maundy maundy

Tonight I'm delighted to be participating in the annual Maundy Thursday reading of Dante's Inferno at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Last year I was a last-minute replacement for one of the scheduled readers; this year I was invited to be part of the regular program under the auspices of poet in residence Marilyn Nelson.

It was particularly cool for me last year because I had just joined an Episcopal church and was soon to be confirmed--so in addition to the wonderful literary history of this institution, it was also "my" cathedral!

The three-hour reading starts at 9pm and covers fifteen out of the thirty-four cantos. I've been assigned the second half of Canto XXI, which will occur sometime between 10 and 11 pm. If you're inclined to stop by, know that you're not required to stay for the whole three hours....judging by my observations from last year, attendees sneak in and out as the spirit moves them.

Today is also, of course, April Fool's, and I've had a fun gmail exchange just now with my friend Greg who works for The Company Currently Known as Topeka. He said in their Chelsea offices they had fake "surveillance cameras" in the restrooms and (uncracked and thus inedible) coconuts in the cafeteria's fruit baskets. What a bunch of kooks!

It's also the birthday of my wonderful father. Happy Birthday, Daddy!

snow day

The only reason I can even post this is that FIT is closed (along with the NYC public schools) due to "inclement weather." We've got a snowstorm on our hands and, although at the moment it looks like it may be petering out, it's dumped several inches already and is supposed to leave us with up to a foot on the ground.

Bob came over to take the kids out sledding. So here I am, just you, me, and my computer. I have so much to talk about, but I just can't bring myself to write much. I don't know what it is--some of my "stuff" is not suitable for public consumption, but mostly it's just too daunting to shape and craft and wrestle with words right now. I've written dozens of emails for work, done some Facebook status updates, exchanged some messages with friends. Maybe I'm worded out. I'll keep trying, though. I promise.

reading with the peeps

Last night my poetry group gave a reading at Cornelia Street Cafe. We published an anthology together in 2008, This Full Green Hour, and this time readers included not only the six of us who were involved in the book, but two other fabulous members, Katie Johntz and Carly Sachs. It was a full house, and a good time was had by all.

I'm so glad to be part of this community--I literally would not have written some of the poems in Saint Nobody without them, and there are others that would definitely not be in the shape they are, thanks to their insights and inspiration.

Here are two videos, courtesy of the lovely and talented Greg Sanders.

i love wes, and wes loves me

On Monday, May 18th, I dropped off the signed retainer letter (with the all-important checks) at the mediator's office. This is the next step in the divorce process--she will now draw up the agreement, we will each have lawyers review it, then go from there (hopefully no more changes after that).

Afterwards, I took myself out for a cocktail at my beloved Flatiron Lounge and sent text messages to any of my friends who might be remotely interested in what had just transpired. Having enjoyed a "404" (named, apparently, for the Atlanta area code, in honor of some out of town patrons) and a "Blue Moon" (so named because it is, um, blue) I headed east to Punch for a little dinner. On the way I saw two men standing on the sidewalk talking and realized that one of them looked very familiar. It was none other than Wesley Stace, aka John Wesley Harding, one of my all-time favorite musicians and now a celebrated novelist. I stopped right in front of him and declared, "I love you!" Without blinking, he replied, very matter-of-fact, "I love you, too!"

Then I went along my way, grinning and giggling. As long as Wes loves me, all must be right with the world.

reading tonight at the bowery!

Tonight I'm reading with three fantastic Red Hen chicks--er--women authors at the world-famous Bowery Poetry Club.

Excited to share the stage with the illustrious Judy Grahn, the celebrated Sarah Goodyear, and the prodigious Erinn Batykefer, all introduced by none other than Red Hen goddess Kate Gale herself!

Just made some last-minute babysitting arrangements so I will be there for showtime at 6! (Draw me a pint, Shappy!)

old saint nick's

Last night I went with a couple of friends to Saint Nick's, a historic jazz club in Harlem. My friend and FIT colleague Praveen lives in the neighborhood (his apartment has the most incredible view) and is a regular at the pub. The band for African Night was large and lively, as was the crowd. Standing room only, jostling required. After awhile, I figured out how to avoid getting jostled by the bartenders shuttling six-packs back and forth to the bar. Before I knew it, it was one a.m. and time to head back downtown on the A train. Good to have a night out.

bar napkin poems

Many words (all of them not necessarily literary) have been penned (and penciled) on bar napkins. My friend Moira even has a stunning sequence of Bar Napkin Sonnets, which she printed in a limited edition on paper that looks like actual napkins. So it was natural that, when a poet friend and I stopped by the Silverleaf Tavern on Mardi Gras, we were inspired by Carly to collaborate, drawing a traveling economist/improv comedian into our circle. The result, a rather fun and meta-poetic limerick, is on Carly's bartending blog.

