Absentee

A busy week out of town playing caregiver, then two of the busiest work weeks I've had in recent memory; as a result, I'm behind on everything online. Sorry to be such a half-assed blogger lately.

I'd hoped to throw my hat in the ring for an NEA this year, but with the deadline coming up fast, I think that hope is going to become another victim of this hectic month. Oh well. I doubt I had much of a shot at it anyway. Best of luck to all my friends who are applying this time around!

* * * * *

Upcoming poetry events in the Bloomington, IN area:

Gerald Stern, Thursday, March 4, 7:00 pm in the Neal-Marshall Grand Hall on the IU campus

A Benefit Reading for Partners in Health, Haiti Soleil, and the People of Haiti, Tuesday, March 9, 6:30 pm, Rose Firebay, John Waldron Arts Center. Featuring poets Catherine Bowman, Richard Cecil, Debra Kang Dean, Romayne Rubinas Dorsey, Ross Gay, Eugene Gloria, Joseph Heithaus, Maurice Manning, Alyce Miller, Maura Stanton, and Crystal Williams.

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Many thanks to blogger Lyle Daggett for his kind review of Breach!

And while I'm in shameless self-promotion mode, my prosepoem "Flyover Country" is up over at BLOOM's website (and will also appear in the print edition to be released at AWP in April). Nice to see this journal making a comeback.

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Sending thoughts & prayers out to the people of Chile. If you'd like to make a donation to help them out via cellphone or online, here are some options (via Mashable).

More than flurries

Here's hoping that any of you who are affected by the current blizzard are in a safe place with plenty of food, good company if you want it, adequate heat & light, and something good to read. It's pretty impressive out there! Here in south-central Indiana, we are just on the far edge of it; we had freezing rain, sleet, regular rain, falling slush, big fat wet snowflakes, and regular snowflakes at diferent times throughout the day. Currently it is snowing like a snowy thing out there and I hear there have been a lot of slide-offs and fender-benders around town.

Indianapolis, a little ways north of me, is expected to get around 8 inches of the stuff overnight. I'm hoping they get the highways cleared quickly, as I need to get up north to deal with a family situation - I'll be spending about a week with my mom while she recuperates from a bit of unexpected surgery.

* * * * *

So, poets & writers, what do you do with the occasional actual check that you receive for a piece of writing? I mean, those of us who don't get paid enough for it to make up a significant percentage of our living wage. Thirty or forty bucks here and there, that kind of thing. It's always nice, even if it doesn't add up to minimum wage when all's said and done; there's something about getting money for a poem that says "this counts for something." (Yes, contributor's copies and nice notes and even acceptance form-letters count for something too, the nice notes perhaps most of all. But, you know, we live in a culture that values cash. So.)

So what do you do with it? Do you:

• Sock it away in a special savings account and let it add up?
• Purchase a little something special for yourself with it? (I will admit that on the day I got my check from Field, I spotted a handmade journal on Etsy that costs just about the amount of the check... and I'm sorely tempted.)
  
• Turn around and spend it on po-biz stuff, reading fees or postage or supplies? Or sock it away towards a workshop or an AWP trip?
  
• Turn around and spend it on poetry books or journals?
• Treat it like any other income and spend it on groceries or rent or whatever?
  

Just curious what other people do...

The best news

I've had quite a lot on my plate for the past few days. So this will be brief.

But I just found out some fantastic news! (Thanks to Patty Paine for linking the article on Facebook.) D.A. Powell, brilliant poet and the best teacher I have ever worked with (two summer workshops in Provincetown), has been awarded the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award! (That link goes to general info about the award.)

Here's an article from the L.A. Times announcing it. Big congratulations to him - this prize is well deserved.

And if you haven't seen these yet, he's got two poems online from the February issue of Poetry: "Pupil" and "The Fluffer Talks of Eternity." (Thanks to Eduardo for linking the latter of those two poems on his blog, thus tipping me off to their existence.)

In the midst of a rough week, it's so nice to hear good news.

Songish

I went to Evil Megachain Coffee Place today, poked at Twitter on my cellphone for a while, then scribbled. Drafted something that feels kinda like song lyrics: it's rhymey and not subtle or complex enough to be a poem, with a song-ish structure. I used to do that all the time, but not so much lately. It's fun.

(Sorry about the evil megachain coffee. It's close to home, usually has a free spot by the windows, and plays decent music. I can usually write there, and that's what counts.)

