Postcards from the Imagination

Or Four Things I Wish I'd Figured Out Sooner:

Political action is not an all or nothing proposition.
Signing a petition or attending a rally does not mean you have to become a full-time activist. It means giving a few minutes or hours of your time to solidarity with your fellow humans. The success of any political action is determined not by the number of activists taking part, but by the number of non-activists participating.

Action does not equal belief.
Most political action has some objective, and that objective is what's most important. Attending a rally doesn't mean I agree with the organizers and/or speakers across the board. In fact, one usually finds a broad spectrum of beliefs among any large group of liberals. Diversity is good, and should be celebrated rather than viewed as a hindrance to specific collective actions.

Do I contradict myself? I am large. I contain multitudes.
Unless you're a celebrity, no one's keeping track of your opinions. Taking political action today based on the best information you have doesn't mean you can't change your mind tomorrow. Unlike the President, none of us is going to single-handedly change the course of history. Moreover, the idea that any of us can simply 'do nothing' is a myth. As long as no one complains, our leaders will continue to do as they see fit, which often means operating in their own best interests. To their ears, silence implies approval.

It doesn't matter what you wear.
The notion that only hippies, punks, and other outsiders attend political rallies belongs to a bygone era. Today one is more likely to run into suburban grandmothers than anarchists. In fact, the seniors often outnumber the twenty- and thirty-somethings by a lot. Shame on us! Generally speaking, there's no right or wrong way to protest. Most of the time people are just grateful you showed up.

------------------

There was a time in my own life when I thought I needed to have it all figured out before I said or did anything. Then I realized that world wasn't going to slow down while I caught up. Was I massively intimidated the first time I boarded a bus to protest the Iraq War in Washington? Yes I was. It was a rash decision and I didn't know a single soul on the trip. But as it turned out it was one of the most moving experiences of my life.  Seth and I were talking about some of these issues in relation to tomorrow's boycott and so I thought now would be as good a time as any to post my thoughts.

Posted by Ginger at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Though I believe in the need for meaningful immigration laws, I also believe that the current debate has been distorted by racism and bigotry on the Right. Immigration is not this country's most pressing issue. It's being used by conservatives to garner support among those who fear brown people in the lead-up to the mid-term elections. In the early 20th century, it was my Irish ancestors. In the middle of the century, it was my German immigrant family (which is why my name is Heatter and not Hütter). Therefore, I whole-heartedly support this effort to press upon the American consciousness the importance of our immigrant brothers and sisters.

There is a nationwide general strike planned for May 1, 2006 to protest anti-immigration legislation. Organizers are asking people to wear a white T-shirt and attend one of the rallies, strikes, protests, or vigils in their area. For more information, including a list of local May 1st actions visit nohr4437.org.

Boston College students are planning an assembly in O'Neill Plaza at 11:30. From there they will travel to Harvard Yard for a rally and student walk-out event. At 2:30 pm the entire Student May Day Coalition will march to the State House. At 3:30 they will join the Boston May Day Coalition for a rally at Boston Common.

News items:

Nashua Telegraph: Protest Will Be Felt in Nashua (New Hampshire)
The arresting aroma of rice, chicken and fried plantains won’t emanate from the small kitchen of Rincon Colombiano on Monday. For that matter, the clicking of computer keyboards at Main Travel Agency and the jingle of coins at the city’s Hispanic groceries will not be heard that day. Hispanics who own businesses in Nashua intend to shut down tomorrow, joining thousands others across America in what many have labeled “A Day Without Immigrants.”

CBS/AP: Preparing For Immigration Protests
Preparations are being made across America for massive demonstrations and boycotts planned for Monday to protest strict immigration legislation passed by the House of Representatives...The California State Senate voted Friday to endorse the planned boycott of schools, jobs and stores by a 24-to-13 margin that split along party lines. The State Senate approved a resolution that calls the one-day protest the "Great American Boycott 2006"...

Reuters: May 1 Immigrant Boycott Aims to "Close" U.S. Cities
Pro-immigration activists say a national boycott and marches planned for May 1 will flood America's streets with millions of Latinos to demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and shake the ground under Congress as it debates reform.Such a massive turnout could make for the largest protests since the civil rights era of the 1960s...

