Spring Break 2010 (3)

The days have passed very quickly. Beautiful spring weather, each day a little warmer, each day a little closer to spring and here it will be spring official in a few days. A nice thing to think. Not sure why but this winter seemed to be a strange and hard one. To find myself wearing lighter clothes and not be annoyed at thinking I have to go outside for something is really pleasurable. I mean, just the thought of going outside makes me happy. Soon it will be warm enough for real stoop sitting and that will be something. Something cold to drink, a good book, and I can see many good days ahead.

And these past few days have been good. Most of it has been spent revising poems. I really get caught up in that world. Last night, I found it was three in the morning and I was still going at it, still thinking one line, one word, one image over the other. Should the words be reversed, repeated? How much paring was right and how much spare could lead to too spare? And then the opportunity to put back, to think that the undoing could be redone. The joy here is that nothing is really ever lost. The experience of taking away and putting back makes the put back different. And when it gets taken away (again) it isn't the same removal. These steps revising poetry aren't the same steps repeated but steps further walked.

So with two days left of spring break I'm not going to start counting up (yet) what I feel like I've accomplished but the reading has been good, the translating good, the new poems have potential and the revising is something for which I've found a rhythm.

And I've been listening to some good music over the time, from Miles Davis and Celia Cruz to Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and Jerry Jeff Walker. Throw in Eddie Palmieri and Falla and you've got a nice coming into spring playlist.

My brackets for the NCAA basketball may have been busted. Won it all last year and may finish out of the money this time around. Went against the grain a few too many times. Not over yet, but I can read. Ah, baseball must be nearing.

Report from Maine (6)

I realize our days here are slowly (too quickly) coming to an end. Friday is the day of the exhibition of the work done by the artists at the Maine Media Workshop (with a lobster dinner to follow). Saturday we leave the cottage, pick up Jesse and begin the trek back home. We'll do it in two days because I think all of us will be a little worn out.

Today was one of those full of e-mail days, then a bike ride (which included going out to the breaker point light house in Rockland), then back to the cottage, more e-mail, a talk with Pablo, lunch (Maine fried shrimp, very delicate and sweet), then some shopping and back to the cottage to revise revise revise and work on a new Hinojosa poem which I solved in the way I'm learning to solve him, which is to do what we did with Lorca; I have to work both as a poet and as a translator. It won't work any other way.

A nice talk with Colette. More on that later.

Dinner of lamb rib chops with garlic and rosemary, pasta with shitake mushrooms, fresh Maine tomatoes. A good Chianti. Now a look at the paper and then sleep.

I know I haven't posted any poems for a while--I'm so in the middle of Invisible Man it's hard to do. But those poems come along and I want to re-think some of the Celia Cruz poems. As for the Hinojosa, I'm beginning to revise the ones I've translated, little changes here and there that are beginning to make more and more sense.

Saludos!

Mark

Holding Poet in New York in my hands

Just came from Grove where they gave me copies of the book which, yes, is really now out. Review copies started going out today, as did copies to the stores but many won't get it to their shelves until after Christmas. Some of the smaller independent stores may. Anyone on my review list, look for a copy. If you are not on my review list and can actually write a review, let me know as soon as possible.

The book really looks good. I'm one of those who usually hates how his work looks--maybe this feels different, maybe since it's Lorca (through Medina and Statman) that I can feel this way. Still, the old fear that having done something won't change the world. And yet, to feel a small part of literary history--for the moment, I'll take it.

As for events, I'll try and do some updates but the old list still holds (starting with the New School party 1/31, the first Thursday of AWP--I'll be doing a big e-mailing of the e-card in early January). We're taping a 10 minute segment for City Voices for PBS on January 18 (an all day affair) but I don't know when it will air. Info to follow. Also, let your West Coast friends know about the February appearances in SF and Santa Cruz. And St Marks here in New York on 3/26!

The semester is over. Which means a little rest and a chance to post more in the days ahead and in the next semester when my teaching load is considerably lighter (fewer students). It also means that my website should be up in the next three or four weeks (Jesse's help is critical here).

Have been writing a lot lately and may post some of the new poems for comments, though I think I'm interested still in hearing responses to the Celia Cruz poems.

A note from Lynn Chandhok, who gave a wonderful reading last week in Brooklyn:


• The poem "Muharrum at 203 Jor Bagh" will be the featured poem this Monday, December 24 on Poetry Daily (www.poems.com).
• I was named a runner up for the 2007 Paumanok Poetry Prize, and as part of the prize, will read at Farmingdale State University next spring.
• Seven of the poems from The View from Zero Bridge have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

You can go to her website by clicking the link to the right.

More soon.

Abrazos a todo!

The Weeks Ahead

So walking into too many different stores and they're all playing Christmas songs (can I get "Christmas in Killarney" out of my head?). I know some places were playing them before but now they seem everywhere and so the whole Christmas season starts which I suppose I don't mind. I like some of the bustle of it, the barber shop on 7th Avenue that has the running train and the skaters in a wintry setting, Union Square converted into a great outdoor bazaar. Of course Chanukah comes first, so there'll be lights and trees and it will all seem, well, like holidays. It will bring back memories and for another year, even though Jesse may feel he's too old (but Katherine and I are not) we'll read Night Tree by Eve Bunting and Ted Rand which I think is one of the best Christmas books ever (I remember once many years ago that Kenneth read it to Jesse before Jesse went to sleep and he came downstairs and talked about how wonderful and surprising it was as a book. Of course, it isn't Somebody Spilled the Sky by Ruth Krauss, but that's just on another level.

It all means that the semester is also rushing to a close and I'm worried if we'll get to everything I'd hoped. Not with my writing fellows students, who seem on track, nor my Poet in New York students who seem the same, but my Intro to Poetry students. I think I always feel this way, though, and then it gets done. My mind is already drifting to next semester and teaching Spanish Surrealism and Advanced Poetry, both for the first time. It will be an interesting spring, after all, with new classes and a new book (and hopes that Celia Cruz will find a publisher.

What to do for Christmas break? Travel? Stay home and ready for the spring? "Oh must we dream our dreams and have them too?" (Elizabeth Bishop).

Abrazos