Accommodatingly

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.

who was on the Leonard Lopate show explaining A. Rod’s salary, Steve appeared on the Bryant Park Project this morning sharing his thoughts about the Women’s Final Four.

So how long before Sports Center snaps them up?

Well of course I thought highly of today’s post at Beacon Broadside, about an education official in Texas who got fired for forwarding an email about a speaker who argues against creationists. But it’s not what I think that matters, in such matters: it’s what they think at Pharyngula, the very good and hugely popular science blog by P. Z. Myers, whose referral today broke records for Beacon’s blog traffic. Thanks, Pharyngula! (More science posts on the way?)

Also around the Web from one or both of us: I recommend more poetry books at Harriet, as do Ange and my other co-bloggers there; Mike puts online– I didn’t know it was up, really, officer!– an essay on Young Marble Giants I wrote about twelve years ago; and we attend our first Crimson women’s hoops game.

Also in music news: I still owe several people mix CDs– perhaps in the New Year, after I’m done with a talk about Stevens a review of Ashbery a troublesome piece about Philip K. Dick some other stuff? And track two on this great CD spent most of November in my head. It may even come back. Look, Mike reviews the same record! Small indiepop world.

Yes, it’s another one of those hi-out-there posts consisting largely of links:

More praise from another political blog for  Beacon Broadside.

Nathan loves Hannukah. Not just the presents: the group singing, and the candles, and the Hebrew letters. He also likes to say (among several other new phrases he’s picked up): “Guten tag!” (from a teacher at his school who speaks German) and “Stay in bed all day!”

One of Nathan’s Hannukah presents: more music by the great Dan Zanes. It’s a good thing D.Z. is talented enough to make music that parents like, too, because Nathan likes his songs (and likes us to sing his songs) so much that otherwise we’d go bats. Odd discovery (well, it was a discovery for me– Jessie pointed it out): all waltzes are sad. Especially “Sidewalks of New York,” in D.Z.’s version, even though he and his band make it delightful too. Odder discovery: the talented and relentlessly perky accordionist and keyboard player with D.Z. has another life as a very good alt-country and live theatre act. Of course, the Del Fuegos weren’t bad themselves.

One of my longest, most speculative, or maybe most whimsical, essays about poetry is now available as a pre-print online (pre-prints are online versions of essays that will be published soon in scholarly journals; they’re standard in the sciences and show up every so often in fields like mine).

Wordpress still hates Firefox: if you clicked on the links in this post quite soon after I posted it, you got nothin’, because Firefox’s interface changes a href into a xhref. Fortunately I remembered to go into Safari and change everything back. Grrr.

I recommend another poetry book. Amanda recommends a science book, and Meghan recommends a novel, at the same place.

I’ve been thinking about poems about snow.  Also thinking about Wallace Stevens: do Stevens scholars, in general, realize that the Connecticut River for part of its length is tidal, i.e. “flows nowhere, like the sea”? The fact’s not in Eleanor Cook’s new, good reference book on Stevens; I shall spend part of next week trying to see who has and hasn’t noticed the fact (the relevant poem is “The River of Rivers in Connecticut”) before. If it’s not generally known, I’ve got something else to say when I talk about Stevens in Chicago in a week and a half.

Macalester’s women’s hoops team is winning games now that we’ve left– and Helen is seeing them. No fair! We see our first live Harvard women’s hoops game (knocks on wood) this Tuesday. Unless we get a ton of snow again.

Among Nathan’s new cool behaviors this week alone:

One of the things he wants to do his “own self!” (as he puts it) is read books. Typically he will let us read him a book and then insist on reading it all his “own self.” He flips through the pages and recites, sometimes all, often most of, the words, in order, matching them to the appropriate pictures. This is– how can I put it?– way cool.

Also cool: toddlers still acquiring lots of language are metaphor-generation machines. Metaphor dynamos. Metamos, if you will. Many of them have to do with the moon. Since last week we’ve been hearing that when the moon isn’t visible in the sky it’s hiding. “Moon hiding,” Nathan says, almost whenever he’s outdoors during the day.

Also on the metaphor front: tonight he identified the pictures of snowflakes in this book as moons. Then he began counting them. One moon, two moons, three moons!

And tonight, tonight, he told his first (self-conscious, verbal) joke! (He’s done physical humor for a while.) Nathan pointed to a green cup he had filled with water (during his bath) and said “Nathan elephants in cup… no!” I laughed, he repeated it, I told him he had told a joke, and then he announced to us, proudly, “Nathan joke! Nathan joke!” We think the humor had something to do with this book, which he has been reading his own self.

