Arrived in California 48 hours ago for 10 or so days of holiday travel. We typically fly to San Francisco, but mixed things up this year for the baby tour -- so many friends in SoCal have new additions!
*
Irvine: wow! When did Gina's go from hole-in-the-wall to a chain equipped with a bar? Total weirdness. Thankfully, the pasta salad is still the same.
Campus has changed so much since we graduated -- damn, 97 seems like ancient history. Lots of new dorms and parking garages. The students look so young! Can't imagine how baby-faced I was at 17...
*
Happy anniversary to K.! A year ago today we were married in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Tonight, we'll return to the Newport watering hole where we met to have a beer and read our vows. A chance meeting more than a decade ago turns out to be the luckiest event of my life!
*
Zot!
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Great News!
A friend called a few hours ago to share that her first book has been accepted! Yippy! Looking forward to Spring 2011 when it hits the stores. Once she's allowed to go public, I'll post the details. Congrats!!
Friday, November 13, 2009
Nor'Easter: Ah, No; the Years, O!
During Wind and Rain, rain and wind -- what is it Hardy says?
*
The storm washed out the roads, so K.'s boss sent him home early. With K. here to distract Monkey (AKA, our Jabber-dog), I headed upstairs to work on submissions. Thus far this season, I've only sent out three batches of poems. The two-headed bird/manuscript has eaten up most of what I have left, which means new drafts and slim pickins'. I'm still sitting on a few poems composed in June -- hope these come to fruition eventually...In the meantime, four stuffed envelopes go out tomorrow. Rejection man, be damned!
*
Which to choose?
Steinbeck's East of Eden
OR
Rush's Mating
*
No matter how many games I lose, Facebook's Scrabble calls me. It's the worst source for addicts who need a word-hit. Unlike with writing, the letters come fast and loose.
*
Crazy = reading Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner back to back with Khalifeh's Wild Thorns.
*
The storm washed out the roads, so K.'s boss sent him home early. With K. here to distract Monkey (AKA, our Jabber-dog), I headed upstairs to work on submissions. Thus far this season, I've only sent out three batches of poems. The two-headed bird/manuscript has eaten up most of what I have left, which means new drafts and slim pickins'. I'm still sitting on a few poems composed in June -- hope these come to fruition eventually...In the meantime, four stuffed envelopes go out tomorrow. Rejection man, be damned!
*
Which to choose?
Steinbeck's East of Eden
OR
Rush's Mating
*
No matter how many games I lose, Facebook's Scrabble calls me. It's the worst source for addicts who need a word-hit. Unlike with writing, the letters come fast and loose.
*
Crazy = reading Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner back to back with Khalifeh's Wild Thorns.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Special Delivery
Heartfelt thanks to Mama Candi who sent this autumn assortment in celebration of our upcoming first year anniversary! What a beautiful burst of color to discover on the front porch on such a rainy day.*
Best juxtaposition = at the dentist's office (yes, I was there again): while a muted 700 Club plays on the flat screen -- Pat Robertson preaching his heart out -- Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" fills the waiting room. "Get up, get up, get up. Let's make love tonight..."
*
Back in the gym tonight. I actually managed to stay on my feet!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Meditations (on Gravity) in an Emergency
I fell today. Hard. Bit it, as they say, badly. I'm icing my wrist, knee, and have a knot on my shin where some skin is missing. It was funny, really...
*
Loving this article about writers' habits, even if I don't believe half of it:
She writes first drafts in flimsy blue exam notebooks that she orders from an online office supply store. She often uses 100 exam books for a draft. "The company I order from must think I'm a high school," she said. She types the draft on the computer and begins revising and cutting.
Finally, she makes a tape recording of herself reading the entire novel aloud—a trick she learned from Walter Mosley—and revises passages that cause her to stumble.
*
...it happened at the gym. Stacking too many steps for weighted eleves is (apparently) a poor idea...
*
At the bookstore two cities away, I discovered a novel and short story collection by friends. It was like being with them again, even though there's a great deal of geographical distance between us.
*
CRASH! Two ten pound barbells and me, spilling forward onto the hard wood floor. It hurt. Seriously. I acted like it didn't
*
"Hello, Mr. R.!! Missing you so!"
"K., how's the new work coming?"
*
Often, ambition gets the best of me.
*
Loving this article about writers' habits, even if I don't believe half of it:
She writes first drafts in flimsy blue exam notebooks that she orders from an online office supply store. She often uses 100 exam books for a draft. "The company I order from must think I'm a high school," she said. She types the draft on the computer and begins revising and cutting.
Finally, she makes a tape recording of herself reading the entire novel aloud—a trick she learned from Walter Mosley—and revises passages that cause her to stumble.
*
...it happened at the gym. Stacking too many steps for weighted eleves is (apparently) a poor idea...
*
At the bookstore two cities away, I discovered a novel and short story collection by friends. It was like being with them again, even though there's a great deal of geographical distance between us.
*
CRASH! Two ten pound barbells and me, spilling forward onto the hard wood floor. It hurt. Seriously. I acted like it didn't
*
"Hello, Mr. R.!! Missing you so!"
"K., how's the new work coming?"
*
Often, ambition gets the best of me.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Congrats!
Great things happening for B. -- four poems taken this week, plus some pretty major news. Cruel as it is, I'll never tell...
*
VACANT LOT WITH POKEWEED
by Amy Clampitt
Tufts, follicles, grubstake
biennial rosettes, a low-
life beach-blond scruff of
couch grass: notwithstanding
the interglinting dregs
of wholesale upheaval and
dismemberment, weeds do not
hesitate, the wheeling
rise of the ailanthus halts
at nothing--and look! here's
a pokeweed, sprung up from seed
dropped by some vagrant, that's
seized a foothold: a magenta-
girdered bower, gazebo twirls
of blossom rounding into
raw-buttoned, garnet-rodded
fruit one more wayfarer
perhaps may salvage from
the season's frittering,
the annual wreckage.
*
VACANT LOT WITH POKEWEED
by Amy Clampitt
Tufts, follicles, grubstake
biennial rosettes, a low-
life beach-blond scruff of
couch grass: notwithstanding
the interglinting dregs
of wholesale upheaval and
dismemberment, weeds do not
hesitate, the wheeling
rise of the ailanthus halts
at nothing--and look! here's
a pokeweed, sprung up from seed
dropped by some vagrant, that's
seized a foothold: a magenta-
girdered bower, gazebo twirls
of blossom rounding into
raw-buttoned, garnet-rodded
fruit one more wayfarer
perhaps may salvage from
the season's frittering,
the annual wreckage.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Good Times
Happiness is Friday's accepted request, the deadline now extended for a project overdue. Lucky, aren't I?
Thursday, November 5, 2009
How is it November 5?
The Rejection Man visits two days in a row. *
It's official -- I'm seven hours from a deadline I'm sure to miss. Not my style. Forgiveness, please. A little understanding?
*
Does karma have its hand in either of the above?
*
Reading Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner. I'm not going to follow with 1968's William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond. Thus far, I don't think the book deserves either the Pulitzer or accusations of racism. We'll see how things develop.
*
Please take the Halloween candy away. Seriously.
*
Has anyone attended a Creative Capital Workshop? Can't decide whether to accept the invitation. Will this really benefit me as a poet (vs. the artistic director of a company or organization)?
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