Postcards from the Imagination

I tend to cycle back and forth between the desire to listen and the desire to talk. This week I've been predominately input-ish. For me that means a lot of reading, because with the bizarre exception of VH1's The Surreal Life (by which I am freakishly riveted), I don't have much interest in television.

Hart Crane once wrote, "Thou canst read nothing except through appetite..." and this week my appetite has led to/through the following books:

• Durs Grünbein. Ashes for Breakfast. Trans. Michael Hofmann.  There are some amazing poems in the middle section of this book.  Unfortunately I don't have it to hand, since I was reading it in the bookstore.  It's only out in an expensive hardcover edition, but my tax refund is due any day now...
• Carl Dennis, Practical Gods. I would describe this collection as genuinely warm and witty, human and humane. And while I won't claim that's a fantastic blurb, it's certainly less defensive than those found on the book's back cover--for instance, "Carl Dennis is a poet who has valuable things to say..." "The surfaces of Dennis's poems may seem relatively simple, but..." and "Not only Hamlet but David Hume would have appreciated these rhythmically-graceful, moving and philosophically far-reaching investigations..." Huh? The collection is well-worth reading, but not because of any revolutions of thought. Is the poetry world really so entrenched its few notions of what poetry should do that everything needs to be brought into line with the standard expectations? In my opinion poetry can and should do a lot of things, and as long as poets like Dennis and Collins continue to do what they do well, I'll keep reading them.
• Dean Young, Skid. Impressive and funny as hell. My only criticism is that there's not much range. I've read about half of the poems, and the tone and mood seem fairly consistent throughout. Very, very good, but still short of great.
• Milan Kundera, Slowness. Because I enjoyed The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting so much S. came home from the bookstore one day with five of Kundera's other novels for me. (What a guy, huh?) Slowness is the only one I've not yet finished. If pressed to rank them from the best on down I'd say 1) The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 2) Immortality, 3) The Joke, 4) The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 5) Ignorance, and 6) Identity. I suspect Slowness may come in seventh, but I'll reserve judgment until I've read it through.
• Jack Gilbert. Refusing Heaven. Stunning, stunning, stunning! We received a review copy from Knopf a few days ago, and if we didn't already have a much more interesting proposal in the works I'd write the review myself. Both thumbs, eight fingers and ten toes up for this one.
• Robert Reich. Reason. Billed as the Left's answer to Ann Coulter's Treason. I think Prof. Reich is trying very hard not to talk over anyone's head here, which makes it a little dull. I put it down after the introduction, but may go back to it if something else doesn't grab my attention first.
• Lesle Lewis. Small Boat. Winner of The Iowa Poetry Prize. I picked this one up because the author happens to live in my (adopted) home state. Lewis is not afraid to take big risks, and sometimes they pay off handsomely. I've only read a handful of poems so far, but I'll be interested to see where the collection goes.

End output.

Posted by Ginger at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Perhaps you've heard of discredited White House correspondent Jeff Gannon--aka James Guckert.  But did you know that evidence recently surfaced suggesting he may have been a male prostitute prior to obtaining those sketchy press room credentials?  Maybe not, since the only mainstream media outlet to cover that angle, The Washington Post, buried it in the Style section of their Wednesday edition.

Online Nude Photos Are Latest Chapter In Jeff Gannon Saga by Howard Kurtz.

As Joe Conasan correctly points out in The New York Observer, the media silence on this one is "[p]roof that "the liberal media" is but a figment of right-wing mythology..."

‘Liberal’ Media Silent About Guckert Saga

"Imagine the media explosion if a male escort had been discovered operating as a correspondent in the Clinton White House," writes Conasan.

Indeed.

Posted by Ginger at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

But in a good way. Some of my efforts re: the new literary venture are beginning to pay off. I had a few down days there where the initial rush seemed to have slowed to a trickle, and we were getting nothing but dreadful submissions. Fortunately, I went into it expecting that some days would be more work than fun, and so rather than despair I renewed my effort to get the word out. It looks like we've reached almost a thousand new people in the past several days, and while only a fraction of them will become contributors or readers, we've seen a healthy increase in submissions and subscriptions to our mailing list as well.

S. & I opted out of Valentine's Day, which was a relief. We much prefer spontaneous displays of affection to those foisted on us by Hallmark & Co. Last year we went to the Boston Symphony, but were somewhat disappointed. It was crowded, stuffy (pun intended), and the orchestra didn't sound nearly as good as it might have at home. So far from being surrounded by and shot through with music, it felt as if the most of the notes struggled to reach our ears.

