A View from the Potholes

Mmmm..."ice cream".

We experimented with play-doh today. Overall a success: Vincent did not eat it, and nothing disastrous happened. Vincent is tremendously proud of his “ice cream”, though it looks more like poop to me. All about perspective, as usual.

It was a busy weekend of work. We hosted the novelist Galaxy Craze at the bookstore on Saturday. What fun! She’s my age, with a 4 yr old son and a 3 month old daughter, and several of her friends attended with their children, in particular an adorable set of 4 month old twin girls. It was a total baby-fest! Galaxy gave her reading with her daughter in her lap, while the mother of the twins nursed one in hers.

Could you imagine a more complete mingling of art and family?

After the reading, we talked pregnancy and parenting and birthing. I’ve been getting over a cold, so I refrained from baby-cuddling, kept my grabby hands to myself. But there was something so joyful about having so many young children cavorting about the bookshop, about conversation among a circle of creative parents.

It reminded me: when Vincent was 7 months old, we attended a New England booksellers’ trade show, where we met Jonathan Safran Foer. Jonathan also has a son about the same age as Vincent. I’m a big fan of Jonathan’s novels, and thought I should engage him in conversation about them, being a conscientious bookseller and all, but the last thing he was interested in talking about was his books. Vincent was being his most adorable self, cuddled on my shoulder in a sling, sucking his thumb. Jonathan admired him to a most pleasing degree, showed me pictures of his son (also adorable), and we compared baby notes. It was bizarre and tremendous — given the time, we could have talked all day. Seriously. All day. About our kids.

So is it like this for all new parents, writers and all? You might publish books to great acclaim, but these new beings, they’re amazing, and that’s got nothing to do with you, you’re just the lucky caretaker. And that’s the most interesting thing right now, nothing else compares. Not that you don’t continue to do what you do, which is what you are, a writer. But what you are has expanded in the most wonderful way.

Anyway, I don’t want to give short shrift to Galaxy the writer: I especially loved her new novel, maybe because the main character is a 14 yr old girl, an age I find crushingly hard, and the centerpiece of the story is an intense friendship between 2 girls that, while I can’t relate to the particulars, is definitely spot on. I hope she’ll find many readers!

I seem to be one of the last people in the universe to have heard about this (thank you, Janis!), but in the off-chance that I’m not alone in the dark, if you’re a fan of Joss Whedon you must check this out: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day (who played Vi, one of the potentials, in the last season of Buffy), and Nathan Fillion, who has perfected the art of the smarmy, this is another wonderful foray into the world of superpower musicals for Whedon. The third, and I think, final episode goes up tomorrow, and I think that the episodes will only be up for a limited time, so watch it while you can!

Vincent & Lily & Cinnamon the Horse

Last weekend was incredibly full:  fun and hijinks with Galway Kinnell and Cinnamon the Horse within days of each other!  Can you see how frighteningly fearless Vincent is and why I lay awake at night?

The pictures below are of the Collected Poets Series reading with Galway.  Directly below, his grandchildren perform with him.  Then, there’s Lea Banks, CPS’s founder & impresario, with Tim Mayo, poet, previous CPS reader, and committee member.  Finally, there’s me, Lea, and poet Susie Patlove.  All of the pictures were taken by Laura Rodley, who is a wonderful poet in her own right, and whose chapbook is now available for pre-order at Finishing Line Press!  But more on that later…

Galway & Grandkids

Lea Banks & Tim Mayo

Me & Lea & Susie Patlove

I feel very fatigued this week (or, as Bugs Bunny would say, “fa-ti-gewd”), but I think I’ve finished the revisions on my new poem. I think. I’m going to live with it a little while longer without touching it, and then see how I feel.

In the meantime, because I don’t have enough brainpower or energy to actually write anything, I’ll tell you about the great poetry list Louisiana State University Press has coming up in the fall. LSU can always be counted on to publish a solid poetry list — it’s actually all I order from their catalog for the store. This fall, their list includes:

• Figure Studies, by Claudia Emerson, whose last book, Late Wife, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
• Whirl is King: Poems from a Life List, by Brendan Galvin, “gathers forty-three of his bird poems about herons, owls, shorebirds, warblers, raptors, wrens, and other exotic visitors blown in by wind and storm.”
• Myself Painting, by Clarence Major.
• The Snow’s Music, by Floyd Skloot.
• Time and the Tilting Earth, by Miller Williams.

