5 Months Out

(photo of Books@Cafe in Amman by Bryan Denton for The New York Times)

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Arabic, Arabic, Arabic.

The pattern goes something like this: work hard daily for weeks -- expand vocabulary, mimic recorded phrases, write alphabet again and again, complete audio quizzes and drills -- and then...

The oh-so-dreaded Lapse. Bye bye workbooks. Yo flashcards, go collect some dust!

Excuses come easy:

1. travel
2. deadlines
3. housework
4. appointments
5. laziness??

Ask me how to say bed, ambassador, neighbor, Syria, book, pizza (something I hate in every language), etc., etc. and I'm golden. I can rock at least a half dozen Arabic prepositions.

I can greet you in Arabic, claim American citizenship in Arabic, order a sandwich in Arabic.

I can praise god in Arabic and introduce my husband in Arabic.

I can pick out words (and sound them out) by identifying their letters. Sadly, I can't tell you what 99.99% of those words mean...

Can I conjugate verbs? No.

Do I know whether most words are masculine or feminine? Not even close.

Does the whole sun/moon coding thing still trip me up? You betcha.

On Vanity (Presses)

It's strange facing the part of myself that is old-fashioned, conservative even...

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Here's a snippet from Steve Almond's "Presto Book-O (Why I Went Ahead and Self-Published):"

"...Just as bands sell copies of their live performances, I foresee a day when authors will sell copies of the original work they just read. I also foresee a day when best-selling authors finally realize that they can make their own books and, by avoiding the gross inefficiencies of corporate publishing, make a lot more money.

It’s easy to forget – amid all the leather-bound romance surrounding books – that they are relatively young as cultural artifacts go – and that they can and should evolve..."

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I like Almond's description of his adventure(s) in self-publishing, and his genius reply to the idiot jerk-off that describes his daughter as a "maggot." My congrats to writers who sell out (no pun intended) their books at readings and events.

But, man, the comments section following Almond's essay surprises me. I mean, when you already have a national reputation, agent, five or so books with major houses, etc., why not experiment with on-demand publishing and distribution? What, really, do you have to lose, knowing you already have an audience and established readership? Especially when your next book is forthcoming from -- what was it -- Random House?

I'm not suggesting that Almond isn't ballsy. Remember when he did this? The man also talked a little trash about Oprah... He has the balls and public persona do make self-publishing look like "presto" (Product!) and "razzle-dazzle" (Profits)!

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Here's the thing. If a time comes when (as Almond predicts) authors go the way of musicians "sell[ing] copies of the original work they just read," then I'm in trouble. I don't want to be a rock star. Call me conservative. Call me old-fashioned. I'm going to stick with the "leather-bound romance surrounding books" as long as I can.

Money Matters

In 2009, I spent roughly 10% of my income on books. Yesterday, I ordered three more. It's a new year, right? Hell, it's a new decade.

Did It Again...

K. calls it "the routine." Mornings, I jump online and click from site to site. Email, Poetry Daily, NewPages, NY Times.

Avoiding work? Click, click, click.

I make Scrabble moves on Facebook, jump to Mira's List, then peruse the latest Pop gossip...

Even mindlessness has its order.

This afternoon Calls for Papers catches my attention. After narrowing in on an essay collection in the works, I spend 45 minutes (or longer) mapping out a topic. Five or six thousand words is nothing, I reason, and the deadline is more than a month away...

Didn't I learn my lesson yesterday?

Enough of procrastination-disguised-as-ambition. Does anyone else have this problem: endlessly thinking up new things to do, instead of doing things that need already be done?

That I Can Do / I Can Do That

An opportunity comes up for a sabbatical replacement spring term and I think, "I can do that..."

I can do that, and prepare the house for sale and write my poems and complete the freelance assignments on time and take care of my husband and dog and travel to Washington D.C. (twice) / Connecticut / Missouri / California / Oregon between now and May. I can pack up all our stuff and finish my online Arabic course and submit the manuscript and sort out the rejections and mail books to my grandmothers and put all the unwanted stuff in storage and donate the rest. I can sell one vehicle and ship the other overseas, send the manuscript back out again, squeeze in a summer conference, all the while teaching and grading and corresponding with students. Right?

Ok. I can't do that...at least not all of the above, along with the responsibilities that come with teaching...

But, today I drafted a new poem and am (for the moment) completely content.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Although I've played this game (rather reluctantly) at a baby shower or two, this time it was actually amusing...

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Hey, Ed Hirsch -- what's a cougar doing in this portrait of you and Cynthia MacDonald?

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I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!


(Emily Dickinson)

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Spencer Reece still looks like baby Spencer Reece. Check out PSA for proof.

