Monday, May 23, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Forever
I spoke about the friend who died, the one I thought was a lifetime friend. I remember thinking "forever!" when I asked him in the hallway, "Do you ever feel like you just don't fit in?" and he answered without hesitation, "Yes." We were 39, teetering on the cliff of 40 together, holding hands and hoping the fall wasn't as steep as it seemed. I forgot that some forevers are really short, shorter than a season. He didn't get to fall into 40 with me after all.
His classroom was a safe place to share yourself, your thoughts, your ideas. Kids knew he wasn't a phony. He listened. He threw his arms out wide and laughed. He challenged. There were rules. He took no shit, and rearranged the room if there were any jokers. He was respected.
I spoke about what an honor it was to have known him, and how I wouldn't have met him if it weren't for my work in the schools. I was there for his parents, not myself, not really for any award. Oh, it felt right, but damn it, I still miss him.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Distinction
I've won the "Teaching Artist of the Year" award for our region's Arts-In-Education program. Today I receive the honor, and I get to read two poems during the luncheon. The award is lovely, but it's the opportunity to do the work before it that matters the most to me. I have many incredible memories from teaching poetry, I've written poems I never would have written otherwise, I've met some wonderful people, I've encouraged others.
While digging around for appropriate poems to read today, I ran across some fragmented notes. I don't remember writing them, or where I was heading with them (if anywhere at all). So, I've decided to post them here. Maybe they'll inspire someone else to write something. Please don't try to eat your own belt, and be careful around large bakery equipment.
They tried to eat their belts. Soaked them in boiling water, then cut them into tiny pieces.
His brother was killed in a bakery accident.
In September the middle schoolers move in packs, run along the sidewalks. They aim for the local park, where they spend their Friday evening sprinting and training for upcoming track meets. Three ponytailed girls pant at the corner traffic light. One bends over to stretch, places her hands on her knees, her ponytail a sudden divining rod. She will always take the lead. The other girls follow - bend, knee touch, stretch – one after the other, reeds in the wind.
Model of the week:
21
If you were invisible for a day?
Celebrity you think you look like?
Reality TV Show Title?
While digging around for appropriate poems to read today, I ran across some fragmented notes. I don't remember writing them, or where I was heading with them (if anywhere at all). So, I've decided to post them here. Maybe they'll inspire someone else to write something. Please don't try to eat your own belt, and be careful around large bakery equipment.
They tried to eat their belts. Soaked them in boiling water, then cut them into tiny pieces.
His brother was killed in a bakery accident.
In September the middle schoolers move in packs, run along the sidewalks. They aim for the local park, where they spend their Friday evening sprinting and training for upcoming track meets. Three ponytailed girls pant at the corner traffic light. One bends over to stretch, places her hands on her knees, her ponytail a sudden divining rod. She will always take the lead. The other girls follow - bend, knee touch, stretch – one after the other, reeds in the wind.
Model of the week:
21
If you were invisible for a day?
Celebrity you think you look like?
Reality TV Show Title?
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Achoo Haiku!
Some of us want Spring to die. Some of us like me and my friend Matt. Instead of cursing the darkness of pollen, we lit a haiku candle via text messages this morning. We also shared some remedies. Bread, tic-tacs, tea, staying in the shower until Summer. Anyway, these hanky haiku woke me up and took my mind off my snarflesnuffle:
Cherry blossomed air
sun nudges the world awake
Kimberly Clark wins
- JH
Green covered windows
A film I cannot clear off
Lick me, Mother Tree
- MH
Sinus cavity
clicks like a garden of crickets
Fuck you, Springtime's sigh
- JH
Mucous, viscous green
Bondo plugging my face hole
Get my nose drill, love!
- MH
Bird shit drip on car
reminiscent of sneeze
Spring's allergic thoughts
- JH
My car sits, lifeless
rag top bitch-slapped by ragweed
Eat a dick, Springtime
- MH
Oh wintry world
you vanish into a sneeze,
ripe snot, puffed eyelids
- JH
Nose, raw and runny
My stock in Kleenex goes up
Cheap 1-ply bastards
- MH
Sinus drains, drip, drip
I pop five tic-tacs, why not?
Ah, minty relief!
- JH
Drip drip drip drip drip
snot soup slips down throaty hill
A cold lunch. Serves one.
- MH
Roof of mouth itchy
Insert finger, violent scritch
Hope no one saw that!
- JH
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Teeny Type Story
There's coffee, the usual cat on the lap, the pile of books I never tidied. A train of allergy sneezes followed by snarfles and a trip to the bathroom to unroll several squares of toilet paper. I don't know, I think I should stop reading the letters of writers I love. It's ruining their writing for me. My glasses don't work anymore. The prescription is just too old. I don't like squinting, but I squint, tilt my head down to peer at menus ... if I get the angle just right ...
She gets the angle just right and the door opens. Several messy letters schlorp past, leaving a trail of messy messiness. Consonants. They are so sloppy. Mannerless. The entire room is filled with giggles and chortles as the letter U tries to call everyone to order. There's a boy in the center of the room, and she wants to talk with him, but the consonants took all her confidence away with their power moves through the door. She wipes the mud and tittle (that j!) from her skirt, and walks over anyway. The boy works a thread through a needle. The thread wriggles, and she notices it isn't a thread at all but a word. The letters are silent in anticipation. U spreads his arms and conducts them as if they are an orchestra, but the word the boy is threading won't stay put and the letters stay quiet. The type is tiny on the thready word. Probably eight point, maybe six, the girl guesses. She hands the boy her glasses. He threads the word, aria, through the needle. The r grumbles. R is such a jerkoff. She never wants to play. Tough doodley-doo, r. You have to play with only vowels today. The word needle is threaded, and the music swells. An aria, of course. The girl puts on her glasses to read all the assembled letters. That's better. Sublime, even. Musical.
