Instant chat around the globe

My older daughter Natalie is in India for a 6 week 12-credit college program to study culture, politics, religion and history. If it is 8 am here and I'm eating my oatmeal and rice milk, Bangalore is 9 1/2 hours later and Natalie is getting hungry for curry dinner. What is astonishing to me is that we can IM each other and--bam--just like that our words zoom halfway across the globe. We tried to Skype but the connection isn't really strong enough to maintain video phone calls. She sends me photos and journal entries, I'm turning them into a book, and being a designer, well, I'm starting to art direct her. More monkey photos please and a few more of the jasmine blossoms too. She tells me the locals laugh at them when they take pictures of the monkeys perched on roads and temples, they laugh in the same way she laughs at tourists snapping squirrels in New York. I love that I can get her photos and reactions so quickly. A postcard from India takes at least a week to travel. Thanks to the internet and laptops and digital cameras the world really is closer.

How to draw like a pro when you're stuck

 My daughter Caitlin is doing a project for school. She is creating characters to illustrate the "E" number she is studying in AP Calculus. She already wrote a fairy tale with witty math wordplay, "The Princess and the E." Right now she is drawing the characters. It's going to be a picture book she can show and read to her class of 30.
 "I have always loved the art of William Steig and Quentin Blake, why can't I draw like them?" she moans. "Or Dr. Seuss, he was such an original!" More sighing. "Why did I wait so long, this is due in the MORNING!"
 She's an art major at her visual/performing arts high school, so yes, she can draw.
 I tell her to grab one of our many picture books illustrated by Blake. She grabs Dahl's The Twits.
 "Copy his style as exactly as you can. Don't worry about plagiarizing, copy away, no matter what, it will turn into what you do more than what he does. Quit trying to be original, waste of time. You'll get there faster by cheating."
She is drawing reckless princes and cavorting witches.
 "They aren't interesting enough," she says squinting.
 "Give them silly hats, can't have enough hats."
I just looked over her shoulder. The drawings are fresh and fun and look nothing like Quentin Blake.
 "You can't pass these off as Blakes," I mention.
 "No, I realized it was easier to draw it my way. Thanks for getting me to see that."
 I freely share this sage advice with the rest of you.

The Scottish Dream

No, in this dream I did not see ghosts or have a problem washing my hands clean. I was in a home where an older man proudly and tersely showed me his photo gallery. Strong and riveting images. Even in the dream I realized I was some sort of critic and this guy fell into that class of artists that operate outside of museums and collections.
He paused in front of one shot of a young woman who at first appears to only be holding a shawl or something. Then you realize she is clutching the bloodied hat of someone fallen at her feet. The moment is discordant, the light on her almost pastoral, at the scene of a terrible accident. A hit-and-run?
The man's wife comes up to me and says, with a burr, "there's an old saying, you get the best twice, once when you know it and twice when you show it." The man clears his throat or maybe he is saying something unintelligible to me but his wife laughs and says she'll be serving tea.
I sit down to interview this master of light.
The alarm goes off and it is Monday and the gray skies and work week hours resume.

The Stephen Colbert [Poetry!] book interview

Stephen Colbert: Tonight, Americans, we are going to give me a round of applause for having a live poet, Claudia Carlson, on our show. With this book.
(Colbert runs and accepts wild applause.)

SC: So. I see this book has an elephant on the cover and the back cover says it is about your mother.

CC: Well actually...

SC: Your mother is an elephant?

CC: Uh no, she was...

SC: Plus, it says The Elephant House, don't you live in New York City, shouldn't you have called your book The Elephant Apartment House?

CC: Many of the poems are set in other locations...

SC: Places elephants live, like zoos and India?

CC: Close, yes, the Bronx Zoo as well as Baton Rouge and the Grand Canyon.

SC: You travel with a lot of trunks?

CC: (laughing)

SC: You don't have many political poems in your book, why is that?

CC: That isn't my focus...

SC: Why aren't you writing true blue American ditties? With this elephant on the cover I assumed you were. After all, you didn't write The Donkey House or Jackass Loser Democratic Diaries.

CC: I wrote the stories I had to tell.

SC: So why don't you rhyme everything? I thought poetry was supposed to rhyme. You know, "roses are red, pachyderms are gray, Colbert is hot, day after day."

CC: I write in free verse and...