Cheers!

contemporary gothic reading tonight

Gothic: Dark Glamour
Contemporary Gothic Literature
Thursday, December 6, 2008
6-7 pm
The Tile Gallery at the Museum at FIT
Seventh Avenue at 27 Street
New York, NY

FIT students, faculty and staff read selections from Anne Rice, Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and more.

(including Moira Egan)

Hope to see you there!

saved by the Mel

What a lovely day to be caught in the rain (or at least drizzle and fog). I've been car-sitting for a friend who's overseas for a month--I get to use the car in exchange for moving it on the alternate-side parking days. When he dropped it off my friend noted that the automatic windows were temperamental and had stopped working, leaving them stuck open. "They always start up again eventually," he assured me. Unfortunately, though, they didn't start up again, no matter how many times I tried, and by the end of the week there was heavy rain in the forecast. When the deluge began on Thursday night, I was out on the street trying to cover the windows with garbage bags and electrical tape. You can imagine how well that worked.

So today I used the car to take Bobby to a birthday party and drop Stella off at Dad's. The car wasn't totally waterlogged, fortunately, but I did get a wet behind from the seat (and so did Stella). I went to lunch at a lovely cafe in Long Island City, savoring salade nicoise, cafe au lait, and pain au chocolat, chuckling over the latest issue of The Onion, and generally clearing my head of some muck and gunk that had built up for a few days.

Afterwards I started up the car again, intending to swing by Socrates Sculpture Park. Immediately one of the best vocal renditions of all time came on WNYC: Mel Torme's "Lullaby of Broadway." I snapped my fingers, bopping and singing along, as I made my way up Jackson Avenue. At a stop sign on a side street, I idly pressed the window control button, as I had so many times the past few days in a futile attempt to get the windows to close. This time, the window went right up. I pushed the other three buttons. The other three windows went up, too!

Maybe it was driving around a bit, charging the battery. Maybe it was hitting some bump that got some shorted-out wire in the system to reconnect. But I like to think it was Mel, the Velvet Fog at his scat-cat best, filling the little car with his special brand of electricity on a foggy day in L.I.C.

back in nyc

I made it back a bit ago and decided to jump online before I begin the prospective ordeal that is returning the rental car (in case you haven't heard, I had a minor accident a few weeks ago that resulted in the insurance company declaring the Honda minivan--2001, 160,000 miles--a total loss).

The kids and I had a great time with family and friends in Ohio and PA. The drives were, for the most part, uneventful (I managed somehow to keep the kids from killing each other in the back seat, and Stella only got out of her seatbelt a couple of times). We were much more comfortable than I'd expected due to a surprise upgrade from "full-sized" to "luxury"--they gave us a Dodge Charger, a huge black mobile that my brother David called a "mafia car."

As always, re-entry is a little hard. Fortunately, the touch of flu I picked up at the end of the week has been summarily dispatched by a new miracle drug--Tamiflu--and I feel almost normal, physically.

Perhaps I will head to the gym after the rental gauntlet. And a quiet evening at home before things start up, bright and early, at FIT tomorrow. I hereby resolve to post more frequently, even while the crazy semester is going on.

In the meantime, go to MacGregor's blog for a fantastic Robert Lowell poem.

Letters to the World reading tonight!

Just a reminder, in case you haven't received the email blast or Facebook invite. I'm excited to be part of this reading to promote the wonderful anthology of poetry by women!
Tuesday, August 5, 6:00 p.m.
Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia Street, New York, NY
LETTERS TO THE WORLD ANTHOLOGY READING
Cover $7 (includes one house drink)
Poets LouAnn Shepard Muhm, Mendi Lewis Obadike and Amy Lemmon read from the international anthology Letters to the World (Red Hen Press), joined by NYC poet Tim Suermondt.

quotable quotes

It was a wild and wacky weekend. I spent way more time than I probably should have on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Here are some random bits:

"I respected him in a certain way--with his hookers and his plaid--because the world was changing, and it wasn't for the better."
--MacGregor Rucker, Lower East Side, 8/2/08

"Just because it's poetry doesn't mean we have to slit our wrists."
--Greg Sanders, East Village, 8/3/08

"The android in you loves the android in me."
--Paula Carino, live performance at Arlene's Grocery, 8/2/08

"Cell phone or schizo? It's really hard to know."
--The Larch, ibid.

