223: AWP, Day 1

(Top: Dean Young; Bottom: Marvin Bell)

Union: A Conversation in Poetry. (Christopher Merrill, Marvin Bell, Tomaž Šalamun) This panel focuses on the creation of a book, Union, that was written together by seven poets from around the world. Four of those poets—Marvin Bell, Christopher Merrill, Tomaž Šalamun, and Dean Young—discuss the benefits and challenges of poetic collaborations and read selected poems from the book.

(Top: Ravi Shankar; Bottom: Tony Barnstone + Nathalie Handal)

Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East and Asia. (Nathalie Handal, Jill Bialosky, Kimiko Hahn, Ravi Shankar, Srikanth Reddy, Tina Chang) Language for a New Century brings the voices of some of the most exciting writers of our time. This unique and much anticipated collection by W.W. Norton is a landmark anthology, providing the most ambitious, far-reaching collection of contemporary Asian and Middle Eastern poetry available. This exciting panel features Norton editor, Jill Bialosky, poets and editors of the anthology, Nathalie Handal, Tina Chang, and Ravi Shankar, as well as contributors Kimiko Hahn and Srikanth Reddy for a reading and discussion on this book, which includes 400 unique voices from fifty-five countries writing in forty different languages, broadening our notion of contemporary literature.

(Above: Annie Finch)

Multiformalism: Postmodern Poetics of Form. (Susan M. Schultz, Hank Lazer, K. Silem Mohammad, Annie Finch) Language poetry meets new formalism at last, and the poems fly! Editors and contributors to a daring new multicultural, multiaesthetic anthology talk about where poetry is headed now.

(1: Cole Swensen 2: Cal Bedient 3: Forrest Gander 4: Cole Swensen 5: Brenda Hillman)

American Hybrid: The Meeting of Extremes. (Cole Swensen, Forrest Gander, Brenda Hillman, Cal Bedient, Lynn Emanuel, Mark McMorris) This panel will address the critical premise behind the 2009 Norton anthology American Hybrid: that the long-standing division in American poetry between tradition and experiment has given way to myriad hybrids informed by both extremes, bringing them into real conversation for the first time. The panelists chosen demonstrate the rich range of our poetic inheritances; their statements on this trend will be followed by a public discussion to explore its potentials and ramifications.

(Top: Brenda Hillman; Bottom: Forrest Gander)

Empty Bottle off site poetry reading. (We / being Colleen, Amanda, Bart, and Brian / only made it in time for the last two readers / I am disappointed in missing Alex Lemon, but I did go see him last March.)

More AWP images here. Not so much the wildfire I promised yesterday.

So, so much in my head right now, it all feels so very full. I will fall asleep easily tonight. And at some point, I promise, I will process this all, probably here. For now, sleep, because tomorrow is just as overwhelming.

222: windy city

I have arrived safely in Chicago, no wheel gripping or silent tears for me. I made the journey on my own, and even though I'm nearing-thirty, I have a sort of big-girl puffed-up proudness in my accomplishment: I wanted it, I feared it a little bit (those taxi drivers and their crossing-the-dotted-lines driving!), and I did it. Ta freaking da.

Everything here costs something: the parking (valet, $15 extra, which I declined), the internet ($15 / day for the slowest version in the room--free wi fi in the common areas, but my laptop is fussy and the battery has died and the hook-up needs to be jiggled and let's just say, the whole process could indeed prove to be a nightmare that one need not witness), and on. I paid with fives at the tolls so I could have ones for the week; I'm assuming vendors will love me, as will Dislocate, should our table run out.

(Hey! If you are at AWP and reading this, check out Dislocate! Buy the most recent issue! [You now can officially do so online!] A poem of mine is in it--they accepted the poem before I was accepted into the program, I feel the need to add! And I'll be at the booth at nine tomorrow morning, wiping the sleep crud from my eyes.)

Also, have you seen this? I absolutely adore the premise: the two editors asked some of their favorite poets to submit a poem for each of Obama's first one hundred days in office, reflecting on the world as it stands that day.

PS: AWP, Chicago 2009 photoset here. It looks kind of sweet with just three photographs tonight. Tomorrow: it grows like wildfire.

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.

220: first babysitting, pneumonia

I'm meant to be an hour and a half northwest of where I am sitting just now, just me and a baby, facing puppy outings and soft building blocks on the floor, but instead, I am home again, content with my pups, happy to sleep next to my husband tonight.

All was going well--I showed up in the late afternoon sun, we had dinner, the four of us, a little family with a special family guest, Christian eating more than usual in a goofily robust fashion, and he played and smiled and smelled like little boy happiness and warmth. He fell asleep easily at seven, and I thought: I can do this. Instructions were printed, directions to the daycare were sketched out, the doctor's number was confirmed to be hanging on the fridge. I knew the routines, knew the cats and the dog, knew how to turn the swing on and off and where the fresh pajamas lay.

