Music Meme

1. The person who passed the baton to you? Peter Pereira. (By the way, Peter, it's "Drake", not "Blake" ... although I think "Jennifer Blake" would be a great nom de plume.)

2. Total volume of music files on your computer:
Zero. I know, pitifully archaic. But I think there is an iPod in my future, so that should change soon...

3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought:
"The Wreck Of The Day", Anna Nalick. Good stuff.

4. Song playing at the moment of writing:
"St. Robinson In His Cadillac Dream", Counting Crows

5. Who am I passing this to? Kelli Russell Agodon, Paul Guest, and Jeannine Hall Gailey, assuming they have escaped it thus far...

Little Help?

Ok, so you know how an epithalamion is a poem/song for a wedding? Is there a fancy $20 word like that for an anniversary poem? If not, there should be.

Professor Stephen Hawking and the Lump

The radiologist would like a closer look.
Between the spot compression
and the ultrasound, I balance
hibiscus tea in a porcelain cup,
scan the magazines for something
more remote or theoretical
than swimsuit fashions.

Stephen Hawking has radically
altered his theory about black holes;
anything (you, me, cosmic dust, the red
light of its binary twin) that falls
beyond the star's event horizon
will not be annihilated.

Holding a pose on my back,
I watch the screen as a tech
maps the margins of a mass
more hole than lump, dark
on the display, swallowing
every heartbeat. The doctor tries
to comfort me with probabilities.

If you jump into a black hole,
your mass energy will be returned
to our universe, but in a mangled form,
which contains the information
about what you were like,
but in an unrecognizable state.

At dusk, I am reluctant
to slip off the red elastic lace
holding everything together.
I attempt a sensual pose, feel
my husband's fingers pause
for a moment on my left breast.
The sun, too, hesitates before it falls
beyond the black horizon.

Highly Recommended

What a delightful discovery I made this week. Flipping through the movie listings in "The Stranger" at Starbucks, I saw that "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" was playing at something called "The Big Picture" in Redmond. Huh? Since when is there an indie theater in Redmond? Turns out it's part of what the owners call a "boutique meeting and event facility". They've had a space in Seattle for years, but just opened up another in Redmond Town Center about a month ago. The lion's share of their business is company and private functions; basically, an alternative to sterile hotel banquet rooms. What an alternative. Very swank, very nice, way beyond the means of most of us. But the cool thing is that their 100 (about) seat theater is open to the public, screening mostly indie films. In addition to "Wild Parrots", they're showing "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room" at Redmond, and "Look At Me" (which I also want to see) in Seattle. Nicest theater chairs I've ever sat in. The whole venue is over-21, so you can bring your martini and white cheddar popcorn (served in a champagne bucket) into the movie with you ... Decadence. Even if the featured movie isn't to your taste, you can pop in and grab a drink. I sound like their publicity lackey, but honestly, it was such a kick. I love lush.

Absolutely DO NOT miss "Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill", if it's playing in your town. Wonderful show, especially if you appreciate either birds or engaging weirdos. And where else are you going to hear Kerouac singing "Ain't We Got Fun"?

"At least she didn't suffer"

Yes, it was quick, my rejection from 32poems. Which I really appreciate. No, not sarcasm ... if I'm going to be rejected, that's my preferred method. And it serves me right, trying to slide in at the end of their submissions period. This was not deliberate, things just sort of slipped away from me and it happened like that. (Bad procrastinator! Bad!) At least I got "try again" ink; can't be bad. Now for the mags that read year-round ... talley ho!

If you had to choose between reading poetry and listening to music (both vocal and instrumental) for the rest of your life, which would you choose?

That just popped into my head today ... I would choose music, which makes me feel like a fraud, poetically-speaking. And you?

Ready for the Storm

Wonderful stormy weather the last couple days; mercurial. Even some thunder and lightning, which we don't get enough 'round these parts. I drove over Cougar Mountain with all my windows and sunroof open in that anticipatory stage right before a storm breaks, when the wind blows right through the car and the sky is dark, darker. Second best thing to being outside in it.