She gets the angle just right and the door opens. Several messy letters schlorp past, leaving a trail of messy messiness. Consonants. They are so sloppy. Mannerless. The entire room is filled with giggles and chortles as the letter U tries to call everyone to order. There's a boy in the center of the room, and she wants to talk with him, but the consonants took all her confidence away with their power moves through the door. She wipes the mud and tittle (that j!) from her skirt, and walks over anyway. The boy works a thread through a needle. The thread wriggles, and she notices it isn't a thread at all but a word. The letters are silent in anticipation. U spreads his arms and conducts them as if they are an orchestra, but the word the boy is threading won't stay put and the letters stay quiet. The type is tiny on the thready word. Probably eight point, maybe six, the girl guesses. She hands the boy her glasses. He threads the word, aria, through the needle. The r grumbles. R is such a jerkoff. She never wants to play. Tough doodley-doo, r. You have to play with only vowels today. The word needle is threaded, and the music swells. An aria, of course. The girl puts on her glasses to read all the assembled letters. That's better. Sublime, even. Musical.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Unfinished Sampler
Last night I went to bed after watching about an hour or so of Avatar, after declaring it Pocahontas with tall, blue aliens. The bio-luminescent landscape was the most interesting part, and as my daughter said, it made me wish it existed. (The element that the humans wanted from the alien landscape was called "Unobtainium." Who wrote this?) None of it made me want to stay awake, so I went to bed and read a chapter of a book where a man has his suitcase riffled through while he's sleeping on a train. This is unsettling, but he finds no answers. All of the sentences were short and it reminded me of some writing advice for beginning writers -- write in short sentences.
The short sentences, the recovered suitcase without a culprit, the computer generated blue people battling it out on the television downstairs, it all put me to sleep. It was humid in the bedroom. At 4 a.m. lightning broiled the sky, and rain shot through the window and into the laundry basket on the floor. I felt it against the exposed part of my back, the rejected lump of covers at the foot of the bed. Outside was angry, and it invited itself inside.
I fell asleep and had dreams of of crying and yelling, "This is not the shit house!" This morning from my writing desk, the Q-tip of pear tree sways back and forth. The lilac nods in the breeze. All the furious rain that pelted the house is captured in the needlepoint grid of the screen like an unfinished sampler.
This is not the shit house.
The rain worked with a spiderweb stretched over the seat of a chair on the patio to knit a sequined chair cover. The tensile strength of the web is impressive. As the wind pushes through the open weave of the seat, the web waves and each captured drop glitters.
The short sentences, the recovered suitcase without a culprit, the computer generated blue people battling it out on the television downstairs, it all put me to sleep. It was humid in the bedroom. At 4 a.m. lightning broiled the sky, and rain shot through the window and into the laundry basket on the floor. I felt it against the exposed part of my back, the rejected lump of covers at the foot of the bed. Outside was angry, and it invited itself inside.
I fell asleep and had dreams of of crying and yelling, "This is not the shit house!" This morning from my writing desk, the Q-tip of pear tree sways back and forth. The lilac nods in the breeze. All the furious rain that pelted the house is captured in the needlepoint grid of the screen like an unfinished sampler.
This is not the shit house.
The rain worked with a spiderweb stretched over the seat of a chair on the patio to knit a sequined chair cover. The tensile strength of the web is impressive. As the wind pushes through the open weave of the seat, the web waves and each captured drop glitters.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Eskmo and Beats Antique
Philadelphia evening. Oh glow sky dandelion bloom, brick building dryer scent exhalation, fried peppers and onions, concrete dusk stoop song!
"I love new experiences," Susan said. I agreed. We parked on the sidewalk near a fenced lot with "No Dumping" signs, the sidewalk sprayed with constellations of broken glass. The bar was a block away. Young women with feathers in their ears and black lace stockings waited near the entrance. The bouncer checked our IDs, stamped the inside of our arms with the word "Important." We found a table in the back room of the North Star bar, ordered some dinner, and talked as our food was prepared in what the menu stated was "a very small kitchen." The menu pleaded for patience. The servers looked exhausted but kept their humor as people ordered drinks and dinners.
A woman seated next to us leaned in to ask, "Are you here for Beats Antique? How did you hear of them?"
"Hooping!" I shouted over the din of one of the opening acts already going on in the stage area in the neighboring room.
"What?" she asked.
"Hooping! Hula hooping! We hoop to Beats Antique sometimes!"
"Ooooh!" and she told us about her three workshops at Burning Man where she laughed and laughed while re-learning to hoop. Would we be interested in doing something with the Sustainable Living Roadshow? She gave us a card. She told us about the origins of the band, and that she is the mother of one of the members. A man who I imagined was her husband offered us some of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream that he brought into the bar. "They don't have dessert here!" He had extra spoons to share.
The opening act was Brendan Angelides, a DJ known as Eskmo. The floor throbbed with people. We nudged our way to the middle. Scent of sweat and beer, sweet fading perfumes. Dreadlocked hair, feathers, Tristan Tzara faces. I felt like I was waiting for a train with my purse in my hand.
Eskmo crinkled plastic water bottles, shook strings of shells, banged rhythmically on pot lids, and looped it all over a bone humming bass. Fractalled images of feathers, water, and a double helix flashed on a screen behind his tabletop set-up of electronic equipment. Images were sometimes joined by phrases like "you have invisible friends watching, guiding," and "little sister, little brother, big sister, big brother." The Brave New World-ian text made me wish for more poetry. Brendan swayed, cracked open a beer into the mic to capture the "pop" of the tab, then leaned forward and bobbed a bit with his mouth open in a semi-hypnotized state. He looked like a technological Linus in his striped shirt and maroon short pants, weaving the sound of torn up paper into a melody with the twist of a knob. There is a joy from watching someone do what they love when they do it well. Virtuosity.
