Untethered

Hello, dear Readers, I am back from the place I went, which was a planet of pure busyness.

I have many things I hope to accomplish in February, and in order to begin the implementation phase of those plans I thought it wise to detach myself from Facebook, at least for the month. Facebook can be hilarious and delightful--but lately it has mostly just been a distraction for me. I am a little bit OCD, so the urge to check the live feed every five minutes is hard to resist when the computer is on. I deactivated my account on Thursday, and I do miss it, a little. But I feel kind of wonderfully free and untethered, as well.

I didn't really do much of anything other than teach in January. My non-teaching accomplishments were few indeed, but I did figure out how to make a pretty good Earl Grey tea latte, I took some pictures in St. Mary's Cemetery (the one above was put through Poladroid), and my friend Paige and I went to Brattleboro on a mission to pick up the photographic enlarger we bought off Craigslist.

Brattleboro is really far away. It is a difficult place to drive--there seem to be no rules of the road in Brattleboro. It has a coffee shop called Mocha Joe's that everyone seems to know about and a shop called Sam's that sells plastic antlers. There was a display of them in the window, along with hunting stuff. I wonder what they're for.

There will be more here soon

Oh yes. I have been teaching like crazy this month. I will be back soon. In the meantime, why not visit some of the lovely blogs I've linked to on my sidebar?

Our winter afternoons

Sorry to be so quiet here. It's a busy time of year, and also a tired time.

BUT--there is a new quote up at it was prettier when i imagined it!

"Never since the beginning of the world has there been so little light. Our winter afternoons have been known at times to last a hundred years."
-Charles Simic, from The World Doesn't End

Please take a look, and send your photographic interpretations for inclusion. I know you want to do this, you're just feeling a little shy.

Happy new year!

The Insects' Christmas

More prettier

Three amazing new photos by Angela Myers are up at it was prettier when i imagined it. Go look!

Evelyn & Amelia

I have a big new poem up at No Contest, the web journal run by GenPop Books. Thanks for giving it a home, nice people at GenPop!

Two things that frighten me

it was prettier when i imagined it

Dear readers, you are invited to visit and contribute to it was prettier when i imagined it, a new blog project my friend Paige and I are building collaboratively.

From our mission statement:

it was prettier when i imagined it is a gallery of photographs inspired by contemporary poetry.

To participate, submit original photos in response to the posted quotations to: prettierimagined@gmail.com.

Wide-ranging interpretations are welcome. We hope to create a lively dialogue with a broad aesthetic.

Our first prompt is a beautiful excerpt from Kyle Buckley's The Laundromat Essay, and I know it will delight and inspire you.

November geese

I spent the week at the college library, in self-imposed exile from my home--where the bathroom is in a shameful state of undress. The library is a fine place to be exiled to, though, with all those books and its wide windows overlooking the Green Mountains. The Middlebury library, decadently, houses a cafe, as well, and I am not one to say no to a mocha latte when mocha lattes are available.

I got a lot done: I finished the first draft of a fiction project I've been working on this fall, among other things.

On Tuesday, I saw something beautiful from the reading room windows: the sky, for a few moments, filled with departing geese. I've never seen so many. Skein after skein of them. It was between classes so the quad in front of the library was busy with students, but all of them stopped in their tracks and looked up to watch the geese fly over. For me, it was almost revelatory--a sudden broadening of perspective. I felt the vastness of the birds' travels, and their farewell.

I didn't take a picture. Here are some other departing geese, though, photographed from the same window the following day.

Home Depot is not Venice

We are having our bathroom redone, and each moment of thinking about this and dealing with it exists on a shifting spectrum, at one end of which is relief and at the other end of which is anxiety and lassitude. Yesterday we spent many hours at Home Depot, which placed pretty far into the anxiety/lassitude side. It's always fun to walk around those kinds of places with Terry, and I do love looking at all the weird stuff people buy for their homes--but it's a little stressful making decisions that amount to hundreds of dollars worth of new stuff that looks good on the floor, but that might or might not prove hideous in combination and in actual practice.

