Your Neck of the Woods

As far as Readings go:

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Sunday, 9/26 -- Jones/jubilat reading featuring Lucy Ives and Steve Healy. 3 pm, Jones Library, Amherst

Wednesday, 9/29 -- Green Street Cafe Reading, 7:30, Green Street Cafe, Northampton

Thursday, 9/30 -- Bernadette Mayer Reading, Alumni Memorial Hall, University of Massachusetts, 8pm

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At first I thought to myself: "I will never write another blog post. 95 percent of them out in the world make me cringe." And that worked for about a year. And then somehow I decided to keep that opinion alive and also restart this blog. The human mind is a mysterious thing.
Also, after setting up this new layout, I spent a good 4 days thinking that I wouldn't write another blog post, mainly because I had nothing to say. And then Saturday came. And I had a day's worth of work to do. So of course, procrastination directly leads to blog posts. And I vow to try and stay true to what I like about blogs.

So here it is: A post where I write about the Today Show.





I love it. I would ask, "Who doesn't?" but history always tells me there's someone that breaks my heart by telling me how much they hate it. It was always a signal in my school years that I should start getting ready because the bus would be there in 10 minutes. And now, being the relatively new early riser that I am, I spend most of my mornings with my eyes glued to first: Meredith, Matt, Al and Ann (and Natalie), then straight onto Kathie Lee and Hoda.

I'm nosy. I want to know what people are doing. I love to humanize celebrities, learn about high school quarterback heroes, watch a farm town revive itself after the recession. I love happy endings. I love humanism. I love to get involved in other people's stories. I don't think there's a simpler way to say that.

Why not be silly? Why not care about things? Why not watch a story where a dog fosters a piglet, or where a Colombian woman is free after being trapped in the jungle for years?

So much for a good first blog post. I may be rusty.

My students are reading Dorothea Lasky's Awe. We are discussing "voice" in detail on Monday. "I! LOVED! IT!" was what many of the happy readers said in class on Friday. And I think that's about as good as it gets, don't you?

Fun Facts and Resolutions

The moon is drifting away from Earth

Every year the moon moves about 3.8cm further away from the Earth. This is caused by tidal effects. Consequently, the earth is slowing in rotation by about 0.002 seconds per day per century. Scientists do not know how the moon was created, but the generally accepted theory suggests that a large Mars sized object hit the earth causing the Moon to splinter off.



I like to make resolutions. Everything always lies in the potential in something, and then when it involves follow-through, it's lost. I wanted to be 100 different things when I was little. I love everything and want to do everything, but never really delve into it.

The Children of the Road

I've had conversations with people who understand what I'm talking about, so I'll write a post about this. There are poems I see that, although may not be *good* poems, or stir any emotional core in me, I see poems that are *written* in a way I would like to write. The...equation is there, I would just like to make the substitutions my own and create a whole new poem. The logic is there. The steps from a to b are there. But the whole poem may not succeed. I like those poems. I like to keep these poems around, work with them. Wrestle them apart and see how I can get them to tick. This is one of those poems, I think:

Highway Barns, the Children of the Road, by Kenneth Koch

Amaryllis, is this paved highway a
Coincidence? There we were
On top of the fuel bin. In the autos
Dusk moved silently, like pine-needle mice.
Often I throw hay upon you,
She said. The painted horse had good news.
Yes, I really miss him, she waves,
She pants. In the dusk bin the fuel reasoned silently.
Amaryllis, is this paved highway a
Coincidence? My ears were glad. Aren't you?
Aren't you healthy in sight of the strawberries,
Which like pine-needle lace fight for dawn fuel?
The white mile was lighted up. We shortened
Our day by two whole tusks. The wind rang.
Where is the elephant graveyard? She missed the pavement.
A load of hay went within speaking distance of the raspberries.
Overture to the tone-deaf evening! I don't see its home.
Prawns fell from that sparkling blue sphere.
The land is coughing, "Joy!" Hey, pavements, you charmers,
When are you going to bring me good news?

blow on me solar wind, i know you're out there

5. BEAUTIFUL THINGS DUMP:

Deleted most entries.

All the time we spent in bed
Counting miles before we set
Fall in love and fall apart
Things will end before they start

Sleeping on Lake Michigan
Factories and marching bands
Lose our clothes in summertime
Lose ourselves to lose our minds
In the summer heat, I might

I'm going to stay up all night plannin'!

Ilya Kaminsky. Here is a piece from the longer poem "Musica Humana," an elegy for Osip Mandelstam. I'm not at all sure why, but this piece is my favorite.


I am reading aloud the book of my life on earth
and confess, I loved grapefruit.
In a kitchen: sausages; tasting vodka,
the men raise their cups.
A boy in a white shirt, I dip my finger
into sweetness. Mother washes
behind my ears. And we speak of everything
that does not come true,
which is to say: it was August.
August! the light in the trees, full of fury. August
filling hands with language that tastes like smoke.
Now, memory, pour some beer,
salt the rim of the glass; you
who are writing me, have what you want:
a golden coin, my tongue to put it under.


(The younger brother of a cloud,
he walks unshaven in dark-green pants.
In cathedrals: he falls on his knees, praying HAPPINESS!
His words on the floor are the skeletons of dead birds.)


I’ve loved, yes. Washed my hands. Spoke
of loyalty to the earth. Now death,
a loverboy, counts my fingers.


I escape and am caught, escape again
and am caught, escape

and am caught:



Lauren Greenfield lecture.