An hour after he was tucked in, Christian woke up, wailing. Kelly seems to have a level head with this whole parenting thing--she informed me that she verifies the comforts--the pacifier, the blanket, the music--and if all seems well, lets himself cry himself back to sleep. Richard is more prone to worry, and since Christian is teething, tablets were produced and a frozen pacifier was swapped out. And he wailed. And wailed. And threw up all over himself and Kelly. We thought--perhaps it was too much food, and that gag reflex the doctor spoke of was in effect. (You see, Christian caught a little cold at daycare and had been coughing and snotting all over the place.) But then he threw up again. And again, and again, and Kelly was on her fourth shirt, Christian in his third set of pajamas, her husband in the bathtub, holding him out and away, me fetching a washcloth, and there were tears, but eventually all was soothed and Kelly's work trip to Madison was canceled, traded out for a doctor's appointment.

I still stayed the night and helped meagerly. Christian woke several times in the night, and Kelly calmed him back to sleep, and Richard had to leave well before the sun was up for his own job as a cross-country long haul trucker. But, you see, Christian wasn't having much of me or Richard. I was pleased to feed him breakfast and to placate the little bugger for a while as Kelly had to deal with work disasters from home (she apparently employs a few people who behave like middle schoolers when not under her supervision). I held him up, my hand against the span of his back, and we toured the house, peeking out windows at the snow, at the farmland turning to townhouse land, and he sucked on the strings of my university sweatshirt, his gummy smile comforting and wet fists slapping my cheeks, my nose.

I came home just before they left for the doctor, showering away the soot of sofa-sleeping and baby drool, snuggling up against my dogs who are giants compared to hers, and Kelly called with the doctor's verdict: pneumonia. Nothing to wail about, at least not on our part, but enough for poor Christian to add another misery to that of teething. And we'll try this again next week or the week after (where you will be smothered in photos of him all over again--just imagine what it's going to be like when I have kids of my own--collective grooaaannn).

219: welcome, jack finnegan

Born this afternoon: a second son to Ryan's sister, Jack Finnegan, younger brother to James (Jimmy) Holden. Welcome sweet, sweet boy.

(And best of luck to Megan, with two young boys, both of which are related to Ryan and their brother, who were sweet but adventuresome boys themselves.)

218

Just peeking out from beneath my pile of reading. Above: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I'm going to have to sit on my hands to prevent myself from reading on--In Defense of Food and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are ones I've held off on reading--and I'll have to hold off more, as I need to read that quagmire called Kristeva and re-read Middlesex for the class I'm TAing. And on. Oh, and write a draft of an eight page piece of literary journalism, due in less than two weeks. (Topics I'm considering: Alzheimer's, Barn Bluff, running an independent bookstore in a small town, etc. I just need to make a decision and immerse myself, but I'm afraid of making the wrong choice.)

A few other things:

- I was called up for jury duty again, but I called and explained that I was caring for my godson, whose parents would be both out of town (Kelly to Madison and Richard is a long haul trucker) from Sunday evening until Tuesday morning, and then on Wednesday night I am heading to Chicago for AWP.
- Ryan was going to accompany me, but he will be in Florida instead--Delray Beach, actually, the city of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival just weeks after I was there. His grandfather passed away last night, and I am thinking of him and his family as they say good-bye.
- Tomorrow morning I am taking a beginning gardening class, which I realize is a bit strange given this summer will be my sixth growing vegetables, but that whole hit-or-miss technique has brought on some strange results. It's good to learn.
- I'm feeling pretty good about this semester. The work load has dramatically increased from last semester, but I like to be challenged, and I think I have finally caught up, more or less, which means I can deal with other items gathering dust (book reviews, cleaning house, critiques on friends' poems, long walks in the woods, that sort of thing). Sometimes I feel as if I am gathering dust, rotating on the sofa or the bed, turning pages and flagging for quotes to use later in essays or lesson plans. Today it got up to forty-something outside, a miracle! And I stood in the melting snow, Pollan in hand, the dogs romping about, sliding through slush and uncovered dog patties. Ah, false spring, the presents you give.

217

This is where unveil to you, with great excitement, honor, and all that is good, a joint project with a dear friend who has blessed me with knowing her since we were both fourteen years old.

The idea behind camera lucida is a kind of call and response, only with words and images. The above photo is hers. The poems, then, are mine, and we will banter this way.

I've set the blog up so that only two posts show at once--one image, one poem, flip flopping each Monday.

I remember when we were in ninth or tenth grade, she was at art camp, and I was at the college swimming where my father is a professor. She asked me to write a poem to accompany one of her pieces, and I wrote something, probably dark and sappy as my teenage embarrassments of poems tended to be, but right there was a kernel that would return, full blown.

All the poems I'll write will be early, probably first, drafts. But it's the creative energy and flow that is the point, the ways in which a visual artist and a linguistic one can intersect and inspire and move. It's a way of looking at things, and I'm excited to see where it might go.