Reading with the Plague Papers

Reading a poem live 

Tuesday, November 17 

at 5:00 EST 

with The Plague Papers (anthology of ekphrastic poems based on pieces from museum collections) cohort! For a link to the event, please RSVP by email to poemeleon@gmail.com OR message me privately on twitter or facebook. Hosted by Robbi Nester and Cati Porter.

The Plague Papers at Poemeleon

"The Wife's Reply," originally at Autumn Sky Poetry, is now part of poet Robbi Nester's anthology The Plague Papers. The online anthology is inviting and colorful, images that inspired its poems arranged in a lovely table-of-contents grid by Cati Porter of Poemeleon, where the online book is housed.

Clip from Robbi's introduction:  In this anthology, the only one of its kind to my knowledge, we have asked writers to choose individual items from [museum] collections, and to tell us about them in poetry or prose. The works are listed alphabetically by the names of the museums in which the objects are located. Like other forms of Ekphrasis, the resulting works may interpret the work in question, imagine its creation, comment on the difference between the work online and in person, or spin a narrative about it, but with the aid of the link included with each piece, readers can immediately visit the museums and see for themselves what all the fuss is about. This book will introduce them to institutions they may explore for themselves online and perhaps, after the danger has passed, in person.

Mine is a response to an Old English poem in The Exeter Book (circa 970), housed in the library collection belonging to the Exeter Cathedral. Traditionally known as "The Husband's Message," the somewhat-damaged lines convey an exiled man's call for his wife or his betrothed to cross the sea to meet him. In riddling style (The Exeter Book also holds riddles), the request is spoken by a tree that has learned to speak, its wood now holding a carved, runic, secret cry.

About Robbi: Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent being Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019). She has also edited two other anthologies, one of which, Over the Moon: Birds, Beasts, and Trees, was also published as a special issue of Poemeleon.

A dim, gloomy Hallowmas...
Starting my mandated quarantine with All Saints Day...
Here's how the family welcomed me home...
Giant jack o' lanterns (minus one some mischievous Yankee stole)
and lady ghost and owl and noisy skull-knocker...

All Saints in the wee hours...
First snow of winter is on the giant pumpkins and chrysanthemums...
Snow plows scraping and jingling...
900 miles from Cullowhee...
Guess I'm really and truly back in Cooperstown.

Robbi Nester at LWOM

Robbi Nester is up at Lady Word of Mouth with A Likely Story, a collection of poems. Cover art by Mary Bullington.

CC: Robbi Nester asks--

Lummox Press, 2014

What follows is a copy of an interview conducted by Robbi Nester, posted last Saturday on a facebook page for The Liberal Media Made me Do It, a brand new anthology from Lummox Press, edited by Robbi. Although the interview has been re-posted here and there on facebook, I'm adding a copy for people who don't venture that way online.

* * *

For our second interview with a contributor from the book, I've chosen Marly Youmans, a poet, novelist, and commentator on the arts (and other things as well).

Robbi: Do you often listen to/write about public media?

Marly: I often listen to NPR, but television is not part of my day--I don't really have time for it, though I did watch PBS when I was much younger. I once had an idea for a novel while listening to a folk music show on WAMC (Albany.) A folk singer on Wanda Fish's The Hudson River Sampler told an anecdote about her grandmother wandering off the edge of her farm in Vermont and becoming lost, traveling on foot in Canada for months without meeting a soul. That little seed of an idea eventually became Catherwood (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996. It's out of print now but will be back in print within a year.)

UK: Stanza Press, 2012
Now in second printing!

RN: What else are you doing in your work right now?

MY: I'm writing poems and tiny stories because I have little time at the moment. I have several poetry and fiction manuscripts to polish, and I have an idea for a novel that I want to work on when time appears! I'm not in a hurry to bring out another poetry book because the last three came in such close succession (The Throne of Psyche, The Foliate Head and Thaliad.) I'll be on tour again later in the year, and I'll be teaching at Antioch in the summer.

RN: National Poetry Month just ended; what poetry-related activities do you recommend to our readers or potential readers?

MY: Oh, I don't know--these days, when poetry has such a dwindled audience, recommendations seem almost out of place. Go to a good university library and enjoy the lost art of browsing? Read a Shakespeare play aloud with friends? (Pick one with some marvelous blank verse, couplets, or songs.) Or study a pronunciation guide and then read some Chaucer with friends, taking turns? (Enjoy it--laugh a lot!) Memorize a poem? Go to a well-stocked bookstore and buy a new poetry book by a living writer? Pick out a press to support and follow--buy books directly from their site? Choose a writer to support, so you see how his or her work changes over time? Try translating or writing a particular form in order to understand it better? Read translated poetry?

Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing, 2012
This is a beautiful and powerful book--
worth owning, worth reading and
rereading. --Rachel Barenblat

RN: Though I see your reason for saying poetry's audience has dwindled, all the same, the number of MFA programs (online particularly), spoken word events, self-publishing outlets, and such has grown exponentially. What do you think this disparity means? Does it herald big changes in the art, or only the effort to turn the impulse of poetry, which will always be with us, into a commodity?

MY: My opinion on these subjects is a tangle of contradictions. For example, I don't think an over-the-top proliferation of MFA programs (it is, yes, a commodity and cash cow for universities) is a good tendency, given the state of the economy and the level of student debt incurred by many. On the other hand, a free ride with years to write must be very sweet! And I know people who have gone for the MFA because they need more credentialing for teaching, even though they've published quite a few books. That's useful, though here I point out that we've gone credentialing-mad in the last fifty years. If an English department wants a writer, they should go for a writer of good books and have no concern for the diploma. But the university administration has a concern with ticking off boxes and improving its rankings. But what's the use of a credential to poems and stories? None. It's like giving a tiara and matching earrings to a terrier. But we are a nation obsessed with credentials from the ivory tower. Signs of change are appearing on that front, though, and perhaps we will become more sensible.

Mercer University Press, 2012
The Ferrol Sams Award
Silver Award, ForeWord BOTYA

I expect that creative writing (like a lot of people, I'm not fond of that label) was more vibrant when it meant bold first ventures at places like The University of Iowa and UNC-Greensboro and Hollins--when it had the life and energy of something new and daring. Lately the programs have been attacked as places where writers teach, anoint, and credential other writers who will go on to teach, anoint, credential--an art for the free market economy. A program today is going to have to struggle against that image. So far, though, they seem to be surviving and multiplying.

You ask about self-publishing. Self-publishing is one of those curious things that is just exactly as good as the work of the person making use of it. Self-publishing has an old, venerable past. It also has an old, cheesy past. The dilemma is once again the excessive nature of current usage, this time with the added difficulty for the reader of finding needles in a gargantuan haystack.

I'm not in the least opposed to self-publishing, particularly for mid-list writers. The major New York publishers put enormous amounts of money and time behind the lead books they decide to sell, but the rest of the list must share small money and small marketing time. (It's hard. The gobbling-up of large New York houses has meant pressure from conglomerates to fatten profits in a traditionally low-but-steady-profit industry.) A first-rate writer without lead book status becomes a design in the classy wallpaper on which the lead books are hung.

Mercer University Press, 2011
"a writer of rare ability whose works
will one day be studied by serious
students of poetry."Baton Rouge Advocate

But here's an issue for poets: poetry is never lead book material. Oh, you may find some push for a Billy Collins or a Mary Oliver or a Sharon Olds. You may find a push behind a celebrity who decides to publish a book of poems. Is it a problem? Not really. A poet needs to see the situation and get on with navigating rocks and shoals; if that means self-publishing allures, fine.

Currently I'm thinking about self-publishing the reprint of a novel, even though I have offers from a number of publishers. I'd like to give it a try once, if only out of curiosity. Whitman, Woolf, and plenty of other writers have relied on self-publishing.

Since I've been living in a rural village for the past 15 years, I don't have a sense of the range of poetry events available in a city. My experience with tour readings at bookstores and other venues is that they are still attended by many different sorts of people, not just writers, and that's good. I'd be curious to know how many people attend, say, "spoken word events," and how often they draw a crowd including more than the organizers and the poets who appear regularly. Perhaps that's irrelevant and wrong-headed--perhaps the fundamental purpose of such events is to create a sort of sub-world where poetry retains meaning and purpose for every inhabitant. Sometimes I have the feeling that poets are a sort of lacemakers' guild, quietly going on with the work in stray corners. If that's so, fine. I'll make lace.

Rounding up poetry--

Today 

Lady Word of Mouth 

features 

Robbi Nester's anthology 

from Nine Toes Press,
an imprint of
Lummox Press,

The Liberal Media Made Me Do It: 

Poetic Responses to NPR and PBS Stories.

National Poetry Month,
2014.
Brand new news!

from David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art and Fear

The artwork's potential is never higher than in that magic moment when the first brushstroke is applied, the first chord struck. But as the piece grows, technique and craft take over, and imagination becomes a less useful tool. A piece grows by becoming specific. The moment Herman Melville penned the opening line, "Call me Ishmael," one actual story--Moby Dick--began to separate itself from a multitude of imaginable others.

