Cat Update

I think I'll name him Frank. Last night Jonathan and I got him to come out from under the bed. So far, he likes to play with string and look at himself in the mirror. And he likes being brushed and having his belly rubbed.

Now off to meet the lady poets for tea...how cliche of me, cat, tea! At least yesterday I wrote an Ode to Beer with my students---don't blame me, they picked that. Of course they would---it was the day before spring break.

An Addition to the Family

I just found out that I'm expecting...a cat. The shelter finally got a declawed cat and as long as I prove that I'm a fit cat mother during the home visit tonight, I should have four paws running around by the end of the week. Here he is in all his glory---now I just need a name!

Up up and away

I'm on a poetry high right now---check out the photos from last night's Burlesque! And found out that I'll be teaching the poetry workshop at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Festival in Rockville next October! Off to AWP so bye bye blog for now. More rockstar-ness to follow next week. Stay tuned!

A Test

For some reason, I can't find my last post, but I know other people have read it so this is a test for the twilight zone. No news here!

Neglected

Oh blog, how I have forgotten about you---blame it on the week of hazy celebrations or travels, but I've been a bad writer. There were so many things that I wanted to tell you, so many good poetry things---about readings, and then about travel, my mom found a great website about trips women should take though I forget where I put the link (reminded me that yes, I am still a feminist) even though I'm up to my neck in laundry and love finding new recipes in Real Simple. The 18 year old me is cussing out the 28 year old me (where are your values? why are you in the house so much? Do you really like crocheting?). I also realized I can't party like I used to. This new body, while open to yoga and tight bartending outfits refuses to be a temple to alcoholic nights. I have become a puker in my mid-to-late twenties. My body seems to like to expel fun---booze, food---my delicate stomach can't even handle an excess of guacamole. Too much yummy Mexican even cuts a night short. *sigh* Lately I just feel busy---perhaps I've taken on to much. I miss those days when I could just hang out. Though I think that's getting older---just taking on more responsibilities. I feel like I have so much correspondence, press stuff, teaching stuff, that yoga really becomes down time. And there are so many other things that I want to start doing. I'd like to get back to swing dancing and have a regular date with the girls or the poets. Ramola and I are going to try and get something together at GW for us faculty to hang out and share our work. I go back to what Maj has advised. Plant your roots and do the good work. Sometimes I question how much good work I'm doing. Things don't feel as organic as I would prefer. Everything is about a purpose in a way. Rumi has been coming back to me lately---the National Geographic photographer who comes to Rouge between internation stints told me he's working on a Rumi article and they've been reading a lot of Rumi in yoga class. So I'll leave you with Rumi as I ammend my neglects: "Love is a tree with branches reaching into eternity and roots set deep in eternity, and no trunk! Have you seen it? The mind cannot. Your desiring cannot."

PS---Burlesque Poetry tonight!!!

Neglected

Oh blog, how I have forgotten about you---blame it on the week of hazy celebrations or travels, but I've been a bad writer. There were so many things that I wanted to tell you, so many good poetry things---about readings, and then about travel, my mom found a great website about trips women should take though I forget where I put the link (reminded me that yes, I am still a feminist) even though I'm up to my neck in laundry and love finding new recipes in Real Simple. The 18 year old me is cussing out the 28 year old me (where are your values? why are you in the house so much? Do you really like crocheting?). I also realized I can't party like I used to. This new body, while open to yoga and tight bartending outfits refuses to be a temple to alcoholic nights. I have become a puker in my mid-to-late twenties. My body seems to like to expel fun---booze, food---my delicate stomach can't even handle an excess of guacamole. Too much yummy Mexican even cuts a night short. *sigh*

Lately I just feel busy---perhaps I've taken on to much. I miss those days when I could just hang out. Though I think that's getting older---just taking on more responsibilities. I feel like I have so much correspondence, press stuff, teaching stuff, that yoga really becomes down time. And there are so many other things that I want to start doing. I'd like to get back to swing dancing and have a regular date with the girls or the poets. Ramola and I are going to try and get something together at GW for us faculty to hang out and share our work. I go back to what Maj has advised. Plant your roots and do the good work. Sometimes I question how much good work I'm doing. Things don't feel as organic as I would prefer. Everything is about a purpose in a way.