"Come on over, drunk or sober."
--The Actual Facts, ibid.

And one more, perhaps providing a gloss on much of the previous:

"ALCOHOL: THE CAUSE OF, AND THE SOLUTION TO, ALL OF LIFE'S PROBLEMS."
--Chalkboard behind the bar at Arlene's Grocery

cost of living

I'm back in the Big Dirty after a lovely week in the Pacific Northwest. This morning after getting the kids off to school and camp I had a very expensive hour and a half. First, I bought 12 gallons of gas. Then I went to Key Food and stocked up, not only on food, but on cleaning supplies and those funky newfangled lightbulbs. As the cashier scanned the items and the tally mounted I joked to myself I'd need a second mortgage to pay for it--the joke being that I don't have a first mortgage.

Then I had to park at a hydrant for a few minutes while I lugged all the stuff upstairs (the alternate side parking rules meant there were no parking spaces in front of our building until 10 a.m.). Sure enough, when I came down, a lovely young woman was writing me a ticket. When I asked her to stop writing it she says, "How can I stop writing? I can't stop writing once I've started." It occurred to me how much I would like to hear that in a very different context--say, from my students, or myself. It also occurred to me that my groceries were costing me another $115 now that a ticket was in the mix.

Welcome home.

fab fourth

Yesterday I spent the evening with good pals Greg and Jeremy and an assorted cast of walk-ons.

We started at the Whiskey Ward, described in one review as a "No bullshit saloon off Delancey Street for serious drinkers," then headed to Schiller's Liquor Bar for dinner (yes, it's a restaurant, too), where we saw Sex and the City's Chris Noth and John Corbett enjoying cocktails at the bar.

We didn't make it to Greg's apartment rooftop, as planned, for the Macy's fireworks--we rather lamely watched some of the glow from the street outside Schiller's--but it was a great time nonetheless.

gone with the wind

Today on the way in to teach my fabulous Creative Writing for Illustrators class for FIT's M.A. program in Illustration (I'm so lucky to get to work with these excellent people--and I'm not just saying that because I told them about my blog and some of them will be reading this), I made it onto a W train that was just about to pull out of the station. For some reason, the trains were all running on the middle tracks, which meant they were express from Astoria Blvd to Queensborough Plaza. It also meant they were packed, especially the car I was in, even at 2:30 in the afternoon.

I walked to the front of the car in search of a seat, or at least a space to lean. I settled on the space in front of the doors, which I knew would be opening at the next stop. I was holding one of my prized possessions, my Transitchek Unlimited Metrocard--I am not exaggerating when I say that Transitchek has saved my life. They deduct the fee pre-tax from my paychek, and I get to ride subways and buses as much as I darn well please.

I have been keeping the card in my wallet, and make a habit of replacing it right after I use it, but after paying my fare I had to run up the stairs and catch the departing train. I turned to try and open my backpack, and the card flipped suddenly out of my hands. It landed, not on the floor, but in the interstices between the door and the doorway--I watched helplessly as my dear unlimited Metrocard slid swiftly, so swiftly, through the crack and, presumably, to the outside of the train car.

This means (1) I have to pay $4 in fares I normally would not. And (2) I have to spend some of my valuable time tomorrow getting a replacement card at the midtown offices of the Transitchek company--not at all on my way to anywhere I need to go. Just what I would love to be doing. Sigh.

june is bustin' out

Just heard a fabulous big band version of the classic from Carousel by Frank West (thank you, WBGO). I can't believe this month, the most brilliant of the year, is almost over. It's been a rough one--work, family, "personal issues," etc.

Two of my dearest relatives have been in the hospital with conditions related to kidney stones (they're doing OK, but it's tough). The kids have ended the school year with a few minor but uncomfortable ailments--Stella has some sort of virus (Coxsackie or Fifth Disease) that has put her under the weather for a few days--the rash appeared today. And Bobby bruised his eye and cheek area in a playground incident ("Daniel pushed me into Adrian") and had to get an xray yesterday that, thankfully, ruled out a broken cheekbone.