Last chances

to benefit Phoenicia Publishing and buy a new book at 20% off--including books by me (Thaliad in hardcover and softcover, with lots of wonderful art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins), Dave Bonta, Rachel Barenblat, Dick Jones, and more. Available to the end of this month, national poetry month. Phoenicia is helmed by the discerning Elizabeth Adams, who is one of those rare multi-talented people; among other things, she is a wonderful designer. 

to sign up for my national poetry month giveaway

to sign up for my patreon account before I give up and ditch it, as I've discovered that I simply can't promote it--I'm so dratted polite that I can't ask anybody for anything!

to nab a hardcover edition of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage--I thought they were all out everywhere, but evidently Amazon had a final shipment. A very few remain there and elsewhere, but used copies are fairly rare.

Duende again! And poetry--

Gerry Cambridge and David Mason,
reading and talking in the Transatlantic Poetry on Air series
hosted by Robert Peake in London
and Jennifer Williams of the Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh.
(The duende discussion is at 59.10 if you haven't had enough of that subject
and want to hear that discussion before you listen to the poems.)
Hat tip to Patricia Wallace Jones and Paul Digby.

Mary Boxley Bullington

Portrait of moi by my college friend, painter Mary Boxley Bullington, requested by poet and teacher Robbi Nester, also a college friend. We were all aspiring young poets together and all still write poems, all these years later.

Mary taught Medieval Literature in her post-schooling life but has been surviving for many years now as a painter and collagist working with painted papers. As many of you know, that's quite a trick. She lives in a jolly, bright Roanoke bungalow and shows her work at galleries and events in the Southeast, and you can even visit her at home during the annual Roanoke studio tours and during her Christmas open house. So if you're traveling along the 81 corridor or live in Roanoke, you might check out her schedule! A number of my painter friends in North Carolina and New York have said they want to meet her; you might too. Just be sure and take home a painting, large or small... They're great fun as life companions, those pictures.

Mary is an exuberant, wonderfully vigorous painter and collagist. I think she may have the messiest studios that I have ever seen; they are as rich and layered and full of interest as her collages. She is among those friends of mine who are genuine characters--who possess gen-u-ine character! You may see her blog here, but to see a rich world of new characters, her facebook photo pages are the thing: here. (And if you have a time-frittering desire to see a great many often very silly comments on the little portrait, go to here... Some may be "hidden," but many will show.)

Camellia courtesy

Thanks to Oregon poet Dale Favier for his mid-way read and post, in which he has a number of interesting things to say, including this: "People will inevitably call it Faulknerian – it's Deep South, it's hot, it's told through the lens of a boy who's neurologically atypical. And it's got fruit and blood. But if you have any spiritual antennae at all, you'll quickly grasp that it's anti-Faulkner. There's fullness, not emptiness, in back of everything." That comment reminded me of how my father, the sharecropper's boy who became a WWII tail gunner and then a professor of analytical chemistry, detested the very name of Faulkner and thought that he had gotten the deep South and poverty entirely wrong.

Thanks to GalleyCat for "handpicking" A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage and posting a clip and jacket image... and to poet Robbi Nester for telling me about it.

Thanks to the Cooperstown Crier for news about the new book and also about the NBA panel for young people's literature.

Upcoming:  an expansion of readings in North Carolina, tba on the Events page.

Launch Day: Clare Dudman interview and more

"A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage" tells of a young boy's travels through the black heart of Depression America and his search for light both metaphorical and real. Writing with a controlled lyrical passion, Marly Youmans has crafted the finest, and the truest period novel I’ve read in years.            

     --Lucius Shepard

March 30th at last: today A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage officially enters the world. (To read the first chapter, go here. To read more about the book, go here. To buy the book in hardcover or as ebook from an online seller, go here. To find a store and obtain a copy from an indie, go to IndieBound.)

UK novelist Clare Dudman has contributed another piece to the launch interview, and you may find it at Keeper of the Snails.  If you have kept company with me here for a while, you may remember that poet Dave Bonta and I met up with Clare at Powys Castle in Wales, back in May of last year.

Two more launch announcement pieces are: poet Katie Hoerth's post at Katie's Blog; poet Robbi Nester's post at Shadow Knows.

Thank you to all of these writers. And if you don't know Clare's novels or Katie and Robbi's poetry, please take a closer look at their blogs...

Please pop down to the next post for a rather different celebration of the day!

Nester chooses Blake on "The Lydian Stones"

Valentine's Day pub date!
Victorian Violet Press

Illustrations by Nina Canal of France

Today is pub date for Robbi Nester's chapbook from Karen Kelsay Davies' Victorian Violet Press, and Robbi is the featured chooser on The Lydian Stones.  Please drop by and leave her a congratulatory valentine. Enjoy!

And here is a cruel winter Valentine for you if you have had enough of candy hearts and small animals dressed in ruffly pink.

