Snapshots After Easter

The End of Lent--

After not eating chocolate & sweets for forty days, I realized the chocolate I remember in my mind tastes better than the chocolate of real life.


Easter Everywhere--

We have no less than 5 huge chocolate bunnies in our house (one missing its ears) and bowls and bowls of candy. My eyes are bigger than my stomach.


Poe-try (the lowdown on Dean Young & Tony Hoagland's Poetry Reading)

I found this on someone's blog (Anhedonia: The Poetry Life) and thought it was both interesting and entertaining. She wrote a report of the Hoagland/Young reading to her friend Aaron--

Tony Hoagland's wearing a bright-colored, button-down shirt -- swimming pool blue -- and a vest, brown, maybe corduroy. He's looks cute, wise, and sweet but shorter than I ever would have thought he was.

Dean Young's sporting a vest, too. Like a suit vest with the satin along the back ... and jeans ... he looks a little like a displaced cowboy. Maybe a banker who lost his pants and shoes but still had to show up in something at the banquet. Something ... I like it.

It's quite wonderful, Aaron ... I look around me now and everyone's reading poetry. This makes the world soften to me. At least right now. I will enjoy completely this coming hour or so.

Dean Young looks exactly as he does in his author photos. And so does Tony Hoagland, just shorter. I wish you were here. But I know each of us have glorious days coming, many of them, and we will likely enjoy some of them at least in the same time zone.

And I wonder why this girl sat down right next to me when there were lots of empty seats ... so now I battle for the elbow room I need to write this and now have that need to do that hide-with-hand thing ... hiding what you've written while you write so no one can read it.

Li Young Lee is also here. I saw him read in Kalamazoo at The Little Theater. I think I told you about it -- how sensual I felt after hearing his long and lux poem about furniture and erotic visions. He was beautiful that night and even the smirks from a clique of former colleagues could not stiffle me, or ruin me that night. It was like some post-coital moment ... unwieldy and wondrous. And I wrote so much that night ... a curdled and commingled love and fear and passion in the upper right corner of my heart and the lower left of my spleen. I know this reading will be at least that but maybe more.

Your time right now is 4:00 while mine is 6:00. Real time.

So many (I mean a good 30 out of a total of 60-70 people) women have super-curly, untamed hair ... why is that, Aaron? So many "literary" women now have super-curly hair ... it is a strange and tiny trend.


Later I will write about the fascinating things they both had to say about the craft of poetry and the writing life in general ... but here is a little taste.

Hoagland said people come to poetry for different reasons, and the main two reasons are to seek a truth and deep meaning while the others come to it for a love of language and a desire to have fun with it. He said, and I agree, that the Truth-seeker readers (me) need to do more of what the Language-lover readers do (you?) and vice versa. Tonight I plan on some big fun with Dean Young's Embryoyo!

___________________

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Yesterday at a birthday party I wanted the frosting off the cake, but it's still Lent and I decided to be good. A friend of mine who isn't religious, isn't Catholic asked "What would happen if you had sweets during Lent?" Before I could answer my mum chimed in, "Her heart would turn black." So there you have it. Spoken like a good French Catholic.

Life and things.

Before Lent--
I'm feeling better. Today, I went to a local bakery with two poetfriends to celebrate Fat Tuesday with lunch and chocolate eclairs as Lent begins tomorrow. We arrived wearing Mardi Gras beads. We had a wonderful time talking about poetry to anxiety.

I sometimes think that had I not moved to this small town, had there not been a well-placed flyer for a poetry workshop, a Wednesday night on an island, another friend wanting to start a new group, I would have missed out of having these friends. It's something I'm so thankful for, the community of poets in this area and these friends I have in my life.

And speaking of poetry, I haven't been writing much and that hurts a bit to say given I was a daily writer. But I pulled together a poem for tomorrow's group from a writing exercise I did Sunday at a friend's house. As much as I complain about deadlines, they can be helpful to me. A sort of love/hate relationship, more love than hate. But I have something to bring.

Lent--
Tomorrow Lent begins. oh chocolate, o non-pariels, I will see you soon...