CNN: Mexican lawmakers support U.S. immigration protest
Mexican lawmakers issued a declaration of support for immigrant protests planned in the United States on Monday and said they will send a delegation to Los Angeles to show their solidarity.

Posted by Ginger at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In a nutshell, Net Neutrality prevents big telecom companies from deciding which websites open faster and run better on your computer. Without it your internet service provider could give preferential treatment to websites which are either affiliated with their corporations or pay for dominant placing. Maybe the Poetry Foundation could afford to pay for 'fast-lane' access, but The New Hampshire Review and other independent web publications most certainly could not. And the same is true for independent book publishers, political organizations, artists.
 
Yesterday my Congressman, as a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, voted to gut Net Neutrality. Shame on you Rep. Bass! Next week the vote is expected to go the full House, and MoveOn.org is urging all of us to 1) Sign this petition; and 2) Call Congress today. Tell them you oppose any telecom law that does not include the "Markey Amendment" protecting Net Neutrality.

Addendum: I just placed my call to Congress. I told Rep. Bass's staff that as the editor and publisher of an indepdenent online literary magazine called The New Hampshire Review, I was extremely disappointed that he voted against Net Neutrality. I said the Internet's level playing field is what makes small publications like TNHR possible, and I urged the Congressman to vote 'yes' on the Markey Amendment. I put the same in a letter to the editor of my local newspaper.

How would the gutting of Network Neutrality affect you?

(from SaveTheInternet.com)

• Google users—Another search engine could pay dominant Internet providers like AT&T to guarantee the competing search engine opens faster than Google on your computer.
• Innovators with the "next big idea"—Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay Internet providers for dominant placing on the Web. The little guy will be left in the "slow lane" with inferior Internet service, unable to compete.
• Ipod listeners—A company like Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service that it owned.
• Political groups—Political organizing could be slowed by a handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay "protection money" for their websites and online features to work correctly.
• Nonprofits—A charity's website could open at snail-speed, and online contributions could grind to a halt, if nonprofits can't pay dominant Internet providers for access to "the fast lane" of Internet service.
• Online purchasers—Companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their online sales process faster than competitors with lower prices—distorting your choice as a consumer.
• Small businesses and tele-commuters—When Internet companies like AT&T favor their own services, you won't be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, Internet phone calls, and software that connects your home computer to your office.
• Parents and retirees—Your choices as a consumer could be controlled by your Internet provider, steering you to their preferred services for online banking, health care information, sending photos, planning vacations, etc.
• Bloggers—Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips—silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.
  

Blocking Innovation

Corporate control of the Web would reduce your choices and stifle the spread of innovative and independent ideas that we've come to expect online. It would throw the digital revolution into reverse. Internet gatekeepers are already discriminating against Web sites and services they don't like:

• In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.

 

• In 2005, Canada's telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.

 

• Shaw, a major Canadian cable TV company, is charging an extra $10 a month to subscribers who want to use a competing Internet telephone service.

 

• In April, Time Warner's AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com -- an advocacy campaign opposing the company's pay-to-send e-mail scheme.

This is just the beginning. Cable and telco giants want to eliminate the Internet's open road in favor of a tollway that protects their status quo while stifling new ideas and innovation. If they get their way, they'll shut down the free flow of information and dictate how you use the Internet.

Posted by Ginger at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I needed to get something (anything!) written quickly in order to meet my two-poems-per-week quota. Click below for the exercise itself:

The evening smarts like a wet towel on skin—
     the mockingbird in her cage above my desk
doing the Charleston, kicking up feathers
     that smell like seed, belting a cherry tune.
Ethel Waters you called her, and called her
     wrought-iron cage the Speakeasy. Only she isn't
a mockingbird at all. I don't know what kind of
     bird she is. I know the stars are doing their
thing again now that the clouds have shoved off.
     Sky-bling someone called them because
the season for planetarium hopping had passed.
     How do you spell w-a-t-e-r-l-o-g-g-e-d?
the boy asked me, as though I were the dumbest
     contestant in life's quiz show. The foyer was
long as a mouse hole, and I folded it up like
     an origami bird—Miss Two-Step with an extra
foot just for laughs.
                              When Ethel falls off her perch
it will rain diamonds for weeks. The bars will turn
     licorice. The world will begin to wobble. I'll know
you by the phrases you never use in conversation.
     Sic transit gloria mundi. Ethel crooning from
the other side. The feathers in your headdress flying
     back to their resurrected birds.