The crowd didn't dance so much as sway in a trance. A hand popped up here and there to limply wave. Bubbles floated. It wasn't the mosh pit of my youth. When Eskmo packed up his gear and Beats Antique took the stage, the space was packed and I tried to hold my ground close to the front. Instead of being shoved out of the way, I was shoved out of the way with a phony "Hi!" from a short woman with curly hair adorned with a peacock feather. I prefer just being shoved. Is it now concert etiquette to pretend we know each other? If we're going to be polite, say "Excuse me," but don't be fake. Just shove or nudge your way past me.
Beats Antique started their first set after 11 p.m. Zoe Jakes took center stage in what seems to be her trademark leopard bodysuit. Harnessed to her shoulders was a large high school bass drum. Gold on her cheeks glinted under the lights, and the heavy beats and sub bass swelled into a full-on whirlchurn. Susan and I moved to the back of the room when the bodies made us claustrophobic. Stage presence is a big part of the Beats Antique show, variously parts high school band, performance art, and burlesque bellydance. A woman in the back shook and rattled the coin-beaded scarf wrapped around her hips as Zoe danced around the stage with a Sally Rand fan.
It was midnight. We had a two hour drive home. We are middle-aged. This morning I'm feeling a titch on the puny side. The coffee isn't strong enough.
The Lone Star bar was so close to the zoo. I kept thinking of the animals with their thrumming, caged heartbeats, so near. I love a new experience colored with forever.
"I love new experiences," Susan said. I agreed. We parked on the sidewalk near a fenced lot with "No Dumping" signs, the sidewalk sprayed with constellations of broken glass. The bar was a block away. Young women with feathers in their ears and black lace stockings waited near the entrance. The bouncer checked our IDs, stamped the inside of our arms with the word "Important." We found a table in the back room of the North Star bar, ordered some dinner, and talked as our food was prepared in what the menu stated was "a very small kitchen." The menu pleaded for patience. The servers looked exhausted but kept their humor as people ordered drinks and dinners.
A woman seated next to us leaned in to ask, "Are you here for Beats Antique? How did you hear of them?"
"Hooping!" I shouted over the din of one of the opening acts already going on in the stage area in the neighboring room.
"What?" she asked.
"Hooping! Hula hooping! We hoop to Beats Antique sometimes!"
"Ooooh!" and she told us about her three workshops at Burning Man where she laughed and laughed while re-learning to hoop. Would we be interested in doing something with the Sustainable Living Roadshow? She gave us a card. She told us about the origins of the band, and that she is the mother of one of the members. A man who I imagined was her husband offered us some of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream that he brought into the bar. "They don't have dessert here!" He had extra spoons to share.
The opening act was Brendan Angelides, a DJ known as Eskmo. The floor throbbed with people. We nudged our way to the middle. Scent of sweat and beer, sweet fading perfumes. Dreadlocked hair, feathers, Tristan Tzara faces. I felt like I was waiting for a train with my purse in my hand.
Eskmo crinkled plastic water bottles, shook strings of shells, banged rhythmically on pot lids, and looped it all over a bone humming bass. Fractalled images of feathers, water, and a double helix flashed on a screen behind his tabletop set-up of electronic equipment. Images were sometimes joined by phrases like "you have invisible friends watching, guiding," and "little sister, little brother, big sister, big brother." The Brave New World-ian text made me wish for more poetry. Brendan swayed, cracked open a beer into the mic to capture the "pop" of the tab, then leaned forward and bobbed a bit with his mouth open in a semi-hypnotized state. He looked like a technological Linus in his striped shirt and maroon short pants, weaving the sound of torn up paper into a melody with the twist of a knob. There is a joy from watching someone do what they love when they do it well. Virtuosity.
The crowd didn't dance so much as sway in a trance. A hand popped up here and there to limply wave. Bubbles floated. It wasn't the mosh pit of my youth. When Eskmo packed up his gear and Beats Antique took the stage, the space was packed and I tried to hold my ground close to the front. Instead of being shoved out of the way, I was shoved out of the way with a phony "Hi!" from a short woman with curly hair adorned with a peacock feather. I prefer just being shoved. Is it now concert etiquette to pretend we know each other? If we're going to be polite, say "Excuse me," but don't be fake. Just shove or nudge your way past me.
Beats Antique started their first set after 11 p.m. Zoe Jakes took center stage in what seems to be her trademark leopard bodysuit. Harnessed to her shoulders was a large high school bass drum. Gold on her cheeks glinted under the lights, and the heavy beats and sub bass swelled into a full-on whirlchurn. Susan and I moved to the back of the room when the bodies made us claustrophobic. Stage presence is a big part of the Beats Antique show, variously parts high school band, performance art, and burlesque bellydance. A woman in the back shook and rattled the coin-beaded scarf wrapped around her hips as Zoe danced around the stage with a Sally Rand fan.
It was midnight. We had a two hour drive home. We are middle-aged. This morning I'm feeling a titch on the puny side. The coffee isn't strong enough.
The Lone Star bar was so close to the zoo. I kept thinking of the animals with their thrumming, caged heartbeats, so near. I love a new experience colored with forever.
Friday, April 08, 2011
The Poetry Mines
Why doesn't anyone buy poetry? Geezamarooni! If I knew why, I'd fix it. Maybe it's because poets use words like "geezamarooni."
My husband and I turned our art gallery/poetry studio/theatre into an independent bookstore at the beginning of the year. (Now the money will really come rolling in!) We've published collections of poetry for the past seven years. Poetry titles don't exactly fly off the shelves. We've witnessed the trend, and continue to see it in the teensy checks we chase from distributors (sales there aren't all that brisk either and they like to keep the money for as long as they can), the few times a month we see a sale online, and the once or twice someone stops by to pick up a title. What sells poetry? When poets give readings from their books. I'm pretty sure the audience feels obligated to buy. The poet is right in front of them. Buying a book is their way to get out the door and on to a dirty martini.