Maura, who has been one of my favorite people since the years when Holiday were touring, has a great piece at the Chronicle about the attractions of a library career. Required reading, I’d say, for anyone on their way to a Ph.D. who isn’t quite sure she/he wants to move absolutely anywhere to take absolutely any job in a given academic field, and wonders if there’s a life path that could make more sense: for many such folks, there is. And she explains it.

If posts have been light around here, it’s (still) because we’re blogging here and here. And because I’m about to fly here. Apparently I am staying on the Queen Mary, which is not the same ship on which the Olympic basketball teams stayed.

Over at the blog I get paid to work on, I posted a link to a Mary Oliver poem about the Red Sox. Now, I know that all o’ y’all who are into your “difficult” or “elliptical” poets or whatever may not dig Mary Oliver, but I’d love to see you visit the post and add your favorite sports poem to the comments. Of course, we all know what my favorite sports poems are…

Cappie delights us by forcing a game five. (Geno, as usual when he’s the guest commentator, predicted the plays, sometimes minutes before they took place.)

I’m now blogging here. Please send suggestions if you have them, even if they seem unrelated to poetry. Yes, it’s a lit-blog gig.

I have new poems here, one about a kitchen tool, and one about Robert Lowell flying over Connecticut. Well, maybe it’s secretly about Walter Mondale Robert Lowell. Or is it about Chris Dodd Walter Mondale?

I also praise Elizabeth Treadwell here.

Nathan got discombobulated this morning because we rolled in through the back door at day care and he was shocked to find himself in the day care room: we walked all the way down the long hall to the front entrance and then re-entered the day care center through the correct door. It’s like watching a well-made television show and not wanting to miss the credits. Or something. In any case, our little guy quickly recovered: he clearly likes having some playmates there.

From Jordan, the most disgusting way to make yourself finish a long piece of writing– and one of the most effective.

Well, I had to call this miscellany-style post something, and it’s a neat ice cream flavor Jessie found last week. As neat as I’ve tasted recently unless you count the best ice cream store in the world. (Sorry, Izzy; you are tied for second best, though.)

Two hours ago we got back from Willimantic, where we celebrated Jessie’s mom’s birthday and Jessie’s mom’s husband’s mom’s birthday. Nathan got to chase a ball, and kick a ball, and watch a ball kicked by, his affectionate cousins, whose names he likes to say. It’s a bit of a drive, but not bad if Nathan (a) sleeps or (b) wants us to sing children’s songs— we got (a) on the way down and (b) on the way back– and it’s certainly easier than flying. Yep, that’s one of the reasons we moved.

Should I write an essay entitled “Science Fiction as an Ethnic Literature”? Somebody should. I’m afraid that I’ve taken on an assignment (no, a different assignment) that requires me to read all of Philip K. Dick, which is like, and yet in another way not in the least like, having to read all of Swinburne. For a third assignment short article, I need to find out– tomorrow if possible– whether it’s true, or whether it’s more of an urban legend, that few Americans cared much about Paul Revere until Longfellow versified his midnight ride. UPDATE: the Paul Revere archive-and-tourism folks say it’s true. (I still want a print source, though. [shakes head])

I owe about ten people mix CDs. And in a couple of weeks they’re going to get them.

I owe many more people than that thanks and some sort of detailed update on our first month or so in Massachusetts: it’s neat to get so many queries, but scary to think about how many I may not answer directly. Come visit us when you can, o friends who live elsewhere. And tell us, if appropriate, just what you saw and ate at the State Fair. We miss the fair: age cannot wither, nor can custom stale, its infinite variety of food on sticks…

Partial Nathan update: he’s super-interested in opposites– up and down, new and old (and the associated word “time”), on and off (bathroom faucets now say “on” and “off,” rather than “off” and “no”), small and tall, Sox and Yankees (really– he loves saying “Go Sox!”) and the fact that 6 becomes 9 upside-down, while N becomes Z on its side.

As Brazelton’s research predicted, our extroverted, neophilic child loves the stimulation of his day care but sometimes, about half an hour after we bring him home, gets cranky and needy and desirous of Mommy’s (in particular) attention, maybe in part because he can “misbehave” around us and blow off cranky steam, while at work at day care he wants to behave.

Jessie reviews a cool memoir in the new Rain Taxi; it’s also the Powells review of the day today.

Unless things go pear-shaped I should be blogging here soon. Stay tuned. Oh, and support the Mercury if you can. All they need now is two out of three.

First in one sense, last in another: I’m giving a reading at Opposable Thumbs Books on Friday May 18. It’s likely my last reading in this state before we decamp for New England, though of course I hope to come back now and then (to read, or not to read).

