poetry can be funny…
“the lanyard” by billy collins
Sat 6 Feb 2010
there is a light somewhere
Posted by alhp under poetry, readings
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why is the heart laughing?
“the laughing heart” by charles bukowski
read by tom waits
The Laughing Heart
Charles Bukowksi
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
Wed 20 Jan 2010
people still read books… right?
Posted by alhp under on writing
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Charlie Rose discussing the future of fiction and who (if anyone) is actually reading (in 1996 mind you-though these topics seem just as applicable if not even more so) with writers David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Mark Leyner.
“there’s this part that makes you feel full” – DFW
Wed 20 Jan 2010
it is tired of trying to be stouthearted
Posted by alhp under a little something
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I am still recovering from the reading of Infinite Jest. I feel confident that I have watched every David Foster Wallace interview available online. While I have found some answers, even more questions arise. When I read this poem today I could not help but think of DFW and IJ and all the characters that live in it.
poem of the day from poets.org
Having it Out with Melancholy
by Jane Kenyon
If many remedies are prescribed for an illness, you may be certain that the illness has no cure.
A. P. CHEKHOV The Cherry Orchard
1 FROM THE NURSERY
When I was born, you waited
behind a pile of linen in the nursery,
and when we were alone, you lay down
on top of me, pressing
the bile of desolation into every pore.
And from that day on
everything under the sun and moon
made me sad — even the yellow
wooden beads that slid and spun
along a spindle on my crib.
You taught me to exist without gratitude.
You ruined my manners toward God:
“We’re here simply to wait for death;
the pleasures of earth are overrated.”
I only appeared to belong to my mother,
to live among blocks and cotton undershirts
with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes
and report cards in ugly brown slipcases.
I was already yours — the anti-urge,
the mutilator of souls.
2 BOTTLES
Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin,
Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax,
Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft.
The coated ones smell sweet or have
no smell; the powdery ones smell
like the chemistry lab at school
that made me hold my breath.
3 SUGGESTION FROM A FRIEND
You wouldn’t be so depressed
if you really believed in God.
4 OFTEN
Often I go to bed as soon after dinner
as seems adult
(I mean I try to wait for dark)
in order to push away
from the massive pain in sleep’s
frail wicker coracle.
5 ONCE THERE WAS LIGHT
Once, in my early thirties, I saw
that I was a speck of light in the great
river of light that undulates through time.
I was floating with the whole
human family. We were all colors — those
who are living now, those who have died,
those who are not yet born. For a few
moments I floated, completely calm,
and I no longer hated having to exist.
Like a crow who smells hot blood
you came flying to pull me out
of the glowing stream.
“I’ll hold you up. I never let my dear
ones drown!” After that, I wept for days.
6 IN AND OUT
The dog searches until he finds me
upstairs, lies down with a clatter
of elbows, puts his head on my foot.
Sometimes the sound of his breathing
saves my life — in and out, in
and out; a pause, a long sigh. . . .
7 PARDON
A piece of burned meat
wears my clothes, speaks
in my voice, dispatches obligations
haltingly, or not at all.
It is tired of trying
to be stouthearted, tired
beyond measure.
We move on to the monoamine
oxidase inhibitors. Day and night
I feel as if I had drunk six cups
of coffee, but the pain stops
abruptly. With the wonder
and bitterness of someone pardoned
for a crime she did not commit
I come back to marriage and friends,
to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back
to my desk, books, and chair.
8 CREDO
Pharmaceutical wonders are at work
but I believe only in this moment
of well-being. Unholy ghost,
you are certain to come again.
Coarse, mean, you’ll put your feet
on the coffee table, lean back,
and turn me into someone who can’t
take the trouble to speak; someone
who can’t sleep, or who does nothing
but sleep; can’t read, or call
for an appointment for help.
There is nothing I can do
against your coming.
When I awake, I am still with thee.
9 WOOD THRUSH
High on Nardil and June light
I wake at four,
waiting greedily for the first
note of the wood thrush. Easeful air
presses through the screen
with the wild, complex song
of the bird, and I am overcome
by ordinary contentment.
What hurt me so terribly
all my life until this moment?
How I love the small, swiftly
beating heart of the bird
singing in the great maples;
its bright, unequivocal eye.
From Constance by Jane Kenyon, published by Graywolf Press. © 1993 by Jane Kenyon. All rights reserved.
Wed 30 Dec 2009
the entertainment
Posted by alhp under i just read, words we write
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I started reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace in October. I finished it last night. I am not a slow reader. I read it almost every single day. It is a challenging book, is what I am getting at. And long. 981 pages; 1079 with footnotes. And the font isn’t that large and the margins aren’t that big and DFW isn’t much into paragraphs, but really likes abbreviations (without which we’ve speculated it could have doubled in length). I got a new dictionary because of (for) this book. Entire meetings of English Club were devoted to IJ. We were all reading it. It has been nice going through it with others, to share in the confusion and awe of DFW and IJ.
