one of mine 

I am going to take out my beer sign for Sunday it is by far the best day of the week.

One of the great things about working for a poetry review is getting to talk to the small presses, seeing how they promote their new authors, who returns phone calls, has information and just the investment they take promoting the work.

I have learn by far, more than I ever thought I would, plus I have figured out how to say “Teresa Ballard” five times in a conversation so if my manuscript ever does come across their desks, they will think, hmmmm I know that name. (in truth, they probably think I am "special" )

Top two presses so far: Graywolf (no surprise) and Alice James. AJ surprised me. I found that other places who were well known like Graywolf, did not measure up to them.

It has helped narrow down who I would send my manuscript out to and sometimes I think as poet, we get so busy just wanting to get the book OUT there, we don’t stop and think about who we really want to work with.

fly, fly to me 

Where in the world

Because my friends love me, one of my friends picked me up the guidelines for the new Minnesota grant which is for women writers this year. It lets you apply for up to $5,000 that can be used to improve your creative mind, hell with that much I could buy a new head.

My friend is applying to go to Thailand and I have spent all morning trying to think of where I would go. Of course, you can use it for other things, computers, childcare (I could get my nanny named Lola) but it is REALLY hard to think that practically. Practically was never one of my strong points. I am toying between returning to Haiti or going to South America, so my question for the day is, where would you go to refresh your creativity mind?

36 days and counting

I realized today that I have taught 36 straights day with out a break, not the whole day mind you and some days I have given tours and there are days like today when I have made all my drawing and painting class crawl through the grass like bugs and then give me ink sketches so it's not hard labor. But in some form or another I have encouraged creativity and I must tell you, I am pretty damn sick of it. I am ready for heavy drinking or maybe a nice walk around the lake. I want to sit all day and not do anything but write, please don’t tell me that is creative because with what I am writing lately I beg to differ.

Last night’s reading was okay, it was a small crowd. I was a little freaked out when I pulled up to the building and there was a big yellow sign, you know the ones that say Beer $2.99 or buy one chicken leg get one free but this one said POeTRY REaDING/ TE Ballard and I thought “fluck” and then I thought cool I have my own beer sign.

But because I have been working so much I had to go to the grocery store on the way home and this is not okay. A) after I read I feel really, really good like a poetry god and for some reason in Minnesota people do not bag your groceries and that is not okay with a poetry god and B) after one reads, they should either get wine, laid or at the very least a nice dinner. None of those things happened and I feel very cheated.

True fact: I always wanted to have a dog and name it Sartre. Another true fact: Last time I had a dog I was 5 and I named him Joe and then Joe had puppies so I named them Joe 1 and Joe 2. This may be why god has not given me another dog.  

... 

this was the only thing beautiful today

Perceptibility Is a Kind Of Attentiveness by Jane Hamilton

It is not enough
to see only the beauty,
this light
that pools aluminum
in the winter branches of apple—
it is only a sign
of the tree looking out
from the tree,
of the light looking
back at the light
the long-celled attention.
The leaves too,
and the fruit, distract
in their sweetness and rustling.
As snow distracts,
covering the tree’s looking out
with its own,
and the fragrance of blossoms.
Only stripped
of its multiple selves,
its many fabrics of loveliness,
does the tree’s eye
step into a form
we can see with our own,
the black roots twisting down
from the heart,
ours equally whorled,
equally silent,
a flood-swept corridor keeping
no vision but life’s
A mirror look into a mirror,
colorless, plain,
what flows between them
passes like water through a net.
A dragon-palace, but what dragon?
Its flowing scales of emerald,
emerald water;
it roaring rush,
tide-rush of water;
the treasure—oh even the treasure—
treasure of water.

We have the same birthday...

Stanley's Century: a Tribute to Stanley Kunitz

Celebrating the 100th birthday and lifetime achievement of Stanley
Kunitz--poet, editor, teacher, activist, leader, collaborator and
friend.

With Lucie Brock-Broido, Olga Broumas, Mark Doty, Nick Flynn, Edward
Hirsch, Marie Howe, Major Jackson, Galway Kinnell, Karl Kirchwey,
Cleopatra Mathis, Gail Mazur, Michael Mazur, Marie Ponsot, Gerald
Stern & Nancy Willard.

