Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Best News from Best New Poets 2006

Teresa Ballard and Vincent Zompa were selected as the Best New Poets Open Competition Winners by Eric Pankey and Jeb Livingood.

the beer is on me!!!!

Sunday, September 10, 2006

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It took me three hours to walk through the Diane Arbus exhibit. It felt like I had been there a half an hour when I came out the elevator door. I checked the clock three times.

” I used sometimes to wish not to notice the difference between things and people as if that would constitute enlightenment.

I understand this…I’m trying to forget.

I read all the little scrawls in note books, all the letters. Remind me to burn my journals before I die. I don’t mind manuscripts under glass. It’s the things I draw on napkins that terrify me.

I am applying for a Guggenheim even though I have no degree or formal training. I do speak a little French but I don’t think they are going ask me that.

Top of the Guggenheim application: I am a single mother of two small daughters and I want time to create art.

How many times have I written that?

Because there is a photo in the exhibit where she is pregnant and looking into the mirror, b/c I have that same photo of myself at twenty four and because I know what it’s like to leave my husband, to use my art as a way out and because honestly I had forgotten how she died, when the suicide came under glass with the date, I made a sound inside myself that frighten the man next to me and I wanted to not understand so well.

Diane Arbus

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If I have not written you—I’m an ass, if I have not called you back it is b/c my phone is not hooked up (and I’m enjoying it) and if I did not respond when you said my name I think I am sorry.

Reclusive is a lovely word.

Today I am going to see the Diane Arbus exhibit b/c it is the last day and it will be amazing. I hope. If not, I know it will be crowed and I can say reclusive, reclusive a thousand times in my head.

The sewer exploded last night again downstairs and now I need to pay someone to run cameras under my house to look at shit. Photos of shit. For some reason I find that incredibly funny—I hear humor takes over right before you go mad.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

It takes too much time to be a writer. I, the keeper of all time especially mine, have decided this. In a perfect world there is enough time to do the things you love or maybe that is too loose a definition, I mean the things which let you breathe easier. In my ideal world I’d write without the guilt of motherhood, financial responsibility or stress, I’d write b/c it helps me breathe. But I don’t live in my ideal world

I live here.

I have just finished my third 50 hour week and I have to get a non profit art program off the ground by next week. I have a giant dragon in my front yard made out of cardboard that Isabel made in go-cart class and its raining. I am debating how much I love my daughter and if I should try to push the giant red dragon into the trees so it doesn’t get ruin---it is way too big for my garage.

This week I read to my students from Da Vinci’s notebooks. I talked to them about light, the human form and inventions. I told them this man was brilliant not just b/c of everything he thought but b/c he wrote everything down. He valued his mind--great people are made when they allow themselves to be great people.

Please remember to write it down.