cabin mates, Brian Laidlaw, would wake to yoga practice, would line his mat up to the picture window and breathe and move and breathe.

Denise, a fellow blogger and former MFA, wrote a post that begins with an image from a train in Chicago. I want to get onto a train, with nothing by way of obligation, with a small knapsack that contains: my bedroom pillow, a writing notebook (maybe a brand new one, even), a volume of poetry that requires no essays or reviews or interviews at the end of it, some knitting (preferably in earth tones, preferably natural fibers and bamboo needles), my camera with a blank card in it. I wouldn't have any medication with me or student essays or submissions to dislocate or any other literary magazine. I would have pencils to sketch with. I would have music.

I want to start a new garden.

I want to clean windows.

I want to make things with my hands. Bake oatmeal cookies in the afternoon. Celebrate the feel of autumn sun on my skin.

Breathe and breathe and steady and breathe.

Yesterday morning, when I was a bit late (the morning rain made the commute harrowing) for a meeting with the professor I'm doing my independent study with, I was so off-kilter, my body soaked from the cold rain, my car parked in an unfamiliar place, I had to steady myself, and he had to tell me to take a moment. He may not have known it, but I was on the verge of bursting into tears, nearly as embarrassing as when I did cry, unstopping, in the doctor's office several years ago, revealing what I already knew about myself (oh, anxiety disorder).

I cannot let myself go back to that.

335: the story of a tattoo

While I was at Bread Loaf, I met this girl, whose name I can no longer recall, who had the most beautiful tattoo--a pair of poems twined together on her arm. I marveled at the tattoo from a distance, and snuck this shot during the Robert Frost talk at his cabin in the woods.

I already knew of Shawn through Meryl, one of my fellow poets in the program, and we'd been emailing, discussing a tattoo Kelly and I have been considering for much too long. It takes a while for two people to settle into something permanent such as this, though I think the friendship took a bit less time.

But when I saw the above tattoo, my lack of patience went into hyperdrive, and I began a dialogue with the ever patient Shawn on how to do something like this on my own arm.

First: settling on the poem. It had to be something I loved, and though some, who I've told I'm getting a poem tattoo, have asked if it would be one of my own, I cringed--it seems narcissistic, and somehow, I don't believe my own words are at a place that could claim that kind of permanence. Not on my own body, especially.

Sharon Olds has always been my favorite poet. Since I was a junior in high school. And this poem speaks to me on so many levels, and that last line, oh, that last line:

I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

It felt so right. Which led to contemplation: what shape would this poem take? The above tattoo seems to be based on a flower, and I'd been hoping the poem I'd select would lend itself to something obvious--but no pillars, no paper dolls. Instead, Shawn suggested two of something, for the two figures in the poem, and if I weren't already talking birds with my friend Kelly, he'd suggest that one, which led me to wings--the poem in the end seems to be about a kind of freedom, a revenge to bad memories. Also, I read this from an interview with Sharon Olds:

What did you mean when you once said that your poetry comes out of your lungs?

[Laughs] Well, you know, it's curious where different people think their mind is. I guess a lot of people believe that their mind is in their brain, in their head. To me, the mind seems to be spread out in the whole body -- the senses are part of the brain. I guess they're not where the thinking is done. But poetry is so physical, the music of it and the movement of thought. Maybe we can use a metaphor for it, out of dance. I think for many years I was aware of the need, in dance and in life, to breathe deeply and to take in more air than we usually take in. I find a tendency in myself not to breathe very much. And certainly I have noticed, over the years, when dancing or when running, that ideas will come to my mind with the oxygen. Suddenly you're remembering something that you haven't thought of for years.

Wings, lungs. The senses, which are so important to both her work and my own.

So he sketched this for me:


Shawn has a special knack, I must add, for what he calls "illustrative realism." He creates these amazing creatures with such imagination.

Here are some of my favorites he has put up on his blog: book birdhouse and the opposite arm's bird as well as these shoulder doilies. Some other clever designs: the bird/swine flu, this crazed penguin, this brainwashed sheep, airline safety, the drag king and queen, and many others.

He added the words, and from a distance (hence, my keeping it thumbnail size), you can see the wings still:


But I also wanted to include the larger draft, so you could see the way all the words interact. My favorite about the top tattoo is the way the words interact, overlap, mingle.