* * * * *

Apparently there were some football games today. I think I live in the one part of the country that won't generally be cheering for New Orleans. Good thing I don't care enough to take sides.

* * * * *

Ahsahta Press is taking its back catalog digital, via the Boise State University Library's institutional repository, ScholarWorks (the same name IU uses for ours). I suppose there is bound to be a certain amount of controversy over this, but I think it's pretty cool. It's not like they are giving up on print, they're just using the repository to keep books available that otherwise you'd have to order via interlibrary loan, and I like that they've got the library involved - to me that suggests it will be done right. I still love print, carry a book with me at all times despite the fact that any unexpected dull moments can just as easily be filled by poking at Twitter or Facebook or various random websites on my cellphone (and if I'm standing in line at the post office, I'll be honest, it's easier to pull out the phone and hold it in a free hand rather than trying to juggle turning pages in a book while standing there) - but I love the idea of small-press poetry being available in virtual perpetuity. What do y'all think?

* * * * *

The "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon Friday night was very nicely done, with several musicians I'm not usually that crazy about turning in heartfelt performances that won me over. (Justin Timberlake and Mary J. Blige, I'm talkin' to you.) Of course I loved Bruce Springsteen's delicate rendition of "We Shall Overcome," assisted by Seeger Sessions band members Charlie Giordano on accordion, Curt Ramm on trumpet, and Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, Cindy Mizelle, and Curtis King on vocals. And the new song written especially for the occasion and performed by Jay-Z, Rihanna, Bono, and the Edge - "Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour)" - is actually a pretty good song, unlike a lot of other well-intentioned charity singles ("We Are The World," I'm talkin' to you).

Keep on giving to Haiti if you can. You can donate directly, or you can purchase the audio and/or video of the telethon, or just grab individual songs for a buck apiece, if you're so inclined (link goes to a page that leads to your choice of iTunes or amazon). Here's Bruce to inspire you:

Bruce Springsteen - MTV Shows

Journalish

A few news tidbits from the literary-journal front:

• diode, one of my favorite online journals, has a new issue up. Check out v3n2 here. I've only barely dipped into it so far, but looks like some good stuff!


• Bloom, which fell off the face of the earth for about three years, is (knock on wood!) being revived. Look for a new issue at the AWP conference in Denver this April. My prosepoem (yes, prosepoem -- something I hardly ever write!) "Flyover Country" will be in it. I'd about given up, to be honest. But I'm glad things are looking hopeful once again; this was one of my favorite journals until it disappeared.
  


• Last but not least, today I got the speediest acceptance I've ever gotten -- a few minutes short of three hours from the time I hit "send" to the time the acceptance letter showed up in my inbox! I'll have two poems in upcoming issues of the Tipton Poetry Journal: one in the winter 2010 issue this month, and one in the summer issue this coming July. Not only did the acceptance arrive in my inbox that fast, but there were even proofs attached! Sometimes, technology really does make our lives a little easier.
  

Haiti: Ways to Help

The images from Haiti are almost impossible to comprehend. So many of the people there had almost nothing to begin with; how on earth can they get through this? I can't imagine what those people are going through right now. Horrible. I don't have words.

A few helpful links, in case you have not yet identified ways you can help:

How to Use Tech to Make a Speedy Donation. Helpful tips from PCWorld.

Charity Navigator offers some suggestions for how to make sure your donations go where you intend them to, and how to select the most effective places to donate.

Doctors Without Borders is where I'm sending the donation that I wish could be so much larger. They do good work, hard work, and as far as I can tell they manage their funds reasonably well. Also I believe they already have a presence in Haiti, which helps.

Oxfam America is another good place to donate.

I will admit that I haven't researched Yéle Haiti as thoroughly as I'd like. It's a smaller organization, and less well-known. But it has been in Haiti for a while, it seems to be reputable, and they make it very easy to give a $5 donation via cellphone simply by texting YELE to 501501. $5 isn't much, but a bunch of tiny donations can add up.

You can also donate $10 to the Red Cross by texting HAITI to 90999. The Red Cross has been criticized for spending too much of its money on administrative costs, and I still hold a bit of a grudge against them for their homophobic policies regarding blood donation. But they know what they're doing when it comes to mobilizing emergency assistance, good people work for them, and they are on the scene.

Someone I know recommends Partners in Health, another grassroots organization that has been in Haiti for a while and has built up relationships there.

And clicking on the logo below will take you to some information provided by the White House.


If you are in a position to help, please do.

Draft dodging

The temperature hit 32 degrees here after 11 days, I think, of never inching above freezing.

