Spotlight on...

[Tzara]

You're going as an FBI agent. How cool is that?

I just love that Armani gray sharkskin double vent jacket with that bold FBI in broad gold letters across the back. Sean John is, like, envious.

But our spotlight is on BJ. Oddly, she doesn't cower at all, but rather seems to enjoy the spot. Maybe it's the strip club music in the background. Philosophical question: Just what kind of music would a Kansass strip club play? Take This Job and Shove It? Carry on My Wayward Son? Golly, I certainly hope not.

According to Wikipedia, not always the most reliable of sources, Bird started out in KC, though prolly on the MO side. Close enough, I think.

Hell, I'd take that as a gimme, were I from there.

 

[Eluard]

Hello dear,

okay yes. Here is the Story.

I was told early on that it might be very difficult for me to conceive. I was not attached to the idea of making a new human; i figured if a new soul wanted to choose me then it would maybe happen eventually if I tried. Both my mates have vasectomies, one for 18 years and one for 11 years. So when we found out We Were Pregnant, it was quite a surprise, to say the least. (and no, at that particular time, there were no other potential candidates). All I said was, hey, maybe it's time to think about trying to have a child if I ever want to have one. within three months, there she was.

The pregnancy was blissful and beautiful. I was healthier and more vibrant than I ever have been, or ever will be. Rain Michael, whose name and gender I knew before two months had passed, was also completely healthy in every way, all the way through the pregnancy.

The time of carrying her was the most ecstatic and amazing time in my life. My central injury is this: I know that I will never, ever be that happy again. Ever. Continuing to stay on this planet under those circumstances has been a challenge. I stay because there are still ways that I can be Of Use to the World, and because there are people who would be in great pain if I chose to leave, and I will not put them through that. Those are the only two reasons I stay now.

She chose to leave, for reasons unknown, during her birth. I was in blissful labor at home, floating in an actual heated swimming pool that my engineer mate had manifested in the new nursery, and suddenly there was something Terribly Wrong. I was at the hospital within 6 minutes, but she was already gone. Had I already been at the hospital, they may have been able to do a c-section but she would have been gone anyway. She weighed nearly ten pounds. i was in labor for another 12 hours after that, because that is what had to happen. She had black hair and blue eyes, and there was no visible cause for her departure; she simply decided not to stay.

I chose to not see her after her birth, since I wanted to remember her distinct and extraordinary voice in my head, rather than the empty shell I delivered after that day of hell in the hospital. I am not the same person I was. Everything that I was before her existence was burned away during that time I spent in that particular room. All three of her Parents endured the darkest purgatory there, and we are not the same creatures. We are transformed, burned, simplified. But we have stayed together and we help each other. She died on the 12th of June 2003 and was born on the 13th. She is buried in her own grove on my land. People who love us come to that grove regularly and leave beads and stones and mobiles and wind chimes in the trees. A landscaper friend is building a meditation garden nearby.

Whenever I tell that story I always add this: there was a website that saved my life, and every one needs to know about it, just in case. One million infants die every year. That's two million bereaved parents. Every year. Anyone who knows one should send them here:

http://www.nationalshareoffice.com/index.shtml

I do not exaggerate when I say that those people kept me on this planet.

Let's move on, shall we? And listen: seriously, thank you for asking. Mamas like me would love to talk about our children except that we often feel like Frankenstein when we do, so we just don't. Rain was extraordinary, and she has changed my life and made me far more Useful than I was. I'm proud of her. I think she could still save the world someday.

Anyway.



Good Lord (as it were) did I do that? I honestly don't remember that. It would be the height of hybris, and I hope I haven't indulged. But just in case I have in fact claimed to be able to prove that God Exists (really, I think it's a completely individual thing, so just because there's a Divine in my life doesn't mean you have one or that I can prove you do... but okay, I'll try this too, even though I really would like you to find those moments of Brass Balls in which I have said that and quote them to me...)

Alright then, I offer this. Nobody told me this spotlight thing would include Proving There's A God. But here we go. This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote a while back. For what it's worth, this piece has been published in two different minor rags. This particular essay had to do with my various insane attempts to establish a garden on my land in the country. I quote:

***
I may harvest only lessons and stories from this year’s garden, unless by some ridiculously small chance the basil and cucumbers survive the next four deadly months, with their potato bugs, turtles, rabbits, puppies, grasshoppers, moles, deer, raccoons, hail, 70-mph winds, 110-degree heat, and the rest of the uncountable obstacles to the dewy perfection of a prize vegetable.

But I realize that I have come to understand the vegetable after all, in its only important characteristic: that it is utterly miraculous, just like me. That a single cucumber seed can open itself in the dark and invent a new creature, a root that digs and drinks, that it can destroy itself and emerge from the ground wearing its old self, its own old skin, and then shake that off too and open two perfect leaves like supplicant hands to the bright and unimaginable sky. That in time and against all odds it can invent leaves, a vine, a stem, a solid system of roots, that it creates a blossom and finds a way to attract pollinators and then allows that truly beautiful thing to die and fall also, in hopes that the bud underneath will be given a chance to swell with water and ripen in the sun, full of seeds and ready to be carried off and transformed into itself again.

This is the miracle, the only true thing about the vegetable and the vegetable world. It is real and unreal, completely beyond our imagination, beyond our ability to duplicate except in the solid intelligence of our own cells. The cucumber, like me, is an utter impossibility.Yet here we both are, normal, essentially unimportant and completely mortal, growing our beautiful and disorderly way toward the sun.

***end quote***

I offer only this. The cucumber, the tomato, prove the existence of a Higher Intelligence because they ARE a higher intelligence. Not something external, not a God who Makes Our Tomatoes For Us. The Vegetable Itself. That is "god". That is what I would "worship" if I were in the habit of worshiping things. The incredible perfection of nature itself, the immense and unimaginable and unduplicatable Pattern that we take much for granted. God is a salad. God is a Cucumber, a Tomato, the plants that make those miraculous things happen. God is the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.

(O that Dylan. For that line alone, the man is a complete fucking genius and will spend his eternity in Poet Heaven.)

