I am tired, the girls and I spend the day at the Minnesota State Fair. We saw a cow give birth and I realized why my parents never really had to talk to me about birth control in adolescence. I was very much a farm girl and watched animal produce and give birth my whole life. Both my girls walked away from the experience today with the firm belief that they will never, EVER do that;)
Bella ate a hot dog that was actually 12 inches long and three people stopped to take her photo b/c when you do this with no teeth it’s really cute. We made spin art with Frisbees and all three of us recieved matching tattoos. We didn’t eat a single thing that was good for us and I thought of Loudon when I saw deep fried candy bars. Dear Lord, the things they put on a stick.
It was a good day. It was a long day. I am working on the grant tomorrow and I am promising myself I WILL finish it.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Why Neruda is Hot!!!
You come flying, alone, in your solitude, alone with the dead, alone in eternity, shadowless, nameless, you come flying without sweets, or a mouth, or a thicket of roses, you come flying ~Neruda
Monday, August 29, 2005
We Are Talking of Fever
Little light, little bird
let me tell you a story. Cup, by small cup
I’ll pour into you. Now open.
Now open your mouth.
Here is the way we begin
once there was a girl there’s always a girl
sometimes there’s a prince.
Now give me your throat
bend to the wolf
this is easier really
then telling the story
to open my mouth.
I want to be the wolf but I am not.
Neither am I the girl, you’re always the girl
unless you’re the fever, red flush
coming over the fields like fire.
I’m the cup. Here is the story.
A girl carries the bucket to the well
but there’s no bottom, the water
follows her like a line, a road
she must travel. The child
does not want this story.
She’s not the princess
hungry for blood, she wants more
of the wolf, more of the hunger.
Her smooth canine, her white mother,
where is the prince?
This is a story of two, the boy is not here.
The girls are adding on to each other.
One is the water.
Little light, little bird
let me tell you a story. Cup, by small cup
I’ll pour into you. Now open.
Now open your mouth.
Here is the way we begin
once there was a girl there’s always a girl
sometimes there’s a prince.
Now give me your throat
bend to the wolf
this is easier really
then telling the story
to open my mouth.
I want to be the wolf but I am not.
Neither am I the girl, you’re always the girl
unless you’re the fever, red flush
coming over the fields like fire.
I’m the cup. Here is the story.
A girl carries the bucket to the well
but there’s no bottom, the water
follows her like a line, a road
she must travel. The child
does not want this story.
She’s not the princess
hungry for blood, she wants more
of the wolf, more of the hunger.
Her smooth canine, her white mother,
where is the prince?
This is a story of two, the boy is not here.
The girls are adding on to each other.
One is the water.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Today I went to the Renaissance Festival with my girls and they rode wooden horses and pushed each other off their steeds with sticks. We ate pickles out of barrels and if one more person calls me "my lady" I am going to throw a shoe at 'em;)
I have never wanted to be a knight or a princess, witch, goblin. At night, as a child when I snuck down to the beach alone, watched the moon slip over the water I only wanted to be one thing....
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Yesterday was the last day of teaching for the summer. Hurray. My daughters took a stilt building/walking class. I don’t know what actually possessed me to give them the tools to make themselves six feet tall. Now Bella is refusing to be the flower girl in my brother’s wedding unless she can wear them. I’m tired of being a single parent. I told her she could pack them and then my new sister in law can deal with her. It's possible she will be on to a new thing by October like maybe the unicycle on the front porch. My girls are now trained in all areas of circus performing.
I'm on the fourth read through Richard Silken’s “Crush” so I can fairly counter Charlie’s claim that it is better than a “Clerk’s Tale.” I like them both but “Crush” feels more manipulated to me and there’s strength in Spencer’s work b/c he writes with a gentleness that Silken does not have. To quote my grandmother, it takes a hell of a lot more “presence” to walk quietly into a room and be noticed then to barge into the room and get everyone’s attention.
