Yeah, Baby. Want your resolve.

"I won't let fear determine my behavior. My heart, however crooked, still rules."

Spent the weekend reading Stoker's Dracula instead of any of the newly arrived poetry collections I'm wanting to get to, and not because I'm in the Halloween spirit (wish I were--somebody give me a sound kick in the ass), but because apparently, thanks to my T.A.'s interests, I'll be teaching the novel next term in my Intro to Literature class. You might think Dracula would be right up my alley--19th century, bloody, sexy, perverse, but here's my confession: it happens a little late in the century for me (1897 folks!), so if I've read it before, I don't remember it. Before nearly finishing the novel last night, I had only a weary residual sense of its plot from one of the bad Count Dracula films made in my lifetime (If anyone can suggest a good one I can screen for this class please please do).

There's an obvious 19th century Gothic precursor to Dracula I do know well. It was written and published in 1818 by a girl the age of some of my youngest first-year babes and was revised by a woman--a grieving widow nearly a decade by this time--thirteen years later, in 1831, just six years before Queen Victoria took the throne. I've taught Mary Shelley's Frankenstein almost as many times as years I've been teaching, which is a little excessive considering that most of my students have been exposed to it in high school or elsewhere by the time they get to one of my courses. I know a commitment to teaching Frankenstein (again) is a lost opportunity to introduce students to something less canonical, say another of Mary Shelley's novels or one of Joanna Baillie's dramas, but I love how Shelley's book canvasses so many other texts: Milton's Paradise Lost, Rousseau's The Social Contract and his Emilie or On Education, Goethe's Faust, Promethean mythology, David Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Paine's Age of Reason, and on and on, until the novel is itself a treatise on political institutions, social hierarchies, religious doctrine, education, reason and empiricism, and yes, fatherhood.

But here's the point: I teach the 1818 version of Frankenstein--and never the 1831 revision--because I'm much more familiar with the 1818 contexts. In 1818, for example, incest is relatively common as a subversive theme in Gothic literature--though scandalous of course--but by 1831, Shelley has ostensibly revised it out of her novel. The incestuous in Dracula takes place in polygamy and adultery, rather than between blood relatives. Bloodletting and decapitation in early 19th century writing still invoke Robespierre and his Reign of Terror. But in Dracula bloodletting and decapitation are engendered by the voraciousness of the feminine body, where blood infects like disease or procreates like semen, and decapitation is at once castration and the restoring of masculine order--still political, yes, but it's going to take me awhile to come to terms with who it is that fathers the violence: what is Dracula? I really have no idea--no good idea. Everything I think I know makes for a somewhat conventional vampire. Dull dull dull. I have a lot of homework to do in the coming Days of the Dead if I'm going to make it interesting.

***

"Although it can be tiring to confront yet another 'vampirism as _____' metaphor..."

I see your point, Charlie.

***

I, too, dislike it.

("imaginary gardens with real toads in them")

frog legs

I'm thinking of taking a new imaginary lover.

But let's make it interesting. Not someone too easy to love. As a kid I was in love with Kermit the Frog and couldn't understand what he saw in the tyrannical Miss Piggy. Clearly she bullied him into that relationship. I felt sure I would make a more loving partner to him, given the chance, and certainly I wouldn't insult him by calling him Kermi. I was a better person then and didn't mind that he's scrawny and submissive and that for lack of a nose he has a high nasal voice and for such a large mouth, no lips. It occurred to me at times that he is a frog and therefore an inexcusably inappropriate choice for me, and I was very sad and anxiety ridden about being in love with something, someone, so wholly imaginary. I was sensible enough to know that we could never marry and have children, not even in my most creative fantasies, and not because of the great physical divide between amphibians and human beings (I was a child, what did I know?), but because I knew I was not brave enough to tell my grandmother, my father, my cousins: "I love a muppet frog." They already knew of course, I was ridiculous. And despite their pains and a great deal of my own, I failed to outgrow my extravagance, and so I was also a disappointment. Kermit dumped me you know and went back to that pig. She's got some kind of hold on him. I can't help thinking he needed to be the real dreamer between us. All those fantasies about fur.

and another thing to be O so happy about

Suzanne Frischkorn's Spring Tide is now available. I cannot wait to get mine or for you to get yours.

