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Sonnet in Winter – Hospital Visit

December 8, 2009

For a change of pace, here’s a sonnet, written about a winter’s visit to a sick friend.

The sonnet follows the Shakespearean rhyme scheme, and though it tries for Iambic Pentameter, I’m not sure that attempt is truly successful.  As noted in previous posts about sonnets and formal poetry, I tend to use a syllabic rule of thumb rather than to follow strict rules of scansion.

For further explanation of the Shakespearean rhyme scheme and some approximation of the rules of meter in formal poetry, check out prior posts re poetic meter, and sonnets, and for reasons to write formal verse .  (And plenty of others – check out poetry category.)

No chance

I wanted to give her time, a summer’s day,
a perfect green blue day that I would pluck
from my summers to come, that I would lay
upon her bed, and, shimmering, tuck
around her.  It should have been an easy offer,
easy to say.  After all, the future
can’t be readily assigned; life’s coffer
holds nothing forfeit.  Tubes followed suture
to a darkness barely gowned; I searched around
my jangling brain for words, but what came out
were stones that lined her pillow, the sound
not meaning my meaning, and not about
summer days; my own fierce will to live
hoarding what I had no power to give.

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson.

(If interested in different forms of poems–sestinas, pantoums, villanelles, and more villanelles, and even more villanelles–there are a lot of villanelles.   Really.  Check out these links, and others.  Thanks.)

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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After the Ninth Southern Vampire Novel

December 7, 2009

Under pressure of pressure (that is, randomized, yet persistent, work and life demands), I read nine vampire books last week.  (The “Sookie stackhouse Southern Vampire Mysteries” by Charlaine Harris).  This is not something I am proud of.

I also managed (for the record) to get to work every day, to work while there, even to put in several hours on Sunday.  Cooking was done Laundry was not.  (I hereby send an open apology to all members of my gym.)

Sleep was intermittent.   Perhaps, as a result, I felt a bit dazed finishing the ninth novel this morning (“benighted” may be a better description.)

I’m not quite sure why one (“I”) turn to silly books under pressure. Of course, there’s the whole mind candy business.  (See my earlier post “When Escapism Hits Hard –  https://manicddaily.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/blocking-write…pism-hits-hard/ )

And yes, it’s embarrassing.  Still, there it is.  Some nights (and mornings, Saturday afternoons, and subway rides) will have their vampires (in print.)

Since I am new to this genre, I don’t know what is standard.  I did notice a considerable overlap between the Sookie Stackhouse novels and the Twilight Saga – cool, perfectly handsome, powerful, vamps in love triangles with warm, slightly less handsome and powerful, “were” figures (werewolves, shape shifters, were tigers) and a humble but cute gal who has an extra-special zing to her blood.  There are also characters who can read minds (Edward Cullen and Sookie Stackhouse), but who fall in love with those whose minds they cannot read.  Jokes about the ridiculousness of vampires and baseball.   Enforcers of  vampire “law”.  Many descriptions of clothes.

The Sookie Stackhouse books are much more diverse than Twilight, with (i) a soap-opera-sized number of characters, (ii) nearly non-stop corpses, (iii) an interesting social context (Northern Louisiana); (iv) an interesting political context (the vampires have “come out of the closet” with worldwide TV announcements), and, of course, (v) actual sex/frequent biting (as opposed to abstinence/last-resort biting ).  No wonder the books have successfully translated to a television series (True Blood, which I confess I’ve never seen.)

And yet, despite the fact that I read all the Sookie Stackhouse books straight through, I can also see why they do not have the devoted readership of Twilight.   First, the books are not written for tween/teenage girls, a viciously loyal  group.   Secondly, the books are basically crime mysteries,  inherently written for just one read.

Third, and most important,  where’s the Edward (i.e. Robert Pattinson)?    Bill Compton (and remember, I haven’t seen the TV series) is the closest to unconditionally devoted and droolworthy. (Eric is promising but sneaky, Alcide too hairy, and Quinn, the were-tiger, too unintelligent.)  But after the first book or so, poor Bill only briefly passes, longingly, through the dark of Sookie’s yard.

