Excuses

I've had so little to say because:

• I've been rubbing butts (and backs and achilles tendons)
• The lengthy case of tendonitis I've been nursing has had me contemplating the end of my career and/or the beginning of my ability to predict the weather with my joints.
  
• The Internet is pretty and shiny.
• The Megavolcano in Yosemite Park explodes approximately every 600,000 years. The last time it went off was 640,000 years ago.
• For ages, we've contemplated the end of our oil supply and now we will suffocate in the stuff because they can't make it stop.
  
• I was given my very first car by some very generous friends and now I must confront all the reasons I never bought one (see above). The amount of space it takes up in my brain is appalling.
• Writing is hard and researching agents is exhausting.
  
• Matt Debenham's The Book of Right and Wrong, Lydia Davis' Varieties of Disturbance and Belonging, Nilofar Talebi's translations of Iranian poetry.
  
• Rain in the form of sweet spring, wild & tempestuous, sunshower, two-minute downpour and when will it ever fucking stop.
• Weeds needed pulling, branches needed lopping and just look at the inky spill off the tongue of that iris.
  

Spring break

I've been away. Out in the world. In shorts and t-shirts and sandals. In the sun. In the park. Not caring much about writing because I can walk in the woods with my beau in mid May then come home and eat pudding and watch Irish movies with the subtitles on. Just like my beau, this city knows how to soothe me and swoon me and sweep me off my feet.

Poetry x 12 where I delve into Shel

April disintegrated in my hands. Already gone and I never chimed in on the Poetry x 12 Challenge for the month which was to read a favorite collection from childhood. For me, there was really only one shining star of verse in my youth and that was Shel Silverstein. I still have my copies of Where the Sidewalk Ends and Light in the Attic. I devoured these as a kid. Returning to them now, I was reminded of how dark and sad some of these poems are. I mean, look at the author photo. Good god. My mother must not have turned the book over before buying it. Either that, or she understood that this would appeal to her rather broody child.

As an adult, what appealed to me most was the juxtaposition of the sing-song rhymes and the slightly sinister tone. For example, "Me-Stew" ends with this: So bring out your stew bowls/You gobblers and snackers/ Farewell – and I hope you enjoy me with crackers! That "Farewell" kind of kills me. As does poor "Hector the Collector" who calls over "all the silly sightless people" to share his treasure box of bricks, vases, buckles, etc. and they call it junk. Heartbreaking, really. Brilliant really.

Joseph Harker, the man managing the Poetry x 12 challenge has more to say about Shel over at Naming Constellations.

And next on the list for May is the challenge to read poetry from a foreign country. A perfect opportunity to read more of my fellow Bennington-ites efforts. I'll be reading Nilofar Talebi's translation of Iranian poetry, Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians Around the World.