Poetry & Music Mash Up: Oracle - Cate Marvin + Sylvia Plath - Ryan Adams

sylvia plath

Sylvia Plath

+

Oracle

Dead girls don't go the dying route to get known.
You’ll find us anonymous still, splayed in Buicks,
carried swaying like calves, our dead hefts swung
from ankles, wrists, hooked by hands and handed
over to strangers slippery as blackout. Slammed
down, the mud on our dress is black as her dress,
worn out as a throw-rug beneath feet that stomp
out the most intricate weave. It ought not sadden
us, but sober us. Sylvia Plath killed herself. She ate
her sin. Her eye got stuck on a diamond stickpin.
You take Blake over breakfast, only to be bucked
out your skull by a cat-call crossing a parking lot.
Consuming her while reviling her, conditioned to
hate her for her appetite alone: her problem was
she thought too much? Needling an emblem’s ink
onto your wrist, the surest defense a rose to reason
against that bluest vein's insistent wish. Let’s all
us today finger-sweep our cheek-bones with two
blood-marks and ride that terrible train homeward
while looking back at our blackened eyes inside
tiny mirrors fixed inside our plastic compacts. We
could not have known where she began given how
we were, from the start, made to begin where she
ends. In this way, she's no way to make her amends.

RIP: Ellie

 Ellie 

Ellie & Harley

Ellie's collar

 

It is a three dog life. Ellie had enough spirit, I thought she'd live more than one lifetime. She is/was the dog of my adulthood and the dog of my daughter's youth.

 

She died today. She was eighteen. In dog years she was eighty-eight.

 

Like the majority of our pets, she was a rescue dog.We found her at the local animal control shelter.

 

When my daughter was very young we would go to the pound on weekends to pet the dogs and cats. We had Sheena, a pure bred Persian cat that had been a grand champion in the 80's, but had been given to us because she had contracted feline leukemia, and although in remission, she was a danger to the other cats in the cattery.

I was recently divorced and thought a dog would restore some normalcy to our family. I was interested in a small dog, but small dogs don't generally like small children. I finally decided a medium-sized dog would be best. I wasn't interested in a farm dog, but when Ellie jumped up and wrapped her paws around my daughter's neck, she begged Mommy please! ,we brought her home.

 

Although Ellie was affectionate and even tempered, it was apparent she had been abused. She had a nic in her ear, was skittish around men and trucks, loud noises, and the broom, and the ironing board. It took her a very long time to get used to my husband, and men in general. She never got used to the ironing board.

 

She was a blue healer border collie mix, a hardy breed that is loyal, physically tough, and a sheepdog herder by instinct. When my daughter was a toddler, Ellie herded her around the back yard. Up until recently, she always nosed the back of my legs as she followed me from room to room.

 

She loved to dig. Nothing could break her of digging in the yard, or the flower beds. And she loved to run, at break neck speeds. She wore a groove around the house. Certain sounds, like the washer would send her racing around the house.

 

When we brought Harley home, Ellie indulged his yipping and snapping and accepted him, although she would get jealous, and bark or hold his favorite toy under her paw, if he was getting too annoying or too much attention. 

 

Christmas day she was disoriented, and in the following days of this week, she slowly faltered.

 

She loved us. We loved her. She will be missed

Letters: Thomas Cromwell to Henry VIII

the new yorker 19 october 2009

On this day, 28 July 1540, Henry VIII had his chief advisor executed for trumped up charges of treason and heresy. The real reason for his fall from grace was more of the office politics variety; Norfolk hated Cromwell, mainly because Cromwell was the most powerful and able man at court and he wasn't a noble, just the son of a lowly blacksmith. The King lamented his rash decision. He never found a man as capable to serve him.

I just finished Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall early this morning, so a letter from Tom to Harry seems fitting.


Dear Henry,


Did I not tell you that you would miss me when I was gone?


Sincerely,
Thomas Cromwell


P. S. Wolsey asked that I relate the following unto you: Sit on a spit thou cockered and doghearted codpiece giglet.

The Day in Cartoons: Donna Summer - Mike Luckovich

Donna Summer  Mike Luckovich, AJC Opinion

.

Although she is best known as the Queen of Disco, Donna Summer was much more than that.

She died yesterday from lung cancer, a disease she believed she contracted from breathing the post 9/11 particle-filled air. She was 63.

Interesting Reading:

L. A. Times - Donna Summer ruled majestically, if uneasily
Washington Post - Donna Summer, queen of disco, dies at 63; fans remember her hit songs
New York Times - Memories of Donna's disco nights
The Telegraph - 'Queen of Disco' Donna Summer 'thought she became ill after inhaling 9/11 particles'
Rolling Stone - Dim All the Lights for Donna Summer
--- Rihanna, Mary J. Blige, Flea and More Remember Donna Summer



The Day in Cartoons: Maurice Sendak dies - Dave Granlund

davegranlund.com

Let the wild rumpus start is taped to the inner door of my office. Where the Wild Things Are was my favorite book to read to my daughter.  If you haven't seen this moving film adaptation of the children's book yet, rent it.

Maurice Sendak created a world in which even when you were a wild thing and had to be sent to your room without supper, there was still hot soup waiting for you.

