tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23069101579093761542024-03-29T02:31:47.448-07:00Dr. Sward's Cure for Melancholia"Melancholia. Black Dog. Depression. Call it what you want. 14 million people a year got what you got," says my Russian-born podiatrist father.Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.comBlogger100125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-2678305678125513002010-09-06T16:38:00.000-07:002010-09-07T12:13:31.995-07:00Writers Friendship, David Alpaugh cheers the soul<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV24afcWb1_4N6bJcrHkBqOWATEiHCxUW3wM-k5rZIVgBFsQGI8SkchyphenhyphenTWDL3CIKCik1M2uUPq_3wvVWT3mevG__G74GZnZt9vcZ4NKBzs-DdBUFfq0LMniUIDy4OShGvmL1IL2IGIpac/s1600/David_Alpaugh.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 160px; height: 228px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV24afcWb1_4N6bJcrHkBqOWATEiHCxUW3wM-k5rZIVgBFsQGI8SkchyphenhyphenTWDL3CIKCik1M2uUPq_3wvVWT3mevG__G74GZnZt9vcZ4NKBzs-DdBUFfq0LMniUIDy4OShGvmL1IL2IGIpac/s320/David_Alpaugh.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5514250750689434450" /></a><br /><div class="content"> <div class="image-attach-body" style="width: 70px;"><div class="caption"><br /></div> </div> <p> My friend <a target="_blank" class="ext" href="http://www.davidalpaugh.com/" title="David Alpaugh">David Alpaugh</a>, author of “Counterpoint,” “Heavy Lifting,” and widely read and discussed essays on "The Professionalization of Poetry" and "New Math of Poetry," responds to my new poem, “Legacy: Muse Neglect,” which opens</p> <p> <em>We’re comin’ up to my birthday./I’m seventy-seven—twenty-three more and I’ll be a hundred!/So what’s it all about, sixty-odd years of writing, scribbling?/Etc.</em></p> <p>Hello, Robert:<br /><br />My apology for taking so long getting back to you on "Legacy: Muse Neglect." Been tidal-waved by late days of summer, gearing up for fall obligations (Coolbrith, Valona, etc.).<br /><br />"Legacy" is a brave poem. You certainly touch a responsive chord in this poet, as I, too, am starting to wonder if I've lost the muse, have been treading water post-Counterpoint. Didn't old man Wordsworth and young man Byron have similar doubts? ("Whither is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the dream?").<br /><br />I love the concrete "eye to eye" confrontation with your "first mutt," that "first published poem." The metaphorical sense here is as sure as it is quiet. The paradoxical reversal of the dog becoming master and wagging the man is richly comic, and most poignant in that manly dogly reproach, "Bad poet, bad poet!" Unpretentiousness that comes from truly having the goods rather than just the flash has always been one of your most appealing qualities.<br /><br />Cheer up, Bob. "Legacy" is proof that you're poems have not lost their canine magic. Dogliness was and is the metaphor for what you continue to aim for in your work. Falling a bit short much of the time is inevitable. (When Samuel Beckett was asked if he had a favorite work he shook his head and muttered: "Something wrong with all of them.")<br /><br />The more I look at the history of poetry the more I believe that our mission is (in Frost's words) "to lodge a few poems where they will be hard to get rid of." You've done that with "Uncle Dog," "God is in the Cracks," "Heavenly Sex" and a dozen others, and now "Legacy" will be in the running (or, as you would say, trotting!).<br /><br />The only question is the crucial one for our Po-Busy time: will the gatekeepers get out of the way and allow poetry to live not by status and accreditation but by love? Here, I'm afraid that "the worst are full of passionate intensity." Let's hope we can overshoot their papier-mâché palace and land a few good poems on the other side!<br /><br />With deep respect for your generous, generative humor,<br /><br />David</p> </div>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com84tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-74375668500936277692010-06-19T11:22:00.000-07:002010-06-19T11:42:46.884-07:00Podiatrist Father, "God is in the Cracks," Black Moss PressIn answer to a recent query from 'Podiatrist Melbourne' ( see below)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Podiatrist Melbourne has left a new comment on your post "Podiatrist Father": </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Interesting blog. It would be great if you can provide more details about it. Thanks you..."</span><br /><br />I'd say 1) my poem "The Podiatrist's Son," which opens <span style="font-weight: bold;">God is in the Cracks</span> (Black Moss Press, Canada) is the best introduction to that blog and the directions in which it flows. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Globe & Mail </span>(Canada) noted in a review, "The heart and core of this book is a series of dramatic monologues and dialogues between father and son..."<br /><br />2) In addition to being a podiatrist, Dad evolved his own blend of kabbalistic, Christian hermetic, and prescient New Age mysticism which lent its colors to his medical practice... (quoting here from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Globe and Mail </span>review). Podiatry is the take-off point...Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-33307488486540319452010-06-12T19:05:00.000-07:002010-06-12T19:11:11.955-07:00Red Room Writers.com<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(41, 48, 59); ">Thanks for checking in... for latest, please visit:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.redroom.com/author/robert-sward" style="color: rgb(71, 54, 36); text-decoration: underline; ">http://www.redroom.com/author/robert-sward</a><br /><br />and, also,<br /><br /><a href="http://writerfriendships.webdelsol.com/" style="color: rgb(71, 54, 36); text-decoration: underline; ">http://writerfriendships.webdelsol.com</a><br /><br /><span style="font-size: 12px; ">Working simultaneously on 3 blogs (how did <span style="font-style: italic; ">that</span> happen?), I'm focusing more now on the Red Room Writers.com and, in addition, "<a href="http://writerfriendships.webdelsol.com/" style="color: rgb(71, 54, 36); text-decoration: underline; ">Writers' Friendship / Writers' Enmity</a>." Introduction to Writers' Friendship follows:</span><br /><br />"Humility is not a virtue propitious to the artist. It is often pride,<br />emulation, avarice, malice, all the odious qualities which drive a man<br />to compete, elaborate, refine, destroy, renew his work until he has<br />made something that gratifies his pride and envy and greed. And in<br />doing so he enriches the world more than the generous and good, though<br />he may lose his own soul in the process. That is the paradox of<br />artistic achievement." So says novelist Evelyn Waugh.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; ">If Waugh is right, then what is it like for one writer driven by</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; ">pride, emulation, avarice and malice, to sustain a friendship with</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; ">another?</span><br /><br />Anyway, for more, click on <a href="http://writerfriendships.webdelsol.com/" style="color: rgb(71, 54, 36); text-decoration: underline; ">http://writerfriendships.webdelsol.com</a></span>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-73291127000648824762009-11-29T17:20:00.000-08:002009-11-29T17:23:49.752-08:00Casting and Gathering - Friendship, On the Contrary...<h2 class="date-header">_____________</h2> <div class="post hentry uncustomized-post-template"> <a name="1461711402897801434"></a> <h3 class="post-title entry-title"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; ">by Andrew Boobier</span></h3><div class="post-body entry-content"><br />--<br />In his poem, Casting and Gathering, dedicated to his friend Ted Hughes,<br />Seamus Heaney writes:<br /><br />I love hushed air. I trust contrariness.<br />Years and years go past and I do not move<br />For I see that when one man casts, the other gathers<br />And then vice versa, without changing sides.<br /><br />Heaney evokes here the push-pull effect of friendship, the fact that<br />two people can have different natures, contrary impulses yet be united<br />in the common bond of mutuality and respect for each other as fishermen<br />and poets. The poem is also about growing up and learning to respect<br />these differences, 'I have grown older and can see them both...' he<br />says.<br /><br />There is a dialectical movement in which the two opposing forces of<br />Heaney's and Hughes' language (the 'hush' and 'lush') are not only<br />synthesised into their bonds of friendship but also as a resolution<br />within the poem and Heaney's own contrary. The strong resolutions<br />within Heaney's poetic output in general are indicative of his<br />allegiance to his Romantic forbears and his own particular need for<br />balance and redress (e.g. see his lecture, The Redress of Poetry -<br />essentially a post-romantic rebuttal of post-modernism).<br /><br />I have a great [*word missing?] of sympathy with Heaney's trust of<br />contrariness, though I have a harder time coming up with cosy<br />resolutions. I once wrote a poem combining<br />suicidal American poets with the need for public displays of mourning<br />after national tragedy, it ended:<br /><br /> Human beings,<br />as Eliot says, cannot bear too much<br />reality.<br />History is a register of fancy.<br />War is a matter of personal<br />taste. Poetry is the language<br />of saints.<br />If only everything<br />were so black and white.<br /><br />That last line is an ironic, wistful sigh mimicking the<br />romantic-capitalist desire to categorise discourse and ideology into<br />neat manageable parts which can be subsumed or appropriated into a neat<br />manageable whole. I certainly do not blame people for seeking these<br />kinds of resolutions; we're all looking for something to hold on to<br />when reality gets too heavy [*to] bear. But having been schooled these<br />last twenty years in existentialism, surrealism, and the works of<br />Georges Bataille, Lacan, Barthes, Derrida and Foucault, I tend to have<br />a more sceptical eye on such matters.<br /><br />I, too, trust contrariness. But it is one that is intuitive, left open<br />to its own raw and rough edges, dark and often unresolved. This kind of<br />operation is not always easy to undertake when you have also been<br />influenced by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Wallace Stevens, Eliot, Heaney,<br />Hughes, and others who have trod the well-worn path of Romantic<br />academic poetry fed to the young on undergraduate courses. Like<br />Whitman, I say: Do I contradict myself? Well, then, I contradict<br />myself. This attitude is undoubtedly rooted in the fact<br />that I am a working class kid educated to highfalutin middle class<br />intellectual values.<br /><br />So, on the one hand I am a poet - the ne plus ultra of post-romantic<br />narcissistic navel-gazing. On the other, I hate that kind of widely<br />accepted and highly-acceptable form of egocentricism. Poor Andrew, torn<br />between the ego-impulse to express himself and desire to lose the<br />'self' in a more communal project!<br /><br />Anyway, a few years ago this came to a head. I've always been too<br />much of a misanthrope to be enthused by 'community arts' and so instead<br />I was drawn into the more cerebral collective adventure of surrealism.<br /><br />One day I was browsing through one of the larger chain-store bookshops<br />when I came across a strange 'calling card' which had been left in a<br />book of surrealist short stories. I can't recall what it said exactly<br />but it intrigued me enough to contact the authors. I thought it was a<br />flyer for a magazine and I had just starting writing 'surreal' poetry<br />and so I sent them a letter with a couple of poems and told them I was<br />familiar with surrealist history and had even translated a novel by<br />Georges Bataille at university. They wrote back immediately and set up<br />a meeting in a nearby pub. So I then met up with four people calling<br />themselves The Leeds Surrealist Group. They were four friends who'd<br />originally met at university, united by a passion for black attire and<br />exploring the darker side of the imagination first begun in the 1920's<br />by Breton and his band of collective adventurers.