Italy: Il Bel Paese

I'm back from Italy. For more details on the trip, you can feel free to visit my new travel blog.
This was a different sort of trip for me. I wasn't really sure what to expect from it. There was something slightly dangerous about it-- navigating through the streets of Rome, knowing only a few words of the language. Florence was much nicer, more romantic. Next time I go there, I'd like to be with someone I love.
I spent an incredible amount of time in museums and churches. I've also discovered that while I have a good head for beer, drinking wine at dinner every night makes me a bit silly.
Everything in Italy draws the eye up--domes, balconies, painted ceilings. You find your head tipped toward the heavens constantly. And I made my pilgrimage to the Protestant Cemetery to visit Keats and Shelley, then to the Keats and Shelley Museum by the Spanish Steps. We also stood at the corner around which Dante is said to have first seen Beatrice in Florence.
It was all too brief, but inspirational none the less. I took many notes, nearly filling a new mini Moleskine. There is, I believe, fodder for at least two short stories and a handful of poems within these fevered scribblings. Though it doesn't perfectly match the image given to me by 19th century literature, it is country whose nature lends itself to an amorous nature. The combination of delicate beauty along with wildness stirs the poet, the artist, the architecture.
It poured with rain the whole time we were in Florence, but that was beautiful too.

Poetry: Billy Collins, "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes"

While reading the new Writer's Chornicle, I came across a reference to this poem. I thought it was lovely, so I decided to share it with you all. It certainly evokes a more sensual view of Dickinson. It also playfully describes the searching feeling readers and scholars have when sorting through the many layers in her work, but also the layers of information about her as a person.

"Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes"

First, her tippet made of tulle,

easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

National Poetry Month: Me.

As a special for National Poetry Month, this is a poem I wrote for a class a few weeks back.
"A Tryst in the Greenery"

A single crimson droplet seeps to the surface
Trembling on the edge of my fingertip and
It is drawn into the fabric of my sweater,
Absorbed into the fine weave.
The thorny prickled bushes snatch at my hair
And entwine their arms with mine.
My cheeks are scratched,
Clawed by unseen hands.

There are flowers blooming in the dark,
Vines whithering untouched
And trees torn while still golden.
A tomato dangles on a whiskered stem
Soft orange, not yet ripe,
But the underside is blackening
Dying inside already.
And where are you?

So what do you guys think? I don't share a lot of my creative writing on here, but I rather liked this poem.

National Poetry Month: Dylan Thomas

"The force that through the green fuse drive the flower"

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Please remember to read poetry this month (and every month). Support local open mic nights and check out poets.org.

Happy November!

I wanted to rush out of the gate and get 15,000 words my first week, but a research paper on Don DeLillo and other projects for my classes had delayed me. I'm sure I can catch up this weekend.
I'm excited about my novel. It's definitely an experiment compared to my usual writings. It is a fragmented narrative interspersed with memories and other routes that life could have taken, there may even be a little poetry involved. Lately I've just been fascinated by how slender the thread our lives hang on is. We believe we have control and we can plan out our lives, but in reality the smallest chance or the slightest choice can through us in a different direction completely. I want to explore that, whatever that is. A tidy little project for the month of November.
Happy Noveling everyone.

Sonnet Sunday: more Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

It's been a while since I've done Sonnet Sunday, too long. I watched Bright Star again last week and I fell in love with the poetry of Keats all over again.

National Poetry Month Festivities

In honor of National Poetry Month, the literary society will be Committing Random Acts of Poetry (C.R.A.P) around campus this month-- not the whole month, just the latter half, but still. I will be performing "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Caroll:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought –
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

It will be epic.

