All Things Bookish

I read this today from Louise Erdrich's new novel The Night Watchman:

And Patrice thought another thing her mother said was definitely true -- you never really knew a man until you told him you didn't love him. That's when his true ugliness, submerged to charm you, might surface.

Oooh boy. 








On Friday night I joined a virtual silent reading that I heard about from my beloved friend, poet Heather McHugh. The thing originated at a hotel somewhere in Seattle and was a yearly affair where you basically showed up, I think, at the hotel bar, alone with a book. And then that was it. You sat at the bar or in the bar at the little tables and just read your book. Alone. For two hours. While a man played the piano. You could drink and eat little plates of food, but mostly you read and looked up and around at the other solo people reading and what they were reading. And then back down at your own book. So, this year given The Pandemic, the Silent Reading was virtual. I signed up, paid a small donation and joined the Zoom thing at 6:00 on Friday night with nearly 300 people. Reader, this is the kind of thing that makes me truly and perfectly happy. It's the ultimate reading dream. I made myself a plate of sheep's milk cheese, crackers, soppressata, french fries, olives and a glass of wine. I read The Night Watchman and I read from Sharon Olds' new collection titled Arias. I peered at the tiny thumbnail portraits of all the people sitting in their homes reading. I lay my head back on my chair and closed my eyes and listened to the piano music that poured out of this guy for the entire two hours. I saw Heather's smiling face in early evening light and the book she was reading, something by Borges and once again felt overwhelmed by her beauty and what she's brought to my life since I've met her. Understanding. Humor. Caregiving. Poetry. She's got a fabulous new website/podcast thing going in anticipation of her new book of poems, Muddy Matterhorn.  Check out her sound files here.





What else? I guess the usual -- vacillating between a strange ennui and ridiculous industriousness. Noticing everything that is ugly and stupid and false about our country in particular and so not anything like or ever has been shining on a hill even as the oak hydrangea flowers chartreuse, the acacia tree leafs out, the succulents thrust their onanistic blooms three feet in the air overnight and the hummingbirds clash with one another in irritation or ecstasy who knows but the bees are profuse and there's a Coopers hawk nesting in my neighbor's tree, the Orthodox family next door has five laughing screaming children and the Los Angeles sky is empty of planes. A loved one misunderstands who I am or confirms again that I am not known, digs around in an old place only just barely buried under dark dark earth. I worry for my sons, vacillating like me between ennui what's the point, confusion, and the delight of new recipes (a lemon-parmesan emulsion for pasta!) Their dark brown eyes. I imagine how the world might use two incredibly beautiful men with hearts as big as the sky. I dream of firemen not doctors.

Secular Sunday

Huntington Beach, CA

Prayer During a Time My Son is Having Seizures

Finally I just leaned on the door-frame, a

woman without belief, praying

please don't let anything happen to him.

Don't let him stand there and his gold

jaw lock while he watches the burning

mountain falling slowly through his mind and

no word comes to him.

Don't let him stand there like a tree with its

green branch lopped off and

falling slowly away, the tiny

amber cones already darkening,

don't let him fall like the lip of a 

cliff coming off, a heavy tuft

stuck with white berry blossoms

sliding down the raw bluff of his life,

don't let him stand on the curb watching his

mind get hit by a blue car

over and over, there is nothing he can do about it.

Don't hurt him, I cry out,

don't take his thoughts away as a 

kid will rip toys from another kids' hands,

don't go up to his small dazzling

brain in spangles on the high wire

and push it off. There is no net.

Don't leave him in a wheelchair drooling into

cereal, not knowing the dark

holes are raisins. And yet if that's the

only way I can have him, I want to

have him, to look deep into his face and

see just the avenues of light,

empty and spacious, to put on his bib

as I once did, and spoon brown sugar

into the river of his life.

I'll change his dark radiant diapers, I'll

scrape the blue mold that collects in the creases of his elbows,

I will sit with him in his room for the rest of my days,

I will have him on any terms.

Sharon Olds

Ode to

I know, I know, I know, I know. I am barely coming round the mountain these days, much less here on the old blog. I'm writing, though, quite a bit offline, so don't leave me. I might be asking you to buy my book one day. I might also ask you to find me the perfect job -- one that I can do at home while tending to Sophie as she goes through her ups and downs, pays hooky from school, gets hives, has her medications reduced, gets her THC and CBD dosages tinkered with -- you know the drill. I think.

Last night, as evidenced above, I went to the downtown library to hear the magnificent poets Robin Coste Lewis and Sharon Olds read from their books and then have an inspiring conversation with the moderator and writer Louise Steinman (she actually has my dream job as curator of the ALOUD program). I don't even know what to say about how fantastic Robin and Sharon were -- how inspiring and funny and moving and strong. It was one of those nights when I felt exhilarated to live in this city, to be a woman and a writer and feminist. It was especially cleansing after the clusterf*&k Presidential debate the night before.

Good Lord, ya'll. My status update on Facebook got about five million silly "likes" and as many shares and comments, and all I said was:

It makes me want to weep that our first female candidate for President has to debate this colossal piece of shit.

That's all I'll say about that -- oh, except that if you're still "on the fence" or "voting for the lesser of two evils" or any of that balderdash, I hope you spontaneously combust.

I'd post one of the poems that Sharon Olds read aloud last night called Ode to the Clitoris, but I haven't gotten my copy of her new books, so here's one of my favorites from an earlier collection. Prepare yourself.


I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, 

I see my father strolling out 

under the ochre sandstone arch, the   

red tiles glinting like bent 

plates of blood behind his head, I 

see my mother with a few light books at her hip 

standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks, 

the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its 

sword-tips aglow in the May air, 

they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,   

they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are   

innocent, they would never hurt anybody.   

I want to go up to them and say Stop,   

don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,   

he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things 

you cannot imagine you would ever do,   

you are going to do bad things to children, 

you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of, 

you are going to want to die. I want to go 

up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it, 

her hungry pretty face turning to me,   

her pitiful beautiful untouched body, 

his arrogant handsome face turning to me,   

his pitiful beautiful untouched body,   

but I don’t do it. I want to live. I   

take them up like the male and female   

paper dolls and bang them together   

at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to   

strike sparks from them, I say 

Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

Sharon Olds