cochon de lait

Geaux Saints

2006-09-25T14:37:00.000-07:00

I can't tell you how exciting it is around here today--the Dome is all ready to go for tonight's game. Downtown is shut down, people are all out in the streets going nuts in their black and gold. The pregame show starts at 5:30. I think kickoff is at 7:30. Today in the paper they ran a picture of the dome lit with purple, green, and gold lights. It was really beautiful.

I know some bad things went down in the dome, but today and this game and all of the excitement leading up to it is symbolic of something very important to the area. People have been talking about the saints, and this game in particular since last spring when we learned the opening date in of the dome.

I've heard lots of talk about how tonight's game is just a temporary bounce back, that the Saints are doomed in the long run--all kinds of negative stuff. Well, keep it to yourself, at least until tomorrow. I hope none of ya'll are wasting space in the Dome tonight.

Flaming Fire

2006-09-19T08:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all of my well wishers.

I just got my blurb from Fairchild this morning. I think it may be the only one I need.

In other news, there was a fire in my office building on Saturday, and classes were cancelled on Monday as a result. I was probably more excited about this than I should have been, but a day off was just what I needed. I did no poetry or school stuff. Instead I did a week's work of errands, including a visit to my old friends at Helm Paint Supply so that I could get what I needed to paint my front door. I ran out of steam with the rebuilding right at the front door, but it's fixed as of yesterday. This was before noon. I had two hours before picking up the kids, so I started ripping wallpaper off of the walls in the hall bathroom so that we can redo in there. Peeling wallpaper is my crack cocaine. Bryan had to force me to go to bed last night because I just couldn't stop.

Big Muddy

2006-09-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

I've known this for a week now, but now that my contract is in hand, I think it's time to announce that my manuscript Big Muddy River of Stars was chosen by B. H. Fairchild as winner of the Akron Poetry Prize. The book will feel released next fall by University of Akron Press.

I feel pretty good about this. Fairchild wrote one of my favorite books of poetry ever--I never dreamed he would be writing a blurn for my next book.

Also this week came a letter from the Southern Review that they'll be using two of my newest poems, and these are Katrina poems, in the forthcoming special issue Writing in the South.

Under the Bridge

2006-08-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

So glad yesterday is over--I am really tired of having all the old dredged up memories and pictures thrown in my face, though I will say that I thought the Spike Lee documentary was very good. I don't understand the outcry against it--it's not only limited to a discussion of the poor black experience, but if it were, that would be a pretty accurate recording of events. He was best at selecting people to interview at length, snippets of which appeared throughout the film. Their voices and experiences were very funny and moving--and you got a chance to see them step forward or back. Very good.

At the same time I can understand why people have a negative response to the film--you feel like he isn't telling YOUR story, because he isn't. These events were so personal, and at the same time so widespread and catasrophic, that every one wants to feel like the world is hearing and seeing their story. I feel that way, and despite my hardships over the last year I am one of the ones that came out on top.

As I think about it, a year ago yesterday wasn't bad for me, because I didn't know anything yet. At that time I was worried sick, as much about the hurricane as the fact that Cleveland, Mississippi lacked a Starbucks. It was Tuesday morning, for me, and the following week learning that I was homeless, my mom was homeless. my brother was homeless. For a while we truly had no idea what we would do, or where we would stay, or, or, or. It was four days before we heard from my father in law, and more time after that before we knew about the house, because no on could get in to see. Being so close to the lake, we thought for sure we would have flooded, but no, it was just trees. We had terrible wind, as the eye of the storm passed twenty miles from me. Jay knew his house was flooded to the roof from looking at satellite pictures, and my mom knew about hers, because my cousin is a Jefferson Parish Police officer, and was able to get in and then send a text message.

Yesterday in the paper was the story of a man--a grandfather--who on the day of storm found himself, three granddaughters, his mother, and brother on the roof of their ninth ward home FLOATING DOWN THE STREET in the floodwaters. In their attempt to reach a safer haven (another floating house) the man lost two of the granddaughters to the floodwaters. One turned up later. One drowned. His mother died awaiting rescue. Unendurable grief, and that's just one man's story.

I have often wondered about how my father would have responded to this storm even though he died years ago. I know he would never have evacuated early, so he would have ended up being one of the ones needing rescue. I don't know where he would hav elanded, but my dad was the kind of person to well in situations that involved strating over. Always, and especially since he died five years ago, I have thought of New Orleans as his city. I used to actually hurt passing by to see the places we ate or danced or whatever. It was a pain in me. Now those places are either gone or changed forever, and that pain starts again.

And my kids still play helicopter rescue, and when they find someting they shout out--LOOK--it got saved from the storm.

Positivity

2006-08-23T16:37:00.000-07:00

Today is my third straight day of maintaining a positive attitude, and it is more tiring than ahy machine I torture myself with at the gym. It is SO HARD not to participate in the wee negativities that occur around me at all times.

So here are some good things from the last few days:

My youngest (3.5) started gymnastics today, and he was so cute and so excited. I truly believe he has natural talent.

My poetry students are a diverse and interesting group--we did some writing in class on Thursday, and tomorrow I have gret lecture planned for them.

My freshmen are not whining--they are interested, intelligent kids so far.

Two poems accepted for the NoTell Motel Anthology.

I finished an essay about my Li Po poems for a forthcoming anthology about poems that deal with literary obsessions, and they wrote back to say they really liked it.

I got a letter from CSUP detailing what they enjoyed about my manuscript. I thought that was sweet.

While writing with my students in class on Thursday I figured out how to revise this poem that has been stumping me.

That's all I can think of, and it's Muppet time in my house.

Another one bites the dust

2006-08-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

Well, official word came today that another chance at a book bites the dust. It's no surprise, because I had sort of figured it out already, but I'm still bummed.

Well, Shit

2006-08-11T07:33:00.000-07:00

So.

My homeowner's insurance has close to doubled since last year. I have a named storm deductible of 5% of the appraised value of the house. (So they send the cheap ass adjustors out to dick you over how much it will cost to fix your house, then hold back the first ten thousand dollars.)

Additionally, each househould in the state (I believe) is being assessed $355 to help pay for the insurer of last resort, which is required to maintain non-competitive rates and pick up the significant homeowners who have been and are being dropped by their insurance companies.

Where I live in Mandeville, the corps of engineers has been so slow to remove dead and dying trees that the pine beetle has set in. This bug can kill a tree in a week, and it spreads like crazy. So, the corps being so slow to get to my yard did not arrive before the beetle. And they won't cut down a tree if they can blame it on something else, as in this case. So I've got four more trees to remove (80 foot pine trees run about a thousand dollars each to cut down and remove). And alread we've lost three trees (the ones that landed on the house) and paid to have five others removed.

Flood insurance (keep in mind, this is a second, costly policy) is also going up. And my aunt (minimal flooding in Katrina) got her new policy, and guess what the exemptions are--flooring and sheetrock. If your house has ever flooded, you know that these are the two things that must be replaced--even with a little bit of water--say ten inches--you still have to rip out four feet of sheetrock, rehang it, float it, paint it, etc.

I should be happy to report that I should be soon hearing about a book, but I have a hunch that this is one tree that won't tip in my direction.

Aquarium of the Americas

2006-05-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

Today I and my boys were among the first in line for the grand reopening of the Auqarium in downtown New Orleans. This has always been a great aquarium, and many in the city and region have mourned the loss of all of our fishes and sharks and etc.

It was a little emotional to walk through the tanks knowing that these were all replacement fish. Even my young children knew that. They were very excited to see the divers giving high fives and feeding broccoli to the tropical fish. I had a hard time dragging them up the stairs to see the penguins, who arrived this week from their temporarty home in Monterey Bay Aquarium back to us. They arrived to a jazz band and purple carpet--Ben cut that picture out of the paper and made a collage.

Anyway, I don't have anything interesting to say about the experience. I was surprised not to see any press there. By comparison, when the zoo first opened and we were waiting outside, I think there were more reporters than visitors. So many people and communities contributed fish or money for fish to our institution--Thanks.

Finis

2006-05-17T19:46:00.000-07:00

The semester is finally over and I couldn't be happier to be at home. This year was, for many reasons, horrible. There was the house, my teaching schedule, and this one particular awful section I was teaching. II though last spring was bad when I had to practically manhandle a male student who was shooting spitballs into a pentecostal girls hair. I mean--give me a fucking break. In that same class a different student was arrested in the middle of the midterm exam. (I think he stole an ATM machine--one that spews right wing messages on the receipt.) Anyway, I almost missed them compared to this one section I was dealing--forty percent of the class failed. Several of them plagiarized and then lied about it, appealed it, and dragged the whole process on for months. Ruined the class.

My children, ages three and four, have already figured out that it is better to tell the truth than to lie about it.

Anyway--enough. I'm sure none of those kids will ever sign up for a class with me.

The writing all wee has been going well, but of course no finished anything. I'll neer understand people who are prolific.

Society for Humanistic Anthropology

2006-05-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Boy am I glad I opened what I thought was a piece of junk mail that came to me at school today. A letter from the University of Georgia and the Society for Humanistic Anthropology informing me that I won the second place prize in their Ethnographic Poetry Competition for my "Bois Sec Suite." Bois Sec was a real live Cajun musician. Many of you may not know that my father was a fine Cajun dancer--he even taught it for many years, and sometimes I would travel with him to bard or shows--anywhere, really, to dance, and that's how I became interested in the music and the musicians. My family, the Pelegrin side, is Cajun, and they speak a few French phrases in the home, but this music was never played to me. My great grandmother was very old school, and she lived a long time, so her influence had a far reach, but I never herad Cajun music. I never heard it until my father began to dance.

Here are some lines from the poem. Well, actually it's the second section of the poem

ii. Bois Sec Gets a Squeeze Box

Me, I started young with my fooling.
Used to, I'd sneak up top the barn
and play my brother's acordion.
Thought he couln't see or didn't care,
him working sun to sun out in the fields.
Still, I watched that dirt road for his figure,
a speck to warn me when to sneak
the music back in its dark case.
Little did I know that music would sound far--
most likely all the times I thought
I was singing to women who danced in the clouds
ten acres of fields heard my words.
One day he come up and caught me.
Hearing me squeeze that box better than him
got him mad enough to throw it out.
Soon after I saved up three dollars
and bough my own off a dead man's wife.
She twiseted the coins in a pocket square
dug from her brassiere and wished me
ruination at the crossroads. Black magic,
I thought it was, playing well enough
to follow Amedee to dances. He only
let me ring triangle back of the band,
but I thought I had poweres, still.
Chank a chank--Play, Bois Sec, Play!
Shoot. Them days was good.

Episode Three

2006-04-30T17:10:00.000-07:00

Well. I've had another couple of episodes similar to the Birmingham hotel experience. I wonder if it could be an ulcer--I am under tremendous stress right now--more and more so, it seems, as hurricane season season simultaneously gets behinds me and approaches (June 1).

Grading the last set of essays for the semester I am feeling joy as I look ahead to the summer where my only plans are to play in the sandbox with my kids and finally get the Katrina pictures into an album.

The only other thing we have going on is a disney world trip (I'm a virgin) and we are getting an electrician to come out to fix our phone, which is now 8 months out of wack. We're also going to get the electician to get us generator ready so that in the event of the next big storm we won't have to stay away for three weeks waiting for the power to come on.

Bid storm last night. Water filled the streets and those pine trees danced around--I could have puked. This morning we woke up and noticed a leak. In our new roof. The water was dripping from the a/c intake valve . . . not sure what to make of this. B thinks he was able to get to the problem area in the attic and said it was nothing, that it could be easily fixed.

The other day I had a missed call on my cell phone--it was a Puerto Rico area code, but I'm pretty sure there's no one there that I know.

At Home with Kids

2006-04-19T06:07:00.000-07:00

I am home all this week and part of last with my children, who are off from school as am I. We are having fun, but it is a lot of work to entertain two little boys all day every day by yourself. If left to themselves for a moment--say we are outside and I run in to put a load of clothes in the wash, I am likely to return to them having a "pee pee race" off of their fort, or using plastic shovels to rearrange the dog poo in the corner of the yard.

Recently my husband made the foolish gesture of cutting down the wall of bamboo in our yard with hopes that the grass would grow. All that happened is the the bamboo sent out runners that grow I swear a foot a day--not only where the bamboo used to be, but also everywhere else all over the yard. So my kids get great enertainment snipping down the new shoots with various garden tools. They make windchimes with the wreckage.