<br /><br />For some time the Leeds Group had been adhering to strict Bretonian<br />principles: collectively drawing[s] and writing, and devising games in<br />the single-minded pursuit to wrench the imagination back from the<br />all-devouring profit-motive and market forces. It was all very<br />idealistic, historically informed and seemingly exactly what I was<br />looking for. Inevitably we hit it off and I passed the 'interview' - my<br />wife and I were invited to one of their creative evenings. In the<br />candlelight and semi-gothic darkness we'd sit drinking red wine<br />discussing the politics of surrealism, the activities of other groups<br />in Prague, Paris and Stockholm, the mutual respect for Artaud and the<br />equally mutual hatred of 'Avida Dollars'. We'd play exquisite corps and<br />initiate new games. Once every week we'd sit in a pub, seething into<br />our beers with hatred for the 'system', all the while plotting a<br />'revolution of the mind' by collectively drawing on a beer mat.<br /><br />The real glue that held everyone together was a deep, though often<br />fraught, friendship. Being newcomers, it took some time for the others<br />to let their guard down and let us into their inner sanctum of trust<br />and bonhomie. And yet, group dynamics being what they are, a certain<br />strained tension was never far away. There was a definite leader of the<br />group. He was the one who would organise sessions, the intellectual<br />force behind the whole project, be the overall spokesman etc. Coming<br />into the group from my own intellectual position (my 'Bataille' to his<br />'Breton') shifted the weight in the boat a little. Not that this would<br />come out in any overt way - we never argued - it was more subtle in the<br />way I would question given assumptions or undermine some of the<br />pomposity of what we did with humour. The group could be very serious,<br />sometimes to a point of blind self-righteousness. I find it difficult<br />to be totally serious about anything that doesn't appreciate the<br />absurdity of one's own human, all too human, situation.<br /><br />There is no text without a context, and I wanted to understand more the<br />context of what made the group and its friendships tick. I therefore<br />devised a collective game called The Misfortunes of Memory which would<br />explore the limits of surrealistic discourse and what held us all<br />together. The game itself was quite complex, involving players choosing<br />objects from their past, writing them down and distributing them<br />secretly among the others where they would undergo various<br />'transformations' (visual representations, narrative reconstructions,<br />etc). One controlling individual called 'The Puppet Master' would have<br />little to do with the game except at the end when he would create a<br />small 4 act play based on material given by the others. The players<br />would then have to act out this play. The fifth act would be an act of<br />revenge whereby the actors view the puppet master's objects and devise<br />an ending to the play (including the Puppet Master's inevitable<br />'death') based on this new material.<br /><br />The idea of the game would be for people to give up some aspect of<br />their past, like a gift (in more anthropological terms, an act of<br />'potlatch') and allow this to be manipulated and changed by others to<br />create something new. It would be an act of artistic trust and faith in<br />the Other. What it ultimately meant was that no act of self-reflection<br />would fall into a single 'fetishised' discursive form; it would be open<br />to a series of manipulations and interpretations outside any<br />individual's controlling ego. All-in-all I thought it quite an exciting<br />(and difficult) challenge and felt it would take the group's activity<br />to a new level.<br /><br />My wife was equally enthusiastic about it though the rest of the group<br />were highly suspicious of my motives. They didn't seem to take in the<br />spirit it was presented: as a game. They wanted to analyse it and<br />discuss it further, reformulate it so it conformed to a mutually agreed<br />format with a more defined outcome. The fact that the game was<br />dictatorial was intentional; imposed by an Other like so much that goes<br />on in society. That's why I included the role of the Puppet Master<br />(i.e. the role of Authority) who has an unequal amount of power yet<br />gets his comeuppance. What I hoped the game would produce was a<br />microcosm of the power structures both within the group's own dynamics<br />and in society 'out there', as well as how collective engagement (i.e.<br />artistic friendship) could transform and corrupt power's own corruption<br />through the work of the imagination. It was everything we'd talked<br />about, enacted. OK, it might not work as a piece of art - it was the<br />taking part that was most important - lessons would be learned; the<br />armour (amour) of our friendship would have been tempered in the<br />white-hot forge of collective and imaginative engagement. Blimey, it<br />would have at least been a laugh!<br /><br />It was not to be. I felt by this time the group had moved on and fallen<br />foul of the need to justify its existence through the production of<br />more bone fide 'works'.<br /><br />Endless discussions, overt lack of enthusiasm, needless suspicion... it<br />was the beginning of the end, at least for us. And my wife and I began<br />to see less of the group.<br /><br />In the end we re-enacted one of the more sordid episodes in the history<br />of surrealism - the ideological split. Breton vs Bataille all over<br />again.<br /><br />You cannot blame the group or any individual for this outcome. It was<br />an experiment after all. It's just disappointing that we couldn't take<br />the risk and that, in the end, the ego's defences were set too strong<br />for this particular collective adventure.<br /><br />People confuse my contrariness with being just plain awkward or<br />difficult. Perhaps I am. But being contrary, for me, means exploring<br />given assumptions about the world, seeing how far you can push things<br />before they fall off the edge or transform into something new. For me<br />it's nothing aggressive or nasty; it should be fun, playful. It's just<br />a tool of the imagination that many poets and artists employ. How far<br />should it go though? Should this imaginative prodding extend to the<br />bonds and boundaries of friendship too? As I found out there's a risk<br />involved. Is it worth taking? That depends. One man casts the other<br />gathers...<br /><br />CODA<br />All this happened six or seven years ago now and I haven't heard from<br />the group since. Despite our differences, I still think about them and<br />wonder what they are up to. As for myself, I still live a contrary life<br />- relatively alone - between writing acceptably narcissistic poetry<br />(which has found a modicum of success) and devising more 'weird' stuff<br />with a new writer, Anton Brassiere (which has also had a slight drizzle<br />of public approval).<br /><br />My wife and I have also resurrected the Misfortunes of Memory game<br />which we are currently playing: less as husband and wife but, more<br />comfortably, as friends. Where it's going, we're not sure yet, but we<br />are enjoying the ride!<br />----<br /><br />BIO:<br />Andrew Boobier was born in Haworth, West Yorkshire in 1963.<br />He has published poetry and translations in the UK &<br />US. In 2003 he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.<br />Andrew is also the editor of the Alsop Review's<br />prestigious online quarterly magazine, Octavo<br />(http://alsopreview.com/octavo). Andrew has just<br />launched his own web site at http://www.boobier.com;<br />He'd be pleased to hear from you.</div></div>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-54544087496695425762009-07-27T19:21:00.000-07:002009-07-27T19:21:16.710-07:00Collin Kelley: Modern Confessional: Poets On Twitter<a href="http://collinkelley.blogspot.com/2009/05/poets-on-twitter.html">Collin Kelley: Modern Confessional: Poets On Twitter</a>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-1849607390474387152009-04-08T23:22:00.000-07:002010-08-05T16:00:37.550-07:00Writers' Friendship Renewed<div class="byline">by <a href="http://www.redroom.com//blog/robert-sward/poet-barry-spacks">Robert Sward</a></div> <br /> <div class="image-attach-body" style="width: 89px;"> <a href="http://www.redroom.com/image/barry-spacks-poetry-matters"><img src="http://www.redroom.com/files/images/BarrySpacks.thumbnail.jpg" alt="Barry Spacks, Poetry Matters" title="Barry Spacks, Poetry Matters" width="89" height="100" /></a> <div class="caption">Barry Spacks, Poetry Matters</div> </div><br /><p><strong>Reading an Old Friend's Poems</strong><br />by <a target="_blank" class="ext" href="http://www.barryspacks.net/" title="Poet Barry Spacks">Barry Sparks</a></p> <p>The wonderings and sweetness of this voice<br />bring to my thought<br />the scent of fine paper, fine linen,<br />shirt with a white collar<br />for the first time worn,<br />long evening with a new book,<br />dwelling over the pages.</p> <p>But in its sayings<br />of loss, this voice<br />tastes blood on its teeth, tart taste of blood<br />that can neither be spit out nor swallowed.<br />In reverence for loveliness<br />my friend's word-music comes upon me<br />like air before rain: remember? ?<br />that freshness, cool, ultimately delicate;<br />though air so offered<br />may lift at times into a wind<br />carrying sand, or into a deluge to follow.<br />"Where will we go," asks the poem's voice,<br />"when they send us away from here?" ?<br />the body gone<br />from all its familiar desirings<br />and gone this mind<br />that was a savoring,<br />while its voice alone continues,<br />a comfort to desire.<br />_________</p> <p>BIO NOTE: </p> Barry Spacks earns his keep as a persistently visiting professor at UC Santa Barbara after years of teaching at M.I.T. He's published many poems in various journals, paper and pixel, plus stories, two novels, and seven poetry collections, the most extensive of which is SPACKS STREET: NEW & SELECTED POEMS, from Johns Hopkins. A CD of 42 poems, A PRIVATE READING, appeared in October 2000.Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-39817103850225653292008-09-01T22:41:00.000-07:002008-09-01T23:27:13.047-07:00Always the Beautiful Answer - Prose Poem Primer<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ-CeA7fKbPNHf1iau-bFhOrVL5OJtfVlhYlC1S37OHVQxURUOSiBvIAYOVzvcaFeLhZNLl2o02svTUHMzh6jy8K6XPYLmSlVm97jo9_BGEOV1sdIQpjIRHmPB_0xxhMvZYRqW9uD7MlA/s1600-h/Peter+Klappert.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ-CeA7fKbPNHf1iau-bFhOrVL5OJtfVlhYlC1S37OHVQxURUOSiBvIAYOVzvcaFeLhZNLl2o02svTUHMzh6jy8K6XPYLmSlVm97jo9_BGEOV1sdIQpjIRHmPB_0xxhMvZYRqW9uD7MlA/s400/Peter+Klappert.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5241305573047550882" border="0" /></a><br />Poet Peter Klappert's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Circular Stairs, Distress in the Mirrors</span>, Six Gallery Press,Pittsburgh, PA, 2008.<br />---<br /><br />My friend Peter Klappert sends a copy of his new book plus Ruth Kempher's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Always the Beautiful Answer: A Prose Poem Primer</span> (the anthology was first published in 1999 and is now back in print). RK begins with a definition...<br /><br />PROSE, n. 1. Speech or writing without metrical structure: distinguished from verse. 2. Commonplace or tedious discourse.<br /><br />POEM, n. 1. A Composition in verse, characterized by the imaginative treatment of experience and a condensed use of language that is more vivid and intense than ordinary prose... any composition characterized by intensity and beauty of language or thought: a prose <span style="font-style: italic;">poem</span>.<br /><br />Age 19 serving in the U.S. Navy (LST 914) in the combat zone in Korea (c. 1952), I began writing... something... and reading everything I could find in the ship's library. In fact, I was ship's librarian... anyway Ruth Kempher includes Carl Sandburg's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Tentative (First Model) Definitions of Poetry,</span> which I read then and haven't much looked at since. Now it all comes back... <span style="font-style: italic;">vividly</span>, stuff that helped tease me into wanting to write. Sandburg's definitions of poetry include:<br /><br />1. Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths.<br /><br />2. Poetry is an art practised with the terribly plastic material of human language.<br /><br />3. Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, 'Listen!' and 'Did you see it?' 'Did you hear it? What was it?'<br /><br />Anthology includes Charles Baudelaire's "The Stranger," "The Soup and the Clouds" and the editor's note, "The prose poem began as a conscious form in nineteenth century France, pioneered by Aloysius Bertrand and Charles Baudelaire. The form represented a kind of reaction against the strict poetic dictates of the French Academy...<br /><br />And Michael Hathaway's tribute / "Ode to Grandpa Hathaway," poet and editor I knew in the mid-1960s when I was teaching at Cornell and serving on Prof. William Hathaway's magazine, EPOCH. Michael Hathaway's poem meets / satisfies all 3 of Carl Sandburg's definitions.<br /><br />Anyway, I send thanks to Peter Klappert, whose new book <span style="font-weight: bold;">Circular Stairs, Distress in the Mirrors</span>, I turn to next. Then to play his CD / Library of Congress Podcast,"The Poet and the Poem."Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-77173338734261141382008-08-12T15:37:00.000-07:002008-08-13T17:05:47.513-07:00Wisdom through excess<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqZPHlGFwgCUvZDpiOogU5Si50nAwU8T9Ta-G2DKl_2OKdkzJj5oVA_JHEKxKImPCJ5t96sTCSknYOSqCuoI1fY28eIk6E19D6LRw0vFxJSB3wFIu4iLwvb0_frP2WKW9YYcdoZEhhZs/s1600-h/MuchMarriedCvr-Sward.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqZPHlGFwgCUvZDpiOogU5Si50nAwU8T9Ta-G2DKl_2OKdkzJj5oVA_JHEKxKImPCJ5t96sTCSknYOSqCuoI1fY28eIk6E19D6LRw0vFxJSB3wFIu4iLwvb0_frP2WKW9YYcdoZEhhZs/s400/MuchMarriedCvr-Sward.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5233773825643168722" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />“It takes several lives to make one person.” I believe that and that we are also, all of us, phoenixes rising, or so it seems, from the ashes of our old selves. The rise and fall of the phoenix. Phoenix. Pheonix. Phoenix.<br /><br />“The soul is a vast domain," wrote Arthur Schnitzler. "So many contradictions find room in us… We try our best to maintain order in ourselves, but this order is really just synthetic. Our natural condition is chaos.”<br /><br />I think of that as I come across reviews of an earlier book. <span style="font-weight: bold;">“Four Incarnations </span>is named for four distinct periods in Sward’s writing career… shaped by four marriages and four dramatic changes…”<br /><br />Friends ask, “Does it get easier… does getting divorced and getting divorced again… does it get easier, the second or third time around?”<br /><br />NO.<br /><br />In the 60s and 70s I took pride in being called a wild man, a crazy. Experimented and bought into the Romantic notion that to carouse, to indulge, to choose excess over order would help me as a writer. Excess. I'm thinking of Blake who suggested that the way to wisdom is through excess. I'm pro-Blake, but I'm re-thinking excess. These days I’m paying more attention to Ben Franklin and less to Blake. “Early to bed, early to rise...” In truth that's what works. That, for me at least, is what furthers the writing.<br /><br />It's late in the game, but these are the confessions of a much-married man.Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-37461144284277620942008-08-09T16:19:00.000-07:002008-08-09T16:43:11.932-07:00Why do you write?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBXxMLpzSUXqaaAsO8Vi6lJnO7rjLY4OQZPddi5mYWDtVBU66baHyq3Oa2uwLUCmws7c1_thI1dt0pKN3QLVfxVC5JGkIlmUU-MsHCCvf-I2GZ4y1lCZub1zTGtQ1yfrOYfTSfnp1xrPk/s1600-h/Orhan_Pamuk3.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBXxMLpzSUXqaaAsO8Vi6lJnO7rjLY4OQZPddi5mYWDtVBU66baHyq3Oa2uwLUCmws7c1_thI1dt0pKN3QLVfxVC5JGkIlmUU-MsHCCvf-I2GZ4y1lCZub1zTGtQ1yfrOYfTSfnp1xrPk/s400/Orhan_Pamuk3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232666115812155730" /></a><br /><div>Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize Lecture, 2006... </div><div><br /></div><div>In his Nobel Lecture, Pamuk provides a fairly comprehensive reply to the question, "Why do you write?" </div><div><br /></div><div>"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Why do you write?</span> I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can't do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. </div><div><br /></div><div>"I write because I love the smell of paper, pen and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten.. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life's beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but--as in a dream--can't quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy."</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The New Yorker, Dec. 25, 2006. Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">.</span></span></div>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-48729348317887108142008-08-07T17:21:00.000-07:002008-08-07T18:12:31.965-07:00Men have breast tissue, too! Later... #2<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4xdS07kXcfR6uydWdGrih5AUkyaf-f6HTig7T-_cFpKtDXG4tMv6kBTkbllqf5qmaoQoY0GI5tJ7IHF7Ob0U-L8_z0ySgGl17_CBuW29EeBD_zQnkESzmPDd-uaAVygs8739OMh9MbC0/s1600-h/80px-Pink_ribbon.svg.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4xdS07kXcfR6uydWdGrih5AUkyaf-f6HTig7T-_cFpKtDXG4tMv6kBTkbllqf5qmaoQoY0GI5tJ7IHF7Ob0U-L8_z0ySgGl17_CBuW29EeBD_zQnkESzmPDd-uaAVygs8739OMh9MbC0/s400/80px-Pink_ribbon.svg.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231936435956106690" /></a>Medical Clinic<div><br /><div>Procedure is for "US BREAST UNILAT... lump or mass in breast. Clinical data:</div><div>lump at 9 o'clock about 8 mm-1 cm size, cystic..." </div><div><br /></div><div>"...at 9 o'clock"? Can't help thinking of World War II movies, gunnery specialists, air force pilots and sailors locating the enemy's position. </div><div><br /></div><div>So there's the waiting, then these two procedures, imaging of where I'd have breasts if I had breasts. Thinking of re-reading Philip Roth's novel, "Breast." Maybe there'd be something there for me. A fan of his, but that's not a favorite book. I like Patriarchy, the one about his father, nonfiction, actually... </div><div><br /></div><div>So awaiting the second procedure, another imaging, I pick up a copy of an old New Yorker, Dec. 25, 2006, and the page I open to is Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Lecture titled "My Father's Suitcase," 2006. Usually I browse magazines before reading, but this time I plunge right in... </div><div><br /></div><div>A good long wait so I'm able to read Pamuk's Lecture in its entirety. I'm a 75-year-old writer, Jesus Christ! And what's the point? You wanna read my poetry? Yes or no? Don't even think. Just say what comes to mind. Do <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">I</span> want to read my poetry? No, actually. True, I wanna read it out loud to an audience. That I enjoy. And I wanna write new stuff... but do I want to go back and read it off the page for pleasure? Hell, no. </div><div><br /></div><div>Orhan Pamuk's Lecture is about himself and his father... and the suitcase full of writing his father left him. It's a meditation on the life of a writer. So here I am with my breast tissue and a whole bunch of questions, not the least of which has to do with mortality. It's the kind of thing that would stay in people's minds. "Oh, he's the man with the breasts." That they'd remember, the biographical detail. Okay, I'm no better than anyone else. That's probably what I'd remember too. Better than someone's poems. Most peoples' poems.</div><div><br /></div><div>But Pamuk gets it right: "Societies, tribes, and peoples grow more intelligent, richer, and more advanced as they pay attention to the troubled words of their authors--and, as we all know, the burning of books and the denigration of writers are both signs that dark and improvident times are upon us.</div><div><br /></div><div>"But literature is never just a national concern. The writer who shuts himself up in a room and goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature's eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people's stories, and to tell other people's stories as if they were his own, for that is what literature is."</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-66462872089393570302008-08-07T12:30:00.000-07:002008-08-07T12:32:47.524-07:00"Men have breast tissue, too."<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq3O3v0jEAioUBx-5MwZSQxx_E0T_095i1Nj1ZDRY6eD3m-8IWelcSJ3B7l1-S1NQF07_h2bXCXnEFR6h9o6mso-ozJm09kY2NQkFXhBoftg4pPv6phjMIC2OU_6n79Egr1nPxgcZM4Lw/s1600-h/Inflammatory_breast_cancer.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq3O3v0jEAioUBx-5MwZSQxx_E0T_095i1Nj1ZDRY6eD3m-8IWelcSJ3B7l1-S1NQF07_h2bXCXnEFR6h9o6mso-ozJm09kY2NQkFXhBoftg4pPv6phjMIC2OU_6n79Egr1nPxgcZM4Lw/s400/Inflammatory_breast_cancer.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231860855626762658" border="0" /></a><br /><h2 class="page sifr-red sIFR-replaced"><span class="sIFR-alternate">Mammogram - "Men have breast tissue, too."</span></h2> <div id="node-49340" class="node"> <p class="author-time">August 7, 2008</p> <div class="content"> <div style="width: 100px;" class="image-attach-body"><a href="http://www.redroom.com/image/inflammatory-breast-cancer"><img src="http://www.redroom.com/files/images/Inflammatory_breast_cancer.thumbnail.jpg" alt="Inflammatory breast cancer" title="Inflammatory breast cancer" class="image image-thumbnail" height="69" width="100" /></a></div> <p>"Men have breast tissue, too," said my doctor, a woman. And I got this little cyst or lump or something. So there I am today in Radiology, the only man in the waiting room. I don't know if the thing is benign or not, but the muzak they're playing is positively toxic. Hell, for me, would be an eternity of canned music. One tinny, one cloned musical cyst after another. Suspiciously benign music. Lumpy music made up of... I hate being here...</p> <p>Women over 40 get these things, mammograms, every year, says the technician. Only one man in 500 gets breast cancer? Is that what she said? Or only one man in 500 gets to get a mammogram? Better my male breast tissue than my nuts. X-ray technican holds and squeezes my "whatever" into position so she can shoot the first of four x-rays. She sticks little "nipple dots" ("nipple markers") on the places where the little cyst(s) might be hanging out. I put my arm up, first the left arm, then (later) the right and lean into this contraption, we shift around, struggling, plump technician and I... together we try to produce enough of something to be squeezed into immobility and x-rayed. What the fuck! And I don't mind her squeezing me. It's an odd way to spend your morning. We do a little dance. She leads, I follow... it's all about getting my breast tissue into position. It's a struggle... we finally get it done. </p> <p>Then the wait for... we need to find out if she needs to do it again, if the first set of x-rays don't work out. So I wait. Lying down. Sitting up. Dressing. Preparing to leave. Then simply waiting. Room has a pink orchid, possibly real. But stiff and unlife like. It wears a label: <a target="_blank" class="ext" href="http://www.shopflower.com/" title="www.shopflower.com">www.shopflower.com</a>. And there's a can of Suave, "fights sweat... 24-hour protection." </p> <p>And a copy of the <em>Ladies Home Journal</em>. What am I gonna do? My mother used to read this thing and I did too... years ago the <em>Journal</em> actually published some decent fiction. This issue offers "125 Beauty Boosters." It's for women. "Can This Marriage Be Saved? The Case of the Boring Husband." And, to round things out, "Sizzling Summer Cookouts!" plus, just what we all need, "Fatal Drug Side Effects (What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You.)"