Accommodatingly

If you know Else Minarik’s Little Bear (the original series of four linked illustrated stories for small children, not the sequels) you probably think of it as a cute, warm story– certainly that’s what I expected when Jessie brought it home for Nathan, and that’s right as far as it goes. But when I realized that reading it all the way through, to Nathan, made me cry more than once, my interpretive organ got to work: what’s so profound, or so sad, or so happy, about it? Why does it feel as profound as (less mysteriously) The Giving Tree, a book that really is sad (so much so that I think it’s not really for kids), whereas Little Bear is consoling, and happy at last?

If you don’t know Little Bear, this won’t make any sense. If you do, try these hypotheses: in the world of Little Bear and Mother Bear, you can only become what you are: the best coat is your fur, the best planet to visit (the only planet you can visit) the Earth you know. Moreover– as Little Bear learns when he can’t sleep– the only wish that is ever granted to us is the wish for stories; and the only stories we end up hearing, the only stories we understand or want to hear, are stories about ourselves.

Nathan, by the way, loves it: he paid me the great compliment, tonight, of calling me Father Bear.

Another new post on the literary-professional-poetry blog, where posts wholly literary, professional, poetry-related, or academic will henceforth go. (This one’s a thank-you to recent poets who read here, to the former student who sent me a really promising book, a heads-up about my upcoming event in Glasgow, and a plea that you-all help me avoid plagiarism.) Matters personal, fun, music-, house-, Nathan-, or basketball-related, in addition to matters unclassifiable, will continue to result in posts (albeit, alas, infrequent) here.

By the way, Close Calls, the book, is now out!

Yesterday… me: “What are you thinking about?’
Nathan: “I’m not thinking about anything.”
Me: “I’m thinking about spaceships.” (We’re still enjoying the Martians.)
Nathan: “No you’re not. You’re thinking about French horns and trumpets and tubas and bass guitars and pianos and, and drums, and violins!”

Today (as we walked across an icy parking lot and felt the wind blow): “When it’s cold in the winter I like to think of the sun and the beach.”

In non-cute news, I’ll be in San Antonio on Thursday talking about poetry and stuff. I’ll try to bring back the sun, though I don’t think I can do anything about a beach.

This meme has been tearing through Facebook like a wildfire. Thought I might as well share my response here since I’ve been simply awful about blogging lately…

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1. I received this from four people (well, one of them only had 10 random things) before I finally answered it.

2. I accidentally navigated away from the page when I had about ten of these things written and lost the whole list. If you decide to do this, write it in a separate text editor and copy and paste when you’re done.

3. I am constantly aware of issues related to class and financial status. I have a fear that is actually common among many women that I will one day be a bag lady (http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Retirementandwills/Playingcatchup/P140989.asp ).

4. Being married to someone from a different economic class whose erudite schooling is almost comically intimidating does not erase my anxieties about such things.

5. I used to be a born-again Christian. I am still, to borrow a phrase from Susan Campbell, “Jesus haunted,” but I do not now, nor will I ever again, believe in hell. I agree with the Rev. Carlton Pearson that any God who would condemn that many people to eternal suffering would be worse than the most genocidal maniacs in history. (for more on that, listen to this episode of This American Life: http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1273 and I will pay you back the dollar for the download).

6. I don’t believe that you need to believe in God or in any spiritual realm to be a good person.

7. I comprehend faith in God, and understand that many people I love believe that my lack of faith means that I will be condemned. I feel sad that they carry that burden of worry, but I can’t carry it for them.

8. My son Nathan was born by emergency Caesarean. I had an easy recovery and am perfectly fine with the fact that I didn’t have to push him out of my body. This does not mean that I didn’t have to work really fucking hard to bring him into this world.

9. I used to live in New York City, and I still miss it.

10. I used to live in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and I miss it even more.

11. The first one of these notes that I was tagged in was from Alicia, and she said something really nice about me and Steve in her note. It made me cry because I miss her a lot.

12. Whenever I hear the phrase “Not Available in Stores,” I hear it as “Storrs.” Since there isn’t jack squat besides UConn there, it’s fitting.

13.I spent my 20s convinced that I hated my high school years, and in my 30s realized how much I actually loved them.

14. I have often wanted to be more of a tech geek, but coding makes my head spin.

15. I wanted to be an actress when I was young, and sometimes I still think that it’s what I should do with my life.

16. I know how to do a lot of things pretty well, but as soon as I get good at something, I devalue its importance and difficulty.

17. I sometimes use grocery shopping as a form of therapy. I just spent $150 at Market Basket, and I feel pretty good about it.

18. When I go back home, I am astounded by how few good restaurants there are.

19. I once rooted for the Yankees just to annoy one of my Red Sox fan friends. I still carry that shame with me every day.

20. I have done and said other shameful things, but nothing I want to admit on Facebook.

21. I used to really hate Elmo, but now I kind of like him. Barney, however, is the antichrist.

22. I wish I had more patience, especially with my spouse and my son.

23. I listen to This American Life on my iPod every week.

24. It won’t hurt my feelings if you never get around to writing your own note like this.

25. I’m glad that I’m done with this and hope I didn’t make anyone feel badly.

Nathan really, really liked the pizza we ended up having from his birthday. So did we. We recommend Stone Hearth Pizza, a regional chain which claims to use almost entirely regional ingredients.

I’m in no position to recommend– but thought you-all might want to know about– new work of mine: on Governor Blagojevich and Alfred Lord Tennyson at the Poetry Foundation, on Jordan Scott in the new Believer, and a couple of poems (about Nathan, in part) in the Columbus-based litmag The Journal, which I think I’ll be reading more often in years to come.