Thursday, May 19, 7pm
Tribeca Performing Arts Center
@ Borough of Manhattan Community College
199 Chambers Street, New York City

Tickets: $25/$15
Call (212) 220-1460 or visit www.tribecapac.org

Organized by Poets House in partnership with The Academy of American
Poets, Cave Canem, Fine Arts Work Center, The New York Times, Poetry
Society of America, Poets & Writers, and the Unterberg Poetry Center.
Additional support from LMCC and Teachers & Writers.

... 

When I was a little girl I used to wake up at my grandmother’s cabin and go down to the beach all by myself with a flash light and wait for sea turtles. I’d read somewhere that they could be tricked into believing a bright light was the moon. I had also read, sea turtles traveled thousands of miles and lived to be a hundred years old. In the middle of the night I wanted to be the moon, I wanted to be so blest that a creature would travel the world to plant her babies at my feet. The only problem of course, was my grandmother lived on a lake.

My daughter had a free writing assignment tonight for her 5th grade class and she is so shut off from coming to any readings in the future and I may have to take my Anne Sexton tapes out of the car. Her story is called the “Maria Diaries” and has dead birds, father abandonment, an unwanted pregnancy and three children who are basically in charge of themselves.

Actually it is a wonderful fiction outline and I may have to steal it someday but if this doesn’t get me a call from the school social worker, I have no idea what will. I wonder if the explanation I let my children read whatever they want, will actually hold water.

,,, 

Ahem

so this is what the cover letter said and this is the only thing the cover letter said and for some reason, maybe lack of oxygen, it made me laugh my ass off…

,,, 

Art Whore

If you were at the institute of art this morning in Minneapolis I know you saw me b/c I was that chick trying to convince all the children that they really did want to come paint but what we really did was:

~ set off the alarms at the Japanese tea house
~ look up the skirt of the Indian princess
~ burn a swan’s quill in sand
~ write in Hebrew (it is important to note here that I can write all common children’s names in Chinese, Hebrew and Hieroglyphics but I don’t know how to sort laundry)
~ drop pennies in the foundation from the second floor
~ and make spooky sounds in the mummy room

I probably did a lot of other things but this is off the top of my head. I am glad it is over and get back to this thing called writing though I feel like I have missed every deadline in the world and all I want now is a nap. However, I do know more about writing on holy scrolls then I ever thought possible.

I know how to pick a skin, soak it in lime and find the five feathers one chooses from a goose for writing so if anyone out there wants their next book to be holy, well I’m your girl.

Today

- I rented “the pillow book” and then saw Miss Rebecca’s blog
- a child told me I was magic
- another gave me her angel painting
- my lover told me I was thinking too much
- I told a room full of children if they stopped and painted
everything else would fade away
- I was told I was magic again

.... 

Okay my reading is in two days which makes me think I should actually have something to read. This will be my third time reading there so I should probably have new poems and one of colleagues wants to bring her child. Why do people do that? I went through my poems today to remove all the ones that have sexual connotations in them, and well I won’t be reading any poetry on Thursday if I stick to that rule ;)

I bought a brilliant fiction book Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close I hate authors who are young and brilliant (that is the jealously talking) but Foer is doing things in this book that need to be done. He is pushing the envelope. It is the first time in a long time I have read anything new in literature and hell I read more than the average American watches T.V.

Okay my house smell funny and I have two fellowship applications due by the end of the day so I can buy my nanny named Lola who will feed my children mangos while I finish all the books I want to write. Now to put that in sentence in a one page letter that actually gets me money….

Rod....

All I wanted for mothers day were three good days to write but I did get two runny eggs, toast buttered on both sides, coffee that could kill you and two little girls who love me. It was a good morning.

I am a little apprehensive about writing more about the discussions with Elizabeth, mainly b/c people might get so bored, they may start throwing rocks but it is the only thing in my head at the moment so you will have to endure.

Yesterday Suzanne talked about Emily Dickenson. Can one have a good poetry discussion without Emily? What does she represent to us as poets, more than just her work but her example as a writer? One of the reason I think so many ppl relate to her is because she’s the still small voice that says, even if no one ever sees my work, in a hundred years from now someone may be reading my book.