Interesting reading:
The New York Times - Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies at 83
NPR - Maurice Sendak, 'Where Wild Things Are' Author, Dies
PBS - Maurice Sendak: "Where the Wild Things Are"
Huffington Post - Maurice Sendak Dead: Stephen Colbert Remembers Author On 'Live With Kelly'
The Guardian - Maurice Sendak obituary

Rest in Peace: Carol Novack

Oh, this lovely, irascible, hilarious, infuriating, marvelous woman will be missed! I just learned that she left us just this past Friday. When she'd call, it was an hour long expletive-laced conversation, at the very minimum. They were filled with raucous laughter, minor, sometimes more than minor disagreements, but we always parted friends. I remember a moment of shocked silence after I casually mentioned my paternal grandmother's surname, Hertzog, and she accused, "you're German!" She emailed that it had been a long time. It had. We emailed a few times. She'd left New York City for Ashville. She had just published her memoir. We hadn't spoken in real time for at least two years. I had no idea she was ill.

It's true you don't know what you had until it's gone.

Until I can find the words:

I am not who I think I am or is I whom?
Author's Bio
Carol Novack is the former recipient of a writer’s award from the Australian government, the author of a poetry chapbook, an erstwhile criminal defense and constitutional lawyer in NYC, and the publisher of Mad Hatters’ Review. Fictions and poems may be found in numerous journals, including American Letters & Commentary, Caketrain, Drunken Boat, Exquisite Corpse, Fiction International, First Intensity, Gargoyle, Journal of Experimental Literature, LIT, and Notre Dame Review, and in many anthologies, including “The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets,” “Diagram III,” and “The &Now Awards: the Best Innovative Writing.” Writings in translations may or will be found in French, Italian, Polish and Romanian journals.
I would say that I'm an outside of the box writer, if I could recall where I put the box. I write and have led workshops in poetic/musical, genre-blending (hermaphroditic) "fictions." Samples of my work, along with reviews, may be found on http://www.amazon.com/Giraffes-Hiding-Mythical-Memoirs-Novack/dp/1933132833/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top; http://booktour.com/author/31642; & http://carolnovack.blogspot.com (links to writings, reviews & interviews).

Publications and Prizes
Books:
Giraffes in Hiding: The Mythical Memoirs of Carol Novack (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2010), Living Alone Without a Dictionary (Makar Press, 1974)

Anthologies:
New Cross Musings on a Manic Reality (Dog Horn Publishing, 2011), Heide Hatry: Heads and Tales (Charta Books, 2009), The &NOW Awards (&NOW Books -- Lake Forest College Press, 2009), Diagram III (Del Sol Press, 2008), The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets (Penguin, 1986), The Tabloid Story Pocket Book (Wild & Woolley, 1978), Mother I'm Rooted (Outback Press, 1975)

Journals:
5_trope, Action Yes, American Letters & Commentary, Anemone Sidecar, Apostrophe, Big Bridge, Caketrain, Cellar Door Magazine, Diagram, Drunken Boat, Elimae, Exquisite Corpse, Fiction International, Gargoyle, Journal of Experimental Fiction, knock, La Petite Zine, Lamination Colony, Laura Hird Showcase, LIT, LITnIMAGE, Mad Hatters Review, Metazen, Milk, Mindfire Renewed, Mississippi Review, Muse Apprentice Guild, Necessary Fiction, Newtopia, Notre Dame Review, Opium Magazine, Otoliths, Pindeldyboz, Retort Magazine, Salt Flats Annual, Salt River Review, Scythe, Scythe Literary Journal, Segue, Sein und Werden, SmokeLong Quarterly, Susurrus, Tears in the Fence, The Angler, The Beat, The Del Sol Review, The Jivin' Ladybug, Underground Voices, Unlikely Stories, Unpleasant Event Schedule, Void Magazine, Wheelhouse, Wild Strawberries, Word Riot, Yankee Pot Roast
Prizes:Creative Writers' Grant from the Arts Council of the Australian Government
Personal FavoritesFavorite Authors:Beckett, D. Barthelme, DiLillo, Stein, Rilke, Kafka, many others, including friends of mine.

Rest in Peace: Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton

sorrows
Lucile Clifton

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking

their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching

as i whispered into my own
cupped hands enough not me again

but who can distinguish
one human voice

amid such choruses
of desire

Poet Lucille Clifton died February 13, 2010. She was 73.

This is the first I've read this poem. It is true that each of us falls in love with our own sorrow, that we hold sorrow like precious relics within the reliquaries of our bodies, make pilgrimages and offerings.

If you'd like to read more of Clifton's poems and biographical information, or lose yourself for an hour or two in the site's archives, search Poetry Foundation.

Mark Christensen November 15, 2009

"...The threshold we cross with closed eyes-
Where angels hide behind their backs
The saws with which they mean
To saw the present from the past,

Oblivious to the scarlet threads
That prove to be hiddenn among
The filaments, those red rivers
Running through the theme of time..."
from Angels Grieving over the Dead Christ -Gjertrude Schnackenberg

Mark Christensen, our friend, died this morning of complications from a stroke.

My husband and Mark were friends from their early, wild man years. They grew up together, were in and out of trouble together, were together during hale times, and saw each other through hard times.

Mark and I became friends when my husband and I met close to fifteen years ago. One of my favorite memories is of Mark and my husband sitting in my living room politely drinking Thai coffee from demitasse china cups and eating petite chocolate-covered cookies. I wish I had taken a picture. I didn't know either of them very well then, and I certainly didn't know they drank thier coffee black, or that they generally drank an entire pot of Folgers or gas stop variety coffee every morning.

A few weeks before his stroke, Mark came over for early morning coffee in my husband's man cave. I walked out to say hello and he greeted me with his usual kiss and hug. It's true that life changes on a dime. It's so strange and sad that he's gone.