SC: No you don't, the book costs $12.95, that's only close to free if you're a European tourist. So. You also interview dead people such as the artist Goya and scientist Mendel. And people like Bluebeard and Sleeping Beauty.

CC: Well I prefer to think of it as a creative visit.

SC: Like what I do?

CC: But with more metaphors.

SC: And more elephants. Tell me, do you have many in your closets? In your jello?

CC: I try to not forget them.

SC: Well, we won't forget you, and America, go out and put (or elect) an elephant in your house.

Flash forward

Tonight I am beginning an intensive course in Flash. All the moving flashing bling of websites and interactive applications will become something I will be able to do myself, in theory. The real goal is to know what can be done and direct others to do it for me. The class is a fine perk of my job.

My whole adult life I have designed print and web pages that mostly stayed still. Didn't attempt to be a director with the video camera. Didn't hanker to make cartoons. But there is some part of me that would like to know how much movement and extras are delightful, and where it becomes annoying. I know many movie and game sites are fantastic, artists create beguiling online environments, and this is the future. Even if Flash gets replaced by something called "Pow" or "Zoom" it is still the way things are going. And I'm getting on board.

Truffle hunting

What is it about chocolate?

I was at a party where one of the guests had made truffles with an ingredient that I have never heard of . . . tonka bean. It isn't used in US cooking because the FDA has banned it. In large doses tonka can be a lethal anti-coagulant. But in the truffle that melted on my tongue it was a vibrant relative of vanilla, with hints of cinnamon, cloves, and almonds. As if the tame vanilla of--let's say a hostess twinkie--had gone to South America and now emoted Carmen Miranda. Zing-badda-boom.

I must eat chocolate nearly every day. At work we serve chocolates at long meetings, just as attention wavers the theobromines gives us new focus and amity. I know some, a few odd people, don't like it. And dogs shouldn't like it but they do. They can't break it down. And it's so good they'll keep eating non-stop until it kills them. Our dachshund ate some mislaid Halloween chocolate bars and shivered, panted and sicked up for a day. I wonder if she would have a problem with tonka?

Nobody has legislated for no chocolate to protect dogs. Seems as if a little tonka could be allowed into the food American humans eat, they use it in Europe. Unlike dogs, we wouldn't eat it until we died, would we?

Short attention spans

Some good deeds take decades to prove profitable. For instance putting small kids in Head Start, feeding them a healthy meal and preparing them for school, or inviting a freshman seminar to your home every week and feeding them cookies along with nuggets of science and liberal arts. The Head Start payoff is 15 to 20 years later, these kids go to jail less frequently and have a greater chance of going to college and earning more. Clear cost benefit. But you have to be far sighted to see it. Bush's administration seems keen on dismantling Head Start, savings today over long term results tomorrow.

My father ran a freshman seminar at Stony Brook with his typical form of generosity, he brought students into his living room and my stepmother baked cake or cookies and poured tea. No clear benefit in dollars. But of course, you can't look at it that way. Yesterday the acting surgeon general came back to Stony Brook, thirty years later, and publicly thanked my parents for their instruction and kindness. He was one of those freshmen. My father ran this and other programs with the same enthusiasm. These programs had always been prone to dangerous scrutiny from administrators. They tend to look at money coming in now (such as grants) as far more valuable than potential. As a teacher, it takes years for your work to mature, make careers for themselves, and report back, but even the flintiest administrator must be delighted when a notable former student thanks a former teacher and this directly leads to more donations, grants, and future classes enlarging the reputation that was built on such slow good will.

The last seat

After work yesterday I decided to walk to the Marsh Hawk Press spring book launch. Not looking at a map, I though, how long could it take me to walk from Spring Street to W. 27th? Or another way to put it, the Holland Tunnel to the Lincoln Tunnel. It turns out there is a weirdo exponential math to the street grid on Manhattan's most Western edge. I finally hit my first street number at 10th. And it had all been uphill. Ah, only another 17 blocks! I'll be there early. I turned up the Brazilian techno pop playing in my ears, and walked another 5 blocks before I hit 11th street. It must have been another quarter mile to 12th. And so on. Finally at 14th street, a decimal math order was imposed on the grid and it was only one block number between streets.

