Dance and Play

Went to an informal dance concert Friday and a play tonight, Eastern Standard, both wonderful student productions and full of talent and hard work. Had great conversations with students in the lobby, Alissa talking about her write-up of the play for the student newspaper, how she'd wanted to write about homophobia, somehow, but that those considerations had been cut from her final article: Alli introducing me around, helping me put names to faces, those from the program and those from the dance concert the night before: Sylvie promises a tape of her performance, which was for me very moving and provocative and: at the last, I meet Evan's parents and have a chance to tell his father what a great kid he's got, for Evan is brilliant in many ways, and ambitious, and endearing, but also among the most generous spirits I've known. And some of those big souls are Evan's friends. It's beautiful to watch, really. That connection. I had nothing to do with it, but sometimes they invite me in.

More research for ENG 346

Spent the last two hours typing "poetry" and "suicide" into the web, and I can't do it anymore. By the time I got to Reetika Vazirani and her son I'd already been thinking: enough for now, come back to it later. Now I'm a bit of a mess. Shaken and depressed.

Another thing I hadn't foreseen: how well will I hold up while teaching the suicides? How will I do it?

Halleluja

i've heard there was a secret chord that david played and it pleased the lord
but you don't really care for music, do you?

it goes like this...the fourth, the fifth
the minor fall
the major lift
the baffled king composing halleluja

halleluja
halleluja
halleluja
halleluja

your faith was strong but you needed proof
you saw her bathing on the roof
her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.

she tied you to a kitchen chair
she broke your throne
she cut your hair
and from your lips she drew the halleluja

halleluja
halleluja
halleluja
halleluja

maybe i have been here before
i know this room i've walked this floor
i used to live alone before i knew you.

i've seen your flag on the marble arch
love is not a victory march
it's a cold and it's a broken halleluja

halleluja
halleluja
halleluja
halleluja

there was a time you let me know
what's real and going on below
but now you never show it to me do you?

remember when i moved in you
the holy dark was moving too
and every breath we drew was halleluja

halleluja
halleluja
halleluja
halleluja

maybe theres a god above
and all i ever learned from love
was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.

and its not a cry you can hear at night
its not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken halleluja

halleluja
halleluja
halleluja
halleluja




This, friends, is poetry.

AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF OCCULTISM: A Compendium of Information on the Occult Sciences, Occult Personalities, Magic, Demonology, Spiritism, and Metaphysics

Abaddon: (The Destroyer). Chief of the demons of the seventh heirarchy. Abaddon is the name given by St. John in the Apocalypse to the king of the grasshoppers. He is sometimes regarded as the destroying angel.


Wow. King of the grasshoppers.

Madonna Spinning Wool

"Every so often something happens," Herman says, "that confirms my faith that the universe is a perfect place."

Having Frank Gaspar out to Knox for a reading last week was like that. I know planet earth is in big trouble, but sometimes, despite so much suffering, the universe comes full circle, and a student and her teacher become colleagues, officially, inasmuch as she can officially offer him an honorarium for his reading, fly him out on her college's budget, and introduce him to her own poetry students.

--Nothing short of a miracle considering she'd never seen a poet before she met him at a writers' conference twelve years ago, her first conference, and not one she was actually attending, but one held at the community college where she took classes and worked a few workstudy hours, which is what she was doing there, making coffee, running errands, handling cash. The conference director offered her a fifteen-minute conference with Frank Gaspar the Poet if she agreed to go get him a hamburger; the director offered him a hamburger if he agreed to look at this kid's poems and meet with her for fifteen minutes. The kid was a pre-pharmacy major, not a serious writer. The Poet said at the end of their fifteen minutes: take care and send me some poems if you want to, which is what you say to people when you mean it but doubt it will happen.

And the kid got a lot years out of that hamburger, though it was Meg, the conference director, who ran that errand.

So: though it could not be done, a feast beyond hamburgers was called for. She cooked all week for the post-reading dinner she held at her place, invited the entire department and several advisees, fed them tamales, chicken mole, Spanish rice, pintos, guacamole, all the wine they could drink, and had not a doubt in the world that her mole would seduce even the vegetarians in the room to eat it, which it did, though everything else on the table arose from vegetable love.

***********

Mole is exquisite and Aztec old. It took three days to prepare this time. I boiled six chicken breasts (bones and skin are necessary) in water with garlic, onion, white wine, apple juice, fresh ginger, cloves, cinnamon, cumin, oregano, and salt, to make stock. Poured off the stock, set it aside, and removed the skin from the breasts.