Birds have had babies in the birdhouse we built a few years ago. It's a rudimentary birdhouse painted bright yellow and royal blue, with universe-themes stencils painted on. Sounds like a very happy home, as is mine, theough no poetry is happening for me, and I'd be telling a lie if I pretended to be anything other than freaked about it.

2006-04-10T10:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all of my well wishers. I am fine, totally fine tho a bit shaky, and my arms are so bruised--I look like the world's worst IV drug user.

Today I am in list mode, so I feel like I am getting to the bottom of the work piled up on my desk.

I am past about ten deadlines, so if you are an editor or a colleague waiting on something from me, please be patient--it's on my list and I will get to it eventually.

A Cardiac Event

2006-04-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

I was in Birmingham on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week because I was supposed to be giving a reading and doing a talk as pert of the Red Mountain Review Reading series. When I met my guide the night before the reading he handed me a big fat check, and I sort of joked about it and said something like, you shouldn't pay me because I haven't done anything yet.

Well. As fate would have it, I ended up not giving my reading or meeting with students and faculty. Instead, I woke at 5:00 am with chest pains.

First I thought it was food poisoning. Then I thought maybe I was just nervous and stressed (my job has been a true pain in the ass these last few weeks.) Then I was sweating, hunched over, shaking, racked with spasms of pain in my chest, all while alternating between cold water running in the bathtub and the fetal position on the bathroom floor.

Long story short--I called 911. And they came--the firemen and paramedics--their sirens and equipment clogging up the street in front of the hotel. When they arrived I REALLY freaked out, as I hate doctirs and emergencies. My blood pressure was 200/110, I still couldn't breath or stop shaking, and they insisted that I was going to the hospital.

So I went. The docs didn't know what to do with me besides to take a few chest xrays (blood clot in the lung?) do blood work again and again (looking for cardiac enzymes) and hook me to an EKG machine.

I was like this all day. In the hosital, alone. I missed the reading. I missed the talk after the reading. I sat there remembering my father, who's life ended on December 8, 2001. He was alone in a Birmingham hospital.

So, my blood says I didn't have a "cardiac event." They turned me loose (fucking finally) at around 3:00 pm. There I was, walking the streets of downtown Birmingham in my pajamas and a pair of Birkenstocks, headed in the wrong direction. I found a cab, and that blessed and extremely fat man got me to the hotel in about three minutes.

I didn't take a shower or make a phone call. I brushed my teeth, threw my shit in my bag, and got in my car so I could get home to my people who were worried sick and in the planning stages of a rescue operation.

I drove in warp speed, stopping once at the Waffle House for three cups of coffee, a pecan waffle, hashbrowns scattered, smothered, and covered, and a bowl of cheese grits. I think it was the cheese grits that saved me.

Snowball flavor of the Day . . .

2006-03-26T15:25:00.000-08:00

Yellow Cake Batter

Sick Day

2006-02-17T08:05:00.000-08:00

I can't say I was entirely disgusted when man child #1 threw up all over the place just as I was putting on my makeup. Because now he's home from school and so am I. We're in the couch watching Harry Potter--with a four year old this takes only an hour, because I have to skip through a lot of it. I've got Jane Hirschfield's new book in my lap, and my left and over his little feverish heart.

309

2006-02-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

I am wondering if other writers out there are superstitious like I am. For example, I finished my NEA application a week ago, but I have been driving around with it in the car (I often drive my poems around, for some reason) so that I could mail it today, since I mailed it on Valentine's Day last time. First of all, who remembers when they mail things? Not normal people--only poets I bet. Or maybe just me. It's not like Valentine's Day is super special to me--it's not my brithday, and it certainly didn't bring me luck in the last round of fellowship applications.

I am also superstitious about certain numbers, like my birthday number: 309. That was the number on my Granny's room in her old folks high rise. I always expect something good to happen when 309 is involved. (Twice I got news about winning chapbook awards on 3/09.) If I played the lottery I bet you could guess my numbers.

My other writing rituals are too mundane and boring to get into.

The Stepchild South

2006-02-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

Look. I know that there are people starving somewhere, and I know that the rest of the country has moved on. But I think everyone should know that Katrina is still with us. Just yesterday around the family dinner table we were near weeping as we talked about those early days of separation, of not knowing, of desperate calls for help coming into the radio stations and no one being able to help. I feel very bitter about this, and can't help but wonder if something similar happened in a different area--somewhere other than the south--if the reaction would have been immediate and adequate.

My brother moved out yesterday, and I'm feeling very sad because we have gotten so close over the last months. Eve sadder than him leaving is the fact that he can just about load up everything he owns and fit it into his Saturn Ion. He has no idea when he can start to rebuild. His neighborhodd doesn't even have electricity. One of the saddest things in this whole experience is that my son, now four, thought that Jay drowned--we did not realize he knew so much of what was happening, and he assumed that everyone in the city was dead. Even still we'll see cousins and he gets so happy that he almost starts to cry--I thought you were dead, he will say.

Thing that is making me want to throw up number ten thousand--today is eviction day for the thousands of evacuees who have been living in hotels. I'm sure most people regard the hotel dwellers and lazy hangers on, but I can assure you that long-term hotel life is no picnic. You can't ever go barefoot, and your life feels public, and there is nothing to do. And these people have no trailers to go to since of course FEMA has managed to accumulate thousands and deliver hundreds.

Stressed

2006-02-03T09:26:00.000-08:00

I usually don't talk about being stressed over book manuscripts, contest manuscripts, submissions and the like, because then I would have to update and confess to losing this that or the other or gettng rejected from this that or the other. But I have to talk about how stressed I am about this year's NEA application. I know how to do it (don't need the directions anymore) but all of a sudden I feel freaked out by the thought of this invisible, unknown audience charged with picking poems out of a tower of paper. I mean, what do I send to make myself stand out? Didn't someone write a while back about how this os what makes poets all start to sound alike because they begin to fear taking risks in their work? I wonder.

AFTER K

2006-01-31T10:26:00.000-08:00

Well. You know you're living in a "post-Katrina" world when you receive the September issue of Poetry and a Christmas card on January 29th.

or when you point out a loose brick that you think needs mortar caul and part of the wall comes off in your hand. (This sounded just like a tomb opening in a blockbuster movie.)

or when you barter with the contractor--floor sweeping in exchange for a lesson from the expert caulker

or when it doesn't bother you to sit down for dinner when the carpenter is trimming out a window right behind the table where you eat.

or when you finally feel comfortable saying "I'm sorry--is that the 'I don't want to do it price?"

or you find you are still raking tree debris out of the yard. And the attic.

Cahunas

2006-01-30T08:40:00.000-08:00

I am having proprietary issues with my poems. Twice in the last week I have had editors take ownership in ways I have felt were inappropriate, the most grevious example being the editor of a regional glossy rejecting my submission to said glossy and the taking the liberty to 'accept' one of the poems for his literary journal on the stationary of said glossy. I think I actually screamed out WHAT THE FUCK in the Post Office. But it's a little poem, and I don't want to alienate myself from said magazine, so what do I do? What a kick in the teeth.

Down to Earth

2006-01-26T19:54:00.000-08:00

I'm back, but grumpy, and not with much to say. Carpenters were in the house today. Lots of dusting to be done. Maybe I'll have something interesting to say on Monday.

No News Is Bad News

2005-12-19T17:46:00.000-08:00

I've been waiting and waiting for some book news concerning my next collection. Well, the news came today, and it isn't good. I'm really deflated, and a little pissed off. I feel so dumb for getting my hopes up, but if you had heard what you told me . . . . "we just want to be sure your manuscript is still available . . . we'll be in touch the next few day" you would have thought a book deal was coming your way too. I could just puke.

Attention all editors: The next time I am a hair awy from something, just don't even tell me. Let me walk around thinking you threw my book away ten seconds after you took it out of the envelope.

Ploughshares and The Southern Review

2005-12-15T07:51:00.000-08:00

My poem In Livingston Parish, Dreamiing of Li Po is in the new issue of Ploushares, edited by David St. John. There's also a great poem by fellow blogger C. Dale Young.

I've got two poems in the current Southern Review: Your Psychic Powers and How to Develop Them, and Squeezers.

Squeezed

2005-12-06T09:48:00.000-08:00

I would like to thank those of you who have written either publicly or privately to say how much you like my new book. I like it too, but in my family having a book out is so anticlimactic. I gave my mom a copy two months ago, and she still hasn't read it. How do I know this? Well, she left her copy of the book behind, and this made me mad. So I hid it, and she hasn't asked for it back. In the family, only my uncle said something nice. He asked me to sign his copy, and I did, and when I handed him the pen back he said he was going to sell it on ebay because it had been touched by a "famous author."

Bills

2005-12-06T09:40:00.000-08:00

Last week, I discovered that the three mortgage payments which the bank offered to defer and tack on to the end of the loan became due, which means that in December I have to pay September, October, November as well. This is the same mortgage company holding a portion of my insurance payment until I hire an inspector ($350) to check on the house and approve of the repairs. Not quite sure how they expect us to complete the repairs with they extra cash they're holding and the three monthly payments they expect. I lost it on the phone.

And when I recovered I went to the toystore and bought Christmas presents. Then I paid the kids' tuition. And don't you know that yesterday I got a check for living expenses in the exact amount that I owe. Go figure.

We are in the financial position to be able to juggle this out--maybe not the exact way we want, but we can do it. There are so many who can't, for various reasons, and of course there are people like my brother who have lost everything, possible even the hoe of rebuilding, and still have a mortgage to pay. You know things are bad when you find your spirits lifted by the thought of a FEMA trailer in the driveway of your decimated home.

Home for the Holidays

2005-12-06T09:34:00.000-08:00

My computer is ill, I don't have an internet connection at home, and my head is in the sand. That's why I haven't been writing. And why bother, when the news is never that good. We are back in our home, but I feel like a squatter. Last night was the first really cold night, and there was air blowing in from underneath the doors, and through all these chinks we were unaware of. So depressing. I still have tile to group, trim to paint, other trim to cut . . . all sorts of things. We are waiting to find a carpenter to install our doors for a reasonable price. Currently, we have the old, rain swollen ones. Also, my house is crowded with my mother and brother and animals. None of us ever can relax. I did get a big big Christmas tree, and I let the kids decorate it, which means that all of the ornaments are on one branch. For outside decorations we festooned the large debris pile with mini lights.

Book Update

2005-11-01T08:59:00.000-08:00

So far, I have sold one copy of my book. The copy I gave to my mother she left at my house, and she hasn't even asked for it. Uncle Chester asked me to sign his copy, and then said he was going to sell his pen on ebay, since it had been touched by a "famous writer." My brother refered to one of the poems by title, then said he liked it "because it's short."

Joe, who designed my cover, and David, are giving me a book party. If you're in the area on Nov. 13, let me know, and I'll tell you where we'll be at.

House Update

2005-11-01T08:49:00.000-08:00

This weekend I bagged about thirty garbage bags of pine needles. Not your ordinary pine needles, either. These aere litteres with shards of glass, roofing nails, pieces of brick, shingles, wood, and the like. I was weraing work gloves (not a first) and I used a pitchfork (a first). There is much much more raking and bagging to be done. Our house is coming along, but we are so tired that it is hard to work on it. The kitchen cabinets and appliances are installed. The lights have been wired, a plumbing problem addressed, and the roof is shingled, though we have run into some problems in another area of the roof. This weekend we plan to do the flooring tin the kitchen and living room. The rest of the new carpet will be installed on the 14th of this month. We are still waiting for payment from the insurance company, and that is why we have been doing so much of the work ourselves. We bought the supplies early because we feared shortages. These fears have turned out to be warranted. On the northshore (where I live) people are experiencing supply-induced delays. I've heard of roofers driving to Jackson, and even higher, to find shingles, etc. And as this happens, the price goes up.

Anyway. I'm hoping for the week before Thanksgiving, which should coincide nicely with our eviction.

Forced out to the Infinite Power

2005-10-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

Well, there is no point in vilifying the slumlord more than necessary. We have been "housesitting" in her rental property since mid-September. The actual person on the lease is absent and isn't planning on coming back. This is Bryan's aunt, and her plans have been changing again and again, so we never mentioned anything to the landlord.

