At Interlochen

Hedgehog in the Fog

Foam Party

This is how far behind I am with blogging: sometime back in late April my students told me about the traditional "foam party" on campus. This is where the college hires a company to come and put up a big tent outfitted with foam-generating equipment, and the tent fills with non-toxic, coconut-scented foam and everyone dances to loud music. I couldn't picture it, so I looked at the Wikipedia article, which I found oddly beautiful and haunting. I put the section on "Foam Generation" through the Cut-Up Machine, edited out 90% of the results, and came up with this poem, which my students tell me pretty closely approximates the actual foam party experience.

Foam Party

Launch dance cannons,

foam people to air.

High volume hours

generated; suspended people

shaving the ceiling.

Air from water texture

range bubble-lights, blizzard-like

consistencies, difficult

foam concentrate. 15m. sprayed

club is achieved, 10m commercial breakdown,

80 in the can. Foam volume

is long. Foam moving

in lights, filled with it.

Adjusting the generator,

200m high. Environment consistencies and

jet-filled people. Crowd and sprayed meters

mass a small thread-count.

Garbage in foam held, diluted.

I am lazy but I'll update soon with words

The Golden Beetle

Bleeding hearts

Photographed in the garden behind the public library. These always remind me of my grandmother.

A Fish

forget-me-not

NaPoWriMo final roundup:
Day 27: The Identity of the Heart
Day 28: Invitation to the Storm
Day 29: The Artist
Day 30: (The less said about today's poem the better. Limping over the finish line.)

Now that NaPoWriMo is behind me, I'm busy wrapping up the semester. Two more classes and a mountainous landscape of reading to go. You will hear more from me soon, I promise.

Trout Lily (closed)

NaPoWriMo Progress:
Day 24: Under Watt
Day 25: Dogtooth Violet
Day 26: Eros and the Reader

Trout Lily (Dogtooth Violet)

Reading at 51 Main

I'm very excited about reading with these fantastic poets next week at 51 Main in Middlebury. We'd love to see you if you're in the area!

NaPoWriMo progress:
Day 17: Disappearing Act
Day 18: Gravity
Day 19: Cause and Effect
Day 21: The Truth about the Lamp, and Material Gains (this one was a collaborative poem Cindy and I wrote together)
Day 22: Elegiac
Day 23: The Bridge

NaPo update

Strange things are happening as a result of writing a poem a day. The poems are getting weirder and so am I. It's hard work, but I was sad to realize, yesterday, that the month is half over. What's making this most satisfying, on many levels, is my inspiring and inspired NaPo partner, Cindy. We send one another our poems each day and are working on a couple of collaborations. I honestly don't think I could do it--would do it--on my own. I need the incentive of knowing someone who's so nice will be disappointed in me if I don't deliver.

Day 13: Dear Shadow
Day 14: Heartsease
Day 15: Crocus
Day 16: Paradise

Rising from the falls

Driving to Carrie's house last night, my friend Kellam and I took Morgan Horse Farm Road without realizing that the Clickity-Clack Bridge is closed. There was mist rising up from the falls there, and I was glad I had my camera.

NaPoWriMo progress:
Day 10: The Afterlife
Day 11: April
Day 12: The Green Fire AND Astrophysics 101 (finally caught up, yay!)

Camera obscura

I've been watching this video from Flickr all day. It recently occurred to me that maybe the fact that my adolescent bedroom was a camera obscura has something to do with my general laziness. At a formative point in my life, staring at the wall was actually a really interesting and compelling thing to do. I've never gotten over the habit, even though most of the time walls are just walls.

I'm one poem behind with NaPoWriMo, but here's my progress so far this week:
Day 6: More Lies
Day 7: Metaphysics and the Fox
Day 9: Underwater

Nines

Here's a prompt I've used a couple of times already this month, with pretty good results.
1. Do a nine minute free-write.
2. From your free-write, select nine words that stand out to you. Write them in a column on the left side of a piece of paper.
3. Select a random book, and from every ninth page write down the ninth word in a column to the right of your first column, until you have nine words in each column.
4. Write a nine line poem, using the top two words in the first line, the next two words in the second line, etc.

Both times I did this I cheated a lot. The first time I used almost all the word-combos but not in the right order. The second time I felt more inspired by the constellation of words I ended up with than any actual lines they suggested, and just kind of went with what they evoked for me. I always cheat with prompts, though, even when I've made them up myself. I consider it a success any time I get something I like on the page.

NaPoWriMo progress:
Day 4: An Annotation on Angels
Day 5: Raven

Two things

1. I've been experimenting with taking digital photos through the viewfinder of a Kodak Duaflex II from the 1950s. It's complicated and involves math and the construction of reflection-blocking contraptions. The first contraption I made from a sock and an old oatmeal container fell apart and I'm trying to put together a sturdier replacement. Here's my first photo through the Duaflex that worked.

2. I am writing a poem a day in April.
Day 1: The Shadow: An Owner's Manual
Day 2: Smoke
Day 3: One Block

Rome revisited

Terry's mom recently gave us an old View-Master that had been living in her attic, along with a couple dozen reels. Here is the Rome slide from "Cities of World." I photographed it through the View-Master with my camera's macro setting. Sadly there's no date on the reel, but most of the others in the batch are circa 1945-1950. The original is color, but I like the effect of the black-and-white, and the unintentional blurring from my unsteady hand. I think I am discovering whole new realms of nerdiness within myself.

It's hard to believe it's been almost a year since we went to Italy. I was looking at my travel journal recently, and here's an entry from May 16:

We walked for seven hours today: all through the Colosseum, around the Forum, up to the Palatine, then into the Aventine. I loved the Temple of Vesta and the house and courtyard of the Vestal Virgins best. Very beautiful and fragile and affecting. Pink roses in the courtyard. We read that the punishment for a Vestal Virgin who broke her vows was being buried alive. 10 were. The weather wasn't perfect--a little cloudy and even a few drops of rain--but I was actually glad for a break from the sun.

We saw the Bocca della Verita and I put my hand inside and it didn't get bitten off.

The crows here wear gray vests.

Melies: The Conjurer

Four tiny toothpicks

In which Terry and I play the surrealist definitions game.

K: What is a cat?
T: It is the macrame plant hanger of your deepest dreams, and more.

T: What is it that causeth the bee to suckle at the honey?
K: It is the soft music of the choir of mice, their low strumming.

K: What is a photograph?
T: The largest, sweetest bowl of pudding you've ever seen.

K: What is the universe?
T: Toothpaste, a toothbrush, and four tiny toothpicks.

Bristol Cemetery redux: key chain version