But I digress. (I decided a while back that that's what's going on my tombstone, if I have one: "BUT I DIGRESS".)

The fact that a thing, a phenomenon like the existence of a tomato, is Understood to a particular level does not negate its mystery and divinity. Sure, we know all about tomatoes. We can describe the process of their creation to the most minute elements of chemistry and physics. We "understand" tomatoes now.

Fine. Go make one. All by yourself, without the special tool of the seed that is provided for you by the Sacred Divine Tomato. You know where it comes from, how it grows, what mechanisms are in place for the plant to ingest energy, to eat nothing but water and sun and dirt and from them manifest the various aspects of that lovely belladonna variant, the skin, the flesh, the seeds. You "know" everything about a tomato. So make one.

Sparkle poof, my darling. There's your divinity. So at your breakfast tomorrow, Eat God. And be sure to say thank you. Just try it. What could it hurt?

Now, a disclaimer. I offer ONLY proof of my own divinity. I desire to recruit no one; I do not proselytize. That I worship tomatoes and cucumbers is my own gig, and I have no church for you to join, so I don't offer any of this as proof of the existence of YOUR divinity, or any divinity in any universe except that which exists within my own personal carnival ride. If you like the whole Tomato God thing, by all means explore it, but my rationale is my own and will melt like Jukkasjarvi in a Kansas August if held to any sort of rational philosophical standard.

I think that's just about enough of me for the moment. I'm going to go think about how we know a "poem" is "finished" and what makes one truly erotic.

Yum.
Or more to the point, Yab Yum.

bijou

Thanks for that very honest answer.

 

[Eluard]

(If you can answer number seven, please tell me via PM. El would want to publish a good answer to that.)

El. already has an answer to that — that is what his book is about.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Drunk, I hope.



So, hey. You gonna answer my questions or not?

The first one is serious. The others are gravy. (If you can answer number seven, please tell me via PM. El would want to publish a good answer to that.)

Patience, mr. smartypants. I've been busy making a living all night -- and not the way you think, but rather teaching a class. Now I'm going to go have a beer with my husband, who I have not seen for two days, and then I'm all yours for the rest of the evening. And I'm going to ask him about your sets question. So there.

bj

 

[Tzara]

El. already has an answer to that — that is what his book is about.

I kinda thought you might. Two words: Amazon URL?

Diffrunt question. Will I unnerstand it? (Yeah, I know, not. Don't unnerstand even Euclid, fer God's sakes, and you don't get more basic than that. The question is, will I understand enough to make back the cost of the book?)

 

[Eluard]

I kinda thought you might. Two words: Amazon URL?

I have the two words but I don't know what you mean by them!! (Must be having a "thick day".)

Edit: Oh I see what you mean — I missed that question mark. No, I am still writing. Have thirty pages to go and 200 or so pages written. All in bee-U-tiful LaTeX.

Diffrunt question. Will I unnerstand it? (Yeah, I know, not. Don't unnerstand even Euclid, fer God's sakes, and you don't get more basic than that. The question is, will I understand enough to make back the cost of the book?)

Oh yes, you'll understand it — and it has interesting implications for computer science. (Which, btw, I am not competent to pursue, as things now stand!)

(There's nothing very easy about Euclid. That was distilling several hundred years of geometry and arithmetic. — No one thinks Euclid invented all that himself.)

 

[Tzara]

I have the two words but I don't know what you mean by them!! (Must be having a "thick day".) Translation: Can I buy it? And Where?

Oh yes, you'll understand it — and it has interesting implications for computer science. (Which, btw, I am not competent to pursue, as things now stand!)

Don't be too sure. My training was in psychology. What I know about computer science is spit and mirrors. My job is to just convince people to buy stuff.

(There's nothing very easy about Euclid. That was distilling several hundred years of geometry and arithmetic. — No one thinks Euclid invented all that himself.)

What I meant, which was probably clumsily expressed, was that I kind of understood my junior high school geometry. My reference to Russell's Antinomy was a joke. You're like way beyond me there, as I knew you'd be.

Can you tape cricket for me? I can't get it here. Don't understand it, but love the game.

Yeah, yeah. Non sequitur.

 

[Eluard]

I have the two words but I don't know what you mean by them!! (Must be having a "thick day".) Translation: Can I buy it? And Where?

Don't be too sure. My training was in psychology. What I know about computer science is spit and mirrors. My job is to just convince people to buy stuff.What I meant, which was probably clumsily expressed, was that I kind of understood my junior high school geometry. My reference to Russell's Antinomy was a joke. You're like way beyond me there, as I knew you'd be.

Can you tape cricket for me? I can't get it here. Don't understand it, but love the game.

Yeah, yeah. Non sequitur.

Ah, nix on the cricket, my friend. Do you know how much tape one would have to use to get a 4 day game — or even just a one-dayer!

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I've decided to move this little section of a post into its own post, partly because I was thinking about doing so anyway, since there were really two separate essays there, and partly because I just want to prove to Tzara that I haven't been slacking in here just because I didn't answer his questions within ten minutes. Listen buddy, I was up til 3:30 a.m. proving the existence of a tomato god, so you just need to have a little patience with me.

Eluard wrote:
Oh and an addendum:
you've mentioned several times being able to offer convincing proof of a divinity: just curious what that might be?

Good Lord (as it were) did I do that? I honestly don't remember that. It would be the height of hybris, and I hope I haven't indulged. But just in case I have in fact claimed to be able to prove that God Exists (really, I think it's a completely individual thing, so just because there's a Divine in my life doesn't mean you have one or that I can prove you do... but okay, I'll try this too, even though I really would like you to find those moments of Brass Balls in which I have said that and quote them to me...)

Alright then, I offer this. Nobody told me this spotlight thing would include Proving There's A God. But here we go. This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote a while back. For what it's worth, this piece has been published in two different minor rags. This particular essay had to do with my various insane attempts to establish a garden on my land in the country. I quote:

***
I may harvest only lessons and stories from this year’s garden, unless by some ridiculously small chance the basil and cucumbers survive the next four deadly months, with their potato bugs, turtles, rabbits, puppies, grasshoppers, moles, deer, raccoons, hail, 70-mph winds, 110-degree heat, and the rest of the uncountable obstacles to the dewy perfection of a prize vegetable.