By the ninth (and last published) book, anyone with a romantic temperament  (read “me”) is getting really tired of Bill’s near-absence.  But, lo and behold, the series is not yet finished.  Ms. Harris has apparently realized that, in our high-pressure world, the appetite for mind candy, like the appetites of Sookie’s vamps, takes many many bites to satisfy.

UPDATE TO THIS POST FROM JANUARY 7, 2010–After much “review”, I’ve found that the Sookie Stackhouse novels are pretty good “re-reads” after all.  If you are in the mood for escapism, they definitely hold up for repeated reads.  I also want to revise my question: “Where’s the Edward?”  The male characters, especially Eric and Bill, do grow on one.  “Like a fungus,” as Sookie says in one of the books (to Eric).   Eric and Bill have certain advantages (for the reader) over Edward as well that almost make up for the fact that they are not embued with the image of Robert Pattinson.  They are quirky, definitely flawed, have senses of humor, and are very sensual.   Fun.

Categories: Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mysteries, Twilight Saga, Uncategorized
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More Advice For Blocks – Sugarcoating The Bullet

December 6, 2009

Followers of this blog know that I have devoted a series of posts to blocking writer’s block and other creative blocks.  But the most common blocks don’t concern projects that are creative, but tasks that are onerous.  These are usually tasks that feel extremely uncreative and yet are difficult, daunting, impossible to begin.

I have developed a number of strategies to deal with such onerous projects:

1.  Close your eyes and wish for as long as possible that the project will just go away. You’ll be amazed how often, with enough procrastination,  a  project will simply be mooted, no longer relevant.  (Christmas cards are, of course, a prime example.  Though the worst case I ever had was with a wedding present I delayed sending long enough for the couple to break up.)

This strategy even works with projects that are not time-sensitive.   Take a cluttered closet that houses, in its depths, scads of missing clothes—time doesn’t make the clutter go away, but usually other demands surface, new clothes are purchased, pounds are put on—suddenly the disorder in the closet just doesn’t seem to matter.

2. Involve someone else.  Often you will still be the person who ends up doing the work, but you’ll at least have someone to witness the work, and, hopefully, to listen to you kvetch.  If it’s that cluttered closet you are working on, you can also ask them for permission to throw your things out.  (Generally, if it’s a good, useful, sort of person, they will be quite willing to have you throw your old stuff out.)

3.  Sugarcoat the bullet.  Sometimes you just can’t put a task off any longer; i.e. the tension of procrastination and insecurity has gotten way more uncomfortable than any amount of despairing but determined slogging away.

You have to bite the bullet. And yet you just can’t bear to clamp down.

Some kind of sugarcoating of the bullet may be required.  This should be a pampering that will make the task easier,  but won’t cause further delay.    (Don’t say, for example, I’ll just take a nap first. And don’t spend a couple of hours, shopping for items that will supposedly make your work oh so much easier.)

If your task is relatively mindless, listening to an audiobook or pod cast can make the work palatable.  If the task does demand a lot of your mind, try listening to music or an audiobook that you know too well to find fully distracting.  (Or, for example, the audio, with only occasional glimpses of the visuals, of a Robert Pattinson trailer.)

Remember that the point of all this is to create a distraction, but a mild one–a distraction that does not take you away from the work, but from your resistance to the work.

(Not the TV.)

4.  Just do it.  I hate to paraphrase a corporate slogan.  Still, once you’ve shut your eyes, delayed, given up on involving anyone, and used up all the sugar you have and still haven’t been able to get it to stick to the bullet,  just make yourself begin.  Momentum is a physical reality, but it can only kick into gear when you do.

Categories: Stress, Uncategorized
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Faux Fir, Birch, Time

December 5, 2009

My little piece of Manhattan (way downtown) has been transforming itself.  Faux fir, twinkly lights, and all manner of gilded Christmas ornamentation, have infiltrated almost every public space.

