The New York Times local online section for Fort Greene/Clinton Hill has a feature called Local Locals, in which Myryah Irby stops people on the street and asks them a few questions. Her husband takes a photo. The questions are superb. She jumps from “why are you raising money for cancer at a sidewalk sale” to “how many times have you been in love” and people go with it, they answer her. And she rolls into another question. I couldn’t stop reading these. (more…)
There it is. Infinite Jest by DFW. I’ve tried and failed at reading it more than once. Probably, you have to. So join the online reading group Infinite Summer, and we’ll power through it together, footnote by footnote. One of the guides includes a very funny Matthew Baldwin, of Defective Yeti. Join me!
This poem appeared in the New Yorker’s May 18th, 2009 issue. I can’t stop reading it and I’m going to be a little bad and put the entire thing here, apologies to Dean Young. Buy his books.
Read it aloud.
Delphiniums in a Window Box
Every sunrise, even strangers’ eyes.
Not necessarily swans, even crows,
even the evening fusillade of bats.
That place where the creek goes underground,
how many weeks before I see you again?
Stacks of books, every page, characters’
rages and poets’ strange contraptions
of syntax and song, every song
even when there isn’t one.
Every thistle, splinter, butterfly
over the drainage ditches. Every stray.
Did you see the meteor shower?
Did it feel like something swallowed?
Every question, conversation
even with almost nothing, cricket, cloud,
because of you I’m talking to crickets, clouds,
confiding in a cat. Everyone says,
Come to your senses, and I do, of you.
Every touch electric, every taste you,
every smell, even burning sugar, every
cry and laugh. Toothpicked samples
at the farmers’ market, every melon,
plum, I come undone, undone.
*sigh* Oh how I want to go to Iowa for a MFA in poetry. The month I spent there studying with James Galvin was catatonically beautiful.
More adventures in Gchat:
me: hmmm. I just googled “intellectual ADD” and got no results, “creative ADD” had a few
Michael: What do you mean?
me: well, I have this issue, where whenever I start thinking about something, my mind maps out all the other obscure things that are associated with it.
Like, if I think, watermelon, then I also start to wonder if those square watermelons are real, and then also that there was this book I wanted to read called Watermelon Sugar, and then also that you can fill one with alcohol and place it in the sun.
So, I really just wanted to think about watermelon, but there’s about 5 other tangents that are worth pursuing.
So, how do I do that in writing?
Emily Dickinson used to do this cool thing on her manuscripts where when she wasn’t sure of a word she would put a + above it, then stack all the alternative words above that or, if there were too many, make a footnote of them. (more…)
Take a gander at my portfolio.