If you have read them both which one do you like better? Please don’t tell me both because that’s just annoying;)
I'm on the fourth read through Richard Silken’s “Crush” so I can fairly counter Charlie’s claim that it is better than a “Clerk’s Tale.” I like them both but “Crush” feels more manipulated to me and there’s strength in Spencer’s work b/c he writes with a gentleness that Silken does not have. To quote my grandmother, it takes a hell of a lot more “presence” to walk quietly into a room and be noticed then to barge into the room and get everyone’s attention.
If you have read them both which one do you like better? Please don’t tell me both because that’s just annoying;)
Friday, August 26, 2005
just asking
It is possible that New Sincerists are really the old confessionailists, kind of like when the old Coke was the new Coke and then it was the old Coke again?
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Birds and Gender
Today in the mail a sea bird from the beautiful Miss Loudon. She flew around my room and landed right here by my bed. A wonderful present.
Also in the mail “From the Bones Out” by Marisa de los Santos. I really like what she is doing in this book. Marisa has what Richard Howard calls, la condition fe’minine. in other words, she is not afraid to be a girl. A woman. So many other women artists it seems try to embrace their art by losing their gender, or believe that gender has no place in creation. I don’t understand this.
I don’t understand how you can BE a woman and not write about being a woman. For example, Richard Silken in his book “Crush” writes about being a gay man. What if he omitted that? Would his book be as powerful? Hell no. Yet it seems so many books by women try to sound like their male counterparts, as if they equate the feminine with something less desirable.
In a powerful way race, gender, sexuality matter. I mean they matter in the fact that they make our world smaller. I can read Langston Hughes and even though he is a black man I can relate to his words. Sometimes his words can be my words, with his writing I am able to fit in his skin.
Can motherhood be powerful? Can a woman in her fullest be sexy? Sharon Olds says for years she would get rejection notices that read this kind of journal does not except these kinds of poems. I am reluctant to bring up Sharon b/c you may confuse what I am trying to say with confessional poetry and gender has nothing to do with confession.
Silken is confessional in “Crush” yet he is powerful. He uses lines breaks and the page to set up fresh images and above all he is not afraid to be who he is. The last two books to really shake up the poetry world in my opinion have been “A Clerk’s Tale” and “Crush.” Why? Is it because they are gay men writing about love? Poets have writing about gay love for a very long time so I don’t think this is the answer. I think we as a society have forgotten the power of personal identity, when we tapped into that, claim it as our own we become unstoppable.
Also in the mail “From the Bones Out” by Marisa de los Santos. I really like what she is doing in this book. Marisa has what Richard Howard calls, la condition fe’minine. in other words, she is not afraid to be a girl. A woman. So many other women artists it seems try to embrace their art by losing their gender, or believe that gender has no place in creation. I don’t understand this.
I don’t understand how you can BE a woman and not write about being a woman. For example, Richard Silken in his book “Crush” writes about being a gay man. What if he omitted that? Would his book be as powerful? Hell no. Yet it seems so many books by women try to sound like their male counterparts, as if they equate the feminine with something less desirable.
In a powerful way race, gender, sexuality matter. I mean they matter in the fact that they make our world smaller. I can read Langston Hughes and even though he is a black man I can relate to his words. Sometimes his words can be my words, with his writing I am able to fit in his skin.
Can motherhood be powerful? Can a woman in her fullest be sexy? Sharon Olds says for years she would get rejection notices that read this kind of journal does not except these kinds of poems. I am reluctant to bring up Sharon b/c you may confuse what I am trying to say with confessional poetry and gender has nothing to do with confession.
Silken is confessional in “Crush” yet he is powerful. He uses lines breaks and the page to set up fresh images and above all he is not afraid to be who he is. The last two books to really shake up the poetry world in my opinion have been “A Clerk’s Tale” and “Crush.” Why? Is it because they are gay men writing about love? Poets have writing about gay love for a very long time so I don’t think this is the answer. I think we as a society have forgotten the power of personal identity, when we tapped into that, claim it as our own we become unstoppable.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
dream
Last night I had a horrible dream and now I don’t want to sleep. I was driving in my beautiful red Jetta and I realized I was late for something. I was driving fast to this toll booth so I could cross the bridge on the other side. When I got to the toll booth the person behind the glass window told me I was going too fast and instead of letting me pay, she gave me an eighty dollar ticket. (I have no idea why I know how much the ticket was?)
