C'mon, what good's a swimsuit calendar without a redhead?

I don't really know where my garden-gnome fixation comes from. Maybe because my pediatrician had one of those old Gnomes books in his office, which may have been the first place I ever saw pictures of naked people (well, in this case, gnomes, I guess). But for whatever reason they pop up in my writing on numerous occasions. I consider lawn ornamentation in general to be a worthy subject, so alternately this could simply be an anglophilic manifestation of a general interest in vernacular public art...

Apparently I am not the only one, either.

Et Tu, Alibris?

Just got an email from Alibris stating that they had plenty of copies of Harry Potter and the Well-paid Ghostwriter or whatever it is available. Just in case I missed the display NEXT TO THE SPAGHETTI SAUCE AT THE FUCKING SUPERMARKET.

Though I have to say, upon seeing a townie-ish looking woman sitting on a lawnchair in front of her apartment reading the text out loud to her young child, my general reaction skewed slightly from bilious to indifferent. I suppose if it is getting people who ordinarily wouldn't to pick up a flesh-and-blood book, it can't be all bad. Though to my mind it just seems like a bowdlerization of any number of classics (C.S. Lewis's Narnia, Lloyd Alexander, Ursula LeGuin) with a shot of John Hughes Botox. I'm most likely not qualified to state this, however, having seen only about 45 minutes of one of the films, and never having read a word of Rowling's prose...

Somebody, quick! Rehnquist is in need of the BLOOD OF THE LIVING!

Maya Deren said the project of mythology was that it illustrated "the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter."


I think this is also an apt analogy for poetry. Articulating that world of one's own sentience that nobody else will ever truly be able to inhabit.

Thus in speaking of one's own work there is only the phrase: "Does the noise in my head bother you?"

Received and read Maureen Thorson's UDP book, Novelty Act this weekend and I give it 4 thumbs up. Reading the book inspired the following poem by way of praise. (Unrelatedly, the phrase "black arts" is stolen from Aaron Tieger.)

FAMILY TREE
-After Maureen Thorson's Novelty Act

That moon is goddamn green &
the cheerleader's dreams are all sinister:

black arts, brown heart & red
boots. All the rockets hung low
from her bower.

An eyeless boy comes to serenade,
his lungs are full of years--

that's how you were born.

Little weevils in a maze of salt:
the statuettes are tired of the yard.

Solemn, the bad gnomes abandon
the Scrabble bush--the letters click
on the hard, dry ground. O our sorrow is made
all of vowels:

little brother fell down a molehole,
he sends back cash & posters
for strange films about heaven.

Down by the sea, a shelf
of tight-lipped oysters where monsters
have hidden tiny, luminous pearls.

So, NYC folks, I will be living in Astoria, Queens as of August 27. Come and visit then and help me uncurl from the foetal position...

Aaron Tieger and I once decided to start a literary movement called the Venomous Dogs. (There is a long story behind the title). I don't remember coming up with any particular tenets for the movement. I suppose whatever tenets Aaron had would have become the editorial slant of Carve Magazine. Though given this was about 10 years ago, I suspect many of our perceptions of poetry have changed. I myself have written a statement of poetics once and only once (unrelated to the Venomous Dogs). Personally, I'd be suspicious of any movement that would have me... I suppose that makes me a pretty much garden-variety postmodernist. But I am willing to substitute for any movement that doesn't make me pay dues... Alternately you can think of me as some sort of literary mercenary. Call me "The Fixer."

Check out some beautiful photographs from Poland.

Get well soon, Eileen!