The sun was golden and turning the cobblestones and brick into gold and copper, women wore light cotton dresses, everyone seemed to be laughing in the warm air, and I walked through neighborhoods I haven't seen for years or decades and it was all utterly changed. Prosperous. Grills and bars and cafes and art galleries. Also chain stores and air-space condos with a symbiotic infiltration of old buildings. My legs were starting to turn into rubbery pasta when I finally found the Ceres gallery hosting the reading. And I was only 7 minutes late and well before the reading started.

There was a lovely remembrance and moment of silence for Rochelle Ratner (from Sandy McIntosh) and the three poets read. I sketched and photographed Jane Augustine, Tom Fink and Karin Randolph. The gallery was featuring the sculptural work of an artist who uses driftwood and branches. Rather like the fence my husband's cousin built around her deck in Montana from ancient weathered limbs. Except these were wall hangings not meant to keep skunks out.

After some chatting and nibbling of pineapple chunks, I headed home. But once again, even though it was now dark out, I didn't need my jacket, the air still held that mix of cool and warm intoxication. I accidentally walked west at first and discovered I was at 11th avenue. Vans, lights, actors cooling their heels in cop uniforms, and a food table announced a movie or TV show was being filmed. A nice looking silver haired man was leaning against a brick wall.

"Whatcha shooting?"
"Guess."
"Law and Order?"
"Which one?"
"Uh, Special Victims?"
"Buzzer noise nope, that's filmed in New Jersey. Criminal Intent."
Law and Order was once filming in my neighborhood, I ran up to Jerry Orbach and told him how much I loved his role. He was lovely about it. Seemed like a great guy in person."
"Yeah, I've been told he was."

I look down the street and people seem to be fussing around an old car.

"We're gonna blow up the car, you can stay to watch if you want."

Another younger guy turns to me and says, "I was just in that car getting it ready. When you think in maybe the last 20 years of all the people that got in and out and sat on that same seat, and I'm the last person to do so..."

We all nod.

It turns out the silver haired guy and I have jobs, as designers, more similar than one would think. I pointed out that in print design nothing actually explodes.

I head back to my subway entrance, 4 avenues away, and as I pass a playground lit by flood lights and casting a multitude of shadows, I whip out my camera and shoot and shoot and shoot. A little boy in a yellow cap and an eyepatch stops to watch me. I tell him I like his hat. His mother catches up to him and he repeats what I said in another language to his mom, tugging it proudly. She smiles. And it was the kind of night where everyone felt kind and wonder scented the air.

6 degrees of 30 years of separation

I get a call from my dad the other night.

"Hello Claudia, I just got invited to a formal dinner with the acting surgeon general."
Well, I'm not surprised, my dad is a science writer, covers medical ethics, history of science, and genetics, and he is just finishing up a book on agent orange with a Harvard prof.
"That's nice Dad," I say while cleaning my nails.
"He is giving a lecture and being honored at Stony Brook, and I wondered if maybe you knew him, he graduated about the same time you did."
Since Stony Brook University is at all times the size of a small city it is like someone saying hey you visited Walla Walla, Washington did you meet Joe? Sure, out of 30,000 students and employees, I ran into this one person.
"I was told that he specifically asked for me," says Dad, with a bit of awe.
Again, no shock. He was one of the most popular teachers of all time on campus and famous for lecturing to 700 students without a mike and keeping them all amused and awake even in early bird classes. He could also draw an epidemiology map of malaria in the world in 30 seconds on the blackboard. Quite a showman, very entertaining. I made sure I got an A in his bio 101 class for non-majors.
"And then I went though the stack of campus magazines you worked on and saw an article he wrote. He must have worked on the magazine with you."
"Uh, what's his name?" I ask.
"Steven G. A. L. (Dad takes a breath and keeps spelling out the name) S. O. N, with a "v", you know him?"
There is this silence on my end. The silence that asks, how did I not pay any attention whatsoever to the news and the importance of the role of the acting surgeon general?
"We both knew him Dad, I'm pretty sure you had him in one of your classes."
I pop open my laptop and do a quick google.
First of all, 30 years later is a long time. I squint and then over the distance of time, recognition snaps into place. Wow!
"He was incredibly bright, ethical, energetic, artistic and focused, even in college," I tell dad, "it was clear he'd have a great career, and clearly, he has. I'm sure you'll enjoy talking to him, say hi for me."

