Business Time with Balloons/Space

My life is a flurry of teaching-related responsibilities and escape fantasies.  And when things started feeling really tetchy, I turned to Dobby Gibson's collection Skirmish--not least because of 1) the title and 2) that he is reading this Sunday at the Jones Library in Amherst (where I'm hoping I'll hear another Ben Kopel original introduction.  If I ever do release my book of poems, I hereby request that Ben Kopel give my introduction every time I read somewhere). 

I don't have anything intelligent to say about Skirmish right this minute (see: "grading" redux), but I thought I'd share just a little bit from one of the poems early in the book:

From "Mercy":
The universe expands in every direction
simultaneously at the speed of light,
but expands into what?
At the edges, it gets extremely dense.
It's all held together by eye contact.
In the center stands your father,
and in his bowl is just enough batter
for one last pancake.
We are born in tiny collisions.
Buttoned into our best suits
we eventually drift apart.

So, I'm off to drift (more or less in my best clothing) into brief contact with my students.  And hopefully later into contact with a balloon-type present.  I hope you enjoyed your brief touchdown into a Dobby Gibson poem.  And I hope I can write some things later about his reading.  And about his poems.  And about Ben Kopel.

Saturday

with apologies to Emily Toder

I saw Seedy Underbelly and I went up to her
she was leaning against a parking meter that charged Saturdays
looking bored and chewing gum
in a way that announced calculated mischief
in a way that looked not calculated
What's wrong with you I said
It's Saturday she said
she held out her hand
it was quarterless
I slapped it
the sound was crisp like apples or dry wood
I heard campfires and felt hungover
I heard anarchy and discount superstores
and felt tired
she let me slap until I was done spoiling for it
I reached into my pockets
they were full of pennies and gum wrappers
I threw one at her
a wrapper
but it twisted in the humidity and she missed
it dropped like a bowling ball in the hypothetical vacuum
You littered she said, surprised or obligated
I'm leaving I said
Don't you dare recycle

Remember that $20/month on books rule?

Now I won't be able to get my hands on G.C. Waldrep's new book Archicembalo (Tupelo Press) until 2012, at the earliest. Clearly, I have a problem that is not strictly monetary. But I do have a birthday...in four months...


{Edit, 5 May: Totally caved and bought a $10 copy at the Juniper Festival. Worth every penny.}

Fly me to the moon...

So, I've been thinking about a writing strategy Caroline explained to me over spring break--that is, writing a line (or so) every day and at the end of the week putting all the fragments together into one joyous poem (style copyright Dean Young, or something).

I've started trying to write this way, and it's going fairly well. Except I didn't do it yesterday or today (yet). But the line from Thursday was great!

One of my writing/image obsessions is with the backs of things. Fire escapes. Behind old buildings and train stations. Water stains. Crumbling brick. Dumpsters. The things that people don't want you to see. I used to try and take pictures of these things with my old film camera.

In other news, in other words, I've been a bad phone correspondent these days. I needed time to do work and to catch up, since I was behind on everything, so I was hermiting. I feel more on track now (despite spending an inordinate amount of time looking at photos online and writing blog posts about random things today). I will call soon soon.

Dear Jalapeño. It's springtime.

I tend to make playlists when the seasons change, though mainly during winter and spring. This winter I was obsessed with every single Bon Iver song I could get my hands on. And with Nina Kinert, who gave me some alternatives for my need to listen to "Peach Plum Pear" at moments of transition.

Now that the weather is crazy, wavering between late fall and early summer and wreaking havoc on my sinuses, I'm pulling out songs that always always remind me of springtime: Arcade Fire's "No Cars Go," as cheesy as it may seem, is a big spring song for me--I first heard the EP version several years ago while I was living in England, and I listened to it on my long walks into town from my flat, everything shrouded in mist and drizzle. I prefer the momentum in the newer version, though I don't know if it will fit into "Dear Jalapeño." Arcade Fire tends to overpower everything else in mixes.

The Most Serene Republic's song "Phages," is pretty much the song I put on as soon as the sun comes out. Renewal! New beginnings! I am pretty much desperate to see them again in concert.