Off to mail S.'s first-ever MS contest entries--very exciting!-- and to check our post office box for goodies.

Posted by Ginger at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Paul Krugman of The New York Times writes, "[Bush's] latest budget proposal is "top-down class warfare in action...The question is whether the relentless mean-spiritedness of this budget finally awakens the public to the true cost of Mr. Bush's tax policy."

Perhaps, but the failure to find weapons of mass destruction should have produced mass enlightenment regarding the administration's gross bungling of foreign policy too.

Then again, maybe the public is a bit more savvy these days, and Bush's 'political capital' simply fell off the back of a truck. See Christopher Hitchens's article, "Ohio's Odd Numbers" in the March issue of Vanity Fair. "No conspiracy theorist, and no fan of John Kerry's, the author nevertheless found the Ohio polling results impossible to swallow: Given what happened in that key state on Election Day 2004, both democracy and common sense cry out for a court-ordered inspection of its new voting machines."

Posted by Ginger at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As long as science fails to accurately predict the weather, as it did today--rain not snow--I still have hope.

Posted by Ginger at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been so warm--low 50's the past few days--that I could almost believe winter is coming to an end. The sky has a look of spring. The ducks are paddling down, rather than walking across, the river we overlook. It's a gorgeous day, except that...

... A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 12 AM THURSDAY TO 12 AM EST FRIDAY...SNOW WILL FALL HEAVILY AT TIMES THURSDAY AND THURSDAY EVENING.

BY THE TIME THE SNOW ENDS LATE THURSDAY NIGHT OR EARLY FRIDAY... TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS WILL RANGE FROM 4 TO 8 INCHES [where Ginger doesn't live]... TO AS MUCH AS 10 TO 16 INCHES [where she does]...

TRAVEL IS EXPECTED TO BECOME DIFFICULT THURSDAY [as usual]. GUSTY NORTH WINDS WILL CREATE AREAS OF BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW WITH POOR VISIBILITY.

(Courtesy www.weather.com)

20-30 inches!!!

(Courtesy local rumor. I guess 16 inches aren't enough to get excited about.)

At least I'm not traveling this time. Two snowstorms ago I was on my way home from D.C. and got stranded in Philadelphia during a layover. They boarded the entire flight first, then cancelled it due to poor visibility where we had to land. Of course, once I did arrive in NE I had to drive home from the airport through all that snow. I will happily be staying put this time.

Posted by Ginger at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Others call someone when they need a lightbulb changed--which is exactly what I had to do yesterday. Our apartment is in a converted 19th century mill building with very high ceilings, and maintenance had to come with a ladder to change the bulbs. It's a regular part of the services they provide.

Still, it felt weird. I come from a do-it-yourself, working-class family. When my mother's bathroom needed remodeling, my sister and I stripped the wallpaper, mitered and installed new molding, re-tiled the shower and painted. In the kitchen, we ripped up the carpet (yes, carpet!) that the old homeowner had put down, and installed a new sub-floor. As far as I know, my mother's only hired contractors twice, and each time her homeowner's insurance covered the repairs.

On the other hand, our living in a building like this is definitely a good thing. We have so many projects under way right now that our apartment looks like a war room. (And we took such care to decorate it when we moved in a few months ago!) We'd be totally lost if we had a lawn to mow, or a furnace to fix--or, say, a wedding to plan.

Fortunately, we still have a few months before any real decisions need to be made on that score, and S.'s mother, who's already done this twice, is itching to do it again. She's an exceptionally talented visual artist, has great taste, and is a wonderful, wonderful mother-in-law, so in all likelihood we'll give her free reign to do as she pleases. There are a few things we'd like to decide for ourselves--mostly regarding the ceremony--but otherwise wedding planning just isn't something that interests either of us.

I actually met S.'s parents for the first time at his eldest sister's wedding, and there's a really funny story connected with that. But later...

Posted by Ginger at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just witnessed two raccoons mating outside my apartment window. It looked--and sounded--like rape. I'd like to think that if there is a creator, the human female sex drive is a show of mercy.

Posted by Ginger at 04:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s
He laughed like an irresponsible foetus."
He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. --T.S. Eliot, Mr. Apollinax

Saturday afternoon we went to a Poetry Society of NH reading and came home with this:

Posted by Ginger at 02:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)