But lately the landlord has been poking around, gardening in the back yard, asking lots of questions, asking to talk to the intended tennants, etc. I was vague in all my responses to her, because I wasn't sure what was going on, but it became clear to me, as I was pressred into helping her water the stupid plants, that the original renters had not been up front with her. They hadn't given notice, which I thought they had, etc.

Also, this house is in a very wealthy area in Mandeville with 24 hour security and strict rules about how the lawns have to look, etc. The neighborhood is cracking down on dwellings that are hosting multiple families becaue the cars on the lawn are "unsightly." So I guess in this neighborhood no one can use a 3500 square foot house to help out relatives who were heavily impacted by this storm. This all seems like complete bullshit to me. I hate being in the middle of it.

Bryan will get out oven cabinet installed today, and we will get to the floors this weekend. (I hope) So if she tells us we have to be out the week of the first, we'll just return to an unfinished house. Lots of people are doing this. The sheetrock dust is gone, the mold is gone. I'll get an air purifier for the boys' room (they'll be sharing since my brother will be with us) and we'll do baseboards, yard, outside painting, doors, the second half of the carpet, trim, bricks, ect, after we're in the house.

Since all of this has happened, my freak out threshhold has been raised. Now it takes about ten major things gone wrong before I lose it. Maybe that's why I'm not freaked out. I just don't care. I don't like the house, and I want to go home anyway. We were forced out, and now we're going to be forced back in.

Evicted

2005-10-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

We're getting evicted! I plan on dragging it out for at least a week, but if we can't get the floors down this weekend it's going to be concrete chic over at our place.

We paid the rent . . . I don't get it. Was it the pink flamingo? Beer cans spilling from the trash? Unwatered plants? Cigarette butts on the driveway? The ice chest on the front porch? The unwatered lawn and skeletal crape myrtle?

A View of the Superdome from Lake Pontchartrain

2005-10-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

I went home over the weekend.

I crossed over the Causeway (the longest bridge in the world, as my children never fail to point out), and drove through New Orleans, over the Crescent City Connection, and to the Westbank. It was a somber journey. The damage to the roof of the Superdome is visible from the causeway--the torn roof and black matertial underneath is clearly visible. The Doubletree Hotel at the foot of the Causeway is more plywood than anything else. There is trash everywhere.

I did not wander through the neighborhoods of various family members and friends. The reason for this is that I have come to hate gawkers--the ones who tour damage as if on a Sunday drive, slowing down to a crawl before my house, where I am working all weekend, every weekend, to drag things out to the street. I always find myself hoping that they pick up a nail in each tire. What I saw was on the interstate. And it was bad. The two or three places on I-10 where rescue workers were dropping those who had been trapped, where those people waited for days to be assisted and moved to shelters have not been cleared. These places, which many of you probably saw from above, have been cleared of humans, but all of the paper trash and debris remains. It is a very odd tombstone or place marker--like everyone coming back into the city has to reflect upon before being allowed to enter. The trash is most heavily concentrated in the shaded areas--where the interstate loops over itself, or where that remaining crape myrtles lean over and drop a but of shadow. It was profane, like disturbing the dead.

On the road, aside from darkness I would say that fallen furniture--mattresses, wardrobes, bookshelves, sidebars, and the like, were the greatest danger. There were few cars. When I got to the Westbank, it was oddly deserted. The landscape is obscured by piles of house trash both at the curb and on the neutral ground. Trees are bent over or blown over, making it hard to get your bearings. It's hard to recognize anything.

You Can Never Go Home Again

2005-10-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

I am in a fog. The whole world is in a fog. All I do is call insurance people, talk on the phone to the carpet place and the bricklayer, look in the bricks of my house for some crack, some flaw I may have missed. It's taking longer and longer, and the house is so different (ok, updated) that it seems strange to me. I can't believe we ever used to live there. And of course everyone is worse off than I am. My brother is demolishing his house. The adjustor isn't even gping to look at it. She called him on the phone and settled with him for the maximum payment on dwelling and contents. That's the case in his whole Lakeview neighborhood. And as bad as that sounds, there are others even worse off. My mother's home is beginning to look more and more unfixable. Every day in the paper they run the life story of some one who died as a result of the storm. The one I read yesterday was about an elderly woman and her brain damaged son in Chalmette. She couldn't lift the man, and was waiting for an ambulance to assist them, as had always been the case in the past. Only the ambulance never came, and they never got out. When the coronoer finally got to them they found motherand son in bed--her arm draped over him.

We'll get back home, that's a fact. But will we ever BE home? My whole city--all of my family and childhood, every landmark I ever smiled in front of, every restaurant, bakery, coffee shop--all of these things are changed. My family is broken up. There is trash everywhere. I just can't believe that it will be decade, or even longer. What am I going to write poems again. When?

Get Squeezed

2005-10-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody--

My new chapbook Squeezers is out.
It looks great.
Ten bucks.
Get one.

Backwards from a Hundred

2005-10-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

As you may know, I was in a car accident (nothing major, kids not in car) last week. I have a rental now, and because I balked at the idea of putting two carseats in a Corolla the Enterprise people put me in a Nissan Pathfinder, the largest SUV on the lot as I can tell.

My injured car is a Honda CRV, which is, I guess, an SUV of sorts, even though it gets good mileage and is a low emissions vehicle. But I have never considered myself to be one of THOSE people in a Suburban or something like it, blocking the view of all cars, parked or on the road, that happen to be within fifty feet or so.

After this week, I am one of those people. This car is so big that my old car could fit INSIDE of it. I bought and carried home two large kitchen appliances without even having to put the seats down. I transported four hundred pounds of flooring.

I'm a little bit ashamed to admit that I enjoy driving this car. It's a V-6, I'm guessing, which means that I can cut into traffic at high states of speed not possible in my four cylinder front-wheel drive contraption. And I was off of the street before, but now I am riding so high that I can look down on about anybody, into the messy back seats of their cars, and this gives me a feeling of authority. This car has all sorts of gadgets. If I could figure out how to use all of the buttons, I think I could heat the seats. I can control the stereo from the steering wheel (but no tape deck for my I-pod adaptor.) Yesterday, when I nearly ran out of gas, the car started to count the miles of backwards, like time ticking away, so I would know just how long I had on the road before me.

For some reason, this is a constant source of stress to me. It's like knowing the day you are going to die and watching the seconds tick off, bringing you there at high speed whether you walk or run. I put forty dollars of gas in this thing yesterday, and that brought the "miles left " number up from zero to 259. No telling how much time that will buy me.

Reading

2005-10-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

FYI, I'll be giving a reading at Southeastern Louisiana University on Monday, October 17 at noon in the Vonnie Borden Theater.

The PR people from the school called me and wanted to know the titles of the poems I am planning to read. I thought that was strange. I haven't checked the paper, but I am feeling quite certain they did not use what I tossed out: "Breaking Curfew with the Ancient Chinese Poet," "Don't Worry, Spiders, I Keep House Casually," "Pharaoh Says Phuck You," "To a Lawn Jockey, Lines Written in Spring," & etc.

Blinders

2005-10-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

The other day I was bemoaning my state to a group of colleagues when one of them changed the subject to mutual acquaintance who was in a similar, if not worse state than I am. It was time for me to go anyway, but I sort of made a joke of it and said that I only had time for my own problems. The group cracked up alughing at that, and I made my exit. The only problem is that I was being toally serious. I just have too much going on right now. I have never been so stressed out. Every day something happens that brings me to the brink, and then I just feel the tears welling up. The other day I was sitting at the kitchen design center in Lowes when B called to tell me that his parents, who have been caring for Boh-Me, were bringing him to he kennel because he is too high maintennce and cries at night. Then my mother beeped in to say that the landlord came over and saw Andycat and said he had to go. And then I just started crying, for no reason and for every reason.

SO when I hear people, even my mother, talking about this or that problem with the house or the CBD, or this or that favorite restaurant or whatever, I just shut down. I don't even hear them talking. I guess I am listening, though I would never be able to repeat anything from the converstation.

I don't watch the news anymore. Is New Orleans still in the news? I sure feel all alone down here.

Bone Tired

2005-10-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

All this time, and I thought bone tired was some cliche. After the last few weeks, I know it now to be an actual state of exhaustion. The first wave of exhaustion comes from having no routine, no loose guideline by which to structure the days. This is really hard on the kids, but it's hard on me too. I forget to cook, or to pack lunches, or to put the clothes in the dryer because I've been on the phone with this or that contractor, the adjustor, the agent. And when it's time for bed, we tramp upstairs to our blow up mattresses, which are never right, which are uncomfortable, which are deflated, and I'm too tired to plug in the pump.

The next exhaustion comes from having so many people so close all of the time. Like, my mother nagging full time overe the weekend. And also I'm trying to teach, but even when I do have time to sit in my office all I do is sit, and move papers from one folder to another.

The final exhaustion is the physical one. I thought I was a tough strong lady until this weekend, when I spent both days cleaning debris out of my attic. Everything up there is now on the street. It's an eyesore, and I'm glad that my neighbors have to look at it. I can't believe the things I threw down and hauled to the street. I can't beliebe the tree limbs and pine debris that I thrwew down the stairs and into the street. The insulation. The broken glass. And then we were pulling up floors and dragging wet carpet out to the street. I can't believe I did that. I can't believe how tired I am, I don't even know what's making me tired. My hands are swollen, I can't bend my legs, my back is out, and can't put my purse on my shoulder . . .

On top of it all

2005-10-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

The icing on the cake: a Stepford wife wrecked my car. That bitch didn't even look me in the eye or ask if we were ok. She musn't be from around here.

In Which the Poet Buys a Blue Fish and Eschews Work to Shop for Cabinets

2005-09-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

Well. Things are going well. The contractor and his crew have been going above and beyond at my house--all of the sheet rock in the half of the house that was damaged has been replaced, floated, and "sprayed," whatever that means. Bryan and I will be priming this weekend along with getting debris out of the attic. I know, I know--we should have done that when the ceiling was gone, but at the time we were too overwhelmed to make even small decisions, much less act on them. The sheetrock man, Adrian, also installed the two bay windows that were crushed in the crushed area of the house, and he will be pulling out another window in the kitchen just so they will match. Something tells me insurance won't be picking up the tab on that one.

I finally did get a little money from the insurance people--anough to pay the people who were holding checks of ous. Now we're back to using our own money, but I don't care, because things are coming along so well. Our next big expense will be tree removal--if you can believe it, I think the three trees on the house and the two teetering precariously will end up costing us $16,000 to be removed. And no, that isn't a typo.

Once on a WITS trip I had a student write the lines "I got the blues and I'm broke but I'm happy." That's how I'm feeling today.

On the front of smaller aggravations, I'll note that this storm has posed a real problem to the professional side of my life as a poet--I can't receive proofs or copies or rejects or book offers, and I certainly can't send anything out.

I am so happy I bought a fish and named it Bishop.

Your Place Was Checked

2005-09-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Livingston Parish on the Tickfaw River, every few weeks or so the sheriff, Willie Graves?, would drop in via boat and check to make sure the place was ok and didn't seem to have been vandalized. He did this because it was the off seasoon, and I was living year yound in a place of seasonal (summer) places. He would leave a card on the boat dock that read You place was checked on ______ with the date written in by hand.

Well, over the weekend my brother went into New Orleans to check his place. He had about seven feet of water in the house for three weeks. The smell was so bad he said he was retching. Mold up the walls, the fridge turned over, every single object he had ever owned destroyed after soaking in shitty water for three weeks. He showed me the pictures and I did not recognize anything--not the house, not his street, not the surrounding areas. Every landmark tree and sign was either goe or surrounded with so much debris that it couldn't be seen.

He didn't say much, but I know whe was very upset. He got sick that night, from touching the water we think. He took off a glove to rub some debris off of a Strom trooper figure, and we think maybe the water got under his fingernails or something. Jay came home with two plastic bags of objects he thinks he can hold onto. He hasn't showed us anything from the bags.

He's been washing CD's in a bucket all week. No word on if they're playable or not.

Jay had to sneak into the city under the protection of a friend of his who had clearance to save cats. (All the remaining cats are dead now, the friend says.) As hard as he worked to enter the city, Jay says he never wants to go back while his house is standing. Just tell them to bulldoze it to the ground.