But I realize that I have come to understand the vegetable after all, in its only important characteristic: that it is utterly miraculous, just like me. That a single cucumber seed can open itself in the dark and invent a new creature, a root that digs and drinks, that it can destroy itself and emerge from the ground wearing its old self, its own old skin, and then shake that off too and open two perfect leaves like supplicant hands to the bright and unimaginable sky. That in time and against all odds it can invent leaves, a vine, a stem, a solid system of roots, that it creates a blossom and finds a way to attract pollinators and then allows that truly beautiful thing to die and fall also, in hopes that the bud underneath will be given a chance to swell with water and ripen in the sun, full of seeds and ready to be carried off and transformed into itself again.

This is the miracle, the only true thing about the vegetable and the vegetable world. It is real and unreal, completely beyond our imagination, beyond our ability to duplicate except in the solid intelligence of our own cells. The cucumber, like me, is an utter impossibility.Yet here we both are, normal, essentially unimportant and completely mortal, growing our beautiful and disorderly way toward the sun.

***end quote***

I offer only this. The cucumber, the tomato, prove the existence of a Higher Intelligence because they ARE a higher intelligence. Not something external, not a God who Makes Our Tomatoes For Us. The Vegetable Itself. That is "god". That is what I would "worship" if I were in the habit of worshiping things. The incredible perfection of nature itself, the immense and unimaginable and unduplicatable Pattern that we take much for granted. God is a salad. God is a Cucumber, a Tomato, the plants that make those miraculous things happen. God is the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.

(O that Dylan. For that line alone, the man is a complete fucking genius and will spend his eternity in Poet Heaven.)

But I digress. (I decided a while back that that's what's going on my tombstone, if I have one: "BUT I DIGRESS".)

The fact that a thing, a phenomenon like the existence of a tomato, is Understood to a particular level does not negate its mystery and divinity. Sure, we know all about tomatoes. We can describe the process of their creation to the most minute elements of chemistry and physics. We "understand" tomatoes now.

Fine. Go make one. All by yourself, without the special tool of the seed that is provided for you by the Sacred Divine Tomato. You know where it comes from, how it grows, what mechanisms are in place for the plant to ingest energy, to eat nothing but water and sun and dirt and from them manifest the various aspects of that lovely belladonna variant, the skin, the flesh, the seeds. You "know" everything about a tomato. So make one.

Sparkle poof, my darling. There's your divinity. So at your breakfast tomorrow, Eat God. And be sure to say thank you. Just try it. What could it hurt?

Now, a disclaimer. I offer ONLY proof of my own divinity. I desire to recruit no one; I do not proselytize. That I worship tomatoes and cucumbers is my own gig, and I have no church for you to join, so I don't offer any of this as proof of the existence of YOUR divinity, or any divinity in any universe except that which exists within my own personal carnival ride. If you like the whole Tomato God thing, by all means explore it, but my rationale is my own and will melt like Jukkasjarvi in a Kansas August if held to any sort of rational philosophical standard.

I think that's just about enough of me for the moment. I'm going to go think about how we know a "poem" is "finished" and what makes one truly erotic.

Yum.
Or more to the point, Yab Yum.

bijou

 

[Tzara]

I've decided to move this little section of a post into its own post, partly because I was thinking about doing so anyway, since there were really two separate essays there, and partly because I just want to prove to Tzara that I haven't been slacking in here just because I didn't answer his questions within ten minutes. Listen buddy, I was up til 3:30 a.m. proving the existence of a tomato god, so you just need to have a little patience with me.

I am your humble patient, sweet.
Or sweet I 'm while you humble me.
Perhaps you hum blow me. That's neat.
I'm thought of dead. Photographique.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Really? OK, then:

You only did this because you know what a complete moron I am with the whole quote mechanism.

But I have figured it out. So there.

What's this G. M. Hopkins fetish about?

My first answer is that I love him for the same reason that I love Leonard Cohen. He is so much of what he is. He is the archetype of himself.

I admire shameless exuberance. Even when it skirts the dangerous edge of Awful. I skirt that edge myself on a regular basis. And sometimes I plunge straight over the edge without even slowing down.

"Trochee" is a trochee. Why is "iamb" a trochee and not an iamb? Why is "anapest" a dactyl?

Iamb is actually an iamb. No one knows that because it's been hidden from us by the 440,000 Lemurian Illuminati. It's disguised because if poets went around just casually saying the name of god, all surreal hell would break loose.
The Templars have all the documents proving this fact and predicting what will happen when it is revealed, and they are saving them until 2011, when they plan to form a baseball team, the Boston Templars, win the World Series and announce this revolutionary fact on ESPN during the post-game interviews.

Anapest is a dactyl because someone had to volunteer, since dactyl couldn't be one himself, even in the adjectival form. Anapest is generous about its own identity and dactyls have understandably low self-esteem.

When you sit down at one of those table settings with the multiple forks, what's the one at the top of the plate for?

The fork at the top of the plate is currently said to be the "piscine fork," used only when some form of seafood looks gelatinous and unpleasant enough that it may still be alive. In this case, the piscine fork is used to finish off the fish course by stabbing it in the heart before it can get to your salad.

However, the piscine fork has a much more ancient usage. During the Early Norman period, soldiers at dinner would finish off their meal with a game played with an early version of our modern deck of playing cards, using only the court cards and the odd numbers. The game resembled our modern version of "Spoons" in which at a certain point in each round players must lunge for the pile of spoons in the middle of the table, and the one left without a spoon loses the round.

The Norman version, often played by the huscarls during long campaigns, was a far more brutal game, played with forks and occasionally with short daggers. During the more sophisticated 12th century, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who deeply appreciated some of the more brutish masculine traits, provided her huscarls with bronze forks when they did particularly well in a battle, especially when she was at war with Henry. She also established a Christmas dinner tradition of laying forks along the tops of the plates, as a subtle statement about the violent and underhanded proclivities of her sons.

