XOXOXO

It's Friday afternoon  :)  I still have to post something to this blog, but I'm on it with a sonnet:
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From Clearances 5

By Seamus Heaney

The cool that came off sheets just off the line
Made me think that damp must still be in them
But when I took my corners of the linen
And pulled against her, first straight down the hem
And then diagonally, then flapped and shook
The fabric like a sail in a cross-wind,
They made a dried-out undulating thwack.
So we'd stretch and fold and end up hand to hand
For a split second as if nothing had happened
For nothing had that had not always happened
Beforehand, day by day, just touch and go,
Coming close again by holding back
In moves where I was x and she was o
Inscribed in sheets she'd sewn from ripped-out flour sacks.

Culturally clueless

The first poem in "Seriously Funny" is by Frank O'Hara, and it contains an allusion that was new to me when I first read it earlier this week.

Now here is what happens every time I run into stuff that's new to me:  I make a mental note to myself that I must look it up, which of course I never can do right away, because I must leave for class or something---I am on my way to somewhere almost all of the time, that is just how my life is---and then I forget all about the mental note before actually getting to it.

And here's the second half of the story---and this also happens to me amazingly often---this morning I came across the exact same allusion (in this case, a name) in a completely unrelated context (in this case, in this article on Poetry News), upon which I finally looked it up.

That's why I spent some time this afternoon researching Lana Turner on the internet.

Here's the poem in question:
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Poem

By Frank O'Hara

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to a lot of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Quick question

Here are two lines of poetry in Urdu, and I'm linking every single word in both lines to its entry in a standard Urdu-English dictionary:

  tum mire paas hote ho goyaa
  jab ko'ii duusraa nahiiN hotaa

My question:  Does that make the lines intelligible to someone who doesn't speak Urdu?

The lines are famous btw  :)  they are by Maumin KhaaN "Maumin" ... here is AKhtarii Baa'ii singing a different famous Ghazal of Maumin.

Seriously Funny

Arrived in today's mail:  poetry anthology "Seriously Funny", edited by Barbara Hamby (the friend from whom I heard about the book studied with Barbara Hamby) and David Kirby.  I'm obviously spending my afternoon reading the book, and I'm loving it  :)  so for my blog today,  I'll just post a poem from this book (and then go back to reading):

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Dream Song 4

By John Berryman

Filling her compact & delicious body

with chicken paprika, she glanced at me

twice.

Fainting with interest, I hungered back

and only the fact of her husband & four other people

kept me from springing on her

or falling at her little feet and crying

'You are the hottest one for years of night

Henry's dazed eyes 

have enjoyed, Brilliance.'  I advanced upon

(despairing) my spumoni.---Sir Bones:  is stuffed,

 de world, wif feeding girls.

---Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes

downcast ...  The slob beside her       feasts ...  What wonders is

she sitting on, over there?  

The restaurant buzzes.  She might as well be on Mars.

Where did it all go wrong?  There ought to be a law against Henry.

---Mr. Bones:  there is.

Almost 200 speeches

For those of us who are still looking for a speech for next week's homework, here are videos of Nobel lectures.  The texts of the lectures are posted as well (so we can easily get exact quotes).  The lectures are all long, but that's probably a good thing, because the paper has to be long too ...

Physics
Chemistry
Physiology or Medicine
Literature
Peace
Economics

I hope everybody has fun writing this thing.  I have never in my life liked writing such long papers  :(

On the road

I have to get on the highway in fifteen minutes, I'm driving to Ann Arbor to pick up my daughter for the weekend  :)  So today, I'm just posting another poem by Jim (my teacher at the Workshop):
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Orbit Obit

By James Galvin

From this far out in the orbit, everything
Is infinitesimal, and very clear,
Like the little trigger part of your ear
With a wisp of blond slacked behind it.

From this far out in the orbit, nothing
Is big or vague, like church, but the line in the sand
Keeps moving.  From this far out in the orbit your eyes
Are quatrocento islands of towers all

Atilt, where all the women go blind from making lace,
And all the men are fishermen who mend
Their nets each sunset, and sooner or later are lost at sea.
From this far out the Hemlock Society

Writes me a letter in which they offer to help
Me kill myself for a small contribution.
The line in the sand has passed me by.
From this far out in the orbit the tip of your tongue,

The white hush of your hip, your palm proffered to be licked,
The event horizon of your lower lip,
All good places to start and end,
Since no one ever mentioned going home.

Taking stock

Okay, after the Workshop announced next year's summer classes yesterday, I got thinking about my application, for which I need a manuscript of 10 to 12 new poems, postmark deadline March 1.  And March 1 next year is a Friday, and I don't always have time on days that aren't a Wednesday, so for me the postmark deadline is really February 27 ...  At any rate, I took inventory of what I have written this year so far, and I immediately became depressed:  As of today I have only one new poem that I could possibly use.  Other than that, I have one amazingly lame first draft for a second poem, one prose sketch for a third poem, one vague idea of a fourth poem, and nothing at all for the rest of my manuscript (except, of course, a solid wish to write more poetry).

In 2012, I ended up revising the last four poems of my manuscript during the late morning and the early afternoon of Wednesday, February 28, and I felt like a complete idiot when I mailed the manuscript later that same day.  Of course, I did feel blessed when, in spite of having been so irresponsible, I still got in, but it also made me think again that the poems would have been a lot better if I had worked a little more on them.

So this year I really, really want to work all year on my manuscript.

I want to have 15 to 20 good first drafts by the beginning of the Christmas break.

And I want to spend two months revising after that.