Thank you, Shawn: for doing this in trade, for being so patient with me as I "line edited" the wings, for doing this on your day off, for being so encouraging, for having an awesome wife who is going to be my own cheering section and reminds me how cool poetry is, for being so good at PhotoShop, for making art for all the world to see. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

(Need a tattoo and live in the area? Shawn's your man. Seriously.)

I'll post pictures of the finished project later. For now, I'm off to shower and drive to Identity Tattoo in Maple Grove. I'm not nervous at all, I swear.

PS: All images, save the top one, are copyright Shawn Hebrank.

315

I learned about the Women's Prison Book Project a while back but somehow, in the rush of the world, had forgotten this local effort to get books into prisoner's hands.

They have a sale coming up, and I thought I'd pass along this information:

--------------------------------------------------

The Women's Prison Book Project Big Book Sale!

Paperbacks are only $2, Hardcovers are only $3 and these are really in good shape. Plan ahead for all your gift giving needs, as well as getting a stack for yourself. A huge range of topics and types.

Saturday, August 7 from 10-6, Sunday August 8 from 10-5

Powderhorn Park--we're near the park building

The book sale is one of the major fundraising activities we do each year. Funds help us send all sorts of books to women in prison all over the country.

288: summer reading

I love this article from The Washington Post: [they] asked authors which character from literature they'd like to spend the day at the beach with. Here's what they said.

I'm flying out shortly for New Jersey for twelve days, so it's likely to be a bit spotty here, at best. Ryan is staying behind, and my purpose is to watch my sister-in-law's two sons while she and her husband are at work; there's a three week overlap after she's returned to work and he finishes the school year and daycare is ridiculously expensive, so I figured we could relieve a little of that.

I did not get enough sleep last night, which is good, because I should fall immediately to sleep tonight, preparing me for what might be a very long week. My mother-in-law described Jimmy, the three year old, as "greased lightning." Eep.

Reading on the plane: The Pillow Book. I plan to post over here, some of my thoughts. I've also brought along a few poetry books I owe reviews to to various literary magazines and a few fiction books that I hope to read before falling asleep. I don't know what to expect, but it will be a nice change to my routine.

Oh, and who would I spend the day at the beach with? I am thinking Esther Greenwood from The Bell Jar, mainly because that was the first book that made me fascinated with its author. Lynn Cox, author of Grayson, would also be lovely company on the beach--I loved her brief memoir, the specificity, and I think someone who could identify our surroundings would be inspiring.

What about you?

278: letter:press

This weekend was an intense workshop at the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts with an incredible instructor: Letterpress I compacted into a weekend. It was mostly work time: blackening our hands with lead type, learning the jargon of the letterpress, carving into linoleum blocks, paging through haiku books, setting my own brief poem, learning about mixing paint, thinking about folios. Our instructor encouraged us also to continue on, and when we did, to also thinking about press names. Ryan suggested Paper Tattoo as we were driving home; there was a beat, then we both said, "You/I kinda like it" simultaneously. It might stick.

221

Even this has changed. So much sunshine, weather in the forties without the spindly minus in front, and fallow fields have turned swampland, puddling. I even saw a small waterfall at the edge of one field, water running over a heap of stones, disappearing in the valley by the highway.

I want to believe that spring is on its way, but I know this is a fluke, that Minnesota simply doesn't give up on winter in mid-February. It's a respite and nothing else.

Right?

Currently:
- Middlesex for school, You Shall Know Our Velocity! in the great read-and-donate project.
- Listening to The March by EL Doctorow. I've been having a hard time finding a book on CD that doesn't make me want to fling it out the window in frustration--poorly developed characters, ridiculous plot changes, awful awful writing, and on. This one I've just started, but I'm thinking of the Alice Sebold and the JoAnne Harris, the Ursula Hegi and Maeve Binchy, the Sarah Gruen and Kim Edwards. Books I knew I wouldn't otherwise want to read, but listening might not be so bad. I've avoided the classics because I wanted to prop them up in my lap, have a more intimate contact with them, but maybe... Anyway, for the Chicago trip, I picked up Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. After reading The Road for the class I'm teaching, I'm curious to explore others, though I think it would qualify as a listen-curiosity as opposed to a reading one. It seems I've lost so much of the time I'd adapted to as far as reading goes--last semester spoiled me. This semester is keeping my nose to the, erm, paperstone. Yeah, that was awful. I need some sleep.
- Drinking lemonade. It's not summer yet, I know, but the sunshine made me do it.
- Small frustrations: the lose your wallet and find it hours later sort. The mud tracks on the carpet sort. The dishes built up in the sink, and on.
- The cleaning that comes from looking for a wallet. Sigh of exasperation, then scrub, straighten, recycle. Shred paper for the worms, for the compost tin. Maybe even read old New Yorkers, if you could imagine yourself a pocket of time.