Fantastic dreams of slosh and strife

My friend Doug had an unexpected extra theater ticket Friday night. I got the call at 10 pm. I was draped across the couch, rather brain dead from the work week. Very noisy around him. "Hey Claudia, this is Doug, Binnie's daughter is sick, we have an extra ticket to this percussion show, it's down at Union Square, show at 10:30." Doug lives on Long Island and probably doesn't know it is a temporal space-time rule that any location in Manhattan cannot be reached in less than 30 minutes by any means. Then Binnie (who is a poet) took the cell phone, told me to hurry, and said the ticket would be waiting for me at the box office and to wear comfortable shoes, it is a standing audience.

What was I going to experience? Big drums and a mosh pit?

I took a cab to Union Square where a big old neoclassical bank has been turned into a theater since I last worked, ages ago, in the down at heels offices of literary publisher Farrar Strauss & Giroux. The only thing the same about Union Square seems to be the drab building I once worked in, everything else has transmogrified through money and use. I just didn't realize how much until I entered the former bank.

Loud booming noises and a series of arrows lead me to the box office of the Roth Theater and up some stairs past the gents room into...

Fuerzabruta. Or "Brute Force" in English. Here is the trailer on youTube. It involves not one but two suspended pools--including one that descends to inches above the audience's heads and I placed my hands on the clear mylar and felt the bodies slide by above me. There are spinning walls with horizontal running acrobats, sets that are destroyed by the athletic actors wearing casual work clothing, walls that runners smash through, flashing lights, thumping music that felt like it was taking over my breathing, and...an hour of this kinetic dream like chase scene done by the same Argentinian group that created De La Guarda. The audience was herded about, encouraged to interact, and spritzed with confetti and water. The show is stunning, one gapes, the themes easy to read into, rather cirque de soleil except the audience is in the center ring with the performers, rather like a mob of timid mice experiencing Queen Mab's dream madness...

So yes, a bit like a mosh pit. We sipped and recovered in a Starbucks and Doug and Binnie had wet hair, they had enthusiastically joined in while I hovered on the edges with Doug's daughter Hilly. On the way back to the upper west side with Hilly, who goes to Barnard, we enthusiastically talked about our love of speculative fiction and the dream state--the meditative out of body experience--of reading a good book. Plus you don't get wet that way.

Friday and too tired to say "meme" and mean it

At work today my visionary boss was searching for a word to describe the center, the eye, the idea, the core, the communicable itness of a project. I said "meme" and the group around the table looked at me like I was speaking in tongues. Well I guess I was.

Wikipedia says a meme is "any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted...from one mind to another. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a 'culture' in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus." Thank Richard Dawkins for coming up with the term in his book The Selfish Gene. And like genes, he suggests memes face natural selection and either die or survive and mutate. In ESL publishing I would say the hot or recycled approaches to selling a series are memes. The meme for a book can be that it complies to some standardized testing or that it offers teachers of multi-level students a single book that can work for all or some other new hot approach. The newest of the new trends in teaching seem to shift meaning as they are developed for a book series. Like a slogan, an ad campaign, the hook for a song, the sound bite, the credo, it mutates until it is expressed in the fixed medium of print.

I just finished reading China Mieville's Un Lun Don. Enjoyed it. He has clearly been infected with the wild alternate city meme, the earliest instance I remember is The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake. But Mieville's humor, cleverness, plot, details, language, and sheer audacity of invention is what keeps me turning the pages. The only lack is characters, they're thin on development and side-kicks come and literally go (dead or worse) with the speed of invention rather than the pulse of affection.

Rochelle Ratner

Rochelle died this week. She was my editor at Marsh Hawk Press. She was also a poet, novelist, photographer, friend of writers, and a great supporter of poetry. She was generous and fierce.

Less than a week ago she was blogging and I was starting to design her latest book. It is hard to imagine Marsh Hawk Press without her...

When my book was published, Rochelle had me come over to her apartment to celebrate. She and Ken were the nicest hosts imaginable. I looked around their ingeniously designed home and thought how lovely it was that they had found each other. Ken is blind, he is a programmer, and has a special computer adapted to his needs. Rochelle was tiny, quirky, she had a special work area built upstairs, exactly suited to her needs. The apartment was filled with books and art... She talked about her compulsion to write as a young girl in a family that didn't really know what to make of her, how long she did it in isolation, then she moved to New York, found other writers, and was much happier. They passed me a drink and we were soon laughing and she said lovely things about my book and I felt so happy that it had all worked out this way.

Far more people will miss her than I, but it really saddens me that she won't be around. She was part of the heartbeat of this city.

