Lord, I Have Loved Clouds!

it's earth day today. it's raining. everything in amherst looks very green and grey.

the earth day t-shirts hampshire's giving out today are a bit TOO green. like. the loudest shade of green you could find. i'm in the hc library reading and thinking and, evidently, writing in this blog.

i had free pizza in the prescott house office, as part of a very ill-attended earth day event. *sad* but the pizza was delicious. also i took stole a copy of GOOD magazine. it was the may/june 2008 issue, the 中国 issue, you see. entitled, "Don't Be Scared Of China (别 怕 中国)." pretty interesting, and from my brief skimming of the main article, they cover a fairly balanced account of modern-contemporary china, from everyone's favorite subject of chair mao to the very exciting chinese visual artists working today. on this latter note, i've discovered lin zhipeng from the central article in the magazine ("Ten Reasons Why China Matters To You") and am checking out his stuff - you should too. it's funny, sexy, and just the right kind of crazy.

anyway. back to 'real' reading. bought sandra cisneros' story collection Woman Hollering Creek this afternoon from amherst books, because i forgot to buy it from the school bookstore earlier in the semester. i've already read some of these stories, i think in high school, and now we're reading it in The Other America. i quite like the little story, "Eleven." here's the beginning:

What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don't. You open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. And you don't feel eleven at all. You feel like you're still ten. And you are--underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that's the part of you that's still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five. And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's okay. That's what I tell Mama when she's sad and needs to cry. Maybe she's feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That's how being eleven years old is.

i have to say, i was pretty tempted while i was in amherst books. tempted by the fresh-off-the-press english translation of 余华's (Yu Hua's) gargantuan 2005 novel called 兄弟 (Brothers). still have to finish reading yu hua's 活着 (To Live), which was turned into a movie in 1994 by zhang yimou. i was also tempted in amherst books by an english translation of 孽子 ('sons of sin' but english edition is Crystal Boys) by Pai Hsien-yung, a revolutionary text from taiwan, about young gay men living on the margins in taiwan. and then i noticed Ha Jin's recent memoir-as-writer extended-essay work The Writer as Migrant. the title alone is right up my alley. i flipped through that volume for a few minutes, catching mentions of nabokov, which reminded me of how much i want to read Speak, Memory and Pale Fire. turned around in the same section and found myself face to face with julio cortázar and his wildly experimental (but i hear, very entertaining at the same time) 'novel,' Hopscotch (Rayuela). ahhhh.

one wants to be immortal in bookstores. or, perhaps, to be of infinite disposable income. and then immortal.

**

i keep forgetting to post some olena kalytiak davis poems. and yet i have a whole book by her, from the amherst college library. so here's 2nd poem from that 1997 collection, And Her Soul Out of Nothing:

I'm Only Now Beginning To Answer Your Letter

Remind me of your affliction.

I'd like a chronological exhibit
of the disorders leading up to our
conversation, like your old driver's licenses
arranged in that one thin pocket of leather,
the phases of your hair, the splay
of your youth. Your current
eyes distorted by lenses, you're speaking clearly,
louder than the drugs prescribed.

What I want to know about is the frenzy.

Sure, I can picture you
on Christmas Eve needing Mass
to last as long as a bottle of wine, but
I don't get the religion.

Explain Jesus.

Talking with you was like opening an empty drawer.

Talking with you was like emptying an empty drawer.
My hands overflowing with garments out-dated, or never worn.
What do you call that thing a priest wears
around his neck? The scarf of a priest...

Explain how we're so immediately alive.

And how far can I carry the thought of you
when already the snow won't hold me.
Even rosaries get tired.

And you're not thinking me,
you're just imagining my dead sisters.

You say you want to feel
the words.

You just want to live in Boston
with the painter Martha McCollough.

Sure, I can imagine the thought
of an easel, the idea
of thick paint.

But I want you to explain it simply, clinically.

Because now that I've thought about it, what
doesn't begin with love and death and end
in loneliness?