215: excerpted

from The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet

pg. 17: 'But where does he get that spit,' I would ask myself, 'where does he bring it up from? Mine will never have the unctuousness or color of his. It will merely be spun glassware, transparent and fragile.'

*

pg. 53: In the silence, I heard the mysterious rustling of the sheet of yellow newspaper that replaced the missing windowpane....

'It's a newspaper printed in Spanish,' I said to myself again. 'It's only natural that I don't understand the sound it's making.'

*

pg. 56: 'That he charms monkeys, men and women,' I said to myself, 'is comprehensible, but what can be the nature of the magnetism, born of his glib muscles and his curls, of that blond amber, that can enthral [sic] objects?'

However, there was no doubt that objects were obedient to him.

*

pg. 158: I shall be stuck in love, the way one is stuck in ice, or mud, or fear.

*

pg. 267: This book does not aim to be a work of art, an object detached from an author and from the world, pursuing in the sky its lonely flight. I could have told of my past life in another tone, in other words. I have made it sound heroic because I have within me what is needed to do so, lyricism.

199

Somewhere around the holidays, I stayed up late, finishing up the advance reader copy I have of How Far is the Ocean From Here by Amy Shearn, a graduate of the MFA program in which I am currently enrolled.

Sometimes I wonder at the fairness of that: I'm already tainted by realizing if time had aligned properly, she could have been my classmate in Reading Across Genres. Thus, the reading experience is changed, but aren't we always the worst jurors, having read reviews or word of mouth, having judged the cover in whatever way and been drawn in or repelled by all the blurbs?

Either way, I think there's something that draws me to Shearn's style, the snippet we read of Frankie (whose storyline may be the most interesting of the book and much buried under others) for 1101 last semester had some gorgeous language, though with strange plot turns (a child having full conversation with a classroom skeleton?).

The novel itself is fine. I generally am drawn into a book for the language, the setting, and the characters (development). For me, just this time around, the setting was fine, and the characters made me squirm a bit. I don't think characters need to be likable in a novel, but perhaps what I wanted was more dimension, more reason. I felt extreme indifference and even annoyance.

However, I can't help but think: this Amy Shearn, she's got something. She's got charm (for she charmed many in the program on her visit) and she's definitely got a gift for figurative language. This is strange to admit, but sometimes it was actually too much: like gathering little twigs for a fire, not enough for a full flame. (Ah, the irony of using a simile to point out too many similes.) Too much of a good thing maybe?

I do know this: I strongly believe Amy Shearn has a gorgeous book in her. This one might not be it, but it's a decent first book. And you can bet I'll read whatever she has out next.



Recent library acquisitions: The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (we're starting with this one in the class I'm TA'ing for this semester: EngL 1201W Contemporary American Literature--look, look, there's my name again!), The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (our next book club pick), and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (recommended by a co-worker at the bookstore where I worked over the holidays). These will accompany me to Florida next week.

I'd love to hear books at the top of your must-read list. My own: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, something by Michael Pollan, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, A Mercy by Toni Morrison. (I've been saving these and so many, many more. It's that whole save-the-best-for-last food philosophy that sometimes gets me in trouble when I get full too fast.) On the way from the library: Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, and 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.

189: sa-gah

Photo: by Ryan, on his camera phone
Me, reading with Penelope and Gatsby curled up on top
Also: hat, hand knit by my mother, plaid shawl made by my sister,
blanket on far right made by my mother-in-law.
That's a lot of love and cozy. :)

I caved. I read the Twilight sa-ga, back to back, with little breaks to eat, sleep, shift more books around at work. I am not ashamed of my delvings, though, unlike Emily, I will puff out my chest and admit that I am entirely a book snob, that I want the writing to be good in order to be enamored. This does not, however, mean that I can be sucked in by mediocre writing (or that my own writing is anything more than mediocre). Dan Brown: case in point. I wanted to pull my hair out, his prose was so awful, but I read each and every one of his books, staying up quite late and abandoning many responsibilities simply because I could not put them down.

