Postcards from the Imagination

My daughter is up for the week, so I'll be back after the new year.

Posted by Ginger at 06:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The honors committee has approved my thesis application!

Posted by Ginger at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm not quite finished with the term yet, but very close. Losing my hard drive set me back by about a day. In the meantime, the English honors committee is currently in possesion of an expository statment from me which begins, "The guiding aesthetic I have in mind for this collection of poems is what some poets are calling the New Sincerity. The half-serious brainchild of poets Andrew Mister and Anthony Robinson, New Sincerity was introduced by Robinson on his blog in June of 2005." It may be the first time any of them have seen the word blog used in a prospectus, but I saw no reason to shy away from mentioning the very real conversations that got me thinking along these lines. And how could I when, after all, I met my future husband through an online poetry community? Besides, there was simply no way for me to talk about the aesthetic without acknowledging the poets who started the conversation in the first place.

Hmn, that sounds more defensive than I intended. I guess what I mean to say is that despite orange alerts, the George "Nixon" Bush administration, the rise of reality television, Ashlee-Paris-Britney-Jessica, Billy Collins's latest contribution to the "I too dislike it" school of poetry, and the high price of every-damn-thing, I kinda dig the 21st century so far.

Posted by Ginger at 01:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Still working.

Posted by Ginger at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Two courses down, three to go! My professors have already posted grades online for the two completed courses, and they're both A's.  Woo hoo! Of course, those were my two easiest classes: Studies in Poetry and Philosophy of the Person.

I have a biology exam today that will close the books on a third course, and then papers to finish over the weekend for Yeats and Henry James.

Time to go cram for bio...

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P.S. For the those of you who may have stopped by yesterday, and wondered what the heck was going on, TypePad was down and a problem on their end temporarily wiped out a few days' worth of posts.

Posted by Ginger at 06:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My files are gone for good. Thanks for commiserating, Elizabeth.

One Art
Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Posted by Ginger at 07:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm outraged that I haven't heard this story before. Where the hell is the media on this? An innocent man on death row should be prime time, no? Thanks to Kevin Andre Elliott for the heads up. Please help spread the word. The facts, from Wikipedia.com:

"Cory Maye (M-D-1982?-present) is a prisoner on death row in the U.S. state of Mississippi. He was convicted of the murder in the 2001 death of Prentiss police officer Ron W. Jones, during a drug raid. Maye pleaded not guilty at his trial, citing self-defense as the reason...

At 11 p.m. on the night of December 26, 2001, Jones accompanied a seven-member SWAT team from the Pearl River Basin Narcotics Task Force, a four-county police agency responsible for drug enforcement. He was not a member of the team, but had been invited along as he had passed along an confidential tip that large quantities of marijuana were being stored and sold in the apartment of Jamie Smith, who lived in the other half of the duplex. The officers had obtained search warrants for both apartments. Whether the warrants legally allowed for a no-knock entry is still not clear...

There is disagreement about what happened next. The officers then either served the warrant on Maye's half of the duplex, or entered what they thought was another door to Smith's in search of more contraband (later, prosecutors would say both were served simultaneously). Attorneys for Mississippi and Maye differ on whether the police clearly identified themselves. Maye, who was asleep at the time of the raid, retreated to his bedroom and readied a .380-caliber pistol. When Jones entered, Maye fired three times. Jones was wearing a bulletproof vest, but it did not cover the area where he was hit, and the injury proved fatal...

Maye had no criminal record, and wasn't the named target of a search warrant..."

Posted by Ginger at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Shortly after my last blog entry yesterday, my laptop had a meltdown. The screen went white-on-blue mumbo jumbo, and then the whole system shut down. When I tried to re-boot I got an error message that said, "Cannot find operating system." Of course, I'd not yet printed out my thesis app. Horrified I packed up the computer and drove over to the store where we purchased it just two months ago. Diagnosis: dead hard drive, data irretrievable. This includes my application materials: two page prospectus, three page annotated reading least, and ten poem writing sample. Also lost--all of my notes for the semester, all the poems I've written or attempted to write since September, my submissions spreadsheet, a chunk of the next issue of TNHR (not poems, which are stored on our server, but design work), drafts of final papers that are due this week, a bunch of email, and who knows what else.

And this is Finals Week.

If one more person asks, "But didn't you back it up?" I'm going to scream. I didn't think I needed to, what with the computer being less than three months old. Silly me.  According to the techie who looked at it, new hard drives fail all the time. There's something no one tells you when you buy a computer! The mega-chain will replace the drive free of charge for the manufacturer, but it's going to take three days, and we had to pay them $60 to re-install Windows.