I finally gave in and, after vacuuming with our limping Hoover, turned on the AC. Ahhhh. Tonight the kids are with their dad, and after I finish a bit of the mountain of online grading, it's vegan dining with a Very Cool Poet Girlfriend and drinks afterwards, perhaps with others joining us.

we love dan zanes and friends!!!

Stella and I had a very special outing on Saturday--Emma Sage and her mom, Tara, invited us to help celebrate Emma's 7th birthday with a trip to see Dan Zanes and friends at the Highline Ballroom. Well, for various reasons I didn't try to get tickets until the week before, and it was too late: sold out.

But all was not lost. Tara emailed Dan through his website about Stella and Emma, and someone from his record company called her and said they would leave two tickets under my name! Lo and behold, Stella and I were on the guest list! It reminded me of my Boston days, going to rock shows (including Dan's band the Del Fuegos).

Stella and I also said hello to Saskia Lane, who plays bass for Dan's band, and who is in a great gal group called The Lascivious Biddies with our friend Deidre Rodman.

We had a great time--the girls became instant friends and danced a lot to the awesome sounds of the myriad musicians Dan has gathered around him. I especially enjoyed the performance of La Bruja, whom I'd just seen a few weeks ago at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe celebration at Town Hall. Afterwards, we had a wonderful outing along the Hudson River waterfront.

Thank you Tara and Emma! Thank you, Dan and Friends! See you soon!

valentine

Eating: Russell Stover Private Reserve Vanilla Bean Brulee (bought myself)
Listening to: The Juliet Letters by Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet

Evening plans: Poets Billy Collins, Deborah Landau, David Lehman, Noah Michelson, Honor Moore, Molly Peacock, and Mark Strand help celebrate Valentine’s Day when they read from The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present at New York University.

And probably more chocolate.

we love MoMA!

Yesterday we finally took advantage of two great programs for families at NYC's Museum of Modern Art. Bob took Bobby to "A Closer Look for Kids" at the main site, while I took Stella to the "Create-Ability" program for children with special needs, starting at the Education Center.

Bobby got to have a special tour of the Martin Puryear exhibit and do some drawings of the pieces in the exhibit. Meanwhile, Stella and I went with MoMA's Sally, Amanda, and Alex (and another lucky family) to spend time with some famous paintings: Rousseau's The Sleeping Gypsy, Chagall's I and the Village, and Wyeth's Christina's World.

Bobby's program finished around the time we were at the Chagall, so Bob took over with Stella and I took Bobby for a snack in the cafe. Then we rejoined the Create-Ability team for some art-making time in the classroom!

let's pretend it's still October 5

...and that I have enough energy and brain cells on line to write a post right now. I had the bright idea that I needed to take the kids into the city after school today. We went to the Mid-Manhattan Library, then to Grand Central Station (yup), got some groceries at the marketplace, then back on the subway home.

It probably goes without saying that there are lots of weird and rude people out there (and lots of nice ones, too), and they all come together at rush hour.

But I'll say it anyway. Trying to marshal two active kids, one in a stroller who wants to get out when she needs to stay in, and stay in when we need her to climb stairs, is "a Challenge." Luckily, a very nice woman carried the (empty) stroller up the stairs at Fifth Avenue so I could concentrate on keeping Stella from running down 42nd Street. Other fellow humans were not as helpful, like the crazy man who decided it was his calling to tell me to "calm down, Miss" when I was holding Stella down in her stroller on the platform at Queensborough Plaza. (It took me a minute to realize he was not just a garden-variety busybody, but really did have a screw loose.)

Then there are the lovely folks who make no moves to allow room for a dazed mother with her kiddies (one of whom has a fairly obvious disability) to sit, or even stand comfortably with the stroller, and then give the lucky mum dirty looks when the stroller accidentally bumps against the foot they have so generously extended into the middle of the aisle.

I was going to post a fuzzy photo I took of the kids on the train, but I think one of my fellow new yorkers must have stolen my digital camera while I was distracted by one kid or another. [UPDATE: found the camera, obviously.]

Remind me: why did I think it was a good idea? Oh. It was "An Adventure." And I got some really good baby bok choy.