I Interview My Visitors, no. 3 (part 3)

Robbi's website is here.


Interview with Robbi Nester, continued


[Robbi's fascinating parents]

Marly: You have been through a lot lately. Both of your parents, two intense and colorful figures, died recently and, like so many married people, one right after the other. Would you like to give a little thumbnail sketch of each?

Robbi: You are right to say that my parents were "intense and colorful" people! My father was born in Philadelphia, and even before his birth, he was unfortunate. His young father, less than 40 years old, died of a heart attack the week before he was born. There were already two children, and no willingness on the part of his father's family, who were rather well off, to help out. My grandmother, a difficult woman, depressed and obsessive, took in sewing until my father was old enough to wander the streets in search of food and coal, which he snatched from passing coal trains as it fell to the rails. He stole fruit from pushcarts parked in the streets. For a while, he and his siblings were put in an orphanage because his mother was unable to care for him.

Later, his Tourette's became so severe that he was hospitalized for two months because of misunderstandings about what he had. He joined the air force early on in life and flew 35 missions over Germany.

Following that war, he volunteered in Israel and flew planes for their air force and helped to start one of the nation's first kibbutzim, a collective farm for Jewish socialists from all over the world. That's where he met my mother, who was there with her sisters.

My mom had a very different early life, a life of privilege in Capetown South Africa, where her father was the postmaster. She was happy and popular, unprepared to deal with a difficult brooding person like my father.

Her life with him was hard, since he took out his rage on both of us, but she stayed with him for 60-some years.

They adored each other, and spent every minute together. He tried to care for her when she got dementia, but couldn't manage it.

I miss them both very much.


[Robbi and Judaism]

Marly: Your synagogue is a big part of your life. Can you explain why the focus and concerns of Reformed Judaism appeal to you? [Drat. I was afraid that I had the wrong “R,” and I did.]


Robbi: I am not a reformed Jew, but a Reconstructionist. Reconstruction is left of reform politically speaking. Practically speaking, this means that we do not feel comfortable speaking of Jews as "the chosen people" or other practices that exclude people who are married to or are part of the extended families of those who belong to the shul. The matzor, or prayer book, for Reconstructionism is non-sexist and refers to God without any gendered pronoun. But that is all just window dressing. For me, being a Reconstructionist is different from belonging to any other synagogue, and I have belonged or tried to belong to other kinds, because it encourages life-long learning. It is not just children who take classes, learn Hebrew, ask questions, and are expected to investigate basic questions about Judaism and Jews, but adults, throughout their whole lives.

[Bat Mitzvah]


I never had a bat mitzvah when I was young, even though most other people in my neighborhood did have bar and bat mitzvahs. My parents were aggressively anti-religious, and my extended family was Orthodox, which means they didn't hold with girls having such ceremonies. I felt at once attracted and alienated from Judaism, partly because I was not welcomed, as a girl, to be a real part of things. But also because my parents disapproved. And what kid of 10-13 wants to go to school for extra times two times or even more per week?

But I had a bat mitzvah, along with several other women, ranging from late 20s to 70s in age. I was right in the middle. It was one of the most wonderful days of my life! [And more]I sing in the choir, and this is also a central part of my life. Until recently, I belonged to a Torah group, studying the first five books of the Hebrew bible or Tanakh in English. I can't be in it now because I teach on Tues. and Thurs. afternoon.

There are so many things. It's too bad my family (my husband, who isn't Jewish, and my son, who is) isn't interested, but it's important to me.

[A poem about Richard Nester's Virginia grandfather from Floyd Country Moonshine]


Will’s Ridge


Your grandfather’s a mountain.

Although he passed some time ago,

his name endures, enshrined

on maps and part of local lore.


In contrast, Greeks and Romans

once made gods of sea and storm,

each willow housed a dryad,

all the earth alive, divine.


Egyptian pharaohs, who fancied

themselves gods, charted their

immortal course from pyramids

built up by human hands, while


moderns mark their graves

with chunks of polished granite,

piles of sea-smooth stones,

marble mausoleums, built

to last, if what’s within is not.


Your grandfather outdoes them all,

a modest farmer, his mountain

stands unchanged, and will

as long as there are maps, and even


beyond that, for named

or nameless, the mountain

shapes the world around it,

makes this a place, marked by

its jagged silhouette against the sky.

I Interview My Visitors, no. 3 (part 2)

Robbi's website is here.
Photograph: Robbi reading at Red Rock Canyon, taken by her friend Lou



Interview with Robbi Nester, continued

Marly: You're a Philly girl. Tell us about your life in California-- where you teach, where you live, and how you finally at long last learned to drive.