And Monday afternoon (while I was on my dinner break from work before heading back for the evening shift), another dam may have broken. I drafted two poems, or poemish things anyway. I hadn't drafted anything that held my interest since, oh, about September... so it felt like a pretty big relief to come up with something that felt like I might actually want to look at it again at some point.

I'll post it here, but it will disappear in 24 hours or less. (Things blow away when it gets drafty, you know.)


Edit: *poof*

Test post via SMS.

Bookish

It's been quite a while since I took a stab at writing a book review. I love talking about books, but for some reason find reviews difficult. In this case, I was writing the review with a very specific audience in mind -- obsessive Springsteen fans -- and that made it easier. So you can go over to Blogness to read my review of Nick Hornby's fun new novel, Juliet, Naked.

And over here, where my audience (inasmuch as I have one...) tends towards the literary sort, I want to post an excerpt from Hornby's book, because he manages to describe a particular frame of mind -- call it long-term writer's block, or something like that, though I don't actually believe in "writer's block" myself -- so vividly. I think some of y'all might recognize it... I know I do. Hopefully, if you do, it's because you used to feel this way and you don't anymore. The protagonist here is Tucker Crowe, a rock singer/songwriter who hasn't written or played any new music in years.

It wasn't as if he was a happy slacker, either. He'd never been able to shrug away the loss of his talent, for want of a better word to describe whatever the hell it was he once had. Sure, he'd got used to the idea that there wouldn't be a new album, or even a new song, anytime soon, but he'd never learned to look on his inability to write as anything other than a temporary state, which meant that he was permanently unsettled, as if he were in an airport lounge waiting for a plane. In the old days, when he flew a lot, he'd never been able to get absorbed in a book until the plane had taken off, so he'd spent the pre-boarding time flicking through magazines and browsing in gift shops, and that's what the last couple of decades had felt like: one long flick through a magazine. If he'd known how long he was going to spend in the airport lounge of his own life, he'd have made different travel arrangements, but instead he'd sat there, sighing and fidgeting and, more often than was ever really acceptable, snapping at his traveling companions.
(from Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby, pg. 159)

2010:2

S-s-s-so cold this week. It was 1 degree outside when I woke up this morning. One.

* * * * *

Thanks to Leann's post over at Blogness, I just frittered away at least an hour working out my personal Springsteen setlist statistics. I attended 9.4% of the shows on the "Working on a Dream" tour, and I was curious to see which songs I got that were statistically more or less improbable to have gotten. I didn't get the sole performance of anything, but I did get one of two performances for a few, and ... so on. Also, I got 25% of the Girls In Their Summer Clothes this year.

Anne. Put down the spreadsheet and back slooooooowly away.

* * * * *

Here's a little video that I took at the Atlanta Zoo when I was there. The keeper was feeding the meerkats some live crickets, one by one. Apparently this is a great meerkat delicacy.

2010:1

As I wrap myself in layer upon layer of fleece (it's 9 degrees outside, and my house is drafty) I catch myself doing what everyone seems to do in the last days of one year and the first days of the next. Lots of internal summation, lots of listy thinking. I'll spare y'all. And no, I'm not making resolutions, though I do have goals and hopes for the next few hundred days.

* * * * *

In my last post I mentioned the murder of fiction writer & IU professor Don Belton. It appears that his killer has been caught; the young man's story is that Belton had sexually assaulted him a few days prior, and the alleged killer had gone over to Belton's house to discuss the situation. (Here is the ABC News version.)

Now, I didn't know Don Belton, and I don't know the alleged killer, and so anything I say must be conjecture. I do know what friends of Belton have been saying, and they all say that he is not the sort of person who would have assaulted anyone, and they sound pretty credible to me. And while I believe that self-defense against sexual assault is absolutely justifiable, I don't think that showing up at someone's house several days after they allegedly assaulted you, with a large knife in your belt and a willingness to use it, is really what I have in mind when I think of "self-defense."

I also know that homophobia and racism stink pretty loudly, and there's been a bad aroma around this story for a while. As the "Justice for Don Belton" website points out, "there is a long, established history of suspects invoking a claim of sexual assault and/or a “gay panic” defense to get charges reduced or to win over a jury when the victim was a gay person."

The whole thing makes me fairly queasy, to be honest. As I said I didn't know Don Belton at all, but it sure sounds like the world has lost a talented and much-loved man. And it won't surprise me if homophobia turns out to play a very large role in what happened. It's all very, very sad.