I'm only now beginning to answer your letter:
Remind me of your affliction.

davis' humor reminds me somewhat of other funny depressive writers, e.g. louise glück in Meadowlands or parts of VIta Nova and "Prism" from Averno. though she reminds me more of mary ruefle, with the somewhat absurdist bent, yet kind of more straightforward, like an aimee mann song. i love these silly, sad lyric (in the broad sense)-makers. the funniest things in the world to me are things that have a deep desperation at heart. i need to read more dorothy parker.

& o what the hell. here are some more davis poems. maybe you deserve it. maybe you don't. (the following three pieces i've found online, before i got my hands on an actual book. i dunno which collections these poems may have ended up in...)

The Unbosoming

I have been a day boarder, Lord. I have preferred the
     table to the Bed.
I have proffered, Lord, and I have profited, Lord,
     but little, but not. I was Bored,
Lord, I was heavy, Lord. Heavy bored. Hopeless,
     Lord, hideous, Lord. Sexless.
I was in love, Lord, but not with You. The nine
     malic moulds, Lord.
The butcher, the baker, the under-taker. Lord, I was
     taken under. I Repeat
Myself, Lord. I re-peat myself as the way back, the
     way back to Myself,
Lord. I have trembled, Lord. His face, Lord, and Yours.
     I am unlovely, Lord, I Nam
Not precious, Lord. Spy better, Love, and You will see:
     I am nothing. I have Seen
How lovely, Lord, how lovely You are, Lord, but I refused
     to kneel. I Refuse
To knell Your loveliness. I refuse to kiss. And I refuse
     to tell. I am unwilling, Love.
I am unwell. Unkempt. My hideous loins, Love. My body,
     which is all Wrack
And screw, Love. All slack and crewel. At Your beck and
     call, Love, at His Beck
And call. Crestfallen, Love. Of the fallen breast.
     Un-clean of eye. Loose of Thigh.
Ridiculous, Love. Most serious, Love. Unshod. Unshriven.
     In vain and in Rain,

Love. I live and I Wire. I Wive, Lord, but I Fathom Not.


Six Apologies

I Have Loved My Horrible Self, Lord.
I Rose, Lord, And I Rose, Lord, And I,
Dropt. Your Requirements, Lord. 'Spite Your Requirements, Lord,
I Have Loved The Low Voltage Of The Moon, Lord,
Until There Was No Moon Intensity Left, Lord, No Moon Intensity Left
For You, Lord. I Have Loved The Frivolous, The Fleeting, The Frightful
Clouds. Lord, I Have Loved Clouds! Do Not Forgive Me, Do Not
Forgive Me LordandLover, HarborandMaster, GuardianandBread, Do Not.
Hold Me, Lord, O, Hold Me

Accountable, Lord. I Am
Accountable. Lord.

Lord It Over Me,
Lord It Over Me, Lord. Feed Me

Hope, Lord. Feed Me
Hope, Lord, Or Break My Teeth.

Break My Teeth, Sir,

In This My Mouth.


Francesca Too Can Stop Thinking About Sex, Reflect Upon Her Position In Poetry, Write a Real Sonnet

pilgrim, i did not mean to be so loose
of tongue, so bold in all i loosely told
in my smut so smug, so overly sold.
i did not mean, pilgrim, to traduce.
i apologize, i offer no excuse:
but, poet, though you have right to scold
it was high-souled you who made my mouth hold
what it held and tell what it told. a truce,
no, let’s call it an honor. mine is apt,
as far as long sentences go: my vice
in your verse will tempt others to try
and sing: readers, lovers forever rapt
and about to sweetly sigh: paradise!
thank you, poet, for keeping me alive



***

p.s.
bought new headphones - again. i need to stop breaking them in my sleep. i need to reduce my carbon footprint. in my sleep.

and so. re-listening to portishead's Third.
right now: We Carry On.
and then: Daniel, off Bat for Lashes' awesome new album, Two Suns.

p.p.s. my future (i.e. next semester) roommate likes Mrs. Dalloway (which i have read at least once every year the past three years). and books by haruki murakami (especially Kafka on the Shore and Sputnik Sweetheart, two of my favorites too). of course this is well worth mentioning to the world (of the internets).