I’m Watching “Lost” Six Years After You, Part I.

I waited this long just to be sure there was no possibility of my spoiling anything for you.

Today’s “Lost” Line

Charlie: “You’re killing Drive Shaft.”

Liam: “I am Drive Shaft!”

(This post brought to you by Hetty Wainthrop Investigates, black nailpolish, & Drive Shaft.)

A Tech Review or, Look What I Can Do.

Because I just learned how to take screenshots, here are some things I like about Google Chrome.

Active Verbs

Strategic Fostering of International Relations

Spy vs. Spy

Shuffle & swing.

To make up for the seriousness of the last post, this one is brought to you by 7-chords, 9-chords, & the women from Virginia who use them.  In order of swing-influenced from greatest to least, because I was bored & have spent the morning drooling over hollow-body electrics.

Know of others?  Let me know, post-haste, so I can shamelessly rip them off.

Things About Which I Have (Almost) No Authority to Speak, Part III.

The Poetry Foundation’s blog Harriet caught my attention today because of the misleading title of Craig Santos Perez’s most recent post, “Gender & Poetry (Part 1): Why Don’t More Women Do Blog-Oriented Writing?” While I should probably wait patiently for Part 2, I can’t because I’m a woman & I don’t like waiting.  Or voting, or things that are icky.  So I’ll just respond to it now & apologize later through tears & wads of shredded tissue.

After a tragic missed opportunity to make me laugh with his parody of Dream Song #14  (& I have laughed at many a Berryman parody, my favorite being one about Mexican food: “Enchiladas bore me, / tamales bores me, especially great tamales…”), Perez cites Jessica Smith as one of his “favorite unboring woman bloggers,” & links to a post she unboringly posted about poetry & gender.

Perez pulls the unboringest chunks from her unboring post & uses them, to his credit, to start a conversation rather than come to any huge conclusions, aside from the one that’s implicit in the title of the post, which is that the blogosphere is a sausage-fest, & that this somehow relates to poetry.  (As a boring woman blogger, I’ve always wanted to use the words “sausage-fest” but haven’t for obvious reasons [cultural oppression].)

Even though this post has on its designer heels the post announcing this year’s National Book Critics Circle Award finalists, four out of the five of whom are women, it still seems as if the role of gender in poetry is being discussed against a backdrop of the cultural/intellectual oppression of women, & our resulting reticence when it comes to our writing & our careers.  Smith points out that “most of the great poets writing today are women,” & tries to explain that greatness by suggesting that because of this intellectual oppression, the female experience may be somehow more novel & compelling than that of men.  She uses all this as an opportunity to call upon women to write proud (&, more self-servingly, submit to her all-female magazine Foursquare [not to be confused with the next ridiculous wave of 140-character navel-gazing]).

I’m not sure I want to touch her argument about the female experience as unique or uniquely wedded to good writing, mostly because—as she points out, though rather dismissively—it’s made super complicated by class, ethnicity, etc., & I think that any discussion that throws around the words “oppression” and “anonymity” is owed a deeper treatment of those issues too.  (Even if they’re Boring!)

What I do find a little grating is this: “This is all to say to the self-effacing women: you may not be the best poet who ever lived, but demographically, the odds are in your favor that you have something to say, so please speak up.”  Maybe it’s pedantic & stupid to even say it (or maybe it’s the monolith of male-dominated intellectual culture that’s making me think I oughtn’t), but the four female National Book Critics Circle Award finalists weren’t recognized for being women and writing poems.  Lots of people have something to say; I’d be willing to bet that everyone does.  Whether or not a person can say what he or she has to say well probably depends upon discipline, education & opportunity (& that’s where class becomes problematic), & probably also luck.  & from the looks of it, plenty of women are putting themselves out there.  I guess I’m just more than a little hesitant to draw large conclusions about the effects of a male-dominated society from a small pile of submissions to an all-female journal.

Of course, I have absolutely no idea what it takes to say things well.  I just say things.  I am also absolutely not the kind of person who wants Susan Howe’s Singularities on my nightstand, so maybe I’m not the deep reader for whom this post was meant.

But if it helps, the slush I read is full of poems by women, many of them writing about womanly things.  Because if there’s one thing we ladies are good at, it’s submission.

Pictures, Links, a Picture of a Lynx.

Funny

Funny & A Little Like My Life

This.

Funny & More Intense Than My Life

This.

In My Life & Intense but Not Funny at All

As Promised

Posterity.

Here is a picture of a poetry journal.

In it, my first published poem, a filthy little villanelle about doing it.

I received my first-ever contributors’ copies in the mail today.  You will not be receiving them.  You cannot find my poem on the internet.  You’re welcome.

Pop Quiz: Shot out of A Canon.

T.S. Eliot or Star Wars?

1.   “For us, there is only the trying.  The rest is not our business.”

2.   “The more you tighten your grip…the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

3.   “We seem to be made to suffer.  It’s our lot in life.”

4.   “Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism.”

5.   “Fear death by water.”

6.   “Without precise calculations, we could fly right through a star.”

7.   “Do I dare disturb the universe?”

8.   “…until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.”

9.   “If you strike me down, I’ll become more powerful than you could ever imagine.”

10.   “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

11.   “Hurry up please, it’s time.”

12.   “Into the garbage chute, flyboy.”

(George Lucas: 2, 3, 6, 9, 12.  T.S. Eliot: 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11.)

Open Mic with Stalin.

Topical as ointment, this is.  But well done.

Things I Learned Today at the Gym.

1.  My iPod sometimes says it’s at half battery power when it’s actually at no battery power.

2.  The elliptical machine has no radio stations, only TV stations, & only seven of those.

3.  Ellen Degeneres makes reference jokes about minstrel shows.

4.  Matthew Broderick makes reference jokes (?) about menstrual shows.

5.  Mr. Broderick either thinks New Orleans is a state, or that all cities in Louisiana are New Orleans.

6.  Ms. Degeneres does a game on her show where she tries to get her guest to guess a mystery word.  I did not know this because I do not watch this show.  Instead, I suddenly thought I was watching a mumblecore film for the 50+ demographic, or Mr. Broderick’s impromptu impression of Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man.”

Post in Which I Make Three Poems Relevant to My Domestic Situation.

from “Song of [Mice]elf,” by Walt Whitman

My [mouse] has [my refrigerator], and round him obediently wheels,
He joins with his partners a group of superior [mice],
And greater sets follow, making [more mice] of the greatest inside [my refrigerator].

from “[Poverty],” by Marianne Moore

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are [nutritious] beyond all this fiddle [Faddle™].

“Ah! [Spaceheater]” by William Blake

Ah! [Spaceheater], weary of time,
Who countest [degrees] of the [heat];
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the [grad student's sleep will be sweet];

Where the [feet shed their socks by your fire],
And the [fingers feel nothing like] snow,
Arise from their [freeze], and [perspire]
Where my [Spaceheater] wishes to go!