Hatching Supernovae

The White Album!

2012-02-04T07:08:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow at Cake Shop, Polestar Poetry Series presents The White Album--with one poet "reading" each track. Come hear me read my poem based on Lennon's "Yer Blues", along with 29 other fantastic poets. See you there!

Will you be prepared for what you / have not said.

2012-01-03T12:09:00.000-08:00

I have no idea how to introduce this poem. I needed this poem in my life, and there it was. I cannot read it all the way through without crying. I feel too close to it--it puts forth into the world what I was too at a loss to articulate. I will always be thankful for it. Below is an earlier version than what eventually appeared in the book Raptus, which was the book I carried in my bag for a year. I like the fact that the specific date begins this version as opposed to "That day in June."

SORTING

June 16, 2000—we heard the echo of a meadowlark.

Let go the meadowlark and the valley in which its song
repeated itself and the valley in which its song unfolded.

Let go the dream of such clear sound.

Let go the walks, dinners, drinks, talks, senses of beginnings, let go
the beginnings, we will never begin again.

Let go the still gray sky. It has propped us up long enough.

Let go the nights.

Let go the voice that answered me in earnest in all things I find
I can no longer imagine it.

Imagine the rents in the driveway cement from the rain that pooled
and stayed and the way the cement buckled wildly in the years that followed
and the years that followed in which no one came to the door.

You came to the door and said my name and the whole weathered mess
glowed beneath the afternoon’s hanging clouds and weeds
grew in blunt stalks from the cracks.

Who would you change for?

The maples change more in an hour of wind than we change.

The aspens shatter light I have felt the leaves in their wind-glittering
strangeness. Let go

the town and its dry river paths the white bellies of the swallows
under the bridge flashing in the last minutes of dusk and I knew I could not
continue as I had been nor did I sense a course.

Who are your friends.

What do you care for.

What would you give up if you could give up
anything. When were you afraid there is no extreme need that is not
warped by fear. What does the world

require of you have you loved the time you have spent here.
Was it because of the people with you. Or that the silence

was never silence it was always the fan’s white noise in the window
at night and below that the new rain on the grass
and below that the grass as it bends under the water
and night buried under the water and the town
at night under rain and grateful for rain in this dry season.

*

There and not there like the wind in the yard.

There and not there in a smile that is not
itself but a thought in a far country and a brush
of the shoulder that in a single minute means

everything. Everything you have said in support and questioned.
In support of love that unfolds where one least
imagines it for example a year of endings.

A white shirt. A shoelace a razor. A pacing in the hallways at night
like the steady lines of bicycles fanning across flat green fields.

The shadow of an airplane over the field or that shadow
as it ripples over a building through the thick windless
heat. Are you paying attention
to what passes through you.

Through you
I came to see a better life but cannot
account for why I have not always
lived it.

A polite vagueness in the Good bye! and Good luck!

Goodbye to the laughter I love I did not keep it close enough.

Goodbye to the mind that moves along walls and roads its un-
ceasing spirit I wish I were always in its path.

To the boys playing soccer at five in the leafy park goodbye
their gamesmanship goodbye
goodbye to the gravel they scattered the ground
they scuffed the houses they return to, may they always have homes.

Goodbye to the busses and the poppies that flew
past us behind bus-windows in deep red-orange-dotted-
smudges and the edgeless fields where you
walked when I wasn’t
there, with you, in your head,
where you walked, were you
alone, were there
fields, how alone
were you. How

alone can anyone
stand to be. Any one of us might be
tapped any one lead away when that day
comes will you be
ready. Will you be prepared for what you
have not said.

Will you know what you love.

*

To have been alone together is to have been
alone within an
illusion. Step into a dream
of life its tapwater and shoes its
coffee-cups paper-clips sheets the white light
that backs every curtain every room casually
shared every question will you help me with this I will help you.

Step into a life that is not
dreamed and try to say now if there are
remnants of illusion. Is what you say every day real.
Are the lesser estrangements
deeper and if so how much can you bear and if not
what will convince you.

Does the sparrow on the t.v. antenna convince you—it is there every day.

Every day the sun hits the red roofs of the village where you lived
and every evening the swifts dive through the crooked stone streets chasing
bugs we cannot see. The birds rose
level with our torsos on the terrace and whistled
their strong eerie whistle I heard it each morning a lone swift
veering past our bedroom window.