Rumi has been coming back to me lately---the National Geographic photographer who comes to Rouge between internation stints told me he's working on a Rumi article and they've been reading a lot of Rumi in yoga class. So I'll leave you with Rumi as I ammend my neglects:

"Love is a tree with branches reaching into eternity and roots set deep in eternity, and no trunk! Have you seen it? The mind cannot. Your desiring cannot."

PS---Burlesque Poetry tonight!!!

Off to NYC

Find me at the KGB Bar Monday night and for the Alimentum reading Tuesday night!

Found Love Up His Nose

You have to click on the picture to be able to read the comments and they're well worth it. Ah, cliched love! Roses and reservations (that's what's in store for me). I printed some love poems for my students from Poets.org to get them writing---to steal a line from the poem they picked and to free write (then using the author in the title). I love how we can still rift on the holidays...I remember once making a poem of the words on candy hearts!

Here's mine:

Found Object Valentine
(for Peter Gizzi)

These things: leaf, zipper, sparrow, potato chip
moon. Lintel, scarf, window shade. Dildo, collinder,
a spade, a hunk of cheese, slab of bread. Eros.
Mortar and pestle, a long tube, plastic spoon, hair
coiffed, steel coiled. Do I love you or not
today, winter Tuesday. My birthday, tofu
bacon, the locked door. Up, rocks. Both.
Neither. Pathetic swoon.


I had forgotten to blog about Atlanta and how I caught a certain someone with his finger up his nose on the airplane. And today, yellow and orange roses. I'm wondering if those things cancel each other out. Maybe he was digging for roses???

Another Roadtrip

Last night I was talking to Jillian about making more time to read and crochet---I'm going to try and work in 30 minutes a day dedicated to either. I think the problem for me, is that writing work never really stops. I could always write more and read more. And pleasure reading is often also work reading and vice versa. Click here for my latest pleasure job! I was virtually in Connecticut and Nicaragua. On Saturday I actually travel to NYC for readings at the KGB and Alimentum. Who says you can't mix business and pleasure?

An Atlanta Review

Already! Those bloggers don't waste any time!

ATL

Hot-lanta just got hotter!The ladies of Burlesque will be bringing it and who knows, we may slip out of something and give Sandra Beasley cause for another great article!

Crochet

Sarah was in town visiting---this morning we went to Stitch DC and she taught me how to crochet over tea at Ching Ching Cha. There's a lot of women in my family who knit and so now, at least I'll be able to bring my ball and needle around and not feel so un-womanly. I've got the cooking part down and so now, onto some handy work.

Last night I took her to the JCC to hear Myla Goldberg read and perform with One Ring Zero. Reminded me of how back in college, I always brought my non-Jewish friends around to Hillel. What struck me about Myla is how much we have in common---we both love Kundera and Kafka and both lived in Prague. Though I didn't try to talk to her--I thought it might be weird---too much "me too" vibe going on.

Ah well, I can reflect while I loop and pull through--that's our bastard yarn-speak!

Ramona's Got a New Bag

and I have to share it with her---the birthday card from my dad and stepmom read: to Carly and Ramona...luckily since she's my alter-ego, we can both use it at the same time. No girl fights getting ready in the morning!!!

It was worth being woken up for after a night of the hottest Burlesque action ever!

It Wasn't Really Sold Out...

On Friday Sandra and I managed to get tickets to the sold out David Lehman reading at the writer's center. David read a phenomenal new poem, Yeshiva Boys, a poem in mutiple sections (it took at least 20 minutes to read I think) and I was amazed at how much ground this poem covered---from Europe to his childhood---the humor and seriousness. I know I'm not doing this the honor here, but the poem made me really think about memoir---how much of our history is a part of our identity. I think for me this was the first time I even thought of Lehman as a Jewish poet even though I knew he was. The poem made me take him more seriously as I often think of David and punning and fun more often. And also someone who writes shorter, less challenging poems. I was really glad for it. I think that line that has been in my head---how we become ghosts of ourselves--will be part of a longer poem.

