RIP Twenty's Special, aka Sissy

Thank you mama & daddy for taking such good care of my old girl.  Love.

SAT / Grandma Sissy had a birthday yesterday / mama hooked her up with decor & carrot cake!

THANK YOU MAMA FOR HOOKING OUR OLD GRANDMA SISSY UP!

new book opening party w/ my girls! LIONS is out. it's a pretty lil chap too so thank you JEN TYNES & MIKE SIKKEMA!

crack the bubbly!  excited.

yeeeee!

ah!

awwwwwww.

yeeeeee!

work!

THURS / spring cleaning / recovery from the Cactus Moon / important film

Hell and Back Again - Trailer from New Video on Vimeo.

i have today off from school b/c of the RODEO.  praises to the rodeo.  i love this town.  in a bit, im going to MMs for taroh.  haven't had that done in awhile so im excited.  

WED / Ralph and Ellie picked me up early this morn for the barrel racing slack / made me sad / can somebody get me a pony?

bucking horse

Tucson Rodeo!

El Minuto lunch

lil buck

Ellie and Ralph

i don't know that i like snow patrol (i don't think so really) but i heard this song in Ralph's truck and i like it a lot.  feels familiar.

THANKS TO MY MIJA MARA VAHRATIAN FOR ROCKING ADV PO LAST NITE

SUPERB LECTURE ON VOICE.  THANKS, GIRLBEAR.

Gorgeous start to week - love Ellie and some horses

MON / heading to RANCH to see my German SISTER ELLIE / look below yall! / it's my BOOK / THANK YOU TO JEN TYNES AND MIKE SIKKEMA / LOVE!

IF YOU HAVEN'T ORDERED IT YET, GO TO HORSE LESS PRESS AND GET ON THAT.

LOVE!

SUN FUN DAY actually work day / so sad tonite's the season finale of Downton Abbey

FRI / busy week

Annie & Whitney had birthdays this week.

Dave cooked din for us ladies three.

I'm watching a lil Weeds Season 6.

Need lazy time, must have lazy time.

MON / AZ CENTENNIAL BDAY IS TOMORROW / HAPPY AZ!

PICS from weekend

i was pretty mellow all in all this weekend.  thurs:  stay in & chill.  fri:  babysit eli for dani.  sat:  diff story.  full out.  decided if i  need a backup job i might could get work as a video vixen.  i'll be dancing crazy to a lil hip hop.  we ended up at the nickle bar.  today i wrote & then went to sunday din at mms, downton abbey, toast dd's smartness, cry a lil.

poet phil cordelli in pics w/ me & annie.  / annie's glow in the dark ice at the nickle bar. / my new kitten i named lefty but call pancho.  i have inside:  astrid & ingrid.  outside:  lucy, loki, lupe, & now lefty.  yip! / blueberries in alma, ga where i was born which is the blueberry capital of ga.  mamamcita took pic today.  they freeze berries to stay 32/33 degrees because outside is much colder than that & they need to sustain just at freezing.  weird.  

SUN / it's not that war outside that keeps them / AWP

Switchback Books, Coconut Press, & Horse Less Press AWP Reading

Saturday, March 3, 2012        7:00pm until 9:00pm

Please join us for readings by...

Daniela Olszewska
Kate Schapira
Shelly Taylor
Cori A. Winrock
Karen Lepri
Hanna Andrews
Jenny Boully
Lea Graham
Kim Gek Lin Short
Christie Ann Reynolds
Angela Veronica Wong
Jennifer Tamayo

...additional readers TBA!

This event is off-site at one of Chicago's best venues, located right off the Blue Line Damen stop in the heart of Wicker Park.  Subterranean.  