If I have $5000 in a taxable account, are TIPS a better investment than an S&P 500 index fund? Over what time frame?

You're talking about "money", aren't you?

I believe in tipping hugely, especially when one is traveling. It brings good fortune.

What's that knocking at the gate stuff in Macbeth really about, anyway?

It's a metaphor for sex. It always is. At least in my universe.

Is there ever a good time to draw to an inside straight?

I am frequently drawn to straights. Bless their hearts, they mean well. And they are often inside, which is convenient, since the environment is more easily controlled. They do like their creature comforts.

I have only ever played poker with a computer, when I was about 9 and Dad brought home a fun thing called a PET. It was like a typewriter with a TV screen attached. I'd put in the cassette tape that said "poker" and there it would be with a row of cards all laid out for me. It always won.

I'd be a terrible poker player anyway. My understanding is that you're not supposed to show your cards to other people and ask for advice, and that's just not my style.

Is the set of all sets that are not members of themselves a member of its own set or not?

I have sent this particular question to my committee. The answer will be forthcoming within a day or two.

Why do I dislike Wordsworth's poetry so much?

Because of this.

Who is John Galt?

John Galt was Lord Byron's secret gay lover. Despite their falling out over Byron's having borrowed a particularly expensive pair of garters from Galt and then losing them in the Hellespont, Galt wrote a fawning biography of Byron, which had to be virtually rewritten from scratch by his eventual publishers because it contained a shocking number of references to Byron's reportedly impressive masculine organ.

There now. Off to listen to some Leonard. He makes me want to lay on the floor.

bijou

 

[foehn2]

"Poetry Reading (Ants)" was entirely stupid.

I'm trying to think of a question to ask you, bijou. I'm failing. You supercede gender, stereotype, culture. The clarity of your writing is stupendous, marvelous, unequaled.

You say, bijou, you care little about publication. I nod and agree. However, it's selfish to keep jewels in a closed box. I like to see the sparkling.

Thanks for being here.

/tom

 

[ghost_girl]

"Poetry Reading (Ants)" was entirely stupid.

I'm trying to think of a question to ask you, bijou. I'm failing. You supercede gender, stereotype, culture. The clarity of your writing is stupendous, marvelous, unequaled.

You say, bijou, you care little about publication. I nod and agree. However, it's selfish to keep jewels in a closed box. I like to see the sparkling.

Thanks for being here.

/tom

yep, foehn, I totally agree. She should stop being selfish and publish her work hear that Lady?

there are places that would snatch your work up at first read. Oh, and some of them pay real money! A bunch of us began submitting our work about, lets see, maybe 3 years ago and well, you are very good, and we have links ( shhhhhh).

There is something in the cyber water here. This place has bred poets of extraordinary talent, or just helps unleash it, whatever the reason, you found this place, you really should submit.

now that I think about it, isn't it kind of weird? I mean, 3 pushcart nominees, hundreds of poems in really good places from about a dozen of us that seem to have been spawned on a porn site. I think it happened because we trust each other and help each other and most people dont have this kind of support for their work in the real world, ya know?


We're probably gonna annoy you until you do, so just do it, lol.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

If y'all don't stop this uncontrolled ego-boosting my friends are going to have to have an intervention and stick pins in me.

Thank you. Seriously.

Okay, here is the Dark Truth. I have published. Quite a bit, in fact. I have poetry in five or six different magazines and three small anthologies, and non-fiction in a number of others. Perhaps the most well-known is a two-year essay series that was picked up and re-printed by a second magazine.

Very little of it is on line in its original publications; much of that happened before on-line magazines were really happening. Anyway, I really like paper. But here's the Terrible Secret part of it: I have never submitted. Everything I have published has been requested of me, and i have merely said yes.

Case in point. I used to hang out at this artsy-fartsy coffee shop to do my writing and schoolwork, back when I was a fiery english major studying Dead White Men of the Middle Ages. (or was that Middle Aged White Men of ... wait...) This particular coffee shop was rather a haven for artists and spooks like me, and at one point an anthology was published based on the people who hung out at this shop. I was approached and asked for some poetry. I gave them a few pieces and they printed them. Same-same with the essay series and the poetry in other mags and anthologies. I've never submitted anything.

Non-fiction example: a woman came into my shop a few years back with a free New-Age-type newspaper she was trying to promote in our area. It was based in Minnesota or something, and was a rather typical 25-page newsprint thing that came out quarterly. Articles on familiars and angelic guides, ads for candle shops and stuff like that. She saw that I was selling little chapbooks of my own work (yes, I went through that phase) and said that they desperately needed competent writers for short articles for their paper. I wrote for them for a while, little 1000-word riffs on Feng Shui and temple sleep in Greece and stuff. They loved me because they could call me at the last minute and ask me to fill some piece of space and I'd give them 800 words on this or 1200 on that within a week. But I was rather a thorn for them because I never managed to come up with one of those mystical, soft-focus author's head shots they liked to print with the articles.

I have produced three full collections of poetry and fiction and once I get my shit together there will be a fourth. I have a 16-essay series ready to re-print as an actual book. They are all on PDF files on disc somewhere at my father's house, since there was a point when I just wanted all that shit OFF of me so I sent it all to him with instructions to make scads of money with them after my death. I'm sure he could find them if he looked hard enough.

In fact, I have a publication resume as long as my arm, starting with the high school literary magazines and including such obscurities as a two-volume anthology specifically focused on sacred sexuality.

There came a point when someone around here asked if they could see more of my work, and I thought maybe it was dumb that very little of it is available for people to see. So I created a couple of MySpace pages, since that is within my technical scope, and put everything I've every written up on line in there.

The three main places in which I have published the most are all magazines that are now defunct. Only one of them now has an on-line version and I've chosen not to give them the right to reprint the essay series, for various reasons.

I don't know why I bother to be at all cautious anymore, so I'll just put the links in here.