Fucking Pine Trees

2005-09-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

A big fuck you to hurricane Rita, who sent a large limb through the good side of the roof and a leak into the bedroom, where everything not destroyed is currently being stored. Luckily we have our honest roofer up there anyway, and he said something to the effect of him sticking it on our tab. The super huge pine on the side of the house has limbs like the one we're fretting over now swinging in all directions--it could be that we have the roofer out again next week. We need to take the tree down, which, due to its size, we can expect to cost anout 4k. But even if I had the cash in hand, there's not a tree crew to be found around here--they will only remove trees from houses--no extra cutting.

The leader of the sheetrock crew, Arian, somehow broke his hand and has deemed himself unable to give orders. So yet another day passes without them working.

We're just working around the cracked slab, hoping it's a surface crack. And I know this is a dumb thing to worry about, but I want to see of there are any christmas tree ornaments left in the attic, in case it turns out we do have Christmas this year.

Days I've been waiting for a check the insurance agent "overnighted" to us: 9.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Thieves

2005-09-23T11:24:00.000-07:00

Well, it's storm time again, and my roof is unfinished and unshingled. The sheetrock crew we hired has an articulate sppkesman, but his crew gives new meaning to ineptitude. We nicknamed them Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are always together, always sitting down when I pull up into the driveway. One is tall and skinny, the other short and fat, with a little short red mustache. Their job? to throw hammers at the walls and ceiling to get the sheetrock down. Their other job? sifting through our belongings to take what they want--so far toaster, carseat, toys, retired infant bedding, etc. I almost don't care. and I have a new passtime. Passing by the house at odd hours to take pictures of their progress. What I'm really doing is spying on them and trying to get their faces in the frame, just in case. Yesteday they left a ton of sheetrock outside and it got rained on. Needless to say, I don't want that in my house.

If anybody is sending me mail, you should know that I am not getting mail--not at the house address, not at the P. O. Box. I don't know what is up with that, and I am hurting for the first of what will be numerous insurance checks.

I'm about to go hunker down--we're on the rain side of this new storm, and tropical storm winds here for the next day or so. I am really hoping my neighbors' trees stay on their sde of the fence. I need a break from the home fiasco chaos.

As for my brother Jay, you know things are bad for him when his good news is that his house only took 8.5 feet of water, not the twelve feet we thought. At night we all sit together watching the news, drinking, figurng what few things may have floated to the ceiling and survived the three weeks of water, hoping that maybe some of the Star Wars toys made it, or maybe one of the eight guitars he left behind.

The Rock

2005-09-15T09:10:00.000-07:00

Well, thanks to all of you have been sending me supportive emails. My goodnews is that I got a good bid from a drywall man who will come in with his crew on Monday after we clear out the house. And we may be able to arrange to have one of his crew members install the bay windows if we can find the materials. We have considered going to Jackson.

In other good news: I saw a praying mantis on the window, which I took as a good omen. And I believe Squeezers is going to print early next week.

Where I'm At

2005-09-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

I have been up and down over the last week and a half--from elated at the thought that things might work out, to despairing as I take a clloser look at the damage my house has sustained. We did have the trees removed ($7,500), and we did hire a roofer to build a roof ($12,000). He'll be finished this week, and we are looking for someone to rebuild our missing wall, and a drywall person to replace about all of the drywall. Still waiting on money from insurance. I have discovered that I do not like to tangle with the adjustors. We have been very honest with them, but I am suspicious of these numbers they keep spouting out.

Over the last week I have gained a house at least temporarily. I have gained my brother as a long-term house-mate--he lost everything in his New Orleans home. I have begun drying out the books that can be salvaged. I have used a shovel to dump my children's ruined toys into garbage bags. Today I will try to get to the attic to go through the water-damaged items therein. At this point, I'm hoping to be able to save at least a few baby outfits. A lot of our wall art and extra furniture is sitting up there destroyed.

I have received water and ice from the FEMA stations still set up here, and the kids love to see the soldiers. (They're walking around armed, by the way, even the ones directing traffic.) I have a P. O. Box address for at least the next six months.

Mary--I hate to be grabby, but I'd love a postcard from you with something funny written on it and a replacement of the Fayetteville mix CD a la searching for J W's tombstone experience.

Anyway, I'm in a better spot than most.

Does anyone have a translation of Catullus translated by Charles Martin I can borrow? Peace out.

P. O. Box 1512
Mandeville, LA 70470-1512
504-952-1745 (alas, cell phone service is sketchy, and land lines are a joke)

Bad to Worse

2005-09-03T14:01:00.000-07:00

Bryan made it to our house, but I almost wish he hadn't. We took hits from three pine trees--two in the same place, and one so large it tore/smashed roof from back of house to front. Lots of water damage from rain. Books, guitars, toys, furniture ruined. Attic exposed. I spent the day looking for a place to live in Hammond, which over night has become an impossible-to-penetrate, cutthroat real estate place. I have lots of connections, and none of them did me any good. I was told there was a house I could buy for 289K if I moved fast (like in an hour) but I still have to meet the mortgage on my destroyed house, and I don't know how I will be able to get in to work. (I'm supposed to be back on Thursday)

My kids are so confused, and I don't know where we'll be living in a week.

Thanks for Asking after Me

2005-09-02T18:53:00.000-07:00

Many live friends and blog friends have written to check on me via email or the blog. I have written back to you, but the emails keep bouncing back. So this is just a general thanks.

Mary, if you are trying to call me, I'm at the Holiday Inn Express in Greenville, MS room 316. My mom's in 328. If you call after nine I'll be pissed b/c the kids will be asleep.

I'll be here till Sunday

Peace out

Katrina Is a Tacky Name

2005-09-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

Katrina is a tacky name. It's easy to say it with disgust. Today was a strange day--waking up to fires in the city, bedding down to news that help has fucking finally arrived. I do not feel optimistic, but I do feel slightly encouraged. When I hear 50,000 remain in the city, that seems too high to be true. I hope.

The local government is under fire and they are firing back. Nagin went off on the radio, and in a press conference with Bush he looked like he was ready to slug him. I think it's dumb to call local officials unprepared--how could you possibly prepare for somehing of this magnitude. Also, to those who criticize Nagin's timing, you should understand that he was following the plan everyone agreed to last year after major traffic problems during the evacuation for Ivan: a contra-flow plan was to be set into motion simultaneously with the mandatory evacuations, which would start in the lower parishes fifty hours before storm landfall. Plaquemines, being lowest, would leave fifty hours out, followed by Jefferson at forty hours out, followed by Orleans, thirty hours out. They are late announcing "shelters of last resort" because they know, on paper at least, what a storm like this could be like, and they do not want to give people an option to stay. There are also those, like my great-aunt and uncle--who have the means to leave and a place to go--but they holdout anyway, proud of the fact they have never left before. Now, we are fairy Aunt Bee and Uncle Leonard are dead.

Of course, this doesn't address the money/race issue. Those who got out have money, a running car, and place to go. Those who remain largely don't. That situation is unacceptable, and I do think local officials need to admit it.

In Greenville, MS, which seems like largely poor area, I was greeted with kindness and sympathy from every angle. My kids have seen free movies at the movie theater, we have been invited to church suppers nearly every day, we have been offered food, clothing, and shelter.

I must stick out around here, because everyone knows I am a 'refugee.' Today at the laundrymat a woman asked after my family and offered to help me in anyway possible. I could have been anyone.

I feel funny being called a refugee, though it's true that I am displaced, my home is partly destroyed, I am worrying over the whereabouts of my husband and brother, and my kids are asking me questions I don't know how to answer. I don't know when we're going home. I don't know who will fix our house. I don't know why daddy didn't call tonight.

Still, all this is a dust speck--a true refugee doesn't have clean sheets and a high-speed internet connection.

SICK

2005-09-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

I am just sick to my stomach. What the fuck. I feel confident saying New Orleans is not getting the help another city--say New York--would have received in the same situation.

Here I am, homeless, but safe, taking my kids swimming in the hotel pool. I haven't told them about our house. I haven't heard from my brother since Monday. I know he left the city, but only that.

Bryan left seven hours ago to make a four hour journey. I have no way of knowing he is ok.

2005-09-02T04:23:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe what I am hearing about New Orleans. I don't understand why so many people are still there, though I speculate it has the media's inclination to focus on the behavior of a few individuals. And for the record, I would steal anything I needed to stay alive. And, FYI, rich white people are looting and robbing on the Northshore where my father-in-law is. He has taken to drivinig in pairs and carrying a weapon at all times. He has to drive to Hammond to call us.

In Mandeville our home is heavily damaged--according to my father-in-law, we no longer need a door because you can walk in the missing wall. I barely even care about this anymore, becase we will be able to fix the house at some point. Bryan tried to get to his parents yesterday, but had to turn back. No gas anywhere. I know they are worried sick--I think he will try again today.

I am supposed to be back to work on Sept. 6. I hope I don't lose my job, because then I'll have no health insurance, and Ben has breathing issues when he gets sick in the winter.

New Orleans Poets

2005-08-31T15:21:00.000-07:00

In any of you have heard from one of these poets, please chime in.

Nancy HarrisDave Brinks, Megan Burns and familyStan BeamisJimmy NolanBeverly Rainbolt & familyJohn Gery & Biljana Obradovic & familyLee GrueKay MurphyNiyi OsundareHank Lazer Brenda Marie Osbey Maxine & Joe CassinLorenzo Thomas Bill LavenderJoel Dailey Rodger KamenetzJerome Rothenberg David ShapiroYictoveAndrei CodrescuAndi YoungJohn Travis & familyKatherine SoniatGrace BauerJulie KaneKalamu ya SalaamKysha BrownCamille MartinRalph Adamo & familyBrad Richard Peter CooleyJohn SinclairTom WhalenAlex RawlsGina Ferrara & family

This comes from a blog I already forgot the name of.

Disaster means 'bad star' in Greek

2005-08-31T14:27:00.000-07:00

I have read with interest some responses to the description of the Katrina damage. Although I am most concerned emotionally with New Orleans, I do think that it has been over-represented in the news. Slidell, LA, which took a direct hit and is underwater--has hardly been touched on.

It bothers me to hear people say "Hiroshima" and "the tsunami" because those are obviously unfair comparisons. However, in defense of the people who may have blurted out those comparisons, I think they are just searching for words, which we all know are inadequate. I mean, New Orleans is underwater--thousands of people are dead and are going to die--in plain view of the news media--I can understand a bit of drama.

I have been staring at these images for two days now, and it still hasn't sunk in yet. People's histories are gone. People are displaced and I fear many will never return. Forgive me for touching on Cajun culture, but the language is dying, the elders are dying, and now part of the way of life has beed destroyed. And the Cajuns are only one of many cultures directly impacted by this event/disaster/ whatever you name it.

People are really scared

Katrina Continued

2005-08-31T14:10:00.000-07:00

My father-in-law was able to make it to my home to check it and report on the damage. The cats are alive, and he let them out. My house is heavily damaged and uninhaitable. Trees down everywhere. There is a large hole through the roof and ran in the den/playroom area. The corner or back wall--I didn't quite get him--was crushed and open to outside. That hole is how they got into the house. Inside is wet, but not flooded, from the rain. Bryan will try to get back and get a few things. We are really lucky though, because the structure is redeemable. Almost a million people are in far grave situations.

New Orleans is chaos--I am sure everyone has seen this on the news. Thousands feared dead, and thousands may die if not lifted out.

For those trying to reach th Folsom area--they have no electricity, phones. Cell phones are out. My father-in-law drove to Hammond and called from a land line. He will call everyday before noon, he said, and I will post anything new that I know.

I fear for New Orleans--I just don't see how we will recover. No economy, no jobs, no money. . .

The Things They Carried

2005-08-30T17:55:00.000-07:00

When I packed my car to evacuate for this hurricane, I was really just going through the motions. I've done this so many times before, it's easy to be rote about it. I dumped in the kids' albuterol and breathing machine in case of bronchiolitis. I tossed in the albums of their pre-digital camera baby pictures, a cross my father used to wear, the Mignon Faget necklace I got on my first Mother's Day (white seed pearls with tiny gold beads and a gold-flecked venetian glass pendant in the shape of a heart), my laptop, a few books, three books for the kids, pillows, some clothing, one par of pajamas each, matcbox cars and lincoln logs, a few costume pieces for the kids to play dress up. I was wearing flip flops, and those are the only shoes I have with me. I forgot Sam's new shoes. I forgot to bring stuffed animals, insurance papers, a picture of m great-grandmother in drag, long pants for any of the kids. I only left out a few days of food for my cats. I didn't bring a toothbrush or a pen. I didn't put tape over the windows or cover the new sofa, or try to move furniture over the windows. I just left. I even left Bryan at home, in case the storm turned, because he is no fan of evacuation. I didn't mail any of my bills or the printer ready proof of my chapbook. I didn't water the orchids. I didn't do any of the things you might do when seing someplace for the last time. I didn't even look back.

