Hail, kindred spirit!

I had a fine piece of serendipity today. I'd gone for a walk in our local botanical garden, which features native plants and plant communities of the Southwest. There is a particular oak tree that must be more than 300 years old. Its sign proclaims it to be the Majestic Oak, and indeed it is, although Walter and I always rebelled against the un-ironic name and called it "the pretty big oak." It is one of the places where I left some of his ashes, discreetly of course, to become part of the tree.

As I continued my walk, I found myself putting words together about it. Ooo, a keeper! But bizarrely, I had set out without anything to write with or on or in, and I couldn't find the Notes app on my phone. Despite rising heat, I hustled over to the gift shop. "Hello!" I said to the young man behind the counter. "Could you give me a scrap of paper and something to write with?" "That's a nice 'hello'," he said, and handed me both. I jotted down what I had, noting as I wrote where it needed some work. "I totally understand," he said; "I'm a writer, and I'm never without," and showed me his moleskine journal and pen. Turns out he writes YA fiction, and was impressed (!!) that I write poetry. Well, I was impressed that he can come up with plots, which I could not do if my life depended on it. We talked Craft for a while, particularly the Surrealists' tricks for jump-starting inspiration. We exchanged our information, recommended readings to each other. I suggested Richard Garcia and Matthea Harvey for prose poems.

Hail, Avery! Long may you bring the right words to paper!

Notre Dame was burning (posted better late than never)

Live TV coverage of Notre Dame in flames. You can see the huge jets of water being pumped directly from the (adjacent) Seine. Every firefighter in Paris must have been called in on this one.

Old Wood

Halfway through my last dinner, I saw the blaze,

unfathomable as the Grand Canyon creaking shut.

The owner confirmed:  Everyone on staff is following

as firefighters poured the river onto the flames.

When the spire lifted as it toppled, people gasped, 

wailed as though a suicide had jumped.

The day before I’d walked the quais, 

browsed the bookinistes, shot mood pics of the towers,

total cornball, through the mist of new leaves.

Arrow of God, the spire had fallen before the sun was down, 

The fire turned the sky red, turned the cross white-hot.

Not all the water in the world, not even the river could help.

People stood and watched, sang and wept.

Rains came only the next morning.

Ash sifted down catching, reflecting coral light 

I’d brought my husband’s ashes in a carved wooden box.

No need, no need.

After dinner, the owner walked me to the door. We sniffed the air.

Vieux bois, she shrugged, wincing. Old wood.

(published in New Verse News on April 23 2019, Easter Sunday)

Kafka's Cat gets out

Glenn Ligon's work, at the Broad in DTLA, with visitor

Thank you, Sammy Greenspan of Kattywompus Press (welcome to the 'wompus!) who did not scoff or mock, but instead encouraged me to put together this manuscript of weird prose poems using the hapless Franz Kafka as my persona. These are surreal, I say diffidently, and why Kafka works as a speaker for me is a good question.

When I first read Kafka in German, I was startled to realize that he is funny. Not just "funny" as in "not quite right", but "funny" as in--funny. It is not only the situations, which are funny enough in the first sense. His choice of words, his sentences, read like gags. There are good translations, faithful and deft, but I have never seen one that captured Kafka's hilarity. I certainly haven't been able to achieve it. Word is that Kafka used to read new works aloud to friends, and that his performance brought them into hysterical laughter. I can understand.

Anyhow, if you want to see what I'm talking about, you can click on some of the links at the left, which include Kafka's Cat where it first appeared in Otoliths. You may leave me a message with your information at my email, KarenGM.poetry@yahoo.com, or go directly to Kattywompus's web page,   https://kattywompuspress.com/.   Or not.

Now playing on K-REN? Night and Day

If Renoir had painted Notre Dame

First night in Paris

For the last three weeks, this song has been going through my head. All day long. I don't choose them, I just report them. And, honi soit qui mal y pense.

For Ella, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6M--07fGwU

And alternatively, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzmZ7pHTalE
for the close harmony!

Night and Day

Cole Porter

Night and day, you are the one
Only you beneath the moon and under the sun

Tour Eiffel into the night

Whether near to me or far
It's no matter, darling, where you are
I think of you night and day, 

Night and day, why is it so 
That this longing for you follows wherever I go?
In the roaring traffic's boom
In the silence of my lonely room
I think of you night and day

Night and day, under the hide of me
There's an, oh, such a hungry yearning
Burning inside of me
And this torment won't be through
'Til I spend my life making love to you
Day and night, night and day…

Night and day, under the hide of me
There's an, oh, such a hungry yearning
Burning inside of me
And its torment won't be through
'Til you let me spent my life making love to you
Day and night, night and day

Songwriters: Cole Porter

Night and Day lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, Red Brick Music Publishing

It's irrational, but I love Pi Day--or, multiples of 11

A pie crust for people who believe in butter.

I almost forgot that today is Pi Day. It's the first one in years for which I baked no pie. Just not in the mood. But pies have been part of my life since I was a child, not because anyone in the family baked superb pies, but because I loved them. They were my preferred dessert any time I had a choice. I started trying to make crust when I was 11. Miserable results, partly because my mother did not believc in butter. By the time I was 22 I could produce good crust, just not reliably. Thus the quest for the perfect pie crust. I hit dependability when I was 44; now, at 66, it's a crust you can be happy to eat, even if it is not the apotheosis of what crust can be. The good-enough pie crust, D.W. Winnicott might say. 

A layer of almond paste is a good addition to all the almond-essence fruits.

Who is my audience? Who's in the crowd?

Tourists at the foot of Sacre-Coeur surveying the hordes of tourists on the street leading to the foot of Sacre-Coeur.

 No, really:  I'm asking. Yesterday I got a high number of hits and visits. Yippee, said I, and clicked on the audience stats to see who these people were. Almost all the hits were from Moldavia. Um, OK, I said, glad you liked my stuff enough to click through my blog.

The Paris Metro, with the continuous cars of Line 1, 5 pm on a weekday.

Then I looked to see what websites were the sources. A gratifying number were from links at journals where I've had work published, but a disconcerting number were from a free porn site. I don't know quite how that happened. Perhaps it means simply that people are complex, not to say complicated.

The police forces out en masse for a group of teachers, from pre-school through university professors, protesting cuts to education funding. btw, gendarme means "people who are armed" with guns, not simply truncheons.The short couple in the center are about to be taken into custory.

Maybe it simply means that I'm not nearly as narrow/obscure/esoteric as I sometimes feel. Hi-ho.

Values on parade: eavesdropping at the Louvre

La Jaconde as you head through Charles de Gaulle International Airport on your way out

Arrows

Back in the day, on our second trip to Paris, we moseyed through the gallery the Louvre docents had given to the Italian Renaissance. Most visitors were not moseying. They were trotting, hustling even, on their way to the room with only one access and no exit that houses La Jaconde, La Giaconda, aka Mona Lisa. We were enjoying the art and lingering, but not everyone felt the same way. One American (Madras shorts, loafers without socks) held forth in the middle of the room, proclaiming that no one really liked Picasso, that his fame was all a scam put forward by a cabal of critics. (As it happened, Walter adored Picasso, so he made some extraordinary faces to keep from laughing out loud.) However, there were also two guys who were thrilled by what they were seeing. They stood for some time before some master's painting of the martyrdom of St. Anthony, namely, the muscular yet lissome saint being riddled with arrows. Then one said to the other, with some exaltation and exhilaration and reverence, "You can't call yourself a man if you don't make Art."