[Philly]

Robbi: There are a lot of stories in this question. I grew up in Philadelphia, but I spent most of my time running away from the bullies who desired only to toss me, always the shortest and smallest person in sight with only my wits to protect me, into the nearest trash can. That, and the hostility of Philadelphia generally, hayfever, and the godawful weather drove me out.

[The Road to California]

I never thought I'd go to California, but when I started applying for MFA programs, I decided to go to Irvine, CA, to UCI's MFA program, where I studied with Chuck Wright (most recently at UVA, I believe) and Jim McMichael. I had been accepted at all the programs I applied to, which included Missoula MT, Tucson AZ, and Carnegie Mellon, PA. All of them wanted me badly enough to offer scholarships and teaching. When Richard Hugo, then dying of the cancer that would eventually kill him, called me to offer me a scholarship, I nearly fell over!

I was fortunate, but I thought that I might as well go to Southern California, and I fell in love with the place and have been here ever since. It has been 30 years now.

[More grad school and teaching]

I stayed on at the University, where I taught every writing class they had to offer, and got a PhD in Comparative Literature, writing a dissertation on play in the work of Vladimir Nabokov. I never did rework and publish that dissertation. The whole process of writing the dissertation and jumping through various hoops was pretty oppressive.

Instead, I took a job at a community college teaching composition, and have been there, at Irvine Valley College, a small, friendly place (mostly), with high standards. I develop my own curricula, which often combine film, literature, and interdisciplinary materials. This semester, my theme is "Crime and Time," with topics taken from the film by Stanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange. After writing a paper on that, they go on to consider Foucault's Discipline and Punish and then choose a topic to research related to punishment and crime, writing three researched arguments.

I change my theme every year. Next year I am on to The Uses of Narrative, considering the dangers and blessings of stories, considering Bettleheim's work on fairy tales, new research on placebos, etc.

[How Robbi Finally Learned to Drive]

Learning to drive is a whole other thing. I had 20 permits before I finally took the test. My misadventures with driving began when I was 16, in Philadelphia. My dad, who was bipolar and had Tourette's and rage, among other things, was the person who first tried to teach me, and he pretty effectively put me off of it completely by pulling my hair, stomping on my feet, yelling in my ears while I was trying to drive.

The kind of car I was trying to drive was completely unsuited for a small, slight person like me. It didn't have power steering, and I couldn't see over the windshield, even sitting on a phone book. Now that I have a little Corolla, and sit on two pillows, I am much better off, but at first, I smashed up a few dumpsters and hit a few parked cars.

It was finally thanks to determined (female) driving teachers and friends that I learned to drive. Thank you to them.

Marly: And tell us about a favorite recent California restaurant meal!

Robbi: This part of Southern California is full of wonderful ethnic restaurants. It is an extremely diverse place, home to more southeast Asians, for example, than Southeast Asia itself. I love Vietnamese food, so probably my favorite restaurants are Vietnamese. One I particularly love, and haven't visited for a while, is called "8 Courses of Fish." They keep on bringing out one course after another, raw fish, soup, a huge roasted catfish bronzed with sauce, etc., until you couldn't touch another bite, but it's a fascinating and fun meal, great for parties. I also like a new vegan restaurant I've discovered, "The Loving Hut," run by a religious group, where I discovered the joys of vegan Pho. Pho, in case you don't know, is the famous Vietnamese national dish of soup and noodles, generally spiced with star anise and, in its regular configuration, with hunks of beef tendon and other things floating in it. One sprinkles in Thai basil, bean sprouts, and sracha hot sauce (sp?), and it is an amazing treat.

PICNIC AT THE BIG LADY, QUABBIN RESERVOIR

The Quabbin rises as if bound to speak:
the four lost towns, Dana, Enfield,
Greenwich, and Prescott murmuring
of all that was, before the emptied
graves and cellar holes took on
the impersonal and public face of history.
Where now the bass patrol and deer
nose out the fattest berries, old rumors
and a persistent watching from behind.

Were the windows open when water
swept those barns and fields? Perhaps
a table set for tea and cake spun slowly
to the ceiling, flowers spilling
from their vase, family photographs
undeveloping to slicks of sepia
within the darkening, generic pool.

I can still see the steeple
dimpling the surface. Whole towns
caught, like a breath, beneath its
phantom shadow, as in a small
glass dome where no snow falls.

June 29, 2008, qarrtsiluni

Tomorrow, part three...

Readings for the 12 Days of Christmas: qarrtsiluni

Well, I am falling behind--I planned to read some novels-0f-friends that I haven't read yet and talk about them. But I have galleys due tomorrow, and I'm only on page 82 of The Throne of Psyche. And that means 24 pages to go with lots of little spacing issues to note. So I shall recommend a 'zine: qarrtsiluni. I also recommend its managing editors, Dave Bonta and Elizabeth Adams--if you look to the right at my blog roll, you'll find Dave's Via Negativa and Beth's the cassandra pages.

