the non-nature-acquainted guide to The Wild Iris…

Okay, Louise. Your language is simple, your poems “swell in my mind,” & I dig the talking flowers more than I thought I’d be able to. However, some of us grew up completely alienated from nature. I dig flowers, but I don’t know any of their names. I can’t picture a Hawthorn Tree…I just picture some generic tree & that’s not the kind of specificity I want.

& oh, I’ve tried to learn our names for nature. I spent a whole summer in Boise writing in wildlife preserves in an attempt to become more connected. Unfortunately, sometimes names alienate. They don’t swell in the minds of those who did not have parents who grew up in New England knowing what is in their yards…

this is okay. I’m in on the book because I know what “Matins” & “Vespers” are. The shifting of perspectives is skillfully done– I buy it without realizing that I’m buying anything. I like that your creation story highlights our alienation from nature…

Anyway: An Illustrated Guide to Louise Gluck’s The Wild Iris. Or at least the beginning of it.

A Wild Iris from Eugene, OR

Wild Iris. Image stolen from here. It almost makes me want to consider moving to Eugene with the hippies rather than Portland. This is pretty much how I imagined the iris to look, given previous experiences & the cover to the book. Glad I was right about one thing!

A cantatrice is a female solo singer. How did I not know this before? Anyway, Louise compares a white daffodil to one. I can imagine a daffodil.

Trillium

White Trillium. Which is apparently the state flower of Ohio. Neat. (This is a public domain image off of Wikipedia, as the following will be unless otherwise noted!)

Lamium. I want a garden of these!

Lamium. According to Gluck: lives “in shadows, trailing over cool rock, under the great maple trees” (5). Somehow, I don’t think lamium would survive in Idaho, but I could be wrong

The first house I lived in as a child had a gorgeous Red Maple in the front yard. Besides the crab apple tree we planted in the yard that didn’t survive, it was the only tree I knew by name, really. Besides obvious things, like fruit trees or weeping willows.

Snowdrops

Snowdrop, one of the first bulbs to bloom in Spring. “Snowdrops” makes a hell of a lot more sense now that I know this.

Okay, so I was afraid of this happening. I am officially sick of doing this, but I can almost guarantee another post about The Wild Iris when I finish the book tomorrow. Yes.

hypo–

Would probably be best for me to go to bed right now cuz my nice evening along is transitioning into the type of lonely evening that inspires me to text my drunk boyfriend begging for cuddles that can’t happen.

Feeling a lot right now. Excited that I got The Idaho(me) Project blog in shape for introduction, but had trouble focusing on writing it. I’ve been having trouble focusing all day today– I kept noticing my mind wandering as I was on the phone with Devin & I guess he’s really the only person I’ve talked to today…

which was kind of nice, but I have to admit that I wish he felt more certain of our relationship boundaries cuz now I feel like I want to throw my arms up, “fix” everything, which I actually know I do not want.

Decided to do the Sweatheart Challenge at the gym next week. 26.2 miles over 7 days. I even bought electrolyte-enhanced water at Stop & Shop. Hopefully it will force me to be disciplined & write at work…

I need to write in the morning as opposed to vacuuming.

Sent so many rejection emails tonight. Some of the names looked familiar from other journals. It’s interesting, how subjective publishing can be.

Obsessed with Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. My ants seem perplexed by my need to skip to it as I get ready to leave in the morning.

26.2 miles. I know that completing this will probably be a stretch for my body, but it will help me regain faith in my abilities. & I’ll feel more aware of my body, more embodied. I need to rearrange some plans…

How did I not get everything done today? I ought to sleep now so I can do something before braving the hypothetical snow to meet A. for coffee…

Notes on Louise Gluck’s “Education of the Poet”

“…from the beginning I preferred the simplest vocabulary. What fascinated me were the possibilities of context… It seemed to ne that simple language best suited this enterprise; such language, in being generic, is likely to contain the greatest and most dramatic variety of meaning within individual words… I loved those poems that seemed so small on the page but that swelled in the mind…” (4)

Qualities necessary for being a writer, according to Gluck:

“…the adamant need which makes it possible to endure every form of failure: the humiliation of being overlooked, the humiliation of being found moderately interesting, the unanswerable fear of doing work that, in the end, really isn’t more than moderately interesting, the discrepancy, which even the great writers live with (unless, possibly, they attain great age) between the dream and the evidence.” (6)

Louise Gluck most struggles to be free of romance, & she associates the music of language with lawlessness, romance. Poetry for Gluck seems = the control & order of that music. Poetry as a space of control.

