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8 comments
I’m in a state of severe Thing deprivation, and it’s rough out here, missing them, going on two weeks of no Thing-ness in my life. So maybe that’s why I love this poem so, or maybe it’s because it is awesome. You decide.
Yeah, I know I haven’t finished the last essay yet. I know. It’s mulling around in my head, see, about which way to take it. And part of the reason is that I left California, flew home, and immediately went to a writing residency at Soapstone. I’ve been waiting for this residency for a year, and I knew that I’d be doing it with Friend One (it’s a cabin for two women writers, and you can note on your app if you’d like to be placed with someone else who is applying).
Going from my grandmother’s house–and all the sickness and strangeness there–to this lovely place has been a rare event. Part of the reason is that the movement, the transition itself, has allowed me to consider my family in ways that going straight back home and into my real life wouldn’t have. I feel more contemplative. And without the kids here, I have the time to write about it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: break up, loss, Montana, Poem of the Week, Soapstone, writing
10 comments
My grandmother is, at this moment, dying. I know she’s laying in the dark oak bed she and my grandfather shared for some fifty-odd years. The one she dusted, faithfully, every week with a kind of patience I have never had the patience for. In the language of medicine, it’s emphysema and congestive heart failure–due in large part to a 60-year smoking habit she always tried to kick, and whose effects she always tried to counteract with walking and exercise. In the language of family, it’s that her lungs can’t draw enough breath anymore, and she’s always cold, even in the crisp, bright summer of Bakersfield, California. My mom called today, said that it was hard for my grandmother to wake up this morning, that her body was cold.
3 comments
By way of introduction
for Matthew Zapruder Read the rest of this entry »
11 comments
Oregon Spring Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Friend One, James Kim, Oregon, poem, Rogue River
17 comments
So, a million years ago, when I started Terrible Mother, I included as part of the shenanigans, a poem of the week. This poem was something I’d find and post for readers to enjoy. Part of this is because I love poetry and I abhor the way people think poetry is just too esoteric and ineffable to be of use to them. Christian Wiman, the editor of Poetry magazine, said “Let us remember…that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we will be less apt to destroy both.”
I love that quote. I love it partially because Christian gives me an ulcer and he’s pretentious and egotistical. Friend One and I once snuck into a very exclusive party at the top of the Hilton in Atlanta one year by getting by Christian. He’s wrong a lot of times, and he’s kinda a jerk. But he’s smart and a really talented poet. And he’s right about this. I also love publishing a Poem of the Week because I’d like to think my poet friends will someday make some money*, even a smallish amount. Poetry is too important to lose. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: body bags, poetry, the War in Iraq, W.D. Snodgrass
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