Yet there has to be a Lavina, the person dedicated to actually seeing the work go to print. The basic fact: talent is not everything, whether we believe it should be or not. Elizabeth said that she has spent her life time researching poets who never made it as writers, more specifically the forgotten black poets. For every one Gwendolyn Brooks there were hundreds who were never heard.

And for some reason Elizabeth finds this comforting, to know that so many things come into play besides the work. I must say my first reaction was down right fear but then I began to think about what I believe about myself and poetry.

The first is, that I believe all the language and everything I need to say is already inside me, that poetry for me is a rediscovering and listening for what I already know to be true. Secondly, that I can no more stop writing than I can breathing, as much as I sometimes try to trick myself into believing I can.

Dorrianne Laux told me that she writes every day so she is out in the field when lightening strikes and if you take that same rule and apply to publication then you are sending work off to be in the field. You are making yourself available so that whatever the universe has to offer, you are open to it. And yes, that bit is comforting.

Last night we talked about the fire within poets, the desire which pushes us to write. It was a very interesting discussion. Elizabeth spoke about one of her best friends, who always won awards for her writing, who was the person who was suppose to grow up to be the poet.

The thing was she didn’t have the fire. It was possible for her not to write so she stopped. I understand this. I love to paint but I don’t need to paint. It does not make me crazy if I don’t paint. Yet you do not want to be in the same room with me when I haven’t written. It's not pretty.

It is my fire. I think writers have a lot of different combinations of burning. I have a friend who blows me away with the amount of work she produces and yet she has no desire to be published. I don't think I ever understood this but I am beginning to realize lately that everyone has their own unique journey.

Not all poets have the desire to be read by other people and I don’t think you need that to be a great poet. Emily Dickenson didn’t. She had only the desire to write. A person who has a fire to be read does not put thier poems in a box. It is not possible.

I have a fire to be read. There is something that happens to me when I read in front of people, when I realize the whole room in breathing in, when I am breathing in, that we are in this moment, in a space I’ve created. To be honest sometimes that is even better than the feeling of nailing a poem. And nailing a poem is damn good.

One of the most important things I think I heard last night is that Teresa Ballard is never going to arrive anywhere. Even if I get everything I want, if I win Yale before I am forty I am still going to want something else. I am still going to continue on this journey. And oddly enough that is comforting. I don’t have to wait for something to happen to make me the writer I see in my head. I just get to be her.

blest poet

I struggle a great deal in my poetry life. I don’t think I really talk about that a lot and I don’t know how much it is my poetry life, as it is my publishing life. I wonder if what I write is ever worth reading. This last month has been a deep struggle. I am submitting to journals I believe I “need” to get into and getting notes back (sometimes) but not getting in. It hard not to let this define me as a writer and lately the question “why am I doing this” has been following me everywhere.

I need a community of writers. I desperately miss Palm Beach, sitting and talking with people who have a passion for poetry. I haven’t felt like I have fed that part of my being since February and she has become a hungry little bugger.

Tonight I made myself go to reading, actually my lover made me go b/c I have been mopping around the house saying, ,“I will never ever have a book” and my children made me go b/c my little weeps have made them crazy. You know it’s bad when your kids want you out of the house.

So tonight I went to the Loft “our literary center” to see Elizabeth Alexander read and the two other people who were awarded a mentorship to read with her. I applied for this. I didn’t get it. Yep, and I was a bit bitter. Side note: I am bitter about most things I don’t win—I don’t think this is a good quality.

I didn’t want to go and hear people tonight be poets when I felt so lost but well, I was kicked out of the damn house. I went to the Loft and there on the billboard was Elizabeth’s name and the message “reading on the 6th” and I thought hmm, I wonder what today is? Another side note: I never know what day it is.

I went upstairs to the office and it was empty, then I saw the director who I met last summer with Dorrianne Laux, he remembered me and of course told me, well the reading is Friday, then he said, well come to this meeting with three other people (who won the mentorship) and Elizabeth. So for the next three hours I sat in a room and we talked about writing. We talked about exactly what I have been struggling with and every single question I put in my journal this week was addressed. It was almost as if she was reading my mind.