I don’t really know what else to say about it or where I would even begin. When I finished it, I just sat there and stared at the blank space on the lower half of page 981. I had known the end was coming. I’d read the last footnote with eager regret. I had often thumbed to 981 with a twinge of doubt that I would ever reach it (I had started IJ at least 3 times before). I texted Abdul who had finished it the previous week and while waiting for his response, I realized I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
I closed the book. I reopened it to the first page and started reading it again.
When Abdul responded he suggested I do exactly what I had done and then said the most perfect thing: “I feel like the story is just starting and I’m starving for more of that world.”
Wed 9 Dec 2009
a thousand years would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of
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Dream Song 29
by John Berryman
There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry’s ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.
And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.
But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.
John Berryman, Dream Song 29 from The Dream Songs.
Copyright © 1969 by John Berryman
Tue 8 Dec 2009
the one unlikely mouse
Posted by alhp under poetry, readings
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The Country
by Billy Collins
I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice
might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.
Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe
behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner,
the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time -
now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,
lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country?
Wed 2 Dec 2009
“Alcohol’s the only thing that’ll kill you when in withdrawl… Not even heroin can do that.”
Posted by alhp under i just read, words we write
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In the short non-fiction piece “Blue”, Mary B. Valencia subtly draws parallels between the alcoholic behavior of her lover that lands him in rehab and the home renovation phenomenon she finds herself entrenched in. The dismantling of two lives, their love and their home and the subsequent attempts at rebuilding (not all successful) is made only more powerful by the fact that it is not fiction.
Valencia has a seemingly effortless way of bringing the reader straight into the story: “I peeled away green painter’s tape from around the light socket and flicked the switch,” (45). Her tactile imagery alongside this everyday action makes me feel the tape under my own fingers. And later on my toes curl at this: “I dried off and walked downstairs without any clothes on. I never did that. I didn’t care that the back window had no curtain, that there were nails and sawdust on the floor, that a snake’s den of cable hugged the walls,” (47). I feel as though I am walking with her on that bare floor,welcoming the idea of physical pain to subside the emotional.
The story flashes between home renovations shows she becomes addicted to, fond and not so fond memories of the boyfriend (though even the fond ones give us glimpses of what is to come: while the two are racing another couple in canoes, “You steered sloppily, holding us back, but I kept counting”), not wanting to rid the house of him and then desperately trying to rid the house of him (46).
In the midst of finding hidden bottles and recalling fights, Valencia details a gentler moment: “I wished you had always been with me. That’s why I hung onto you us for so long, because of that moment when you loved me so perfectly,” (47).
Valencia weaves an undercurrent of change and possibility into each aspect of the story, you can choose not to get sober, you can add more storage space to accommodate the accumulation of your life, or you can start over, clean up. Even then, so concerned with what could be, you forget what is. She reminds us this can be a matter of our perspective: “You hated the chain link fence until I pointed out the visual depth. We weren’t constricted by the six-foot high wooden fences,” (48). We get to choose to see things the way they were or maybe, in a way, still are: “If you stood at the base of our pear tree, you could see an entire row of fruit trees – cherry, peach, apple – a stretched outline, a secret orchard in the city,” (48).
The final passage brings us into the garden, into the melting snow revealing items thought lost, and Valencia considers what she had found, what she could turn it into, and what it truly had been: “What was the yard like before these brick houses, garages and alleys? On the edge of this great lake, was there still a forest of tree roots under my feet?” (50).
And I didn’t even touch on the blue part… read it for yourself: “Blue” appears in the Fall issue of the Canadian journal PRISM international.
Thu 12 Nov 2009
Title: Spot Literary Magazine 3.2 Publication Reading Party
Location: Border’s on Bellflower in Long Beach
Link out: spotliterarymagzine.net
Description: Fall 2009 Spot Lit Reading celebrating the new issue will take place on Nov. 22nd at 7:00 pm. at the same Border’s Books on Bellflower, featuring the contributors from the issue who are local to SoCal, including Jeffrey Alfier, Michael Buckley, Steven Carey, Tobi Cogswell, Lorene V. Garrett, Christian Hanz Lozada, Clint Margrave, Bill Mohr, Greggory Moore, Luisa Pena, Katrina Prow, Joan Jobe Smith, Macrae Sutherland, Fred Voss, Christa Westaway, and Jennifer Woo, with emceeing by Susan Hansell and Gerald Uyeno.
Date: 2009-11-22
Thu 5 Nov 2009
“My memories are twitching like morning in the city.”
While driving home last night at about 11:45pm this guy came on the radio…perhaps it was the setting and my state of mind but the passage and the author’s delivery struck me.
I thought it was a poem because I’d flipped the station too late to hear the host’s introduction. He’s actually reading from a novel, but I prefer to think it’s a poem.
I’ve looked up the book and have no intention of reading it…but prefer to think this was everything he intended.
Click Here to Listen to Colin McAdam reading from “Fall”