Softened dried red chilies--three varieties--in warm water, removed stems, veins, and seeds, then set them to boil in some of the chicken stock with more cloves and more ginger until they were nearly fluid and ready to puree. Added red wine. Poured the whole pot into the blender and made a red chili smoothie. Then the hard part: worked the contents of the blender through a medium mesh strainer, discarded anything that wouldn't go through or wouldn't be ground.

Toasted a couple of pounds of almonds, pecans, walnuts, and Spanish peanuts in the oven for a few minutes to bring out the oils. Sauteed half a sweet potato in oil, thin slices of it cooked through, then put everything in the blender with more chicken stock and a few animal crackers and pureed that mixture too. Worked it through the mesh, also. Further blended whatever didn't mesh, and put it through the sieve again and again.

Then, in the biggest sauce pan I've been able to find, I combined the chili smoothie and the nut shake, and let the whole thing simmer on low all day, stirring vigilantly, and let it reduce and thicken into the wonderful robust color and texture of stuff you don't pour, but spoon. Added several ounces of semi-sweet chocolate. When the whole thing looked like the dark red mud I miss from home, I spooned heaps of it on top of the chicken breasts and slid them into the oven where they baked on low for a couple of hours.

************

The students showed early and nervously took up the couch and chairs in the living room. They put on music and lit candles and talked to each other. By the time my colleagues arrived, it was clear we'd need to find another place to sit and eat, so we sat on the floor close to the dining room and felt comfortable and close and somewhat mystified that the students didn't invite us in, though we teased Andy into handing us pillows from the stack on the floor beside him.

When a reading goes well, the party does too. The students left, but the rest of us stayed and took over their living room and talked, mostly about teaching. Friends took Frank back to his hotel room, thankfully, for I hadn't been to bed at all the night before. I crashed.

Today, a week later, I'm still washing some of those wine glasses.

************

On Saturday, the day after the reading, Frank and I went pouring through the antique shops here in town. We talked; we looked through several glass cases on the first floor of the Antique Mall before discovering a little wooden plaque, six by eleven, a Byzantine Madonna seated and lone, though labeled "Annunciation." No angel in sight. He saw her first. He said: wow, look at that. I said: god she's beautiful, I want her, but I'll bet she's expensive. We both held our breath. He walked around the back of her case to get a look at her price tag; I stared at her gold leaf halo and tried to place her. When he came back around I said: she's spinning, I think. And he looked at her again, closely, said: There are a lot of Madonnas in the novel I'm writing right now. I've seen a lot of Madonnas. You have too, I'm sure. But I've never seen one spinning.

So he bought the Madonna for fifteen bucks, and now I'm looking right at her. Spinning.

************

I wrote him:

I did a little research on Our Lady. Apparently Mary is thought to have
been spinning purple wool when the angel arrived. Here's a link that
gives you some of the textual sources.

http://www.udayton.edu/mary/questions/yq2/yq299.html

Anyway, because I didn't realize right away that you'd given me
another annnnunciation, I didn't think to tell you
that the year I left Cornell and came here, I kept a
moleskine journal filled with every depiction of the
annunciation  I could find and I filled it up with
writing Zali says I should make into my next book
(don't know about that..). I was thinking hard about
what it means believe that the universe makes
announcements. (You want to go to Smith? Okay, go to
Smith. You want to go to Cornell? Yes, that's in the
plan, go to Cornell. You want a job? Okay, but the one
we have for you is in the midwest and far from the
desert...it's a sacrifice, but your fate...) And I was
thinking I needed to dump my mother's divine child
theory ("The universe has a special plan for you,
Ginita") because it was killing me, making a martyr of
me. And I was thinking I needed to stop looking in the
mail for some sign of what my life is doing: did I
publish another poem, did I get a job offer, did
I win a prize for teaching? etc.

So I couldn't help but be drawn to her, you know, when
we saw her, but it's weird: that journal was about
fighting these superstitious impulses to find
something cosmic at work. About realizing that while
I'm not religious, I am easily moved by coincidence,
and easily shaken by it because I am a skeptic about
nearly everything too. And now you give me another
annunciation to look at: the angel is not yet in
sight, she is spinning, and her life is still the
mystery mine is, yours is. And but for that thread in
her hands, she has no purpose. She is free.