-------------------------------

By Jim Simmerman. Collected in The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises by Poets Who Teach. Eds. Robin Behn and Chase Twichell. NY: Harper Perennial, 1992.

1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia.
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you've never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of 'talk' you've actually heard (possibly in dialect and/or which you don't understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: "the (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun)..."
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he/she could not do in real life.
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a nonhuman object say or do something human.
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that echoes an image from earlier in the poem.

Posted by Ginger at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Do you buy books online, use Google, or download to an Ipod? These activities will be hurt if Congress passes a radical law that gives giant corporations more control over the Internet. Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. Amazon.com doesn't have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer. Politicians don't think we are paying attention to this issue. Many of them take campaign checks from big telecom companies and are on the verge of selling out to people like AT&T's CEO, who openly says, "The internet can't be free." The free and open Internet is under seige--can you sign this petition letting your member of Congress know you support preserving Network Neutrality? Click here: http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet. A list of all the ways you might be affected by Net Neutrality is located on the bottom of this link: http://civic.moveon.org/alerts/savetheinternet.html. Thanks!

Posted by Ginger at 01:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just can't cut a freakin' break, and it this point it's so absurd that mad laughter seems the only appropriate response. The latest: I'll probably have to move again. Staying in this apartment, or in New Hampshire past the end of May will quite likely not be an option. And what options do exist aren't pretty. Is it any wonder I've not been able to write a decent poem in weeks? On some level, there's no need. Ms. Manguso's already said what I'm feeling...

Asking for More

I am not asking to suffer less.
I hope to be nearly crucified.
To live because I don't want to.

That hope, that sweet agent—
My best work is its work.
The horse I ride into Hell is my best horse
And bears its name.
So, friends, drink your cocktails and wear your hats.
Thank you for leaving me this whole world to go mad in.

I am not asking for mercy. I am asking for more.
I don't mind when no mercy comes
Or when it comes in the form of my mad self
Running at me. I am not asking for mercy.

(from Siste Viator)

Putting my critic's hat on for a moment, this poem reminds me of my favorite Eastern European writers — Nina Cassian, Wislawa Szymborska, Milan Kundera. It's got that same brash hardness to it. That same refusal behave appropriately. That same unequivocal syntax. I love it.

Posted by Ginger at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Begging your pardon for the me-ism of the first two items...

• My contributor's copy of American Literary Review arrived (!) and it was every bit as thrilling as I'd expected it to be.
• A poem written by Seth and dedicated to yours truly appears in AGNI 63.
• Andrew mister is a genius. Seriously. See "Liner Notes" in The Canary 5. He makes knocking the reader on her ass look easy. I've been toting this issue around in my bag to read whenever I have a few spare minutes. IMHO, a major flaw in Tony Hoagland's recent Poetry essay is that he's never seen an issue of The Canary.
• The 1st issue of PRACTICE: NEW WRITING + ART arrived in today's mail and looks very exciting. I'll have more to say as I get further into the issue, but my first impression is extremely positive. I'd describe it as being both experimental AND inviting—i.e. none of that chronic standoffishness one so often encounters in experimental projects. Rather the journal is organized in such a way as to offer readers a conscious and refreshing welcome. Don't let the bare bones website put you off. The journal itself is beautifully constructed, and printed by a company which won the award for "Most Environmentally Friendly Printer in Canada" in 2006.

Posted by Ginger at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A Secret Service officer covers the mouth of protester Wenyi Wang.
(Photo: AP) Full story here.

Posted by Ginger at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

She's hundreds of miles away now, and to say I miss her is a pale approximation...

Posted by Ginger at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My weekend with the girl was exhausting but good. I don't have the energy left for more than a basic run down...

Thursday: Drove down to NJ & picked J. up at my mother's house. The round-trip took about 10 hours, and we arrived in NH at 11:30 pm.

Friday: Searched high & low for a Tamagotchi Version 3. No dice. Fortunately, we managed to find one last copy of Tamagotchi Corner Shop for Nintendo DS. J. was thrilled. Also, swimming and dinner at one of her favorite restaurants.

Saturday: Horseback riding, ice cream, more swimming, pizza party for two.