I'm the April fools Mum

My daughter Caitlin played a great trick on me.

Background to joke: all through high school she had an imaginary friend. Not a 6 foot rabbit or munchkin... She created the boyfriend/boyfiend that would scare any parent silly. "Paco" is serving time at Sing-sing, pushing 40, and interested in marrying my teenage daughter as soon as he gets out. Over the years Paco's story has grown. Trumped up drug charges--just a misunderstanding, his illegitimate children, the almost finalized divorces, the list goes on.

I get a call yesterday, a guy with a thick Mexican accent asks to speak to Caitlin.
"Who is this?" I ask, thinking it must be one of her classmates working on one of their numerous projects.
"Theese is Paco," he says.
There was that awful moment where I am thinking she got the name Paco for the fake Paco from a real but innocent Paco and the fake Paco can't possibly exist, right?
"Call for you Caitie," I say passing her the phone.
"What? You get out tomorrow! Wow! I am so excited, I can't wait to see you and be with you," she gushes.
At this point I know... but I don't let on.
"You'll take the bus from Ossining? Oh my love I can hardly believe it! My mother is watching us... She's staring. What? You want to talk to her? Sure, she's here. Mommy, Paco wants to talk to you."
"Hello, this is Caitlin's mother," I say in a stern voice.
"Yes theese is Paco, I love your daughter very much. I make marry her."
"Well how do you plan to support her, and yourself?"
"Weeth my savings."
"You saved money in jail?"
"I start saving tomorrow."
"But what will you support yourselves with?"
"With my heart and my lawnmower."
"Where will you live?"
"I have 15 cousins in a house, they give us corner of room."
"Didn't you go to jail on drug charges?"
"No, just misunderstanding at border, with Caitlin's love I am new man."
"But she is going to college, how can that fit in with your plans?"
"I give her choice, me or silly school."

Then I tell him he can't see her anymore and allow Caitlin to say goodbye. She sobs into the phone convincingly, stomps out of the room, slams her door and the sobs turn to laughter. I open the door, she sobs. I shut the door, she laughs.

Then all is revealed. Her sister's friend Nelson, also a drama major, was the culprit. All I can say is go see Nelson in any show he is in, you won't be sorry.

The new old invisibility

Last night, after a poetry reading, some old and new friends gathered around a bistro table and talked about trends in poetry. We were 5 women, mostly older, baby boomers and up in age.

We felt some of the poems we had heard recently were the works of overly young voices. As in, interesting concepts that grew tiresome because they lacked the depth or reach we associate with either older or more perceptive poets of any age. I knew what they meant, certainly the poems I wrote in college lacked perspective.

But, said one woman, we must help the younger emerging poets. "We do!" chorused the table. We are happy to give them advice, attend their readings, and buy their better books. We certainly give them more attention than they do us. "When I was younger, I really listened and got to know older people and older poets," said K., "seems like fewer of their generation are getting to know us." "Well there are so very many baby boomers, I think they are entirely sick of our generation," I said.

It's upsetting, said one of my friends, that teaching jobs keep going, again and again, to 35ish poets while a better older poet, who is also a great teacher, can't get hired.

So it comes down to sex appeal? The American obsession with youth? I posited that the new invisibility I am experiencing as a woman over 50 also affects the awarding of teaching jobs, plum reading series, and the other meager benefits of being a poet in America. "Not just women," said J., "some of my male friends complain of the same thing."

Yes, said the eldest woman, between 50 and 75 most poets are forgotten--invisible--until they are rediscovered and lionized in old age. We stared glumly at our gelattos.

America loves the new. Emerging poets, young poets, that is where the attention is. Do you want the photo of a wrinkled man or woman on your writing program brochure or the young hot new? I can take a guess as to which one sells more. Or is assumed to sell more. Are you more likely to enjoy the poetry reading if the poet is juicy looking? I think of the many plain older poets whose poems fill me with wonder.

I no longer turn any heads when I walk down the street or walk in a room, but I don't feel different or less appealing or less sexy or even less new as I experience the sights, smells, sounds and associations that can turn into the beginning of a poem in time to the beat of my feet.

Ah well, maybe with that old new invisibility comes some new poems.

Totally fannish embarassing moments

I have a new rule, and its corollary:

1. don't meet your heroes, they've already given you the best that they've got in their book or poem or movie.
2. don't let your heroes meet you, you'll slobber on their egos like a hungry dog.