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Also sad, the recent suicide of poet Rachel Wetzsteon (who I also did not know). Along with the Christmas-week suicide of Vic Chesnutt, this news spotlights the fact that this time of year can be so very hard for people. If you know someone who's sad or lonely, do the world a favor and reach out to them this month, will you? Sometimes even love doesn't help someone pull through crippling depression -- sometimes there's just too much fear, pain, damage -- but sometimes it's good to try.

This poem of Rachel Wetzsteon's, reprinted in the New York Times, struck me hard:

Sakura Park

The park admits the wind,
the petals lift and scatter
like versions of myself I was on the verge
of becoming; and ten years on
and ten blocks down I still can’t tell
whether this dispersal resembles
a fist unclenching or waving goodbye.
But the petals scatter faster,
seeking the rose, the cigarette vendor,
and at least I’ve got by pumping heart
some rules of conduct: refuse to choose
between turning pages and turning heads
though the stubborn dine alone. Get over
“getting over”: dark clouds don’t fade
but drift with ever deeper colors.
Give up on rooted happiness
(the stolid trees on fire!) and sweet reprieve
(a poor park but my own) will follow.
There is still a chance the empty gazebo
will draw crowds from the greater world.
And meanwhile, meanwhile’s far from nothing:
the humming moment, the rustle of cherry trees.

* * * * *

I continue to contribute to Blogness on the Edge of Town; the last few days have celebrated the "Decade of Bruce" with several of us talking about our favorite album, song, tour, and show of the past ten years (as well as our least favorite song - that one was kind of hard). Other than that, I haven't been writing much lately. Maybe it's just too damn cold. Maybe the days are just too damn short. Or maybe I've just been too damn lazy.

I hope all y'all had a good holiday, whatever "a good holiday" means for you. Mine included a short trip to Atlanta, where I got to see actual giant pandas for the first time in my life. Here's the youngest, Xi Lan:


And some meerkats (they remind me of people I know, though I can't put my finger on who):


And finally this dignified gentleman orangutan. My sister said he looks like Buddha. So he's the Orangubuddhatan:


(More zoo pictures on my Facebook, for those of you who are there.)

Terrible news

Few details so far, but terrible news today that fiction writer and Indiana U. creative writing faculty member Don Belton was found stabbed to death in his home.

Here's the story from an Indianapolis tv station.

I didn't know him personally, but this kind of crime is not usual here in Bloomington, and to hear that it was a fellow writer...

This following the awful news a few days ago that singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt took his own life. Just very, very sad.

I'll try to check in at more length in the next day or two as I catch up from holiday travels.

Update, early Tuesday morning: The local paper reports that a suspect has been taken into custody.

Solstice stillness

I can't figure out whether tonight or tomorrow night is the longest night of the year. It comes down to seconds; tonight the sun set at 5:25 and will rise at 8:01, and tomorrow the sun sets at 5:26 and rises at 8:02 Tuesday morning. The actual moment of Winter Solstice happens around midday tomorrow. Tonight feels like Solstice Night, though, with darkness and stillness and just a bit of snow.

And fleecy blankets, and a cat on my feet. That'll enforce a little stillness.

* * * * *

I continue to trace the roots of this stillness. I feel like I haven't got anything to say, but when has that ever stopped me? I think, perhaps, I need to go back to the details. To just being awake, and noticing deeply.

I like Twitter. It's good when you don't have much to say.

And so, I'm going to use the avenue that has felt most hospitable recently. Beginning tomorrow, I'm going to try to notice three things each day. I don't need to force those things into poems; I just need to pay attention to them. Full attention, even if only for the length of time it takes to compose a 140-character description. And I'm going to tweet about them.

We'll see how that goes and whether it wakes me up again.

I bought a new phone a couple of weeks ago, and it has an adorable little slide-out keyboard and a bright shiny touch screen and it has Twitter and Facebook and Gmail and Outlook and a camera and maps and navigation and even a lolcat application.

So if I notice things, I don't even have to be near my computer to record them, to put a few words out into the ether. I just have to grab my little phone, my little portable brain.

Three things a day. I can do that, right?

* * * * *

In other sort of writing-related news, I've signed on as one of the contributors to Blogness on the Edge of Town, which is, yes, a Bruce Springsteen-related blog. Mostly news and tidbits and suchlike. Should be fun, and a nice way to stay connected to a community that's become important to me.