Here you'll find the entire essay series, Letters from Thistle Hill, along with updates to the activities of our rather out-of-control fundraising group, Tribe Threee: myspace.com/tribethreee

Here you'll find about half the poetry collections, in a page dedicated to my daughter and the mandala that was painted in her honor:
myspace.com/100daughters

Here you'll find the rest of the words:
myspace.com/thirdeyesadie

MySpace is juvenile and a huge pain in the ass, but it's technology I can work with so that's where it all is.

As to submission, well... I just can't quite bring myself. Maybe I'm spoiled, maybe i'm too much of a dom, or maybe i just have a fear of failure or something.

I dunno. But I've got words out there, if that matters, so there ya go.

thank you, again, sincerely, for those wonderful comments. I'm stunned and honored.

bijou

 

[Angeline]

If y'all don't stop this uncontrolled ego-boosting my friends are going to have to have an intervention and stick pins in me.

Thank you. Seriously.

<snip>

Bijou, I have to agree with g_g that you should start submitting again. You know your poetry will be accepted, most likely in pretty hard-to-get journals if you keep submitting. And even if you didn't know where you wanted to send them, lots of writers here know (from study or their own publication) which places would likely be interested in which poems. For me, that has been one of the best reasons to stick around here. Our collective publishing intelligence is broad, and we support each other with suggestions (if not serious prodding).

I knew you were published already. I've followed a few of your links, but more important, I can tell from reading your work that it has the kind of polish and--well--editorial solidness that only comes from craft and success.

And I wonder how many of us are published outside the field of poetry. I am. If one were to google my married name, he or she would get pages of hits because I'm much more published in education research and literacy studies than I've ever been in poetry. C'est la vie. I tried harder then.

If you're not sure where to submit some of your poems, let us bug you about it if you like. We're so good at that, especially monkey-man. (Sorry, but I fell under the lazy emote spell years ago, and the crutch is really comfortable now.)

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Y'know, what I need is an agent. Someone needs to come and take all my work away from me and send it places and get it offa me. I'd pay good money for somebody to do that, seriously. Even if the poems didn't actually bring money in, I'd still pay good money, just to get the weight off. And shiny things. Don't forget shiny things.

I have not forgotten about the cool questions: When is a poem "finished", what makes one erotic, and what my process is. I'm bashing on some ideas for those but it's being a nutty week and I want to do them justice.

Soon.

bijou

 

[Angeline]

Y'know, what I need is an agent. Someone needs to come and take all my work away from me and send it places and get it offa me. I'd pay good money for somebody to do that, seriously. Even if the poems didn't actually bring money in, I'd still pay good money, just to get the weight off. And shiny things. Don't forget shiny things.

I have not forgotten about the cool questions: When is a poem "finished", what makes one erotic, and what my process is. I'm bashing on some ideas for those but it's being a nutty week and I want to do them justice.

Soon.

bijou

Take your time. I know those questions in particular don't have easy answers, but they're important ones to me. When I have the opportunity to ask them of a good writer, who obviously thinks about them, I don't mind waiting for answers. Anyway, this thread is a lot of fun. I certainly don't mind if we're all schlumping around in here for three weeks.

 

[twelveoone]

unpredictablebijou. Yes, her.



Her gods counsel her...
by unpredictablebijou©


Her gods counsel her as she waits for a letter:

This is the price of passions, says Buddha
Unrequited love is most powerful.
He sips his macchiato, adds milk
to preserve the balance.
You must make peace with this
dichotomy; ecstasy and anguish are the same.
You must encompass them, or be lost in your own
jagged mountains.
He manifests his Nature in a biscotti to distract me;
I manage a smile.
He sighs, points at me with his spoon:
Climb the ladder then, if that's your answer
Stand on one foot for twelve years, arms raised, waiting for word.
Throw yourself into a bonfire and translate that way.
But taste this first: it's a Peruvian dark roast.
If you must live in bittersweets, after all…

I don't know, he says. You talk to her.
Freyja smiles, brushes my hair off my face.
You need a trim, baby; your bangs are getting long.
Think of it, she says, as a simple force.
Love exists independent of its object; it’s a tidal thing.
Be in love with the moon now;
let this be your good luck charm, just
a way to become full. Let them be figures in a dream.
What you have is real enough; already this memory,
an independent genesis. Stop hurting yourself with time.

Poor thing, she croons. Fidelity is so new to you, and
desire such a fierce familiar. If I told you more
you'd ignore this purification, live outside yourself.
You haven't touched your hot chocolate.
She warms it with a fingertip.

Skunk grows impatient. Just tell her everything,
he says, tell her right now, and see where that gets her.
It won't matter anyway, and maybe she'd be better company.
He glares at me. You know she loves this, secretly; she's wearing it
like a stripe, like a Hawaiian hair shirt. All this poetry and agony, he spits,
for a season, for biology and basic heat.

You know it's more than that, says Freyja. She licks
steamed milk from her diamond fingernails.
You see she's on new ground here. Old ground,
grunts Skunk. The oldest.

As they leave,
Skunk gives me a new pen.
Buddha leaves the floor strewn with lotus blossoms;
the barista scowls and brings a broom.
Freyja last, kisses
her fingertip and touches it to my lips.
Speak plainly, she says, and let it go
like a wave over you. I know the coffee
has a scent like civet and every
ripe plum catches your eye
so stop waiting. We'll be your lovers, and this food
and this moon and this ticking clock, this rich moment.
Try not to worry.

Corybantes bus the table, sweep
falcon feathers and jewels
into a dusty pile. I leave an extra dollar,
carry my paper cup away like a grail.

Buddha, Freyja? Frigg, where are the dwaves? Love it. Rich.
PS
A poem is never finished, only abandoned. - Paul Valery
PSS
Above mentioned trio (and dwaves) appear in one of my unfinished, abandoned monstrosities, (so do about 50 other people) just mentioning it because it is comforting to know someone else would put these two together, and I get lonely wherever I'm at

No questions, great stuff, great sense of the absurd, riotious.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Thanks twelvie!

I have time today, a little bit, to talk about the writing process. This is a major holiday for me so I'll be off for a bit till tomorrow.

I've already talked a little bit about how I write in the little thing I wrote for the poet's intro thread (the link is below as the bio).