I know I am blest poet. Normal people don’t get pulled out of a car to have a drink with Billy Collins and Thomas Lux or go to a poetry reading on the wrong day and have it be better than any reading could possibly be. I struggle inside myself every day to be poet. I struggle with the hunger I have and the ideas of what defines this. But there are days when I am given gifts. When I know I am standing exactly where I am suppose to be and it is good.

True fact: when the Jews were lost in the wilderness they would pile stones on their path so they would always remember where they had been. A reminder of which way to go. I have stones in my poetry life. They are not many but I’ve always known when it happened, that it was a place I needed to mark.

>>> 

Holy Cow!!!

I would like to say I’ve been away writing so you can picture me in a field, note book in hand, yellow butterflies weaving in and out of my hair. Well, you could picture this. I picture this when I’ve actually folded so much laundry my fingers are numb b/c truth, though supposedly a powerful thing, is hardly ever pretty.

I have no time to write and I becoming bitter. Bitterness is not attractive on a 37 year old woman. It makes her hide herself in the bathroom, pull into the driveway and sit there for a good ten minutes before she actually gets out of the car. Side note: I always wondered why my mother did this, just stood there before opening the door as if she was diving into cold water.

The new show is up at the museum. The first illuminated bible in modern history. I am teaching about it but I haven’t seen it yet—that is bad. The director was telling me yesterday how everything is made on skin, tiny handmade pens to write on skin, how they use feathers to make the pens. How cows in some way are considered holy in almost every culture and that (I kid you not) if aliens ever really took over the world they would probably beam up a cow first, because you find their skin or image on every sacred text.

Of course this was followed by a deep stutter, and several minutes of how she didn’t really believe in aliens but all the way home I saw the cows sailing by every tree. Beautiful mama cows being beamed up to start the world again.

a horse is just a horse of course 

in the box

Well I actually have poetry news today. I will be reading next week (May 12) in Saint Paul, Minnesota, email me if you want directions and Shenandoah is holding my poem “Sparrow” which I am very, very happy about. Of course it will probably be another year before I see it in print. Pleiades was 18 months from acceptance letter to actual journal. It is amazing how long the birth of a poem is. Also the Loft Mentorship Applications are out today (for anyone else living in this cold state) www.loft.org I am thinking of applying for Non-fiction this year as well as poetry. I have been a finalist (I almost got to study with Doty) but I didn’t win and this year the poetry mentors don’t excite me. However Nick Flynn in non fiction does excite me and then I can sell photos to Jenni when I get to meet him. I am always so excited to apply for things until the depression sets in as I am licking the envelope.

all hands 

>>> 

the world is orange and red

Mayday is a high holiday. We are home to the Mayday Parade which happens every year a few blocks from our house. There are giant puppets, artists galore and pagan celebrations for spring. It is an amazing adventure. This was Olivia first year on stilts and Bella first year walking the three miles by herself, mostly b/c I had to catch Livi if she fell on her head.

It is amazing how uplifting it is to shout happy mayday at people and throw seeds at their heads. Besides it is full of children, kids who have created their own costumes who march in the streets. People who believe the world is a beautiful place and today for at least a few hours, it was.

happy mayday!!!!!! 

Please pass the mop

One of the bonding moments I remember having with my mother during my early adolescence (they were few) is watching Leo Buscaglia lectures on T.V. I remember that he always said that sometimes he went for days without taking a shower so he could remember what he smelt like. And that as a culture we have forgotten the primal desire for smell. I love that.

My friend Emily who writes for New Yorker (this is what she says, I say she has been in the New Yorker twice) also claims that when she is writing well she will look like shit. She says when we knock on the door and she looks like this, to go away b/c these are her “inspired” times.

So if cleanliness is next to Godliness, it is possible that filth is in direct contact with the muse?

This photo is titled "My boobs in New Mexico" and was taken on a road trip from Calfornia to Minnesota. It was taken by a six year old girl who wanted to play with my camera.  

I Made Three Wishes Today

1.the clothes would come out of the dryer folded
2.someday I would be as famous as Robert Bly and Poetry would obviously not read my poems and take them anyway
3.that this version of the book is THE version.

I have begun my stint with the Minneapolis Institute of Art so my time for the next few weeks will be minimal. If anyone catches C.D. trying to throw me off his roll, please form a maddening crowd. I promise to be back in full form in two weeks.