The decorations are intended to inspire Christmas cheer.    Instead, they usually make me feel guilty, irritated.    (So much to do, and now Christmas!)   I sometimes think I’d just rather have big neon signs blinking,  “Shop Shop Buy Buy”.

What especially bothers me are the white sprays of some kind of wooden (or plastic) branches that seem intended to represent birch.

I’m not sure what birch has to do with Christmas.  (In fact, the branches may actually represent some variation of ice storm rather than birch.)

Their starkness, leaflessness, has a morbid quality.    Even punitive–I think of  the switches given to bad children by some European version of Santa Claus—the Italian witch La Befana?

The sprays of birch” may especially bring me down because the main place I see them is the South Bridge, an overpass over the West Side Highway, which is one of the prime viewing spots for Ground Zero.  The stark white branches punctuate each window except for the one with the best bee-line view of the old World Trade Center site.    (That last bunch of birches has been tactfully moved inward to an interior wall.)

The fire station directly across from Ground Zero is also festooned with a thick ornamented bunting.    Tourists peer in its garage.  The 9/11 Tribute Center next store sells teddy bears.

I know all of this is part of the natural progress of time—the transition of these few acres from unintended graveyard to must-see tourist sight;  I’m sure it’s all good on some level, as well as inevitable.

So why does it bother me?

Simple snobbery?  A bit.  Some of the decorations seem kind of plasticky.  Though actually, they are pretty nice for plasticky.  Also re-usable.   I can testify to this re-usability because they are exactly the same the year as the year before, and too, the year before that.

This, I realize, is what truly bothers me. The “before” element, the “last year” piece.  It seems too soon for Christmas decorations to be up again;  too quick for “before” to have become “again”.

(I’m not referring here to the fact that it’s too early to celebrate Christmas.   That prematurity was also the same last year.)

No, what bothers me is that it’s too soon to be this year.  Where did the last one go?   I can come up with specific moments, but certainly not 525600.

The idyllic version of time passing shows  leaves turning red, snow falling, that electric lime green of spring, black-eyed susans reaching out to a brilliant summer sky.

But here we are in downtown New York City.  Faux fir sprouts, dead white “birch” splays, ornaments blossom.

All this time I thought those decorations were goading me to shop, but what they were really telling me was to pay attention.  Right here, right now.

In the midst of that realization, I hurry on to work, late again.

Categories: New York City, Stress, Uncategorized
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Blocking Writer’s Block – When Escapism Hits (Hard)

December 3, 2009

Sometimes the mind needs candy.  It just can’t bear to chew over ideas of substance; it’s too tired to wrestle with gristly debates; it doesn’t want to pick nuance from its teeth.

No sirree, what it wants are donuts.  (It’s not even up to “doughnuts”.)  And it wants them all night long.

Who knows what makes the mind revert to pablum?

(Actually, I think it’s stress, a rebellion from pressure, an internal decision not to bullied by one’s own sense of responsibility.)

During such periods, some minds, usually of the male persuasion, will watch sports  or play video games; some females will watch several seasons in one sitting of Grey’s Anatomy, even though they well understand that both McDreamy and McSteamy are McStupid, and that Meredith Grey would be more properly named “MiMi Beige.”

In my case, the reversion is to puerile, but somehow, entertaining books.  (And, of course, a certain new movie star whose name is only known to regular followers of this blog.)

I’m not quite sure what to advise when times like this arise.  I guess the most important question is—are you getting your work done?  By work, I mean your day job, your school work, your obligations to family, friends, dog, your toothbrushing and hairwashing, your eating and some minimum amount of sleep.  Hopefully, most of us can put down the mind’s donutty distraction for the hours it takes to perform the tasks that keep us in the daily life business.

But what about that creative work that we think of as a second career (or a true vocation)?