Refugee Diary

2005-08-30T17:44:00.000-07:00

Still in Cleveland, MS. I was all prepared to be a snob about this place, but every citizen has been exceedingly nice. Examples--a woman at Krogers let us use her discount card because some of the items we were buying were on special for members. The Baptist church put signs up all over the hotel inviting the Katrina refugees to a catfish dinner in their parish hall.

The lobby of this hotel is filled with people from all over New Orleans. Each has a terribly sad story. Many elderly, including one man from Chalmette whose home is under thirteen feet of water. He says he is too old to rebuild. Many people, like us, have small children with them, and they have the strange and difficcult job of entertainging children in a cramped nervous space. We have been swimming several times, tyring to make up ganes with the other kids, make everything seem ok, but look around and it's very sad.

There are pets looking out of some of the hotel windows. There are cars packed down with ice chests, pillows, and atlases. The lobby is constantly busy with people chatting, trying to use each other's cell phones, and constantly watching the news on a big screen TV. We are almost unaffected by these images because of the shock of them. The news is everywhere--echoing in the hall. And in the rooms also, where people with laptops troll the message boards for news of pecific neighborhoods, specific streets. Then we pass the news along. It is never good. This evening I heard that my neighborhood was "devastated" by trees--with large pines, sometimes tw or three, crashing through the living room. I'm afraid to know anything else, but still, I keep looking.

Katrina Refugee

2005-08-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

Well, I never thought I'd be a refugee, but here I am in Cleveland Mississippi with no idea about home, people left at home, cats left at home, etc. New Orleans is nearly 100 flooded. The eyewall of thhe storm passed very close to me in Mandeville--all communication there is lost, so we have no idea what we'll be going home to. I've heard rumors that flooding in Mandeville was minimal, wind damage (read--pine trees) extensive. News coverage not too helpful--it's just showing flyovers of metropolitan New Orleans. At this point, I'm just hoping that one member of the family has at least a structure to return to, but I'm out of touch with everyone--no phone service, or the lines are busy.

Good news--my kids are safe, mom and husby are safe. We have also managed to locate a generator.

If anybody hears anything about Mandeville, Covington, or St. Tammany Parish, pleas post a comment.

Sad Sad Sad

2005-08-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

I am so incredibly sad today. My friend's son has died. I can't even believe that I just wrote that out, because it seems so intimate and so private. If . . . If . . . If . . . I want her to be ok, but I think she will never be ok. This mother grief is the scariest monster to think about. I don't know what to do or say. Whatever you believe, believe it for her, for them, and most of all for that sweet, sweet boy.

This Is Their Penis and This Is Their Butt

2005-08-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

Today I brought the kids to the children's museum and we all had the blast. I believe this one in New Orleans is supposed to be the best--it's a great, huge space. Ben wants to have his B-day party there (you can rent rooms, or the whole place after hours). For them, the best exhibit wat the mini-port of New Orleans where they drove a tugboat and an ocean liner, go to look under the Mississippi River Bridge, load and unload a barge of freight, and toot the very loud horn lots of times. For me the best part was the Things to do with lines exhibit where the kids made sculptures by fitting pool noodles into holes, and drew with light. They also had a blast wearing ensembles from the costume box.

After that we had a City Park picnic (in the back of the car because Ben is afraid of thunder). We had to eat gas station food and ham, because for some reason I only put grapes and drinks in the ice chest. We saw the antique train and walked down to the sculpture garden--if ever in New Orleans you must stop there. The kids loved this huge bronze spider, but they loved the nudes most of all. They were standing with a group of larger than life nude running men (the men look like they're wearing mask from Greek stage) saying over and over again, loudly: THIS IS THEIR PENIS AND THIS IS THEIR BUTT. A Buddhist monk took their picture. I hope he remembers us, because now that I have written it down, I will remember him.

Slave to the Couch

2005-08-04T03:43:00.000-07:00

Where have I been? What have I been up to? Well, I can assure you none of it is poetry related. We got a new sectional sofa and I have been babysiting it--keeping it dog free, and children with food and markers free. That in itslef is a full time job. I also have been shopping out of catalogues. (This is a new obsession of mine--buying Christmas presents in the summertime.)

I finished (?) my next book of poetry. I've been working on my syllabus. I read "That Is No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy, which was outstanding. I'm tryting to clean out my files (a joke).

As the summer ends, I've been taking the kids everywhere--to the zoo, the aquarium, and today to the Children's Museum for art time. We've also been going to slash around in the Mandeville fountain at the trailhead, across from the firestation and down the street from the library. My kids have been reading about bugs all summer, specifically flies, mosquitoes, and maggots. Ben wrote his name, a milestone considering his hand surgery in December.

I Am So Pathetic

2005-07-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

I am writing with a refill to my Sensa pen.

We Made It

2005-07-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

Well, I am thankful that there is nothing to report as far as hurricane weather is concerned, though the folks in Florida are telling a different story. It is terrible to sit and watch a big storm brewing and to be able to track it, and to wish it away from where you are but also away from where anyone else is. The worst thing that hapened in my neighborhood is that a tree got struck by lightening cross the street, and, by way of boredom, I had to sit through "Herbie" with my two kids. Charles would pitch a fit--even the cars are breeders.

Back to my life as an insecure poet.

FREAK OUT MODE

2005-07-08T09:51:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this has made it to the national news or not, but Louisiana is facing the second big storm in a week. In fact, the debris from Tuesday is still in the streets--trees down, large branches, etc. My brother only got power back last night.

And now we are facing this category four storm. It's over Cuba now, and in the next 12 hours we'll have a good idea of where it might head. The forecasters are saying the Pensacola area, but the storm does keep moving west, which reminds me of last year when until the last second Ivan was headed straight up THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

Jefferson Parish has ignored the contraflow plans and called for an early evacuation of residents. This means that my mom is coming over tonight. It also means that the roads will be congested when we leave--Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans has not yet made a decision. I live in Mandeville, but I follow Nagin's orders because my home is on Lake Pontchartrain, which receives drainage from NO. So any flooding there means flooding here.

Evacuation is so stressful. I really don't want to have to leave. But just in case I am getting everything ready--insurance papers, emergency meds., important records, etc.

Boh-Me

2005-06-25T18:16:00.000-07:00

We love him! He's very gentle, loves to fetch, and so far poops in the same spot.

Gatemouth

2005-06-24T08:12:00.000-07:00

I got my B this Jazz Fest poster of Gatemouth Brown and just picked it up from the framer. But they messed it up, and the frame I special ordered and waited patiently for is all wrong. I thought I could live with it, but I can't. So I'm going back today to have them get me the one I wanted. This is going to take FOREVER. I hink next time I'll do something else.

The frame I picked out is four inches wide, and finished to look like old barn wood (this is so th picture will fit in our music.play room, which we are trying to get to look like the inside of The House of Blues. What they sent was unfinished, but there is a thick blue-ish stripe in the middle of it. Really, I can't believe I walked out of the store with it all.

On a different note, I haven't TOUCHED my writing all week. I've been stepping over this crate by my desk with my notebooks and notes and drafts, but I haven't even reached into it. I don't know what's wrong with me.

Bohemian Shard

2005-06-23T06:59:00.000-07:00

We're adoping a greyhound, something I've wanted to do for years. Here's the one we want, on the top of the page. You can click on his picture to see a full size picture. This guy is a retured racer, hence the cool racing name, who is being returned because his people are getting divorced. He's supposed to be very sweet, and, most importantly, he likes being around little kids.

Blog-O-Twins

2005-06-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

Suzanne says we're twins. I think she might be right!

Who's your blog-o-twin?

Write now, worry later

2005-06-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

It took me about three weeks to recover from this semester and its aftermath, a wrap-up which included some heavy disappointments for me. However, I have reached the point where I am taking all of this as a good sign, because it means I can go back to doing what they pay me for and pull out of the endless projects, meetings, readings, etc. that were completely draining my time. I have learned, in three short weeks, to say no. I have also reached the point that I can let go (for the most part) some deep resentment of a few individuals. This may sound like nothing to you, but for one who takes pleaseure in writing people off and holding a grudge, it's a real surprise.

So, now that the knot in my chest is gone, I have been able to enjoy writing again, not to mention my children. One of the reason I love summer is that I feel like everything in poetry sort of shuts down--I don't worry about submissions or my manuscript. I'm not even worrying too much about poems. They come, I write them down, I put them aside. None of my usual second guessng the topic, delivery, relevance, where it fits in book. I'm just writing the poems down. I'll fret over them later.

Does anyone out there have a relaxed summer approach to writing?

Blog-o-Snobs

2005-06-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

Generally I have found the blog community to be funny, light-hearted, and supportive, but over the past few months I have encountered some pretty rude comments, I've had polite emails ignored, and recently, when someone sent out a general call for readers of a manuscript I said sure--I'd love to read it. (See how generaous I am!) Well, I practically had to go through an audition process--where have I published, who am I reading, where is my work online, etc.

Am I the only freak, or does everybody have encounters like this?

Now, on to a few things you may not know about me:

1. I had plastic surgery on my face after I was attacked by a dog.

2. I collect Jackalopes (so far I have two.)

3. I like walking, but I hate hiking (the road must be paved.)

4. I am scared to death of cockroaches.

5. When I was a little girl in dance lessons, the teacher told my parents I was klutzy and that they were wasting their money.

6. I drink WAY too much diet coke.

7. I don't have any close friends from high school.

8. I used to feather my hair and carry a comb in my back pocket.

9. (along the same lines as number seven) I can't skate backwards.

10. I was afraid to be in the room with my dad when he died.

This doesn't say much, does it?

Wild World

2005-06-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

This weekend my son was looking out of the window and said look at the mommy raccoon with three baby raccoons, and I sort of ignored it, because he always confuses squirrels with raccoons. Not this time--he was right. There was a mom and three babies balancing on the fence early in the morning to make their way to our garbage. I though I had seen some raccoon prints the other day, but didn't think much of it. These guys are so funny to watch. There was a mom with two babies that used to come see me every day when I lived in Springfield. She'd stash the babies in a tree and then come take saltines and cat foot not quite out of my hand, but almost. They have the funniest way of eating--the eyes in that black mask are on you all the time, but the hands are moving in odd directions, shoving the food in.

As much as I want to, I am not going to feed these because a.) they do bite and they do carry rabies, and b.) the man across the street traps them and then "releases" them into a nearby natural park. I'm sure he shoots them, but he would never admit to it because I think it's against the law. When one of the neighbors died (he was old) his house was vacant for a while, and raccoons got in through the chimney and did major damage--eating through wire, etc. All of the ceiling fans had crashed onto the floor. That's when I found out about how he took care of them. So I'll be keeping quiet about our little friends. I really hope they come back.

Almost better than the raccoons was the luna moth on the bricks when I came home. The boys got to see that as well. The markings on her wings were so pretty. I know they're supposed to look like eyes, but on this moth the top of each upper wing was rimmed with brown that curled in, so the wings looked as though they were marked with symmetrical snake heads. Very beautiful. I haven't seen one of those for so long. I think this one is newly emerged, and its wings seemed wet. Since it was sort of low to the ground, I'm going to keep my cat in tonight.

Goodbye to Privacy

2005-06-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

Blogging is such a strange thing. You get a few minutes, log into your account, then write about what is on your mind. One day you may be elated, the next you may be dejected. You may be in the mood to talk about your sex life, your children, the current issue of Poetry Magazine--whatever. You just write what you think, spell check it (maybe) and publish the post. All of this is done in the privacy of your home or office, and while you know that anyone can get to your blog and read your posts, you don't really think about that--or mbe do you.

Lately I have had lots of things I want to talk about on my blog, but I have been afraid to for many reasons. I don't want others out there to think I am petty, or lazy, or behind the times. I don't want a reviewer to quote me out of context. So I put a lid on it or talk in code. I don't know what bothers me more--the fact that I don't have the balls to say fuck it and say what I want to say, or the combined vanity and fear that makes me think people care enough about this writing to comment on it, or hunt me down.