James Franco: English Nerd

Some nerds are hot. Very hot- made hotter by the fact that they are nerds. Last night James Franco was on The Daily Show, discussing his Oscar nomination for the Danny Boyle film, 127 Hours. When he heard that he had the nomination he chose to go to his class at Yale instead of heading to a morning talk show. Apparently it was a class on the Romantic poets, so he couldn't miss that (I totally agree). He's pursuing a PhD in English, it helps 'get the ladies.'
His love and knowledge of English no doubt helped with his role as Allen Ginsberg in the recent film Howl about the obscenities trial surrounding the poem of the same name. A film I've yet to see, but have heard good things about.
So, next time someone complains about the lack of guys that are smart and sexy, point out James Franco as hope for woman-kind.

Sonnet Sunday: Neruda

Sonnet 16, translated by Terence Clarke

I love the clump of earth that you are,
because, from the planetary prairies,
I have no other star. You repeat
the universal multiplications.

Your wide eyes are the light that's left
of the defeated constellations.
Your skin quivers like the trails left
in the rain by the passing meteor.

Of so much of the moon, for me, were your hips,
of the entire sun your deep mouth and its delicacy,
of so much burning light, like shadowed honey,

your heart, charred with long red rays.
And so I pass by your fiery form, kissing you,
planetary and small, my geography, my dove.

Edgar Allan Poe, You Don't Look a Day Over 200

But in fact, you are 202 today!

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these
fits of absolute unconsciousness, I drank--God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity.

from the Memoir of Edgar Allan Poe
For the past two years the mysterious "Poe Toaster" has failed to appear. For sixty years, a mysterious figure dressed in black left roses and a bottle of cognac on Poe's grave on his birthday, but not in 2010 or this year.
Theories abound that this fan has died. A shame there is no one to take up this mantle in his place... yet.
Still, enjoy remembering Poe today by rereading "Annabel Lee", "The Black Cat," "The Raven"- or just play with your Edgar Allan Poe finger puppet.

Sonnet Sunday: Cummings

Something more contemporary. "Unrealities III" by e.e. cummings:

it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when (being fool to fancy) i have deemed

with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds

the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always) and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;

moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination, when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:

one pierced moment whiter than the rest

--turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.

Sonnet Sunday: Shakespeare 138

I haven't done a Sonnet Sunday post since May! National Poetry Month in April exhausted my lust for iambic pentameter, but I think it's time again. After all, we only have three months to prepare ourselves for NPM festivities. I'm coercing the literary society into performing "Random Acts of Poetry" on campus. I knew there were benefits to being president, besides my new nickname- "She who must be obeyed."
So, for your reading pleasure, Sonnet 138 by William Shakespeare:

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust,
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Being Unproductive: a celebration

In light of the giant weight off of my shoulders with all papers complete, a reprieve from classes until Monday and little left to worry about until finals, I enjoyed an extremely unproductive afternoon. The weather was gorgeous, so I went on a long walk around town, but then decided to wander off by the creek in search of a good climbing tree. I haven't climbed a tree in ages and sometimes the urges of my tomboy childhood in the middle of nowhere return.
My search didn't yield anything too promising, the best bet was in some one's yard and that just seemed mildly inappropriate and like it might alienate my neighbors. However, cutting up by the range at the sportsman's club (it was empty, I regretted not bringing my bow, I would have had perfect solitude to practice), I ended up below the cemetery. As I write this I realize it seems slightly creepy, but it was so quiet, I just lay down in the grass- not in the cemetery proper mind you- the sky was that shade of off white that is so common in autumn.
With the tombstones in the distance behind me and the sounds of the water trickling over rocks in the creek, I felt very content. For some reason it made me think of "Ode to a Nightingale" by Keats. Particularly this stanza:

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Hmm... this whole scenario is sounding even more morbid. I couldn't remember the stanza exactly, but some of the words and their impression were floating through my mind. I do feel like perhaps I should watch Bright Star again now. Well to veer away from that, I should tell you I spent most of the rest of the day making things for my Etsy shop and listening to Pandora Radio.
Because of my love of analyzing and debating (English major all the way) I am a member of online forums so that I can discuss some of my obsessions that are more obscure where I live. I've recently become a member of the "Sherlocking" forums and this afternoon I wanted to go waste a bit of time there. To my chagrin the site is currently disabled due to hacking problems. Many of the members are also bloggers, but they all belong to camp Tumblr. Curses to Tumblr and its ridiculous exclusivity- you have to be a member of Tumblr to follow or comment.
I was eager to share the geekery of a recent whim of mine:

I stitched over the top button hole on my coat with red thread. It's a long story, but it has a Sherlock significance.
This has been an extremely long post. I'm going to go drink tea now. Ugh, looking at that photo has made me realize that I have really unattractive, ungainly hands. Well, I guess I should take 'hand model' off the list of possible careers now.

Summertime Haikus

Here is a set of haikus:
June 22nd

Everything worn smooth
By grit of crumbled mountains,
Shrieking small children

The constant crashing
Like a lost limb, you still feel
When out, flesh reddened

Empty houses of the dead,
The ground under your feet pulled,
Hats, pasta salad

I'll be by later with a cautionary tale about the dangers of summer reading.

Marginalia by Billy Collins

I am all moved in to my summer place, though still sorting out the internet thing. I've been watching far too many Jane Austen movies and making soap. In the spirit of this, I'm breaking my poetry prohibition. Here's a fantastic poem by Billy Collins about things one finds scribbled in the margins of books.

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Sonnet Sunday: Open Edition

Since I am running out of favorite sonnets I am opening today's entry up for anyone to post their favorite sonnets. It's either this, or I post one of my rubbish sonnets. No one wants that.
Please, I am desperate for fresh 14-liners.

Non- Sonnet Saturday: Anna Akhmatova

One of my favorite poems by Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, "You Thought I was that Type"

You thought I was that type:
That you could forget me,
And that I'd plead and weep
And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,

Or that I'd ask the sorcerers
For some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift:
My precious perfumed handkerchief.

Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul
Vicarious tears or a single glance.

And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,
I swear by the miracle-working icon,
And by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you.

Poetry Reminders

This National Poetry Month is nearing its close, but their are still exciting events to look forward to:
-Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 23. Carry around your favorite poem and share it with everyone you know (and maybe a few you don't... but don't get injured or arrested)
-Shakespeare Day, also April 23. William Shakespeare, by all records seems to have been born and died on the same day. Weird.
Combine both aforementioned celebrations by carrying a Shakespearean sonnet in your pocket. That's what I'll be doing.
Now I need to research dopplegangers in literature and get some sleep.

Sonnet Sunday: Neruda

Sorry it's late: busy day.
Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Non-Sonnet Saturday

I took a literature class once where we studied song lyrics as the most highly circulated form of poetry in the modern world. With that in mind my poem today is a song by The Decemberists, a very eccentric band. They have specific signatures and sounds in their music, but at the same time they experiment with quite a variety of styles. I highly recommend them. I've been listening to them quite a lot this week, re-realizing their genius. Something quirky and humorous today:

"Apology Song"

I'm really sorry Steven
But your bicycle's been stolen
I was watching it for you
'Til you came back in the fall
Guess I didn't do a good job after all

I was feeling really sorry Steven
And I spent all morning grieving
And everybody's saying
That you'll take the news gracefully
Somehow I don't think I'll be getting off so easily

I meant her no harm
When I left her unlocked
Outside the Orange Street Food Farm
I was just running in
Didn't think I'd be that long
I came out, she was gone
And all that was there was some bored old dog
Leashed up to the place where your bicycle had been
Guess we'll never see poor Madeleine again

Let this be consolation, Steven
That all the while you were in England
I treated her with care and respect
And have her lots of love
And I was usually pretty good 'bout locking her up

Where has she gone?
Well, I bet she's on the bottom of a Frenchtown pond
Rudely abused on some hescher's joyride
So I wrote you this song
In the hope that you'd forgive me
Even though it was wrong
Being so careless with a thing so great
And taking your poor Madeleine away, away