There is a small chance not all is lost. Right now the melty little hard drive is at a little hole-in-the-wall computer repair place that Seth's had good luck with in the past. (The "Geek Squad," on the other hand, gave up right away.) In tech-speak, the drive won't "spin-up" but they're going to try swapping out the electronics to see if they can get it do so. If that works, they may be able to retrieve my documents. I should know something by the end of the day today.

Until then, limbo.

It gets better though. After dropping off the hard drive, Seth and I stop to purchase a flash drive so that nothing like this will ever happen again. While we're in the store I suggest pricing iPods, since that's what we'd like to get each other for Chrismakkuh. (Of course, we can't really afford them, but life is short, and the gift of music is a gift indeed.) As we're standing there, one of the employees walks up and asks us if we want to buy a black Nano that just came in through returns. Indecisive we say, "Not right now, thanks." But we're apparently out of the loop consumerism-wise, because fifteen minutes later when decide to take it, it's gone. Long gone, and can't be ordered. The sales guy looks at us like we're from Mars because we hadn't anticipated this. I'm sure Apple had no idea how popular this little gizmo would be, right (?) and they're not intentionally kept supply low in order to make it seem hot-and-hard-to-get, or anything...right(?) Effing capitalism!

Next stop: Tree shopping, in the hopes of ending the day on a high note. We stop at the Rotary Club tree sale (all proceeds go to charity) where we got our tree last year. Almost immediately we find one that we like. A minute later we realize we don't have enough cash in our wallets, and the Rotary Club doesn't take cards. As soon as we walk away from the tree, we hear a man behind us exclaim, "It's perfect! That's the one I want!" Which tree do you think he was talking about? Yeah, that's the one.

When we finally arrive home with another tree, there's a rejection waiting for me in the mailbox. Rejections are fine generally, but today I feel like I'm wearing a giant "Kick Me" sign.

And no, this is not the pilot for a sitcom. It's my life.

Posted by Ginger at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I'm turning in my thesis application to the honors committee today. They want a tentative title for the project, so I'm going with Attentions. Not flashy, but for a host of reasons it feels right—at least as right as naming any collection of as-yet-unwritten poems can feel. Back in the early days of this blog I had a favorite quote up in right margin: " I cannot / rest on what to call it. / Not generosity, or / a blindness, trust, brute / stupidity. Not the soul / distracted from its natural / prayer, which is attention," (Carl Phillips, "Parable"). So it's partly that. Partly the plain fact that 'paying attention' is what I intend to do while writing these poems. Partly, too, the way attention involves both the heart and the intellect—consideration and concentration, not one or the other. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I like it. (And a Library of Congress search for the title confirms no one's used it before.)

Posted by Ginger at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Case for Beauty
Carl Philips

Beauty, at least when it is referred to by that name—suffers the same treatment by too many contemporary poets (and students of poetry) as does authority in poetry. It gets dismissed as naive, or irrelevant, or somehow on the wrong side of the field on whose other side we are all assumed to have happily set up camp together. But to hold that assumption is to exercise the very sort of authority that the mysterious "they" hold suspect. It also suggests that beauty is monolithic, one-dimensional, and finally inorganic—without the capacity for evolution, without susceptibility to time.

It is easy enough to trace this attitude in terms of history, but in the end as uninteresting as is anything that's easy. Curious only; unseductive...

About beauty, as about all other versions of abstraction (which includes the abstraction of history), there is a general nervousness that I see as symptomatic of an ever-increasing unwillingness to think athletically—that is, without (as opposed to in concert with) the safer (easier) toeholds of the concrete. And that unwillingness looks sometimes sore in danger of becoming an inability, even as the merely vestigial must eventually disappear.

Equally on the rise: an unwillingness to be held accountable—to take responsibility, which is what authority requires; it forces the artist to take a stand and to reckon with such issues as intention, meaning, self, and their relationship to what Marianne Moore calls "the genuine." And since abstraction is generally conflated with authority—as, erroneously, the concrete is not—what hope for beauty?

The authority of a plum is different from that of, say, beauty, but no less complex.

There is also the general conviction about beauty that all has been said about it; in that respect, it apparently resembles light and shadow, the body (which is becoming more and more categorized as an abstraction itself, has anyone noticed?), water, and—in sudden flight—the dead: low, across it...The point about beauty is to see it. The point of the poem is not to say anything about beauty, but to enact the vision of it. As for statements, in a poem about beauty: that's precisely where, if it has been successfully enacted on the page, the vision's work begins.

As the philosopher once said, "Oh well—all's either lost or it is not," and returned to that from which he'd been distracted.

A star

A sky

A snowfield

* * *

The fish,

the vine—twisted,
bloomless—

whose ugliness gets
outvoted by its having
alone of its kind
survived

* * *

The victory that
knows to blush,

and the one that can't

* * *

Not as if fine distinctions mattered,
but because they do

Back home,
they baled the hay, they
roll it, here

* * *

Magdalene,
Magdalene—

in equal parts,

"The Craven"

"She-Who-Kisses-the-Bloody-Wounds"

* * *

One of those perhaps

silos through which by
day the smaller carrion-birds

pass,
wanting and unimpeded

This is my case for Beauty.