The entire left wall of our store is dedicated to poetry. There is a series of four shelves mounted on the wall right when you walk in that feature poetry books, and in the middle of the left wall is a large, wooden shelving unit from a school library with a magazine rack below that holds all of the Paper Kite titles. We are loaded with poetry here. The visual, the lexical, the Ijustdon'tgetitacal. Bern Porter's Found Poems, Improvisations by Vernon Fraser, the tender collection of Kristin Prevallet that appears to be sold upon inspection, but I later find mis-shelved, of course. Kenneth Patchen. Denise Duhamel. I spend my days gazing at spines that stand as straight as capital I's. Maybe that's the problem. Poetry just feels too self-centered, too prone to introspection. Novels transport the reader.
We have a few regular customers in our store. There's a man who always asks about 19th century diaries. Another wants books about world religions. When prompted to check out some poetry, he said, "I don't know what it is about poetry. I just don't like having to read things more than once." He never finishes the hot chocolate he makes for himself either.
Books facing out sell first. Most people don't like to paw through books, squint to read the mouseprint titles of the spines, or disrupt the 64-crayons-in-the-box order of things. However, poetry books facing out don't sell. Their cover designs just plead.
I'm pretty sure you become stupider for not reading poetry. That's right, you become downright dumber if you don't at least pepper your gluttonous meal of autobiographies, fashion magazines, and novels with poems. I owe thanks to many poets not just for the garniture of their writing (I've been wanting to use that word!), but for the empathy that comes from their poems, the delicious word pairings, the sensory delights, the new ways of seeing. For me, long stretches of reading poetry feel like philosophical dumpster dives. I come up breathless, with hands full of treasures no one else wanted. Fools! Remember Hector the Collector by Shel Silverstein? I think Hector was a poet.
Mine, mine, mine!
I mean that as a verb. Read poetry.
My husband and I turned our art gallery/poetry studio/theatre into an independent bookstore at the beginning of the year. (Now the money will really come rolling in!) We've published collections of poetry for the past seven years. Poetry titles don't exactly fly off the shelves. We've witnessed the trend, and continue to see it in the teensy checks we chase from distributors (sales there aren't all that brisk either and they like to keep the money for as long as they can), the few times a month we see a sale online, and the once or twice someone stops by to pick up a title. What sells poetry? When poets give readings from their books. I'm pretty sure the audience feels obligated to buy. The poet is right in front of them. Buying a book is their way to get out the door and on to a dirty martini.
The entire left wall of our store is dedicated to poetry. There is a series of four shelves mounted on the wall right when you walk in that feature poetry books, and in the middle of the left wall is a large, wooden shelving unit from a school library with a magazine rack below that holds all of the Paper Kite titles. We are loaded with poetry here. The visual, the lexical, the Ijustdon'tgetitacal. Bern Porter's Found Poems, Improvisations by Vernon Fraser, the tender collection of Kristin Prevallet that appears to be sold upon inspection, but I later find mis-shelved, of course. Kenneth Patchen. Denise Duhamel. I spend my days gazing at spines that stand as straight as capital I's. Maybe that's the problem. Poetry just feels too self-centered, too prone to introspection. Novels transport the reader.
We have a few regular customers in our store. There's a man who always asks about 19th century diaries. Another wants books about world religions. When prompted to check out some poetry, he said, "I don't know what it is about poetry. I just don't like having to read things more than once." He never finishes the hot chocolate he makes for himself either.
Books facing out sell first. Most people don't like to paw through books, squint to read the mouseprint titles of the spines, or disrupt the 64-crayons-in-the-box order of things. However, poetry books facing out don't sell. Their cover designs just plead.
I'm pretty sure you become stupider for not reading poetry. That's right, you become downright dumber if you don't at least pepper your gluttonous meal of autobiographies, fashion magazines, and novels with poems. I owe thanks to many poets not just for the garniture of their writing (I've been wanting to use that word!), but for the empathy that comes from their poems, the delicious word pairings, the sensory delights, the new ways of seeing. For me, long stretches of reading poetry feel like philosophical dumpster dives. I come up breathless, with hands full of treasures no one else wanted. Fools! Remember Hector the Collector by Shel Silverstein? I think Hector was a poet.
Mine, mine, mine!
I mean that as a verb. Read poetry.
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Girl Out
of step again, ribald rhythm plays
its tricks from Hell. Right leg kicks, left leg
stays put. Oh, vile muscles, memory's betrayal!
Swallow that pill as you smile. No one likes vague.
The audience can't see your “Oh, shit!” thoughts,
but be expressive. They'll forgive your flubs
if you shake your fringe and wink as you were taught.
Glitter toss! Now count to eight, Beelzebub.
Blow a kiss, shiftslideturn, all the applause
comes from hips and gaze, your electric hands.
You do not ask, you earn. Empress of Awe,
your screw-ups erase with the lift of a fan.
Feathers pillow your skin as you lean,
tassels twirl, light licks silver sequins.
- Jennifer Hill
its tricks from Hell. Right leg kicks, left leg
stays put. Oh, vile muscles, memory's betrayal!
Swallow that pill as you smile. No one likes vague.
The audience can't see your “Oh, shit!” thoughts,
but be expressive. They'll forgive your flubs
if you shake your fringe and wink as you were taught.
Glitter toss! Now count to eight, Beelzebub.
Blow a kiss, shiftslideturn, all the applause
comes from hips and gaze, your electric hands.
You do not ask, you earn. Empress of Awe,
your screw-ups erase with the lift of a fan.
Feathers pillow your skin as you lean,
tassels twirl, light licks silver sequins.
- Jennifer Hill
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Birthday Girl
You forgot it was your birthday
when the alarm went off
in its submarine deep bloop,
and you rose from a dream
where your right hand
was trapped in a tangle of fabric.
The cat rubbed her furry cheek
on your elbow, up your arm,
against your chin. Another day
of being alive. Purrr.
