another reading tomorrow, Saturday August 17

Many thanks to poetry mid-wife Don Kingfisher Campbell for inviting me to read at the Catalina branch of the Pasadena public library, at 999 E. Washington. There is an open mic, and the reading will go from 3-5pm. I promise not to read anything I have read there before.

Another reading this Sunday, 8/11/13

A bit dark, an unexpected take on something you see every day, somewhat whimsical. Yep, that describes my poems.

I'll be reading again this coming Sunday, 8/11/13, in Second Sundays, the fine poetry series hosted by Alex Frankel. For location, directions, and details, see http://www.secondsundaypoetry.com/ With me will read the amazing Daniel Romo, as well as Martina Newberry. Martina and I knew each other 30 years ago, when we both had different names and different careers. She had a fine voice then, and I'm looking forward to discovering what she is saying now.

How I am spending my summer

traces of fireworks--long exposure on a point-and-shoot ELF!                        

 

 

I work with the steering committee for a poetry reading series usually housed in our local library. The other women on the steering committee are also working writers. That is to say, they write and seek publication (and frequently get published), and they spend a lot of time reading as well. We met recently, and when I walked up to the table, the others were discussing what they were reading this summer. Made me glad that I was the last to arrive:  I have been reading low-fiber stuff, for the most part. True, I am reading L’Etrangère en français, dictionary in hand so that I don’t miss out on Camus’ fabulous diction, but the rest of what I am reading is not only light-weight, but re-reading. I feel a bit embarrassed about how often I return to something I have read before. Usually, what I am seeking in the repeaters is a particular scene with a particular emotional tone, a particular interior landscape if you will. Most recently, it was a scene in The Devil's Cub, a Georgette Heyer Regency romance, and I'm not even going to try to summarize the set-up. (Earlier, it was a few of the Harry Potters. My husband is recovering from a knee replacement, and J.K. Rowling has made it possible for him to permit his leg to be iced long enough to give some real relief. Seeing the Potters around and talking about them with him made me want to go back. Still effective, btw. Now he is referring to people not in the know as Muggles, and to various obdurate bad guys as Voldemort. It works.) I've also been re-reading various essays of Josef Wechsburg, a lover of music and food and kultchah in general. He wrote a gorgeous piece about the late lamented Budapest String Quartet, and a fittingly worshipful account of visiting La Pyramide of Fernand Point. I'm a long ways from either one right now, I must say.

Burrowing Song emerges

The next big thing has finally arrived. My chapbook of prose poems, Burrowing Song, is in the process of being printed and bound, and should be available by next week. I say "finally" because it's been four years since my first chapbook, Eggs Satori, was chosen as a finalist by PuddingHouse Publications. PuddingHouse and its editors were hit by a number of setbacks, the worst being health crises, and they put their publications on hold--apparently, on permanent hold. Sammy Greenspan of Kattywompus Press was good enough to take a look at my set of prose poems, and accepted not only Burrowing Song but also Eggs Satori into her catalog. (ES should be coming out at the end of 2013).

But--! If you are interested, you can find Burrowing Song at www.kattywompuspress.com. If you would like a signed copy, send me your address, and make payment to pieplate8@yahoo.com at PayPal. Prose poems have been around a while, although not under that name. You may find them reminiscent of the short pieces of Kafka, or Buber, also of shaggy dog stories, fairy tales, and dreams. Who knew that most of the preoccupations of my adult life would find a place in one genre? Below, an example:

Golden Hind

Time-traveler from disco days wears molten gold space pants, astronaut-tight, catching rays and glances. She’s known at Gold’s Gym. Her pelvis leads the way across the parking lot. She’s muscle-queen of SoCal’s March heat wave, gold standard of saucy butts, she is shrink-wrapped in a Lycra blend of gold lamé, she hits her aerobic range just tugging those things on. Her 18-carat hair is the Golden Fleece. How many golden hours given for that elevated rump, those plastic alabaster arms? Not the working sculpt of dancer’s muscles, but a body for no motion at all, for beholding alone. She smiles the secret smile of the marble maidens at the Acropolis. Their eternal draperies mention rounded bellies. She basks in her own fat-free golden light. Her daughter with golden locks trails in her wake, a mirroring moon waiting for a moment of just-right, sneaking another cheesy goldfish from the foil-lined bag.

Mental Space of One's Own

You know how there is always some great book or work that you have never read, feel you ought to read, never quite get around to reading? Some work that everyone around you has read, so that you are reluctant to admit that you never did read? I have in fact read Moby Dick, Ulysses, War and Peace, Tristram Shandy, and Part 2 of Faust (auf Deutsch), but until last week I never had read A Room of One's Own. I'd seen so many references that I supposed I had already got its goodness, basically. Wrong Wrong Wrong!! I had utterly forgotten how sly Virginia Woolf is, how deftly she builds up the bits of evidence, emotional as well as physical, that will lead you cleanly grievously to her conclusion. I had never heard anyone allude to the Manx cat, a perfectly good cat, complete even without a tail, that strolled calmly through the quad of the men's college where she was lunching. I had certainly never heard anyone mention the poor dinner of the women's college, and how it must contribute to the scope of work that can be produced. And when she mildly but inexorably adduces the circumstances that must obtain in order for a woman to sit herself down and gather her thoughts and have the mental room to let them mingle and speak--well! No wonder this work is a banner and a mantra for women who write. Just from reading it, I feel that space has been cleared in my own crowded head.

Conference season is approaching



 

Two years ago I attended a writing conference at Esalen in Big Sur on the Central California coast. I do want to say that it was a magically beautiful place, and that I took home a lot of ideas and writing oomph, to say nothing of a renewed appreciation for whole grains. Tonight, however, I am also remembering the graffito dashed on the fence that greeted us as we drove up to the entrance:  "Jive shit for rich white folks." Just saying.

The Next Big Thing: Burrowing Song

Vieve Kaplan, friend, colleague, and poet, invited me to join The Next Big Thing, a cascade of promoting myself (read:  my work) and inviting others to do the same.

My tagged writers for next Wednesday are:  Judith Terzi, Richard Garcia, Dale Wisely, Nickole Brown, Cati Porter, and, Maria Andrade. I haven’t collected their URLs, but when I do I will post those here. Check them out too!

What is the working title of the book?

          Burrowing Song

Where did the idea come from for the book?

          Sammy Greenspan of Kattywompus Press challenged chapbook submitters to offer her unusual collections, such as a chapbook of prose-poems. I just so happen to write a lot of those, thanks to Richard Garcia’s mentorship.

What genre does your book fall under?

          Poetry chapbook, I guess…maybe weird fables, or dream book.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

          Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Robert Downey Jr., Tina Fey, Angelica Houston—those people who can play anything and anyone they want, and no one at all.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

          Apparently, I look at the world in strange, or at least unique, ways, and my sense of humor also is tweaked.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

          To write the poems, a span of four years; as we all end up saying, to perceive the poems, many more years than that. When I write, I continue to be surprised how drifts from so many different things in my life enter my words.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

          Immediately, Richard Garcia, for introducing me to the notion of the prose-poem form; more broadly, the Brothers Grimm, my dreams, German Romantics, Kafka, shaggy-dog jokes, Dada, Mitteleuropa humor, and people who speak in code because they are in danger.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

          When I’m being serious, I’m pretty funny.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

          Neither; Kattywompus Press has picked it up (after inspiring it) and tells me that it should be published sometime in 2014.