And here too, I marathoned through these books.

But with a wary eye.

Pluses:
+ I loved the setting. Give me the Washington coast any day. Ferns and moss and towering trees and the ocean.
+ I loved that Bella loves books. Sadly, the only mention of the pleasure of shopping for books (in Seattle) never came to fruition, though occasionally the main character speaks of tattered copies of Wuthering Heights and Romeo and Juliet. It fades fairly quickly in the book.
+ Bella is humble. I like humble folk. Probably one of the driving forces behind my powerful admiration of my husband, who is hugely smart and talented, and denies every last bit. Sincerely.
+ Kindness and family. This book is about love, and not just about boy-and-girl love. Bella's best friend is a subject of unwavering love too--and how family isn't just Mom and Dad and brother and sister. Family takes on all kinds of forms. I ought to know.
+ And putting family first is good. Learning is good too, though it doesn't always have to take on ivy towered forms. (Says the girl on her third degree.) I know there's a lot of criticism about this issue (and if I'm being cryptic, it's because I hate spoiling it for those who haven't read it, though I may do so inadvertently anyway--sorry!), but I am of the school of thought that one ought to follow one's happiness and not a formula for said happiness. (I do wish the author hadn't mentioned Bella was in AP classes in the first book, then professed her ordinary throughout--of average intelligence, etc. Not that I didn't encounter my fair share of ordinary in AP classes; I'm probably a good example! But my point is not to mention something casually like that, something that could be important in character development, and change that aspect of the character later.)

Minuses:
- I've already picked apart Disney, that guilty pleasure where the worlds have often been filled with no mother figures save the evil stepmother and the storyline that falling in love is the only happy ending, so it seems I can't resist here either: there is a deep rooted desire to be taken care of; I love it when Ryan is gentle and kind when I am unwell or sad and all I want is to curl up against him and feel protected. But! Three and a half of these books are all about this helpless person who cooks and cleans for her father and whose mother is a flake. And how many times was Bella carried or cradled by a male figure in the book? Though, I must admit, being a vampire isn't about gender, nor is the strength derived from being a vampire about gender. I might just be bristling from the section of her thank you's where S.M. thanks her family for putting up with going out to eat so often--I'm doubly grateful my husband and I are together in the kitchen, together in home repairs (though we do err on the side of traditional gender roles in who "leads"--with my parents, it is the opposite, and some day I will re-dedicate another post to that).
- The prose is plain and repetitive.
- The plot is (fairly) plain and repetitive.
- If I have to read "liquid topaz" or "statue" or the "planes of his chest" again to describe a character, or nearly anything, I shall scream. I swear it.
- Likewise, or "trembling" or anything about breathing or heartbeats ending while kissing or the way glass or skin fractures like diamonds...
- There's also the "chaperoning" issue. And the cliches. Most of my issues are related to style.
- The author is none too subtle with the literary references. I realize this is a teen book, but allow those connections to WH and R+J come about with allusion. Slappity-slap-slap in the face.
- OK, I love a good love story. But vomit and over-the-top. Yes, I loved staying up until the sun rose just talking to Ryan, I still do. My favorite moments in this house are when we sit down and have conversations that trail around for hours. And the subtleties of brushing up against one another, etc. But really? All those clueless doe-eyed moments made me squirm. It was a soap opera, to be un-unique in my description. I'm more impressed with subtle shows of love.
- Each book could use some serious editing for streamlining the story. One issue here is that the books are so "addictive," so the reader plows through them in less than a week. Of course we don't need reminders, gentle or otherwise, or loops in conversations / descriptions. We're hooked; we can't stop reading the dang things. Not get rid of the excess so we can get to the story faster.
- And the characters can be clueless. I like a little surprise; certain twists are obvious to the reader for dozens and dozens of pages before actual revelation occurs. Not painfully clueless though. Just a bit dopey.

Other items of interest:
~ The first book in the series is on the syllabus for the class I'm TAing next semester. Huh. The class is geared toward freshmen and folks who are using this as a requirement and won't take many other English classes in the future, so our goal is to give the students a little glimpse into the joy of reading and discussing. Perhaps you could call this my warm-up, though I promise not to wrinkle my nose too much in discussion.
~ I am in love with this book review. Hilarious!
~ Atlantic Monthly has an interesting review discussing what girls want and focuses on the success of the Twilight series.