Lucky for me, as soon as I took this on, Bruce did a lovely and newsworthy thing (in case you haven't heard): he posted a statement on his official website in support of marriage equality. You have to scroll down past the cute picture of him at the White House for the Kennedy Center Honors a couple weeks ago, but the statement is still there, and it still gives me the warm fuzzies to read it. He doesn't post political statements very often, so the fact that he felt this one was important enough to comment on makes me really happy.

Why should I (or anyone) care what some wealthy heterosexual rockstar thinks about this, or any, political issue? That's a fair question. And it's an age-old one, really - can someone's art be compassionate, authentic, truthful if the artist is a weasel? Not going to even try to answer that one tonight. I'll just say that it did my little heart good to see someone whose work I have respected for over thirty years demonstrate, not for the first time, that his heart is in the right place. And considering how much of my money has ended up in his pocket, I feel like I have more than an artistic stake in this, heh.

I will say that his statement has not met with 100% support in his own fan community. There are people who listen to his music who disagree pretty strongly with a lot of his politics. So I guess he took a certain risk in posting that statement, though at this point I think most people who'd stop buying his music or going to his shows because of something like that have already stopped long ago.

I'm rambling. It just made me really happy, the night that statement got posted and I stumbled across it. Fangirl that I am, I'll leave it at that.

* * * * *

Watching the news, where they're talking to stranded travelers in the airport. I hope those of you who got blizzarded on this week are digging out without too much drama, and if anyone's traveling, I hope you get where you're going okay.

Hope it all clears up before Thursday, when I am getting on a plane myself. Till then we just have a little snow, and enough cold to make me bundle up trying to stay warm (except when I suddenly have to try and cool off - you middle-aged women know what I mean there) but not so cold as to be dangerous. It's not so bad. Though I confess I wouldn't mind being snowed in for a few days, so long as I had heat and people food and cat food and the Internet and a few books to read. And maybe somebody with a younger, stronger back than mine to shovel me out eventually!

May you have a happy holiday, if you celebrate one of those Decemberish ones. Peace and joy and goodwill and light, and all that.

Yes, light. Here's to its return.

AWOL

There’s a difference between where I am now, on the one hand, and productive silence (where you’re not writing but your silence is moving you towards new work) on the other. Where I am right now feels necessary and unavoidable, but not necessarily like it’s moving me towards any kind of writing.

On the other hand, who knows?

* * * * *

Shedding skin is an itchy procedure. Snakes get real cranky when they’re halfway there.

* * * * *

So after all the drama about “OMG is this the end,” it looks like Springsteen doesn’t feel like the E Street Band is anywhere near finished. Nice interview with him in Billboard this week, conducted just prior to the show I saw in Nashville. What amazes me is that the guy’s had basically the same job since he was a teenager and he still clearly loves his work. If you could bottle that kind of undying passion & enthusiasm and sell it…

Getting paid squillions of dollars for doing what you love probably doesn’t hurt the enthusiasm, of course.

* * * * *

Music just makes words seem inadequate. With just a few notes, a chord or two, you can convey a feeling as complicated as “triumphant but wistful, without regret” so clearly that everyone listening feels it too. You can convey feelings and images so complicated that there aren’t actual words for them. Add the dimension of performance, and musicians have a whole language that, as a writer, I barely have access to.

The same could be said for visual art as well, of course – there are things you can say with a certain intensity of blue, a certain slant of light – but I don’t have the vocabulary or the framework for that. Music, at least, I can hear with comprehension – even if I can’t produce it myself worth a darn.

I foresee guitar lessons in my future. I took lessons for a few years in high school, but it’s been a long time since I was anywhere near serious about playing – long enough that I think what I want to do is start from the beginning. I know it’s not the same as having an actual teacher, but I think I’m going to invest in lessons via Nils Lofgren’s online guitar school. He’s one of the most amazing guitarists I know, and with any luck the lessons will give me just enough to keep me interested and focused and give me a reason to sit down & practice every so often. I don’t think I stand a chance of ever getting good enough to get paid for playing, but I would like to regain enough chops to do a little songwriting. I used to write songs now & then and always enjoyed it, but was hampered by the inability to create music that could provide a strong enough framework to support complex lyrics, so my song lyrics were always kind of dumb and simple compared to the poems I was writing during the same time period. I’d like to revisit that effort. But to do so will require the acquisition of musical craft.

