Yusef Komunyakaa, from "The Autobiography of My Alter Ego." The American Poetry Review. Vol. 35/No. 6, November/December 2006.

Posted by Ginger at 07:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

And with a quivering lip he wound up the whole by adding, 'Poor Fanny! she would not have forgotten him so soon!'

'No,' replied Ann, in a low feeling voice. 'That, I can easily believe.'

'It was not in her nature. She doated [sic] on him.'

'It would not be the nature of any woman who truly loved.'

Captain Harville smiled, as much as to say, 'Do you claim that for your sex?'... 

'Granting your assertion that the world does all this so soon for men, (which, however, I do not think I shall grant) it does not apply to Benwick. He has not been forced upon any exertion. The peace turned him on shore at the very moment, and he has been living with us, in our little family-circle, ever since.'

'True,' said Anne, 'very true; I did not recollect; but what shall we say now, Captain Harville? If the change not be from outward circumstances, it must be from within; it must be nature, man's nature, which as done the business for Captain Benwick.'

'No, no, it is not man's nature. I will not allow it to be more man's nature than woman's to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.'

'Your feelings may be the strongest,' replied Anne, 'but the same spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the more tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer-lived; which explains my view of the nature of their attachments. Nay, it would be too hard upon you, if it were otherwise. You have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with. You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all quitted. Neither time, nor health, nor life, to be called your own. It would be too hard indeed' (with a faltering voice) 'if woman's feelings were to be added to all this.' 

'We shall never agree upon this question' --Captain Harville was beginning to say, when a slight noise called their attention to Captain Wentworth's hiterto perfectly quiet division of the room...

..."Well, Miss Elliot,' (lowering his voice) 'as I was saying, we shall never agree I suppose upon this point. No man and woman would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you, all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side of the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.'

'Perhaps I shall.--Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.'

'But how shall we prove any thing?'

'We never shall. We never can expect to prove any thing upon such a point. It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof. We each begin probably with a little bias towards our own sex, and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occured within our own circle; many of which circumstances (perhaps those very cases which strike us the most) may be precisely such as cannot be brought forward without betraying a confidence, or in some respect saying what should not be said.'

'Ah!' cried Captain Harville, in a tone of strong feeling, 'if I could but make you comprehend what a man suffers when he takes a last look at his wife and children, and watches the boat that he has sent them off in, as long as it is in sight, and then turns away and says, "God knows whether we shall ever meet again!" And then, if I could convey to you the glow of his soul when he does see them again; when, coming back after a twelvemonth's absence perhaps, and obliged to put into another port, he calculates how soon it be possible to get them there, pretending to deceive himself, and saying, "They cannot be here till such a day," but all the while hoping for them twelve hours sooner, and seeing them arrive at last, as if Heaven had given them wings, by many hours sooner still! If I could explain to you all this, and all that a man can bear and do, and glories to do for the sake of these treasures of his existence! I speak, you know, only of such men as have hearts!' pressing his own with emotion.

'Oh!' cried Anne eagerly, 'I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures. I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of every thing great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as--if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.'

She could not immediately have uttered another sentence; her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed.

Posted by Ginger at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scott Eric Kaufman is running an experiment on the speed of memes, the results of which will be announced at a "Meet the Bloggers" panel at MLA 2006. Help him out by linking to his post: http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2006/11/measuring_the_s.html, and pinging Technorati.

Posted by Ginger at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

from The Flowering of the Rod
by H.D.

I go where I love and where I am loved
into the snow,

I go to the things I love
with no thought of duty or pity,

I go where I belong, inexorably,
as the rain that has lain long

in the furrow. I have given
or would have given

life to the grain
but if it will not grow or ripen

with the rain of beauty,
the rain will return to the cloud.

The harvester sharpens his steel on the stone,
but this is not our field,

we have not sown this,
pitiless, pitiless, let us leave

the place-of-a-skull
to those who fashioned it.

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

Q: What percentage of American workers have jobs that pay at least $32,000 per year, and offer health insurance and a pension?

Click below for the answer.

Posted by Ginger at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That's right. The project is now out of my hands, and into those of my thesis readers. It's the first time I've ever ordered my poems, divided them into sections, created a table of contents. It was easier than I'd imagined; much easier than writing the damn things. 30 finished poems in about 25 weeks is an absurd pace. But I'm glad I did it. I had a whole post's worth of things I wanted to say about the process driving home from BC last night, but I should probably hold off until I have more time.

Posted by Ginger at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Barnes & Noble sent us their 147 pg. holiday catalog. Of those 147 pgs. exactly one page is devoted to poetry (pg. 14). That page is divided into seven boxes: (1) 1/4 pg. & (6) 1/8 pg. ads. Allen Ginsberg gets the 1/4 page space for his Collected Poems, 1947-1997, and B&N uses one of the 1/8 pg. boxes to advertise itself. Of the five boxes which remain, two go to David Lehman, for The Oxford Book of American Poetry & Best American Poetry 2006. Also featured: Mary Oliver's Thirst, Tom Lowenstein's Haiku Observatons, and actor Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Traveled: Unlocking the Poet Within.

Posted by Ginger at 05:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"I could try to create a massive cash-cow that I knew was crap in hopes of generating nutty sales, but then I'd be spending the majority of my energy on that -- and not on what I supposedly care about: the books I love and believe should be in print. The goal of the press."

Posted by Ginger at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as 'demeaning to women.'" (emphasis added, The Washington Post)

In other news...