Except that she is always already haloed and dressed
in gold leaf and red and blue robes--

WVKC College Radio

Driving home from the play and playing the college radio station as usual, there's Andy--I recognize his voice--announcing he will now read one of my poems for "poem of the night," his favorite poem from my collection, "That Cried to the Whole City, Sleep No More." And his reading

is beautiful, not hesitant, not uncertain, and full of his sense of the rhythms of the poem, and fully appreciative. "I hope she won't be mad at me," he says to his listeners. I pull into my driveway, sit in the car listening, and laugh and laugh alone in my car, embarrassed, thankful, I can't even

say: all day I met with students and made the usual wholehearted attempt to put myself into their work and to listen well and to trust well, and was exhausted to the usual point of despair before I'd managed to begin the first appointment at 8 o'clock this morning. But it was a good day of teaching and the rewards were rich: good,

important poems at the table first thing this morning with the independent studies, and Crackpots coffee, and a conversation about aesthetics that fed me: once at the office, a few hours to think about book orders for spring and the serenity that comes with surrendering to Norton who also makes desk copies available and easy to get to: Rachel came in with her nervous

about-to-rehearse-my-seminar-paper energy and the enthusiasm of a writer who still loves what she's written: Yele arrived like clockwork and began making photo copies for the 346 course reader and looked happier and more confident than yesterday when the world was too much with us: JoAnna stepped in to announce that she's signed up for 346 despite her self-doubt--though this kid need not doubt herself--

and can she have the list of readings in advance to get a head start: Meg brought two strong papers for her independent study, but more crucially, her frustration with O'Connor, which turns into a discussion about close-reading skills, new to her, and won't I consider teaching a class on how to close-read texts, which is

to say the world shifted for her today, if only in terms of reading, but reading is everything in my book: yes: today she discovered the value of looking up "good" in the dictionary, though everyone knows what "good" means: though she is already a damned good reader:

--then home for a bath before the play, time to soak quietly and read what Sean, my colleague, is reading tomorrow afternoon for his Knox debut, and the work is gorgeous, sexy, vulnerable: wish I could do that kind of writing:

--then the play, directed by another colleague I love, and a hard thing to pull off because it's 19th century Vienna and Freud's contemporary, so not scandalous to us: but Evan was hilarious on stage in underwear: I am a grumpy playgoer: it goes well, or not, and this thing went well even three hours in:

--a great conversation in the car with Sean about teaching and the frustrations of teaching: why police anybody into having a text in class, why insist on punctuality, presence, participation: he is nervous about tomorrow's reading, but he's going to knock their socks off: drop him off: drive home

alone: recognize Andy's voice on the radio when he clears his throat: turn up the volume: wonder what Andy plays on his show: students keep me updated on music--why I listen to their shows: and he reads my poem: also plays Rufus Wainwright, Radiohead: I call the station once inside the house, get put on the air, more embarrassment, but gratitude mostly: thank you, Andy. You made my day. You're listening too.

My cat bites me.

I've loved people like that sometimes: what else is there to do but bite you to remind you I would eat you, overwhelm you and swallow you whole, and have of you what I want in me, and then you could not leave the house on days like this, unless I did.

But I must leave the house, kitty, though you don't suffer my long days at the office well.

When Frank was here he asked me: do you suffer? He said: I've given it up. I don't think it gets you a thing. I said: I don't know. I'm looking for a quieter place. --Both of us speaking as if there is a habit to quit, a lifestyle, a fix, both nodding as if we are saying something wise and attainable.

The P&S course makes me nervous now. I've thought my way through it, but I've avoided thinking about my relationship to the material. What am I teaching? That suffering is necessary, pleasurable, empowering? That suffering is a choice? That beauty is a choice, is sublimation, is another form of repression, is trauma, is not trauma?

The class is full already, and overwhelmingly full of women, which somehow though I'm not surprised, I hadn't anticipated. --Precisely the kind of blind spot that makes me nervous about this course.

--What I'm not seeing.

*****************

Oh, I really am very sad about Alberto. I missed his last post before it disappeared, so I don't know what's happening, but I know I will miss hearing from him and miss reading his posts. Alberto, thank you for your sincerity and generosity. Querencia.

At last, the flyer

for my poetry and suffering course is posted across campus:

Spring 2005 English 346:

Modern and/or Contemporary Poetry

The Beauty of Suffering:
Masochism, Suicide, Sorrow, and the Poem

“Nothing seems desirable anymore, values collapse, you are morose?
Well, that state can be made beautiful…”

—Julia Kristeva


ELIOT ROETHKE RUKEYSER BERRYMAN LOWELL MERRILL GINSBERG ASHBERY SEXTON PLATH HASS GLUCK HARJO DOVE AMMONS C.K. WILLIAMS T.R. HUMMER HOAGLAND RIVARD YOUNG TATE SOTO HOWE BERNES HARVEY KLINK MULLEN HUNTINGTON WOJAHN C.D. WRIGHT GASPAR SIMON HILLMAN BIERDS ORLEN FULTON &

