The Beautiful Leaves, the book arrives

 

You’ve been hearing me talk about this collection for a few years, and now it is about to see light of day. The Beautiful Leaves , the collection of my poems about my beloved last husband Walter, will be published on August 8 by Pelekinesis Press (specifically, the Bamboo Dart division). Usually, I feel somewhat constrained about promoting my collections, but not this time. I feel that I am honoring Walter as he deserves. I feel also that my particular take on death and dying is not one you commonly encounter, and that my approach might strike a chord with other bereaved folk.

If you would like me to sign a copy and send it to you, please send $12 ($9 for the book, $3 for packaging and mailing, to my PayPal account, pieplate8@yahoo.com. Be sure to include your address in the notes. If you prefer Zelle, send me an email to the above address, or leave a comment, and I’ll send you the account number. Venmo also works:  @karen-greenbaum-maya. Of course, if we will see each other soon, or if you are planning on attending my book launch, or any of my readings, then just the $9.

I am so happy to have this collection come out. Walter loved the poems I wrote before his death, and I am glad to leave testimony about him.

AHA: a blast from the past, so to speak.

 

A very striking (no pun intended) virtual installation. You had to download the app, then sign in and view this creation through your phone. Naturally, the other people on the pier have no idea what you're seeing--and the phone just adds them into the scene

There is a little game in this prose poem. No one has noticed it yet. Perhaps you will.

Aha:  Atomic Apron

Hidden in the fold of the hem are the secrets of the atomic bomb, the equations and transitions that won the war. A white cotton apron, trimmed with satin-stitched wild roses. How can it have gone through the war and still be so pure? And the cloth, gauzy, open-weave, nothing but a net of threads. How did the secrets not leak through? Always the question no one asks out loud: Did that really happen? He’s the one who knows. Archbishop of physicists, eighty years ago they say, he inscribed the breakthrough on the cloth, then stitched it up tight. He is now so famous that credit, blame, renown no longer concern him. All respect is temporary. He knows this, as surely as he knows everything atomic reverts, sooner or later, to hydrogen. Ad infinitum, he will remember the moment when he understood: My God, he’d said, ja mei, mais non, aha.

Take it or leave it: Actually

 

The beginnings of a wildfire, near Sunland, CA

Actually…

…before she grew up in a barn, she was raised by wolves.

Her hair's a mess, but she has a fine big voice.
You can hear her down the street howling out Mahler
with something of an accent.  Sends a shiver up the spine.
She was a wild child, looking out into the moonlight,
snarling and nipping if someone interrupted.
School wasn't easy, what with the biting and the fleas.
No one has ever been trapped so long and survived.
She woke with the chickens, she slept with the cats.
Their smells kept her safe with the other animals.
People in the house made horn-signs, spat to avert her.
Their every sigh drew drops of blood.
This brought bad luck.  If you stumble as you go,
you are not welcome, and she never stepped right,
as sure as dancing, not even once.

Play her the song.  Maybe she'll sing.

Not quite Shakespeare: About the Author

 Found poem with refrigerator magnets

In college I had a friend, then known as Frances Harrod, who adored Alexander Pope. She had memorized hours and hours of his work, and would recite at any provocation. I loved it. I particularly loved Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, where Pope complains about the travails of being a famous poet. Alas. At one point, he mocks folks who try to flatter him by telling him how he resembles the greats, but only in their defects:  "Go on, obliging creature, make me see//All that disgraced my betters, met in me." Naturally I found it very possible to take the same approach.

About the Author

 

Like Proust, I’m not inventive.

Like Henry James, I’m fat.

Like Melville, slow to publish;

Like Eliot, I’ve a cat.

 

Like Stevens, I do other work;

Like Jarrell, write in prose.

Like Thurber, I don’t see too good;

Like Shakespeare, I wear clothes.

 

Like Kafka, I remember dreams;

Like Shaw, pontificate.

Love Paris just like Baudelaire;

Like Henry Roth, I’m late.

 

Like Freud, I must have enemies.

Like Gilbert, I’m not glad.

Like Wilde, I’m snide but tactless.

Like Sylvia Plath, I’m mad.

 

Like Joyce, exploit allusions;

Like Tolstoy, I’m no fun;

Like William Blake, can’t catch a break;

Like Reverend John, I’m donne.