The day before, you forgot
it was almost your birthday,
and the day before that you forgot
it was almost, almost your birthday.
You count the week as birthday week,
share it with your sister and daughter.
You march as a triumvirate,
you ram the world.
Now as you get older, the day before
the day you were born is quiet as a long
stretch of field covered with snow,
or the fist of a peony bud.
Regular mail.
Skim milk.
It's so quiet, you almost don't exist
as you pour coffee, seal an envelope,
read an advertisement for soap
with those eyes your mother and father created.
You prefer it now, the day before your birthday.
The power of invisibility.
Today is your birthday,
and as your outline
fills with color and confetti,
you bop around
the landscape you painted
and see how little
of life is ever still,
how much is thrown,
how little you own.
Birthday girl,
even your eyes
are loaners.
- Jennifer Hill
when the alarm went off
in its submarine deep bloop,
and you rose from a dream
where your right hand
was trapped in a tangle of fabric.
The cat rubbed her furry cheek
on your elbow, up your arm,
against your chin. Another day
of being alive. Purrr.
The day before, you forgot
it was almost your birthday,
and the day before that you forgot
it was almost, almost your birthday.
You count the week as birthday week,
share it with your sister and daughter.
You march as a triumvirate,
you ram the world.
Now as you get older, the day before
the day you were born is quiet as a long
stretch of field covered with snow,
or the fist of a peony bud.
Regular mail.
Skim milk.
It's so quiet, you almost don't exist
as you pour coffee, seal an envelope,
read an advertisement for soap
with those eyes your mother and father created.
You prefer it now, the day before your birthday.
The power of invisibility.
Today is your birthday,
and as your outline
fills with color and confetti,
you bop around
the landscape you painted
and see how little
of life is ever still,
how much is thrown,
how little you own.
Birthday girl,
even your eyes
are loaners.
- Jennifer Hill
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Pep Talk
This is the place and you are here,
scratched up desk, no chandelier.
Old glasses jabbed into a pot
with dried out pens and fusty thought.
You twist and wind dreams into knots –
This is the place and you are here.
So get it out, good God, be done!
The coffee’s black, your timeline thrums –
this whingy-whine is overdone.
This is the place and you are here –
so suck it up, you chanticleer!
This is the place and you are here.
- Jennifer Hill
scratched up desk, no chandelier.
Old glasses jabbed into a pot
with dried out pens and fusty thought.
You twist and wind dreams into knots –
This is the place and you are here.
So get it out, good God, be done!
The coffee’s black, your timeline thrums –
this whingy-whine is overdone.
This is the place and you are here –
so suck it up, you chanticleer!
This is the place and you are here.
- Jennifer Hill
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The Morass of Self-Doubt
Self-doubt spreads like kudzu. Let it in and it will cover and take over every corner of your body. It will invade your gestures, and control how you view your environment.
I used to think that if I was genuinely having fun, others would want to play too. I'll be 42 next month, and I'm not so sure that's always true now. (I spent a lot of time alone on the playground as a kid, making up stories in a dirt pile. It was genuine fun for me.)
Sometimes I'm just having fun alone. It's just me, and that's ok. This is as true for the writing parts of my life as it is for the hoop dance parts. What makes me giggle as I write it might not make the reader giggle, but I write it anyway. I have to remind myself over and over that it's alright to wear shorts with fringe on them, bleach my hair, go to a burlesque class, sing a sound poem on the elevator, wear a top hat to the grocery store, leave a painting in the woods for a stranger or a bear to find, and that it isn't some sort of mid-life crises.
Do enough people "like" what I'm doing? That smile on my husband's face - does he think I've lost my mind, or is he enjoying the show? Oh that horrible little voice inside me that says that people are laughing at me behind my back! It feels like all the worst parts of education.
Am I sorry I didn't discover that I have a body that dances earlier in my life? Yes. When I was younger my muscles were suppler and I had more energy, but when I was younger I was also wrapped in kudzu.
Right now, I'm happy that I discovered that I have a body that works with my mind at any point in my life. My forays into hoop dance have inspired others to try it. This is good.
So this post is a big screw you to strangling vines of self-doubt. If I feel like wearing shorts with fringe on them and hooping it up on the dance floor, I'm going to do it, with relish and abandon.
I used to think that if I was genuinely having fun, others would want to play too. I'll be 42 next month, and I'm not so sure that's always true now. (I spent a lot of time alone on the playground as a kid, making up stories in a dirt pile. It was genuine fun for me.)
Sometimes I'm just having fun alone. It's just me, and that's ok. This is as true for the writing parts of my life as it is for the hoop dance parts. What makes me giggle as I write it might not make the reader giggle, but I write it anyway. I have to remind myself over and over that it's alright to wear shorts with fringe on them, bleach my hair, go to a burlesque class, sing a sound poem on the elevator, wear a top hat to the grocery store, leave a painting in the woods for a stranger or a bear to find, and that it isn't some sort of mid-life crises.
Do enough people "like" what I'm doing? That smile on my husband's face - does he think I've lost my mind, or is he enjoying the show? Oh that horrible little voice inside me that says that people are laughing at me behind my back! It feels like all the worst parts of education.
Am I sorry I didn't discover that I have a body that dances earlier in my life? Yes. When I was younger my muscles were suppler and I had more energy, but when I was younger I was also wrapped in kudzu.
Right now, I'm happy that I discovered that I have a body that works with my mind at any point in my life. My forays into hoop dance have inspired others to try it. This is good.
So this post is a big screw you to strangling vines of self-doubt. If I feel like wearing shorts with fringe on them and hooping it up on the dance floor, I'm going to do it, with relish and abandon.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Destroyer
I praise the beast who gave me boots,
spirit strong,
eyes that thawed winter with absolute,
fenced-in song.
Together we stamped the damp ground
with our names. I am astounded.
So stable,
unable
to hide the animal I’ve found.