In rare cases I've done both things to an artist I admire and found myself, finally, laughing about it later.

I met Penn, of Penn and Teller (the tall one who talks) at a Monday Night Magic show. Huge fan. Grotesque gushing inanities poured out of my mouth as he sat, hemmed in by my eagerness, during intermission and the look of wary weariness--as in this happens all the time and is so boring-- humiliated me even as my mouth kept slobbering compliments... I promise if I ever see you again Penn I won't say a thing. Ack.

Then with the multi talented Shaun Tan I managed to have BOTH experiences. At the world fantasy convention I heard him talk, loved his intelligence, wit, and talent, ran into him, invited him to dinner with friends, he accepted and was as thoughtful, considerate, and interesting as I could have hoped for. If only the story could end here. A short time later he was in New York signing books at Books of Wonder, a delightful children's bookstore. By this point I'd morphed into weird fannish mode. I saw him at the signing table, ran to him clutching a copy of the book like a football player, and almost knocked over a lady in her wheelchair and a guy with his kids. I'd accidentally cut the line in my awful eagerness. The shame. I looked up and heard the woman spinning her wheels slightly, sighing "I don't mind waiting a little longer" and felt like a turd. A fan turd. And Shaun's face had a look of wary weariness.

Reviews and judgment day

To have a published book is to invite comment. The glossy cover, the publishers imprint, the curiously tarted up self in the author's photo all serve to convince the world that I did indeed write this paper object and my musings have organized the 26 letters of the alphabet into patterns I can call my own. My father and step mother, my sisters and brothers, all said just the right thing, mostly. My friends said it exactly. And lately, at good readings, good because I am finally relaxing, the audience lets me know they enjoyed it by the laughter and sighs of sympathetic recognition.

But to be published is to invite a response from far more than the people I send my family newsletters to. I am speaking of reviews. Each one that comes out I begin reading with all the enthusiasm I used to have for report cards. Sometimes it is a pat on the head. Other times a rap on the knuckles. Or amusingly, it appears to be a review of a book by the same name but the work of another.

What is the reviewer's task? I read reviews to know if I should invest or save my money and time. The author of the review may be using a book to nudge the great lumbering tail of current poetry. They may be looking for their own readership and by their humor, intelligence, or wit make themselves indispensable. They may try to advise the writer in how they can better their craft and vision for the next book. Or they get their kicks from knocking down the blocks. A review is in itself an essay, equally to be judged.

My book goes out into the world, is hopefully read, and I'd take any review over the great silence. If there is a final day of judgment for books, I don't think the reviewers decide who goes to Satan's writers lounge. The worst that happens, my efforts are forgotten in the out-of-print purgatory...

My husband's plays sometimes had simultaneous pan and praise reviews that took polar opposites on the same points. Which to believe? I'd look around the theatre, see how engaged everyone was, the standing ovation, my own delight in his language skills, and ask myself how any one could find it wanting. Were they crazy? But I'm his wife, a little crazy for him, and my judgment will be suspect. I can only say, believe the good reviews.

Some people tell me they never read their reviews. Never? Really? Some of my friends don't own a television or read the news either, sterner stuff than me. I read, feel it for a day and move on.

Because none of that is about the writing, my writing. Images and feelings become words and sentences. Dreams pull up their socks and find their grammar. Poems form in my inner ear, long before the world hears them.

Poets' Grimm becomes a play

The contract came in the mail. Our fairy tale poetry anthology has an agent.

Got a great letter of support from a teacher:

To Whom It May Concern:

As a high school theater teacher and director, I am always searching for new and challenging material to work on with my kids. This past fall I hit upon the idea of adapting material from The Brothers Grimm. While discussing the project with an English teacher colleague (also a fine poet in his own right), he suggested The Poets’ Grimm. We eventually incorporated about twenty or so poems from the book into what became an original and successful stage production.

What was most striking to me was the reaction my students had to the poetry. We spent several days simply reading and discussing poems from the collection. Students listened attentively as they took turns reading/performing selections. Lively discussion would often follow about the merits of a particular piece. Kids would come by my office to browse through the collection. Almost every actor in the show wound up performing a poem of their choice. One wrote a poem of his own and shared it with us as part of our rehearsal process. There was an unforced enthusiasm for the poems which was palpable. Nor am I talking about the simplest and most accessible poems. My students’ investigation was thoughtful and penetrating. Though it was not my specific intention, the collection was a wonderful teaching tool.