So that’s going to be my Solstice gift to myself, I think. And yes, I’m going to start at the beginning with the beginner lessons, make myself go from the ground up. Because the hard part of having been serious about playing & then letting it go for years is that my expectations are all out of whack – I pick up the guitar and my hands jus t don’t do what they’re supposed to, & I find myself trying to play things that I just don’t have the technique to do anymore. And because I’ve never stopped listening to music my ear is still good, so I can hear how much I frankly suck. If I start at the beginning and get somewhat disciplined about it, I think I can get my chops back. Might take a couple years.

And maybe, once I start playing again, the creative, articulate part of my brain will wake up and I’ll find my way back to poetry again. I sure hope so.

* * * * *

Still have an essay or two brewing, I think. Watch this space.

No, I haven't...

... fallen off the Internet. At least not quite.

Just back from a quick trip to Nashville, put about 580 miles on the ol' odometer (well, the rental car's odometer; my beater wasn't quite up to the trip) in two days and saw a terrific concert. I need to go back to Nashville when I can spend more time. Very cool city.

I've been a very, very lucky girl this year. Wednesday night was my 8th Bruce Springsteen concert of the 2009 "Working on a Dream" tour. He and the band play in Baltimore tonight, then Buffalo NY on Sunday night (no, I won't be there for either one, sadly) and then ... that's it for the foreseeable future. The E Street Band is officially on hiatus for at least a year or two. I think most of the band members have every intention of coming back together and touring again, but life takes its hard turns sometimes and there aren't any guarantees. I've certainly enjoyed every moment of the ride I've had; it's been worth every penny, every mile, every aching muscle.

April: Denver
May: St. Paul and Chicago
August: Mansfield, MA x2
September: Chicago again
October: St. Louis
November: Nashville

Add that to the 4 shows I caught on the 2008 "Magic" tour (Indianapolis, Nashville, St. Louis, Kansas City) and it's actually been a two-year journey.

I have an essay-ish thing brewing about it all. Maybe this weekend I'll get it written. Gratitude is an important part of it, so it's an appropriate Thanksgiving-week thing...

Nearing Winter

Still not writing, and still experiencing poetry as a foreign language. I miss it, I do. I almost got it back as I was driving back from St. Louis on Monday afternoon - something about the particular combination of alertness and meditativeness that highway driving engenders has often brought me to bits of poetry. But alas, the words just flitted around the edge of my brain, laughed at me, and left.

What can you do?

* * * * *

Thanks for the kind words about my poem's appearance in Field - it's nice to share good news with people who appreciate it for what it is. Of course, the world keeps its balance, and I've had a few rejections this week too. C'est la vie. Book manuscript #1 is still out to one place, which I'm expecting to hear from just any day now; I'm holding off on sending it elsewhere at this point, until I take the time to give it a long hard look & see if it wants a big revision. (I imagine sitting it down, giving it a stern look, and asking it "do you want a big revision?" like a bad mom asking her child if he wants a spanking. Sigh.)

* * * * *

A week ago tonight I was in St. Louis for a Springsteen show. I met up with some friends before the show, and three of us went to get our wristbands together (when you have general admission tickets, you get there a bit early and get numbered wristbands; they draw a random number and the person with that number gets to go in first - so if you want to be together in the GA area you have to show up at the same time for your wristbands). We ended up doing pretty well in the lottery, about 150 back from the number that was drawn, so we ended up about 2 or 3 deep in front of the stage, pretty much right in front of Nils Lofgren's mic stand. (The picture here was taken a couple hours before the show, right after we got into the arena. We actually ended up a little closer to the stage than we are here.) I'd never been up close on that side of the stage before, so as the show progressed it was fun to have eye contact & interaction with the guys on that side, particularly Clarence Clemons & the aforementioned Nils Lofgren - who gave me quite a few great smiles throughout the show. It's no hyperbole to say that Nils is one of the greatest living rock guitarists, and it was very cool to be able to watch him play from so close. From all accounts he's also a very sweet guy, and I have to say his energy onstage is very light, almost constantly in motion but very peaceful at the same time - a lot of fun to watch.