But I must say, it’s a good thing I’m already familiar with these poets, because the excerpts of poems LSU included in the catalog were not exactly impressive. The books themselves look to be excellently designed, however.

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My general malaise probably also has to do with the kind of stasis a bunch of my submissions are currently suffering through. All this waiting can be exhausting.

Bookslut has a wonderful commentary up on one of my favorite books of all-time: A Winter’s Tale, by Mark Helprin. Besides being a magical story gorgeously told, this book seriously altered the trajectory of my life. The article on Bookslut by Barbara J. King is far more articulate than I’ll ever be.

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Galway’s reading last night was indeed packed, and in fact we had to turn people away at the door because we’d reached our maximum capacity. Some folks had wisely come very early to stand in line, but the tardy were out of luck. The Collected Poets Series committee works really hard to present these free poetry readings, so while we’re sad anybody missed out, I think it’s great when an overflow crowd shows up for poetry!

Galway read wonderfully, of course, and shared the “stage” with his 2 grandchildren for one poem as they provided the refrain — “Ha ha! Ha ha!” I think it was. They did a great job. He took a break about halfway through to take questions, preferring that a reading end on poetry, not poetry chatter. He was funny, self-deprecating, and once again displayed his proclivity for endless revision: as he read one poem, he stopped, trying to decide which version to read, the one on the page or the one in the margins. He decided, when he was done, that he probably had read us the lesser “revisioning.” I can’t imagine many writers confessing that!

He closed, as I will this post, with this short poem:

Prayer

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

Exciting news!

This Sunday, July 6th, at 7:00pm, the Collected Poets Series is sponsoring a special reading with the poet Galway Kinnell. He will read from his work at Mocha Maya’s Coffee House, 47 Bridge Street, Shelburne Falls, MA.

Galway Kinnell has received the Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Frost Medal, and a MacArthur Fellowship. In the nomination for the 2003 National Book Award, the judges called Kinnell “America’s preeminent visionary” whose work “greets each new age with rapture and abundance [and] sets him at the table with his mentors: Rilke, Whitman, Frost.”

Kinnell’s volumes of poetry include Strong Is Your Hold; Imperfect Thirst; When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone, Selected Poems; The Past; Mortal Acts, Mortal Words; The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World: Poems 1946-64; The Book of Nightmares; Body Rags; Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock; What a Kingdom It Was; and many others. He is the editor of The Essential Whitman. He has also published translations of works by Yves Bonnefoy, Yvan Goll, and François Villon, and Rainer Maria Rilke.

He is renowned as an especially sensuous poet and moving reader. By giving public readings since 1960, Kinnell has been influential in making the poetry reading a part of our cultural life. Galway Kinnell has served as the State Poet of Vermont, and was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University for 25 years. He is currently a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. He lives in Vermont.

I’ve heard Galway read twice before, and he is simply tremendous, and so generous with his time. This is sure to be a standing-room-only event, so get there early!

The first time I watched “On the Town,” I thought what they were singing in the big “New York, New York” number was “A big boat ride in a hole in the ground.” Yes, never mind that it makes no sense, I figured it out a good long time later (for the uninitiated, as unimaginable as that is: “and the people ride in a hole in the ground”).

So we took a mini-break this weekend, drove up to New Hampshire to Newfound Lake, and then to Lake Winnipesaukee today, where Vincent got to take a big boat ride. “Big” is relative — we were supposed to go out on a REALLY big boat, but due to the crazy weather (and lack of customers) we ended up on a smaller tugboat-sized number. But big enough for me! My boys love boats.

It’s official, and clinging to these new summer days is that summery languor, that eh, whatever, it can wait feeling. But I truly have done more than read novels and dip my toes in the kiddie pool, ensconced in my gestational cocoon — I have indeed read a lot of novels, but I had catching up to do! For a while I was reading nothing but poetry, and it’s mighty difficult to be a bookseller on a poetry-only diet.

