Chimera Song Mosaic
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
More importantly, where had Catherine gone? So many Alexandrias!
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
1. Lance is back in town, so we have been whooping it up, trip to the island, sitting around and staring at each other (I do most of the staring; I ask, "Are you used to my blonde hair yet?" He says, "I'm ignoring it"). Mostly I am sad that he will leave again after Labor Day. So sad.
2. Josh talks about The Last Unicorn after a trip to the Cloisters last month. I loved that film so much and am excited to hear about a non-animated remake. But will the unicorn talk?
3. Catherine recommends Jolie Holland Escondida last month, and I was so pleased to hear so, because Jolie went to high school with me, and after seeing an article about her new album in The Houston Press at the beginning of the year, I have been listening to it every since. My favorite tracks are "Goodbye, California" (so twangy) and "Mad Tom of Bedlam" (so naughty). Jolie went away to California to become a musician after high school, like I wanted to. But the big difference was that she actually played instruments, unlike me. I realize this now. It's not like we were friends or anything. She was in a group that was friends with one of my groups of friends, and there was some overlap in that ecotone.
4. I read a bunch of Constant Critic critical reviews today. I have not been touching much of my present reading list because I had some make up reading to do (old articles from magazines I need to toss). But I did finish CROWD and enjoyed it a lot, especially the fiction. (What is my deal with fiction lately? It could be that since there are so many more fiction writers than poets and so few stories appear in journals--compared to the number of poems--at least the journals I read, that maybe, just maybe it is more competitive for the stories, and the ones that get published are really, really good. But not all of them are, of course. And I read some poems I really liked, for example, Katy Lederer's "The Appreciate Mass": "Our inner hearts are / rockets": stunning! Chelsey Minnis's "Preface # 1": "If anyone thinks they need to write reviews, teach classes, edit magazines or translate books in order to write good poetry . . . Then maybe they can just take a rest from it . . .": yeah, baby! There were many others, too, of course. This from my favorite prose piece, Karen Brennan's essay, "On Bliss": "I'm not an historian and it's difficult to describe the city as it was then. As a civilization we were universally aroused, universally in seek of orifices or appendages. Perhaps that's why someone lopped off the woman's arms, as part of a performance piece demonstrating our impossible desires." I also loved Pia Z. Ehrhardt's "Cigarette stories.") And I did not write a poem, as Lance had instructed.
5. I am so dreading the start of school. Verily dreading it.