This is Blah and Stupid

2005-06-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

I think over the summer that I will try to be more daily in my blog writing. Yesterday and today I have had the feeling that there is a huge weight on my chest because I am angry and sad about some things I recently learned. Usually when I feel this way I can start writing--either working on a poem or writing in my journal--but yesterday that wasn't good enough. I wrote and wrote--lots of nasty details to use in two different poems, then I fell asleep and wrote some more. But when I woke up I felt like the wind had been kicked out of me still. All I wanted to do last night was watch a funny movie, so I did, but that didn't do it either.

Ray Charles has helped a little. And my kids are off at school this morning--I have another hour and a half of free time, and I've already finished a draft of a poem. I may go shopping and buy things until it's time to pick them up.

Louisiana is trying to pass a new smoking tax--a dollar a pack--and many people are outraged. I only smoke in bars, and I hardly ever go to bars, and out of extreme boredom, so I shouldn't care about the tax that much--BUT, if the tax doesn't pass, it is unlikely that I will get a raise this year. I need a raise because my salary is very small. I also just want a raise, and my health insurance premium nearly doubled. But I'm so busy writing this blog and poem that I can't be bothered to go outside to get the newspaper and see what happened.

Your Classic Cautionary Tale

2005-06-07T14:18:00.000-07:00

There was a wedding in my husband's family this week. For most this would be a joyous occasion. For them, it is a time to unearth all past wrongs and trangressions, grudges and animosities, and cram them into the back of the Methodist Church. How do I fit into this? I don't. I stay out of the way with a casual look so that no one will think I am involved in the mess. This time around I did stand by Grampy in a show of support, because it was a very uncomfortable situation. At one point, Grampy, who I consider to be an upstanding man, was looking for a way to smear a dog turn on another family member's car. Things went downhill fast at the world's trashiest reception which followed.

Then yesterday my husband brought home "THE LETTERS" which prompted the whole thing. I read them, which I shouldn't have done. I held them up to the light. Until yesterday, I had regarded the bad blood as trivial until I read those letters. Now I regard it as trivial and sad. And I have learned things that I didn't want to learn.

I will not be keeping quiet about this in the poems. My side of the family is so much better. Most are ignorant, and we fight a lot, but everything blows over and there is alsways good food involved.

I am trying too hard

2005-05-31T06:40:00.000-07:00

I spent about forty-five minutes in the kitchen preparing a cool painting project for my kids to today. It took them about eleven minutes to tire of this activity, I now have a green blob of paint on the light carpet. Oh well. They are more interested in building prate ships with blocks and singing Jingle Bells while beating on the wall, the oven doo, the window . . . . anything.

The season of the cockroach has begun. Last night, after reading awhile in bed, I reached over to turn out the light, and there it was: gigantic, huge, three-inch long cockroach looking right at me. We moved most of the furniture in the bedroom before getting that one with a book. (NOT a book of poetry.) Then I couldn't go asleep because I was afraid that another would crawl in my mouth. (Around here, the legend is tht for every one cockroach you see there are 400 others hiding somewhere near.)

By the way, I don't live in filth. The rain brings these in, and we got four-inches or more yesterday.

Thanks!

2005-05-28T13:29:00.001-07:00

Thanks to David and Suzanne, I think I have figured this out!

Here's my poem that was in Poetry in January.

Somebody Help

2005-05-27T10:29:00.000-07:00

Hello out there . . . how do I underline something and have it turn into a link so that it doesn't look like this? http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0105/poem_146723.html

I promise I am not an idiot in every area of life.

Two Poems on Blackbird

2005-05-27T10:21:00.000-07:00

I have got to learn how to use links. This is practice.

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v4n1/poetry/pelegrin_a/index.htm

Room of Her Own

2005-05-24T07:44:00.000-07:00

If you could turn any room or building in the world into your writing studio, what would you choose and why? (From Charles)

I would like to buy the property we used to rent on the Tickfaw River in Springfield, Louisiana. The property has three houses--The big house, the guest house, and the guest shack. We lived in the guest house, which was really just a gussied up hunting camp. This house would be all mine, and it would be cleaned by someone other than me. The kitchen would hold a coffee pot, bar, and icemaker only. No washing machine, no brooms, irons--nothing but some file cabinets and my desk in front of the long window looking out over the river, and a rug for my feet. No phone, no email, no radio. No visitors unless they were other poets or cool people. Family on occastion, and one of the boats would be big enough to take them all out.

Why? Spots of Time. When I lived there the first time I thought that if I were Wordsworth I could write "The Prelude" sitting out on that boat dock. Also, it's the place where B. and I were last A and B. (There's four of us now.)

Blog Dogging

2005-05-23T06:06:00.000-07:00

For the most part, I enjoyed Peter Campion's essay in the June issue of Poetry magazine "Grasshoppers: A Notebook." The last section in particular gives and important 'answer' to the questions I (and I'm sure many others) have pondered lately, "Why write poems anyhow?"

Earlier in the essay he bemoans (and who doesn't) that poetry has become a "guild" system, that young poets are constantly worried about their 'careers' and looking to experienced poets for advice. He then says you can see this if you spend more than an instant reading poetry blogs, where "the you-know-whats spew down the screen with a kind of poisoned earnestness."

I see no reason for this view. For me at least a blog is an area to spill out informal ideas, observations, foolishness, and yes, even some--gasp--earnestness. On occasion some real insight creeps in through the back door. I don't see a problem with this, and I also don't understand why anybody cares what poets write about on their blogs. I think that for some the blog community is another way to find friend and mentors--poets have been doing that forever. I don't think there's any shame in looking for support in this type of environment--the readers who want to sympathise will. The readers who don't can look elsewhere.

I realize that anyone can read what you write on a blog, and respond, even, if you have set up you account that way. But I think, with very few exceptions, it is misleading to quote from a blog and present that writing as representative of a poet's style, thoughts, ability, whatever. I'm writing this before I brush my teeth--I'm not too worried about spelling.) Yet in this essay Campion quotes from a blog--I'm pretty sure it was C. Dale's--in which the author is encouraging another poet who has become discouraged about rejection by referring to poems of his that went around many times before getting accepted. The reason I remember this conversation is because I found it encouraging. I also was touched (there's that earnestness again) that a more well known poet cared anough about younger writers to share this information in a public forum. I would never do that--I'd just pretend that everything got accepted on the first try.

Campion does not attribute the lines to C. Dale, which is just plain wrong--as though he is doing the author a favor by not connecting him publicly to those lines. It's not his dissent I have a problem with--it's the way it's presented.

Real Life

2005-05-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

Funny how when real life crashes in there is, as least for me, little time or care for blogging. What a rough month--half a week--including mother's day--in the hospital with man child number one.

I am greatful for healthcare and insurance.
I am grateful for the wonderful nurses in the pediatrics ward.
I am grateful for exrays.
Oxygen.
Fold-out couches.
Portable DVD player.
Shrek. The Incredibles. Peter Pan.
I'm grateful that we're home.

I got the proofs to my chap, but haven't looked at them.

Killing the Darlings

2005-04-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

Is there a word for reaching a point in writing a poem where you know that it will be getting much, much worse before it gets any better?

Is there a way to avoid this stage entirely? Is there a different term for this realization when it happens on the same day you receive a rejection from a journal THAT ASKED TO SEE MORE OF YOUR WORK?

My students laught at "kill your darlings." Then they fall asleep. I vote for "spanking the monkey" but of course that phrase is aleready taken.

___________

Bippo's Place for Smiles

2005-04-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I brought my children (2 and 3) to the dentist for the first time. This was a trip to hell, and it cost $189. This place is called Bippo's Place for Smiles, and it is a shining example of the depraved attitudes many of the people in my community (and I guess I belong in there to a certain extent) have towards child rearing. I did not shop around, but I am quite sure that this place costs twice as much as any other pediatric dentist. In the outside play area there is a jungle gym like the ones at MdDonalds. There is a meditation garden. Once your spoiled children have finished perusing these delights, it's time to enter "The Jungle." Yes, "the jungle." At Bippo's place for smiles, one does not simply open the door and walk into the cramped waiting room. First one must walk through a thirty-foot hallway that is painted to look like a jungle--wild animals (with wild sounds piped in), cross over the goldfish pond, and climb through the tree house that eventually leads to the waiting room. In the waiting room were several televisions, video games set to restart over and over--no quarters needed, and a tropical fish tank that was stocked with all of the fish from Finding Nemo. There was a crawl space behind this talk so that the wee ones could crawl in and see the whole thing from behind. There were helium balloons, and Bippo himself circulated the waiting room handing out toothbrushes and taking pictures with the children. Until yesterday, my kids had never seen a video game.

In the back of the office, there was a fleet of beautiful dental technicians handing out stickers justto get the children to come into the room. If the child sits on the chair, he gets to pick a toy from the tooybox. In fact, they must reward after brushing every tooth, because my oldest came out with an armful of bracelets. I came home with the news that both of my children had overbites. They will both need braces. I think that no one gets out of Mandeville without braces.

When I and my brother used to go to the dentist, my mother was sitting there forcing us to do our homework, ready to swat us with a rolled magazine for the slightest thing.

Friends, we have it too good.

Obscure Toil

2005-04-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a poem from Lucia Perillo's new book Luck is Luck. I read a few poems of hers on Paul Guest's blog, and decided I had to have the book, pronto. I went all the way to New Orleans and unleashed two todlers in the bookstore on the hunch that they would have this book, because I couldn't take the time to call.

This poem is about writing. It's about Emily Dicinson and office supplies and political prisoners. And that great truth--that we're doing this work and maybe no one will remember!

On the Rhythmic Nature of Obscure Toil

So you write one poem, then another,
until your stack is big enough to bind with a black
spring clip. If you were Emily Dickinson
(but there is no chance that you're Emily Dickinson)
you'd have poked a sharp needle through the sheaf.
Then laid it to rest in an underwear drawer
until you died of glomerulonephritis:
a disease, alas, with too many syllables
to suit your common meter. And when sister Vinnie
discovers your cache, whet do you care?
You just wish you'd sat for another daguerreotype
besides that one with your hair so severely parted,
signifying the pre-central plumbing era
and its omniprescent oily scalp.
Then hair mousse comes along
and the thread through the sheaf becomes this spring clip
made by a woman imprisoned in China.
One minute she's dopin Tai Chi in the park,
making Fair Lady wrists when a cop steps up,
calls her pose dissident, and slaps on the cuffs.
Then for all minutes after, she's sticking these wires
into the black triangular piece,
so many per hour her fingers are flayed
like brushed dipped in rust-red paint.
And you, you thought you were just writing a poem
without the crutch of Emily Dickinson's beat,
her thump-thump-thump-thump/thump-thump-thump
that can be sung to "Swing Low Sweet Chariot"
or "When the Saints Go Marching In."
But since you didn't want that to help you along,
you wre just fidgeting, scratching your head,
absentmindedly staring out of the window,
and while you were gone, look:
someone left these bloody prints across the page.

On the cover of Perillo's book are Audubon's shrikes and a green background.

Speaking of obscure toil, for a brief stint I held a job in a special collections library. This was nowhere near as cool as I thought it would be. Everything was locked up in the dark, and you weren't supposed to touch it. Artwork, books, photographs, statues. This library had one of a few (two?) complete folio collections of Audubon's Birds of America. The library stored these books on their sides in the dark, and once a year took them out for viewing in a special room. Anybody could come, but it seems like only the wealthy patrons were aware of it. On those days I wore white gloves for the only time in my life and slowly turned the folio pages, which are quite huge, while people ooed and ahhed over his Wild Turkey (the smaller birds just don't stand out). After an hour my time in the viewing room would be over, and I would shrink back to the stacks, flashlight in hand and forbidded pen and notecard in my pocket to sneak research towards a poem of sorts.

By the way--in this special collections library, the archives of poetry boooks from the affiliated university press were stored on the sixth floor behind a locked metal gate appropriately named "the cage."

Dark blood in my body

2005-04-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

Lately I have heard people, in blogs and elsewhere, talking about James Wright. The most recent occasion was Alison Stine's blog, in which she talks about opening the book and using a line from a poem of his to lead her through the night.

I do that a lot with the work of James Wright. The book Above the River is never far fom my reach, and my copy is so dogeared and useless that really there's little point in me trying to find anything special. It's better to just open up and read.