The show itself - what do I say about it that hasn't been said? It wasn't an epic, awesome, one-for-the-ages show like the St. Louis show last year. But not every show can be that, by definition. People who weren't there say that the setlist was boring, and it's true that there weren't a lot of surprises or rarities (though the fan who brought the gorgeous sign requesting that Bruce play piano got us a wonderful, uncommon solo piano performance of "For You" which showed that Bruce's voice, even this late in a long tour, is holding up remarkably well). But everything that was played, including the Born to Run album straight through, was played with a lot of heart, a lot of presence, a lot of commitment. "Backstreets" was mesmerizing and heartbreaking, sounding more and more like all the band's history and love has been poured into it; when Bruce sang "we swore we'd live forever" I'm pretty sure Clarence Clemons was looking at the little "altar" he has set up onstage, which houses pictures of several departed friends including the late E Street organ/accordion player, Danny Federici (Clarence writes about the altar in his new book, Big Man). So that was a touching moment. And after delivering the final, intense, wordless wails at the end of "Jungleland," as the spotlight slipped off of him, Bruce bent nearly double at the microphone, breathing heavily, seemingly exhausted by the force of throwing every cell in his body into that vocal. Theatrics? Sure. But also, the physical commitment he puts into his performance is unmistakable.

(Incidentally, the Bruce-as-blur photo here was taken with my crappy little cellphone camera. I didn't bother taking many, because they hardly ever come out worth anything, but this one struck me as kinda cool.)

I find that, as an alleged writer, I am envious of musicians for the physicality of their art. I get a little taste of what that's like when I do poetry readings, which I experience as a very physical thing (it matters what boots you wear, how you stand, how you breathe when you're reading, even if you're just standing there at a podium in front of twenty people). And it's a lovely feeling, a means of settling into your own body as home. But it's not just the performance aspect that I envy, though there is that. It's the way you make music, if you're doing it right, with your whole body. You can kinda do that with poetry, but you can also forget to do it, very easily. If you hold your breath while you're writing a poem, you still get a poem (maybe not a great one, but). If you hold your breath while you're singing, you get ... silence, y'know? You don't have the option of remaining disconnected from your physical self. And I envy that.

I also envy the communal aspect of making music. Being in a band. You can collaborate in poetry, but it's not the same thing. Watching the E Street Band from so close, it's wonderful to see how they communicate. A nod of the head, a wave of a hand, can change the whole course of a song. (And when Bruce decided to do the "Detroit Medley," which starts with "Devil with a Blue Dress On," he told the guys closest to him & they ran to spread the word to the rest of the band - and I noticed Nils making little devil horns on his own head with his fingers instead of verbally telling everybody what the song was, a game of rock & roll charades. I got a kick out of that.)

In my next life, I'm gonna get over myself about 20 years earlier, so that when I'm in high school I won't be too shy to talk to other people who love music, and can start a band. Yeah. That's what.

Most of my friends at the St. Louis show were headed to Kansas City for the show the next night. Not me - I wasn't able to swing both shows, so I left STL on Monday morning. Before leaving town I took a tiny detour to Left Bank Books. I was instantly greeted at the door by a six month old tabby kitten named Olive, who followed me around the store and pounced on anything that even thought about moving and was generally crazy as a loon, which is what a six month old kitten is supposed to be. I picked up a few books as well as a magnet that says "If you don't grow up by middle age, you don't have to" (quote attributed to James Gurney). Seemed very appropriate for the moment.

When I got home I got a call from one of my friends at the Kansas City show. They'd done the lottery for the general admission folks & had everyone in line, when all of a sudden they announced the show was cancelled due to a death in Bruce's family. Needless to say everyone there was fairly stunned. This is not a band that cancels shows if they can possibly help it. Turns out it was Bruce's cousin who died, who had worked as the assistant tour manager for the band for the past ten years. He was in his mid-thirties, so one assumes the death was entirely unexpected and certainly very sad. Just goes to show you - you never know when a show will be your last. Or as the great Warren Zevon once said, not long before his own death: "Enjoy every sandwich."

I have one E Street show remaining - Nashville, in less than three weeks. After that it's going to be a long winter.

Fuel in Field

One more snippet from the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion (or is that the Shameless Department of Self-Promotion?): My poem "The Fuel" appears in the brand-new issue of FIELD, hot off the press -- I got my contributor's copies today. Check out the table of contents; I'm tickled to be in some pretty darn good company!

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Went to a very good concert the other night: Alejandro Escovedo and Los Lonely Boys. Escovedo is a terrific songwriter and impossible to pigeonhole; he's got punk, rock, alt-country, and various other influences in his sound. His set was intense and heartfelt, accompanied by a second guitarist and a terrific violinist (who grew up, as it turns out, here in Bloomington). Los Lonely Boys, doing an all-acoustic set, sounded about like I expected them to -- great harmonies, smokin' guitar work. My friend and I commented to one another that it was so obvious the band members are brothers; the way they interacted onstage, you can just imagine what it would be like to sit at the family dinner table with them (probably kicking each other under the table and flinging mashed potatoes) or to go on a road trip with them (eek).