- Jennifer Hill
This is a Ronsardian Ode. It's a French stanza form, syllabic (decasyllabic and tetrasyllabic lines), rhyming, with nine line stanzas. Mine is short. I realize this poem isn't going to win me any vegan friends.
spirit strong,
eyes that thawed winter with absolute,
fenced-in song.
Together we stamped the damp ground
with our names. I am astounded.
So stable,
unable
to hide the animal I’ve found.
- Jennifer Hill
This is a Ronsardian Ode. It's a French stanza form, syllabic (decasyllabic and tetrasyllabic lines), rhyming, with nine line stanzas. Mine is short. I realize this poem isn't going to win me any vegan friends.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Praise for What Floats to the Surface
I don't care that your poem was published in Huckleberry Pie Review, or that you've won that prestigious award that turns every other writer's eyes into thumbtacks. I don't care that you live with your four cats and husband on an island. It doesn't matter that someone once described your writing as "the deft hand of minimalism." What matters is that you wrote a phrase in a poem that still floats to the surface of my memory as I press my foot into the ground of my backyard to check for 60 foot sinkholes. I don't own any of this land, this bland madness of snows.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
The Chillmonster Rhymes with Truck
It's not that I resort to unprofessional tones when it's only nine degrees outside. Really. It's only nine degrees outside and I feel the dread hand of a ghost brush along my back in the quiet of the bookstore. The cold slips under the backdoor, or from the basement, or is wheezed through a window gap.
I did not just use a word that rhymes with truck as I felt the chillmonster grasp the wedge of skin exposed from my sweater's lazy rumple. Yesterday I had a fruit salad for breakfast (not made by me, what luxury on a weekday!) and the chunk of real peach I bit into sent a spineshiver tone of summer through my body. Lawnchairs, sun on skin, dirty feet -- the parade that marches out slush and stagnacy. I'm ready.
I did not just use a word that rhymes with truck as I felt the chillmonster grasp the wedge of skin exposed from my sweater's lazy rumple. Yesterday I had a fruit salad for breakfast (not made by me, what luxury on a weekday!) and the chunk of real peach I bit into sent a spineshiver tone of summer through my body. Lawnchairs, sun on skin, dirty feet -- the parade that marches out slush and stagnacy. I'm ready.
Friday, February 04, 2011
A Pleasant Cure
A friend replied to a recent email of mine: "The list of authors I have not read never ceases to embarrass and amaze me. However, there is a very pleasant cure for such things."
I agree. At fancy and not-so-fancy dinner parties with literary, intellectual, highly-educated types, I find myself struggling to remember the plots of novels I've read, the names of the authors who wrote them, and the titles of poems that moved me. I remember a phrase, but I can't quote it perfectly. I remember the feeling or color I got from reading a poem, novel, story, or excellent phrase, which is much harder to quote. I can recall whether what made me laugh or cry was on a right-facing or left-facing page, at the top or the bottom, in the book where I read it (my husband also has this quirk of memory).
I'm not totally ashamed by my shortcomings in reading. There is a very pleasant cure for such things, as my friend said. One of my favorite writers is E.B. White.
Books of E.B. White I have not yet read:
The Lady is Cold - Poems by E.B.W. (1929)
The Trumpet of the Swan (1970)
Books of E.B. White I have partially read:
Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do (1929, with James Thurber)
Here Is New York (1949)
Books of E.B. White I have read completely:
Essays of E.B. White (1977)
One Man's Meat (1942)
Stuart Little (1945)
Charlotte's Web (1952)
The Second Tree From The Corner (1954)
The Elements of Style (with William Strunk, Jr.) (1959, republished 1972, 1979, 1999, 2005)
I have a biography of E.B. White that I haven't even touched. There's a collection of his essays and poems that I didn't cite in my partial list because I can't remember the title of it. I've read a short piece of his simply titled "Note" in a 1950 New Yorker magazine (upper right of right-facing page) that reflects on a forgotten actor in a restaurant.
In Charlotte's Web, Wilbur says:
"What do you mean less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something - even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is."
This appears on the lower portion of a right-facing page in the edition that I own. In fancy conversations about books I admit I feel like nothing, but I do know that my combined reading experiences account for something. I consider myself lucky to have days filled with books that I can pull from shelves and sink into, or lazily peruse. I hope it is alright that I can't quote verbatim, that I forget author names, plots, and titles. When a writer makes me laugh out loud, or connects me to another writer, or gives me an "aha!" moment that connects me to the larger world (not just the world of letters), I feel appreciative and warmed by the light of genius.
I agree. At fancy and not-so-fancy dinner parties with literary, intellectual, highly-educated types, I find myself struggling to remember the plots of novels I've read, the names of the authors who wrote them, and the titles of poems that moved me. I remember a phrase, but I can't quote it perfectly. I remember the feeling or color I got from reading a poem, novel, story, or excellent phrase, which is much harder to quote. I can recall whether what made me laugh or cry was on a right-facing or left-facing page, at the top or the bottom, in the book where I read it (my husband also has this quirk of memory).
I'm not totally ashamed by my shortcomings in reading. There is a very pleasant cure for such things, as my friend said. One of my favorite writers is E.B. White.
Books of E.B. White I have not yet read:
The Lady is Cold - Poems by E.B.W. (1929)
The Trumpet of the Swan (1970)
Books of E.B. White I have partially read:
Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do (1929, with James Thurber)
Here Is New York (1949)
Books of E.B. White I have read completely:
Essays of E.B. White (1977)
One Man's Meat (1942)
Stuart Little (1945)
Charlotte's Web (1952)
The Second Tree From The Corner (1954)
The Elements of Style (with William Strunk, Jr.) (1959, republished 1972, 1979, 1999, 2005)
I have a biography of E.B. White that I haven't even touched. There's a collection of his essays and poems that I didn't cite in my partial list because I can't remember the title of it. I've read a short piece of his simply titled "Note" in a 1950 New Yorker magazine (upper right of right-facing page) that reflects on a forgotten actor in a restaurant.