What assumptions does Gluck make when talking about language? Does she assume the role language, which she views as her inheritance, gives her? What class/education assumptions does she make entering into the poetic conversation?

More later.

rededication

I’m in bed watching a youtube video about women’s experiences of nothingness rather than succumbing to the sleep I desperately want or need. Decided I need to take decisive action to end this wallowing & negativity, to accept it as it is then move on. Cuz negativity just breeds more negativity & the belief that it’s inescapable.

I need to stop trying so hard to be this ideal version of myself cuz it just alienates me from myself. & today, the desire for sex & approval & intimacy all got jumbled– it’s desirable to be a “victim,” to think someone else owes these things to you, or that you can only get them from someone else. The choice to meditate or not– neither is perfect & both will suit different times & I think perhaps I need some more time for silence. & to use this space (as in this blog) to reflect on art, what I’m reading, how I relate to it. How I allow it to change my life.

& what I write needs to be okay in the moment if it’s what I need to write cuz it’s what I wrote. No matter who likes it or doesn’t. Cuz for each person who thinks yr awesome & wants to publish you, there will be another who doesn’t dig yr music. So be it. Devin reminded me tonight that yes, I have my whole life to write. If what I’m writing right now feels scary & melodramatic & inaccurate, it’s only because I have to do this first to get to the accuracies.

& I want to go all out– vacuum, burn some sage, go for a run…

& I want to celebrate– celebrate the awesome conversation that occurred at the reading last night, celebrate my friends who made it happen, celebrate the people here who I love, the people in Idaho I love, celebrate my new blog project. Live for the opportunity to write, to take risks, to try new things. I can pave yet another new road to this life. I am fortunate, so fortunate & grateful for Devin who unfailingly helps me through my self-destruction & Shannon who so fully sees & experiences & Angela who challenges me & shows me myself & Grey & Claudia & Kristen & Jamie & oh I could go on & on…

Tomorrow is new, even if only cuz I construct it that way.

self-pity.

Wine-drunk & failing at sonnets on my sister’s couch. Stuck. Don’t know what to write.

…listening to the train run by. Tastykakes. Cuddlelust. Poetry leaves no room for wanting to be cherished.

Saw my father’s name in granite for the first time today. Final dates. He has entered gravestone history, my chilly associations…

Saw people who share some blood & little else. Don’t know me, yet do. Saw my father remove the battery pack from my red microphone, know that I knew (know) all the words to all the songs, was good at the memory game. Yes, my memory is still (somewhat) photographic. Photogenic. Which is perhaps why I’m so good at maintaining (hi)story, the story I tell of myself, that continuity.

All this. Nothing comes to the page. How am I supposed to have 6 sonnets by Wednesday when I  barely have 2?

pathology

I am feel like such a fucking coward.

Not exactly a coward, but a predator. Only take what appear to be risks when they’re a sure thing. Leave things to email, to words in which I feel comfortable with the command of language. What is written feels safe even when it’s not.

So afraid of being wrong. Or thought of as a problem in ways that I haven’t problematized myself.

No right or wrong, only actions & consequences.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE LIKED, MEGAN.

Fear of discomfort, of being uncomfortable.

February 2, From Here to the Corner Reading featuring Brenda Shaughnessy, Laura Jaramillo, and Megan Williams

The next From Here to the Corner reading will be February 2, 2010, 7:30pm at 25CPW, an artist-run storefront gallery at 25 Central Park West on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Three poets, Brenda Shaughnessy, Laura Jaramillo, and Megan Williams, will be featured.