Unfortunately, it can be very hard for creative work to serve as a significant block to a donutty mindset, especially if you are not getting either money or acknowledgement for the creative work.

Luckily, the mind has some natural defenses:

  1. Boredom.  Most escapist fare does not, per se, hold an overwhelming amount of food for thought.
  2. Pride.  An OC (obsessive-compulsive) attraction to escapist fare can become really embarrassing.    It’s true that innocuous plastic book covers, and a Kindle can go a long way towards mitigating that embarrassment.  Still, when you mother keeps telling you how much she’s enjoying Cormac McCarthy while you are obsessively reading Charlaine Harris (author of The Sookie Stackhouse novels, the basis for the series, True Blood), it gets a bit much.
  3. Duty.  Trees.

While you are waiting for boredom, pride, and duty to kick in, here’s another trick:    try to find something useful in your mind candy.  Look at it from a “maker’s” point of view.  If you are interested in writing, read the dumb books with an eye for their plotting, their narrative structure, their momentum, their sex scenes (!)   (Yes, it’s all a bit of an excuse, but there can be some valuable lessons there.)

Finally try to just enjoy yourself a bit.    Be giddy, stay up late, read while you walk to and from the subway.   More importantly, get some much-needed confidence.     And don’t worry too much.   If you are truly interested in doing creative work, the angst will be back soon enough.

Categories: Stress, Uncategorized, writer's block, writing
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Louis Armstrong- Pure, Not Simple

November 30, 2009

I don’t usually cite videos on this blog, but just saw a wonderful clip of Louis Armstrong from 1933, playing “Dinah” on a Danish sound stage:  http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/louis-armstrong-in-2-minutes-53-seconds/

I’ve always loved Louis Armstrong.  He seemed to me, when I was a child and he was an old man, to convey pure eye-popping exuberance.  I marveled then that a voice that was so scratchy could also be so good.   Here he is young, energy sparks inside and around him; the syncopation is perfect; his voice is instrument as well as song;  he’s both beat and melody, dancer, conductor, percussionist, singer, trumpeter.   So musically he’s pretty great.  But once more, it’s the exuberance that carries the moment.  And the listener away.

Categories: music, Uncategorized
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Grandmothers – Personal Celebrities – Grandmother Poem

November 28, 2009

I realized this afternoon that it was my grandmother’s birthday.  I’d been all set to write about addiction, particularly those addictions related to celebrity (as in the pursuit of particular people,  i.e. Robert Pattinson, and the pursuit of celebrity itself,  i.e. Michaele and  Tareq Salahi.)

And then I remembered that it was November 28th and that one of my grandmothers had been born well over 100 years ago, in a year in which Thanksgiving fell on this day.

This, in my mind, is much more important than celebrity, though related too in a funny way.

Grandmothers are very special people by and large.  I understand that they can be problematic children, spouses, and parents.  But, for many, it seems, the mantle of “grandmother” works a wand-like magic that enables them to be their very best selves for very long stretches of time.  In that sense, they can be a household celebrity, at least to their young grandchildren;  those same young grandchildren have their own experience of celebrity in the unconditional specialness they are accorded by their grandmothers.  Pretty terrific.

All that said, I’ve always felt that my grandmother was particularly special, and probably her best self her whole life.  Here’s an (illustrated) poem about a day spent with her.  The drawing bears no resemblance (!), but I’m much better drawing elephants than people.

Fishing With My Grandmother (Done With Elephants)

The Time My Grandma Took Me Fishing

Reeds split for our crouch;
she parted her lap around me,
mosquito in ear, white curls
bristling my face.  Our hands laced the green
rod—it was a stick, only truly green
on the inside, like the bubble
of high grass, low crik, thick
with summer.  Safety pin
for a hook;  even she
seemed surprised when the stick jarred,
jerked the thread across the
murk, though she quickly pulled it through
my loosening grip. Both amazed as
a silver disc flashed,  shiny as
the newly bought, through
our homemade afternoon; in the bucket,
an occasional swish of rainbow
that you could only catch
if you really looked.