I like the way qarrtsiluni is run and its daily format. I like the fact that the topics and the guest editors are so varied. I like how Beth and Dave edit now and then and have great taste. And I once had a grand time editing the Insecta issue with Tasmanian-poet-in-Wales, Ivy Alvarez.

The photograph? That's Vicki Johnson's bug on a banana leaf...

Here's a bite from a college classmate of mine:

Salamba Sirsasana 1 — Headstand
by Robbi Nester

The moon swells like a seedpod.
Inside the quiet studio, I take
my aching head into my hands,
fingers web to web. A breath,
and then this awkward frame
ascends, becomes an aspen
flexing in a nonexistent breeze.
Grounded in air, movement merges
with stillness, my ear a vehicle
for surging tides, the galaxies’
faint hum. Everywhere
and nowhere, the worlds
fall away, balanced
on these two arms.

And here's Ivy!

hours

morning’s beauty has wrinkled
into cloud glower

snow shower
arrives

dark eyed
with the threat

of sharp stars
cold night


Oh, and here's "Blue Morphos," which Ivy and I made Katherine of the stately name (Katherine Durham Oldmixon) tweak because we liked it...

Blue Morphos

This summer morning, two languorous butterflies suckled
the hummingbird feeder; wings unfolded and folded now

and then as if they dreamed they were flying, the way
a dog asleep in a sunny spot of yard runs a meadow.

Where does a butterfly sail in her red nectar reverie?
I have seen them exult in the winds of the Caribbean;

sheer wings glisten with sea spray, tremble in currents
with that wild insect certainty that inspired Icarus.

On the road to Cobá, they drifted in clouds like spring
sun motes swirling before the windshield, slight and pale

Mexican Yellows, Orange Fritillaries; iridescent Morphos
imbricate paths in my memory through crumbling ruins.

That day we couldn’t move for fear of crushing them;
tiptoeing across a quivering sea of shimmering wings,

we urged them to fly: what could they be thinking?
Suicide, to sojourn in the parking lot of a tourist stop.

I thought of my grandmother’s tray, gift from a traveling
relative, fine wood framing amputated wings—

dust to dust under glass, keepsake of a time when
someone flew over an ocean, someone wingless arrived home.


There's Carey Wallace, who just published her first novel! Clare Dudman, who recently published another book. I wonder who else among the Lunians has a new book? And there's Richard Nester, who is married to Robbi and should have had a book long ago... There's the Insecta crew and Laura Frankstone of Laurelines and the marvelous glassman Paul Stankard and lots of other names I know, a whole cloud of qarrtsilunians, a glad looney bunch:

Greta Aart – Katherine Abbott – Beth Adams – Mary Alexandra Agner – Adam Aitken – C. Albert – Lisa Alden – Stacey Allam – Gwendolyn Alley – Maureen Alsop – Reed Altemus – Celia Lisset Alvarez – Ivy Alvarez – Amba – Andy Anderson – Emily May Anderson – Holly Anderson – Khadija Anderson – Arlene Ang – Elizabeth Angell – Anne-Mieke – Anonymous – Tiel Aisha Ansari – D.S. Apfelbaum – Lana Hechtman Ayers – Carrie Ann Baade – Tricia Anne Baar – Glenda Bailey-Mershon – Emilie Zoey Baker – Janet Baker – Josephine Balakrishnan – Norman Ball – Rachel Barenblat – Stuart Barnes – Boe Barnett – Dax Bayard-Murray – Jeffery Beam – Caroline Beasley-Baker – Kimberly L. Becker – Kate Bernadette Benedict – Maria Benet – John M. Bennett – Carol Berg – F. J. Bergmann – Kristin Berkey-Abbott – Judith Bernal – Nicolette Bethel – Clive Birnie – Polly Blackley – Maroula Blades – Kelsey Blair – Danielle Blasko – Sarah R. Bloom – Nathalie Boisard-Beudin – Dave Bonta – Bryan Borland – Patricia Bralley – Helen Brandenburg – Paul Brandt – Therese L. Broderick – Dustin Brookshire – Harriet Brown – Irene Brown – Richard Brown – Darcy Bruce – James Brush – Will Buckingham – Eric Burke – Sarah Burke – Rick Bursky – Sarah Busse – Nick Carbó – Isabelle Carbonell – Jenna Cardinale – Joyce Carter – Maciej Cegłowski – Tina Celio – C. E. Chaffin – Sherry Chandler – Cecelia Chapman – Robin Chapman – Peter Cherches – O Thiam Chin – Alex Cigale – Lisa J. Cihlar – Ross Clark – Chris Clarke – Maggie Cleveland – Brenda Clews – Cathryn Cofell – Robert Elzy Cogswell – K. 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Questions for Mrs. Nose

This is for my friend Robbi, who asked.