The rains rose and fell through the winter
and the spring rose and the beating summer
arrived. The birds arrived
each night and often we took the stairs
to the terrace after dinner to watch their black bodies
in hundreds rise and spike and dive, each in its own private
depth, sharp hap-
hazard wing-splitting
rolls. As if there were hundreds of separate skies.

*

So that nothing will ever again be for us what it was.

The long walk to the grocery store in noon-white
heat. The men standing immobile at boule, murmuring with the toss.

Constant church bells, the apple you set on the counter to eat,
the shake of a head saying no. Let go

the bistro the woman by the creek the disease.
Notes, letters, poems strung word-to-word.

Let go the young girl walking toward a building at the end of a long city-
sidewalk I see she is looking
toward someone there in the highest window her mother or a tutor
watching her child and neither one of them

needs to wave. Had I been able to read the signs, had you been able
to speak more clearly, had I
noticed, not
assumed, had you come to me
in understanding linking need to
need, had I
heard you, had you
spoken, I heard, as you
said the words, the harder
course, you
insisted, nor
have you always
lived it, persist, and cannot any longer
pass lightly over
anything. You came to me
in understanding and brought with you the need of a whole life,

having for months looked elsewhere, the streets of the town after midnight,
a nullity in each livingroom’s blue t.v., letters
to others, drought
in the mind drought in the neighborhood
grass. Certain
you would always be there.
Certain you would follow. The night’s

hours in talk and the paths our thoughts took
together. The dust-choked house and its un-utterable shag carpet
or the blue house and all the passing cars stranded in its
snowbanks the bitter arguments sweet reprieves the funny
Midwestern meals you cooked the mountain ash years without cigarettes
heaps of sweaters dishes the fire
in the kitchen the purple
kitchen. The absurd red car your mother gave us,
the books we wrote, sentences we took out,
pencil in the margins your shrinking
penmanship new shoes your smile the one that
seizes at what’s
real. The laundry the prosody. The refusals
the constant generosities every desperate apology.
You have to hold it in mind all at once.
You have to need it enough.

*

If I let go what will be left. Too hard
to sort each sorrow from each joy

and why, instead of answering, we passed into silence.
Clear, deep green, like a lake we’ve never been to

and stood at its blue edge-grass and felt nothing, like sunlight,
as it moved across our faces, slow
warmth, amber-

white, and when it passed we didn’t
know. But we stayed.

Joanna Klink

Three Wise Men (obligatory sappy year-end post)

2011-12-30T14:55:00.000-08:00

On the eve of the eve of the new year, I'm thinking back on 2011, and how it was both the worst and best year of my life so far. Pretty complicated, '11. I make no predictions or declarations for 2012, other than I'm ready for it. And happy.

I've been spending time with Kristin (Kiki) this week, who is visiting from Chicago, and it's been a great way to end the year. My lovely and talented friend Lily is turning 30 on NYE, and we're all going to ring in the new year/her birthday in style. I feel lucky to call Brooklyn my home and have such a fantastic crew of friends/co-workers/writers here. Plus, my faraway friends are the greatest--Kiki, Melissa, Aaron, Mairead--their correspondence and luvs are unparalleled!

Resolutions are not really my thing--especially because finding balance is a day-to-day effort more than a "turning over a new leaf" type of switch. But in the past month or so, three men I adore have said things that have stuck with me, for different reasons. Once, when I was feeling stressed, Paul addressed me simply, "You are perfect. The world is a mess" which, though indulgent, was grounding, empowering, and sweet in a time of frustration. Aaron, in the midst of a long conversation, said, "Everything is a performance. People make the mistake that performance = artifice." I've been thinking on this a lot these past few weeks. What beliefs, mindsets, personae, do we perform? It kind of gives new meaning to faking it until one makes it. Our actions might be part of "faking it" but our actions aren't "fake." And in any kind of art, performing an identity doesn't make that identity inauthentic or artificial. Finally, Alex, one night this month told me, "Honey, you get what you ask for. So you better ask for a lot." That one needs no further explanation. So: three good mantras for 2012, rather than resolutions. Cheers.

This is why I want to be in Paris right now!

2011-11-18T14:01:00.001-08:00

No, Dear Launch Reading next Friday

2011-11-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

Hello! Mark yr calendars because on Friday, November 11, No, Dear will release Issue 8, the METAL issue!