In Charlotte's Web, Wilbur says:
"What do you mean less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something - even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is."
This appears on the lower portion of a right-facing page in the edition that I own. In fancy conversations about books I admit I feel like nothing, but I do know that my combined reading experiences account for something. I consider myself lucky to have days filled with books that I can pull from shelves and sink into, or lazily peruse. I hope it is alright that I can't quote verbatim, that I forget author names, plots, and titles. When a writer makes me laugh out loud, or connects me to another writer, or gives me an "aha!" moment that connects me to the larger world (not just the world of letters), I feel appreciative and warmed by the light of genius.
Friday, December 31, 2010
New Year
The stapler forced to hold everything together
with its metal teeth finds out later the lion’s maw
of staple remover rends it. My bare foot
discovers the bracket shaped discard.
Always, the hungry hum of the paper shredder,
the scissor’s ample and clean cuts,
pens bleed maps onto my fingers
that I can’t wash off, and the receipt spike –
oh, how it lives to gore! Paperclips
hold permanent yoga poses.
I press a stamp of approval down hard,
also a delinquent stamp, neither declaration
ever changes. Both grin their red grins.
Only the date stamp laughs –
Wrong year.
I notch a fingernail into the gear
for its last number, edge it forward.
How behind I was. How behind.
How could I forget?
with its metal teeth finds out later the lion’s maw
of staple remover rends it. My bare foot
discovers the bracket shaped discard.
Always, the hungry hum of the paper shredder,
the scissor’s ample and clean cuts,
pens bleed maps onto my fingers
that I can’t wash off, and the receipt spike –
oh, how it lives to gore! Paperclips
hold permanent yoga poses.
I press a stamp of approval down hard,
also a delinquent stamp, neither declaration
ever changes. Both grin their red grins.
Only the date stamp laughs –
Wrong year.
I notch a fingernail into the gear
for its last number, edge it forward.
How behind I was. How behind.
How could I forget?
Friday, December 24, 2010
Christmas Eve Meditation
Good morning. It's December 24th, and it is 5:32 a.m. I am sitting here in this chair. It's a tough and sturdy chair, a chair of penitence and patience. It is dark outside, still. When I walked the dog, the sharp edge of the air jabbed itself inside my coat and grazed my collarbone. No stars. The wind composes music with the chimes, the dog snores from his pillow. I am wearing one of the many pairs of glasses I own - the brown oval frames with the loose right arm. I keep them in the blue flower pot with my arsenal of pens and one u-shaped bobbypin.
There is a clamshell on my desk that has "Quiet, Please," written in script on it in black Sharpie marker. To my right is a painting of the beach that I bought for my daughter as a Christmas gift. I haven't wrapped it yet. I have other gifts to wrap as well, yes. To my left is the door where a draught slinks in from the bottom. The coffeepot just beeped off. I'm trying to drink all of the coffee I made before anyone else wakes, because I put cinnamon in it and I'm the only one in the house who likes that.
I should be writing, but I am just sitting here in the mostly dark, thinking. My hair has a tangle in the back that feels like felt. When I run a comb of fingers through it they catch, and I use my thumb and forefinger to wiggle the matted strands loose. That tangle is always there. I like it. It is like time, or the sea, or the sky. Maybe a mouse nest or the mouse itself. It is a mess that is mine alone and I wear it everyday, even on holidays.
Good morning. It's December 24th, and it is 5:52 a.m.
There is a clamshell on my desk that has "Quiet, Please," written in script on it in black Sharpie marker. To my right is a painting of the beach that I bought for my daughter as a Christmas gift. I haven't wrapped it yet. I have other gifts to wrap as well, yes. To my left is the door where a draught slinks in from the bottom. The coffeepot just beeped off. I'm trying to drink all of the coffee I made before anyone else wakes, because I put cinnamon in it and I'm the only one in the house who likes that.
I should be writing, but I am just sitting here in the mostly dark, thinking. My hair has a tangle in the back that feels like felt. When I run a comb of fingers through it they catch, and I use my thumb and forefinger to wiggle the matted strands loose. That tangle is always there. I like it. It is like time, or the sea, or the sky. Maybe a mouse nest or the mouse itself. It is a mess that is mine alone and I wear it everyday, even on holidays.
Good morning. It's December 24th, and it is 5:52 a.m.
Monday, December 20, 2010
I Still Do
for Kenneth Patchen
It takes a great deal of love to give a damn.
Be rebellious. Do more than kiss a cheek – punch
the button of the heart’s elevator. Become a battering ram.
It takes a great deal of love to give a damn.
Point to where the pain is, call yourself alive, a dram
of care in your blossomed fist, a cup of blood clenched.
Be rebellious. Do more than kiss a cheek.
- Jennifer Hill
It takes a great deal of love to give a damn.
Be rebellious. Do more than kiss a cheek – punch
the button of the heart’s elevator. Become a battering ram.
It takes a great deal of love to give a damn.
Point to where the pain is, call yourself alive, a dram
of care in your blossomed fist, a cup of blood clenched.
Be rebellious. Do more than kiss a cheek.
- Jennifer Hill
Saturday, December 18, 2010
The Base Price of Going Blonde
On a semi-lark, I walked into a hair salon to have my hair colored. I wanted to try blonde. It's on my list of "100 Dreams." I've never been blonde and thought I would like to try it.
I found myself flipping through a large book of hairstyles, and found one or two examples that looked right. A stylist with white, fastidious hair and his collar buttoned asked, "Now, what do you want?" He was flat-lipped in his delivery. I told him I wanted to try blonde and his jaw dropped. His co-worker, who was crossing off appointments in a book on the counter, cocked her head and smiled in a way that said "crazy."