Nobody else ask! Consider yourself asked in turn if you want to be asked.

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
Yes, my mother, Mary Sue Morris Youmans. She was probably not completely pleased because she never admits to "Sue." Of course, as a child in south George she was called "Mary Sue." My father named me.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
Do tears in the eyes count? In that case, I think it might have been reading Yeats.

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3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
You can find out the curious truth about my handwriting here: http://thepalaceat2.blogspot.com/2007/09/little-man-of-letters.html. Today my hand has relaxed considerably from the Palmer method and is more eccentric and more itself, but people tend to admire my handwriting all the same. Of course, good handwriting is not a virtue and helps nothing much.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
The words "lunch meat" disgust me. I refused to admit to having eaten such a vile phrase.

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5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
No to young goats, yes to children: three, two sons and a daughter ranging in age from 11 to 19. Children are more important than writing. I can't say that about much.

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6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
Hard to say. Yes, I think so. After all, I love being with my daughter, and we are much alike.
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7. DO YOU USE SARCASM?
Seldom. I was too domesticated by my Southern ancestors. If I do use sarcasm, it generally refers to a child's midden or personal heap of debris, otherwise known as a bedroom.

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8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Yes, and doctors always report that they are Guiness-record size.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
I rebound. That's close enough for me.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
I'm on a narrow-minded diet, thanks. No cereal. Don't even mention foods not on the list to me.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
I haven't the slightest. Probably I'd have to say "no" because I only have one pair with ties, and they vanished into a child's midden long ago.

Usually it's "13" that is missing. WHY IS 12 MISSING?
12 has evidently been excused. It was probably WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE WISH? or WHAT HARRY POTTER CHARACTER WOULD YOU BE? or WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE CELEBRITY?

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?
Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. Didn't I say not to mention foods not on The List?

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
Whether they feel "like me" or where on the spectrum of interestingly different from me they appear.

15. RED OR PINK?
Red is no longer my color. Pink, which I like less, is. Pink: a pale pink, the inside of a shell, perhaps.

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16. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
A deep-seated conviction that I am a fool and that the word "Fool" will someday appear in golden, beautiful letters on my forehead: perhaps that is true; perhaps it is a fiction. You pick.

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17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
My dead.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST?
That is a terrifying idea. I do not want everyone to do anything. Nothing in this world appears to be exactly right for everyone. I do not even want everyone to read my books, for pity's sake. I wouldn't mind if they all bought them and gave them to a beloved friend, though.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
Barefoot. Grey shorts for rebounding--just yo-yo'd up and down and about for an hour.
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What happened to #20? First 12, now 20. It's not a bad idea. We could get rid of a few more...

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
Birds craking against the dull sky and snow. The hiss of this computer. The small crik of a branch.

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
Verdant green. (Happily "verdant green," not as in the famous poem wherein grasshopper's "verdant green" becomes "green ice.")

23. FAVORITE SMELL?
My mother's cooking, my husband's cooking, violets in bloom, gardenias in bloom, sea salt in the air.

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
A fat man with blue hair. A lama. A storytelling liar.

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
Yes, and I wouldn't bestir myself if I didn't! She is my longtime friend Robbi Nester, a tiny woman of 4'11" who is a poet and college teacher and mother and wife and reader and much else. She is a woman of vim and energy. She blogs at Shadow Knows.

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
Anything that my son of 11 plays. As he was the lightest person in the entire football league last year, I watched those games on tenterhooks--uncomfortable seat, tenterhooks.

27. HAIR COLOR?
I was born blonde and slowly darkened to brown. Now I have a splot of less desirable color, hidden by the usual magic.

28. EYE COLOR?
Green. You knew that.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
I am quite near-sighted and have sensitive eyes, and contacts make my eyes not green but green and red. Most unattractive except during the Christmas holidays, when I might consider them festive, worn with a holly crown.

30. FAVORITE FOOD?
Utterly impossible. I grew up with a great Southern cook and married a man who became a great cook because I wouldn't eat anything that wasn't good. (That's what he claims, anyway.) I have a great weakness for all kinds of Southern things, especially okra and lady peas and black eyes. I also have a weakness for chocolate, Asian food of all sorts, fiery dishes, TexMex--I just like good food, though I'm not a huge carnivore. I could easily give up meat, were it not on the menu. Among game, I prefer antelope. Probably if I had to make a wish right now, I'd wish for a bowl of hoppin' john (fresh black eyes, though, none of your dried-our rubbish) garnished with scallions and hot peppers. Now that's comfort.

