christina aguilera on national public radio?

it's true...i was listening to NPR this afternoon on a tiny radio in the kitchen (ironically enough, playing housemother/domestic goddess as both parents were working today) when, at the end of a great piece about a new word surfacing in england (the word is chavs) the christina aguilera hit "dirrty" (no, that's not a typo) played as the "exit music" to the piece. the song's subject matter is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the very "saturday evening post"-type moment i had been having: evie in the highchair eating cereal and applesauce, i dilligently mincing clove upon clove of garlic;

i'm not making it up...proof here. you can imagine the slightly uncomfortable moment as the silence blissfully took over for the house-grunge-stripper beat, and the hosts searched for a more comfortable segue into the "real" news.

i know, the real question is what was i making for dinner? as i said, both mom and dad were working, so as an extended olive branch to my youngest brother (who is thirteen, hence we are not always getting along) i whipped up some shrimp alfredo (augmenting the canned sauce) with penne. for evie and i, i modified a recipe for veggie black bean burgers, adding corn and kidney beans, skipping the green peppers. they came out well, i think. yesterdays adventure in the kitchen was homemade falafel (i even made the beans myself!) with a kind of garlic-y sauce of miracle whip, tahini, and cayenne, and yet another variation on an egg salad theme.

last week's attempt at making spinach pesto, wherein i substituted fresh spinach for basil, ended up a strange neon green (think of the slime in the nickelodeon show "you can't do that on television"); it tasted, i'd say, average. edible, mildly pleasant, nothing i'd pay for. thankfully, i chatted with a chef at a wedding this weekend and came home with a better understanding of fresh/herb based sauces, and a new set of ideas and proportions.

planning on doing evie's grocery shopping in the morning, so i'll possibly attempt the spinach pesto again tomorrow.

now that "lost" is in summer re-runs, i'll have even more time for cooking!

my, my, my, i train for meals the way some men and women train for the high jump, no?

'my vocabulary did this to me'

yes, jack spicer's dying words; thinking today, fondly, of how much trouble my intellect (or interest in intellectual pursuits) has given rise to in my life.

anyhow, an old poem, marking the beginning of my fascination with jack spicer.

WHEN MY MOTHER SAYS, ANGELA, EVEN GOD GIVES US SECOND CHANCES

...all lost objects stay upon the moon
untouched by any other eye but God’s.

Jack Spicer, Imaginary Elegies I-IV

I cannot say why I invited you in, weeks after you’d left: just
that the moon was full, Mars bursting in the west, your hands
in the stalks of my hair I as stepped
from the car; even Diana’s moonflowers
were blooming.

That night, my entire shin was bandaged, the skin there burned
away playing softball, trying to outrun your throw flaring out of
right field, sliding into second on bare legs. You could not see
it pulsing red beneath the gauze pads, beneath my jeans,
your hand resting there a moment
while we smoked on the roof.

A full month later it is healed, a marble scar. Some nights,
I mistake it for the moon
look for you in the driveway.

But I wake in the morning and I do not see you, even
days when you are still sleeping next to me; it is
too early and too bright and I close my eyes,
think about how one
can never look directly at the sun, but can stare at the moon
for hours. How I do not really see anything until it is dark,
find your shirt in the bedclothes,
a handful of pennies on the roof.

another gem in my inbox

...this one comes from the writer's almanac, a garrison keillor newsletter sent each day.

"Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe ... that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens."

joseph brodsky

thbbbbbttttttttt

that's evie's sound for "blowing the white fuzz off the dandelion stem". and that's what she's about to do in the photo.

current (and recent) events

* diane (wakoski, my goddess with the silver ankle and the zebra) sent me the collected books of jack spicer a few weeks ago. currently working my way through "after lorca", so far loving how spicer marries the magical, the absurd, the humorous, the spectacular, etc etc etc in these "translations". in my goofier moments, i want to emulate this side of spicer.

my large-scale spicer obsession began when, in a contemporary poetry class, diane mentioned that his famous last words were "my vocabulary did this to me" (meaning his early death brought on by severe alcoholism). i then read "imaginary elegies I-IV" in the anthology the new american poetry, a great find at a small used bookshop in east lansing. spicer's musings on the moon, loss, poetry, and god knocked me from my seat. i then bogarted my old roommate's copy of the collected and fell in love with "fifteen false prepositions against god".

having, at least, my own copy has made me feel like a poet again.

side note: when i was pregnant, people were constantly asking me if i played music into my belly for la luz, or read out loud. i went to many poetry readings, concerts, participated in open mics, etc. the few times i purposely sat down and read to la luz in utero, i read the "fifteen", and played johnny cash's cover of "you are my sunshine".

* still working my way through anne carson's decreation. it's rather difficult and dense; i've been making quite a few margin notes, and doing a little light research. reading good, strong poetry (especially a book like carson's with essays and criticism breaking up the poems) brings out the "reader" in me, and the critic. i think, for the first time in quite a while, i'm going to write a paper/article.

this is a good thing. obviously, it is challenging to reconcile my "old" life as a poet/activist/troublemaker with my "new" life. i feel as though i am finally learning to unite them (like spicer's translations, which, as "lorca" calls them, are more centaurs [half lorca, half spicer] than translations.)

* an old colleague of mine (that makes me sound 50!) from the red cedar review (where i worked as poetry editor and reader for a few years while at MSU) emailed me about a month ago. she and two other acquaintances are starting a small press, and approached me with an offer: they want to publish a chapbook of my poems as their fifth "book". (!!!!) i'm ecstatic. i'll have complete control, i'm able to forego the entire submission/contest process, and i'm not "selling out" (as in publishing it myself, or through a vanity press). i am almost unable to believe my "luck" here, in that i was approached by a press, run by editors whose opinion and aesthetics i trust and admire. yipee! it'll be a bit before the book appears, of course; so i'll be keeping everyone posted.

* the weather, and my mood, finally broke. so, i will have some ice cream, a shower, and maybe a short nap, and then sit in the sun.

what to say?

more than what i have the energy to say now, surely.

la luz is incredible.

i am exhausted. life feels heavy lately. that, i must change.

promises of more soon.

hopefully tomorrow.

what a gal

this is the face evie makes when she has a fever and is watching ice age.




here's a list of her new words, phrases, etc.

dead bug
dirt
can i see it
laundry basket
all done
i want it


the little one has also taken to pointing to herself (i.e. finger on the chest) in her own sort of sign language...for example, pointing to an apple, then herself, while making the "huh?" noise, as if to say, "can that be for me?" so, as i didn't follow the latest parenting trend and teach her sign language (deciding instead to focus on the english language, doubly) evie has seemingly caught on quite fast to language and patterns and the like, and added in her own type of sign language to clarify. amazing.

and now, she has learned to manipulate the way she says something--she has a tender rendition of "mama", and another one for when she's spilled her milk across the kitchen tile.

the last bit of baby talk for this post: tonight my brother was playing "landslide" on the guitar; evie began singing, making up her own gibberish words and SINGING IN TUNE!!! one thing i've never been able to consistently manage, and she's showing the ability to master it already? (maybe not master, but at least accomplish...).