for the best use for five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred green beans from Karen’s garden, some of which I left on the plant too long and have grown to the size of a grown man’s arthritic fingers. Please advise.
it’s not even the pleasures of the flesh I’m talking about
I am reading more Philip Roth today: here is an excerpt from a fight about contraceptive devices.
She walked over to me, leaving white footprints on the grass. “I didn’t think you were such a creature of the flesh,” she said.
“Didn’t you?” I said. “I’ll tell you something that you ought to know. It’s not even the pleasures of the flesh I’m talking about.”
“Then, frankly, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why you’re even bothering. Isn’t what we use sufficient?”
“I”m bothering just because I want you to go to a doctor and get a diaphragm. That’s all. No explanation. Just do it. Do it because I asked you to.”
“You’re not being reasonable – ”
“Goddamit, Brenda!”
“Goddamit yourself!” she said and went up into the house.
– Philip Roth, GOODBYE, COLUMBUS
there is no meaning without form, there is no meaning without form…
I am not being very formal these days, not by my old standards. But I am using a lot of seven and nine-line stanzas. That’s something.
Hey, maybe it would be useful to make a list of poetic/formal things I like and don’t like.
This is an exercise that R, a friend from Poland, told us he performed with his NYC experimental theater company. They were worried that their style was getting too repetitive. So they made a list of everything they hated – it included things like musicals, one-man shows, and Shakespeare – and they decided to do productions including everything from the list they hated. It really stretched them. I think it’s a great idea.
Maybe I can have my students do this? I suppose the problem with it as an introductory exercise is people who are approaching poetry writing for the first time, or who have never really thought about technique, might not have any formal preferences. I wouldn’t want them to feel bad about that.
Dear Chair of the Alumni Committee of the Stanford University Board of Trustees,
Virtual high fives: I wrote my first Baltimore poem today. I’ve been writing a little since I got here but it’s very much of the spinwheel – automatic “I am writing a poem because I have nothing to write a poem about” variety. This one actually has a concept, and a voice, or something.
So I received an invitation, via email, from the Stanford Board of Trustees, to apply for membership. Yes, me! Really! I can only assume that they send it to all alums, or else that they confused me with Dara Weinberg, the venture capitalist. Dara Weinberg, the lunchbox!* Dara Weinberg, the tax auditor! Dara Weinberg, the T-shirt!** But there was something about the formality of the letter that I really liked. So I first organized the lines of their email into stanzas (inspired by the Flarf/Conceptual Writing issue of POETRY), and then composed a response to them, explaining why I would be declining their offer.
It’s fun.
J says the gift of this program is time: time to do the work. I’m not even in it yet, but I already feel that. This may not be any good, but it is the best thing I have written since I wrote my grad school portfolio. I know that being here is going to really help me.
Now, if there was a Poetry Board of Trustees, that would be another thing.
* I think I am going to call my poetic movement Lunchbox Realism.
** Spaceballs, of course. Come on.
I’m not moving to Warsaw!
Amazing Rachel has a new collaborative art project, called I’M NOT MOVING TO WARSAW, and she needs YOU!
You can participate at their site by answering these questions:
Co jutro? | Define tomorrow.
Opisz swój sen. | Describe a dream you remember.
Dlaczego jesteś tu gdzie jesteś? | Why are you where you are?
and emailing your responses, along with the name, real or pseudonymous, that you want to be known by, to imnotmovingtowarsaw @ gmail.com. It’s fun.
They are going to make some kind of magic out of all the answers.
Why does the gun you are mugging me with have an orange plastic tip?
Yesterday I went to a campus information session and tour aimed at prospective Hopkins undergraduates. I was the only person there who wasn’t either 16 or a mom. I then went to the program offices and met G, the graduate coordinator – she had two enormous Nortons for me with a Post-It with my name on it. We talked Poland for a long time – she and her family have background in Austria and the Ukraine.
I looked at one apartment, looked at another apartment, and met up with some people who may have a third apartment. It has now been explained to me that there is a safe and short way to get from campus to Hampden on foot.