Reading poems from the issue:

Hanna Andrews

Julian Brolaski

Iris Cushing

B.C. Edwards

Seth Graves

Austin LaGrone

Gracie Leavitt

Anne Marie Rooney

Paige Taggart

Brian Trimboli

Amber West

Pete's Candy Store, 709 Lorimer, Bklyn. 7pm! Wear yr metal tee, or, y'know, yr chain mail!

New poems in Papirmasse!

2011-10-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

I've never met Kirsten McCrea, but I'm pretty much convinced she is one of the most amazing humans ever. Kirsten is a visual artist living in Montreal and she's the art-smarts behind several supercool projects.

First, there's The Hot Topic Project:

... in which Kirsten painted a portrait of every person named in the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic." Be still my heart. Read more about the project here!

And then, there's Papirmasse, a mail-art subscription through which, for $5 per month, you receive work by a different artist/writer pair each month for a year.

I'm happy to be November's poet--two poems from Slope Move plus one poem from a new series, "The Frames", will be featured in the issue. Check out my interview on the Papirmasse blog!

Candy

2011-10-26T08:59:00.000-07:00

Because life IS crazy! And because I LOVE Iggy, in every incarnation. Also, this is totally part of the soundtrack for Slope Move. All that separation anxiety! Even the video is all separate spheres-esque.

I sort of imagine that when Kate Pierson joins in, even though she's singing the same chorus, she's actually kinda eye-rolly about all of Iggy's shirtless wallowing. Eff off guy, you blew it.

Moonflowers & Morning Glories

2011-10-17T13:24:00.001-07:00

Took this photo in my neighborhood this weekend. So many around every corner near my apartment--climbing iron gates, above doorways, twisting wild in parking lots.

Moonflowers used to be important, and for some reason, I had always thought these were just blue moonflowers. Makes sense, no? Nearly the same shape, and that glowing globe in the center certainly looks like the moon... Upon further investigation I now know that these are actually morning glories. And I love them.

The News in Neon

2011-10-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try to begin updating this blog 1-2 times per week. I am publishing it in the blogosphere, so it must be true.

First, biggest update--most of you already know this, so, yawn, yesterday's news, but...

**my first book of poems, Slope Move, is forthcoming from Coconut Books in 2012!**

It's a book-length poem about, well, leaving.

More specifically, it's about the act of separation: from an "other", from the self, & from linearity (i.e. the splits that occur within narratives--through shifts in time, perspective, & memory.)

Also poems about bird-hating, co-dependency, Liz Phair songs, & Chicago.

[Red Missed Aches] by Jennifer Tamayo, now available for pre-order!

2011-05-09T07:10:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Tamayo's Red Missed Aches Read Missed Aches Red Mistakes Read Mistakes is now available for preorder on the Switchback website and on Amazon!

[Red Missed Aches] is a perfect-bound 8.5" x 8.5" book of text and images, winner of the Switchback Books 2010 Gatewood Prize, selected by Cathy Park Hong.

From Cathy Park Hong's introduction:

Jennifer Tamayo's writing is cacophonous, rude, and stripped. She uses equal measures of English, Spanish, and Spanglish; she landmines her poetry with malapropisms so the music is startling and pleasingly discordant.

[Red Missed Aches] feels defiantly unfinished, adhering to a DIY feminist punk aesthetic so that it is more rough assemblage than bound book, a palimpsest that provocatively revises female sexuality and citizenship. Tamayo's debut collection is a daring and astonishing work that refuses borders.

Switchback Books
May 15, 2011
ISBN-10: 0978617266
ISBN-13: 978-0978617264
$18.00

Visit the Switchback site to purchase the book via Paypal!!

(And while you're at it, be sure to enter the 2011 Gatewood contest, open for submissions right now!)

Wednesday, April 20, 7pm: Donnelly, Nezhukumatathil, Waldman & American Poet issue 40!

2011-04-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to announce that American Poet issue 40 is hot off the press!

Come celebrate with me and hear readings by the fabulous Timothy Donnelly, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, & Anne Waldman at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, Wednesday, April 20, at 7pm. Grab a free copy of American Poet and be sure to buy a coffee or a beer from the cafe (and perhaps a used book from the shelves!) All Housing Works proceeds go towards the fight against AIDS and homelessness.

This issue of American Poet, the journal of the Academy of American Poets, features essays by Sharon Dolin, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, & Marilyn Hacker among others, and includes poems by Galway Kinnell, Khaled Mattawa, Mark Doty, Jean Valentine, Yusef Komunyakaa, Laura Mullen, Juan Felipe Herrera, Rosmarie Waldrop, Timothy Donnelly, Anne Waldman, Adrienne Rich, Evie Shockley and many others.