Also, Molasses Flood!

Nathan turns three today! It seems like just weeks, sometimes, since we brought our little guy home from the hospital– and now he speaks in complex sentences, distinguishes conifers from deciduous trees, and asks us whether sushi is Chinese (for informational purposes only, I suspect– for all his curiosity about the world he still has trouble eating new things). He’s the best. Jessie made apple-ginger cake for his school friends (those not out sick) this morning, and I’m about to go home so he can have (what he’s apparently requested) pizza. But before I do, and since we haven’t done such a thing here in a bit, a couple of literary and musical timelinesses that ought not pass without notice:

Daniel Karlin in last week’s TLS had the best piece of literary criticism I’ve seen so far this year, a convincing re-evaluation of Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. You can’t read Karlin’s piece online, but you can read an editor’s summary here.

Second best: the essay about Jane Austen, Emma and care-giving from the current (it just came this morning) Michigan Quarterly Review. Again, the essay itself appears not to be online, but here’s the question it asks: does Emma Woodhouse’s father have what we, in the 21st century, call dementia? How much of Emma makes more sense if he does?

Mick Imlah, the Scottish poet and critic who since 1994 was my editor at the TLS, has died. I knew him primarily via email, as an editor– we only met in person once: nonetheless he was as generous, patient and attentive to me as I could have wished– and I recommend a look at the poems as well.

His last book was widely expected to win Britain’s Eliot Prize; instead, the prize went to the last book that he sent me for review, Jen Hadfield’s Nigh No Place. I recommend it, and Hadfield’s prior book too.

Merge Records are finally, finally going to reissue (the CD goes on sale in two weeks) two of my favorite indie-rock records: the first two discs by the Volcano Suns. You can download two of their best songs at this absurdly copious and apparently wholly legal MP3 blog (which also has lots of other songs I mean to check out soon).

I learned about the Volcano Suns and about thousands of other obscure indie bands in the early 1990s at WHRB’s Record Hospital, which, L. informs me, now has its own Wikipedia entry. L. also informs me– I’m shocked, really– that a blogger in the employ of the Boston Phoenix has posted a story about Record Hospital’s two-decade archive of handwritten playlists and comment books: if you want to know what I spent most of 1992 thinking about, you can just click that link. The Phoenix has wisely chosen to reproduce the handwritten comments of Patrick Amory, whose handwriting my own grew to resemble after a couple of months at WHRB.

Do not invite Steve on your show. He has the kiss of death. First Bryant Park Project (where he was brought in for his expertise on NCAA Women’s Basketball), now Weekend America (where he read a poem about cocktails mere days before the show was canned). Sure, you could blame it on the economy, and Steve never appeared on Day to Day or News and Notes, but you can’t be too careful in these uncertain times. Stay away from Steve if you know what’s good for you.

Ten days ago we were in Puerto Vallarta. We recommend it.

Five days ago we were in Connecticut for Christmas. It is a very good thing that we can now see Jessie’s family without having to board (or pay to board) an airplane. There was warmth. And fun. And presents, especially for Nathan (see below).

Three days ago we were watching Dan Zanes’ holiday show with Nathan in New York. We recommend that too. He’s got several musicians from Semitic traditions who seem to have joined his entourage since his last album: there’s a singer whose bio calls her “neo-Hasidic” and who adapts Jewish festive and liturgical tunes, and several Arab-American players, including a guy with a buzuq. We liked the buzuq, but what I still want is a melodica. I’ve wanted one, vaguely, ever since I saw one in the Heavenly stage show…

But it’s churlish to complain about instruments we don’t have, at the moment, since Nathan got so many new ones for Xmas/Hannukah, which he has now arranged to his liking, now that (today) we are re-established at home.

He’s got a purple microphone with its own stand! and an electric keyboard just his size! And this ingeniously designed toy trumpet, which is actually a bath-safe plastic pan-pipe! Our living room has really turned into a music room. Which is good. I have become “Drummer” (as in “Drummer! Daddy Drummer! Can you play the drums now?”) which is good, except when it’s a bit rude. We’re working on the rude part.

Three pieces of text online you should probably read:

(a) the LRB’s Lanchester on video games. Yes, they are art.

(b) the Poetry Foundation’s staff year-end best-of list, which includes the inevitable (Jack Spicer, George Oppen), the international (my former student Hannah Brooks-Motl, whose work you should clearly watch out or, picks Robert Minhinnick), and the heretofore almost-unknown.

(c) the nation’s preeminent women’s-sports journalist explains why people keep doing things they don’t really love, and why, sometimes, they later decide to stop.

When you get done reading those things, there’s always my fake Virgilian ode to last month’s election, now with a quasi-permanent online home at InDigest, a web-mag I’d be reading even if they had never published me.

It’s called Close Calls with Nonsense, not coincidentally named for my forthcoming book about contemporary poetry. You can expect to find my impromptu thoughts on contemporary poetry– and on other contemporary bookish matters– there, starting with this neat Web discovery. Sometimes posts there will be posted here, too; sometimes not.

Nonliterary matters– Nathan’s accomplishments, basketball milestones, travel notes– will continue to turn up on the accommodatingly blog, when they turn up online at all.

Design and formatting on the new blog, of course, all done by Jessie, without whose labor, attention, and design sense I’d still be using only 12-point Courier on white backgrounds for everything. Which might look neat for a while but would get got old fast.