The opening band, Hacienda, was relatively unmemorable -- four guys with two guitars, percussion, Hammond organ, and vocals. Sort of a Tex-Mex thing, I guess. I would rather have had their 30-40 minutes divided between Alejandro Escovedo and Los Lonely Boys; Escovedo's set in particular felt way too short. I really need to see him do a headlining set someday.

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Off to St. Louis tomorrow for what promises to be yet another fantastic Springsteen/E Street Band show. Yeah, I do expect it to be fantastic; would I drive 228 miles each way if I didn't? Here's a great clip from the last Springsteen show ever at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, a few nights ago. This is their cover of "Higher & Higher" and it kind of explains why I go so far to see these guys. How can you not want to be in the same room as this much joy? Check out the huge grin on Bruce's face. This is a cheesy thing to say, I guess, but in this video it's like he is a man possessed by radiance. I've heard from more than one person who was at this show & it sounds like this song was a truly transcendent moment.

Words fail me

After almost a year and a half of pretty intense productivity, it doesn’t surprise me that I’m not writing at all lately. I don’t really believe in “writer’s block” but at the same time it seems pretty normal to have periods when the writing just doesn’t happen. That’s happened before and it will happen again, and especially given that I’m in the very last stages of completing a big project, doesn’t freak me out at all.

What does freak me out, somewhat, is the fact that I don’t seem to be able to read poetry right now. I get to a page with a poem on it and my eyes just blip right over it, almost as if it’s in a language I don’t read. It is the damnedest thing, and I don’t remember it ever happening before. Maybe for a day or a few days, but not as an ongoing thing like this.

Maybe this is my reflexive way of ensuring that I don’t go back to my new manuscript until I’ve gotten some serious distance from it and can be somewhat objective. Maybe I’m spending too much time on Facebook and Twitter and just don’t have the attention span (or the depth of focus) necessary for poetry. Maybe zombies ate my brain. I have no clue.

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

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Also, there’s one thing that is annoying me right now about aforementioned Facebook and Twitter, and that is how the real-time nature of it gives me all kinds of reasons for envy (a feeling I do not like having). It is easy to become painfully aware of other people who have time in the middle of the day to write a poem, go for a walk, curl up with a book, send out manuscripts, take a nap – while I’m sitting in my cubicle or working with students at the reference desk. I like my job. I like it quite a bit. But man, I don’t really need to be reminded of how nice it would be to have more time for writing, and of how much better a writer I think I’d be if I had more time to give to it.

Assuming, of course, I would actually write if I had time. Which, right now, who knows.

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On a happier note, this weekend I am off to St. Louis for one more Springsteen/E Street Band show. This will be my next to last show of this tour, which is to say, my next to last E Street Band show for the foreseeable future. After November the band is going on hiatus for at least a year and a half, possibly/probably longer, and there's no guarantee of another tour. At the very least, it seems unlikely that, two or three years down the road, these guys will be doing the three-hour-plus, full-throttle rock shows they've been doing. Not impossible, but ... unlikely.

I’m certainly going to savor every moment of what's left, every bit of thunder.

Still shameless

The new issue of Coal Hill Review is up, including poems by Chana Bloch, Maureen Seaton & Neil de la Flor, yours truly, and others. My contribution is "Blue Afternoon: The Middle Distance" which is about being a middle-aged, bifocals-wearing person. Hey, you take your material where you can get it, eh?

Shameless self-promotion

My poem "Swallowed" (originally published in 2007) is this week's "Poem of the Week" over at the Valparaiso Poetry Review blog. This poem was always a little different for me, maybe even an odd duck, though reading back through it now I see a slight similarity to the tone of my current project, which also features fictional characters. Though that similarity may be all in my head...

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Five Women Poets, one of the groups I'm a member of, has its annual reading on Saturday evening, October 10. If you're near the Bloomington IN area, you are most cordially invited: 7 pm at Rachael's Café on Third St. The group consists of Patricia C. Coleman, Deborah Pender Hutchison, Antonia Matthew, Helen May, Carol Paiva, Anya Peterson Royce, and myself (yes, that's seven members of Five Women Poets; we're poets, not mathematicians!) and Bonnie Maurer will be our special guest poet. Drop me a note if you need directions or further details. I have no idea what I'm reading (or, more importantly, what I'm wearing) but it should be fun.