The Marine Reserves' Toys for Tots program changes course and decides to accept donation of proselytizing Jesus doll. (CNN.com) [pictured here]

Sony laughs all the way to the bank as consumers turn violent in their quest for the new PS3. (also CNN.com)

Posted by Ginger at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

FUGUE tells me they'd like to publish a poem called "Soutien-Gorge" in their winter issue--the third from my thesis to be plucked up. And for the first time ever, I'm going to get paid for my work(!)

Posted by Ginger at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

E. E. Cummings

You scored 62 Demeanour, 68 Debauchery, 37 Traditionalism, and 95 Expression!

You are generally good-natured, but you have a dark side, and your dark side wants to party. You make your own rules and say what's on your mind. You love life, but you don't take shit from anyone. You have strong political opinions, but you probably think about sex more often than just about anything else. Your masterpiece is "Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond." (The Which Famous Poet Are You Test written by Torontop)

Posted by Ginger at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"According to the company's Web site, the button-activated, bearded Jesus, dressed in hand-sewn cloth outfits and sandals, recites Scripture such as "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." It has a $20 retail value."

Looks suspiciously like Billy Ray Cyrus, no? 

     

Posted by Ginger at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In more than a year and a half of blogging, I don't think I've ever regretted anything I've posted as much as yesterday's little freak-out. Though I wasn't conscious of it the time, I now realize that we were just days away from sending out 'Save the Date' cards for our wedding, and that probably had something to do with it. *Cringe* Just thank your lucky stars I'm not going post pictures of the make-up sex.

Speaking of nuptuials, Seth and I, much to my relief, have decided to call off the supersized mega-traditional wedding. It wasn't an easy decision, as we'd already booked a venue, caterer, and DJ--but our plans for two seperate ceremony sites had fallen through, and the whole thing was beginning to feel less than meaningful for both of us. For my part, I felt as though the marriage piece was being overwhelmed by the party planning, and I'd been largely tuning out. To Seth's credit, he realized how unhappy the whole thing was making me and told his parents we'd rather not go through with it.

Instead we're thinking about doing a very small, informal ceremony--immediate family & friends only--on this beach, at night, under so many stars you can barely see the spaces between them.

Afterwards, dinner in Provincetown.

Now this is something I can really get excited about: because rather than being the stars of some enormous pageant, we can simply be ourselves; because our exercising the right to marry in Massachusetts doesn't mean depriving someone else of that right; because the Cape's where we fell in love; because there's something truly transcendent about this spot; because we'll be able to return to it on anniversaries and it will be exactly as it was the night we were married; because if anything doesn't go off perfectly, it will only add to the charm; because we can put the whole thing together in less than a month; because maybe, just maybe, it will allow us to take a honeymoon that puts us back in Paris, where we were engaged, on our first day as husband and wife.

And that's just off the top of my head.

Posted by Ginger at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Larissa Szporluk's "Edgepeople," from Columbia: a journal of literature and art, Issue 43, 2006.  As before, no text yet, but if you happen to see it in a bookstore...

Posted by Ginger at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My nephew did this in art class. And he's only nine! If that sounds like bragging, trust me, I have nothing to brag about. This is all his own doing.

Posted by Ginger at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Ginger at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The Republican Party's decades-old grip on the state's congressional delegation crumbled under a nationwide Democratic wave yesterday. New Hampshire voters made Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes the state's members of the new majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Hodes's dramatic defeat of 12-year House veteran Charles Bass in the 2nd Congressional District paled in shock value compared to the upset win by anti-war political unknown Carol Shea-Porter over Jeb Bradley.

Not only did Shea-Porter become the first woman to represent New Hampshire in Washington, but she ensured that the state would have two Democratic U.S. House members for the first time since 1912." (Union Leader)

Posted by Ginger at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

UPDATE (11:18 pm): New Hampshire's other Congressional District has also been called for the Democratic challenger: Carol Shea-Porter! This is a huge surprise, as no one expected she had a chance of dislodging Republican incumbent Jeb Bradley. That's TWO new House seats out of New Hampshire!

UPDATE (10:26 pm): New Hampshire's 2nd Congressional District, my district, has just been called for Democrat Paul Hodes! He beat out the Republican incumbent Charlie Bass 53% to 45%.

UPDATE (10:04 pm): I made 466 get out the vote phone calls today, and now I'm holding my breath! 

POLLS ARE OPEN TODAY! I'm going to spend some time this morning making get out the vote phone calls from home. If you'd like to participate, check out MoveOn.org's Call for Change program. They have a very cool system set up online that allows anyone to spend five minutes or five hours calling progressive voters and reminding them to go to the polls.

IMPORTANT: If you're on the National Do Not Call Registry and have been receiving calls that sound as though they're coming from your local Democratic candidate, BEWARE!! These calls are coming from Republicans who are 'robo-dialing' voters--once, twice, even dozens of times per day (and night)! More here.

Project Vote Smart: voter registration info + detailed information on federal and state races in your district.

I think it's important for everyone to get out there and vote--even if you live in a place that leans heavily in one direction or another and think your vote doesn't count. After the 2004 election, I talked to a lot of Blue-staters who stayed home for just that reason. But imagine if they had voted. George Bush might have won the electoral but lost the popular vote. Imagine how different the past two years might have been if voters had made it clear to Mr. Bush that he did NOT have the support of the popular majority! So go record your conscience if nothing else.

This post will remain up top until Nov. 8th.

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

"Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs with minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign." --Paul Valéry, 1928.

Posted by Ginger at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)