</p> <p>Still waiting. One pink wall and three cream-colored walls and x-ray room itself is the size of a prison cell. Pink gowns... </p> <p>X-ray machine has a name, the manufacturer? " Lorad - M-IV" it says on the glass (?) shield to protect technician as she shot those images. Yeah, how am I going to know where I am if I don't write these things down? catalog... it's a way of paying attention. A kind of writer's x-ray? </p> <p> I read somewhere that men, aeons ago, were equipped to suckle their young. That's why we still got nipples. </p> </div></div>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com127tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-32838214319448665182008-07-26T12:22:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:27.039-08:00Keepers - Garrison Keillor's Writers' Almanac<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIHiClYfqqdKZflUR-Utw1JblhvgmhRFwfLVLWDDCbmTdbtAiZfg3JXYhpp6Uq2svb2uOtSnVwPVMOu_ZbkPAUoKyb2hREuXaQZlEXcnEpqaKjsZ7MWUHMwqcL60n9vrtiaaN-md6uGag/s1600-h/71XJVMB79PL._SL160menninger,21,-23_SH30_OU01_AA115_.gif.jpeg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIHiClYfqqdKZflUR-Utw1JblhvgmhRFwfLVLWDDCbmTdbtAiZfg3JXYhpp6Uq2svb2uOtSnVwPVMOu_ZbkPAUoKyb2hREuXaQZlEXcnEpqaKjsZ7MWUHMwqcL60n9vrtiaaN-md6uGag/s400/71XJVMB79PL._SL160menninger,21,-23_SH30_OU01_AA115_.gif.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227410477563884642" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeEoFY0h31g5xqwexR2rtlMZN47qS-US9D9Hxrs85sFlHdwyreUpPYNgv67zMXKEsPd3csgF__0BUOCG7ZEahxTK9cwtLqMpx0XXDMpxJLmhHH110OR8KT0ZjJmMoYrk9zPZfv_LEQ_2E/s1600-h/41BS9GNNpgL._SL160_PIsitb-dp-arrow,TopRight,21,-23_SH30_OU01_AA115_.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeEoFY0h31g5xqwexR2rtlMZN47qS-US9D9Hxrs85sFlHdwyreUpPYNgv67zMXKEsPd3csgF__0BUOCG7ZEahxTK9cwtLqMpx0XXDMpxJLmhHH110OR8KT0ZjJmMoYrk9zPZfv_LEQ_2E/s400/41BS9GNNpgL._SL160_PIsitb-dp-arrow,TopRight,21,-23_SH30_OU01_AA115_.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227410251498920818" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">In an emergency:<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">[Karl Menninger] often said that it would help anyone "to be getting three square meals a day and to know that there is opportunity ahead—things to be done, land to be turned, things to build." Once, when someone asked him what to do if a person feels he is about to have a nervous breakdown, Menninger replied, "Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, find someone in need, and do something for them." </span><br /><br />* * *<br />This blog is something of a journal and one thing I do with my journals is use them, in part, as scrapbooks. What follows are some recent additions, excerpts from <span style="font-weight: bold;">Garrison Keillor's</span> Writers Almanac:<br /><br />It's the birthday of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ernest Hemingway</span>, (books by this author) born in Oak Park, Illinois (1899). His first important book was the collection of short stories In Our Time (1925), and he followed that with The Sun Also Rises (1926) and the book that most critics consider to be his greatest novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929).<br /><br />Hemingway said, "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was."<br /><br />* * *<br />It's the birthday of the man known as the "dean of American psychiatry," <span style="font-weight: bold;">Karl Menninger</span>, (books by this author) born in Topeka, Kansas (1893). His ideas about mental illnesses and how to treat them were revolutionary for his time—and many of the approaches he advocated and developed became instituted in modern psychiatric treatment centers.<br /><br />Menninger built on some of the foundations that Freud had established, and some of his achievements rest in explaining Freud to the general population through magazine articles, books, and letters. But he also diverged in many ways from the founder of psychoanalysis. Where Freud believed in treating individuals through set therapy sessions, the Harvard-educated Menninger advocated a total immersion experience to help mentally ill individuals get well. He-co-founded with his father and brother, who were also medical doctors, the Menninger Clinic in Topeka. It was inspired partially by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, which Karl's father had visited many years prior and had come home to report, "I have been to the Mayos, and I have seen a great thing."<br /><br />The Menninger Clinic started in a farmhouse with only 13 beds for patients. At first, local citizens sued to stop the opening of a "maniac ward" near them. The clinic expanded greatly and eventually grew to 39 buildings on 430 acres—and to a staff of 900 people.<br /><br />In addition to disagreeing with Freud on the best approach to therapy, Menninger had differing notions as to what caused mental illness. While Freud attributed mental illness largely to conflicts within a person's mind, Menninger thought that societal influences played a large role in an individual's mental health. He believed strongly that mental sickness often came about because of a lack of parental love during childhood.<br /><br />Also, he thought that criminal behavior was often a stage of mental sickness and that it should be treated accordingly. He was a lifelong advocate for prison reform, believing the current system did nothing to help stop antisocial behavior. He told Congress in 1971: "I sometimes feel as if I would like to scream out to the American public that they are squirting gasoline on the fire. The prison system is now manufacturing offenders, it is increasing the amount of transgression, it is multiplying crimes, it is compounding evil."<br /><br />[Karl Menninger] often said that it would help anyone "to be getting three square meals a day and to know that there is opportunity ahead—things to be done, land to be turned, things to build." Once, when someone asked him what to do if a person feels he is about to have a nervous breakdown, Menninger replied, "Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, find someone in need, and do something for them."<br /><br />He wrote more than a dozen books, including several best sellers. His works include The Human Mind (1930), Love Against Hate (1959), Man Against Himself (1956), Whatever Became of Sin? (1988), and The Crime of Punishment (1968).<br /><br />* * *<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cormac McCarthy</span> wrote in <span style="font-weight: bold;">All the Pretty Horses</span>: "They ran he and the horses out along the high mesas where the ground resounded under their running hooves and they flowed and changed and ran and their manes and tails blew off of them like spume and there was nothing else at all in that high world and they moved all of them in a resonance that was like a music among them and they were none of them afraid horse nor colt nor mare and they ran in that resonance which is the world itself and which cannot be spoken but only praised."Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-17205928258987333752008-07-24T23:21:00.000-07:002011-01-13T19:42:37.674-08:00Eucalyptus--California Fires Rage On<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBWrVzpPxyvTHmyUb4lUsBS2bMQRF5DQ74T3-z665LoUvZ3FGR6wMQl0NtDNt0PTYKHIptBDMcmrlKwAvSOILHjWnFoAoTFI-yycbypis0bXpclb4RHzGkSG_aymcjhXyEhJAuIbiF-Ig/s1600-h/cover!.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBWrVzpPxyvTHmyUb4lUsBS2bMQRF5DQ74T3-z665LoUvZ3FGR6wMQl0NtDNt0PTYKHIptBDMcmrlKwAvSOILHjWnFoAoTFI-yycbypis0bXpclb4RHzGkSG_aymcjhXyEhJAuIbiF-Ig/s400/cover!.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226833085711244402" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Santa Cruz weekly </span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.gtweekly.com/good-times/covers/eupocalypts-now">"Good Times,"</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"> runs cover story, <span style="font-size:130%;">"Eupocalypse Now, California FIRES rage on, so why are eucalyptus trees still the city's most protected menace?"</span></span><br /><br />Ron Oliver, Fire Chief, is quoted as saying, "Eucalyptus are more dangerous because of the resins and oils, so they burn hotter than other trees. But in Santa Cruz they've been declared a heritage tree so we can't do much."<br /><br />How do you define a "heritage tree"? Well, it "has a trunk with a circumference of 44 inches (approximately 14 inches in diameter or more), measured at 54 inches above existing grade..."<br /><br />Why this arbitrary designation? Why this "circumference of 44 inches"? One of the city's arborists swears it's true: 44 inches was the waist size of the mayor of Santa Cruz at the time the heritage tree ordinance was written.<br /><br />Fact: "Hummingbird nests are lost at a rate of 50 percent in eucalyptus, as opposed to 10 percent in native trees."<br /><br />"Species diversity drops among the trees by about 70 percent, according to bird experts at Point Reyes Observatory."<br /><br />For more, see the <span style="font-weight: bold;">Good Times</span>, July 24, 2008. <span style="font-weight: bold;">GTWEEKLY.COM</span><br /><br />Solid, well-researched article by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Good Times</span> News Editor, Chris J. Magyar, who quotes our neighbor David Zicarelli, "I have no sympathy for people who think of them as natural here. I've never met anyone who actually has these trees on their property who wants to save them. They're all people who look at them from afar. I like to call that <span style="font-weight: bold;">sentimental environmentalism</span>."<br /><br />And, later in the story, a neighbor nods and remarks, 'After the atomic apocalypse, there will be nothing but cockroaches and eucalyptus."Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com142tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-83666433439378880612008-07-18T15:50:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:27.277-08:00Sonoma Book Festival, Sat., Sept. 20 - Santa Rosa<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigAyEpWsmJDswLrmj52dpcG42VnpW1hN2bL48maqptJh09a5fkyQMhncf5jy3B5MKu_FIOnCVRDuXnCTzcnl3RQrYcGEoItAc_aNO5NKcmu3Lh_Cemz3v7ePBCkb9bi8KNoecNfg25g0s/s1600-h/tents.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigAyEpWsmJDswLrmj52dpcG42VnpW1hN2bL48maqptJh09a5fkyQMhncf5jy3B5MKu_FIOnCVRDuXnCTzcnl3RQrYcGEoItAc_aNO5NKcmu3Lh_Cemz3v7ePBCkb9bi8KNoecNfg25g0s/s400/tents.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5224608232951529442" border="0" /></a><br /><br />P.O. Box 159<br />Santa Rosa, CA 95402<br />707.527.5412<br /><a href="http://www.socobookfest.org/">www.socobookfest.org</a><br />email: info@socobookfest.org<br /><br /><br />NINTH ANNUAL SONOMA COUNTY BOOK FESTIVAL<br /><br /><br />FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Cathy Balach<br />Electronic Art Available 707-527-5412<br /> info@socobookfest.org<br /><br /><br />The ninth annual Sonoma County Book Festival is scheduled for <span style="font-weight: bold;">Saturday, September 20, 2008,</span> 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Old Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa. It is the oldest general interest book festival in Northern California.<br /><br />The square will be transformed with the white canopies of more than 70 booths, showcasing writers, independent booksellers, publishers and other literary exhibitors. Over 60 authors from the Bay Area and across the country read from their published works and participate in discussion panels and workshops.<br /><br />Admission is free and includes readings, panels, and activities for all ages. Among the broad range of topics and genres represented are mystery, thriller, nonfiction, debut fiction, poetry, self-help, travel, children’s and teen/young adult.<br /><br />For a full list of authors, panels, and other information visit <a href="http://www.socobookfest.org"><span style="font-weight: bold;">www.socobookfest.org</span></a><br /><br /><br />###Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-60263450612139643582008-07-15T13:00:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:27.403-08:00Pill-Popping Pets, S.S.R.I.'s for dogs<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGNJ4BdLQWQZArcy71u2Qqwqcsw3HVo9fXioqcYP4HSxuQWtr_G4WGgcLRsUO8CDe2SQUGl_4N2jMTHmLw_giq6dPTt-7G_meD2Zb2J2Tcz6iz_YKG-iEQqm7ve4J0s5F_T31ju6eG8X8/s1600-h/Pekingese1904.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGNJ4BdLQWQZArcy71u2Qqwqcsw3HVo9fXioqcYP4HSxuQWtr_G4WGgcLRsUO8CDe2SQUGl_4N2jMTHmLw_giq6dPTt-7G_meD2Zb2J2Tcz6iz_YKG-iEQqm7ve4J0s5F_T31ju6eG8X8/s400/Pekingese1904.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223361797515312274" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Home-Alone Dogs.</span> <span style="font-size:130%;">-- 42% of American dogs sleep in the same beds as their owners..</span>. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Excerpted from James Vlahos' </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >Pill-Popping Pets</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> in NY Times Magazine, 7.13.08.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;">Lead: <span style="font-weight: bold;">"Americans are spending millions on mood-altering drugs for their cats and dogs. Is it because we've driven them mad?"</span><br /><br />1. Dogs too suffer from separation anxiety and compulsive disorders like hours and hours of tail-chasing.<br />2. More than 20% of American dogs are overweight.<br />3. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Slentrol,</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> approved by the FDA in 2007 is the country's first canine anti-obesity medication.<br />4. Aging dogs can become absent-minded ("where did I put the dog dish?").<br />Pfizer's </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Anipryl </span><span style="font-size:130%;">"treats cognitive dysfunction" to help absent-minded dogs remember...<br />5. "For lonely dogs with separation anxiety, Eli Lilly brought to market its own drug </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Reconcile</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> last year. The only difference between it and </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Prozac </span><span style="font-size:130%;">is that </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Reconcile</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> is chewable and tastes like beef."<br /><br />6. Dogs develop mental illnesses "that eerily resemble human ones and respond to the same medications."<br />7. "Marketers have a new name for the age-old tendency to view animals as furry versions of ourselves: </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >'humanization,'</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> a trend that is fueling the explosive growth of the pet industry and the rise of modern pet pharma.<br />8. Americans forked over $49 billion for pet products and services last year, up $11.5 billion from 2003; other than consumer electronics, pet products are the fastest-growing retail segment...<br />9. The market expansion is being driven both by more pets and by more spending per pet, esp. by affluent baby boomers whose children have graduated from college..." the fastest growing category is health care, with treatments formerly reserved for people--root canals, chemotherapy, liposction, mood pills--being administered to pets.<br />10."...77 percent of dog owners and 52 percent of cat owners gave their animals some sort of medication in 2006, both up by at least 25 percentage points from 2004. 'Owners want their pets to be more like little well-behaved children.'"<br /><br />11. Darwin's theory is that evolutionary continuity applies not just to bodies but to brains. "The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind," Darwin wrote.<br />12. "In laboratory experiments and field observations, practitioners have presented evidence of analogical reasoning by apes, counting by rats </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >and the capacity of pigeons to distinguish the paintings of Picasso from those of Monet."</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />13. "Prozac, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (S.S.R.I.), prolongs the effects of that neurotransmitter to reduce impulsivity, stabilize moods and lower anxiety, [Dr. Nicholas] Dodman says. He is friends with the noted Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey, and they once compared the drugs they employ to treat violent people and animals. 'You superimpose my portfolio on top of his, and it's the same thing,' Dodman says."<br />14. "There is evidence that animals experience auditory and visual hallucinations and can temporarily enter deluded states in which they attack... 'By engaging in and winning aggressive encounters, dominant animals drive up serotonin levels and gain in composure...' Prozac can boost the effects of the neurotransmitter.<br />15. "Archaeologists and geneticists estimate that the domestication of wolves (Canis lupus) into dogs began at least 15,000 years ago." See Jack Page's book "Dogs: A Natural History."<br /><br />16. "Many dogs, 42 percent, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association) now sleep in the same beds as their owners. </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Extreme attachment to people is one of the defining traits of dogs."</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />17. "Extreme attachment, unfortunately, also causes some dogs extreme suffering when deprived of their owners' company... </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >an estimated 14 percent or more of American dogs have separation anxiety</span><span style="font-size:130%;">. The problem signs include home and self-destruction; prolonged whining, barking or drooling; or simply standing by the front door all day in a lonely, panting vigil. ('Nannycam'-type video recorders have captured all of the above.).<br />18. "...more than half the dogs on the drug [Reconcile] experienced short-term side effects, including lethargy, depression and loss of appetite."<br />19. "Modern owners are increasingly trying to 'sterilize' pet ownership [Dr. Dunbar says] ... trying to pharmacologically control dogs so that they don't act like dogs. 'What people want is a pet that is on par with a TiVo, that its activity, play and affection are on demand,' he says, 'Then, when they're done, they want to turn it off.'"<br />20. "Training is basically about forming a relationship, but for some people, that interactive process is now giving the dog a pill." [Dunbar]<br /><br />21. "Long before Prozac, Paxil and the like were taken by people, they were tested for safety and efficacy in legions of laboratory creature. You can plausibly argue--and Dodman and others do--that humans are in fact using animal drugs."<br />22. <br />a. German shepherds tend to tail-chase,<br />b. Doberman pinschers tend to suck their flanks<br />c. Cocker spaniels may have genetic underpinings for what looks like psychotic rage...<br /><br />23. "...the causes of mood disorders and obsessions in humans and our pets aren't so different--faulty genetics, dreary environments..." [Dodman]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">24. "All of the behavioral issues that we have created in ourselves, we are now creating in our pets because they live in the same unhealthy environments that we do... that's why there is a market for these drugs." </span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">[unnamed pharmaceutical company executive]</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">25. The healthiest dogs in America today belong to homeless men and women, says the "dog whisperer." They're well enough behaved so they can move about without leashes, they get plenty of exercise, forage for food... and, in short, unlike the druggies, they're allowed to be dogs.</span><br /><br />----<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-size:85%;">"Americans are spending millions on mood-altering drugs for their cats and dogs. Is it because we've driven them mad?"<br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" >Pill-Popping Pets</span><span style="font-size:85%;">, by James Vlahos, NY Times Mag.</span> 7.13.08</span>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com138tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-37108915264883101842008-07-15T11:48:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:27.553-08:00sperm<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSG438387fbb9zq8jucK_48EGKzNt6pRi-I33NupwBHqjLZ3J-GsM4um_W5PTWsDG80H54zfYtIt82kxYLQOlLYsI9wyXHBfBHZ_MTz1Qify2QQUzeroxJ2gWNbyfxtd00i8hZhcd0JDo/s1600-h/sperm.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSG438387fbb9zq8jucK_48EGKzNt6pRi-I33NupwBHqjLZ3J-GsM4um_W5PTWsDG80H54zfYtIt82kxYLQOlLYsI9wyXHBfBHZ_MTz1Qify2QQUzeroxJ2gWNbyfxtd00i8hZhcd0JDo/s400/sperm.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223314786254776050" border="0" /></a><br />father's day image from NY Times.Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-6825148496127593252008-07-08T00:36:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:27.862-08:00Brain fitness class, neuron<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC4aNzH6DrJpmzOjJUelg3AqnUfGq8VSZLL5GpEZc1NtwFo024HxuqrDtvNYRpV33lCN-0BsKOzjq42-XPa3-c4UCBrjduTyQrxCL9CH2HV1oHtZKjcaXdEI-O68WMvzxR7RLWZq4BWGc/s1600-h/Neuron-no_labels.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC4aNzH6DrJpmzOjJUelg3AqnUfGq8VSZLL5GpEZc1NtwFo024HxuqrDtvNYRpV33lCN-0BsKOzjq42-XPa3-c4UCBrjduTyQrxCL9CH2HV1oHtZKjcaXdEI-O68WMvzxR7RLWZq4BWGc/s400/Neuron-no_labels.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220545026946775234" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Structure of typical neuron... image from Wikipedia.</span><br /><br />Taking a Brain Fitness class. Notes from first three hours... learned that MRIs show "Islands of Inactivity" in the brains of those fried by marijuana.<br /><br />Twelve or so students show up and, when asked why we are taking the class, one woman says she'd had a brain aneurism (sp?) and wanted "to find out what's left." Another had had electric shock therapy... others, like myself, were having problems remembering names. Insomnia can mess with the brain... poor diet, booze, drugs, trauma... all of us, for whatever reason, sensing some slippage. A loose connection of two...<br /><br />Learned that there are as many brain cells (billions!) as there are visible (?) stars in the galaxy. That some dendrites are very long. Several inches... That giraffes, so said the instructor, have brain cells that are 6 to 8 feet long and that every cell in the brain is replaced every 7 or 8 years. So you have, so speak, a different brain now than you did eight years ago when George Bush first became President. <br /><br />Talked to 81 year old man who lives in a Senior Trailer park. "There are funerals every day... they're going like flies... they're going like dying is going out of style."<br /><br />Just as continents eons ago were once joined in a solid mass, for example, Australia and South America; China, Alaska and North America, so too were our brains once more of a piece, so said the instructor. "You generate new brain cells all the time... right up to the minute you die, you're generating new brain cells." And brain cells travel to where they are needed. The brain of a musician is different from the brain of an athlete. But if an athlete seeks to become a musician, the brain cells begin to accommodate. There's something called brain plasticity... instructor says, Until your last breath your mind can change.Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-16025148988691948362008-07-01T12:55:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:28.016-08:00Melancholy, Baron Wormser<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1WUrnsIDbZkuZTAsbLF_01UP7JPsRRbSh0LjM4JTWRH-tUMOQBxpq4XOMckm4HjbgNSS2KciRIckbZQPpJl58JRYJMcw_aK0ydKp36agLP7iKdEsthyphenhyphenPSxNjqe559bzyku-06nba1Rwk/s1600-h/baronphotoedit.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1WUrnsIDbZkuZTAsbLF_01UP7JPsRRbSh0LjM4JTWRH-tUMOQBxpq4XOMckm4HjbgNSS2KciRIckbZQPpJl58JRYJMcw_aK0ydKp36agLP7iKdEsthyphenhyphenPSxNjqe559bzyku-06nba1Rwk/s400/baronphotoedit.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220539535699637650" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /><br />Melancholy</span><br />by Baron Wormser*<br /><br />Weakness—the pale succumbing to loneliness,<br />Refusing to admit anyone else, indulging<br />The blue perquisites of adolescence<br />Long past their sensible deliquescence.<br /><br />He knew it but went on drinking and regretting,<br />Not calling his friends and regretting,<br />Making scenes over nothing and regretting.<br />It helped to make him despise himself,<br /><br />Which was, he sensed, what he wanted. He was<br />Then, in his oblique way, at ease to wander<br />The city's brazen or quiet streets, conjuring<br />Random lives and how the slim arc<br />Of emotion was pulverized. Back home, he put<br />On some Monk, lay down, half-cried.