FREUD DELUEZE KRISTEVA APTER SARTRE BAUDRILLARD PINCH FERNBACH CARTER KAPLAN SMITH SEDGWICK

Letter to Frank Gaspar: February 18, 2003: after accepting the job at Knox

snow: friends skied over tonight for t.v. and beer, the beer bought after I trudged half a mile through sixteen inches of downfall, streets silent and unplowed, walks lined with shovels left standing in the drifts. Have you seen your shoes gleam with snow in the street lights at night? It moves you to talk to God. The trees branches wear their delicate dust and all is silent, paused, waiting to exhale and blow cover, or wake slowly, as if melting. I love this.

The worst of our winters has seduced me into snow, uncannily, I think, since I will soon be living in the snowy midwest, and I should be resenting the tyranny of winter by now, but all I feel is awe, a sense of how relentlessly the right conditions have clapped together, crystallized, and snowed and snowed. I haven't been able to sleep for the last two weeks. Waking is not the difference between sleep and awareness, but is like hearing the spring meltdown running through the gutters and knowing it will soon be time for another time, all night.

I had to make a decision finally, and even if it is too soon, it is done. How do you sleep? It is Presidents' Day, what a day. There is so much terror in the world. I am listening, we are listening. The noise in the street is white: across the cities of the world, poster boards, faces, voices, blurring into one high white static drone. Newspaper. Some restaurant guy in California poured his French and German wines into the street in protest. The rabbit ears on my t.v. pick up waves over my snow-covered roof. The picture distorts, wry, lined. We adjust the antenna, my friends and I, and listen close to news beneath the buzzing screen of snow.

Beneath our listening in, inwardly, I hear my small relief singing, roaring on about my own one trivial incidental excessive happiness, home home, I've chosen a home in snow, I will sleep there soon, and maybe tonight I will sleep, melt one day to the next as the snow gradually melts into spring, summer, this summer's August when the books on the shelves will travel from here to Illinois, be shelved into another shelf in time, as we hold our breath and hope our hopeless impending bombing of Iraq might be shelved for the sake of curious historians looking for the path not taken--for I might have chosen another state today--and we might still choose well, we might.

Are you on the Word-a-Day listserve? Yesterday: Rubicon. River past return. It doesn't matter much for me, really, since the reality of things will surface in the meltdown and I will see the small consequences of the choice I've made without much regret. I've ended my great romance with Knox by joining them. I think by then i will be thinking about bigger harder questions, ones that make me feel small and insignificant. Who am I to celebrate myself now?

Even now. Airports: a survey of those privileged enough to fly. We check our x-rayed bags and shed our boots at security, we of flights, we together packed into planes thinking about the guy sitting next to me. Middle Eastern, this one, think the aisles of white faces. Is he us or them? Us: haven't we behaved badly? Them: what kind of quiet monster is your God? Before clouds, white landscape squares off neatly from the window. America. Me, I'm going to Illinois. That's a place where snow is certain. I am privileged. I have a place among states to call my own. This is sleep. I'm praying for sleep. And dream. The right conditions.

Open-mic

has gone fucking Mars. The coffee house seats about 30 people at most, but 80 crowded in, seated themselves beneath tables and in the aisles for a two-hour event. I worried about the fire code. Now I wonder: what is it? What need are we not meeting at the college that this thing happens so emphatically?

Arms and the Myth

A bright day in Midwest winter--today--almost crystalline--almost quartz not ice--from inside my office windows. Is almost a day at home, despite that it isn't. The bald tree line is almost chaparral. Second floor light lets the sky in, and the office hangs, sundialing all day, which is what makes this space habitable space, even as by this time each year I feel the increments in my old clock sticking between this and that: no daylight savings in AZ: hanging on for dear life, as C. K. Williams says in his amazing poem, "The Tract," not to the tree arms so much as to the truth in the myth of the tree. Or the myth in the arms:

A young saguaro develops under the indifferent but indispensable care of a nurse tree, most often a palo verde (Cercidium spp.), desert ironwood (Olneya tesota), or mesquite (Prosopis spp.). The nurse tree shelters the saguaro from extreme heat and frost, and from foraging animals. It takes 25 years on average for the cactus to grow a foot high. As it matures and develops its first arms at between 50 to 100 years of age, the saguaro may sap enough water and nutrients from the surrounding soil to kill off its aging nurse.

Days like this I forget how much I'm failing. I leave my building tonight and walk towards my darker lot. The thousand black crows rise at once from the trees and descend, terrible again. It's the so many invisible sound of their wings, it's how they live.