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For more on “Portraits of Poets, 1910-2010,” an exhibition presented by the Poetry Society of America at the National Arts Club, follow this link to the NY Times.

Then the Letting Go --

Slate and occasional rain. The trickling of snow melt. Today, I've been thinking a lot about poets and isolation: Whitman wandering the city, gregarious, singing to the masses; Dickinson in her second-story room, where looking out (those large windows, the trees, sister-in-law Susan next door) led inward...

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We scouted towns before we moved here. More than anything, I was hunting a place to write. Walking away from university life meant turning toward a more personal life. After wandering from place to place, state to state, I wanted that. Take away teaching. Take away readings. Take away any old outside commitment, and I thought the poems would come -- and more of them. That's what everybody wanted. At least, that's what a lot of people said they wanted.

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City or village? I've lived in versions of both. Population 1200 or 800,000? I've visited the Amherst house that bordered on a burial yard. I've walked the Brooklyn Bridge with the masses. But even Whitman left New York and headed south, turning from eros to elegy. And on rare occasions Dickinson traveled from that small town in Western Mass to Boston...

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It's unclear to me how these two- or so- years of geographic isolation will shape the work. Will such pressure show itself formally? What will happen when I move again, this time from a town surrounded by tobacco and cotton fields to a country whose language I've only heard spoken by actors, or on news clips or recordings?

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A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER
Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Foxtrot, Bebop, Moonwalk, Beatbox

This morning on NPR:

Fifty years ago, on Feb. 1, four black college students sat down at a whites-only Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. The "Greensboro Four," along with friends and supporters, returned to the counter every day for six months until the lunch counter was desegregated.

Their determination to resist Jim Crow laws inspired thousands of peaceful sit-ins and helped to end official segregation in the South. On Monday, in the same building that once housed the Woolworth's store, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum opens...

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While visiting the National Museum of American History years ago, I saw a child -- perhaps 7 or 8 -- standing before two doors, one marked "Colored" ("Black"?), the other, "White." In order to proceed to the next phase of the exhibit, one must choose. The kid became confused. I mean, completely perplexed. I watched him run back to his father and ask what to do...

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Although the Smithsonian's exhibition on Brown vs. The Board of Education closed in 2005, you can access resources online and read about the landmark case, and why "separate is never equal."

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THE BLUE SEUSS
Terrance Hayes (click to hear him read the poem)

Blacks in one box
Blacks in two box
Blacks on
Blacks stacked in boxes stacked on boxes
Blacks in boxes stacked on shores
Blacks in boxes stacked on boats in darkness
Blacks in boxes do not float
Blacks in boxes count their losses
Blacks on boat docks
Blacks on auction
Blacks on wagons
Blacks with masters in the houses
Blacks with bosses in the fields
Blacks in helmets toting rifles
Blacks in Harlem toting banjoes boots and quilts
Blacks on foot
Blacks on buses
Blacks on backwood hardwood stages singing blues
Blacks on Broadway singing too
Blacks can Charleston
Blacks can foxtrot
Blacks can bebop
Blacks can moonwalk
Blacks can beatbox
Blacks can run fast too
Blacks on
Blacks and
Blacks on knees and
Blacks on couches
Blacks on Good Times
Blacks on Roots
Blacks on Cosby
Blacks in voting booths are
Blacks in boxes
Blacks beside
Blacks in rows of houses are
Blacks in boxes too

Picking Yourself Back Up

As someone who falls often (in so many different ways), I love this excerpt from Gia Kourlas' profile of NYCB principal, Sara Mearns:

This month, as Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she floated along with the music with such abandon that it seemed a wonder she didn’t fall over. In November, to her chagrin, she did fall twice, as Dewdrop in the opening-night performance of “The Nutcracker.”

“I had so much energy,” she said, laughing. “I did go for it. And Peter was happy. Even though I was crying after the show, he was happy. He said, ‘Everybody falls.’ ” She shook her head in dismay: “I think everybody’s going to say, ‘Oh, that was a little too much.’ But I don’t care about falling. I hope that’s what people get when they come and see me — that it’s not about tricks. It’s about the performance and what I transform into.”

["Peter" is New York City Ballet's Artistic Director & Ballet Master in Chief, Peter Martins]

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Mearns goes on to say:

“People sometimes make fun of me for rehearsing a lot, but I feel like when I go out there, I know what it’s going to feel like — that I’m prepared for anything...”

“And it’s not like I calculate my performances. It just feels like if you put everything you can into one role, it’s going to translate to the audience. That’s what really matters — so they don’t just come away with, ‘Oh, that was nice.’ ”

“You don’t want nice.”

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I couldn't agree more.