I write as often as I get a chance to do so and less often than I'd like. But if I don't get a few hours time to sit down and scrawl, ideally late at night, at least two or three times a week, I get sorta crazy. Mad ideas run round in my head and become preoccupying and I feel as if I empty them out when I write, whether or not I'm writing about those particular ideas.

Case in point: last weekend during the business trip I became really entranced by this image I kept having of the city as a sphere in which all human experience was occurring simultaneously, somewhere nearby. I posted that up here as a blog as soon as I got a chance to sit down and make words about it. And since I didn't have a chance to sit down with that idea during the trip itself, it made me sort of crazy for a few days. It became harder to focus on what was supposed to be important: buying the rocks, making sure I spent the right amounts of money, reminding myself to eat food regularly, that sort of thing.

As the trip progressed and I had to stay busy in the Real World, I just wanted to sit down and try this exercise where I wrapped my mind around the whole thing at once, let my consciousness spread out for a mile or two and listened to all the people having their essential stories. This idea of how important people are within their own stories, how individualized and complete and unique and central every personal universe is, and how many personal universes are crammed into a very small space in a city, just blows my damn mind. But I've expressed all that over there already.

It's not always that linear, but there's often some sensation or idea or phrase that's running around, and by the time I sit down with a journal it's the words that come out first. Sometimes I think in terms of a particular meter, and just word-salad individual lines in that rhythm for a few pages. Sometimes I focus on weird form exercises - nine-syllable lines, or lines that begin or end with a particular letter, or whatever. It's the unchecked Finnegan's Wake of my personal brain, filtered through the hand.

Most of my journals are a mix of every possible writing exercise. There is a great deal of free-association - the goal is just to keep the pen moving. There are attempts at forms, exercises. There are little messages I'd like to deliver to people, reports of dream images, phrases that get stuck in my head, that sort of thing.

Okay, here's an important thing, I think. Back when I first learned about the concept of free-association, when I was in some junior high writing class, I got very excited and began practicing that. I slavishly scrawled down every thought that occurred in my head. As I read through those journals, I often noticed that there were a lot of negative thoughts, which is normal. "I can't think of anything to write," or "This is going nowhere today," or whatever. I decided, with the efficiency of an 11-year-old, that writing all that took up too much space on the page, so I'd just write a star whenever I had an idea like that, instead of wasting time writing those exact phrases down. For a while, the journals were full of stars, but as I ceased to validate those ideas when they came up, I shifted the habit, and soon I wasn't wasting time with those thoughts. My writing improved greatly. I did a far smarter thing that I realized at the time, breaking that habit.

I have some strong opinions about the sort of self-deprecatory negativity I see poets indulging in routinely. We (and by we I mean you) constantly insult our own work. I could quote some folks around here, even, if I wanted to name names. I won't... for now. But y'all need to just give that up. There are several sources for that bad habit, which include low confidence, a need to be validated, insecurity and worst of all, our bullshit cultural lesson that teaches us that it's good and polite to cut ourselves down. (Ladies, think about that next time you're in a restroom comparing hair and noses and figures with the women around you. Watch those women cut their bodies wide open and rip themselves to shreds as a politeness to the other women. And then resolve to at least treat your body as well as you might treat a dog on the street - quit kicking it and insulting it and verbally abusing it. Please.)

But I digress.

We're talking about that instinct as it applies to poetry. And someday, when I'm the empress of the world, I'm going to come in here and declare a month long moratorium on all that ridiculous crap: "Here's my awful poem, you're so much better than I am," and so on.

I'm just as insecure about my work as anyone. Most of what I write is not that great, but that's because most of what I write is an early draft or an exercise or a free-association. I pull what is valuable out of that, trust my instincts, and just bravely fly the fucking kite. It's come to my attention over the years that with only a few exceptions, the pieces I have least confidence in are those that do the best with an audience. Sometimes it seems like it's necessary for me to go beyond the boundaries of what I understand and trust in order to really speak to someone else.

I dunno.

So the pieces come from a lot of different sources. I generally don't re-read any particular writing session until I've finished an entire journal full of them. Then I wait a while and go back through the notebook and read with a fresh eye. Many times I don't even remember having written what is there. At that point, I usually fold down the corners of the pages that I think might have something worthwhile on them and put the journal away again for another month or so. Eventually I sit down at a computer and open the notebook, and type the contents of those pages, editing and tweaking where I can, into one of the "K-files". I have about 16 of those files on my computer now, each with 30 or 40 pieces. They actually date back to the pre-computer era. I have several files, now entered into the computer, that were originally typed up on real actual paper, on a battered IBM Selectric named The Albatross.

Most of that is dross. It represents about 25% of any journal. I print those files out occasionally and play with the pages in bars and coffee shops, wandering around and finding things that I like, and fleshing them out. Sometimes I'm very fond of something immediately, and it makes me suspicious. I had a writing professor who was immensely quotable, and among the phrases he gave us was, "Kill all your sacred cows." If you're overly fond of something Terribly Clever and Neato, that's a different sensation than recognizing a really worthwhile line in a piece. For me, the really good things sneak around from behind; I look at them six months down and say "damn, that's way better than I thought it was. Why didn't I notice that before?" If I'm immensely pleased with something the moment it hits a page, it's probably a sacred cow. I let it live but I don't take it too seriously. And I don't try to fit it into a piece.

Knowing that process, which has been standard for me for nearly 30 years, one can understand now why trying the 30/30 challenge was so motherfucking freaky for me. To write some words and then immediately make them into a formalized piece and present that piece to an audience, within 24 hours, is so incompatible with my style that it sent me into a complete blank panic. I had to stop that, frankly, because I wasn't getting any sleep. I'd be up til 5 or 6 am cramming a year's worth of editing into a single night.

So yeah, next time I feel like I can afford to spend four hours a day working on a single piece that may or may not end up being worth its pixels, you'll see me in there again.

*whew*

Golly, I hope this is of some use. I've always felt like I'm probably the only one who thinks and writes in this particular way; I don't expect these methods to work for other people because that would imply that -- gods forbid -- their brains work like mine does. But if it's helpful in some way, cool.

