bripike@gmail.com
We arrived back in Indy yesterday around 5:30. The drive was uneventful weather wise, which is usually the only big news this time of year. We rang in the New Year last night at a local bar with some friends and today we’re hitting the road again for the final leg of our holiday marathon. Around noon we’re heading to Murray, KY where I’ll defend my thesis tomorrow at 1:00. I’m hoping all goes well.
Updates to follow.
Nothing to hear in that hollow. Not boats,
not the cadence of boats and their oars.
Not wood and water and the ferry
to island in a storm, not rain. Not
the repetition of rain and the often loved
sound of trees. Or the sea.
Or the open mouth receiving. Not the lean
of the grief-struck against an oxcart or the low
of the dog caught in that rain. Again
the sound of the heart in the throat, and the too soon
lapse of breath. Again the beat of the foot
against the floor—the speech of the bed-creak
or the priest. Not to hear a cloak or some ghost.
Not moon. Not door. Not the entered shoes of a beautiful
stranger and her door, her moon.
I can’t imagine living without poetry. And I’m not saying this to put non-poets down, because I think everyone has a poet inside them somewhere. It’s not about vocabulary or good handwriting or saying lofty things; poetry is merely honesty, and everyone has the potential for that.
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Sometimes it can’t be avoided
even though you might decline
the invitation to step outside—
sometimes you are outside
maybe in the repose of your garden
among rose petal and fern, but the whole
unvarnished spectacle of do
before you’re done unto unfolding
as spider devours beetle, beetle, aphid,
and the cat red in the tooth and claw.
No need to bring up bombs bursting
in synch or the rockets’ red glare
or every laser fescue pointing out
all that’s erasable, good-bye good-bye.
It’s among school children now,
maybe even in your neighbor’s house,
eating ravenously at his table,
agreeing with everything he says.
Inside, your daughter is locking
all the basement windows, your son
is drawing a truth machine to zap
the bad from the good, and when
your wife comes home to tell you
of a small injustice she’s endured,
the arrow of your steely retribution
thwunks into a soft, imagined heart.
No one immune here, no one
merely a small flash in the pan:
everything hugely combustible.
In the garden, you’re deadheading
lilies, the petals spiraling down
like crushed wings, and your fingers,
steeped in pulp, are turning yellow,
orange, incarnadine, damage
creating its own aesthetic,
painting itself on your skin.
And if anyone asked you now
you’d confess you’re damage, too,
you’re for wreckage of heart and bone
wrenching out the smallest penance.
Above you, purple bruising the edges
of the sky. Even the heavens.
In another moment, someone
might come looking for you,
touch you on the shoulder
and you’d flame up.
Nothing seems so improbable
as the world of a few minutes ago.
Here’s the night full of stars.
Behind each one, the darkness
you can never see.
Gregory Djanikian
The Southern Review
Autumn 2008
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We arrived in Pittsburgh yesterday afternoon and the entire drive was plagued by torrential rains. This is very odd for this time of year, but it’s better than what we drove home in last Monday.
Christmas at the Pike house was excellent as always. I finally got my new “bike” aka. camera and I’m going to post some pictures here. I love it. The pictures are so clear.
We’re going to be here in Pittsburgh till the 31st and then we’re heading back to Indy.
We made it home to Erie on Monday, but the weather (once we hit Cleveland) was awful. Lake effect snow came in full force and when it came time to get off the exit for Fairview, we could barely see the road. Here are some photos from the last hour of our drive.
The following are pictures from Monday night/Tuesday morning at my parents house. Winter Wonderland indeed.
Yesterday R and I did nothing. We decided we don’t really like doing nothing. All day we kept looking at each other and saying, “Don’t we have something to do?” We made dinner, went and looked at lights, and then went out with some friends for a little bit. A day like this on the weekend is rare.
Today, we’re making lists and checking them twice…ok, I’m done. We’re doing laundry, packing the car, and getting ready to head back to PA for the holidays.