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Melancholy" by Baron Wormser, from Scattered Chapters: New and Selected Poems. © Sarabande Books, 2008. Reprinted here with permission of the poet. </span><br /><br />*Wormser has received the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry and the Kathryn A. Morton Prize along with fellowships from Bread Loaf, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2000 he was writer in residence at the University of South Dakota. For eight years he led the Frost Place Seminar at the Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire.<br /></span>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-56566257350950850102008-06-28T21:57:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:28.173-08:00L.A. Times, Tassajara, Big Sur fires...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVUZ86qLg66vbWfvk7WpxsIK0I8fkTOMQOYMl4GrTDAu8PqwdAbfTvjkkGd2fVQq1jLR8dM43vv0K9TZlutZTpQ63-YvJ8HHHQto0J55jLvrJ8PP88Hd-eV-JspzRyra1U5gNKhk-adi0/s1600-h/EricBaileyBigSur.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVUZ86qLg66vbWfvk7WpxsIK0I8fkTOMQOYMl4GrTDAu8PqwdAbfTvjkkGd2fVQq1jLR8dM43vv0K9TZlutZTpQ63-YvJ8HHHQto0J55jLvrJ8PP88Hd-eV-JspzRyra1U5gNKhk-adi0/s400/EricBaileyBigSur.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5217175568952268018" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">[photo from L.A. Times]</span><br /><br />Retired English teacher, I pride myself on an ability to recognize an author's style... Frost, Eliot, Pound... Hemingway, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth... yeah, I'm of another generation. So tonight, reading <span style="font-style: italic;">L.A. Times</span> for news of the Tassajara, Big Sur fires... I'm startled to recognize the voice of a particular reporter, the author of a feature titled "Tempest in the Treetops," <span style="font-style: italic;">L.A. Times</span>, Tues., Sept. 17, 2002. The subtitle to that Column One, front page feature has some bearing on today's calamity: "Some prize the blue gum eucalyptus for its beauty and scent, while others see a messy fire hazard. Battles are being waged across California."<br /><br />I've read other pieces by that reporter, but had no idea who had written the following until I came across the lines,<br /><img src="file:///Users/robert/Desktop/EricBaileyBigSur.jpg" alt="" /><br /><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;" >"Hours before sunrise, the 20 remaining monks still meditate and chant.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Buddhist tenets say that all things are impermanent, and fire can be a great teacher in that," said Alec Henderson, a former defense attorney from Los Angeles who forswore material wealth to take up the Zen creed of "one robe, one bowl."</span><br /><br />Henderson left Wednesday with the task of safekeeping Ginger, the monastery dog. Now he's holding his breath, along with thousands of Zen followers and former Tassajara guests, hoping the monastery emerges intact.<br /><br />But if the flames prove too tough to defeat, the monks plan to retreat along with the Forest Service firefighters.<br /><br />"We won't risk anybody to save the buildings," said Devin Patel, a bearded 28-year-old who serves as the monastery's fire marshal.<br /><br />"The buildings can burn, but you can't actually burn down Tassajara. Fire can never touch Tassajara's heart."</span><br /><br />And then, somehow, I knew without looking who had written it, The <span style="font-style: italic;">L.A. Times</span> feature writer, Eric Bailey. And, not far from Tassajara, ourselves living near a eucalyptus grove with the ever-present danger of Urban Wildfire, as opposed to forest fire, I somehow took heart in the Buddhist tenet that "all things are impermanent, and fire can be a great teacher in that." It's the first time in days that I felt uplifted, odd to say... almost inspired by something I read in a newspaper. One takes something away from the poems one reads, from fiction and nonfiction... Jesus, maybe it was the context and our own situation re: Urban wildfire... the risk... of loss... home and... all that's in it. And yet, and yet... <span style="font-size:85%;">[reading this over, retired English teacher, I'd mark it up... awful, awful writing... oh, fuck it! I'm just trying to make a point.]</span><br /><br />Anyway, excerpting more from Eric Bailey's 6.27.08 story:<br /><br />"...By Wednesday, flames were just three miles to the west. The sheriff ordered an evacuation, but a skeleton crew was allowed to stay.<br /><br />They cut branches, raked leaves and laid out fire hose. They triple-checked the two big pumps that can be used to draw water from the 50,000-gallon swimming pool and the riffles of Tassajara Creek.<br /><br /> <div style="clear: left; font-size: 1px;"> </div> <div id="article_related" class="box_striped clearfix" style="padding-right: 0pt;"> <ul id="article_galleries"><li class="photo_article"> <a href="http://www.latimes.com/la-me-fire28-pg,0,617895.photogallery" target=""><br /></a> <div><a href="http://www.latimes.com/la-me-fire28-pg,0,617895.photogallery" target="">Photos: Wildfire closes in on Big Sur</a></div> </li><li class="photo_article"> <a href="http://www.latimes.com/la-me-fires28-ap,0,2103449.worldnowvideo" target=""><img src="http://www.latimes.com/media/thumbnails/worldnowvideo/2008-06/40456981-27105646.jpg" alt="Fires threaten Big Sur" height="110" width="140" /></a> <div><a href="http://www.latimes.com/la-me-fires28-ap,0,2103449.worldnowvideo" target="">Video: Fires threaten Big Sur</a></div> </li></ul> </div> As ash fell from the sky, Mako Voelkel, the monastery's <i>tenzo,</i> or cook, was cutting fire breaks as well as vegetables.<br /><br />"I'm feeling pretty good about it," she said. "We're prepared."<br /><br />She and the others were working from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m., with time off only for meals.<br /><br />Fires hit the monastery twice in the last three decades. In 1977 and 1999, flames burned all around the complex. Each time, the losses were kept relatively minor, thanks to the firefighting monks and professional crews from the U.S. Forest Service.<br /><br />That's auspicious: With its remote locale, the monastery can't get fire insurance.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">David Zimmerman, Tassajara director, expects a rerun. The monks will don yellow, flame-resistant fire jackets and yellow helmets with protective shrouds and will work to stamp out spot fires. Everyone, he said, feels "happy and honored to be here right now."</span><br /><br />Late Friday, help arrived. A Forest Service strike team pulled in, along with a 30-man crew of firefighting inmates. They'll be fed out of the monastery kitchen.<br /><br />Hours before sunrise, the 20 remaining monks still meditate and chant.<br /><br />"Buddhist tenets say that all things are impermanent, and fire can be a great teacher in that," said Alec Henderson, a former defense attorney from Los Angeles who forswore material wealth to take up the Zen creed of <span style="font-weight: bold;">"one robe, one bowl."</span><br /><br />Henderson left Wednesday with the task of safekeeping Ginger, the monastery dog. Now he's holding his breath, along with thousands of Zen followers and former Tassajara guests, hoping the monastery emerges intact.<br /><br />But if the flames prove too tough to defeat, the monks plan to retreat along with the Forest Service firefighters.<br /><br />"We won't risk anybody to save the buildings," said Devin Patel, a bearded 28-year-old who serves as the monastery's fire marshal.<br /><br />"The buildings can burn, but you can't actually burn down Tassajara. Fire can never touch Tassajara's heart."<br /><br /><a href="mailto:eric.bailey@latimes.com">eric.bailey@latimes.com</a>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com258tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-37941241062185181292008-06-14T11:04:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:28.185-08:00Killer Of Killer Trees Out On A Limb, Eucalyptus Worship vs. Urban Wildfire<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPlg1J6mra5r7z_q8LTin9HXG3bxhWyKbYn9meqQHo3s8-mquNd0VfwIm0Qd2e7PuU052ZppE_ozqhK3J2x27NEyAI_QjInqUFmHhV4MXAXfK7VeI1KbWlt7Ef8BjZxWQtVy6pTq3E76o/s1600-h/euc-nude-jpg.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPlg1J6mra5r7z_q8LTin9HXG3bxhWyKbYn9meqQHo3s8-mquNd0VfwIm0Qd2e7PuU052ZppE_ozqhK3J2x27NEyAI_QjInqUFmHhV4MXAXfK7VeI1KbWlt7Ef8BjZxWQtVy6pTq3E76o/s400/euc-nude-jpg.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197795908118973378" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eucalyptus Worship versus Urban Wildfire. </span>See Mike Neff's <span style="font-style: italic;">Web Del Sol</span> / <a href="http://www.webdelsol.com/The_Potomac/newpotomac-sward.htm">The Potomac </a>/ <span style="font-style: italic;">a journal of poetry and poetics</span> (Washington, D.C.) for more on this story.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The issue:</span> 1) we and our neighbors live near a grove of blue gum eucalyptus, AKA "gasoline trees"; 2) summer is now upon us and so, too, is the risk of urban wildfire; 3) after 20 years of debate, the issue is still unresolved.<br /><br />Now, following the "Martin Fire," our neighbors and friends in Bonny Doon are moving back into their homes, i.e., those lucky enough to still have a home!<br />-----<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />The story:</span><br /><br />So there was the headline, “The killer of killer trees is out on a limb in Santa Cruz... with a lead, “Robert Sward, 68, of Santa Cruz, doesn’t look, sound or act like a tree murderer.”<br /><br />The paper, <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Sacramento Bee</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">,</span> after a few kind words about my poetry (“his verse, more lovely than any weed tree...”) went on, “One might suppose Robert would obey the city ordinance that protects ‘heritage trees.’ Instead, he flings it down and dances upon it.”<br /><br />Yes, much as I love Santa Cruz, I’ve been at war with the city fathers, the majority of whom defend all trees no matter where they came from or what idiot planted them in the wrong hemisphere because only God can make a tree. [I'm paraphrasing here from a feature on blue gum eucs in <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Audubon Magazine</span>.]<br /><br />“These so-called progressives speak in a way that would delight Lewis Carroll,” I am quoted as saying. “A local version of the Duchess recently told me, ‘Diseased or not, two blue gum eucs constitute a grove... and the tree you removed was a member of a grove.’ All that was missing from our exchange was a queen to declare, ‘Off with his head!’”<br /><br />The blue gum eucalyptus—or ‘gasoline tree,’ as firefighters call it—is an invasive exotic from Australia that evolved with fire. Fire doesn’t kill blue gums. Instead, it clears out the competition and opens their seed pods.<br /><br />Soon after murdering a tree, I stood before Santa Cruz City Council, our lawyer present, facing a $9000.fine. For what? Removing one euc and lopping off a few branches from another.<br /><br />The grove in question, the four or five shallow-rooted, <span style="font-weight: bold;">fire-prone monsters endangering our home, is situated on our property, property on which we pay taxes.</span> Our property, our trees, our taxes.<br /><br />It all started in 1991 with the Oakland Hills/Berkeley fire which killed 20 people and caused more than $5 billion damage. Fire officials determined the blue gum euc was a key cause of that tragedy and also the fire storm that later struck Australia. Australia, where the shallow-rooted, unstable gasoline trees are also known as ‘widow-makers.’ Why? Because of their tendency to drop heavy branches or fall over without warning.<br /><br />After reading about the Oakland Hills fire, I did a little research. What I learned was that eucs are the original burn baby burn trees. A little lightning, a careless smoker, a kid with a firecracker, that’s all it takes.<br /><br />Hearing of our plight, which we share with hundreds of other Californians, the <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Los Angeles Times</span> ran a front page feature, “Tempest in the Treetops... Some prize the blue gum eucalyptus for its beauty and scent, while others see a messy fire hazard. Battles are being waged across California.”