Bright blessings for the equinox, all.

bijou

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Buddha, Freyja? Frigg, where are the dwaves? Love it. Rich.
PS
A poem is never finished, only abandoned. - Paul Valery
PSS
Above mentioned trio (and dwaves) appear in one of my unfinished, abandoned monstrosities, (so do about 50 other people) just mentioning it because it is comforting to know someone else would put these two together, and I get lonely wherever I'm at

No questions, great stuff, great sense of the absurd, riotious.

I'm NOT being a smartass: do you actually mean dwarves? Just wasn't clear.

you wrote a poem with the Buddha and Freyja and Skunk all in it together too? Neato. Love to see it sometime.

bijou

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Take your time. I know those questions in particular don't have easy answers, but they're important ones to me. When I have the opportunity to ask them of a good writer, who obviously thinks about them, I don't mind waiting for answers. Anyway, this thread is a lot of fun. I certainly don't mind if we're all schlumping around in here for three weeks.

Well, one down, anyway. And three weeks of cool questions and big fun and schlumping and playtime? Sign me up. I'm in this for the long haul.

bj

 

[twelveoone]

I'm NOT being a smartass: do you actually mean dwarves? Just wasn't clear.

you wrote a poem with the Buddha and Freyja and Skunk all in it together too? Neato. Love to see it sometime.

bijou

Go ahead, be a smartass.
Yeah, dwarves, it was early, Skunk wasn't in it. Frigg was. Dwarves (4) also. Just as a mention though.
I think some pieces may be laying around here, not sure where it went to.

Case in point: last weekend during the business trip I became really entranced by this image I kept having of the city as a sphere in which all human experience was occurring simultaneously, somewhere nearby.

This I'd like to see, like the way your mind works.

 

[Angeline]

Thanks twelvie!

I have time today, a little bit, to talk about the writing process. This is a major holiday for me so I'll be off for a bit till tomorrow.

I've already talked a little bit about how I write in the little thing I wrote for the poet's intro thread (the link is below as the bio).

I write as often as I get a chance to do so and less often than I'd like. But if I don't get a few hours time to sit down and scrawl, ideally late at night, at least two or three times a week, I get sorta crazy. Mad ideas run round in my head and become preoccupying and I feel as if I empty them out when I write, whether or not I'm writing about those particular ideas.

This, in itself, is comforting to hear. I've often tried to explain to my non poem-writing friends that I have to get that stuff out of me. If I don't find time to write it I feel like my head will explode. I wonder if the other poem obsessives here feel that. I can think of at least a few who probably do.

Case in point: last weekend during the business trip I became really entranced by this image I kept having of the city as a sphere in which all human experience was occurring simultaneously, somewhere nearby. I posted that up here as a blog as soon as I got a chance to sit down and make words about it. And since I didn't have a chance to sit down with that idea during the trip itself, it made me sort of crazy for a few days. It became harder to focus on what was supposed to be important: buying the rocks, making sure I spent the right amounts of money, reminding myself to eat food regularly, that sort of thing.

As the trip progressed and I had to stay busy in the Real World, I just wanted to sit down and try this exercise where I wrapped my mind around the whole thing at once, let my consciousness spread out for a mile or two and listened to all the people having their essential stories. This idea of how important people are within their own stories, how individualized and complete and unique and central every personal universe is, and how many personal universes are crammed into a very small space in a city, just blows my damn mind. But I've expressed all that over there already.

It's not always that linear, but there's often some sensation or idea or phrase that's running around, and by the time I sit down with a journal it's the words that come out first. Sometimes I think in terms of a particular meter, and just word-salad individual lines in that rhythm for a few pages. Sometimes I focus on weird form exercises - nine-syllable lines, or lines that begin or end with a particular letter, or whatever. It's the unchecked Finnegan's Wake of my personal brain, filtered through the hand.

I used to travel frequently for my job and found that plane flights or long drives are times when poetry comes to me very easily. I wonder if there's something about being away from our routines that allows that to happen.

Most of my journals are a mix of every possible writing exercise. There is a great deal of free-association - the goal is just to keep the pen moving. There are attempts at forms, exercises. There are little messages I'd like to deliver to people, reports of dream images, phrases that get stuck in my head, that sort of thing.

Okay, here's an important thing, I think. Back when I first learned about the concept of free-association, when I was in some junior high writing class, I got very excited and began practicing that. I slavishly scrawled down every thought that occurred in my head. As I read through those journals, I often noticed that there were a lot of negative thoughts, which is normal. "I can't think of anything to write," or "This is going nowhere today," or whatever. I decided, with the efficiency of an 11-year-old, that writing all that took up too much space on the page, so I'd just write a star whenever I had an idea like that, instead of wasting time writing those exact phrases down. For a while, the journals were full of stars, but as I ceased to validate those ideas when they came up, I shifted the habit, and soon I wasn't wasting time with those thoughts. My writing improved greatly. I did a far smarter thing that I realized at the time, breaking that habit.

This is very, very good advice. I'm going to start doing it now. Well, tonight. I don't spend a lot of time writing extraneous stuff; I usually start with the poem itself and move into edit mode, but I do it enough (either writing it or thinking it) for it to make a dent in my productive writing time.

I have some strong opinions about the sort of self-deprecatory negativity I see poets indulging in routinely. We (and by we I mean you) constantly insult our own work. I could quote some folks around here, even, if I wanted to name names. I won't... for now. But y'all need to just give that up. There are several sources for that bad habit, which include low confidence, a need to be validated, insecurity and worst of all, our bullshit cultural lesson that teaches us that it's good and polite to cut ourselves down. (Ladies, think about that next time you're in a restroom comparing hair and noses and figures with the women around you. Watch those women cut their bodies wide open and rip themselves to shreds as a politeness to the other women. And then resolve to at least treat your body as well as you might treat a dog on the street - quit kicking it and insulting it and verbally abusing it. Please.)

But I digress.

We're talking about that instinct as it applies to poetry. And someday, when I'm the empress of the world, I'm going to come in here and declare a month long moratorium on all that ridiculous crap: "Here's my awful poem, you're so much better than I am," and so on.