Brenda Shaughnessy is a poet and editor.  Her most recent book, Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon, 2008), won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.  Her first book, Interior with Sudden Joy (FSG, 1999) was a finalist for the Lambda Award, Norma Farber Award, and the PEN/Joyce C. Osterweil Award.  She is the poetry editor of Tin House Magazine, has been a Radcliffe Institute Fellow and a Japan-US Friendship Commission fellow.  She teaches at Princeton, NYU, The New School and other institutions.

 

Laura Jaramillo is a poet from Queens. She’s the author of chapbooks The Reactionary Poems (Olywa Press) and The Civilian Nest (Love Among the Ruins Editions).

Megan Williams is currently pursuing her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, where she is a poetry editor of LUMINA. Her poems have recently appeared in Ducts and are forthcoming on Mudlark. Megan is also part of the writing group responsible for From Here to the Corner.

25CPW is a storefront that has been vacant for the past two years. Early this fall a group of ten artists moved into the 3,000 square foot space viewing it as an opportunity to share their ideas and work with a broad audience. The space is called 25CPW. Its members seek to create a common platform for artists, curators, writers, educators, and the general public to engage with contemporary art. 25CPW will maintain a calendar of diverse events featuring lectures, discussions, film screenings, poetry readings, performances, workshops and exhibitions.

From Here to the Corner’s Website

Some things taste better cooked longer

Things on my mind:

• The Idaho(me) Project. Blog to accompany. Chronicle the process of planning a cross-country move & creating a home, an artistic community in a place I find resistant to community. Creating a life akin to a cradle for my first book. Post thoughts, budgets / cost estimates, car shopping, apartment shopping, the attempt to curate a reading series, events, and Sunday night dinners.
• My sudden negative streak. Feeling like an imposition. Where is this coming from– the lack of communication(s) I’m reading into? Even silence is a form of communication but one which is more difficult to interpret. My gut always assumes the worst. (It is possible that people want to spend time with me, right?)
• The futility of nature vs. nurture. Great love of theory vs. workable solutions. Art as counterbiology.
• Acting as I feel it is important to act. Find my aunts’ addresses to send condolence cards. Volunteer, again, for once. Money is not a substitute for time, especially this money. Unearned.
• Openness, closetedness. The terms on which my relationship with Devin is open. What it takes to build a relationship. How I am the only person who can truly judge the suitability of our (any) relationship for me.
• I want a road trip. & to go skiing.
• Reading with Brenda Shaughnessy & Laura Jaramillo– do I want to pick the poems I feel are most in conversation with their work, or the poems I feel most like reading?
• Start the Couch-to-5k plan today. I hope doing this increases my confidence in my body.
• Reflection: how communities form common ways of reacting/relating to situations.  How mine is different than my community’s but is similar to Devin’s (honestly, how it was influenced by him, how he challenged me to grow in a particular way). How this has been challenged, questioned.

Rainy day. I wore a t-shirt under my ski coat & snow boots. Nearly 60 degrees. I want to expand on all of these subjects but I need to put them down first. Expose them to some light.

Messy drunk two nights ago– somehow, it made me feel better. To just let myself feel what I was feeling without poking it for explanation. Asking for the company I needed as opposed to reaching for the home videos & the impulse I get sometimes to just run away. Start fresh. Not worry about the pasts I haven’t dealt with, or have started to in an unsatisfactory manner.

Need to be proactive, to seal some loose ends with choice words. When the moment feels right. I don’t always have to be a microwave.

gut, great fortune teller

Oh crazy turn to the day– I’m coupling this entry with poetry though this freewrite feels good.

My grandmother died this morning & I have taken refuge in numbers– six months from the 3-year anniversary of her son’s death (which occurred on the 6th month of the year.) (on the 22nd).