181: tomatoes, asparagus, book club

Two recipes for you today--part of what I made for book club tonight, along with asiago cheese bread and brown rice; we finished things off with Orangette's peppermint bark:

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients:
• 3 cups (½ inch) sliced asparagus (about 1 pound)

• 2 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth (I used vegetable broth)

• ¾ teaspoon fresh thyme, divided

• 1 bay leaf

• 1 garlic clove, crushed

• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

• 2 cups 1% low-fat milk (I used skim)

• dash of ground nutmeg

• 2 teaspoons butter

• ¾ teaspoon salt

• ¼ teaspoon grated lemon rind

Directions:

Combine asparagus, broth, ½ teaspoon thyme, bay leaf, and garlic in a large saucepan over medium-high heat; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer 10 minutes. Discard bay leaf. Place asparagus mixture in a blender; process until smooth. (Pictured above.)

Place flour in pan. Gradually add the milk, stirring with a whisk until blended. Add pureed asparagus and ground nutmeg; stir to combine. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and stir in ¼ teaspoon thyme, butter, salt, and lemon rind.

Alternatives:
Cream of Carrot Soup: Substitute 2 cups baby carrots for asparagus. Omit bay leaf.

Cream of Leak Soup: Substitute 3 cups sliced leek for asparagus. Substitute ¾ teaspoon rosemary for thyme. Omit bay leaf.

Note: the first time I made this, the soup was greener and I had too much garlic. This time it was frothier, and I think that's because I left it boiling a bit longer in the last step. It was much better this time.

Tomatoes in Spicy Yogurt Sauce

The tomatoes are warmed, not fully cooked, in the sauce, leaving their softly solid texture intact. Serve them alongside broiled, grilled, or steamed fish and be sure to have plenty of rice to soak up the sauce. Prep and Cook Time: 30 minutes. Notes: For this recipe, use tomatoes that are still firm when ripe, such as Early Girl.

Ingredients

• 8 ripe but firm tomatoes (about 2 lbs. total)
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
• 2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 serrano chiles, seeded and finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup plain whole milk yogurt
• Cilantro sprigs (optional)

Preparation

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Meanwhile, fill a large bowl with cold water and a few ice cubes and set near the pot. Put tomatoes in boiling water for 10 seconds each, then use a slotted spoon to transfer them to ice water. Drain tomatoes and pat dry. Core and peel tomatoes (leave them whole). Set aside.

Note: For this portion, especially if you've never blanched tomatoes, you may want to give yourself some extra time. Here's a little blanching tutorial with pictures, if needed. I found the peeling a bit tricky, but I think it's simply a matter of timing.

2. In a large frying pan, heat oil over high heat. When hot, add cumin seeds and mustard seeds and reduce heat to medium-high. Cover and cook until seeds start to pop, about 2 minutes. Remove cover and add butter. When butter is melted, add turmeric and cayenne and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add garlic, chiles, and salt. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Reduce heat to low. Add yogurt and stir in one direction until smooth. Add tomatoes. Gently stir to coat with sauce. Cook until tomatoes are just warm, about 5 minutes. Garnish with cilantro if you like and serve warm, with plenty of sauce.

Note: As my book club girls observed, you need to be awfully aware and smooth with this last step--Chris caught me burning things when I was distracted by the soup. I saved it, and the sauce was actually pretty decent; all I have left is the sauce and some brown rice, but I think that will do for lunch tomorrow quite well.

Also, I couldn't find brown mustard seeds, so I used yellow, and I couldn't find cumin seeds, so I used powder.

Over the holiday, Ryan and I went to Festival Foods in Green B ay to stock up on goods for the parent dinners we cooked, and I swear, my jaw absolutely dropped. They have a side organic market that's bigger than our co-op! And the cheese counter... the sushi counter... the meat! I know, too, if we lived in the Twin Cities, I'd be at Whole Foods and the Wedge often, but we're here, and we make do. I'm daydreaming about summer gardens and farmer's markets in the meantime.

Our book club selection: Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor. We read to each other our favorite poems, and I have more I want to share here. I did bring up Lisel Mueller's "Late Hours," which I fell in love with.

Next up: The History of Love by Nicola Krauss. That's been on my must-read list for a while, so I'm glad it's what Angie picked.