All are welcome! See you there!

Switchback Books is now open to submissions for the 2011 Gatewood Prize!

2011-04-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

The Gatewood Prize is Switchback Books' annual competition for a first or second full-length (48-80 pp.) collection of poems by a woman writing in the English language. It is named after Emma Gatewood, the first woman to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.

2011 JUDGE: Harryette Mullen

READING PERIOD: April 1-June 1, 2011

HARRYETTE MULLEN's most recent books are Recyclopedia (Graywolf Press, 2006) and Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California Press, 2002), a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Mullen was the 2009 recipient of the Academy of American Poets' Fellowship Award. She teaches African American literature and creative writing in the English Department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Please visit our website for more information and guidelines.

Please re-post and spread the word! Thank you!

Hanna Andrews & Becca Klaver, Editors

Whitney Holmes, Managing Editor

Dolly Lemke, Assistant Editor

Brandi Homan, Board President

I Am a Natural Wonder

2011-02-23T11:16:00.001-08:00

My manic little poem is up today at Lily Ladewig & Anne Cecilia Holmes' I Am a Natural Wonder poem project! Big thanks!

You can also read their collaborative chapbook by the same title, published by Blue Hour Press, available as an e-chap on the blog.

Klink fest

2011-02-14T10:03:00.000-08:00

I think it takes about two weeks to fully recover from AWP. There were so many highlights in D.C., including a ridiculously wonderful offsite reading with Coconut Books, Horse less Press and Switchback, in which Marisa Crawford read from her 2010 Switchback release The Haunted House and Jennifer Tamayo read from the forthcoming Red Missed Aches Read Missed Aches Red Mistakes Read Mistakes. Powerhouses, those two.

Those of you who have to listen to me talk about poetry all the time know that I continue to be really affected by Joanna Klink's latest book, Raptus. If you haven't read it yet, you should. It looks a little too subtle on the outside (Penguin), with its muted cover & deer line-drawing, but it's a slim little volume of some of the most complicatedly beautiful work processing the end of a relationship that I've ever read.

I was telling my SB co-editor, Brandi Homan, to get her hands on the book at AWP. Later that night, the two of us went to the VIDA & the Men Who Love Us reading at D.C.'s The Black Cat. Serendipitously, David Baker decided to read one of the poems from Raptus as his contribution, and gifted the large audience with a dynamic and thoughtful rendition of JK's poem. His admiration for the work was obvious. It was one of those moments where you feel like everyone in the room is chosen to be in on the same delicious secret.

Here is the mini-review I wrote on Raptus for American Poet's Books Noted.

Here is a new poem, "Pericardium", I solicited from JK for Poem-A-Day in January.

i know, i know

2010-10-05T16:10:00.001-07:00

I haven't really been blogging for the past couple of months, as editing projects have taken over my life. This is great, make no mistake, but I sure do miss that whole writing thing.

Plus, I can't figure out how to avoid getting the spam comments. Anyone know?

I spend most of my work day and evenings reading poetry or prose about poetry, so I've been reading a ton of comics/graphic serials this summer on the subway commutes.

So far, I've been through:

Whiteout (whole series) Book 1 way better than Book 2.

Supermarket (whole series) Eh.

DEMO (whole series) Quirky, singular. Some issues better than others. Love the Brian Wood/Becky Cloonan combo. I also love their notes at the end of each issue, complete with tracklists of music that inspired writing/drawing each story.

DMZ (I think the whole series? I can't tell if it's over?) Super heavy. New York as war zone.

Some dark stuff there. I also just started reading a new series called Scarlet. 2 issues in, it's pretty intriguing--female protagonist, left for dead in shady police bust (and boyfriend killed in same) she's recovered and now out to right the wrongs of the world, by force if necessary. (So far, necessary.) The art is great in this one, too.

Here's a little video that seems just right for tonight. Although may further encourage the Japanese spam...

The Bird & The Bee - Love Letter To Japan
- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Happy Bloomsday

2010-06-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

So in case you have neither the cash nor advantage of locale to hit up Symphony Space and see o my darling Ira Glass and an all-star cast excerpt Ulysses, do what I'm doing today and read a Bloom-inspired poem by my favorite part-Irishman, Andy Trebing.