I got angry and I felt a little arrogant like I could get out of it and asked to see the manger. When did they start having mangers at ticket booths? Anyway they led me down this hall into this room, a man was sitting behind a desk with thick glasses on, I didn’t like him at all and they locked me in the room.
He asked me if I was going fast and I said yes. He then told me to stick out my hands and very quickly he cut my wrists with a big cleaver so that the top of my hands were hanging as if there were on a hinge. He wrapped them in a rag, told me to keep them tied. I walked to my car. I had to untie the bandages to drive home or I was trapped.
The weird thing is, then I do that dream traveling thing and I am in a house. In the beginning part of the dream I am me, Teresa. The way I am now and in the second part of the dream when I walked into the house I am not, I am male. (Please don’t get sexual dream interpt with me) I am male and there’s a woman in the house with long blondish hair washing dishes and I can hear the kids in the other room. I walk to her. I sit at the table. I hold up my hands. I say “now I can do nothing. I can do nothing.” And my hands just hangs there. I wake up crying.
Now I don’t want to sleep.
I got angry and I felt a little arrogant like I could get out of it and asked to see the manger. When did they start having mangers at ticket booths? Anyway they led me down this hall into this room, a man was sitting behind a desk with thick glasses on, I didn’t like him at all and they locked me in the room.
He asked me if I was going fast and I said yes. He then told me to stick out my hands and very quickly he cut my wrists with a big cleaver so that the top of my hands were hanging as if there were on a hinge. He wrapped them in a rag, told me to keep them tied. I walked to my car. I had to untie the bandages to drive home or I was trapped.
The weird thing is, then I do that dream traveling thing and I am in a house. In the beginning part of the dream I am me, Teresa. The way I am now and in the second part of the dream when I walked into the house I am not, I am male. (Please don’t get sexual dream interpt with me) I am male and there’s a woman in the house with long blondish hair washing dishes and I can hear the kids in the other room. I walk to her. I sit at the table. I hold up my hands. I say “now I can do nothing. I can do nothing.” And my hands just hangs there. I wake up crying.
Now I don’t want to sleep.
For Lee
My horoscope today
LEO (JULY 23-AUG. 22): According to the legends of many cultures, every one of us has a doppelganger somewhere on the planet: a person who looks exactly like us. The modern sciences of genetics and statistics go further, saying that there are at least 80 people worldwide who are our spitting image. If you're ever going to meet one of these doubles, Leo, it will probably be in the coming weeks. But even if you don't, I predict that the whole world will become a giant mirror, reflecting back to you visions of yourself that you haven't been able to see before.
LEO (JULY 23-AUG. 22): According to the legends of many cultures, every one of us has a doppelganger somewhere on the planet: a person who looks exactly like us. The modern sciences of genetics and statistics go further, saying that there are at least 80 people worldwide who are our spitting image. If you're ever going to meet one of these doubles, Leo, it will probably be in the coming weeks. But even if you don't, I predict that the whole world will become a giant mirror, reflecting back to you visions of yourself that you haven't been able to see before.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Monday, August 22, 2005
I bought a book of Romanian Poetry today because it had my beloved Paul Celan on the cover. He looked at me and said ” Teresa don’t you love me?” and I said, “Yes Paul I do” We are very discrete about our love affair and he doesn’t mind at all that I share my bed with others.
I am writing another grant. Forget what I said about the state grant being easy, they have on their site that it will take three weeks to complete all the forms. God I hate it when you have to work your ass off for money.
Fanny Howe received this same grant for her last book which means we both lived in the same damn state and I never got to hear her read. Oh the list of writers regret grows.
I am writing another grant. Forget what I said about the state grant being easy, they have on their site that it will take three weeks to complete all the forms. God I hate it when you have to work your ass off for money.
Fanny Howe received this same grant for her last book which means we both lived in the same damn state and I never got to hear her read. Oh the list of writers regret grows.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
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