Why don't people drive with their windows down more? Ok, I get why on stormy days, but what about beautiful ones? I've been observing lately, on perfect spring days ... very few people drive with their windows down, or even their sunroofs open. From my limited data sample (limited because of trying not to swerve into oncoming traffic or hit the stopped car in front of me), the nicer the car, the less likely the window will be down. Sigh. They're missing a lot. I know your hair gets messed up, but it's a small price to pay for driving "au natural", as it were, as opposed to "immured in a climate-controlled metal box".

Word I don't hear enough: circumlocution

I like Instant Messaging better than email. It's more dynamic; almost as good as an actual conversation. And it's fun when things get temporally derailed, with replies showing up on your screen addressing what you said one or two entries ago, circling back and forward. I'd like to try to reproduce that effect in a poem, a sort of disordered call-and-response, where no statements fall where they should, yet somehow still speak to each other.

Watch out, Sith, here we come, well-armed with buttered popcorn!

The Honeysuckle That Ate Temescal Street

My irrationally-exuberant Lonicera halliana. As you can see, it's impeding traffic on the front walk, but it's covered in buds ... I absolutely cannot bear to cut any of it back. So we've been learning to walk sideways, carrying groceries, guitar cases, what have you.

The title derives from a family saying ... I was born in Long Beach, CA, on Temescal Street. I can't even remember what flora it was that threatened to take over there, but now whenever anything outgrows itself, it's "the ___________ that ate Temescal Street". Sort of like "The Mother of All ___________", without the unfortunate geo-political associations.

The fragrance of honeysuckle is swoonable, although they make unsatisfying cut flowers, what with the sequential bloom. I love how the blossoms open white, then fade through parchment to honey. I was reading last night about how Lantana blossoms (a favored butterfly food source) change from yellow to orange to red. This seems to be associated with the draining of nectar, a caveat emptor to the butterflies so they don't waste their time on empty blossoms and become disenchanted with the plant. I wonder if something similar is going on with the honeysuckle.

Crazy Love

Sorry to have been so lame lately ... I've been doing too much real-world socializing (grin).

Weird winter = super spring, is my conclusion. The rhodies and azaleas are in overdrive this year, and wild forget-me-nots make a blue distance of the roadside. I've never seen such exuberant pink dogwoods.

Dreaming of poets again ... I was driving Paul Guest on an errand somewhere when we ran into Jeannine Gailey, and decided to have lunch instead. In a cafeteria with a baronial fireplace and some sort of big gas-light fixture with lots of brass ramifications and whooshing blue flames that would occasionally burst out across the floor, with no harm done. Everyone was in a sort of writing reverie, thinking of lines, writing them down. Be well, you guys. Watch out for that open flame.

Interesting tidbit from Italy, where some researchers rounded up a bunch of couples newly in love, drew their blood, and ran tests for serotonin levels. Turns out if you're in love, you have the same 40%-lower-than-average serotonin levels as an obsessive-compulsive. Apparently there is some controversy about the research, but really, these results should surprise no one.

Two Horses

Several weeks ago, an old friend of Scott's from his childhood got back in touch with him. Long story short, we are now a trio of a composer, a poet, and a lyricist who can pick a melodic line out of anything. Scott's always composed, and I've written, but we needed that bridge, somehow. So the last few weeks have been a creative rush -- I've got so many things, "regular" poems and song lyrics, up in the air that I hardly know where north is. I'm just dipping my toe in this lyrics pond ... it seems to demand a slightly different emphasis than I would usually employ ... a little more tell, little less show. I've been immersing myself in lyricists I admire -- Adam Duritz & Natalie Merchant, among others, but I'm still trying to figure out the balance. Anybody else out there do some songsmithing on the side?

Jennifer Scissorhands

It's been pruning season, lately, as I look over my collection. *SNIP* out comes those four lines of explication; if they don't get it, too bad -- *SNIP* that stanza, full of good stuff as it may be, doesn't need to be there and it's gone -- *SNIP* there goes that workshop advice you should never have taken -- *SNIP* too much anaphora -- *SNIP* hasta la vista, epigraph *SNIP SNIP SNIP*

Ahhhhh, it feels good. But just like any other kind of pruning, the magic resides in knowing when to cease and desist (learned that the hard way with a cypress last autumn).

One of the best things about submitting to journals (besides the potential for fame and fortune -- grin) is that it forces me to re-examine work I had considered "done". The downside of that, of course, is that I begin to wonder if they're ever "done", and should I be sending them out even now? Ah, well.