Dear Molly Bloom,

Compelling and punishing
as peppercorns in your little
hat, your thin prim kerchief
all go and I’m all standstill

Damn civility poetry too
both monkey suits just
suited for only facts
lined up like that
but my zipper’s unstuck
dear dove,

Glass flower, dear wit,
give heat forty watts at a time
or burn this under your
self-knit mittens when my petition
warms you come
over come over the sky’s
birdless but the songs the songs
the singing

__________________________________________________________________

author, adorable

what you should be reading too

2010-04-02T11:11:00.000-07:00

It's kind of obvious why i'd want to read a graphic novel about an awkward high school girl, both written and illustrated by women. (see my earlier top ten books post, and also note #11.)

While Hiromi of my enduring coming-of-age favorite _The Cutmouth Lady_ is a "gaijin" parent-less schoolgirl coming to terms with her queerness in a rigid religious girls' institution in japan, Kim "Skim" Cameron, the heroine of _SKIM_ is a half-Japanese high school kid/aspiring Wiccan trying to make her way through the girl politics of her Toronto high school. There are the typical mean girls who surface in the story, but there's also the restless childhood best friend who is trying as hard as possible to separate from the often too-enmeshed quality of pre-high school best friendship (think Angela Chase and Sharon Chersky from _My So-Called Life_), a complicated mother-daughter relationship, and various incarnations of insider-outsider politics and exploration of "other"ness.

Other autobiographic graphic novels, the ones I've held dear like _Blankets_ and _Fun Home_, contain the dual perspective of both teenage self and the current writer's self. This perspective adds some hindsight, and, whether overtly or covertly, also offers a re-interpretation of formative events.

_SKIM_ is unique in the sense that Kim's narration stays firmly rooted in the high school experience. While this may pose less of a complex read than the novels I've mentioned above, it also offers a head-on glimpse at this girl-world, reading like the unsophisticated scribbled diary entries of a feverish teen who is dying to be "something" but is struggling with her own sense of self-awareness to figure out what that "something" is, while simultaneously dying to be told by someone that she already is who she needs to be.

2008, Groundwood Books, Trade Paperback, 144 pgs.

happy new fear (or, here's a tiny anchor)

2010-01-06T05:49:00.001-08:00

i hate new year's resolutions, yet also acknowledge that the public declaration of hating new year's resolutions is nearly as annoying. this year is set up to be a very different one from the past several in my life, and when i thought of what it was exactly that i'm feeling, it's funny that the word that emerged is resolution.

the past few years have been defined by a feeling of floatiness, in a way-- being around things and places and people, yet being "around" them, circumventing them, above or below, feeling separated and in that separation, unmoored. while being transient is probably necessary, so is feeling grounded. it seems like that's something i've been looking for for a long time--what represents "home," or, on a larger scale, "permanence." often i've come to feel that the best one can hope for is "temporary permanence(s)." i've been re-reading janna levin's first book, aptly subtitled: Diary of a Finite Time in Finite Space. her view, controversial, is that the universe itself is finite--that infinity is a hypothetical concept, and one not found in the natural world.

sometimes i think the more i learn about physics, (and i am merely a hobbyist, no scholar, to be sure) the more anxiety i have. it's easy to understand why the exponential quality of theoretical thinking drove some scientists to end themselves.

cheery!

but really, i'll take the temporary permanence(s). i'll put anchors down next to people, in books, within a city, in my own writing. i'll exist in those spaces, however finite. as 2010 begins, i realize what a year of changes 2009 was, and how the resolutions of those changes are unfolding in a way that brings me happiness. and so i'd like to exist in the spaces--including this one--more than i have.

yeah yeah, i know, that sounds like a resolution.

well hello

2009-06-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

I saw THIS:

out of the corner of my eye on the subway platform the other night. i did a triple take, then thought to snap a pic. there's a 20-something girl in there. of course. i think this beats the obama air freshener (fyi: obama is jasmine scented!) the boo brought me back from the inauguration.

on another note, my apologies that the lil stars have not been hatching as of late. if anyone is reading: i will do better.

the new york post

2009-04-22T13:17:00.001-07:00

what a rollercoaster week. leaving a city is so much more than changing location.

here i am in brooklyn, back in new york after 5 years. NYC is different yet somehow the same. i guess i'm still adjusting and therefore speaking in abstractions.

it was drizzling when i drove into brooklyn and unloaded all my boxes from the rental car, and by the time i headed to union square for an interview, it was pouring.