I also made the decision that I will apply for more writing grants. Okay so I decided that I will actually DO this and not just think I might. My thought is: my feminist writing which tends to piss off a few judges in the world of poetry might actually serve me well in the places that support feminist writers. *big slap on the head*

Yeah for those people, when I am old and rich I will make a grant for authors who have to write a book while P.B.S plays in the background, it will be called “The Barney Kick Your Ass Grant” and will be open to all writers with small children. Okay my kids have moved on to Arthur but the premise is the same.

Today I facilitated my support group for girls, which is a great mix this time around. We talked about having a support system, choosing and making good friends. I told them that it’s guaranteed that someone will miss understand something they say, that sometimes people try to talk around the subject and not through it. We did roll play about communication so they would how to handle it when it happens.

I realized I need this in poetry life. I need someone to tell me,

“This poem is going to be rejected 20 times even though you know it is the best poem you have ever written.”

“You need to realize Teresa, the book is what you WANT to say, not the stuff you think you should say to be heard”

“And you are a writer, even if no one reads you, you are.”

Here is my new job

I had breakfast this morning at my favorite Colombian restaurant where they make the best corn pancakes. I read my horoscope and I have to say, I am pretty much there…

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Actress Lara Flynn Boyle was recently accused of acting oddly on a British Airways flight from Los Angeles to London. Witnesses have said nudity and extreme lack of inhibition were involved. When Boyle was confronted by reporters with the rumors, she refused to elaborate, noting simply, "My job is to entertain, and not to explain." I hereby declare that to be both your motto and mantra in the coming week, Leo.

,,, 

notes from my morning

My writing life is changing which I suppose would be okay if it was not so drastic. I use to work at night after the children had to gone to bed and then edit in the morning when my mind was clear but now my mind wants the day. And the selfish thing wants the whole day. My poetic mind does not understand things like we all need to eat.

Some days I feel like I would only understand this language if I went somewhere deeper inside myself. If I allowed myself to become utterly lost but I never do. I dive down with the one rope tied around my waist and write, all the while a voice is saying cut the rope. Of course, there is another voice that says this is how writers go mad. I have no desire for madness.

This morning I am thinking about art and sex. Why those two things are so much alike. How if you allow yourself to think about what you’re doing it’s never as good as when you just let go, trust your body knows what to do. And that, to be honest even when you are having great sex, there comes a point where you must come back to yourself or something will snap inside, you’ll never find your way out. You will become lost.

I believe in those two things, exists my language. How I communicate to whatever is holy inside or outside of who I am. Not to say there is not bad writing or bad sex. The worst in both areas is when it is not working but you have to finish the “poem” anyway.

In both those things I am the better “Teresa”, in word I become more than the sum of my parts. I accede who I believe myself to be. And that is why, to be honest I love writing so much. I am for one brief second above my own humanity.

I am glad I did not live it but I wish I wrote it 

My Unofficial Review

Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced

Is the best book I’ve read in awhile. Damn fine.

Happy Birtday Mr. Lolita

... 

*the following post contains strong language and brief bouts of nudity*

It was a beautiful day in Minneapolis and my love is coming back to town tonight and because of this, I headed off to wash my car. After several years in a relationship these things become romantic. Anyway right in front of the car wash a cop pulls me over and thus

cop: Did you go right back there?
me: yes, ummmm I think so.
cop: I have mirrors and I saw you weren’t wearing your seatbelt
me: well actually I was I just had it pull down
cop: why???
me: because (I have no clue what to say now and I had just read Suzanne’s blog before I left so....) ummmm b/c I am pregnant.
cop: well if you are going to lie about it…
me: (PISSED EVEN THOUGH I AM LYING AND THUS MORE PISSED) are you telling me I’m not pregnant? [note: I am a girl I could BE knocked up]
cop: (confused) did you know you had a break light out?
me: (obviously we had moved on) No, which one?
cop: I don’t know.
me: well could you check???? (thinking I had to act pregnant and that involves telling men what to do)
cop: (yells something to a man named Larry &^%$* )
cop: I need your license and insurance card
I fumble around and for some reason, can only find my ten page insurance policy…WTF…and for some other reason, besides the fact I am type A, this is not good enough for him
cop: I am sighting you with four violations.
me: FOUR!!!
cop: ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME????
me: you are six foot three and standing half way in my car… Yes
cop: what you need to do, is go down to city hall and plead not guilty, then they will let the fines go so you are just out your time.