Within a short time another English teacher colleague found several pieces to employ in a senior seminar of hers. Just recently a student came into my office and exclaimed, “Oh, that’s the book!” She’d read selections in English, but hadn’t seen the collection in its entirety. Therein lies the rub. Copies of the collection are currently few and far between. Only through the great good fortune of having a knowledgeable poet as a colleague did we learn of the existence of the collection, and then only through what seemed like some black market operation did we acquire two copies. Those precious copies have been circulated and shared like some underground forbidden fruit.

Given the enthusiasm my students showed for the collection, how nice it would be if it were currently in print. When students ask, as they have, where they might get a copy of their own, how nice it would be to tell them it is easily available at a reasonable price, instead of $175.00 at Amazon.com. I’m sure there are many teachers who would be enthusiastic about this collection, if they only knew about it, and scores more students who would welcome it into their lives if they only had the opportunity.

The cost of awards

Tomorrow I go to the opening for the New York Book Show. Since the design I helped create for the journal Alimentum won entry to the show, I'm a winner. Sadly it costs $75 to walk in the door, nibble the canepés, and ogle the other book designs. Even for a winner. Maybe especially for the winners. One of my friends says "don't go if you have to pay, this sounds like a scam." Actually, I am sure it is not a scam. I was there last year, thanks to my old bosses. I will get a lovely catalog, with my design in it, I'll see many people I know... and I'll hope to win prizes in the future that cost a bit less to enjoy.

Welcome to this life

Friends of mine had a baby a couple of days ago. I met him yesterday. Held him. Small as my dog, features shifting expressions, an almost smile, eyebrows lifted in amazement, then sleep again, this tiny placeholder for a man. Here I am with my children leaving home and he is just coming home. Welcome Tristan.

Poets' Grimm has an agent!

Jeannie and I met with our agent to talk about finding a new home for our anthology of fairy tale poems The Poets' Grimm. After a great start at Story Line Press (a small prestigious literary press) the publisher went kaput. Teachers had used it in creative writing classes, fans of fairy tales read it, poetry lovers read it, and all of them begged us for copies through the website for the book. This helps explain why Amazon is offering used copies for $140.00 to $199.00

This weekend we are invited by Bill Williams to see a play based on poems in the book. It's called Grimm and Grimmer and is playing at Trinity School in Manhattan. Three nights only. Thursday at 7:00 and Friday and Saturday at 8:00. Bill is the person who told us used copies are selling so high.

Give me your Budmo Jiggler

I open a file at work. One of those you-better-find-this-missing-font boxes pops-up, so I say, "hey, anybody got Budmo Jiggler?" to my office mates. Yeah, should have seen their faces.

You try it, "I need a Budmo Jiggler."

Welcome to typography. "I want Electra Light" "I need Giddyap Standard" "I crave Gill Sans Ultra Bold." What do you see just from the names? I smell a creative writing exercise.

What about Tiki-Hut Italic? Deftone Stylus? Or back to that Budmo Jiggler.

Stick it to the (paper) man

My sister is working at a small print newspaper on the west coast. Like newspapers everywhere, sales and jobs are evaporating. She is aware that they want to find an excuse to fire her ass. They are monitoring her closely and clocking her speed. Only on racetracks is this a good thing.

They've upped the ante and started giving her difficult work that falls outside of her job skills in production. Yesterday they handed her a card with type on it. Victorian posies behind an announcement of a doodad show. She had to take the scanned image, turn it sideways, get rid of the type, and expand it's middle by 300%. My sister only knows basic things in photoshop, the simple fixes. This was major surgery.

We formulated a plan. She sent it to me at work when she got there in the morning. Back on the east coast, I spent part of my lunch hour using the clone tool to disappear the type, copy the border, give it a new middle, and move flowers around. I touched up with the healing brush and sent it west where it was still morning.

She tells me it was delightful to see their look of consternation when she handed in the acceptable image. That even though she has never once cheated in school, this felt less like cheating and more like spy vs spy. It put her in a good mood, a mood her pals at work caught, and they were laughing about little things as they worked. A mood not shared by the bosses.