mia met me after work and we decided tapas and booze was in order.

so we went to pipa. you can't really tell from the bad photo, but the interior is all dark wood and only lit by chandeliers. many of them. it was like eating tapas in a starlit forest. dreamy.

yesterday, i headed to soho for a long walk (read: to check out what all the models are wearing to go shopping) and to hit up any bargains for apartment stuff. there were many, which was great. got a bit of writing done (my pact to myself) and did some "set up" (banking, new checks, library card, etc) while mia was at work.

today, decided to hit up the old haunts & walk through morningside.

so lovely. all the outdoor produce, cherry blossoms and tulips in all the median planters! i'm sitting in the coffee shop window watching columbia students walk by--finals week; they all look a bit gaunt.

tonight, more apartment shopping and getting situated. thinking about paint colors for my bedroom--- suggestions? visuals?

more soon.

forgive me, i've been busy.

2009-04-01T07:36:00.000-07:00

doing what, you ask?

hmmm... turning 30, subletting my chicago apartment, resigning from my job, finding an apartment in brooklyn, and...moving to new york!

in 2 weeks.

i'm still pretty emotional about all the changes-- thrilled to move back to new york, but sad to leave a city i've loved living in, a job at a college i am both grateful to and fiercely supportive of, & of course, incredible friendships.

i think for the next couple of weeks, i will post things i'm going to miss about chicago. as tribute.

but for now, here's a picture of the cool painted over fireplace in my new living room in park slope:

you want what you want, but you don't wanna be on yr knees...

2009-03-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

because it's monday, because it's le tigre:

also, punktravesty (who posted this vid) has a whole buncha bikini kill show footage from '96. a total throwback for yrs truly. do a youtube search...it's a treat.

Tonight's the night, tonight we're gonna, tonight's the night...

2009-03-13T07:56:00.001-07:00

if you're in the chicago area, i will be reading from my chapbook a/long/division at a release reading/party with becca klaver tonight!

it's at dollop coffee company at 9pm, details at left, & it's BYOB. & yes, there will be snacks. come & bring friends and/or whiskey!

if you can't make it, but still want a chapbook, you can order one here from Tilt Press. I can't say enough good things about Tilt-- please support small presses that are dedicated to publishing emerging poets! Chapbooks are $8, which includes shipping, or you can purchase a subscription of the series (5 chapbooks for $30).

See you tonight!!! xo.

truth.

2009-03-09T15:53:00.001-07:00

What happened is not how we should measure things.
Joy exists because there are delays, those intervals in bodies
where two languages mix before the first one has to be lifted away.

Brenda Hillman

this is pretty much all i have to say today.

2009-03-03T15:55:00.000-08:00

interpret at will.

(brain)crush of the week: Janna Levin

2009-02-26T08:53:00.000-08:00

those of you who are aware of my strange proclivities know that i spend a good deal of time thinking about physics. science beyond biology was always really difficult for me because i am numerically dyslexic & am not a visual learner (quick shout out to auditory learners!!) as a result of my questionable (read: deplorable) performance in pre-college Chemistry, i was placed into a class with the curious title "Conceptual Physics." & was i ever hooked. because i was able to focus on theory & logic (& in some cases, rhetoric,) of physics problems rather than their intricate (and i'm sure lovely) layouts & mathematical accuracy, i could make both concrete and metaphorical connections between hard science & emotional/psychological landscapes--characterizations of matter, space, time, inertia, energy.

so, it's really no wonder that i've got a total braincrush on this here lady, Janna Levin.

while i’m thinking about, you know, how to make my next loan payment, Dr. Levin is concerned with slightly larger questions, like whether the universe is finite. she's a professor of astrophysics at Barnard College.

oh, and by the way, she's a novelist.

she was recently featured on American Public Media's radio program: Speaking of Faith. she talks about the connection between theoretical phsyics and [existential] philosophy, among other things. Einstein, limits to certainty, beauty, Godel, free will, (non)existence of god. this is seriously my wet dream.

from the interview--roughly quoted:

* "confession: no matter how i list facts, i'm unable to get to the truth-- truth doesn't just drop out like a theorem if i follow certain 'logical' steps....my approach to the truth in the bigger sense...will always be a little bit out of the corner of my eye...or the visceral experience of what it really means...or what the implications are... we can 'know' we're getting closer to the truth, even though we can't always prove it."

le sigh. for a fascinating hour of conversation, go here.