He actually said that….to which it took all my control not to say, if I am so NOT guilty, why are you give me a fucking ticket? But by this time every single male employee from the car wash has come out to watch him give me a ticket. I had the great need to flash them all but I thought that would involve more tickets.

Did I mention he pulled me over in one of those car wash stalls? And to top it all off, after he drives away, the guy cleaning out my car decides this would be a good time to ask me out. I mean because of course, at this moment I am thinking about getting laid….hell, the things non-pregnant women have to put up with.

Well for Miss Violet who made my day by being the kind of girl who lets her mother know exactly who she is, well for her I dug out this poem and I mean I really dug. Yeah for girl babies!!!!!


Ultrasound

In the moment before
when the screen held your flesh, you were nothing
except gray, fading images
and the intern checked organs like a grocery list:
heart, liver. I never did understand the meaning of seed
how a thin line of cord could connect or destroy.
You were nothing to me
except the slight shudder below a rib
and then the buzz of a machine became your name
while this woman drew a line with her hand
and said, this is where a penis should be
yet here you will see the flat land,
the black of ovary. She named you girl
marked the small box with a pen.

**** 

You know it is going to be a good day

• when you are taking a shower and you see a pregnant raccoon climb by your window

• when you do not have to share the pot of coffee with anyone

• you teach a room full of tween girls all the lyrics to the Annie Lennox CD

• and Alice James sends you a box of beautiful books to review.

and yes, two days and counting to front row ticket to Carmen. Where I will dress up, drink beautiful things and be loved well. It is a good day.

Today You Told Me You Loved Her Because Your Sadness Is the Same

I wonder what bridge that builds
if the girders are locked in place, painted steel
green like the bridge my father built when he was twenty.

And I wonder if you love her the way, rivers change
move closer, farther from the shore.

Men died, my father would say
and it seemed like love to hang them there.

Damn will someone show me AGAIN how to post a hyper link? The review is out. It is okay. I was proud of it and now well it is okay. It is very cool however to see my name next to Lucille Clifton. and it is not even Teresa Ballard the stalker was arrested.

Peter post’s about Patti Smith made me go and look at all our old Florida photos…now I am depressed. The funny thing is, before I knew Patti her poetry was more powerful to me and now I don’t know, it feels different and I wonder if it is like that for everyone. Maybe it’s just me but I wonder if getting to know a poet as person makes the reader lose essential distance. Hmmm

I also am afraid to read poetry books of people I know. I have three books by my bed of bloggers I really like that I am afraid to open. Maybe I am just whacked.

There She Be

http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/05/spring/lucille_clifton.html

I once believe there were writers and then there were editors and never the two shall meet. Or if they did it was very rare and not necessarily a good thing. But I think I am growing up in my ideas. I see how reading other people’s poetry has changed me, developed my eye and now I believe that one of the best things you can do as a writer is serve as an editor for a bit.

I mean at least then you will realize when reading 300 submissions 250 of them are going to be about someone mother/father/lover. I kid you not. But it also shows you how universal poetry is, and how a good poet seeks to write not only the common but the uncommon.

Anyway, I am happy I took the job at The Cortland Review. I still want to write any spare moment I get but I can read a little poetry in between.

Saturday you painted your mother flying
over a house, her bulbous body holding you firm.
It was easier then to ask you who you hated
instead of who you loved
because your mother’s hair was red
mixed with clouds. It was easier then
to take you to the bed lick away all the color
with my tongue. But I did not.
I merely traced your mother with my thumb
then the small outline of your body beneath hers.
Oh my skeletal bird, if I only understood
poison in the blood how it travels down, spreads
like water on a cloth. Would I have loved you then?

After I sell my first novel I will buy a nanny named Lola and she will feed me children mangos and strawberries. They will walk to school by the river. She will read to them from old leather books and she will look like me so they do not grow up to be serial killers.