<br /><br />“After a decade of unsuccessfully fighting City Hall for permission to ax his grove, Sward—a poet, retired college professor and avowed environmentalist—resorted to a botanical form of civil disobedience. He hired a tree cutter to take them out.<br /><br />“Scarcely had the buzz of the chain saw kicked up when city parks inspectors—‘tree police,’ as some locals call them—stepped in, halted the cutting and hit Sward with fines initially totaling $9,000.”<br /><br />Maybe I should have known better when, in 1985, I moved here and learned that the most popular film ever shown in Santa Cruz was <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The King of Hearts</span>, starring Alan Bates. In World War I, as a German army retreats, they booby-trap the whole town to explode. The locals flee and a gaggle of cheerful lunatics escape the asylum and take over.<br /><br />Again, I love Santa Cruz. I love the people... so much so that prior to the 1991 Oakland Hills fire I might have been persuaded to strip naked, join hands with my friends, encircle and protect a euc tree—see photo above!<br /><br />But then, after what I learned, innocent no more, I tasted the true nature of the tree.<br /><br />Yes, I was once politically correct. A stoned out of his mind innocent. Yes, yes, and holier than thou. That was in the days before political correctness became a force that would determine the outcome of elections. That was back before I became “an enemy of the people.” That is, an enemy of the blue gum euc. Fucking trees.<br /><br />You don’t run for office, certainly not in this arena, unless you’re PC and pro-euc. Hence the power of those who would fine us $9,000.<br /><br />That, in brief, is the story. True, City Council later reduced the fine to $1500., which our lawyer suggested we pay.<br /><br />“All of which has Santa Cruz’s tree-killing poet [and his neighbors] bewildered,” says the <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">L.A. Times</span>. Yes, it’s true. I am bewildered.<br /><br />“Sward doesn’t see the sense of it: These are his trees. This is his danger.<br /><br />“’There are people in Santa Cruz, Sward said, ‘who believe the blue gum euc is more important than human life.’” And that’s not an exaggeration. <span style="font-weight: bold;">An esteemed arbortist who himself works for the city told me, “There are people on Santa Cruz City Council who wouldn’t move a eucalyptus if it were lying across the body of a small child.”</span><br /><br />Anyway, the blue gum eucs are still there. The grove overhanging our home is still there. The politically correct are still in charge. Nice people, well-intentioned. And so it is we, and thousands of other Californians, face another year with our homes and our lives, and our children’s lives, still at risk.<br /><br />We're talking here about urban wild fires. "Okay, so what would constitute an emergency whereby we could chop 'em down?" I once asked a politically saavy fire chief. "Well, the trees would actually have to be on fire. Then you could remove 'em!" he replied.Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com257tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-16263795770329878002008-06-11T18:23:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:28.484-08:00Beverly Hills, 90210<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi13VzGWb3NxyK2IP4S3gs7x7qqZBWXzyO1aZM4cVTXjI-aCoV2Vcc-_w0sn48-s1IsBSKDYb9DhiEO9esDV4MLzJBbMP3VEQ0TDBOAyNBYC13lOSHLgYkDqnlHXhZ0IpKKsAK33jmKFSU/s1600-h/movie+extra2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi13VzGWb3NxyK2IP4S3gs7x7qqZBWXzyO1aZM4cVTXjI-aCoV2Vcc-_w0sn48-s1IsBSKDYb9DhiEO9esDV4MLzJBbMP3VEQ0TDBOAyNBYC13lOSHLgYkDqnlHXhZ0IpKKsAK33jmKFSU/s400/movie+extra2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5210805091700262498" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDYh_KMZ2rvZ3ujSde5oPNP2Qu28lrrzoZzYu3UgaXYvMMZ41j1rWwbv9za7tReAQC3FRD5Ap3FrOrk-TJANkVvJ7trbIufdM5hfskD1Yx9H3u5Rl3rl3NANpPekDB8BR2a1o4I2lcrxI/s1600-h/movie+extra.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDYh_KMZ2rvZ3ujSde5oPNP2Qu28lrrzoZzYu3UgaXYvMMZ41j1rWwbv9za7tReAQC3FRD5Ap3FrOrk-TJANkVvJ7trbIufdM5hfskD1Yx9H3u5Rl3rl3NANpPekDB8BR2a1o4I2lcrxI/s400/movie+extra.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5210804632330066402" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">[I have my daughter Hannah Sward's permission to run this brief excerpt from a work in progress, <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Diary of a Non-Starlet</span>]</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />"On the Set of Beverly Hills, 90210”</span><br /><br />Author’s note: Chloe is an L.A.-based, aspiring 22 year old actress with a Master of Dramatic Arts degree working as a TV and movie extra -- and stripper -- while she waits to break into the Hollywood scene. What follows is the opening section of a book titled <span style="font-weight: bold;">Diary of a Non-Starlet</span>. A work of fiction, the book begins January 3, 1997.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">January 3 - Breaking in </span><br /><br />Some people do this for a living. They’re the ones with portable lawn chairs, a small wardrobe they carry around everywhere on hangers and a cellular phone to make endless calls about the next day’s work. Some even have a call-in service that they pay for and that guarantees them five days of work each week as an extra. They’re the “professionals.” The average day is eight to twelve hours on the set. The first eight hours pays $50. for non-union and $100. for union members. Anything after that is overtime.<br /><br /> Naturally, everyone tries to get into the union and not only for the money. Union members get treated with a tad more respect. Union members are one rung up from the bottom.<br /><br /> For example, on some shows non-union extras get paper bag lunches while union members are allowed to walk over to the catering truck and eat whatever and whenever they want. There’s always a professional chef on hand, pancakes, grilled rosemary chicken… you name it!<br /><br /> When it happens to be a big cattle call, it feels quite barbaric. I feel kind of embarrassed ambling over to the catering truck in front of all the other extras. Like I’m some princess. Sometimes some famished soul asks me to bring back a hot roast beef sandwich. I hate it. If I were to say no, it’s like I’m some sort of Nazi. And if I say yes, I feel like some sort of spy smuggling contraband over the border.<br /><br /> Most of us haven’t given up hope of one day becoming what we went to school and trained for – to find paying work as actors and actresses with lines.<br /><br /> They don’t say ‘Extras’ when they call you, they just say, ‘Background.’ It sounds harsh, but really that’s all you are. And so you go where you’re told. You become what you are called, “Background.”<br /><br /> Mr. Megaphone picks up his instrument. “Background,” he bellows, and everyone puts down their books, magazines, junk food, etc., climbs out of their lawn chairs, and mope over to the designated spot. My habit of making the best of every situation doesn’t apply to this lousy job and I hate the happy nerds, the enthusiastic extras who jump up and try to look as if they’re having a good time.<br /><br /> Yet here I am . . . but what’s the appeal?<br /><br /> I get to read and write and there’s lots of leisure time and I don’t mind getting paid for that, even if it’s only $100. I’d rather do this than wait tables . . . so I’m doing this while waiting for a chance to act, which is what makes this extra work somehow endurable.<br /><br /> And it’s a continual process. You may land one acting job, but that doesn’t mean there’s going to be another and so you still have to do something in between . . . jobs in between jobs to pay your rent.<br /><br />[sample... more to come...]<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />(copyright (c) 2008, Hannah Sward)<br /><br />--<br /><br /><br />Hannah Sward lives in Los Angeles and is a recent graduate of Antioch University. Another sample of her writing, "Starving," may be found in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Alimentum, The Literature of Food, </span>Issue 4, 2007. Hannah's stories have appeared in a number of online publications.<br /><br />www.alimentumjournal.com<br /><br /></span>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com91tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-23256046344840702392008-05-26T13:34:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:29.022-08:00Sleeping Homeless Princess<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT1-kVTFuJa_f9cEmRakhKyHbauTN1RhZNTi7zXLV1rDX5pqp-hp-NUN9Ia4gDzssWOzJDY8I6Cpuf4y2UfnjXGxa5OOXvbQkKKNAD7UXwmYD2aExP_ABuNFFZe-gChuAK4ynZOPJTM1s/s1600-h/jadedprincess+circuits+copy+1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT1-kVTFuJa_f9cEmRakhKyHbauTN1RhZNTi7zXLV1rDX5pqp-hp-NUN9Ia4gDzssWOzJDY8I6Cpuf4y2UfnjXGxa5OOXvbQkKKNAD7UXwmYD2aExP_ABuNFFZe-gChuAK4ynZOPJTM1s/s400/jadedprincess+circuits+copy+1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5204816304484659730" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi9CPJEwCr3vgoVZsxHIXqL57mV10-sopHyel0KFYsawQvUZUVJqIdwA4S202CPiP9bCxtJkBmoujrkha89XX26CN6rGc_qQimVcNyvtZwDmSdveHZ81AQ-XcEEFIQZer2AWO-IY_hzd0/s1600-h/jade_burial_suit.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi9CPJEwCr3vgoVZsxHIXqL57mV10-sopHyel0KFYsawQvUZUVJqIdwA4S202CPiP9bCxtJkBmoujrkha89XX26CN6rGc_qQimVcNyvtZwDmSdveHZ81AQ-XcEEFIQZer2AWO-IY_hzd0/s400/jade_burial_suit.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5204816046786621954" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;" >Gloria Alford's piece, The Jaded Princess, appears above (at the top). The <span style="font-style: italic;">original</span>, Gloria's inspiration (hers is consciously modeled after the jade burial suit of Chinese Princess Tou Wan, Han Dynasty, 140 B.C.), appears below.</span><br /><br />Now for something completely different.<br /><br />Moving from Emily Gould, <span style="font-style: italic;">Gawker </span>and the NY <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span> (yesterday's posting) to something closer to home. We're re-visiting <a href="http://www.gloriaalford.com/">Gloria Alford's</a> sculpture <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Jaded Princess</span>, now on display at <a href="http://www.santacruzmah.org/">Santa Cruz’ Museum of Art and History.</a> She's part of the museum-wide MAH exhibit, <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Ying: Inspired by the Art and History of China,</span> scheduled to end July 1. After that date the oft-exhibited Princess will be technically homeless. <br /><br />At the opening, Paul Figueroa, the Museum’s Executive Director, spoke of the "breath-taking impact" of Gloria's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jaded Princess</span>, which, "as a replica of an historical artifact transferred to the contemporary immediately sets the 'tone' for the gallery."<br /><br />Following a showing at the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, the director, June Braucht, wrote, “A lot of excitement left the Museum when we returned your exhibition. I really hated to see it leave.The show was one of the very few ‘modern’ shows we’ve had that was as popular with the conservatives as it was with the more <span style="font-style: italic;">avant garde</span> enthusiasts. All comments were favorable as is evidenced in your guest book.”<br /><br />Earlier, exhibited in a show titled <span style="font-weight: bold;">Technology and Art</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Metro San Jose</span> wrote, “The show could begin and end with Gloria Alford’s T<span style="font-weight: bold;">he Jaded Princess </span>and have said it all. Lying in state in her Plexiglas coffin, the figure, constructed of meticulously wired, jade-green computer rchips and soldered lead, replete with a scalloped headdress of round chips the color of tarnished bronze, calls to mind Buddhist temple sculpture, medieval church monuments and mummies—icons of a culture’s revered elite, studied by anthroplogists for insight into past practices...”<br /><br />Sarah Handler, author of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Austere Luminosity of Chinese Classical Furniture</span>, writes, “Mirroring the famous burial suit of the Chinese princess Tou Wan, constructed of pieces of jade which, like a great cathedral, took a generation to carve, Gloria Alford suits her princess out in a stunning coat of computer chips. Using lifeless chips, she brings face and body alive in serene beauty. With the electricity of creation, she resurrects the princess for our time. Inspired by the second-century B.C.E. jade suit, she transforms a Chinese tradition into an original and imaginative work of art.”