---------------

what peacock did this weekend:

FRI

une:  i still love you, Aaron Rodgers
dos:  DD on Wed nite
three:  NOLA i am thinking of you

THURS / good news for two of my most fav folks day

Joe Lo Novelli is in today's Amarillo Globe-News:

'Marvin' accompanies musician on solo tour

[CLICK here for the FULL TEXT story]

Musician Joe Novelli is in the middle of a cross-country tour as a solo act, heading to Amarillo for a Thursday show at the Golden Light Cantina.

He’s not traveling alone, but his travel companion isn’t much for conversation. Though it can make a lot of noise.

Novelli, when he’s not touring as part of a band, performs under the name Marvin and the Cloud Wall. It’s not just one of those esoteric names indie solo artists come up with these days, at least not completely.

“Marvin” is actually the name of Novelli uses for the stack of drum machines that play an integral part in his music. And woe betide anyone who refers to that stack simply as a machine.

“That’s Marvin!” Novelli corrected. Later, he explained.

“I have a penchant for personifying everything around me. It makes things more fun, especially when you spend a lot of time by yourself on the highway,” he said. “You end up surrounding yourself with characters.”

He paused.

“That sounds a little crazy.”

But Novelli’s OK with a little crazy. It helps explain his penchant for using technology popular before he was even born to make music, though he’s not sure exactly why.

“I’ve always catered to the old analog (sound), the drum machines and the old tube amplifiers,” he said. “There’s something in the way things were produced, made and sounded all the way up through the middle part of the last century. They all had unique voices; nothing could really duplicate anything else.”

Novelli’s core drum machine, a TR-77, was made in 1972. He bought it off of eBay from a music fan in Montreal who made his own, apparently unrepeatable modifications to the machine.

“I don’t know anything about analog circuitry, but I can solder things here and there. I opened (Marvin) up, and it’s immensely complex,” Novelli said. “I have no idea how it works. There are wires running this way and that. It’s an impressive feat.”

----

Poetry Book Review: "Soaptrees" by Mara Vahratian

By Bill Wetzel

[CLICK HERE for the FULL TEXT article]

In Mara Vahratian's Soaptrees, you'll find an eclectic world of love, land/place and language. Whether, according to my metaphor, Soaptrees is a world or a state of mind is unclear, but, simply put, it is a smart, fun place to be. Or as Mara's friend the poet, Shelly Taylor puts it: " Mara writes from a sincerely honest place necessitated by delight/crazy awe for life. There is a delightful innocence to her writing not to be mistaken with naïvete, as the speaker of these poems is clever, like genius clever. "

And it's the cleverness that is endearing. Vahratian uses repetition such as "fine-fine", "silver-silver" and "clang-clang (yeah yeah)" to great effect. In Vahratian's skilled hands the impact is charming and amiable. This charm, more than anything, differentiates it from the pain-tinged   lamentation of the films of Wong Kar-wai. In Soaptrees' world, you don't feel the same heartache or regret. It's not a place where the lonely go to recapture lost love. Sure, she reminisces, but it's all forward thinking. In short order, she moves on to different places, events and adventures. In Soaptrees, there is nothing to recapture. Everything is new. You are a different person in that world. It is where revitalized people find new love, as opposed to dwelling on the past.

Moreover, her interpretation of love is not destructive. On this Taylor continues:   " Reading these poems it's easy to see that they're essentially love poems---the speaker is not writing from a place of love-destruction so usually seen in writing ruminating on intimate relationships---there is awe & fascination of masculine/ultra-feminine relationship roles in Soaptrees. "

Love is not idealized or lost in Soaptrees. It just exists. And in fun little moments like: "Touring the South Rim showed you good.." or "Seedy we met, two apologetic I don't do this oftens""     She still touches on the same themes from my dream or the films, but with a different narrative, different character interaction & from a woman's perspective. It's entertaining, at times irreverent and I agree with Shelly Taylor when she says: " It's ridiculously fresh & real so read it ."