Last night I dreamt I grew a full beard. I do not believe this is a good thing and I have no idea what it means? I have been so tired lately I’ve not remember my dreams at all. Usually I teach in them, sometimes I’m in one of my poems like it is a sculpture and I get to walk around it, move the words with my hands. My favorite dream is the naked hang glider dream but I’m not going to go into much detail about that.;)

The art museum is suppose to call in an hour and give me the dates, please let it be a huge grant that pays the artist lots of money.Sometimes I think I have early Alzheimer’s or brain tumor. I cannot remember anything and my whole body hurts. Do you think it is possible all my energy was in my wisdom teeth?

My love is coming home in ten days then we will dress up, go to the opera and eat beautiful food and drink things that are color of parrots.

this says it all 

things which came in the mail

The galleys for the new review, hurray! I will provide a link once it is up.
Calendars by annie finch which has a wonderful book cover.
please dear lord make my book cover pretty
please dear lord give me a book cover

Yesterday was a wonderful writing day. I had forgotten how absolutely
terrifying it is when you can do nothing but write.

Today I had my first art therapy session with a new group of girls.We talked about the strength of the feminine, stereotypes and what it means to be a powerful.

I teach my kids to write daily, paint. I tell them art will save them again and again if they only listen to it. We also talked about shaved heads and the different ways of looking like a girl. I always wanted to shave my head. These classes take on lives of their own, it will be interesting to see what happens.

my day today 

Darling I have fed the cat
slipped to the side of the bed
which is yours, smelling slightly of lime.
I have resisted, repented,
renamed the bed’s corner. Carry on
for I’ve left four times
still you’re the only one gone.
This is madness unraveling slowly
a string hitting the floor
and the cat does not move
there is no hunger. Darling
I have fed the cat.

touch me 

the almost dead

While writing an article tonight about writing and depression I googled famous writer’s suicides and low and behold poor Margaret Atwood (who is not even dead) came up on a list of writers who killed themselves. That is a hell of a list to be on when you are still breathing.

understanding

So my thought for the day which I keep trying to write down here is that I do not believe accessibility equals understanding. If a poem is accessible does it mean it is completely understood? I don’t think so. Rebecca stated in her comment that her mother’s friends do not understand some of her poems and I have had that same comment from my father, that is wonderful dear but I do not know what the hell you are talking about. And yet he will go on later to have a twenty minute conversation of what the poem reminded him of and in turn give me ideas for about twenty other poems. I don’t believe a poet should write for a reader but I do believe the writer needs to be aware.

the cutest kid I know 

Arrogance and accessibility

Emily has wonderful posts about accessibility up at her blog which makes me think about Kaminsky’s review of Wrights work where he talks about arrogance. How a poet needs to believe that they have the authority to say exactly what they are saying. The few poems I get that warm fuzzy feeling for in my own work are the few I believe no one else could ever write except me. So what does that have to with accessibility?

Well the human spirit is a conundrum of individuality verses unity. We have all loved but no one has loved the same way. Side note: my daughter wanted me to explain to her how gay sex was different than straight sex and I said that I thought everyone made love differently and no two people do it exactly the same way though the principles are the same. I told her each two people have their own language.

I don’t know if I answered her question and I am not even sure where I am going here except to say, poetry is a hell of a lot like sex. When it is good I don’t doubt myself at all, I believe the other person will get it without much explanation and I also hand down think I am the best person for the job. So there you go arrogance, accessibility. Oh and the less I think about it, when I shut my mind off and just ummm write, the better it is.

up, up and away

I spent the morning reading submissions. I figured the drugs had worn off to make everything comprehensible but were still in my system enough to make lines like “horny snow” bearable. I never understood that being an editor could be painful.

I have another meeting with the editors of graywolf and this time I will give them a updated finished manuscript. I swear I will. I tried Rebecca’s idea of telling myself I can’t write a poem to in fact make my body write a poem and unfortunately my mind does not accept reverse psychology.

I should of known this, in junior high our school psychologist use to have me picture hot air balloons and put all my troubles on them. The trouble was my problems were always baby grand pianos and fell on her head. To this day I can’t get through a visualizing exercise without giggling. Not good if you are an art therapist on the side.

Best Lines From The Movie Sideways

I can’t believe they didn’t take the book manuscript. I want to die.

Maybe that's the angle. It worked well for Sexton, Howard and Woolf.

But they were published writers.

What about that guy from Confederacy of the Dunces, he wasn’t famous or published when he killed himself and they took HIS book.