168: Blue Winter

Yesterday's snow seemed unreal: that fluffy sort that blows away in your cupped hands, the kind that sparkles at night, that is kicked up by the snow blower in moments, that belongs in department store windows.

I love this blue of winter.

I'm loving wool blankets.

I'm loving the new cookbook I picked up at work today: Minnesota Homegrown. I started reading the introductory essay by Garrison Keillor as the last few minutes of my shift slipped by and I loved what he said here:

"But the greatest prize is for the boy hoeing the tomatoes who reaches down and rescues one and wipes the dust off and bites into it. That is pure pleasure, a privilege offered to few, and after it, you will never be happy with any tomato you buy in a store. You hold it to your nose and there is no tomatoness there whatsoever. It was bred for shelf life and strip-mined in Mexico, or the Imperial Valley of California, and artificially ripened, and now it has no more tomato essence than your shoe. This is why vinaigrette was invited: to provide some flavor for denatured vegetables."

The bookstore owner's daughter is returning from two years in publishing in New York City; she's looking for some adventures before she applies to the Iowa Writer's Workshop (in nonfiction), and will spend some time working on a nearby organic farm (which, it looks like, might just be next year's best CSA candidate for us) (after, she hopes to go over to China to teach for a year).

I'm loving these small pleasures in life: the box of oranges, the soft touch of bamboo knitting needles, the kiss before sleep and snuggling beneath down comforters, the floury mess on my pizza peel (and loving that book--thank you, Angie!), that fleeting winter light, how I wish I could hold it all in just a little bit longer.

PS: See more of the blue winter photo series here.

165

I'm coming up at the end of a brief read: Letters from Side Lake by Peter Leschak. It kept me awake last night, his stories of rescuing swallows from drowning, of peeling timber, of beehives and bears, of the sort of hike that strips your feet bare. The prose itself isn't hugely adorned, and I'm realizing certain things about my own reading habits: I prefer style to subject, being the most prominent (the example I like to use is The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down--I read this for a literacy and cultural diversity course as an undergraduate, and though the subject matter is compelling, a Hmong child whose family's hopes in curing her seizures is at odds with Western medicine, it wasn't what endeared me to the book; instead, it was Ann Fadiman's striking writing style that leads me to wholeheartedly recommend this book to nearly any reader). But sometimes, capable prose and storytelling wins out in the end, and I am drawn to the vignettes that originally appeared in local magazines. But I also know subject has born up much of my appreciation for the book: here is a man who is attempting to "live off the land," in some senses, but doing so incredibly humbly and without an indication of true insanity, as some who desire to live off the land tend to do (case in point--another beautiful, small book I love). The idea of living so closely to the natural world, where it is everyday rather than a distant appreciation, a rotation of camping trips, and an effort to grow food in a little corner of the yard--that's something to be admired. I think about "next" in our little family--how I once urged Ryan to move to the Twin Cities, to make that our home, and now, three years after living in this small town, I'd like, more than anything else, to retreat much further, have acreage, maybe some chickens and woods and woods and woods. For now, I can simply live vicariously, which is what we do when we read literature.

And as much of this book is about the cold, the thaw and refreeze, which is what we are experiencing here--not an ice storm, but instead the slickness that is melted snow refrozen--I thought I would leave you with this excerpt, an indication of being still in the wilderness, a testament to being here now:

"Again and again, the ice sheet groaned. The rumble echoed off the trees, punctuated now and then by a sharp crack. As my ears adjusted I heard other, distant groanings--the expanding ice of nearby lakes. In deep winter the snow muffles the eerie music of the ice, but on this night all the lakes were cold and bare. I was listening to a symphony of freezing lakes, massive sheets of ice releasing the stress of their growth in heaving cracks that wailed slowly in birth. It transfixed me with its simple, awesome power. Nothing that any man could ever do would change the tune of the ice" (31-32).

163

Today was going to be a return to campus, a literary magazine meeting, and an end-of-the-year party for the MFAs. But someone's cold has descended upon me, giving rise to mucus I would prefer not to share (or give witness to the long drive to the cities and back). Instead, I choose to hibernate, but also to consider the art of being home: preparing packages for the mail, writing up holiday cards, baking bread, cleaning off the table of book stacks, finishing novels (reading, not writing, of coursre), boiling cloves on the stove.