But if you observed the several piles of books on the end table beside me, you’d see that, still, 90% of them are poetry-related. No photo, uh-uh, they’re far too ungainly and embarrassing, my piles of books. But I assure you it’s true. A few of the titles I’m leisurely reading: Colosseum, by Katie Ford; cloudlife, by Stefanie Marlis; Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns, by Michael Theune; Things are Disappearing Here, by Kate Northrup; and Return to Calm, by Jacques Réda, translated by Aaron Prevots. So you can see I am not neglecting poetry.

I must confess that I also read an advanced copy of Elizabeth McCracken’s upcoming book, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, which is a memoir. A quote:

A child dies in this book: a baby. A baby is stillborn. You don’t have to tell me how sad that is: it happened to me and my husband, our baby, a son.

It’s a heart-rending book, and probably not the best reading choice for me at this time, but McCracken is an exquisite writer.

This is also the season for fall/winter frontlist orders for the bookshop, so I’ve been on major catalog duty also. There are definitely some exciting books coming up, but for the life of me I can’t remember what they are — I order them, and then promptly forget all about them — unless I read an advanced reader’s copy, that is. I’ll try to post some forthcoming poetry titles when I get the chance.

I’ve been productive in my own work as well. This weekend I reorganized my chapbook, removing some poems, adding others, fine-tuning its arc, and now it’s off to a new batch of contests. May it find more luck in this incarnation! And there’s a new poem, which is turning out to be rather long-ish, that I’m drafting. I’m trying not to be too fierce with my editing scissors this go-around, let it flesh out and see what happens.

And lastly, but most importantly, I’ve been swept up in keeping the supply of sweet tea abundant enough to meet the very high demand! I’ll tell you, it’s very hard to find a decent glass of iced tea around here unless you make it yourself. Even with all the great coffeehouses about. They just get all frou-frou with it and muck it up. Or they simply don’t know what they’re doing.

Last week I despaired that maybe I’d gone “off” iced tea, the way pregnancy makes me go “off” pasta and hamburgers. One glass I bought tasted sour. The next, from another place, tasted like cigars. Seriously. That one I didn’t finish. And then the next one, which came sweet, tasted cloying and suspiciously citrusy.

The perfect iced tea is sweet and strong, and not herbal — and if you add lemon you should be fined, or at the very least strongly chastised. Thank goodness I had a fresh batch at home, which was perfect and perfectly reassuring.

My friend Andrew has a post up on his blog that is one of the most interesting things I’ve ever read. To quote:

The season of the bac has hit France again. The word bac is the shortened name of the end-of-high-school exams, the baccalauréat. This test, instituted by none other than Napoleon, is actually a series of comprehensive exams, one in every subject. Taking them is as much a rite of passage as anything. They signal the end of high school and the first real step towards adulthood.

The tests are not technically high-school exit exams; you can finish high school and not take the bac. In fact, the bac serves as a college entrance exam — pass it and you can enroll in any French university. But this is no SAT. This is a bitch-tastically difficult series of mental ass-whoopin’s.

There is no multiple choice. Most exams consist of an essay. For instance, the philosophy exam consists of one question, and you get four hours to write up an answer. Here is this year’s question:

Does art transform our conception of reality?

Go!

Can you imagine? Can you see American testing administrators forswearing the old paradigm of standardized multiple choice testing for something that demands more critical thinking and writing skills? I don’t think I would perform particularly well, but apparently no one is expected to, that’s not the point. How cool is that?

At some point last night, some vile insect bit Vincent on his left ear. This morning, Vincent’s ear was red and swollen nearly double in size — and sticking out from his head! Thankfully he’s not in any pain or discomfort, and I checked in with his pediatrician, so you needn’t feel bad for enjoying the picture below. Because this is just too danged weird not to post:

It’s not as red as this morning, but there it is, waving at you like a third hand! Such a calamity absolutely called for the ever-dependable solace of chocolate ice cream. I’m sure you agree.