The thing I love about Wright is that time after time in his poems I find that he has said the unsayable. In my life, this is what I am going for--in the poem, in the process of creating the poem something takes over (Muse? Metaphor? Grace?) and allows you to utter things that are nearly inartculate they are so right. I know this sounds like bull, but anyone who is a writer will understand, I bet. It's like being blind, or being lost at the same time you know exactly where you are. This makes his poems hard to talk about it, but when I have been looking at them for a while they sort of lock into place and are perfect, and make perfect sense.

Here's a favorite:

As I Step over a Puddle at the End
of Winter, I Think of an
Ancient Chinese Governor

And how can I, born in evil days
And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of fate?
--Written A.D. 819

Po Chu-i, balding old politician,
What's the use?
I think of you,
Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze,
When you were being towed up the rapids
Toward some political job or other
In the city of Chungshou.
You made it, I guess,
By dark.

But it is 1960, it is almost spring again,
And the tall rocks of Minneapolis
Build me my own twilight
Of bamboo ropes and black waters.
Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved?
Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness
Of the Midwest? Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing
But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter.
Did you find the city of isolated men beyond the mountains?
Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope
For a thousand years?

Hee Hee!

2005-04-21T12:07:00.000-07:00

Do you ever get so delighted with yourself that you start to giggle at the least provocation? Well, that's how I feel today. I finished up some very big projects that were looming over me, and with that comes a certain degree of freedom. And I have practiced being assertive and delegating, and this is loosening my workload a bit. Also, yesterday I wrote a proposal that is so good I can't believe I had anything to do with it at all. I felt absolutely inspired, and after months of thinking about the project and conducting research, it just smacked me over the head and I finished it in only a few hours--I did a tablet draft while my kids were in the sandbox and typed it up right after they went to bed. It didn't even have a typo. I've been inspired in the classroom before, but never with a project for work. After my boss read it she gave me a two-pound praline and called me fantastic in a French accent.

After that I spent the night finishing a revision of one poem that's been due to an editor and working on another I started this week. Today my mom is picking up my kids at school, so I stayed here at school and finished a draft of the new poem. It's called "Breaking Curfew with the Ancient Chnese Poet." Hee Hee!

Procurer of Blurbs, or, Mom, Where Do Blurbs Come From--The Sequel

2005-04-20T17:48:00.000-07:00

A while back I posted about having a hard time deciding what to do about blurbs for my chapbook. I am well aware that a chapbook doesn't need blurbs, but I want some anyway, and I want some good ones. But I had no idea who to ask--I didn't want to rely on former teachers because I did that for my first book, and I didn't want to use a colleague, and I don't really know anybody. I was stuck.

Then I started thinking of people who might be interested in my work and 1 or 2 book poets whose work has been important to me while working on my poems. And then I just hunted down their emails and asked them, prefacing the asking with a brief statement about how important their recent work had been to me. I started with four, and all four have been receptive--I got one blurb the other day, one on the way, and two promised. I think that's pretty good.

Here's an excerpt from the first blurb, which I may have to cut down for size. I wonder of it's ok to put her name down?

The part I like best is this: "Through these landscapes wander a surprising pair of literary ghosts: French convict-poet Francois Villon, feeling thoroughly at home with his fellow sinners, and Chinese scholar poet Li Po, drunkenly searching for his lost pastoral world. It's about time that Southern "grit lit" crossed over from fiction to poetry, and Alison Pelegrin is just the poet to pull it off." Julie Kane

What is "grit lit"? Grit like grits, like girls-raised-in-the-south, like gritty? Or something else entirely?

I don't hate the South!

2005-04-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

I got an email from John H. over at Kestrel asking me to proof some proofs of mine and to please hurry up, because they are on a tight schedule. The funny thing about all of this is that these poems were accepted for realease in the 2001 issue of Kestrel, which was supposed to have a feature on New Orleans area writers. I even had to write an "intro" to my work-- I rememeber it, because all of this happened the week of my dad's funeral and the week before my first son was born, so that piece of writng was so important to me--just something to DO and keep my mind off of his body getting burnt up in the crematorium.

So I proofed the work and sent it back. No hard feelings, and it seems to be a good issue because I saw the table of contents. Pictures of New Orleans and everything. And before he acceped the work, John H. offered me some exceptional feedback.

This week I also got some great suggestions from Blackbird about a poem of mine they have accepted. Gregory D. has been one fantastic editor to me--he's given me more insight on two poems than I've had from anyone in the last four years. I'm excited that someone thought enough of the poems to write so much about them. I'm in the mood, so I'll probably address those changes tonight.

The last time I got lengthy comments from a journal years ago--the editor was protesting a poem and said I reminded him of Quentin from Absolom, Absolom: "I don't hate the south! I don't hate the south!"

Whatever. The poem was supposed to be funny. I gave a reading to a huge crowd the other day, and somebody taking notes in the front row (surely for extra credit!) asked if I was serious in such and such a poem or was I using "irony."

Tantrums

2005-04-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

I'm ashamed to admit that I was just reading an entertainment headline about the Desperate Housewives stars "flipping out" over a photo shoot. You know, who sits where, who wears what, who's on the inside flap of the magazine, etc. These women, according to the story, were really cutting up about the whole thing. And I was reading it thinking, what a bunch of babies--they should be happy that people will pay money to see them in a bathing suit, and that poets will PUSH ASIDE A DRAFT OF A POEM THAT IS GOING WELL to read about it.

It then hit me that poets and writers often behave in the same way. In my own life, I have been pulled into just this sort of controversy myself. And I am so dense that I thought all of us--and these are people I admire--were just trying to find a date that fit our schedules. What I really think is happening is that everyone is hustling for a better posiition on the program, and exclusive show . . . . whatever. My play is to duck my head and play dumb. I don't want to give up the gig, but I have no problems sharing, either.

I can't wait to see how this plays out. So mundane, and yet so interesting. I have to practice my cocktail party behavior so that I can see things in more than one dimension. Friends, that is going to take some work.

Tripping over Cobblestones

2005-04-04T17:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend was the Tennessee Williams Festival. I was a participant this year, which means I got tickets to all of the ritzy parties, which means I had a good time. On Wednesday I had a little too much fun at a party with all sorts of writers. Maybe later I'll go into the adventure I shared with Anne, Dean, and Brad, an ordeal which involved being lost and walking--IN HEELS--among the cobblestoned streets in the French Quarter for about two hours.

It was fun though, and I was giddy when I got home. I even teetered to the mailbox, and boy am I glad I did because what was inside but a letter from the guest editor of Ploughshares saying how much he loved one of my poems. At the end of the letter he wrote "You're the real deal." That's something all poets should hear now and again.

Also in my mailbox were my contributer's copies of the Cimarron Review. If I can ever figure out how to do a link I'll link to the site because my poem is featured there. Also featured is a poem by Brian Turner. I think that guy is a great writer. Maybe he'll come to the Ten. Wms Fest one year.

On Friday I intorduced Ellen Gilchrist, which is no mean feat--that intro cost me a poem and a half, I swear. And I even had Stokes on the phone helping out. Sunday I was on a boring (not my fault) poetry panel. Then I skipped out to see Dave Eggers (Eggars ?)being inteviewed by Anne at Muriel's. But we got there and it was so crowded and hot, we just left after sneaking in to tell her good luck.

I also had a poem accepted by Blackbird, which is a great online journal. Guy the editor write me a very long email with brilliant feedback on a poem I sent to them. Makes me wish I had a writing group.

Rather than Creole tomatoes, my hubby bought be a bright-painted, wooden jackalope from Mexico from the French Market. In its ears I have placed the letter from DStJ.

As Whitehead used to say, Onward.

Betcha By Golly Wow

2005-03-28T20:50:00.000-08:00

This is strange. Today I went to put my bills in the mailbox, and when I did so I noticed a sheaf of notebook papers with poems printed in cramped handwriting The paper looks as though it has been rained on, or at least left out for a few days, and the poems are numbered--there are seventeen of them, with titles like "Jealousy," Good God My Bod," and "Think About You All the Time." The lyrics sound about as you'd expect--here's a quote from "Fatal Attraction"

Fatal attraction turns my hormones/hommies (can't read word) into full throttle
Your body makes me wanna holla like a baby fo a bottle
and so on.

This is disturbing for a few reasons. One, there could be some stalker kid/student out there shoving poems into my mailbox. Two, this stalker type knows where I live. Three, and this to me is the worst case scenario--these poems fell out of some kid's notebook into the street, and some neighbor who somehow remembers that I am a poet, "returned" the work to me, which would mean that they think I write poems like this.

How else could this have wound up in my mailbox? B. says I've been outed by the mailman, who was able to figure out I am a poet by all of the manuscript envelopes back and forth. Now he wants me to critique his work.

OK--off to close my blinds.

Good News

2005-03-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, in celebration of good news, I allowed myself to go shopping. First stop--Scriptura, a stationary store. My mom gave me a gift certificate for my birthday, and I used part of it buying some beautiful blank notebooks--two from Japan with thinner-than college rule, and another from an artist/company named jill bliss. The pages are printed with beautiful illustrations of all different sorts of flowers--every few pages a different print. Too pretty to write in. But I'll besmear those pages in the very near future. I also bought two books--Jack Gilbert's new book of poems, which is amazing, and the Winter 05 issue of The Paris Review because I wanted to read the interview with Barry Hannah. Good reading all around.

The good news? I had two poems accepted by The Southern Review, "Your Psychic Powers and How to Develop Them," and "Squeezers," which is the title poem of my new chapbook.

I don't know if it's ok to quite him, so I'll just say that the editor B.L. said some very nice things about my work, things I needed to hear. My mom said, without irony, "Wow. Now you're famous!"

An Aside: I had my tw0 yeard old son with me yesterday. We had to pass in front of Ann Taylor Lof to get to the stationary store. He saw a huge picure of a model in the window, poined to her, and said "Mommy!" I kissed him about twenty times. Then, when we went inside the snotty man at Scripture followed me around as though I were going to steal something. (Remember--my hands were full of baby.)

Detail Work

2005-03-23T07:37:00.000-08:00

After my offering of green tea and a slab of sushi, an old friend of mine agreed to do the cover design for my new chapbook. Joe is detail-oriented. Here's an email he sent me yesterday:

A:
What we need to ask/find out from the publisher/you (in no particular
order):

1. Precise trim size.

2. I work in Quark. Can their printer deal with that?

3. The cover design you want won't work without coated and very white
stock. Can they/will they get this?

4. What kind of schedule do they have in mind?

5. Do they want to use a photo on the back cover? Do YOU want to use a
photo on the back cover?

N.B.: You might float the idea of flaps if you don't want your picture
on the back cover. Another alternative is a bio page (with or without
picture) at the very end of the book.

6. A thought: You might contact the Squeezers people and see if you can
get permission to use that dog image as a frontispiece. Assuming they
agree, we'd need a black-and-white glossy from them to scan. The image
on the pack of cards is too small, not to mention red.

7. You need to let me know precisely what text is to appear on the front
and back covers. This includes information about the publisher (plus any
logos), bar code, etc.

N.B.: I won't need actual blurbs yet -- just a rough idea of how many
and how long.

8. Presumably the spine will be too narrow to print on?

9. Please confirm number of colors on cover.

N.B.: Some printers treat black plus one PMS color as a one-color job.
Might be worth looking into.

10. Please confirm what kind of schedule they had in mind.

N.B.: Since you want the chapbook in print for your Fanfare reading,
we'll need to know the latest we can go to the printer and still make
that happen. (I'm sure we'll get to the printer long before that, but we
still need to know.)

11. Have they given any thought to the interior design? Cover and
interior don't have to match precisely, but it would be useful to know,
e.g., font choice and design concept so there's not a wild mismatch
between inside and outside.

12. The proper, American English spelling is "acknowledgments," not
"acknowledgements."

13. Can we do bleeds on the cover? (May not be necessary, but still it's
nice to know if we have the option.)
***
Well, that's all I can think of at the moment. I'm sure that, as soon as
I send this, something else will come to mind. If it does, you'll be the
first to know....
Cheers!
J

It's so cool to know that I am in good hands! Also, notice the blurb pressure already beginning to pile up.

Mom, Where Do Blurbs Come From?

2005-03-22T17:40:00.000-08:00

I would post about this on the WOM_PO listserv, but I don't want to put 500 people on the spot.