<br /><br />The Princess draws rave reviews and, retired English teacher, I've been lazy. I'm the composer of business letters, self-appointed agent. So I keep promising I'll write on my wife's behalf, approach some likely venues, curators, directors... "What about the National Museum of Women in the Arts?" I ask. "Or that Computer Museum in Palo Alto? Or the Tech Museum in San Jose? Or Google, say? Or Intel? Sun? Oracle? Microsoft... Bill and Melinda Gates?"<br /><br />We think of loaning the piece with a footnote that it could be purchased. I dunno. Other things get in the way. Even now. Here I am working on my blog. The show ends June 30. I'm gonna make some coffee. I'm gonna write some letters.<br /><br />--<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" >Gloria's piece appears above (at the top). The <span style="font-style: italic;">original</span>, Gloria's inspiration (hers is consciously modeled after the jade burial suit of Chinese Princess Tou Wan, Han Dynasty, 140 B.C.), appears below.</span>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com234tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-65358774841067279912008-05-25T11:26:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:29.176-08:00Exposed, Emily Gould<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh735BNi5VZMNgLrjmWGvX4F5_NHRZ_WdzpCozxKsaNqh-yq_q8Gpi4vwloPcT11NBy2qKMavD_QvU32Xw258ffCLE_jCCVvTRFGPGkDCHryt-57uH-COwsQPAupAgTX0zd9QDvpa1Yrnc/s1600-h/EmilyGouldNYTimes.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh735BNi5VZMNgLrjmWGvX4F5_NHRZ_WdzpCozxKsaNqh-yq_q8Gpi4vwloPcT11NBy2qKMavD_QvU32Xw258ffCLE_jCCVvTRFGPGkDCHryt-57uH-COwsQPAupAgTX0zd9QDvpa1Yrnc/s400/EmilyGouldNYTimes.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5204384870724809186" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blog-Post Confidential</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Emily Gould feature in NY Times Magazine, 5.25.08</span><br /><br /></span>Sit down with the Sunday <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span> planning on skimming, racing through the news, week in review, book section, etc., and getting on to The Day. Stuff that needs to get done. My To Do list. Instead, get caught up with Emily Gould's "Blog-Post Confidential" feature. Then see how, for me at least, it connects with panic attacks, depression and, strange as it may sound, soul-retrieval. I haven't forgotten what this blog, <span style="font-style: italic;">drswardscureformelancholia</span>, is about, and skirt the issue as I may, it's there. As is the idea of a cure, namely, that the cure for melancholia (dramatic and implausible as that may sound) is to be found in the recovery of... <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span>If psychology is the study of the soul, <span style="font-style: italic;">psyche</span> (soul or spirit) - <span style="font-style: italic;">ology</span> (the study of), some think the "answer," if there is an answer, is in the recovery of what has been lost. Speaking from experience, zombie-days, zombie-hood, well, I've been writing about that in the new book*. And the intersection between zombie-hood and what, for want of a better term, I call "soul retrieval." There's at least one book on the subject, a book titled "Soul Retrieval." So, I'm not the first and there's nothing original in what I'm suggesting. Anyway, back to the Sunday <span style="font-style: italic;">Times.</span> I highlight a couple items from Emily Gould's "Exposed." <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span><span>1. "I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there's a place where a record of their existence is kept...<br /><br />2. "But because we were so busy, we continued to I.M. most of the time, even when we were sitting right next to each other. Soon it stopped seeming weird to me when one of us would type a joke and the other one would type 'Hahahahahaha' in lieu of actually laughing.<br /><br />3. "I was initially put off by Julia' naked attention-whoring--'Attention is my drug,' she often confessed.<br /><br />4. "A week later, I found myself lying on the floor of the bathroom in the Gawker office... felled by a panic attack that put me out of commission for the rest of the day.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Famous for 15 people</span><br /><br /></span><span>5. "Whenever I left this comfort zone, I would be seized by one of my irrational, heart-pounding meltdowns, which I would studiously conceal from my fellow subway passengers or pedestrians. The panic attacks were about a desire to be invisible, but if I showed any sign of having one, everyone would pay attention to me."<br /><br />---<br />* Sample of work on the subject appears now in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Bear Flag Republic, Prose Poems and Poetics from California</span>, edited by Christopher Buckley and Gary Young. Four of my poems in this anthology, including "A Face to Sadden God" -- with a section which begins, "There are three parts to the human soul..."<br /></span>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-6462313635987296602008-05-24T00:15:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:29.602-08:00PORTRAIT OF AN L.A. DAUGHTER<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhls45jm1vVuBjX8Qyk-gCNDtNY1D1JJR_MeDlyNd5Jp29IiAZNivKb0zo0-8hm1nvrp5S7bN5ThVeXwDfjTLjXW-lMm9yRobFMB3wu7RPokHOlowWh_iRZsRwIbIHlaUL9SJELM3euDYs/s1600-h/photo021_a.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhls45jm1vVuBjX8Qyk-gCNDtNY1D1JJR_MeDlyNd5Jp29IiAZNivKb0zo0-8hm1nvrp5S7bN5ThVeXwDfjTLjXW-lMm9yRobFMB3wu7RPokHOlowWh_iRZsRwIbIHlaUL9SJELM3euDYs/s400/photo021_a.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203846367725236690" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSO_cDMBb5tEwd1xQ9p3lZdTpxlNjGo0kRNElZgFxt6vf1vqN98w6IlgPQPxQJOp3Df7l8hIPCs1A5OxZPnl-t5z7cqxGEeIRJ5CPPvJwUOMgaPFzc-H4bIseA6_YCSFP3Xrmi0rekDWY/s1600-h/photo010_a.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSO_cDMBb5tEwd1xQ9p3lZdTpxlNjGo0kRNElZgFxt6vf1vqN98w6IlgPQPxQJOp3Df7l8hIPCs1A5OxZPnl-t5z7cqxGEeIRJ5CPPvJwUOMgaPFzc-H4bIseA6_YCSFP3Xrmi0rekDWY/s400/photo010_a.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203846122912100802" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4v9PKOfnPRet_SbtbKGawYvOrCN_UCkpdAkYXVM-2vjMKm_RON0w2A7WbWtA4tTcBT0pBG856sOScEUXgsXzL078i4JE-MOV94ccOgmlHc413bOXd6iwksy9c1_A6Wrjd1aCNiR6mP0E/s1600-h/HollywoodBlvd.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4v9PKOfnPRet_SbtbKGawYvOrCN_UCkpdAkYXVM-2vjMKm_RON0w2A7WbWtA4tTcBT0pBG856sOScEUXgsXzL078i4JE-MOV94ccOgmlHc413bOXd6iwksy9c1_A6Wrjd1aCNiR6mP0E/s400/HollywoodBlvd.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203842639693623714" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.seeing-stars.com/">seeing-stars.com</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PORTRAIT OF AN L.A. DAUGHTER</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Take #1</span><br /><br />Braided blonde hair<br />white and pink barrettes<br />Bette Davis gorgeous<br />I hug her<br />dreamy daughter with no make-up<br />silver skull and crossbones<br />middle<br /> finger<br /> ring<br />three or four others in each ear<br />rings in her navel<br />rings on her thumbs<br />gentle moonchild<br /> “pal” she announces<br />to “Porno for Pyros”<br />formerly the group “Jane’s Addiction”<br />“Nothing’s Shocking”<br />with Perry Farrell<br />Dave Navarro on guitar<br />and Stephen Perkins<br />on drums<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ain’t No Right</span> they sing.<br />“What are you,<br /> some kind of groupy?” I ask.<br />She says nothing.<br /> Just turns up the volume.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Been Caught Stealing</span><br /> they sing.<br /><br />I hold her<br />Wet ‘n’ Wild lip gloss<br />diamond stud earrings<br />and glitter on her cheeks<br /><br />Wan, she’s looking wan<br />my dancing daughter<br /><br />Hannah Davi –a new name–<br />walk-on in the movie <span style="font-style: italic;">Day Of Atonement</span><br /> with Christopher Walken<br /><br />And a part in a Levitz Furniture ad<br /> (“it’s work”)<br />and a part in an MCI commercial<br /> (“Best Friends”)<br />breaking in<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Brotherhood Of Justice</span><br /><br />a Swiss Alps bar-maid<br />(“classic blonde Gretel”)<br />in a Folger’s Coffee commercial<br /><br />“Grunge is in,” she says<br />visiting Santa Cruz,<br />“any Goodwills around?”<br /><br />* * *<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Flashback</span><br /><br />Appearing,<br /> “crowning” says the doctor<br /><br />“Hannah” says her mother<br />“the name means ‘grace’”<br /><br />Two-year-old drooling<br />as I toss her into space<br />and back<br /> she falls<br />and back<br />into space again<br /><br />Flawless teeth and perfect smile<br />one blue eye slightly larger than the other<br />her three-thousand miles away mother<br />still present as<br />two as one<br />two breathing together<br />we three breathe again as one<br />Hannah O Hannah<br /><br />--<br /><span style="font-size: 78%;">(Reprinted from The Collected Poems, Black Moss Press, 2004,<br />and Four Incarnations, Coffee House Press, 1991) </span>Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2306910157909376154.post-51168794205704897972008-05-23T17:03:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:39:29.790-08:00Hannah<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH_L2uTmSazIN8bwoqW_IDQVHEQj8pzjCNgQrQwgQhN9CUVGy6MV1WhTvpPikFIlA2pkd6wuEYmZU1M3dQE-ySBdUTyMRZhh8es3qMlhDN6RFyJ61FJwppRHfa1BmYGIMvIw-77arTIkA/s1600-h/Hannah+as+infant_2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH_L2uTmSazIN8bwoqW_IDQVHEQj8pzjCNgQrQwgQhN9CUVGy6MV1WhTvpPikFIlA2pkd6wuEYmZU1M3dQE-ySBdUTyMRZhh8es3qMlhDN6RFyJ61FJwppRHfa1BmYGIMvIw-77arTIkA/s400/Hannah+as+infant_2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203730390723342738" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">HANNAH</span><br /><br /><br />Her third eye is strawberry jam<br /><br />has a little iris in it<br /><br />her eyelids<br /><br /> are red<br /><br />she's sleepy<br /><br /> and the milk<br /><br /> has gone down<br /><br /> the wrong way.<br /><br />I've just had breakfast<br /><br />with the smallest person in the world.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">(Reprinted from The Collected Poems, Black Moss Press, 2004,<br />and Four Incarnations, Coffee House Press, 1991) </span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><br /><br />One critic dismissed the <span style="font-weight: bold;">HANNAH</span> poem above as "sentimental." Sentimentality is said to be the exaggeration of feeling, feeling for its own sake. But what if you really feel it and feel it in the way the images and tone, etc., suggest you feel it?<br /><br />There's another kind of exaggeration: opting for easy irony, an irony that will impress people though you may or may not really feel what you're setting down on the page. You'll get more attention in a writers' workshop with irony than you will with, dare I say it? honesty, saying what you're really feeling.<br /><br />Above all else in a writers' workshop you want to be "cool." The inner circle of most workshops is made up of people you can count on to be "cool." Cooler than you, cooler than me, cooler than thou. <br /><br />At the Iowa Writers' Workshop sentimentality was to be avoided at all costs. We were taught to be _anything_ but sentimental. Irony was OK because if you were ironic you couldn't be held accountable for anything you might have been feeling. That is, no one could accuse you of being sentimental and, if they were to accuse you of being sentimental, you could always say, "No, no, I was just being ironic. Surely you're not taking me seriously!"<br /><br />If there's irony, you can more easily defend yourself. Further, the use of irony implies there's another level, maybe several levels, of meaning. We all want to write poems with more than one level of meaning.Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12982710959300932054noreply@blogger.com0