& how did I know it this morning on the bus as the Metro-North train passed in the other direction & my eyes welled up &  I couldn’t stop thinking about how my Dad told his parents my mom cheated on him (not true) so he wouldn’t have to fess up to the reasons they got divorced.

I almost used the word abusive in a poem today, how I feel guilty every time I say it. It’s not present-tense, I’m referring to the ghost of the ghost.

This theoretical poem, probably in bad taste, also references his Nazi book collection. Triumph of the Will. The will to change. Think about it.

…how we all end with so many misconceptions–

He changed.

I’m not sure whether the  reason I haven’t visited my father’s grave is because I’m too lazy to go to Rockledge to visit a concealed pile of dust when I spend a significant period of my time building other monuments to his life & I’m fairly sure I’m aware of the arsenic lobster soaring above my head, ready to pounce…

It’s probably something else, some other reason.

My grandmother is going to be shut next to him.

navel-gazing; disorder.

I have an hour & twenty minutes left at work & I can barely keep my eyes open. Slow day, but my internal monologue was racing with revelations this morning:

order // disorder

good detachment // bad detachment

…

Lately it has dawned on me that I could never understand the extent to which I do not experience my feelings because I still see myself as what my detachment was (is) a reaction to: being an (over)sensitive child,

do you want me to give you something to cry about–

every time I felt, my whole childhood. Never asked questions about my family because that curiosity was looked down upon.

Now I perpetuate that silence & I can never tell whether I’m interested enough to break it…

My dad’s family is not really in my life. Nor have they been. I can look at what I know about my father & use that plenty to explain parts of myself, parts of my life.

…consciously trying to be tough because emotion was looked down upon. Was weak. Was my mother, who as a child I saw was powerless (until she decided she wasn’t).

***

The rub: the belief that I am somehow perfectable, that anyone is. That success is having fans, having a life I can pin as “better” or more meaningful than someone else’s…

The worst: the realization that while I can usually look at the freedom I’m condemned to & be excited about the creative possibilities I  have (while acknowledging much of this comes as a result of my racial & economic privilege, or trying to acknowledge this) & how much time I have to dwell, the truth is that no matter how much I love what I have, I will probably fuck up again. I will probably get depressed, lose my spark… things change. This is where good detachment comes in. It’s so hard not to become attached to philosophies or good feelings– the philosophies that support good feelings, love for one’s life…

***

I still feel like I have never learned to interact with others. I am afraid of people I don’t know, but I don’t identify it as anxiety. Sometimes I wonder if compassion & interaction are learned skills. & empathy. I feel much more naturally empathetic when I meditate– otherwise, I feel much more like I did when I was a kid, that my feelings must be alien because I could never gauge how others might react or feel.

***

Gah, maybe all of this is intrepid navel-gazing. I preferred when I allowed myself to be tongue & cheek about that. I hate that when I open my mouth these days all I can hear myself do is complain or brag & I want to shove a dinner roll in there & never dislodge it.

Why are we also so eager to believe the worst things about ourselves?

***

I’ve had a million & a half thoughts I wish I could record. All of them familiar. & I didn’t even get to the interesting part where I cite an article in The New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell that talks about the “predator” personality type & I related to it more than I wanted to.

I want to be a compassionate person & I want to learn to interact with others & be myself  & be fabulous & interesting…

I want to feel what I’m feeling but still remain the healthy kind of detached. So when an upsetting person walks into a room I don’t feel upset. Accept situations as they are like I accept emergencies. Accept things intellectually. Move on.

***

An hour left. Should write about something substantial, like my thoughts on Penny Arcade, but I can barely articulate the cliche & familiar right now

Wondering about: my love for order, but my order, not the prevailing order. For using words to tie up situations, make them neat. I crave words to do this work.

I may delete this entry. It’s all over the place & really I just want to cuddle or sleep or be able to digest food. I want to reach out in ways that I can’t right now because I’m tired of feeling vulnerable.

Oh how I slip in & out of self-awareness. Maybe I do need simple meditation, 20 minutes a day, silence.

What am I going to do for this hour?