Someone should write an article about back-of-the-book blurb etiquette. I need a few blurbs on the back of this new chapbook, and I don't want to use any of my old ones, since they don't apply to the work in said chapbook. Also, one of my best blurbs is from a fiction writer which just seems strange. My poet colleague is out of the question, for though we exchange niceties in the hallway, there is an obvious (but unspoken) sense of competition between us.

I know some poets. I've been published in lots of places. I even have a few poet friends. But which ones am I supposed to ask to write the blurbs. I hate the thought of asking someone who is too busy to write it but too polite to say no. I don't really have any mid- or late-career poet mentors. There are a few editors who have been supportive of my work in the past, but who wants to dump more work on an editor? And I'm certainly not going to pester the poets I really admire but don't know with a stalker Manila envelope package housing a coffee-stained, footprinted version of my manuscript.

I'm sure others have opinions about blurb hierarchy--you want to get someone more accomplished than you are, right? If not, maybe I could ask my students to write blurbs for extra credit!

Perhaps I should start a new trend--a super-size author photo on the back cover (scary) or maybe a crossword puzzle or a comic strip, a treasure map, fortunes . . . .

Who knows.

If I were going to do part II to this post, it would deal with the prickly business of editing blurbs received and what to do if some one writes you a run of the mill blurb that you don't want to use. I think maybe a crossword puzzle would be better than that.

On My Desk This Morning

2005-03-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

CAUTION: Boring, mundane details follow.

I've been 'doin' bidness' so much lately that I can barely find time to read. When I get like this I also excuse myself from writing. Not cool. I had so much family stuff to do this weekend that I didn't touch the work stuff I brought home in order to keep up. So it's Monday and I'm already sinking, and I'm making things worse by taking time out to blog.

I got a message from the Dean this morning that she wants me to do a week-long writing camp over the summer. I'd get paid a lot of money. So I started making phone calls, and already it seems like this idea is too late for this camp to be feasible. Maybe next year, unless the Dean really wants to push.

Other stuff--

Student papers I have no intention of grading
A request from the Provost
Four course descriptions I need to write for this afternoon.
Reminder about a Meeting tomorrow.
Seven unsharpened pencils.
The Book You Are Here that has been traveling in my diaper bag since I bought it some time in December.
Two pairs of earrings.
Sticky-notes in every size and color.
A calendar.
A pink flamingo pen (I call it my trailer trash pen).
Shakespeare action figure (with removable quill pen).
A quarter and a dime.
A Lean Cuisine pizza.
A glass hedgehog.
Pictures of my kids.

Everything else I trashed or stuffed in a drawer on Friday.

Before I go to bed tonight I WILL finish a draft of this poem I have been writing because otherwise I'm going to lose it.

Sorry I'm so boring today.

Chocolate-Covered Peeps

2005-03-19T17:37:00.000-08:00

I have seen (and partaken of) fried twinkies, funnel cakes, blood sausage, alligator po-boys, alligator sausage, crawfish beignets, every type of meat on a stick, and who knows what else. But never before today's trip to the Junk Sale in Abita Springs have I seen chocolate covered Peeps--the chick-shaped ones in purple, yellow, and pink, presented in a pint-sized strawberry basket filled with Easter grass.

Aside from the Peeps, the junk sale was no big thrill--rebel flags, handguns, yard dolls, and long rusty swords for sale. I bought nothing, but I did take my kids to the UCM museum, which is GREAT. It's an ever-evolving walking tour resplendent with found objects. Every inch is decorated and part of the display. And the artist also does really strange taxidermy--dog with gator head attached, that sort of thing. There's also a trailer set to look like a UFO crashed into it. When you get up close and look into the windows, you see aliens dressed in human clothes--pretty funny. I snapped a picture of my oldest standing next to a gorilla dressed in a Mardi Gras ball gown.

+++++++++++++++

On a different note, I got my color done today. I and my hairdresser were feeling wild, so we went wild with my har. Nothing natural about it--blonde, deep-brown, and merlot-colored streaks at the crown. Defititely not natural looking or conservative. And I'm afraid it won't match with the outfit I am wearing to do my presentation at the Tennessee Williams Festival. Oh well. It has about ten days to calm down.

The Stick

2005-03-17T06:43:00.000-08:00

Ok--

Kelli Passed me the Stick. Here's my answers.

You're stuck inside Farenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
I'm embarassed to confess this, but I get a little flushed thinking of Manly Pointer from Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" (He smokes and cusses, and has a thing about amputees) And of course Holden Caulfield, and Ajax.

Last book you bought is: The Kite Runner, Smashed, The Writer's Idea Book

Last book you read: The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry.

What are you currently Reading? Smashed, by Koren Zailckas, The Reader Issue of The Georgia Review, and some short stories my friend Amy Ramsden sent for me to look at. Oh, and midterms.

5 books I would take to a deserted island:

20 volume OED
King James Version of the Bible
The Iliad/The Odyssey
Some sort of a Field guide
All of Shakespeare, including the sonnets

Who am I going to pass this stick on to and why:

Eduardo, because he's funny and I want to know about his crushes
Katie, because she's a talented artist and poet and seems so interesting
Adam Clay, because we've never met but share the Arkansas connection

Thank You, F- You

2005-03-16T19:21:00.000-08:00

I've been moping around for a week because I read a bad review of myself. It's must better to be unnoticed, writing poems for heaven with little or no recognition. I do not have thick skin. I cannot just shrug things off. I'm more of a backpack those grudges to the grave type.

What happened was I was reading arund in the forums at Able Muse and found a topic concerning a recent anthology in--Phoenix Rising--in which I am featured. The editor sent me a copy of this book months ago, and I was so mortified by it that I hid it somewhee in a shelf in the bathroom. The reviewer for this book had a similar, vitriolic response to the book. I was chuckling and agreeing with every slur he spit until he quoted from one of my poems and called it "awful."

Yep. That's right. Awful.

Talk about a sucker punck. There they were--four lines from my poem, which, when taken out of context with no explanation (it was a dramatic monologue in dialect, in the form of a blues song with shortened ballad stanzas), did sound pretty awful. Actually, the reviewer found the lines so awful that he spared me the discomfort of printing my name by the poem. Geesh. If I had known he thought my writing was awful I would have stopped pestering him (he's also an editor) with poems long ago.

Thus ends the F- you part of this entry. The thank you part goes out to the poet who picked my manuscript Squeezers as the winner of a chapbook contest. This person called the day after I found the review, which also happened to be the day after my 33rd birthday, to tell me I was the winner. I was very humbled when she read the judge's citation to me. You all know how I feel about 'prejection,' so I won't get any more specific unil it's formally announced.

Now for the full text of that awful poem, slanged and unworhy of the art and undesirable as it may be.

I’M GONNA LEAVE YOU, CHÈRE

Woman, one morning
you’ll open your eyes
and sweetest Pierre
will be gone—no goodbye.

I’ll be in my pirogue
out at the spot
where I hooked the fattest
bass I ever caught.

I’ll spend the day fishing
and drinking my beer
without ever wishing
I’d brung you out here.

Nighttime I’ll dock where
the lake meets the river
and dance at Tin Lizzy’s
and find a new lover.

I said I was going—
don’t make the mistake
of thinking I’ll listen
to the excuses you make:

Pierre, Pierre,
don’t leave today—
what about the fiddle
you love to play?

What about the hound dog
asleep in the yard?
Your children? Your house?
Is loving us so hard?

Pierre, come back, baby,
I’m losing my mind.
Who’s going to warm
this pear of mine?

Don’t lift your skirt up
and dance in your slip.
Don’t try to kiss me
with your voodoo lips.

My dog doesn’t love me—
you trained him to bark
at my fiddle and my footsteps
when I come home past dark.

And sex? You’re pretending
or my name ain’t Pierre—
I know what would happen
if I touched you down there.

I told you one morning
you’d open your eyes
to find sweet Pierre
had done left you. Goodbye.

Ten Poems Like Me

2005-03-04T09:46:00.000-08:00

Ok--some of the other poets are listing ten poems that would serve as an introduction of themselves to the world. Already I'm confused--is the idea to list ten favorite poems, or ten poems that, for whatever reason, are like you in some way. I'm going to try to make a list of the latter, with the understanding that the poems on the list would fluctuate day to day, depending on mood, outlook, etc.

So here are poems that seem to fit me today, in no particular order.

Robert Burns: "To a Mouse"
Francois Villon: "In this Whorehouse where We Hold Our State" (An untitled ballade from The Testament translated by Galway Kinnell.
James Wright: "As I Step over a Puddle at the End of Winter, I Think of the Ancient Chinese Governor"
Barbara Hamby: Any one of her odes, esp. from her new book Babel
Elizabeth Bishop: "Under the Window: Ouro Peurto"
Li Po: Drinking with the Moon (?) Not sure of translator--it's from the Norton World Lit--I think it could be Arthur Waley.
Andrew Hudgins: "Praying Drunk"
Gwendolyn Brooks: "We Real Cool"
Ai: "The Cockfighter's Daughter"
e. e. cummings: "Buffalo Bill's"

I have no idea how these poems are connected. Either they make me snicker, or shiver, or both.

Writers Friends and S--t at Work.

2005-03-03T11:52:00.000-08:00

This week has not been a great one. As usual, I have taken on too much responsibility at work without even stopping to consider how I will finish everything. Then there's the work that certain *&^^%*!s dump on me.

It is so tempting to drop this job. I am underappreciated, underpaid, overworked, underrecognized. There is asbestos in my office, there is asbestos dust on my poetry notebook, and I have been slighted two times this week. But--I have my kids in this montessori school I wouldn't be able to afford otherwise, and despite all this, I still care very much about my students, even when they don't show the kind of enthusiasm they should when I talk about Whitman and Dickinson as I have been for the last few days.

A few of them make up for the rest. I have this one brilliant student who is a trumpet player. The other day he said,"Walt Whitman is kind of like Miles Davis--they both pull everything into their poetry/music."

Really, it's hard to argue with that.

Last night I heard from an old friend who had been in Thailand for the most part of a year. I had no idea. How is it possible to have a friend in Thailand and not even know about it. Welcome back AR! I thought she was joking, and that when she said ". . . . and then I went to Thailand" she was using Thailand as a metaphor. She came back just before Christmas because she got run over with a mo-ped.

Ah, writer friends.

Poems about the Muse

2005-02-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

Can anybody think of poems addressed to the muse or invoking the muse? I'm looking for contemporary examples, but I'm drawing a complete blank. The reason I ask is that I'm having my American Lit students create a mini anthology this semester. It's an assignment I've never done before, so I thought I'd make up an example for them this weekend.

As I flip though books and think about this, I think that often a poet turns the subject of the poem into the muse--I'm thinking of apostrophe in general, Kock's New Addresses in particular. I feel comfortable asserting that many books--I'll use my book, The Zydeco Tablets, as an example--have a single/primary/central source of inspiration.

When I say muse, I also mean he-muses. I have a he-muse.

I appreciate the comments I've had so far--I'm looking to create a blogroll so that I can link to the sites I visit, but I'm a little slow at this and keep messing it up.

Soon!

Are Writers Lazy?

2005-02-23T11:15:00.000-08:00

I can remember the good old days, before children and a full time job, when I could spend the whole day doing nothing but getting ready to write. I'd wake up, get dressed, teach a class, maybe meet my hubby for coffee or something, and usually I'd be back at home before lunch with the rest of the day left "to write."

Now that I have so little time, I frequently try to remember exactly how I squandered three years in Arkansas and another six months in Livingston Parish. During my writing time I would stare out the window, pace through the apartment with ants in my pants, unable to sit at the desk, walk a few blocks to the florist to get a single flower for the vase on my desk, walk to the coffee shop for coffee, stop in the bead shop. . . Once I spent an entire afternoon in the car driving from gourmet store to gourmet stoere (few of these in Arkansas) looking for some kind of cheese I needed for a recipe.

I know some people would argue that all of these activities are necessary for the writer, that a poem is brewing inside of me even if I am not actually writing it down, that these types of activities are part of my education and so on. But I can't let myself believe that. I think I was being lazy. I would kill for that time now, those days when I would pussyfoot around until late afternoon and then finally drag out the notebook.

That line I always give about being a slow writer isn't evn halfway true. I waste a lot of time.

In my defense though, I feel the need to add that when I do have something going I drop EVERYTHING and devote myself to the poem.