Back to the NC

Home again, watching the snow. Notes from D.C.:


American Ballet Theatre was a no-go. Bummer. I really, really wanted to see Hee Seo.

*

I didn't make it to Mandalay (top of my list), and spent plenty of time stuck in traffic. We did, however, eat twice at Tolteca.

*

Purchased at Politics & Prose --

English-to-Arabic Dictionaries x 2
Summer World (Bernd Heinrich)
Gulf Music (Robert Pinsky)
Poet in New York (Federico Garcia Lorca; trans. Medina & Statman)
Usher (B.H. Fairchild)

*

Also bought a $4 2010 calendar (vintage shots of a teenage Norma Jeane). 2009's "A Field Guide for Imaginary Birds" by Sarah Utter will be much missed.

*

Jabber flipped out when we drove around downtown. Raised in the country, my poor puppy doesn't know what to make of buildings beyond three stories. She stood on my lap, her nose against the window, and moaned and grunted and stared wide-eyed for blocks and blocks and blocks. At the end of the day, the poor thing circled Iwo Jima twice like a rabbit on fire and then ran straight back to the car...

*

The hotel was lovely and wonderful, brand-new and relaxing. However, on the last night while K. was out playing water polo, the man next door starting screaming off and on for about three hours. At one point, he yelled "I'm going to f-ing kill you. You're dead," and "I'm going to bash your f-ing head in..."

In the morning, the housekeeper entered the room and quickly called management. Based on the commotion, I suspect the place was trashed...

*

Back to work. I'm leaving again on Friday and there's much to get done!

D.C. To-List

This week:

1. Mandalay (repeat as necessary, and as many times as possible)
2. Politics & Prose
3. La Tolteca (AKA "drive-way-the-hell-out-to-Fairfax-Station-for-amazing-burrito")
4. Hair cut and color
5. American Ballet Theatre at The Kennedy Center
6. Revise essay and return to editor
7. Smithsonian
8. Walk Jabber around the monuments
9. Mandalay. Again.
10. Do the impossible: avoid the Beltway

Whoso List to Hunt...

Hilary Mantel reviews Alison Weir's The Lady in the Tower, the latest book to chronicle Anne Boleyn's fall from grace:

Why are we so obsessed with understanding every detail of Anne Boleyn’s rise and fall? It is because her character has archetypal force. The story is of its time and place, but also universal. She is the young fertile beauty who displaces the menopausal wife. She is the mistress whose calculating methods beguile the married man; but in time he sees through her tricks and turns against her. It is the human drama that engages us. Her trial is only patchily documented, but you can make an argument that, in judicial terms, Anne was murdered. In human terms, we see that she has been paid out. Natural justice came for Anne not in the shape of the headsman, but in the shape of Jane Seymour, the sly unnoticed rival who ­replaced her, within days, as the king’s third wife.

*

Thomas Wyatt's thoughts on Mistress Boleyn:



Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, hélas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

The Best Minds of My Generation

The first bar my dad took me to was Vesuvio, an alley away from City Lights. I was a sophomore(?) in college, and he told me to "head straight upstairs." He ordered for me.

*

Caught a few preview clips from the new film on Ginsberg. In the bit I saw, James Franco (as Ginsberg) sources poetic feeling somewhere in the out-breath -- or something like that. It seems rather ridiculous...

*

I felt like such an adult -- sitting there, overlooking North Beach. A grown girl, all of, oh I don't know, 18?

*

So many young people enter poetry by way of the Beats. I've taught "Howl" many times, but first loved "Sunflower Sutra." Haven't thought about that flower in forever --

*

The best clip is from a courtroom scene. A prosecutor demands (again and again and again) the meaning of "angelheaded hipsters burning."

*

Daddy's girl had "Shirley Temple" that day. Straight up.

*

To the Supreme Court's ruling on Corporate Political Spending, I say:

America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

In the Forecast

Right now, it's 46 degrees in MyCurrentTown, N.C., and MyFutureOverseasHome, Jordan.

*

Good news: yesterday, a journal came calling (one I've long admired). Best about this acceptance is that the poem is the first to be published post-nightingale. I've struggled (really struggled) to produce while waiting for the first book to find a publisher. Thankfully new work arrived this summer, work that clearly belongs to a second manuscript. For reasons unclear to me, publishing new poems encourages me to push ahead. Instead of obsessing about the first manuscript's flaws and fate, I'm determined to press into other territory...

*

We've started to receive move-related paperwork and other information. Soon, I'll take a physical, have some blood drawn, and get some shots. The needle-phobe in me grimaces at the thought of all the places I'll be stuck.

*

Currently reading:

John Donne: The Reformed Soul (John Stubbs)
Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)
Dismantling the Hills (Michael McGriff)

*

It's really starting to hit me that we're moving. K. gave me The Expert Expat for Christmas, and I was surprised to find that I've already experienced many of the "trailing spouse" effects simply by moving away from university life and into our current rural community. Relocation resulting in identity crisis, social isolation, and career shift? Been there, done that.

*

From The New York Times: Haiti, Alive

*

The sky's gray shows yellow undertones. Perhaps something is about to break...

Starting Again

BURNING THE OLD YEAR
Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.