Details: 2833 Johnson St NE in Mpls, phone: (612) 706-2020, time: 7:30 PM, cost: no cost at all. Unless you buy stuff at the bookstore, and I hear it’s a good bookstore. And a record store, too.

Better yet: I’m reading with Alex Lemon, who teaches at Mac (and holds a degree from Mac), and whose own site is beautiful. Check out his book, Mosquito.

Some of the songs on the new Avril Lavigne album sound like the Fastbacks; several more sound like the Muffs. Recommended (but skip tracks 5 and 12). At the moment, I’d like to read a poetic sequence in twenty abbreviated segments based alternatingly on the lives so far of Avril Lavigne and of Mark Perry. I’d like to read it, but I don’t know that I’d like to write it.

Then again, I don’t know that I’d like to write anything just tonight. Our guy woke up at 5:45am and would not acknowledge me as a parent: he screamed and screamed until he got his mommy, which made everyone involved feel bad. On the other hand, when I drove up to our day care site in our car this afternoon, while N. was playing outdoors with his mommy, he turned around, pointed to the approaching car, and exclaimed “Mommy!”

Ron tagged us, which I think means I have to tag five other people (ideally, related to poetry). Do I even read enough blogs for this sort of thing to make sense?

But I do read glenn mcdonald, who just became a dad and still writes superbly articulate music reviews (that doesn’t mean I like all the music)…

glenn’s newborn daughter has the same name as the daughter of Mrs. Coulter, to whom we link all the time…

I’ve just now discovered Darren Wershler-Henry (a well-designed home page but not a blog) whose book about typewriters I have to read (but it doesn’t count, it’s not a blog)…

if you want to see somebody having fun while thinking provocatively about contemporary poetry, with emphases on Britain, the post-Ashbery quasi-avant-garde, and Chicagoland, not nec. in that order, try Archambeau; I always do…

Corey, who seems to be using his blog to make notes for his dissertation (not a bad use!) turned me on to Harp and Altar, a good-looking new Internet poetry-and-criticism mag…

and of course I keep up with these people. Kevin has perhaps surprisingly terse predictions…

but since I’m still uneasy with the Web as a mode for poetry criticism (though of course Silliman and others can do it well), I’ll close with two people who have significant web presence in other ways than true blogging, and whose recent books have surprised me very much, in the sense that I like them a lot and might not have expected to: the first is Noah Eli Gordon, whose co-authored satirical poem “Archaic Torso of Stephen Burt” seems to have vanished from all online fora, and anyway isn’t in his nifty A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow. The other is James Longenbach: “Being mortal,/ I aspire to/ Mortal things.” (Think how different that line would be were “to” on the other side of the line break.)

Nathan’s asleep, having had a few wonderful days of being held, hugged and taken for walks in my parents’ backyard by (among other good folk) my parents. That’s one good thing about visiting Washington, but it’s something our readers on the interwebs (my brothers excepted) can’t really share, especially since we don’t have video footage, just supercute pictures– we wouldn’t really want to bring you footage involving Nathan’s new word this week anyway, since the word is “poopy.” He uses this word appropriately, but also applies it to my mom’s cat, named “pooky.”

Something else good about Washington which almost any of you could conceivably share: Bridge Street Books, where Rod Smith and others stock one of the country’s best selections of post-New American/ post-Williams/ “post-avant” poetry. If you can shop here regularly and shop at the revamped Grolier, you’re in good shape. And after a bit of a drought, I’ve found a few way-promising new poets, in part thanks to shopping with help from Rod.

I’ll be rereading with pleasure– having just discovered this week– the new one from Elizabeth Treadwell, RIYL Lorine Niedecker; the PSA prizewinner chapbook from Maureen Thorson, about high school aged kids in a Navy town; and the apparently long-delayed, but well worth the wait, first book (prose poems) from Geoff Bouvier. Two out of three of whom have their own blogs. O brave new Interwebs! As with all truly new-to-me poets, I don’t know how much I’ll like these books in a few weeks, but initial impressions are: there’s something good here.

Self-promo: I’m reading at the Black Dog in downtown St Paul at 7pm this Tuesday April 10, with Kathleen Heidelman and Bryan Thao Worra, also a blogger (new to me, worth checking out). It’s likely my second-to-last reading as a Minnesota poet, a status I am reluctant to relinquish. I like being a Minnesota poet. But all good things etc.

Oh, and: props to Pat. We loved the 2005 Final Four and will surely go to another one, but this year I’m almost glad we had to stay away.

UPDATE: Rod has a blog himself. Thanks, Jordan!