Sunday: You know your child is growing up when she wakes at 6:00 am on Easter morning, sees what the Easter Bunny left, but decides let you sleep until 8:00 without touching anything. As it turned out I woke up at 7:30 and was completely surprised to see her passing the time so patiently. Later we went to a movie—The Wild—and did some more swimming.

Monday: Drove J. back to NJ, arrived home at around 9:30 pm. Crashed.

Posted by Ginger at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

...from MoveOn.org

You may have seen reports in the news that the Bush administration may be planning a nuclear attack against Iran. This is alarming. A strong statement of opposition from the American public before that idea becomes credible is important. Please sign MoveOn.org's petition against nuclear attack and then alert your friends, family and colleagues by asking them to sign the petition.

http://political.moveon.org/dontnukeiran/

Posted by Ginger at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To everyone who's been listening to me thrash around in the deep end. Things are improving. I'm headed out of town again—down to NJ to pick up my daughter and bring her back for the Easter break. Yes, I'm a Mommy-blogger too, in my own way. Meet Jacinda. She's the spitting image of her father, including the Manic Panic hair, but there's a dash of me in the there too—mostly, I think, the intensity with which she experiences life. For better or worse, I passed that on to her. No solid plans for the weekend. Just playing it by ear and enjoying our time together.

Posted by Ginger at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The summer job fell through. There's still a chance, but it would only be part-time. We'll see.

I'm exhausted, but I think there's a light at the end of this one. Soon.

Aside: My ALR contributor's copies apparently got lost in the mail, but they're sending another set out today. It will be nice to see my work in print for the first time. I got lucky and within six weeks of taking the plunge had my first acceptance. But since then nothing. Several nice notes, and one acceptance for a poem I'd already withdrawn, but that's it. This, however, is something I can take in stride. I'm more confident in the poems I've been sending out than I ever was about the twice-accepted piece, so I really believe it's just a matter of finding the right places for them.

Posted by Ginger at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...of the poem I was supposed to write for tomorrow's workshop. This week's poem was supposed to take the form of a letter.

*snip*

Posted by Ginger at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this.  I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. YOU HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough for this. I'm just not strong enough.

__________________

To accept and move on is one thing, maybe even a harder thing. But this isn't that. This is a holding pattern. Wait & see. I'm not making any sense, but I can't make sense without saying too much. I can say that I received a poetry rejection in the mail today and was handed it by the last person in the world I'd want to take such a thing from.

Posted by Ginger at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I'm reading Sarah Manguso's Siste Viator. You NEED to get your hands on this book.

Kitty in the Snow

Meanwhile I fuck this sculpture
In my mind until it melts, then stop.
Mmm, cold.
At the party I talk to everyone's honey
And sip poison and then go home,
Get shitfaced, and get it on with myself.
I'm so good, I give it to myself every bad way I know.
I whisper in my ear as I come:
Sarah Manguso, you're a damn fine lover.
Maybe someday we can be together, too.

Posted by Ginger at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

1:51 a.m. and all's hell. Every last one of my nerve endings is lit up like the Fourth of July. I have an appointment with a therapist in the morning, but the child in the next apartment is screaming its little head off, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to join him/her. We could banshee together until the sun came up, then nap until it went back down.

Posted by Ginger at 01:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGES

Nauset Beach, Orleans

Wave crashing, Nauset Beach

Nauset Beach, long view

Rock Harbor, Orleans

Rock Harbor

I don't frankly know what this is, but looking at it I experience deja vu. I thought maybe it was a petrified dolphin carcass, but there's writing on it. Very odd. Rock Harbor. [Update 4/11: With Stuart's guidance I learned that the letters—"CCSN"—stand for "Cape Cod Stranding Network" and this is indeed a dolphin.]

Nauset Light, from a distance

Nauset Light Beach, Eastham

Nauset Light Beach

Three Sisters Lighthouses, Eastham

The Middle Sister

First Encounter Beach, Eastham

Self at First Encounter

Spohr Gardens, Falmouth
Jordan kindly recommended this place. Unfortunately, the time for daffodils is not yet. Spring takes it sweet time up here.

More Spohr Gardens

Nantucket Sound, Falmouth

Nantucket Sound

Another view

Last one

Posted by Ginger at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

And so I'm going to spend the weekend on the Cape, near Rock Harbor taking in the chill, salt air.