All this talk of playlists and music because I'm going to the Margot & the Nuclear So & Sos show next week with Gale and Jess--I'm excited for the first taste of live music since last semester. I like Margot, I do, despite the fact that I think they milk the melancholy in their songs. I think I am more looking forward to being against the stage and trying to hear what the person next to me is saying.

"Dear Jalapeño" because I went to a Zach Schomburg and Emily Kendall Frey reading last week, and Emily read a slew of her "Dear Jalapeño" poems. I like the idea of tying poems together through the repeated use of one phrase, with the aim of changing the meaning of the phrase itself and how we think about it in relation to other lines (at least I think this is what's going on here). Gale and I talked about how "jalapeño" becomes an endearment: her word was "tender." You can read some poems with tender "Dear Jalapeños" in them at La Petite Zine here.

Zach Schomburg read new poems from his MS "Scary, No Scary," and I liked them, of course. I almost liked my friend Ben's introduction of Zach Schomburg even better, though. A kind of amazement about the brain that gave us The Man Suit, which made me realize I could be writing very different kinds of poems. You can read some new Zach Schomburg over at Typo.

And now...a bad spring playlist:

***

Dear Jalapeño--it's springtime (in the works)
1. The Changeling (Get Guilty) / A.C. Newman / Get Guilty
2. Fitz and the Dizzyspells / Andrew Bird / Noble Beast
3. Nightlife / The Muslims / The Muslims
4. Blindness / Metric / Fantasies
5. Zero / Yeah Yeah Yeahs / It's Blitz!
6. Take Me to the Riot / Stars / In Our Bedroom After the War
7. LES Artistes (XXXchange Remix) / Santogold
8. Phages / The Most Serene Republic / Phages
9. Swimming Pools / Thao Nguyen & The Get Down Stay Down / We Brave Beestings & All
10. Only Pieces / Here We Go Magic / Here We Go Magic
11. Dance Dance Dance / Lykke Li / Little Bit EP
12. Take on Me / A.C. Newman / Cheesy Starbucks compilation

{Edit: also, apparently I can't spell but I do know how to use a tilda. Who let me into grad school, anyway?}

Neko Case, You Created a Monster

(Just to clarify, the monster isn't Tomasž Šalamun [left].)

Listening to Šalamun read earlier this month helped clear my head. Or, more accurately, his reading made me realize I've been feeling out of sorts--not entirely absorbed by my coursework, unable to find the space to write much beyond academic prose or comments on student essays.

Šalamun's voice is soft and careful, and his consonants are round and full, so that you feel you are in possession of a secret. Or something beautiful and dangerous, like a tiger in a room with a baby. Maybe that's the closest I can come to explaining what it's like to read his poems in The Book for My Brother.

I'm excited to see his new poems, but his book is near the bottom of my to-buy barrel right now—my new $20 monthly spending limit on books is a necessary reminder of how little money I have. Thank you, graduate school.

Last month I snagged a copy of Lauren Groff's Delicate Edible Birds out of both loyalty and curiosity (okay, it cost more than 20 bucks). I met Groff at a literary festival hosted by my old college, waited and watched for The Monsters of Templeton and wasn't disappointed. I keep thinking of what shapes my own monsters might take and which fictive lakes they might belong in.

My next $20 is devoted, appropriately, to my friend Zach Savich's first/new book of poems, Full Catastrophe Living, which won the Iowa Poetry Prize. A prize I now think is awarded just for being able to come up with badass titles for poetry collections. I've only heard some of his newer "doodles," as some MFA students here call their poems for workshop, so it should be a pleasure to read something with nice strong lines. Especially since Zach's doodles are pretty damn impressive.

I keep trying to remind myself that it can be okay to hibernate for awhile as a writer, which is a difficult thing to do when all of your buddies are taking such great steps forward. I sneak in a horrible poem now and then, just to remind myself that I have a job to do when all my other work is done. I haven't quite managed to lock any babies up with tigers. But when I do, those babies better watch out.

All of these baby jokes are inappropriate, considering that two of my favorite people just welcomed a new son into the world. I really do like babies, I swear.