When we talked last night, she wanted to know how I did the photoshop. I tried to describe it but... she needed to see it. A video is worth a thousand phonecalls, so I recommended free online photoshop training: podcasts such as Pixel Perfect with Bert Monroy, Lynda.com (the first 10 lessons are free in their vast arsenal of tutorials), and for comedy and real tips, "You suck at photoshop". Free, free, free. Throw her more mission impossibles and she'll learn new job skills. Take that mean boss people. You don't mess with my li'l sis.

I'm nominated!

Just found out my poem "The Bees" is being considered by the Pushcart Prize anthology! Court Green, published it and they could only nominate 6 of their poems to the P.P. editors. The editors at Pushcart accepted my poem for consideration. It is now part of the pool of 8,000 poems, essays, and short stories that are being culled for this yearly anthology that honors the best of the small presses. Lovely that Court Green sent my poem in, grand that it made it past the next hurdle to semi-finalist. Even if it doesn't get into the anthology, I feel honored.

With room for only 30 poems, I have at best a 2% chance... but hey, better odds than Lotto and it all happened mysteriously while I was writing poems and mortgage checks.

Now I finally understand why some people note on their flap copy "nominated for a pushcart." The nomination itself is an honor. Some people also note they were 4th runners-up for things like best mincemeat pie, and this is a level of far-misses I think best not mentioned in 50 word bios.

Good news and free money

The president is giving away money and I had a great reading last night.

I had to slog through a freakish ice/slush/snow storm spritzing my face as I didn't see a single cab the whole width of Manhattan. But the eerie tunneled streets and mist rising from still warm sidewalks made SoHo into something more strange and beautiful than the trendy celebs that glide in and out of its shops. Who knew who anyone was in all that snow? People were the negative spaces, the street lamp and neon lit snow were the show.

As I walked further and further east, I wondered if anyone would show up. Would this Bluestockings bookstore be welcoming and hopefully rather dry?

My shoes took on more water and my purse strap broke but I still pressed on. I added my footprints to a dog's across an otherwise blank median strip and then I was there. The place was PACKED and I didn't know most of them. My husband Jim was there waiting for me (he gave up one of his cherished Tuesday nights of sketching with a live jazz trio, two models, and a bar). Glenn arrived, as did Gordon and Len and Roxanne. The bookstore is a neighborhood place that the neighborhood uses like a big book filled livingroom, with eats and teas. I read last. The fifteen minutes went by terribly fast and slow, the way they do when I'm exhilarated by having a responsive audience, a whole room full of (mostly) strangers laugh, or sigh in sympathy, and acknowledge the stories I shape into poems. I'm more confident when people want to hear where I'm going. I loved Julie Porter's poems about meat, she's the pitmaster of an amateur barbecue team. Thank you Meghan, Word of Mouth, and Bluestockings for giving us a good place to read. I sold three books.

Slides and whispers

My daughter Caitlin is applying to many colleges, several of them art schools requiring color slides. Remember those? Little cardboard edged pieces of plastic that one's parents put in a carousel and shined ghosts of summers past onto a wall.

She finished the last painting yesterday. I need them to arrive at the Rhode Island School of Design by Thursday. Two days.

If you, like me, have been so immersed in digital cameras, it is hard to remember how to do these things. I think in flash cards, keychain mini-drives, and printer's ink, which are sold in my drugstore, where do you go for slide film? And where is my old analog camera anyway? Don't those use little round batteries, batteries that have to be dead by now?

I discovered there are specialty photographic services shops that will take a digital image and turn it into a slide for 20 bucks an image for a 1 day turnaround... but my good digital camera still has Yellowstone National Park dust polka-dotting the sensor. I've been meaning to take the Nikon d70 somewhere to get it cleaned.... I wiped the sensor once--it turned out OK--but it was a sweat inducing horror that I don't want to experience again. One wipe too hard and 600 bucks of camera is scratched worthless.

My friend, the talented professional photographer, Lynn Saville, said her slide film had expired and I'd need to buy her new "daylight" film, and I would have done all that, but she had a class to teach and Caitlin couldn't get the film and portfolio to her in time.

Then through Caitlin's highschool (LaGuardia Arts) I got the name of a photographer, Peter Brandt, who snaps slides of art student's portfolios all the time. He has the film, the lights, the lenses, the set-up. He gets it developed. ASAP. Thank gawd. Of course, this costs.

So why was I up at 6:30 am snapping shots of her portfolio just in case? Because you never know. I should be thinking about my reading tonight... Shhhhhhh, just one more spotty shot, bracketed...