                                 —from The Coin of the Realm

Posted by Ginger at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I woke up this morning and decided to give my soul a chance to arrive before getting down to my other work. It never did.  Busy with end-of-semester stuff, it's been thirteen days since I've written any poetry. When I sat down to try this morning, I felt as though I'd never written a poem in my life. I know that's completely normal, but knowing only makes it slightly less frustrating. There's a lot down there to write, but somehow I can't untether myself from the superficial and sink. To be clear, it's not my ability to write next week or next month that concerns me. I miss it now. I miss being in the moment of a poem, out of space and time. I miss the exhilaration, the challenge, the beauty of it.

Postscript: The night before last I dreamt I was writing a review of someone else's work (no one real), and found myself writing "These poems offer a strong resistance to the tradition, as though she were trying to ungun the dead."

Posted by Ginger at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Today was supposed to be my last day of regular classes, but it's snowing so hard the streetlights are still on. Six to ten inches are expected by this afternoon. Yesterday, I made arrangements with my professors to stay home even if the university is open today (likely, as BC is primarily a residential school). Nothing is worth trekking down to Boston from NH in this kind of weather.  I still have a ton of work to do, including a paper that's due via email by one o'clock, but I get to do all of it at home in my comfy sweats! So, who else has snow? How much? Anyone else staying home today?

Posted by Ginger at 07:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Lots of interesting entries about, including Artichoke Heart, C. Dale Young, Charles Jensen, Anne Haines, Peter Pereira, Reb Livingston, and others. Here's mine...

Ten Years Ago
I live with my high school sweetheart in a basement apartment in northern NJ.  I'm exhausted most of the time, and don't do much during my off hours except watch television. I suppose this is normal. I work for a corporate insurance brokerage processing applications for an amateur sports insurance program. I hate my job, but it's better than waiting tables, selling shoes, or answering phones—all of which I've done recently.  I believe I'm being a responsible adult and making the best of my limited opportunities. I am about to become pregnant with my daughter, who will change my view of my life and its potential utterly.

Five Years Ago
My high school sweetheart and I have married, grown apart, and separated. I've become a different person after getting my GED and going to college.  I've just run out of money in Ithaca, NY and had to drop out of Cornell University, where I'd transferred after earning an associate's degree from County College of Morris. I've returned to NJ and moved in with my parents. I think my academic career is finished, and I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. My daughter is four years old, and I'm a single mother.  I worry that committing myself to a miserable, corporate career will make me a miserable parent. I'm writing poetry for the first time in years—for the sheer love of it—but I still think of it as a hobby, as something unconnected to my "real life."

One Year Ago
I've moved to New England and am a student at Boston College. My daughter is living with her father while I finish my education, and I miss her terribly. I'm suffering from severe, and largely untreated bi-polar depression. I'm not sure I want to live anymore. My schoolwork is suffering. My relationship is suffering. I can't write, and I feel like my life is coming apart at the seams. Things are going to get worse before they get better.

Today
I'm feeling as strong as I've ever felt—finishing up a very successful semester at Boston College, looking forward to having my daughter up over the break.  An anti-depressant a day keeps me healthy, and has none of the nasty side effects I'd once feared—that is, I'm still very much myself. I still experience a complete spectrum of emotions, and am more creative than ever, not less.  I've just received my first publication acceptance, and will begin working on a creative thesis project in January. The second issue of TNHR is due out in January, and I'm looking forward to that too. Poetry is my great passion, and I've finally carved out a space for it in my "real life." What 's more, I'm in love. Truly in love.

Posted by Ginger at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Hello, 50+ visitors who've been by here today. Whoever you are, I'm sorry for the silence. This is the last week of classes before finals begin, so I'm hunkered down with work.  But I'll be back again before you know it.

In the meantime, for your reading pleasure, here's one of the poems I'm writing on for one of my final papers. I'm sure you've read it before, but its good enough to read again and again...

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
he only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in the green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbirds must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

                        — Wallace Stevens

Posted by Ginger at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

from C. Dale, "This one involves googling your name and the word "needs". It generates hits and you jot down the first ten where [your name] needs."

Ginger Needs

Ginger needs your help, needs dunking, needs
     to ensure the individuals fulfilling the roles of test
designer and test manager were included in
     the review of the requirements.  Ginger needs
a family to help her forget her past, a home; Ginger
     needs well-drained, rich soil, and warm temperatures
to do well, large doses of wolfsbane to combat
     the werewolf effects, and fixes. Ginger needs to be
planted fairly shallow in a partially shaded area, old soil.

Posted by Ginger at 06:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)