The photo above is from my daily to-campus drive: these are the cornfields of Minnesota, now covered in white, and the winter sky in Minnesota. I wanted to share what I'd mentioned before, the way the horizon sometimes has no clear line, a bit like the ocean. Endless gray-white.

I also think I will make that butternut squash bisque. Here is the recipe:

• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, plus more for garnish (optional)
• Coarse salt
• 1 large butternut squash (about 4 pounds), peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1 can (14 1/2 ounces) reduced-sodium chicken broth
• 1 cup half-and-half
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• Sour cream, for serving

Directions

1. In a large saucepan, heat butter over medium. Add onion, garlic, thyme, cinnamon, and cayenne. Season with salt, and cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is softened, 5 to 7 minutes.
2. Add squash, broth, half-and-half, and 3 cups water. Bring to a boil; reduce to a simmer, and cook until squash is tender, about 20 minutes.
3. Working in batches, puree in a blender until smooth. Stir in lemon juice; season with salt. Serve bisque with sour cream, garnished with cayenne, if desired.
4. To Freeze: Ladle cooled bisque (without sour cream) into airtight containers, leaving 1 inch of space; freeze up to 3 months.
5. To Reheat: Run container under hot water to release bisque. Heat with a bit of water, stirring occasionally.

This twice baked butternut squash looks good too.

Also, since it's been a while, I thought I'd give you a "currently" list:

- Listening: Just finished a mediocre Maeve Bincy novel on my drive to and from campus. Now that I'm home for a month, I don't need a book on CD, so I'll listen to The Current on my shorter adventures. I also finally heard Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. I had been feeling a little disappointed after reading the distant The Audacity of Hope, but listening, I see what a wonderous speaker he is. I got tingly.
- Listening, at home: Gatsby pressed up against my hand as I type this, his purr dominating all other sound. That, and boiling water on the stove, the hiss of scented steam rising above it.
- Reading: I'm just finishing up When the Elephants Dance, a novel about the Japanese occupation of the Phillipines during World War II. It shifts points-of-view and there are stories within stories, giving us a richer sense of the culture of the Phillipines.
- Watching: Just started The Wire. Two more discs came from Netflix today, so I'll delve deeper into the first season this weekend.
- Also, have you seen this YouTube video? I'm impressed with the technology and amused with the subject:



I hope you are all staying warm this Thursday. I no longer have that night class I taught, so I turn instead to grading final portfolios, hoping to submit grades by the end of the weekend. I'd like to have a clean break from the semester and face all the other procrastinations hidden beneath the surface of things.

154

For our Reading Across Genres class, which meets for the last time next Monday, we discussed Vivian Gornick's Fierce Attachments in connection with Shannon Olson's class visit. Gornick's memoir was hugely popular until it was discovered she fabricated much of it--imagined dialogue that was crucial to character, created composite characters, and on. We discussed memoir that gets at Truth versus truth--essence versus entirety. Trish Hampl is steadfast--keep it true. Others play loose with it: James Frey, as we all know, and I just learned I, Rigoberta Manchu mentions the death of the author's brother by guerrilla forces, and later, it was discovered he was still alive (though I'm searching on the internet to see if I can smooth out the details of this story and I'm a bit fuzzy on the issue--still, the assertion is much of the storyline is fabricated and altered). I love a good narrative, and labels are problematic, so I can't let you know where I fall on the continuum, aside from adoration of a good story.

One of the other poetry writers in the program pointed out that (and here, I must admit, I am paraphrasing, not making an accurate, tape recorded quote, just to clarify, in case anyone thought this was indeed, a True/true memoir) "as writers, as soon as we move from that picture in our mind and put words to memory, we are already beginning to lie."

I love that poets don't have to adhere to the labels of Truth or truth or novel or anything in between. There are assumptions, but we can be coy.

On a related note, I've now had two shifts at the bookstore, and I am absolutely enamored (and sorry it's only seasonal work). The owner is absolutely wonderful (it's always easy to love a job when there is a great manager involved--boss, professor, instructor, person in charge) and I've always loved working with books, selling them, talking to customers about them. And this kind of small town shop allows for that kind of lazy conversation about NPR's programming and birding guides and baby name books and the local food movement. Sigh. Oh, and did I mention the huge selection of advanced reader's copies? Yup, in the back room there's just shelves of them, and there's little competition as there was at Barnes and Noble (where I worked for five and a half years) since there's only five of us, including the owner.