Degenerate

when our ruddied hands get all wishy-watery
our fingernails spill out
the silver scum of lottery.
our wallets gape
like hungering starlings
ah, but let us lose some more my darling

and let’s love like tin men
til the coils become flaccid
til our bodies corrode in atmosphere acid—
let’s love like a black and white classic—
but ah, ah
to take part in this generation

to not end poems with punctuation

Providence

Spent the last couple days in Providence revisiting old haunts. On Monday, I chatted with an old co-worker about things I hadn't done in Providence yet, and she mentioned the Athenaeum. I'd never been there, only knew that it somehow had ties to HP Lovecraft and Poe and what not, but it always seemed so imposing. But wow, am I glad I stopped by. I wandered around and somehow ended up in a giant comfy chair with a copy of Sarah Ruhl's collected plays, Clean House. Her name has always popped up since she studied with Paual Vogel at Brown and was friends with Mac Wellman, both MacDowell fellows, and I'd been looking forward to seeing her stuff some day.

I only had a chance to get through the title play before I had to hit the road, but I dunno, maybe it was a combination of the hushed voices and the antiquities on display, but when I finished the piece, I felt like I'd read something classic. Exhausted and satisfied at the same time. Something about the uniqueness of playwriting...how it doesn't really translate to other mediums, the wonderfully stilted rhythm of the dialogue, the fantasy elements which would be ridiculous in any other context, but with playwriting, it's so easy to just accept it as is... a beautiful play and I can't wait to see a production of it some time. And I'm def not some theater buff.

So yeah, though I definitely didn't plan it this way, I guess spent the past couple weeks reading works by three different contemporary female writers in three different disciplines in three different cities. Strange how it turned out that way...

Editing the Currently Reading box in sidebar

EDIT: I changed the permissions so you all can actually do this now if you want.

Thought it would be amusing if people posted what they were reading every once in a while. I made a little sidebar (there, on the right under Links) called Currently Reading. Feel free to go in there and add yourself and link to whatever you want, be it your Facebook visual bookshelf, your LibraryThing books, your Listal favorites, or your Shelfari collection.

To edit the box, you can click this link, or after you've logged into Blogger, click on the manage Layout link. Then click edit next to the box that says Currently Reading and type in your info. If it looks like a lot of indecipherable code, make sure to click the Rich Text link in the toolbar. Also add to the links and any other parts of the page. Fiddle around. You can't really break anything.

Another City, Another Rec, More Awesomeness

I usually hate buying new books, but while here in Montreal I ended up in a bookstore, and found myself in the poetry section, browsing through some recommendations Celeste had made. I picked up Dorianne Laux's collection Facts About the Moon, and after I read through half of the first poem in there, "The Life of Trees," I knew I had to buy it. Generally I'm totally against impulse buys, but I think this one was worth it. Really accessible poems with strong narrators and actually funny moments, not just, oh, that's clever, hmm, let me sip my brandy to toast to your intellectual wordplay, but chuckle-in-bed and if you happen to be drinking chocolate milk while reading there, perhaps unexpected laundry the next day. Not that it's not sophisticated and refined and all that shit that good poetry has to be. Right. Oh well, not that I would know since I never read poetry. So you can take everything I just said with that proverbial smallest grain of salt thing.

Proper inhalation

In DC, was killing time while waiting for a friend at Borders and ended up reading the Aimee Bender collection Willful Creatures. Gawd, there are some pretty words in there. The pieces are generally a lot less frenetic than the Lemonade one that Sam shared, but just as honest and great and magical and super... Whatever, just try and get ahold of it. There were multiple times where I just closed it and had to take a couple deep breaths before I could start again. Thanks for the rec Sam. Ok, off to look at art things.

Response from author

Thanks for writing, Sam -- and for the kind words. Sure, I remember you from the audience -- thanks for throwing that question my way. Sorry about the delay in responding, but I've been on the road and email contact has been erratic at best these past few weeks.

I checked out the blog and have added it to my list of literary favorites; I'll check back in now and then to see what you guys are up to. Good that you have such a close group of writer buddies. Inspiration and doggedness come easier when you're surrounded by encouraging people.

Hope this finds you well. Thanks again for listening, for reading.

Keep hammering.

Ben