Spent the evening watching IRON MAN for the 5th time on a outdoor screen, projected at Broadway Pier, with water all around us. After the Forever Cemetery in LA, I was expecting a really large and unwieldy crowd, but this was so nice. Only 200 people or so.
At the pier, I met up with J, who graduated from Hopkins last year, and his friends C and T, and their dog. J is the first poet from the program I’ve gotten to talk to in person.
We liberated an abandoned sign on the way home, talked poetry and visual arts (C, who works with textile arts, is moving to Chicago in November) and ended the night at the Charles Village Pub- my first time there.
C also shared her favorite Baltimore mugging stories, including being held up by a man with a BB gun in a parking garage. And I saw my first Baltimore rat last night, in a pile of recycling on 31st.
You don’t need a blog
I was in a yoga class the other day, and the teacher, in between us sweating in the B-more humidity, was saying to us, “You don’t need this. You don’t need that.”
And I heard him say, “You don’t need a blog.”
And I was like, WTF? I do need a blog! I love my blog!
But then he went on to say, “You don’t need a strap, you don’t even need a mat – all you need is your own body and your own practice.”
And I realized he was saying, “You don’t need a bloCK.” Which is a little styrofoam yoga prop.
Yeah.
early one morning, the sun was shining
..and I was on the phone with Aetna figuring out student health insurance. Today is a taking-care-of-business kind of Monday.
Last night I went to The Brewer’s Art, a local brewery across the street from the Belvedere in Mount Vernon, with B and G from Poland. We talked local theater, EURYDICE choruses, and beer. It was delightful. As B drove us back, he was debating the merits of Charles Village, block by block, intersection by intersection. I think one of the trademarks of a real Baltimorean is a microscopic knowledge of block ecologies. I was impressed. He was differentiating between the east and west sides of a north-south street in terms of safety and livability.
24 hours of Charm
Yesterday, I had lunch with a recently graduated social worker and friend-of-friend, featuring the best piece of berry pie I or you or anyone has ever eaten, at the Hon Cafe in Hampden. You will just have to come visit me and eat it. I can’t explain it. Whatever you have had before that has masqueraded as berry pie was not berry pie. THIS is berry pie.
She clarified something for me about social work that I have never understood. Once you are licensed and graduated and have all your supervision completed, you can be an independent contractor, just like a therapist can. Not all social workers are employees of the government.
It was a good conversation, but serious – we talked about neglect, parenting, about learning skills, about what social workers can reasonably do to help parents and kids and what they can’t do. She’s only been on the job a week.
I ran home for a few minutes and met my next-door neighbor, who is a city attorney who works on homicides. Really.
That was followed by drinks in Fells Point with two civil engineers working on harbor and freeway construction projects, over locally brewed beers, at the DuClaw Brewing Company, home of Venom.
I was pleasantly surprised by all the strong associations the engineers had with poetry: we ended up talking about Casey at the Bat, John Updike, Carl Sandburg. We also shared horror stories of the first-and-only times each of us has tried to write a poem for a boyfriend or girlfriend. That’s a mistake I think every teenager makes, but only once. You never do it again, or if you do, you expect to get laughed at.
Writing a poem about someone is quite different.
I ventured that more people have some kind of association with poetry, or with a particular poem, than with theater. They agreed.
Today, I’ve been up since 7 watering. Met a bunch of basketball players at Druid Hill Park while watering K’s okra. (I have to point out that the engineers had never heard of okra, and thought I was making the vegetable up.)
Continued on to my first Baltimore yoga class, at Charm City Yoga, the midtown branch. They offer a $20 unlimited class pass for a week for new students! And then I saw Single Carrot’s new show, SLAMPOONED, which takes off Chicago slam poetry, among other things. B and G of the Carrots (the Carrot?) are having dinner with me later. I met them in Poland, but we all live in Baltimore.
The Apartment-Of-My-Dreams just posted itself on Craigslist.
I’ve got to admit, it’s getting better…
It’s getting better all the time…
I said to Engineer #1 yesterday, “This is really easy, living here.” He made me knock on wood.
Dara Weinberg 