I just picked up The Best American Poetry 2007, and I’ve had mixed feelings. There’s an interesting mix of really, really good stuff and stuff that seems to me silly, gimmicky, and simply self-indulgently bad. Stuff by prominent folks we all know (Louise Glück, Robert Pinsky); stuff by less prominent folks doing increasingly interesting work (Brian Turner, Joe Wenderoth); and stuff by former teachers and classmates, none of whom remember me, I’m certain, which is a good thing, because I’m disappointed by some of it, and genuinely amused by one comically pretentious and awful instance, but as it comes from someone who takes himself Very Very Seriously as a Poet and Artist and wanted to make sure all around him knew what a superior Poet and Artist he was, I can’t say I’m surprised.

But the primary reason I picked it up is the fact that former West Point Cadet (class of 2007) Marya Rosenberg has a cycle of haikus included that she wrote as an undergrad here. While some of them aren’t as strong as the rest (I got kind of an Andy Rooney in seventeen syllables feeling from a couple, if that makes any sense), there are also some that are as wonderful and brilliant as any haiku you’ve ever read, and perhaps even moreso in the ways they play with and press at the boundaries of the conventions of the genre. Among various fine examples, my favorite:

Springtime at West Point
boys in combat boots, slipping
on cherry blossoms

Overall, the book is an interesting and diverse collection. And I’m happy to see a Cadet’s poetry receiving public recognition as being at the level of our poet laureates. For me, that recognition of excellent writing — and those fine haiku — are sixteen bucks well spent.

I say check it out. Or write a haiku that nobody else but you could write. Or both.

The Section Marcher

You call attention,
report, breeze, windows wide, and
write — your fingers fly.

That dashed-off attempt isn’t very good, and not even close to being anywhere as good as any of Marya’s, of course. But there’s the breeze, windows, fly thing, and it’s what my section marchers do: they’re in charge of the class. They open windows strategically to make sure the air flows through the old classroom; they take attendance, call the section to attention, offer their reports — and then they do the written work of the class, as well. So: seeing the writing of a student from my school has got me doing more writing and thinking. That’s a good thing, and I look forward, hopefully, to meeting more students like the now-Lieutenant Rosenberg.

Had a fine time in the City today, seeing the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival at Tompkins Square Park. Chico Hamilton and his band were terrific. Later, however, we were disappointed to hear that Abbey Lincoln wouldn’t be able to perform. . .

. . . although the surprise of Cassandra Wilson showing up to sing in her stead kinda eased that sting a bit.

Amanda at Household Opera has been thinking about literary endings, and has posted some of her favorites with invitations to guess. I think it’s too cool a game to pass up, so I’ll add my contributions, and offer my invitation as well: feel free to post your guesses in the comments, and consider yourself tagged to put up your own list of seven last lines, as well.

1. “Am I?” Jesse said.
2. Gold-glowing child, it steps into the sky and sends a birth-song slanting down gray dust streets and sleepy windows of the southern town.
3. Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye.
4. She sat staring with her eyes shut, into his eyes, and felt as if she had finally got to the beginning of something she couldn’t begin, and she saw him moving farther and farther away, farther and farther into the darkness until he was the pin point of light.
5. No one watching this woman smear her initials in the steam on her water glass with her first finger, or slip cellophane packets of oyster crackers into her handbag for the sea gulls, could know how her thoughts are thronged by our absence, or know how she does not watch, does not listen, does not wait, does not hope, and always for me and Sylvie.
6. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.
7. The cults of the famous and the dead.

I’ve finally caved in and turned on the air conditioning at home, and Tink and Zeugma are taking turns standing on the printer with their paws on the window sash and their bellies up to the cold air blasting from the window unit.

So this morning, I’m cleaning out cages in the cat room (warning: cheesy MIDI) with D., who’s another volunteer at the shelter, and K.’s the senior volunteer working in the dog room with N., when the phone rings. Ben and Annie, a ginger tabby and a big black and white, are following me around trying to jump into the cages I’m cleaning after I pull out the litter boxen and the newspaper and bedding, Peanut’s guarding my coffee cup, and Reba’s being a bitch and taking random swipes at me. And it’s mostly a quiet morning, not like the chaos with all the dogs excited and barking on Wednesday morning after one of theirs who’d gotten away from the volunteer walking her this weekend had been found in the woods and returned, with the barking getting the cats all freaked out and barfy and yowly and hissy and swatting at one another. The phone rings, and I hear K. pick up and talk briefly, asking questions, and then giving directions. A few minutes later, it rings again: more directions.

K. comes into the cat room, a little exasperated, cigarette in hand, running her other hand through her hair. “This guy,” she says. “This guy’s like driving around, saying he’s by the drug store, and I told him how to get here, and he says he can’t find us. The drug store’s on Main, right?” D. affirms this. “So he says he’s got a puppy he wants to drop off. Says he found this puppy by the side of the road last night and doesn’t know what to do with it. We’re not hard to find, right?”