It was a see and be seen event in DC poetry and I was glad that David gave me a shout out in his introduction. He was mentioning all the trustees and presidents and then my name. I saw a few people turn around trying to figure out who I was. I spent most of the night talking with his wife and some colleagues from GW and I was giddy from some news from the grapevine and a folder full of my students first poems. Afterwards to Biddy's for some good poetry discourse with Sandra and of course the late night slice. Actually two slices.

The Good and The Bad News

The Good:

Had a great reading in Philly last night and wrote two new Ramona poems on the train home! I'm really excited about this summer at the Havurah Institute---I'm teaching with some great people so check it out and maybe you can be there too!

The Bad:

I will not be the Jenny Moore Visiting Writer or teaching at Oberlin next year. But I think it's all for the better. I've got enough cooking in DC and plenty to keep me busy.

Thus Spake Ramona

It's funny that I'm working on a poem about the merits of online shopping and now you can find Ramona online here. I was just recording her in NYC last weekend and here she is, in the voice!

I'm feeling very energized today. I have some amazing students this semester---I am always surprised by their honesty when they do their introductions and can't wait to see their writing. I know that sounds like crap-o teacher talk, but really, I do believe it. We all have so much inside us and it takes guts to come to the page. And for me, I go straight from the page to the yoga mat. And it's funny because the yoga teachers say the same thing---honor the fact that you came to the mat. So I'm going to tell that to my students. I'm honored that they came to the page today.

This morning while drying my hair these lines came to me: the way we become our own ghosts. I'm not sure where it will go or what poem is brewing, and speaking of steam, SPD asked for 40 more copies!

HOT!!!

Last night I made a spicer version of chicken soup. The recipe was called Asian Hot Pot which I found in Real Simple. It's become my new favorite magazine. The soup uses a soy ginger broth which you can create from chicken or vegetable stock by adding you guessed it, ginger and soy, or you can but a ginger and soy stock---yeah, Trader's Joes! Then you cook down mushrooms, chicken, bok choy, and carrots in ginger and garlic and hot pepper (I used dried chilli peppers) and then add that all to the broth slowly simmering and add some rice noodles and viola---Kung Oy!

I ate it for lunch and dinner today (as well as last night and most likely the rest of the week) and did hot yoga tonight for the first time. This new semester is going to be HOT!!!

It's NYC, go ahead, pee anywhere

Perfect NYC day---recorded Ramona in a friend of Paulette's apartment and I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship between Alimentum and Ramona!!! Walked around the Village, had Two Boots (Earth Mother, of course) and drank jasmine tea from the indoor garden of La Lantana and beers at the Slaughtered Lamb before meeting Jonathan for dinner at Le Zie and then Avenue Q. It always seems like whenever I see a show, it becomes my new favorite. After all, who doesn't like to hear puppets say Fuck You. And that's mild. You know this show is rocking when the line for the ladies room is too long and so we gals hijacked the mens at five minutes before show time. That Ramona, she's a wild one---I mean, if she can roll squash around, and protest canned vegetables, why not bogart the men's room? There were stalls in there not being used!

The Chi in DC

Off to NYC to do some recording for Alimentum---Ramona will be online soon. You'll be able to hear her sing the praises of squash and the like! Also reading at Zinc Bar at 7 p.m. on Sunday!

There's been some crazy chi here in DC so I'll be glad to get out of town for a bit. My last table last night---the man's name was Jonathan Sachs. Luckily I didn't find that out until after he left, because if I had known that while I was serving drinks, I probably would have made some off handed cousin remark.

Me-OW!

Last night I was walzing around barefoot on a hardwood floor and got a splinter in my foot. I guess I should be more demure and keep my socks on next time. Everyone in yoga had some advice, but after the epsom salts and much digging around, there's still that sliver up in there near my toes.

So bring your tweezers and splinter remedies to The Black Cat tonight if you come out for the reading.