Passing Through

A Happy Landing in Long Beach

So here I am in sunny California. Jet lag still has me up early and the mornings are gorgeous out my second floor windows. Yesterday, I even vacuumed the wood blinds, something I usually don't do until just before I leave again. Next stop: The kitchen!

Besides housework, I've been doing a lot of reading in the week since I arrived. I received two chapbooks in the mail while I was away--winners of the contests I lost last year. One is VERY good--Bar Napkin Sonnets by Moira Egan who lives in Italy and is a FAR more accomplished poet than I. It's published by The Ledge Press and you should probably buy it.

I also read two short story collections and am working my way through (the poetry, for starters) Pushcart Prize XXXIV, because, well I HAVE BEEN NOMINATED FOR A PUSHCART PRIZE! Yes. It's true. And I'm just sorta reveling in the old cliché that it's an honor just to be nominated, because by the looks of things, I won't be getting in there any time soon ;) and April will come soon enough and all of my secret hopes will be dashed to the rocks. But it IS an honor just to be nominated.

Funny thing is, the poem that was nominated--by Cider Press Review, btw--was one of the easiest poems I've ever written. It was my last semester of grad school. My thesis had been turned in and the last of my student loans had been spent. We had just finished reading James Tate's Memoir of the Hawk with Suzanne Greenberg in our Directed Reading seminar. I wasn't even sure I liked it, but SO under the influence was I that I wrote a little response, more off-the-cuff than anything I had ever been willing to call finished. I read it in class.

Truth is, I never thought much of it after that... Not even when Cecilia Woloch picked it out of my manuscript last summer--along with a couple others--and told me she thought they would like it at Cider Press... Not really even when it got accepted and published in their volume 10 earlier this year.

It's called "Free Refills," and while I can remember certain influences for the poem's subject matter, I have never felt that this poem was my own. I was channeling James Tate, much the way I was channeling Alan Ginsberg when I wrote "Wail"--the one anthologized in Not a Muse from Haven Books. It looks like I'll be reading a lot more again.

So I skimmed through Memoir of the Hawk... just to be sure that I hadn't ripped anything off or done some slant discredit to his good name, and I noticed some similarities and some differences. Nothing alarming. Just enough to help me reclaim the poem, which got me to thinking: What the heck is this poem about? As I wrote it, it felt so automatic. The language is plain. One thought led to the next without complications or contemplation. I let my imagination play in the surreal fashion that I had just read in Tate's little scenarios.

But it wasn't until just this morning, not until I started writing this blog entry, that I realized what this poem is about. What this blog is about. What, quite possibly, my whole life is about. Passing through. We are always all just passing through. Life takes such strange twists and turns that we never know when a state of being will be over, irreversibly over. Birth control fails. Friendships fail. Uncles and grandmas and nephews die. Jobs dry up and we move away, some of us farther and further than others. New homes. New loves. New visions of life. And then a blue seahorse rides off into the desert with an old woman on its back. Or maybe it isn't the desert after all. In any case, nothing is the same.

I may have just found the title of my new chapbook manuscript... and the confidence to try, try again ;)

Thanks for reading. And thanks to Caron Andregg, Ruth Foley, and Robert Wynne at Cider Press Review, and Cecilia Woloch... and James Tate and Suzanne Greenberg. I hear an acceptance speech in the makings!

No Reason, No Recourse

The rare blog entry from LA

It's my last day in So Cal, AGAIN, and all I want to do is blog and read blogs. I have a million errands to run, tons of people I didn't get to spend nearly enough time with, and all I want to do is linger in my little apartment with the kitties and my books and try to say something that matters... after six weeks of sunny CA.

This visit, I applied for an artist's visa, which would have allowed me not only to stay in Paris for longer stretches at a time, but also to work in conjunction with a proposed "project." So I gathered my strength and put together a proposal and the necessary multitude of triplicated documents required with the application, five passport photos, and the 150 US dollars it costs just to submit said application, and about the time I had recovered from the sunburn I got in the 3 hours I spent outside waiting, the phone call came: I was denied my carte de sejour and told that the reason was unknown and there is no phone number to call for further information as they are too busy to answer one.

At least I was a good citizen and served my jury duty. I was on call all week for the first week of August, rejoicing every night when I heard that I would not need to report the next day... until Thursday. I got the dreaded Friday duty. It really wasn't bad. I dodged the first and only call of the day--a murder trial expected to last 8 days, according to reports in the elevator at the lunch break. Two hours of wandering around downtown Long Beach was then followed by another hour of sitting--on the 6th floor terrace with a view of the harbor--chatting with my two jury duty pals and soaking up some sun.

I wish I could remember that woman's name. She was a riot! We were released early, one by one, and given our green proof-of-service slips. I was called before she was and I gave her two French cheek kisses. She thought that was really cute. Then I headed quickly out, not looking back. By the way, French authorities are urging people to forgo the catchy kisses. No more bisoux in France for fear of Swine Flu. La Grippe Porcine. The dreaded H1N1. Can you imagine?

I spent a lot of time with my family, adorable and germ-ridden as they may be ;) They are my favorite subjects--in videos, writing, conversation, and dreams. My new (and only) niece is like a fallen star from a strange and unimagined heaven. And I love the reason to watch that Blue's Clues! I brought her a French bikini. At her daycare, the kids must all wear hats to play outside. This is perhaps the cutest damn thing I've ever seen. A day in the life of Hailey Grace would make a superb little video...

Speaking of videos, the silver lining in being denied my visa was that in shaping my application, I actually harnessed my projects and decided to launch a poetry video site that I've been contemplating for many months now. awaywithwords I wanted to set these videos apart from most of the ones I've created so far because these are more honestly collaborative. I meet so many talented writers and artists that I wanted to capture even a fraction of what I hear and put it together with things I've seen. Sometimes the correspondences are uncanny. I especially like how my personal life invariably seeps into the finished product.

I like art that is a bit sublime: Beaudelaire, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Pink Martini. I haven't really thought of this "like" in relation to my own writing. I remember I want to read Kant, Jane Austen, and more Jeanette Winterson. What to pack this time? What to abandon until December? It's so much easier to go than it is to leave. And even as I write that, I see that it's a lie. Going takes courage, hunger, and passion. It isn't always clear that it's the right thing to do. Surely, it isn't always the right thing to do.

But I'm leaving, and I can't wait to get back. I'm going back to my tourist life, to my Filou and my man. Maybe to a new apartment. And there is a dangling job possibility like the proverbial carrot, luring me back to the City of Light--no S, please. Writing workshops and fall, the most sublime season of all. Once it sets in, there is no reason, no recourse.

The street sweeper passes down one street then the next here in Long Beach. I mentally confirm that I parked on the right side of the street last night. Seafood enchiladas leftover in the fridge. Silver left to polish. Laundry. My little yard and the coolest day since I decided to stay. I'm gong to go soak it all in.