speak english

2009-02-23T09:11:00.000-08:00

well, despite andy's review mid-movie: "ohh [exaggerated yawn] these rich people and their poor, white, rich problems," i really enjoyed vicky cristina barcelona. i thought it was biting & nutty & while scarlett johansson did bore me a little (something about scar-jo "playing" sexy seems strangely flat. perhaps because she's just inherently sexy.) rebecca hall was spot-on neurotic (loved her) & penelope cruz all out stole the show.

i was pretty pleased at her oscar win for VCB. yay tense breakfast scene:

anyway, there's been an essay under development in my mind for a while now about gender roles & patterning in woody allen films: women are often mere archetypes & yet they tend to be the most dynamic/hold the most power in the narrative. there's something here that reeks of "mystique"-- a mystique that both feels strangely true & inexcusably exoticized/fetishized through allen's lens. nevertheless, it's a pull and a conflict that has repulsed & intrigued/entertained me for about 20 years now. yes, i watched annie hall when i was 9.

i envy people

2009-02-19T07:21:00.000-08:00

who can make lists. or, i should say-- i envy people who find it soothing, productive or satisfying to make lists. whenever i have to make a to-do list it becomes so overwrought/overthought that the list itself overtakes any possibility of actually completing the tasks. any other kind of "best of" or "top" list becomes so laden with footnotes and disclaimers and explanations that it becomes a manifesto you'd probably need a map to read.

all this (see??!?) to say that i was reading brandi's blog last night and her list of top 10 non-poetry books challenged me to attempt to come up with my own. the fact that it's not poetry took the pressure off substantially.

the rules i made for myself: no teen/YA books i love, no philosophy/theory (sorry, everything kierkegaard or judith butler's ever written.)

SO (cringe) here's mine! complete w/ disclaimers, annotations, etc.

1) crime & punishment/ fyodor dostoevsky. (man those russians can write a protagonist!)
2) the invisible man/ ralph ellison. (couldn't sleep for DAYS after reading this)
3) speak, memory/ vladimir nabokov. (this book cemented my need to write poetry forever. even though it's an autobiography.)
4) my life/ lyn hejinian. (of course this is poetry, but i think it belongs on this list.)
5) slouching towards bethlehem/ joan didion. (love these essays like children)
6) tie: blankets + fun home/ craig thompson + alison bechdel. (coming-of-age graphic novels? yes please. the first is about a sensitive wisconsin boy growing up in the 80s trying to make sense of his inner emotional life & falling in love for the first time. the second is about an observant queer girl's relationship/childhood with an actress mother & closeted english teacher/ funeral director father. these books are both genius. also intense class/race--blankets is an undeniable portrait of a white-bred, canned religious, middle-american experience--/gender commentary)
7) portrait of the artist as a young man/ james joyce. (alter ego? lacing that alter ego with mythological context? hyper-awareness of self? check! also, um, it's clear that i love auto-biography...& only if it's non-linear/"experimental"/non-traditional. never really figured that out until i made this list.)
8) tie: lolita + pale fire/ vladimir nabokov. (yes, another tie. so what?)
9) 1984/ george orwell. (what's to say? it blew my mind. you know.)
10) the god of small things/ arundhati roy. (hey, arundhati roy! write another novel! this one was so good i was breathless at its end. seriously.)
11) (cause i can) the cutmouth lady/ romy ashby. (a lot of weird energy surrounds this book of short stories that nobody's ever heard of. queer, mostly american-part japanese orphan girl sent to live in a seedy district in japan & attend a strict all-girls school. oh yeah, and stories about legendary japanese woman-criminals somehow meshed with this. emily gould gave this book to me, several years ago when both of our lives were very different (like, before she had a wikipedia page). i think it was my birthday. she pressed it into my hands & said, "this is important." this obviously adds a whole other layer of girl mythos.)

what are yours?????

tilt title! aka sooooper news!

2009-02-17T07:43:00.000-08:00

!gleeful! about:

my chapbook, a / long / division is officially available from Tilt Press!!!

so you know what you're getting into: a/l/d is a series of prose poems fixated on the idea of separations-- from others, from the real and concrete images of the daily, from the self.

thanks to rachel & tilt press for doing such a beautiful job!

Fear of the sphere/late to the party

2009-02-16T15:05:00.001-08:00

So, I had intended to write this long post about starting a blog/ the scary internets/ my weird control issues & other various and sundry anxieties, but then I figured: the title of this post basically says it all.