I'm just as insecure about my work as anyone. Most of what I write is not that great, but that's because most of what I write is an early draft or an exercise or a free-association. I pull what is valuable out of that, trust my instincts, and just bravely fly the fucking kite. It's come to my attention over the years that with only a few exceptions, the pieces I have least confidence in are those that do the best with an audience. Sometimes it seems like it's necessary for me to go beyond the boundaries of what I understand and trust in order to really speak to someone else.

I dunno.

So the pieces come from a lot of different sources. I generally don't re-read any particular writing session until I've finished an entire journal full of them. Then I wait a while and go back through the notebook and read with a fresh eye. Many times I don't even remember having written what is there. At that point, I usually fold down the corners of the pages that I think might have something worthwhile on them and put the journal away again for another month or so. Eventually I sit down at a computer and open the notebook, and type the contents of those pages, editing and tweaking where I can, into one of the "K-files". I have about 16 of those files on my computer now, each with 30 or 40 pieces. They actually date back to the pre-computer era. I have several files, now entered into the computer, that were originally typed up on real actual paper, on a battered IBM Selectric named The Albatross.

Most of that is dross. It represents about 25% of any journal. I print those files out occasionally and play with the pages in bars and coffee shops, wandering around and finding things that I like, and fleshing them out. Sometimes I'm very fond of something immediately, and it makes me suspicious. I had a writing professor who was immensely quotable, and among the phrases he gave us was, "Kill all your sacred cows." If you're overly fond of something Terribly Clever and Neato, that's a different sensation than recognizing a really worthwhile line in a piece. For me, the really good things sneak around from behind; I look at them six months down and say "damn, that's way better than I thought it was. Why didn't I notice that before?" If I'm immensely pleased with something the moment it hits a page, it's probably a sacred cow. I let it live but I don't take it too seriously. And I don't try to fit it into a piece.

Knowing that process, which has been standard for me for nearly 30 years, one can understand now why trying the 30/30 challenge was so motherfucking freaky for me. To write some words and then immediately make them into a formalized piece and present that piece to an audience, within 24 hours, is so incompatible with my style that it sent me into a complete blank panic. I had to stop that, frankly, because I wasn't getting any sleep. I'd be up til 5 or 6 am cramming a year's worth of editing into a single night.

So yeah, next time I feel like I can afford to spend four hours a day working on a single piece that may or may not end up being worth its pixels, you'll see me in there again.

*whew*

Golly, I hope this is of some use. I've always felt like I'm probably the only one who thinks and writes in this particular way; I don't expect these methods to work for other people because that would imply that -- gods forbid -- their brains work like mine does. But if it's helpful in some way, cool.

It's very helpful. I love learning how other writers go from thought to poem. I incorporate what I think will work for me--and often there is something there I can fold into my process. I hope others will join in and note anything along these lines that they do. This is how we strengthen each other.

Bright blessings for the equinox, all.

bijou

And to you, dear lady. Thank you for your time and thoughts.

 

[champagne1982]

I write as often as I get a chance to do so and less often than I'd like. But if I don't get a few hours time to sit down and scrawl, ideally late at night, at least two or three times a week, I get sorta crazy. Mad ideas run round in my head and become preoccupying and I feel as if I empty them out when I write, whether or not I'm writing about those particular ideas.

I am like this, too. It makes me feel a bit better when I remember what sort of company I keep in my scrivening madness. Unfortunately, it's a measure of the tragedy and the stress I've been living recently, that I haven't felt compelled as often as earlier this summer. It was fun kibbitzing dertiness with tFoolio though.

I have some strong opinions about the sort of self-deprecatory negativity I see poets indulging in routinely. We (and by we I mean you) constantly insult our own work. I could quote some folks around here, even, if I wanted to name names. I won't... for now. But y'all need to just give that up. There are several sources for that bad habit, which include low confidence, a need to be validated, insecurity and worst of all, our bullshit cultural lesson that teaches us that it's good and polite to cut ourselves down.

Sometimes, I wish I were so strong charactered that I could totally disregard OPOs (Other People's Opinions) but colour me weak and dissatisfied and I'm sure you'll find my source of deprecation.

I had a writing professor who was immensely quotable, and among the phrases he gave us was, "Kill all your sacred cows." If you're overly fond of something Terribly Clever and Neato, that's a different sensation than recognizing a really worthwhile line in a piece. For me, the really good things sneak around from behind; I look at them six months down and say "damn, that's way better than I thought it was. Why didn't I notice that before?" If I'm immensely pleased with something the moment it hits a page, it's probably a sacred cow. I let it live but I don't take it too seriously. And I don't try to fit it into a piece.

I like the sacred cow analogy. I always try to remind myself and other people who I honestly critique, that we should never be so in love with a word or phrase that we hang on to it to the detriment of the entire thing. I don't throw those bits away, but I do have a file full of sacred cow poop.

So yeah, next time I feel like I can afford to spend four hours a day working on a single piece that may or may not end up being worth its pixels, you'll see me in there again.

*whew*

Golly, I hope this is of some use. I've always felt like I'm probably the only one who thinks and writes in this particular way; I don't expect these methods to work for other people because that would imply that -- gods forbid -- their brains work like mine does. But if it's helpful in some way, cool.

Isn't this insistence, that such compulsive pieces as those written for a thread like the 30 in 30, a sort of a parallelism of self-worth? I think that posting a relatively raw work in a daily writing thread is an abandonment of ego, you post it regardless of quality in the effort to be on time. But I always post with the knowledge that I can tweak it later on, to make it worth exposition somewhere else. But, my process is to write and post now, regret and edit at leisure.

You've been nothing less than a bright light on editing and writing. In fact, you have been a help. Thanks to you.

Bright blessings for the equinox, all.

bijou

And to you, too.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Go ahead, be a smartass.
Yeah, dwarves, it was early, Skunk wasn't in it. Frigg was. Dwarves (4) also. Just as a mention though.
I think some pieces may be laying around here, not sure where it went to.


This I'd like to see, like the way your mind works.

There should always be exactly four dwarves. Always.

bj