***

Favorite peeps nominated for Pushcarts by No Tell Motel:

Charles Jensen
Jasper Bernes
Cynthia Huntington

All deserving. You rock the many rooms of the house.

***

Books in the mail I came home to find on my doorstep:

Aaron McCollough's Welkin
Kirsten Kaschock's Unfathoms
Paul Guest's The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World
Dan Beachy-Quick's North True South Bright
Rebecca Loudon's Tarantella
Matthea Harvey's Sad Little Breathing Machine
Tony Tost's Invisible Bride
Ange Mlinko's Starred Wire
Ray Gonzalez's Consideration of the Guitar, New and Selected Poems

So many more on my wishlist--and more to add--but doing the best I can.

***

Sunny day, Midwestern fall. The leaves are brilliant, the sky a single wash of watery blue. Can't stop looking at it. Someone remind me to step outside, away from the window, into it.

***

Can't paint, but am painting. Watercolor. Just for the smell of the paint and the feel of cold pressed paper. For the way blue and sienna bleed together and look like sky and pink mud.

Music I love and wanted to own but didn't until I stole it from Jerry's collection:

Ben Folds Five, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner
Elliott Smith, XO
Radiohead, The Bends, Kid A, OK Computer, Pablo Honey
Massive Attack, Protection
Cake, Prolonging the Music, Fashion Nugget
Rufus Wainwright, Poses
Iron & Wine, Our Endless Numbers, The Sea and The Rhythm
Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism
Crowded House, Woodface, Together Alone
Arcade Fire, Funeral
Tom Waits, Blue Valentine
Vic Chestnut, Left to His Own Devices
Badly Drawn Boy, The Hour of Bewilderment

I know. Shameless greedy thief. But O so happy.

***

I am blessed. I write to music. Some people need silence. You?

***

Currently on repeat:

Transatlanticism

The atlantic was born today and i'll tell you how...
The clouds above opened up and let it out.

I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.

Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood lands to your door have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no.

I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer

I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer

So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on

***

I do. I need you so much closer.

letter: ithaca

So many wonderful papers that Saturday of the conference and the presentations went long all day and into the evening, an hour apiece with q&a, and I listened hard as hard as I could for as long as I could, for it is hard to go home as we did to show what you know and wish you knew better, but maybe harder yet to gather together so many wonderful people in the same room at the same time to think about Coleridge and Kant and Carlyle and Austin and Byron and Shelley and Wordsworth, of all things

not among things you think about everyday, unless: well, Karen Swann mentioned she lost two years

of her life as a grad student wandering the notebooks of Coleridge, and I remembered my mentor--also her mentor--Reeve--saying to me for some mysterious reason, stay away from Coleridge especially the notebooks, and I did though I didn't want to after that, I mean

what but the notebooks after that?

***

Reeve and Cynthia, thank you for the homecoming. No really, I mean it.

***

After, between the conference dinner at the home of Jonathan Culler and Cynthia Chase and martinis at Willow with all the folks from Soon Productions,

Kevin Elliott and Chris Nealon gave their poetry readings downtown and knocked my socks off. Was so glad to meet Kevin at last, to hear his poems aloud and to have Aaron Tieger's gorgeous broadsides in hand when Kevin read his final poem. Nealon is a master ventriloquist of voice and damned funny. Kevin is Musician and Myth-Maker--very fine indeed. Was honored to receive his invitation to make tamales for his cooking circle (actually he said "I don't take no for an answer")--which is also Karen and Theo's cooking circle--knowing, especially, that these folks don't mess around. They know food

