Yes, the above is a goofy drawing–I’m not very good at pictures that don’t include elephants–but I am very happy and moved.
Archive for 2011
Hurray (from a New Yorker!)
June 25, 2011The Weekend. (At last!) Time to Reflect? (With Elephant)
June 24, 2011
Face, Cow, iPad
June 23, 2011
I’ll tell you straight out. This is going to be one of my blatantly pro-iPad diatribes.
Yes, the device is a bit awkward for typing, even with the bluetooth keyboard.
Yes, its wireless is not as strong as a laptop, and its camera is not as good as a Canon.
Nonetheless, it’s a wonderful device. The idea that I can just sit there with it in my lap listening to someone on the phone, and draw a face, and shade it in, and give it hair, and erase some of the contours just enough so that they look sort of graceful.
And then, as the call continues, the iPad also lets me paint a cow. A cow! I don’t know why I chose a cow, but there it is, a cow! Which is part painting, part photo, part erasure, part drawing–an act of concentration, and yet as I’m working on it I am also better able to listen to the call.
This morning I used it (on the subway) to scribble down the poem, but I’m only brave enough to look at the face and cow.
Which is enough for me for now,
(I’m milking them anyway.)
Very Tired (with elephant)
June 22, 2011
Public/Private disconnect (Sonnet) (With Elephant)
June 21, 2011
I hate to admit it but I’m kind of a solipsistic person. It’s not that I don’t like people–I take a strong interest in trying to help others (particularly if it involves telling them what to do.)
But I am just awful in social situations – parties, gatherings, even sometimes work settings. To some degree, this may have something to do with not being completely at ease with either my “public” persona or private persona.
At any rate, here’s a kind of gloomy sonnet about this kind of public/private disconnect.
Because I am now linking this post to dVerse Poets Pub Raising the Bar for critiquing, I am going to put up two versions of this poem, an older and newer. (I think the older may be better, but it’s also the one with which I am more familiar.) They are both a bit self-pitying, although that may be something that makes them universal.
The first is the older version:
Pretending
After years, pretending to be what you’re not
becomes a nature; a second skin
coating you like a kind of make-up, caught
in your pores, nestled in your grooves, a twin
of features, caked, you need not reapply.
But habits, faces, fail and it wears thin,
until, worn through, you can hardly try
anymore. Too wary, weary, the word
“cagey” describes so much of what you’ve been,
the opposite of free-flying bird,
while unheard, and hardly there within,
is all you’ve been saving, what you hid, why
you did this, what wasn’t supposed to die.
Newer:
Pretending
After years, pretending to be what you’re not
becomes a nature; a second skin
coating you like a heavy make-up, caught
in your pores, nestled in your grooves, a twin
of features, caked, you need not reapply.
Sometimes the habit fails, pretense wears thin,
that face that clung is suddenly wrung dry–
you don’t want to re-affix, but the word
“cagey” catches so much of what you’ve been–
the opposite of free-flying bird–
that, though you wish more than anything
to be seen, take wing; fretful, you still try
to keep tight all within. Oh me. Oh my.
If you are interested in my poetry, check out my poetry book, Going on Somewhere (by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by Diana Barco, cover by Jason Martin) on Amazon.
If you are interested in my elephants, check out my children’s book, 1 Mississippi, on Amazon.
Blocking Writer’s Block – Tired of Editing? Next Step (If You Dare.)
June 20, 2011
Pearl is really really tired of editing.
I am still working on finishing the manuscript of a novel that I thought was just about finished ages ago.
By finishing, I mean editing, and re-editing. Cutting and cutting more, adding teeny bits.
I am not changing the plot at this point, even though it’s a bit silly. I am just honing. This needn’t be such a long process, except that, unfortunately, I am not somewhat who carves, but rather, someone who whittles. Meaning that I have to go over the same surface again and again and again, smoothing and chipping rather than making decisive definitive cuts.
The big problem with whittling is that it feels endless. (If every time you go through the manuscript, you find more to change, it’s hard to ever feel “finished.”)
Though I am quite sure that at a certain point, I’ll feel pretty certain that I am finished. This will undoubtedly be before I truly am finished. It will still feel good.
I am not there yet.
My next step is to read the whole thing aloud. I shudder at the thought, but reading aloud is truly a great way to edit, especially when you are sick and tired of editing. When you read a manuscript aloud, all of the habitual acceptance disappears, and you immediately understand that that part you always liked is simply boring, or redundant, or run-on, or (if you are lucky), pretty good.
You can see why I shudder!
Pearl just wants me to get on with it.
(For more on writer’s block, see multiple other posts in this category.)
Poem For Father’s Day (Baby Birds)
June 19, 2011
I’ve posted this poem before, and it doesn’t really go with the picture above, but Father’s Day is almost over, and I would really like to commemorate both it (and my wonderful father), so here goes:
My Father (baby birds)
My father’s voice
when he sang
was deep and cragged and
reminded me of a froggie
gone a’courting.
But this was baby birds.
It was not even a person
who had died.
It was not even a particularly noble dog,
though like all of its species, it was capable
of a self-debasing attachment that could
seem Arthurian.
But after the accident, the rush,
the sad blur home,
my father’s back faced me in my room
with a sound
of birds.
It silenced all gone wrong,
turned me back into a person
who could do things in the world.
(All rights reserved.)
Memorized poetry poem
June 18, 2011
New experiment today: seeing if I can write a poem on the iPad! (And on the train.)
I love writing poetry by hand. But it is interesting to stretch one’s brain, and, frankly, it’s always terrific to write in a way that does not require transcription.
So here’s my attempt. What I was thinking of was another current interest–memorizing poetry. Followers of this blog know that I was very impressed by memory techniques outlined in Joshua Foer’s recent book Moonwalking With Einstein. My own memorization efforts have slackened recently, but the way in which the memorized poems have stayed with me has been kind of interesting. See below.
The Bits I’ve Got By Heart
In my head the women come and go
talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time, time for
the lines to formulate in the brain,
and when they are formulated, to drop like gentle rain
from a heaven that’s not quite consciousness;
to break, but soft, into a waking dream,
to be each morning morning’s minion,
as my head turns from the pillow,
plucking, before day is quite begun,
the golden apples from what might otherwise be
a simple rag and bone shop–too bland for foul,
scuttled by ragged part-my-hair-behind prosaicness.
Instead, those half-remembered verses,
gleaned from a teeming brain,
roll up into one ball all I ken
of poets’ strength
and sweetness, and the
dancer, who is part dance,
pirouettes, keeping time
with a beat that echoes
on the inside.
Pearl Moves Up In the World
June 17, 2011
“But all the food falls UNDER the table.”
Unnoticed Rainbow, James Joyce, Elephants
June 16, 2011
It’s June 16th, “Bloomsday,” the day in which James Joyce’s ULYSSES takes place. I wasn’t thinking about James Joyce when I did the above drawing, the elephant with a dark cloud over his head who has a hard time seeing a rainbow. I was thinking about the moods that overtake those of the ManicDdaily persuasion, the gloominess that is the dark side of an overly can-do spirit. I was thinking, really, how the gloominess often has little to do with external circumstances, i.e. a rainbow overhead, but more with internal physical circumstances, i.e. a raincloud in the head.
All of which brings me, awkwardly, to James Joyce, since if there was ever anyone who could delineate what was going on in a head, while also depicting the “overhead,” as it were, it was he. Alas, with no elephants.
ManicDDaily 
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