While we were there I decided to test a theory I've come up with, that Home Depot is not Venice. I can't remember what photographer once said that in Venice you can close your eyes and point your camera anywhere and still end up with a beautiful picture. I didn't attempt this when we were in Venice--I was too busy trying to frame my shots in order to make it look like we were the only human beings in the city at that time--but the one shot I did take when I was stumbling-drunk on Chianti still came out pretty well:

While we were at Home Depot yesterday, I tried the eyes closed, camera pointed anywhere strategy, and I think I have proved definitively that, indeed, Home Depot is not Venice.

Dawn

A funny dream I had the other night is up at the Annandale Dream Gazette. I had a funny dream last night, too, but I don't remember it.

Career Fair Mockumentary

In my fantasy life I am a film director, and my next project is a mockumentary about career fairs. I've already cast a cloud-monger and a shaman (though the shaman doesn't know about her role, yet). Other possible parts include henna tattoo artist, whipped-cream girl, quixotic inventor, and beekeeper, along with the more traditional professionals: accountant, banker, wigmaker, etc.

Tell me: what role would you like in my film?

What I'm doing here

I just spent an hour or so writing a long, introspective post about what I'm doing with my life, and where I hope I'm headed (which I think was inspired by the sweaty-making experience of presenting at a career fair earlier this week), but it embarrassed me and I deleted it. I realize, though, that some of my faithful readers may be wondering what I'm occupying myself with these days besides going out for tea, getting henna tattoos and rambling about in graveyards. The answer is, apart from writing, not much. I'm not teaching again until January, and I've been getting a lot of my own work done this fall: many new poems, plus a fiction piece that I think is a novella. It has felt good to put the focus there, though it's interesting that no matter how much I get done it never feels like enough. One positive thing about a more structured schedule is that there's not as much time for self-flagellation. Another is that it at least forces you to leave the house and interact with other human beings on a regular basis.

Hey, here's some good news: I have two poems in the new issue of West Branch! My friend Cindy Hunter Morgan, with whom I just finished a mini poetry month challenge (we each wrote 12 poems during October), has a poem in it, too! How often does something that cool happen? (Answer: not often.)

Trick or Treat

Will you do me a favor and tell me what you see in this photograph? Because I see something kind of scary and kind of beautiful, mysterious and hidden, which I didn't see when I first took the picture--exploring the Exchange Street Extension cemetery this afternoon--but now see very clearly. T. says he doesn't see it.

Happy Halloween!

TiltShift

I just discovered something dangerous: the TiltShift generator. Here's a photo from the Boboli Gardens I've been messing around with. I guess I know what I'll be doing until the wee hours.

The Wasted Years

I'm very excited to have a new poem up today at failbetter.com! I'm also excited about this beautiful henna tattoo I got at my friend Saskia's birthday party on Sunday:

It was done by Rebecca Freedner of Heartfire Henna in Vergennes. I love it so. I wish it would never wash off.

On art and Dutch clone calibration

It's rainy and raw, and I kind of want to go back to bed. Instead I've been playing around some more with Translation Party. I have so many failed poems that I barely even remember writing. I feel grateful to have attempted them, though--I learned something from each and every one, and now I'm getting some rainy-day entertainment value out of them, as well.

Still Life

Only the Goblet
of master paintings,
which show uncoiling

fern-death girls.
The wall-like entity
called the Goblet.

Overthrown against flash,
ancient, broken walls
of Dutch clone calibration.

Seckle jug that holds
the rabbit has a silver-
red liquid called red fish.

Translation Party

Sometimes when I am feeling overcaffeinated or uninspired I take my failed poems and subject them to Translation Party. Out of this, I get hilarious new failed poems. I do like the way the process often suggests possibilities I hadn't thought of, though, like changing tenses or transforming a declarative into an imperative, for example. Here's the result of today's effort, several steps removed from the original and relineated. You'll just have to guess what the original poem said.

Wild Asparagus

Mother took the five
pearl buttons down

the dark months.
We are ready

to quickly harvest the wild
asparagus. Hanging

lanterns. Fish, sew
the slippers

for the priestess
of the mice.

Leaf-creature

Today was warmer than it has been for a while--it felt like a reminder of summer's passage and it made me realize how long it has already been since I've worn shorts and sandals.

This little green leaf-creature was on the front porch steps when I went out this afternoon to get the mail. Sadly her cunning camouflage can't be doing her much good now that all the trees are gold or orange or already bare. It's a hard season to be a bug. Good luck, little green leaf-creature.

Stone Leaf Tea House

I love it so.