is beautiful. So in the old way, I had a tamale party at Theo's house on the following Wednesday. What you might not know is that Josh and Emily moved into the downstairs apartment of my house about a year before I left Ithaca for Galesburg. I was their upstairs neighbor who shared the backyard garden I miss a lot before I left my place to Theo--thank you, Theo, for having me, us, in your home, my once home, for tamales. It was lovely, and you are lovely. --So Josh, now Theo's downstairs neighbor--was there to deliver in person a copy of Fourier Series, which is gorgeous, and Kevin and Kate showed, and Karen and Jerry, and Ann. My grandmother's pork tamales are impossible to share with most people I now know, so I've developed a vegetarian rendition. Oh, the secret insides of tamales. Chipotles, tiny diced potatoes, feta, and a single green olive with a red pimento eye.

Had a few too many with Theo. She put me up for the night on her couch where my old blue couch used to be.

***

Karen cooked for me all week, amazing food. I learned about greens this week. Dark leafy greens. Apparently spinach isn't as wellness as I thought. I loved staying in your house, in Jerry's study. Thank you, Karen. Thank you Jerry. Oh, and Jerry? I raided your iTunes while you were away. Baby.

***

Neglecting You. Sorry You! But I've got notes in my head I want to write to You. Rick, Suzanne, Cynthia, You especially, and soon.

***

Weird thing: Aaron Tieger's fiancee, Wendy Hyman, is an old good friend of mine from Smith College. How long did it take me to figure it out, this connection? Embarrassing. Had to admit my embarrassment. Was forgiven. Was invited over for tea and cats. If not Coleridge's notebooks, then tea and cats. Was given hope that whatever hope I can find

in life that is good is negotiable.

***

And forgot to say, I got my own copy of Carve. Wendy did the cover.

***

Drove home tonight. The road was a middle road. Watched the sun go down on one half of the world while the other half went dark and I thought, if I were the sort of person to look for God I'd think of souls in the wounded half closing their shoulders against the turning light. But the star hanging low in the sky tonight? Like a wasp. The radio towers blinked red, the tail lights of the trucks ahead blinked red and steady, and the wasp-green light in the sky, I thought, was like one of the barn lights in the distance. Green, steady. Fly me a plane or else give me a planet hanging low and close, wasp bright. Driving home, the first sting of the night. The one draping its back legs into my view.

***

No. The sun went down. The clouds turned orange and blue. It was dark. I thought: if only I believed in something.

Well, I do. But I don't know what.

postcard: ithaca

and Karen Anderson's (Mom's) brownies:

1/2 cup of flour
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup butter
2 eggs
3 oz chocolate
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter

Melt butter with chocolate in microwave on 50% power. Cool and mix with other ingredients. Bake in 8x8 pan 20 minutes or less.

and it was awesome

The Department of English takes pleasure in presenting a conference:

"Unconfinable Romanticism"
Friday October 14, 2:30-5 pm
Saturday, October 15, 9:30 am-12:30 pm and 2:00 pm-5:00 pm
Goldwin Smith 258

The conference takes place in conjunction with the Gottschalk Memorial Lecture, "Sovereignty, Romanticism, and the War on Terror," delivered by Professor Marc Redfield, Claremont Graduate University, on Thursday, October 13, 4:30 pm. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium.

"Unconfinable Romanticism" will feature contributions by a range of speakers, many of them former Cornellians, exploring the ways that thinking about particular works of "Romantic" poetry, fiction, and drama has come, in the early twenty-first century, to entail judgments about the meaning of the ethical, the philosophical, and the scientific; the performative and constative; the role of "theory" and its resistance to the transcendent; the historical and political burden of nationalism; and the weight of the institution in the study of literature, as a condition of creating a civil society as well as a national culture.