Rock Harbor

The wind was high—it gave to your
hair a lift in equal parts gradual,
steep, disarming—

                                I love a storm,
and said so; by I have always
loved better the wreckage after,

I did not mean instead of, but
a preference.
                    To the air, an edge

anyone would call arctic—isn't
that why we left it nameless? To
your face, a look I'd admired before

in the bodies of those who seem
not so much indifferent as made
ignorant, or stunned as if by

sudden luck, or else repentant and
in payment, somehow, for what
all price falls like an irrelevance,

a stole, an expensive sail in a
calm away from. Sex
as a space available where neither

loss nor regret figures—imagine
that.
        Or not having, finally, to take

anything away—in the form of
photographs of the mostly ice
that the harbor's water, the shore

past that, the street after had
become; or as words like those
that came to me: green, kind of,

lit almost, but as if from within
in places, a spill but
an arrested one, less force than

the idea of it, block and edge like
the chance for pattern, but
spent now or only, from the very

start, false
                 —false and singing.
The wind was high; it exaggerated

what you were already, a man
returning toward shelter he can't
see yet, but believes just ahead

exists, the sort of man for whom
to doubt at all is treason. By
not unfaithful, I understood I

could mean both things: I'd do
nothing I'd promised not to—
Also, there is nothing I'll forget.

                                — Carl Phillips

Posted by Ginger at 01:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Had to run to the store earlier. Main St. was littered with happy couples on their way to and from dinner. The pounding heart came back, the sweaty palms, the knotty throat. [Resisting the urge to say what I really want to right here.] I can't take sitting in this apartment alone and upset anymore, so I made plans to get away for a few days. I'm leaving tomorrow morning, bringing some books, hoping to write. I probably won't have an internet connection until I get back. I wish I could leave evaporate tonight.

Posted by Ginger at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If Congressional Republicans can act like a bunch of smug kindergarteners, why the fuck should I hold my tongue. To wit, "[Congresswoman Cynthia] McKinney's apology came after an eventful day in which two witnesses to the incident were subpoenaed by the grand jury and Gainer for the first time pubicly defended the officer involved. It was not clear which, if any, of her colleagues had urged McKinney to make the statement she did.

Republicans initially responded by advancing legislation to commend the Capitol police for their professionalism. Several GOP lawmakers sported pins expressing their support for the police."

Full story.

Uniters not dividers, eh? And certainly not racist. If you want to get yourself even more worked up, go visit Slant Truth to see how Michelle Malkin's been behaving badly on this one.

Posted by Ginger at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

'Despicable' was how someone at AWP characterized blogging, no? Well, kick despicable up a few notches and you've got Postcards from the Imagination. For better or worse, my blog is a kind of diary—the diary of someone whose intellectual life matters to her as much as her emotional life, but a diary nonetheless. I've kept an actual diary only sporadically, entering anecdotes here and there or using it as an outlet when I've been upset. But it's never been satisfying enough to sustain my interest. It's like thinking on paper as opposed to speaking, which is what I do in this space.

I started the blog fourteen months ago because I was going through extended bout of writer's block. I thought that if I gave myself a space to write where there were no rules, but neither was I merely talking to myself, maybe the poetry would start to happen. And it has! It certainly has. Slowly at first, but over the past six months I've written a chapbook's worth of more or less finished poems. I don't know exactly why it has worked, but I suspect it may have less to do with anything *I've* written here, than with all the little charges I've gotten from my blogroll.

In any event, NO RULES was the mandate going in and it still is today. That doesn't mean I don't edit my posts or worry over grammar. I do. But the content is a free-for-all — poem drafts next to internet quizzes next to political action alerts next to autobiography. In terms of intellectual heft, literary brilliance, and even pure entertainment there are better bloggers out there. All I can say is thank heavens someone's using the internet responsibly! I, however, have very little desire to be competitive in this arena. My personal achievement gene gets all the work-out it needs striving for good grades, good poems, and a good magazine.

As to my lack of reserve, it's a risk and I know that. I have a theory that if we show ourselves as weak, fallible, silly, and downright limited more often, each of us might feel less insecure. Instead of having to imagine that other people's lives are as complicated and dizzying as our own we'd know.

