Flutterings

Rattle has just published as its Sunday poem "Look at that, you son of a bitch" (the title comes from the late astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who threw a javelin on the moon 45 years and a few days ago).

Meanwhile, I've been training my lens on tennis players in Memphis:

http://tennis-buzz.com/friday-afternoon-at-the-memphis-open-part-1/
https://www.instagram.com/tennisbuzzlive/

And, from the Department of Tennis Can Provide a Metaphor for Anything -- here's a glimpse of partners getting their signals scrambled...



(Oliver Marach of Austria and Fabrice Martin of France)

...and one of Kei Nishikori strrrrrretching (and sliding and squeaking) his way out of trouble (eventually -- between Sam Querrey's unreturnable serves and Kei's tendency to hit wide/long during the first half hour, it was not a good first set for him):

The Cubs are inflicting the usual dose of October heartache/heartburn, so I'm going to pickle carrots instead. (There's also work to get through, but staying away from monitors for the next few innings seems like a good idea.)

There seems to be no escaping Thoreau today, albeit in texts that address the mythologizing of him. In Mark Caldwell's The Last Crusade: The War on Consumption, 1862-1954, his death from tuberculosis is presented as an example of a 19th-century tendency to cast such deaths as gentle, pure goings-into-the-good-night -- an erasure of what one could argue were the victims' true personalities (vigorous, worldly, earthy) when they were healthy. And Dawn Potter relays Katherine Schulz's observations about Thoreau, including thought-provoking comparisons of Walden to Prospect Park (neither being all that off the grid) and Thoreau to Laura Ingalls Wilder (fictional vs. real isolation).

(An extra layer to this, which I only just remembered: I'm attending a wedding later this year in Prospect Park... and the groom and the officiant and I participated together in a mock trial about thirty years ago where I was drafted to portray Thoreau. "But I haven't read any Thoreau." I forget how our classmates persuaded me that a quick trip to the library would give me enough to improvise with, but I vaguely recall them managing to make contrarian-ness sound like a compliment, and they later reassured me when my Thoreau turned out to be a terrible witness on behalf of Socrates [who was once again sentenced to death], because what I'd said as him was in character.)

Signal boost: 7x20 is seeking tweet-sized pieces by women and writers of color. Non-paying market.

On a related note, I'm the featured poet at 7x20 this week. So far:

Code Name Taurus...
Persian calligraphy

*peeks at scoreboard* FFS, Cubs. OK, I'm off to do some violence to root vegetables.

The new issue of Goblin Fruit is up, it is beautiful, and it includes my poem "Spelling 'For Worse,'" both as text and recording:

http://www.goblinfruit.net/2014/winter/poems/?poem=spellingforworse

The Wailing Well (text and audio)

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt from Poetic Asides was "travel." I started to write about Amsterdam, but somehow ended up with this:

Souvenir

( Last summer, while in Chicago, I gave away )

Oh, and I've got two cinquains in the new issue of AMAZE. One of them was inspired by the Japanese Festival of Seven Herbs.

In other news, all y'all can go ahead and laugh at me: I have indeed been staying up until stupid hours with part 3 of "Not As Dumb" -- and I think it's on the verge of done. (The smut's been deferred to part 4, however - there's a reason I've mentally labelled this fic "The One Where the Characters Will Not Shut Up"...). I'll post it in a day or two (i.e., after I finish this Sunday's sermon, and provided I don't find anything unspeakably irreparable when I go tidy it up).

Earlier this year, marginaliana won my offer to write a custom villanelle. Her prompts included "LPW, Peter reflecting on the way that his work leads to someone being put to death" and
"LPW, Bunter and Harriet's relationship." Herewith...

( A man cannot help what he deduces... )

Thank you again to marginaliana for contributing to the cause!

The Spring 2007 issue of flashquake is up, with two of my poems: "She says, follow the graves" is an Editor's Pick, and there's also "Hosiery running deep."

The titles for both pieces come from poems by Reb Livingston in Wanton Textiles, a chapbook she co-wrote with Ravi Shankar (whose poem Simpatico remains one of my very favorites from the Motel).

In addition to writing poem-prompting poems, Reb also has good taste: one of my poems was included in the first NoTell Motel anthology she compiled, and another will appear in the new one currently in press. Isn't it a fabulous cover? Sexy times ahead! :-)

Apparently what my brain really wanted was for mrissa to prompt me to write a poem (via the art-about-your-friends meme), because that's what it ended up focusing on as I planted the lilies of the valley this afternoon.

So here it is, first draft. I fancy I can revise it into something publishable, hence the locked entry. [ETA: Decided to unlock it and leave it here.]


Dear M'ris

( Before I could bake tomorrow's bread )

~ Peg

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature is now in print!

(I wrote several dozen entries for it. It feels good to see several years' of work finally on its way to library shelves.)

Also (mentioned here a couple of months ago before the site went live), a number of my poems are now available for use on e-cards at BlueGreenPlanet, an e-card and eco-education site. The site is run by artist Janet Chui, whose own paintings are gorgeous.

Happy belated birthday, kassrachel! Your friendship and encouragement mean a lot to me.

Hastily drafted (where does the time go!?), but heartfelt nonetheless:

Season

At this turn of the year, we are greedy for light
in the way that those who have dined too long
on heavy blandness crave the brightness
of unadorned salt and feathery sauces.

At this stretch of the year, we stubbornly sink
our teeth into all we can chew, no matter
how unpalatable the blessings sometimes remain
and how difficult they can be to swallow.

At this spin of the year, we count our candles
and all of the suns and the stars that command
our gifts of witness and our celebrations of choices:
here's to your new year. Here's to rejoicing.

With love,
Peg