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
If it's me, I'll take the happy ending and hope there's not a thing scary about it. Yes, yes, I know what the question meant! Okay, I refuse to answer. Stupid question, really. I prefer whatever it is to be good of its kind.

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32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Last re-watch: Hayao Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle."
Last first-time watch: Lotte Reiniger, "The Adventures of Prince Achmed," (1926, I believe). Utterly lovely and strange silhouette animation, very complex and detailed and surprisingly emotional: this is a movie definitely worth digging for. My penpal Clive once worked for somebody who owned Reiniger puppets: how scrumptious!

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
A skimpy blue top for rebounding with a white shirt pulled over.

*

34. SUMMER OR WINTER?
I detest being cold (as any proper Southerner in upstate New York ought to do), but adore Yankee autumns with colored leaves and blue cobalt nights with snow falling and the northern lights pale over the frozen lake. On the other hand, there's no spring to speak of here. I'll pick spring. Yes. Spring: a long Southern spring with redbuds and flame azaleas in the mountains.

35. HUGS OR KISSES?
Yes.

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36. FAVORITE DESSERT?
Impossible when you live with cooks. There are too many wonderful dinners. All sorts of chocolate desserts. Then there was the three months when my husband became obsessed with baking cheesecakes of all sorts, and cheesecake turned out to be something different than I had ever imagined... And when he did homemade croissants. I think those took three days and were some of the best pastries I've eaten. I like poached pears fixed in simple ways with creme, and little pear and nut tarts. I could write a little book about this topic... It would be a fan letter to my husband and would probably also explain why I'm going on a brief little diet.

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
To this?

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38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
A pebble.

39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?
Just finished Jedadiah Berry's The Manual of Detection and am currently reading Derek Walcott, Selected Poems and Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, and a brand new book of poems, Elegies for the Water by Philip Lee Williams. I just pulled it out of the mail basket and so have only read two poems. My husband is engrossed in a book about Stalin and reading me terrifying, astonishing bits. We don't know nearly as much about those times as we ought, I think: some of the saddest stories in the world.

40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
A roof. I'd hardly call it a "pad" though: more a rural bungalow.

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT?
Nothing, same as usual. I do not have t.v. connection, though I have one to watch movies.

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42. FAVORITE SOUND(S)?
Katydids, cicadas, bells, mockingbirds (oh, I miss mockingbirds! though not at 4:00 a.m.), Southern drawls, my children singing, the words "I love you" and "I just cleaned up my room," Taverner, etc.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
Sure.

44. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME?
An airplane over Iceland, maybe? Vancouver? I've missed a lot of good spouse-trips because I stayed home with children. However, this year I'm supposedly going to Thailand and some adjacent country or other as well.

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45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
Yes.

46. WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
Aiken, South Carolina. I think the hospital is now county offices.

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47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK?
Anything from another world. Okay, I know what you meant!

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48. HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR SPOUSE?
I was bending over a desk, wearing purple wool pants. A smallish purple bottom caught his eye.

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49. IS THE CUP HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY?
My cup runneth over, thanks. Sometimes I don't notice, though...

50. IF YOU COULD SIT DOWN TO DINNER WITH FIVE PEOPLE WHO WOULD YOU CHOOSE.
Well, I shall have to ask Robbi, who inflicted this on me, but in revenge and friendship I shall make her the hostess. I'm assuming that the five people have to be alive and walking or wheeling around on the planet at this very moment. It would be interesting and amusing to have dinner with some of the people who have corresponded with me but whom I have never met or have only met once. How about: Clive Hicks-Jenkins, the painter; Howard Bahr (I have met him once and written about it on my blog, and I would like to see him again) the novelist; Ingrid Hill, novelist and short story writer, Philip Lee Williams, novelist and poet and essayist; Laura Frankstone, painter. However, that is quite a mishmash and would give the hostess quite a lot of work...

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Probably it would end in tears and a food fight.

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So I'd be perfectly content and happy sitting down with my family: we are five, and I would ask my mother to make me-plus-five.

The Food Fight Party:

Clive: http://www.hicks-jenkins.com/

Howard: http://thepalaceat2.blogspot.com/2006/07/palace-storeroom-memory-from-after.html

Ingrid: http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_07_005950.php

Phil: http://www.philipleewilliams.com/

Laura: http://www.laurelines.typepad.com/

PICTURE: Think my husband took this one; it was taken at the same time as one that is at Mezzo Cammin. I don't sit still for a snap often. I think these are two years old... Different hair, different glasses.