"Unconfinable Romanticism": English Department Conference
English and Comparative Literature Lounge, Goldwin Smith 258

Friday, Oct. 14
2:00-5:00 "Placing Conventions"

Gina Franco (Knox College) "Beatrice's Rock: The Masochistic Contract
in The Cenci"
Anne Mallory (U. of Georgia) "Acting Out in Mansfield Park "
Adela Pinch (U. of Michigan) "Love Thinking: Nineteenth-Century Metrical
Theory and the Problem of Other Minds""
Anne-Lise François (UC Berkeley and Cornell) "The Romantic Constative"

Saturday, Oct. 15
9:30-12:30 "Explanatory Models"

Karen Swann (Williams College) "Work without Hope"
Joshua Wilner (CUNY) "Wordsworth and Mandelbrot on the Coast of Britain"
Will Hacker (Williams College) "Re-opening Thy Byron: Tragic Heroism in
Carlyle's Struggle with Utility"
Ted Underwood (U. of Illinois) "Before the Period Survey: Historicism and
English Composition in London, 1829-1856

2:00-5:00 "Odd Romanticisms"

Laura Quinney (Brandeis Univ.) "Blake's Philosophical Psychology"
Rei Terada (U. of California, Irvine) "The Right to a Phenomenal World"
Orrin Wang (U. of Maryland) "Against Theory beside Romanticism: Sensation,
Identity Politics, and the Shape of the Signifier"

black macleod

***

Early on Friday my broadband and digital cable went out and I spent the weekend talking on the phone to Glenda and tapping sentences into a paper I'm beginning to see will not work out. I haven't checked email in several days, but today's the day. Ever afraid of what you might find there when you haven't looked in a few days? (What haven't I done now?) Late last night the cable gurus fixed whatever went wrong and ta-da! the disappearing woman is back. I thought I'd be off line until Tuesday when I will have already packed up my car to drive the fourteen hours to Ithaca, NY--I thought I'd sneak into my office early Tuesday morning to leave an update for you--all of you--before heading out.

The surgery as far as we know went well, though there is some lag time now between her healing and her knowing for certain, and in the time since, a persistent migraine and more soreness than she'd anticipated. Chris has made her take the rest of the month off and she tells me this involuntary vacation arrives just as On Demand digital comes to their household. I think she is not yet feeling well enough for all day chick flicks, but headache be damned she's working on it. I wish she were the sort to enjoy narcotic pain killers, but she's doing pretty well on hogging everybody's favorite reclining chair in the living room and other forms of entertainment that come with a great sense of humor. It's not okay to hide the potato chips from your children, I said. Yes it is, she said, because I want to eat them.

And there's not a doubt in my mind that all your good vibes helped. She doesn't keep up with this blog (the woman hardly does email), but when she is well, I'll show her your posts.

And now I must find a cat-sitter.

October 6th, 11:00 am

Things have worsened for her suddenly--Friday she took Trystan and Sage to a carnival, Saturday we talked and she was no worse, but by Saturday evening she'd called her doctor--so they've moved her surgery to Thursday morning. I don't know that means, exactly, but I think it means I can be grateful to her doctor for making it happen as soon as humanly possible. She is cheerful on the phone. Sage has given her her head cold, so she is feeling worn down, more than just anemic, which is somehow a real reason to rest, to sleep in and miss work. She sounds stuffy on the line, but she isn't in pain, no migraine today. She is calm, so I try to be calm. I took myself to see The Exorcism of Emily Rose tonight and watched the priest's lawyer drink quite a few martinis even after someone testified on the stand that intoxication invites your demons to stick around. I pulled up to a convenience store on the way home and thought about buying something hard and alcoholic and didn't feel better thinking it, so came home and lit more candles. I feel better now, am watching the flames in the dark while I tap something into this page. The woman who helps me clean this place every few weeks is going to freak out tomorrow when she sees all the candles and photographs on the shrine which she eyes with suspicion and avoids in general anyway, but whatever. I'm not cleaning up my vigil so that she can feel safe. We are not safe.

Where will I be at noon on Thursday? Having lunch with the dean. Probably should change that.

Blessings on all of you.