I'll tell you a little anecdote about how this really hit home for me several years ago. I was standing in line at K-mart with my heart breaking over some relationship issue. Now, you'll see from my profile pic that I inherited 'pretty' from my mother, and what's more I was younger and thinner then. On line in front of me was a couple that few people would call photogenic, but they were as tender and affectionate toward on another as two people could possibly be. To my left, on the other hand, were racks full of women's magazines hawking physical beauty as the key to happiness. I realized then, quite viscerally, that if people could mistake me for being luckier in love because of my face, I was probably making a similar mistake with regard to other people all the time. The universe doesn't perfect itself for anyone just because they happen to have won a Pulitzer or been blessed with a trust fund or have boatloads of personal charm.

And while all of us know this is true, it's quite another thing to feel it.

I can't help but wonder if the reserve we cultivate publicly—a reserve that may in fact be necessary sometimes—doesn't have the unintended consequence of making us feel terribly singular in our imperfections. "To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet," is how Eliot put it, letting slip a reality of which Prufrock himself was unaware. That it's all faces. No one is the genuine article.

And while I don't believe we'd be better off letting it all hang out all the time—sometimes we need to pull back in order to make room for others—it might not hurt to let our guards down more often—to let our warts, and our weakness, and our limitations show. That's my theory at least. And it's the guiding philosophy behind this blog.

Posted by Ginger at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I just had a nice long chat with a very kind soul, and I feel much sturdier now. I'm immensely grateful for that.

Posted by Ginger at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ANGRY too.

Posted by Ginger at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

*snip*

Posted by Ginger at 08:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your ex calling to ask if you have any plans for your daughter this summer (who lives with him hundreds of miles away, and thank god because she's much better off there than here right now), and trying to hold it together the best you can, and not holding it together well at all, and stammering down the line, "I'm going through a really rough time this week, can I call you back?"

Posted by Ginger at 07:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm in the middle of god-forsaken nowhere and COMPLETELY alone. Not metaphorically, but really alone.  As in I've moved around so much I don't know anybody anymore, and my fiance has moved out of the apartment. So expect lots of rambling. Talking to my blog at least helps me breathe. And yes, I'm probably embarrassing myself, and no, I don't care. And if this is making anyone uncomfortable just stop reading. If I had someplace else to go I would. I'd call someone or go stay at a friend's house. But I'm just not close enough with anyone for that. One needs people who are really close, or else it's just awkward for everyone. And who wants to throw awkward on top of miserable?

Posted by Ginger at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I hate these assignments. This week we were supposed to research an object's social history and write about it, using Robert Pinsky's Shirt as an example. I suck at writing these 'topical' poems.

*snip*

Posted by Ginger at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the mail the other day: a review copy of Jay Hopler's Green Squall, winner of the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, selected by Louise Glück. For those of you in the Boston/Cambridge area, Glück will be reading tomorrow evening at Harvard Hillel. Info here.

Anniversary

I said you could snuggle. That doesn't mean
your cold feet all over my dick.

Someone should teach you how to act in bed.
What I think is you should
keep your extremities to yourself.

Look what you did—
you made the cat move.

But I didn't want your hand there.
I wanted your hand here.

You should pay attention to my feet.
You should picture them
the next time you see a hot fifteen year old.
Because there's a lot more where those feet come from.

                                          — from Meadowlands (Ecco, 1996)

Posted by Ginger at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think the factory across the river may finally be shutting down. It's been quiet an awful lot lately, and I don't see any lights on in the windows. Nevermind me. I'm talking to myself.

Posted by Ginger at 06:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've just added audio recordings of Phil Crippen's poems to Issue 2.

Posted by Ginger at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the rejections I received yesterday—a very spare one-liner—came with a contest flyer enclosed. For a fee, I could enter to win publication and a big ol' wad of cash! Umn...the editors just rejected my work. Wouldn't I have a better shot at the Powerball jackpot? To be fair, the entry fee includes a subscription to the magazine—but why not offer the contest as a perk to new or renewing subscribers rather than sell it as a contest first? I don't mind being asked to subscribe to a journal where I've submitted work.

Posted by Ginger at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the last sixteen of my thirty years I've moved nine times. Every 1.78 years, or 21 months on average.

Addendum: So I flip over the latest issue of Poetry and see the following on the back cover—"It was easy for Robert Frost to say that 'poetry is what is lost in translation.' The great poet did not move much, was privy to what seemed to him genuine American language and experience, and did not need to see beyond home." Aleksandar Hemon

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

*snip*

Posted by Ginger at 04:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)