A few minutes later, a third phone call, and shortly after that, I’m in the front room with the nervous cats — the ones who aren’t so good in the big room with the other cats — cleaning up plates of old food when I see a minivan pull up. I take the food plates back into the big room and put them in the sink, and D. and I are taking stock of what to do next when K. comes hurtling into the cat room with a little yellow rag cupped in her hands, her eyes wide. “What. The fuck. Is this?” she asks.

(more…)

I’m not usually one to do the quiz thing, but I saw this at k8’s, and was curious if I’d changed much in the ten years or so since I first encountered the MBTI.

Nope. Still strong INTJ. A little less extreme on the thinking/feeling axes than I was ten years ago, but otherwise mostly the same.

I’m familiar with the criticisms of the MBTI — the concerns with vagueness, and the concerns with telling people things they want to hear about themselves — and I get those concerns, but I also think that people aren’t necessarily coming to the MBTI with high expectations of scientific validity. I mean, I don’t really buy astrology — it seems fundamentally ridiculous to me that your personality traits can be in any way determined by the moment at which you’re born — but at the same time, I’m like “Yeah, I am so totally a Scorpio, and so not a Leo or a Pisces.” The supposed attributes of a Scorpio, in their differences from the attributes of other signs, help people tell stories about themselves in relation to others, much as the Myers-Briggs types do.

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

One draft of a co-authored piece, sent off Friday morning: done.

One piece of substantial and enjoyable assistant-editorial work, sent off Friday evening: done.

One draft lesson plan of a session for our arriving faculty workshop: done.

One enormously pleasant afternoon — today — showing an old, good friend around campus, said friend enthusiastic and intrigued by all the military training going on with M16s and camouflage and the balance between that training and the academic project: done.

(And I kinda wish it wasn’t done. Today was a fine day.)

Still to do before summer’s end: a quick-turnaround response piece that’s going to occupy a lot of my time for the next few weeks.

Still to try to do before summer’s end: condense my dissertation’s overarching argument about political economy and teaching writing in the information age into a digestible piece and send it out.

Still to do before year’s end: turn my conference presentation on Tacitus and weblog rhetoric into something to send out.

Still to do right away: stay in better touch with old, good friends.

After lots of investigating, emails, and phone calls, I finally found a no-kill shelter with slots for the two kittens, and as of tonight, they’re hanging out with other cats and in no immediate danger of being euthanized, tormented, run over, or eaten. It took some doing, and I’m relieved: I couldn’t rightly conscience letting two young beings I’d had in my care chance easy harm or death. Tink and Zeugma don’t miss them — well, maybe Tink, a little — but I do.

Especially with kittenish behavior like this wonder at the glories of the carousel microwave:

OMG!! It has soundz AND movez AND foodz! WANT!!!1!!1!

And I’ll be volunteering for a few hours a week at that no-kill shelter, starting tomorrow morning.

I’m tired, dirty, stinky, and my hands look like hamburger. But with immense amounts of wonderful and generous help and guidance from my dad and brother, and a whole lot of work this morning and a long, long day yesterday, my house looks eighteen billion times nicer. Here’s the link to the flickr photoset, which I duplicate below with some narrative.

First: some “before” shots.

The ugly old shed with pretty grape vine on the back of my house.

(more…)

I woke up Sunday around 5 in the morning from a dream about cats. Tink, I dreamt, was hurt and complaining, in a very small-cat voice. I stumbled downstairs and found Tink sleeping on the chair, perfectly fine. I went back to bed.

Sunday evening, around dusk, I was washing dishes in the kitchen with the windows open and heard the same complaint. I looked outside.

Kittens in the garden. Two tiny kittens.

I put some litter and some food and water in the pantry, and they’re happy now. I surveyed the neighbors — everybody saw them, nobody wants them — and I did a careful look around the house for an injured and/or hiding mom. I’m not going to let them back outside because of hawks, because of traffic, and because of some bad neighborhood kids. But I’ll take them to the no-kill shelter in Beacon when it opens on Thursday.

Until then, my two (allegedly) grown cats are terrified of two tiny kittens who stumble and totter and mewl.

Took the train into NYC today with a friend, for the glorious weather and to visit some restaurants we’d been reading very good reviews of, among other activities.

One word.

Mmmmmomofuku.

It was the best lunch and the best restaurant meal I’ve had in years. Do what all the reviews say and get the pork. You will be happy.

We walked and walked and covered a good portion of central Manhattan by foot and subway, spending some fine time at the Strand (”18 miles of books”) until we realized that we have far too much to read already without any of the selections from those voluminous and precarious shelves, knocking around the East Village and northwards and southwards through various other neighborhoods in a sort of big loop until we found ourselves on Curry Hill for a not-bad Indian dinner. Afterwards, we walked about a block and a half up Lexington and found ourselves in front of Kalustyan’s. It was closed, but you could smell those glorious spices even from outside.

The next time I take the train in, I’m bringing a backpack. A big one. And I’m going to Kalustyan’s to stock up and get myself lots of exotic things to experiment with.

You can have too many books to read. You can’t ever have too many spices to work with.