"It's on my list of 100 Dreams," I smiled. A short, plump man with a walk like a pigeon said, "Your Bucket List." I corrected him. "No, a list of 100 Dreams. The word bucket implies something I'm not ready for yet."
My stylist introduced himself to me as he sat me in the chair. His name was unique and reminiscent of high school English classes. He walked in the back and produced a large gateway folded book filled with little loops of hair in different colors. Each loop was marked above with a number. He held the book up to my head and said, "You look like a 6. Well, maybe a 5." I got a lecture against going blonde. "You know you can't put color on color and go lighter, right?" He ran a hand through my hair. "And with all of this, it's going to be a base price of $150. Then there's color and cut."
He talked me down off the ledge of blonde, and onto the concrete sidewalk of brunette. Together, browsing the Book of Loops, we chose a brown that matched the summer lightened ends of my hair. Fine.
In the time that passed we discussed teaching, poetry, the War of the Roses, Prince. We shared our mutual distaste for certain Christmas carols. He shared a story about an 11-year old girl who came in wanting a "scene" hairstyle for a big event. "I wouldn't do it. She was pre-pubescent. It would damage her hair. I said 'Honey, life isn't about things. It's about people, knowledge, and experiences.' So I just straightened her hair and she was happy."
My hair was piled on top of my head and covered and goo while he cut the hair of three other clients. Iridescent snowflakes twirled above our heads, advertising "Cut, color and style from $59.95 and up." A couple of older women got some extra hairspray applied to their holiday teases.
As my stylist washed my hair, he chatted with someone across the room. "God brings certain people into your life for a reason," he said. His fingernails scritched my scalp. From my angle I could see right up his nose. Fastidious there too. All of his buttons were completely and neatly threaded through their holes. Years of experience lined his face. He taught high school English for thirty years, he told me, "and then they offered me an early retirement. Of course I took it!" Now he cuts the hair of women who try to make rash decisions.
As he cut my hair, I asked for bangs. "No. You don't want bangs. You told me you pull your hair back a lot. Do you want to be like a 16-year old, pushing your hair out of your eyes, and looking out at people from a curtain of bangs? No."
We talked about Lord Byron's real name as he dried my hair. "You know, only one person I've asked knew the answer. It really tripped up my students. I asked a lady working in customer service at Price Chopper. She got it right away. You never know. There's this lady, in her 50's, working at the grocery store who knows Lord Byron's real name."
I failed his quiz, but now I know.
The short pigeon walker complimented my stylist's work. "She was a 6, and we just took her to a 5!" he laughed.
My hair looked neater, and a little lighter, if not all that different. Possibly redder? It wasn't what I asked for, but then, life isn't all about what you want. I put my coat on and walked to the counter to pay for the experience, the new person in my life, and the knowledge that I was given. I tipped generously.
I found myself flipping through a large book of hairstyles, and found one or two examples that looked right. A stylist with white, fastidious hair and his collar buttoned asked, "Now, what do you want?" He was flat-lipped in his delivery. I told him I wanted to try blonde and his jaw dropped. His co-worker, who was crossing off appointments in a book on the counter, cocked her head and smiled in a way that said "crazy."
"It's on my list of 100 Dreams," I smiled. A short, plump man with a walk like a pigeon said, "Your Bucket List." I corrected him. "No, a list of 100 Dreams. The word bucket implies something I'm not ready for yet."
My stylist introduced himself to me as he sat me in the chair. His name was unique and reminiscent of high school English classes. He walked in the back and produced a large gateway folded book filled with little loops of hair in different colors. Each loop was marked above with a number. He held the book up to my head and said, "You look like a 6. Well, maybe a 5." I got a lecture against going blonde. "You know you can't put color on color and go lighter, right?" He ran a hand through my hair. "And with all of this, it's going to be a base price of $150. Then there's color and cut."
He talked me down off the ledge of blonde, and onto the concrete sidewalk of brunette. Together, browsing the Book of Loops, we chose a brown that matched the summer lightened ends of my hair. Fine.
In the time that passed we discussed teaching, poetry, the War of the Roses, Prince. We shared our mutual distaste for certain Christmas carols. He shared a story about an 11-year old girl who came in wanting a "scene" hairstyle for a big event. "I wouldn't do it. She was pre-pubescent. It would damage her hair. I said 'Honey, life isn't about things. It's about people, knowledge, and experiences.' So I just straightened her hair and she was happy."
My hair was piled on top of my head and covered and goo while he cut the hair of three other clients. Iridescent snowflakes twirled above our heads, advertising "Cut, color and style from $59.95 and up." A couple of older women got some extra hairspray applied to their holiday teases.
As my stylist washed my hair, he chatted with someone across the room. "God brings certain people into your life for a reason," he said. His fingernails scritched my scalp. From my angle I could see right up his nose. Fastidious there too. All of his buttons were completely and neatly threaded through their holes. Years of experience lined his face. He taught high school English for thirty years, he told me, "and then they offered me an early retirement. Of course I took it!" Now he cuts the hair of women who try to make rash decisions.
As he cut my hair, I asked for bangs. "No. You don't want bangs. You told me you pull your hair back a lot. Do you want to be like a 16-year old, pushing your hair out of your eyes, and looking out at people from a curtain of bangs? No."
We talked about Lord Byron's real name as he dried my hair. "You know, only one person I've asked knew the answer. It really tripped up my students. I asked a lady working in customer service at Price Chopper. She got it right away. You never know. There's this lady, in her 50's, working at the grocery store who knows Lord Byron's real name."
I failed his quiz, but now I know.
The short pigeon walker complimented my stylist's work. "She was a 6, and we just took her to a 5!" he laughed.
My hair looked neater, and a little lighter, if not all that different. Possibly redder? It wasn't what I asked for, but then, life isn't all about what you want. I put my coat on and walked to the counter to pay for the experience, the new person in my life, and the knowledge that I was given. I tipped generously.
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