WED / one of those gettin' stuff done days

---

i'm lovin' all my classes thus far this semester, ya'll.   i'm, of course, absolutely in love with all my students in ADV PO.  i have this one student who is particularly cool.  gary l is a close-to-retiring (as he says) engineer who is taking the class with his daughter, lovely bree, & he is so kind.  whomever is workshopping, gary looks them in the eye & calls them by name & says, 'well so-&-so this poem is just perfect.'  he does give a bit of critique too.  yesterday he provided the automatic which was a tibetan belling ritual something-another which was so special.

2.7.12 (Gary's auto /  for Morgan)

when he came to a rest what attenuated was despair opposite--lung rush, some belling far off land the sands there--he wouldve said that's a Francis Bacon triptych, don't you let that go the light not unlike Caravaggio from some dank weapon of a medieval age come back to God now.  that circuitry bell off some there, there now.  lil red likelihood i lust so much now that limbs what you know transposed some lunguage he said, rife muscled thing not remonstrance is sacred is how when the word was made the earth began, said son, sun in the desert said to love again, start that life this one.  resonate my merely when lust's skully pull un-pulls all others in the kite field.

---

from Jim Harrison's new  book Songs of Unreason


Poet No. 7

We must be bareback riders.  The gods
abhor halters and stirrups, even a horse
blanket to protect our asses is forbidden.
Finally, our legs must grow into the horse
because we were never meant to get off.

MON / FRESH WEEK

1: joe and gabriel sullivan at borderlands

2: mama flower

3: sad packers at the red g

4: joe camped at the canyon de chelly last nite.  gorge photo.

---

The third issue of ESQUE Mag is out--it's the Revolution issue--REVOLUTIONESQUE.  www.esquemag.com.  great poems from Dot Devota (whom i met over weekend) & my poetry godmother angel, Brenda Iijima.

for my friend morgan whom i grieve and remember

i had the honor of writing poems with Morgan Lucas Schuldt for a year.  over the summer we sent the first three of our collaborative poems out to find homes.  we were hopeful.  we sent to the paris review & i wrote a lil formal letter ab americana & the weaving of consciousnesses which M laughed at but let me keep.  i will honor you always morgan my friend.  i miss you.

Happy Friday!

been housecleaning and learning Spanish via Lorca.

Grafico de la Petenera

Camino

Cien jinetes enlutados
donde iran
por el cielo yacente
del naranjal?
Ni a Cordoba ni a Sevilla
llegaran.
Ni a Granada la que suspira
por el mar.
Esos caballos sonolientos
los llevaran
al laberinto de las cruces
donde tiembla el cantar.
Con siete ayes clavados,
donde iran
los cien jinetes andaluces
del naranjal?

Road

One hundred horsemen in mourning,
where will they go,
under the recumbent sky
of the orange grove?
They will never get to Cordoba,
or Granada that sighs
for the sea.
Those sleepy horses
will carry them
to the labyrinth of crosses
where the song trembles.
Pierced by seven ays
where will they go,
the one hundred Andalusian horsemen
of the orange grove?

---



---

last nite we danced under the trees.

La Caita i love

WED / gorgeous desert / hallo FEB

yesterday was pretty fabulous.  i teach from 100-230 a WRT 102--they're real cool.  then i have a three hour break, oh no!  my 2012 plan is to really get in shape.  i pack a bag & head across the street to the beautiful Christina Taylor Green  park.  i jog miles along the wash.  i then eat lunch & head back to school, where i teach my next WRT 102 from 540-700.  then, on tuesdays, i have ADV PO from 710-945!  wooo!  i was tired when i got home.  joe lo came over & we watched Justifed & did some straight chillin.  


SHOUT OUT to JAKE LEVINE for rocking ADV PO!

tonight is a Wed regular with JH at Casa V.  exciting.  tomorrow Abraham Smith comes to town.  we'll see Kaia at Plush then Joe Novelli at La Cocina--they're doing a "Cryin Steel" showcase.  usual trouble will ensue.  fun!


for Wed:





RIP Don Cornelius