You're not helping

Tonight I watched a wrinkle in time with my daughters. It is the first book I have ever loved. I met Madeline L’Engle when I was 16 and she is the first person who ever told me I would be a writer or maybe she was the first person I believed.

On Allison’s blog she has a post about “remember who you are doing this for.” The fact is I am doing this for me. I have always been. It is just sometimes I forget.

Wisdom teeth and the women who love them

I don’t know why I find that photo so funny. A) why would you stand up AGAINST a fence post naked B)why would you wear a hat and C) I am having my wisdom teeth out tomorrow and I am not making wise posting decisions.

I am freaked out about the whole thing. I am worried I’ll have a bad reaction to the medicine and children will find me three days later when they need milk money. And it feels wrong to leave this world without all my body parts.

Maybe I will ask for them in a jar. What do they do with the extra teeth?

On a side note what I never understood about Christian Science is that it’s not okay to go to a doctor if you’re bleeding to death but you should always go in for your 6 month cleaning. If Jesus could close up an open wound don’t you think he could get your teeth on the way.

Anyway I promise that in some post soon I will mention writing/poetry. I will say something wise and insightful unless of course, all of my mojo is in my teeth then well, this is hell.

I'm the one with the gun;) 

I sometimes goggle my own poems. A good poem has a way of traveling, well I suppose bad poems can do this too but I’d like to think it just happens to the work I actually want people to see.

Anyway the funniest thing is that one of my love poems is now posted at
http://mexicomiamore.com/Poems/T.E.BallardBees.html which is as far as I can figure out, is about finding Mexican love and I have no idea how these people got my work.

Plus I have no idea what Mexican love is. Does it differ in some way from Swedish love? Pigmy? Is there Poet love? How about blocked poet love because to be honest I think we deserve it more. But hey if I can have that cover photo for my bio page I think I would get published a hell of a lot more. It sure beats one free copy of a poetry journal.

I am cheating horribly at this poem a day, sometimes it is just a stanza, sometimes it a stanza from an old poem that will not leave my head but I need to find a better house for it. And it is only the beginning of the month; I am going to be posting cereal ingredients by the end of the week.

Poetry right now feels like diving. I need to dive into a deeper level of myself, hold my breath and go but that always equals change for me. I hate change.

One of greatest gift we can give ourselves as poets is the ability to not censor. That is what makes Dobbins wonderful, Celan. The ability to put everything down on paper without value, I am also horrible at this.

C.D. Wright, Adrienne Rich and Donald Justice all slept in my bed last night and only Donald was there when I woke up this morning.

my day 

singing dolls and sylvia

I decided for about 15 minutes today that I would not blog anymore. I also made a list of the reasons I don’t think I am writing very much lately. Sadly it was titled why T.E. Ballard is writing shit and had reasons like owning too many books and getting laid on a regular basis. My mother says ladies are not supposed to use the word laid but it is a wonderful word. I also have singing dolls on the list—if you don’t have children you have no idea how many poems singing dolls can suck out of your head.

On the quest to find something to blow my socks off I bought Adrienne Rich’s new book and the wonderful C.D. Wright that the very tall Charlie introduced me to. I also ordered Eating in the Underworld and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Hopefully my mind will be stirred.

And because it is the first day of “Teresa’s alone writing time” I rented Sylvia and bought of a bottle of Goats Do Rome. The Sylvia movie was okay. I hate Paltrow and I wish ppl would stop giving her literary roles but at least she did not play Sexton.

Oh and my alone time ended by 8 because my baby wanted to come home and sleep in my bed instead of staying at her friend's house. She is now in her bedroom with her dolls and yes, they are singing....

I want to be blown away with a poetry book today. I want to read something that takes my breath away. I can honestly say that within the last year or so only two books have done that for me, Dancing in Odessa and Her Soul Out of Nothing. I have read good books in between, The Clerks Tale and Mercy was an excellent but it not make me weep with the beauty of it. I want to weep today. I want to be blown away.

..... 

How Big Are You?????

A University of Alberta study finds that measuring a man's index finger length relative to his ring finger length predicts his predisposition to being physically aggressive.

The shorter the index finger relative to the ring finger, the higher the amount of prenatal testosterone and the more likely the man will be physically aggressive, they researchers say.