These are some highlights from our Christmas Light tour (Part I) last night:
I am done with grading. I went in this morning to finish a couple of things and now I can get ready to head east for the holidays. Our Christmas/New Years is going to be a hectic one, but I’m looking forward to it. We’re heading to Erie the 22nd through the 26th. The 26th we’re heading to Pittsburgh and we’re leaving their the 31st to come back to Indy. The 1st we’re heading down to Murray for my defense, which is on the 2nd. Phew. Luckily, I don’t have to be back at school till Jan 6th.
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A Yale University professor whose poetry is published by St. Paul’s Graywolf Press has been chosen to write and read an original poem at the Jan. 20 inauguration of Barack Obama. Elizabeth Alexander has published four collections of poetry, and her book “American Sublime” was a 2005 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2004, Alexander was a poetry mentor with the Loft.
Blues
I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world. I sleep during
the day when I want to, 'til
my face is creased and swollen,
'til my lips are dry and hot. I
eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch, butter and sour cream
on my baked potato, foods that
slothful people eat, that turn
yellow and opaque beneath the skin.
Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown, the one
with the lace trim listing because
I have not mended it. Many days
I do not exercise, only
consider it, then rub my curdy
belly and lie down. Even
my poems are lazy. I use
syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go
for pages. And yesterday,
for example, I did not work at all!
I got in my car and I drove
to factory outlet stores, purchased
stockings and panties and socks
with my father's money.
To think, in childhood I missed only
one day of school per year. I went
to ballet class four days a week
at four-forty-five and on
Saturdays, beginning always
with plie, ending with curtsy.
To think, I knew only industry,
the industry of my race
and of immigrants, the radio
tuned always to the station
that said, Line up your summer
job months in advance. Work hard
and do not shame your family,
who worked hard to give you what you have.
There is no sin but sloth. Burn
to a wick and keep moving.
I avoided sleep for years,
up at night replaying
evening news stories about
nearby jailbreaks, fat people
who ate fried chicken and woke up
dead. In sleep I am looking
for poems in the shape of open
V's of birds flying in formation,
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.
Elizabeth Alexander
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We got some snow last night and then we got some freezing rain. This made for a lovely, hard mixture that greeted me as I walked out to my car this morning. After almost falling three times (yes, I know I’m a klutz but it was slippery!) I managed to get my car started, locate my snow scraper, and start hacking away at the ice. Twenty minutes later I was just getting into my car and heading to work. This is where the allure of winter starts to dim…
In other news, after crunching numbers, adding up student loans, and crunching more numbers, RJ and I have decided to wait a year before purchasing a home. I would advise anyone who has significant school debt to not add up all you loans unless you want to seriously ruin your day. Mine was ruined, to the point of tears ruined, but I bounced back when I realized that we could make a significant dent in all our other debt and be in a better financial position in a year and then look into buying a home.
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I subscribed to Poetry about a month and half ago, only to learn that my subscription does not start until January 2009. This irritates mostly because one of my mentors from MSU, Nicky Beer, is featured in the magazine. I plan to go buy it at the newsstand, but it would have been nice to receive it at home. Anyway. Both of the poems featured, Prairie Octopus and Ad Hominem, Nicky read to our poetry workshop this summer.
Source: Poetry (December 2008).
Source: Poetry (December 2008).
Your poem for the week (courtesy of The New Yorker. Yes, I’m still catching up):
Terza Rima
In this great form, as Dante proved in Hell,
There is no dreadful thing that can’t be said
In passing. Here, for instance, one could tell
How our jeep skidded sideways toward the dead
Enemy soldier with the staring eyes,
Bumping a little as it struck his head,
And then flew on, as if toward Paradise.
Richard Wilbur
Note about the form:
Terza rima is a rhyming verse stanza form that consists of an interlocking three line rhyme scheme. It was first used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, d-e-d. There is no limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet. The two possible endings for the example above are d-e-d, e or d-e-d, e-e. There is no set rhythm for terza rima, but in English, iambic pentameters are generally preferred.
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This is too perfect considering R has been a part of both an ugly sweater party and a mustache party…
“Hey man, nice sweater. It’s so ugly.”
“Yeah, when my family first got to this country we had to shop at Goodwill, this is the first one my father bought to get him through his first winter here. Good thing they didn’t have these parties back then, right? He would have died.”
“Geez, man, I’m sorry, you can cut in line for egg nog.”
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Brianna Pike 