Accommodatingly

Our Belmont condo is still full of stuff, but at least it’s not (or doesn’t feel) full of sealed boxes: we are, as fast as we can, unpacking. It’s psychologically exhausting while in progress, but slightly exhilarating (if anything can be only slightly exhilarating) to see the floor, and some books and dishes on shelves, where, the day before, we saw nothing but boxes. (We have a lot of books. And a lot of dishes.)

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Still prepping for the science fiction course that’s going to run this fall, I came across this bit from Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars:
“One night Art sat up suddenly from his couch. ‘I’m losing the content of things,’ he said to Nadia seriously, still half dreaming. ‘I’m just seeing forms now.’” –Admits of several applications, no?

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Not only do we miss our friends in Minnesota: we miss the Current. And Blanche’s show on KFAI. On the other hand, it’s pretty great to be able to wake up on weekdays with WMBR’s Breakfast of Champions when Nathan lets us sleep that late, and to go to bed with Record Hospital. In a manner of speaking, of course.

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Speaking of radio, Minnesota Public Radio last month asked me to write lyrics for a few Twin Cities indie bands who would then compose songs around them– I’ll let you know if and when the segment on the songs is likely to air. I like what the Owls did a lot. One of the others is… a bluegrass number! A well-done bluegrass number. I like it too, though I fear that my lyrical sensibility is about as “country” as the Flatiron Building. (And not as cool.) The third song, by Matt Wilson, has a cycling piano riff that’s super-catchy, and still growing on me.
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Have you been reading the Poetry Foundation blog? Worth a look– especially Ange’s posts (every word of which, so far, strikes me as true). Apparently I’ll be blogging there once school starts after the WNBA playoffs after our full-time day care starts starting sometime in September.

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Nathan loves Amy Winehouse. In fact, if you sing him the first line of her hit “Rehab,” he will answer “No, no, no!”

Consider this post a placeholder, to let those of you who have expressed your concern know that we have moved into our new place. Belmont, Mass. is pretty without being glitzy– we live right next to a big shiny pond, with walking trails and its own flock of geese; the pond is, in turn, right next to the high school, which could mean some heavy traffic when school begins. (It also means that when Nathan and I visited the post office this morning, we rolled the stroller over an entire block of sidewalk painting celebrating the Belmont field hockey team.)

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Jessie’s sister Robin and our trio of nieces (Robin’s kids) are here: they are, as always, enthusiastic re: playing with Nathan. At the moment they have him surrounded, and are asking him, politely, to knock down towers of blocks.

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More news as it happens. Oh, and Sara asked us to note the new site for her series: QT: Queer Readings at Dixon Place. Consider it done, and check it out.

The Movers Who Pack have just left. Tomorrow morning the Cat Movers and the Movers Who Load All Our Stuff Into a Truck arrive. Our house– that is, the one we’re losing leaving– has all its furniture intact but all our smaller belongings packed and sealed in durable cardboard, except for the stuff I’m taking in our car and the stuff I’ll be using (tomorrow, when the house is truly empty) to clean it. It’s a truly melancholy feeling to sit in an empty-but-not-empty house and blog. I miss Jessie and Nathan. Our cats are confused and restless, but they’ll survive. (Geno and LaBelle spent the hours of packing, as intended, locked uneasily into the spacious laundry room; Cosmo escaped and cowered under furniture upstairs– the combination of tension and roundness in his body when he’s freaked out and hiding reminds me of those enormous, solid balls of rubber bands.) It’s like Thom Gunn’s 1960s poem about cats exploring an empty house, except in reverse. I’m glad we’re using a Cat Mover.

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Unexpected literary discovery occasioned by our move, part xliv: the ninth issue (from 2001) of Mark Nowak’s journal Cross Cultural Poetics. I regularly disagree with his approach to literature-in-general– though I always admire his labor activism– but this issue is a gem: part of a long poem that ended up in Mark’s good first book; Elizabeth Willis with a smart essay about folk culture, the Thirties, the Sixties and Niedecker; Eric’s articulately admiring review of The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You; and a striking, sharp-tongued, convincing personal essay by Tisa Bryant, of whom I had never before heard, about her early life of blue- and pink-collar jobs.

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Bryant appears to be part of a Bay Area circle of queer-positive youngish women writers– sort of a next-generation Kelsey Street Press crew?– who like fragmentation and “experiment” but also like passionate lyricism: it’s the same scene that seems to have welcomed Liz Waldner, whose poetry I like an awful lot, and Elizabeth Treadwell, whose poetry I sometimes like (and, of course, some other writers whose work I don’t like).

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Here’s a set of Bryant’s prose poems. And here’s a neat interview conducted this year.

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UPDATE: our grief and condolences to Mrs Coulter and Lee on the loss of their, and our, favorite Moo Cat. You can’t play with her anymore, but you can still look at the sweet photograph.
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As I type, Cosmo has emerged, warily, from his hiding place under the futon. Good for him. Hey, Jordan has a blog!

I just realized that Mary Lucia’s interview with Douglas is on the Current website. Listen!

New work from the two of us elsewhere on the Interwebs:

At Babble, Jessie considers the Terrible Twos (and insults my dancing, but, you know, she’s right).

At the Poetry Foundation, I offer up a rap Pope. Not for eighteenth-century specialists, I think; more for people who have never heard of Mr. Pope but might like him a lot if they found a way in. Do let me know if you find errors. This means you.

I have spent part of the day overwhelmed by sadness, nearly to the point of emotional paralysis, over leaving a place where we have so many good friends, and so many reasons for sticking around the Twin Cities as long as we did. I bet the sadness dissipates soon after we get to Belmont, especially since I think we’ll be coming back every so often to see our friends here.

I spent a much happier part of the day reading Douglas’ book. It looks like one of the books I’ll be writing over the next few years is an introduction to twentieth-century poetry from around the English-speaking world, aimed at students and others who read poetry avidly but don’t know Marianne Moore from Nicholas Moore, or Edward Thomas from Dylan Thomas from R. S. Thomas.

Douglas’ book (so far) looks like a perfect example of how to write for such an audience (it’s also funny, where funny is appropriate).

So does Alex Ross’s book, though there I’m only about on page ten.