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson.

(For spelling purists, “crik” should be spelled “creek”, I know.   I chose this spelling so that non-Midwestern, or Southern, readers would know how to pronounce it!)

Categories: elephants, poetry, Uncategorized
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Elephant-Dog Thanksgiving

November 26, 2009

You can't please everyone.

Or maybe you can.

Happy Thanksgiving!

For more on Thanksgiving (and pleasing), check out “Is That Gravy Hot Enough?”  at https://manicddaily.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/is-that-gravy-hot-enough/and “Ten Reasons to Be Thankful in 2009” at https://manicddaily.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ten-reasons-to…ankful-in-2009/.

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson.

Categories: children's illustration, dog, elephants, Uncategorized
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Thankful for No Snakes

November 24, 2009

Doesn't Mind Snakes (From 1 Mississippi, BackStroke Books, Karin Gustafson)

You  know those moments in which your life has exceeded all maximum legal occupancy rates and weights and is crashing straight down some shaft?

Or maybe it’s a question of balance.  In your case, it’s so off, that you’ve long passed the tipping point and are now crashing at the perfect tilt to cause maximum cranial damage.

Or perhaps there’s no direct crash.  Perhaps your life is overflowing to the point that the only way to save the levees is to swallow as much sea water as possible.

As if there weren’t already enough pressure, you suddenly remember an important appointment.  Because it had so completely slipped your mind, this moment of recollection  is fraught with anxiety.  You are certain, at first, that you have already missed the appointment.  In the next moment, you realize, with bare relief, that the important appointment is tomorrow.  But this hardly makes you feel better, because there’s no way that you’ll be ready even by the next day.  The anxiety that had gripped your heart shifts to your stomach.

What is worse is that you are going through this whole litany in the middle of a subway car rather than in one of those classic late-to-school, naked-in-class, day-of-the-test dreams (from which you could conceivably awake.)  

What do you do?    What are your options?

1.  Call in sick and stay home in bed obsessively reading Twilight.

2.  There are many much better books in the world;  call in sick and obsessively read one of those.

3.  Don’t just call in sick, actually get sick.  (This may even get you two or three days off the hook.)

4.  Consider computer games.

5.  Or baking.  If you do bake, make sure to save some treats for your boss.

6.  Stop waiting till 8 or 9 pm for your one glass of wine per day.

7.  Who said you had to stop at one?

8.  Finally, remember the wisdom of Nanny Ogg,  a Discworld persona  created by the incomparable Terry Pratchett.  In Carpe Jugulum, Nanny, a witch, and her colleague, Magrat Garlick, with newborn baby in tow, engage in a hazardous escape from (you guessed it) a vampire takeover which has defeated Granny Weatherwax.  As their rickety coach gets stuck in a flooding rainstorm, the baby’s diaper begins to smell, and Magrat complains of their plight, Nanny offers the comforting thought that their situation could be worse.

“How could it be worse?” Magrat asks incredulously.

“Well,”  Nanny says, “there could be snakes in here with us.”

Be thankful that New York City subway cars, by and large, do not house snakes.

(Sorry, by the way, for paraphrasing Pratchett from memory.   If you don’t know his many many wonderful books, check them out!)

And if you are stressed, long for the soothing of watercolors, don’t mind snakes, and would really really like to learn to count (with elephants), check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon, or at the ManicDDaily homepage.

 

 

Categories: elephants, Stress, Uncategorized
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Another Villanelle – “The Nap”

November 22, 2009

Believe it or not, I have found, on this blog’s “stats,” that there are almost as many people interested in villanelles as in Robert Pattinson.  (Well, maybe not almost as many.)  Still, there is an interest.

This is fortunate for me as the villanelle form is one that I really like.  (Check out my other posts on this subject, if you would like to read explanations of the villanelle form and suggestions about how to write them.  Check these out especially if you also like Magnolia Bakery’s Banana Pudding.)

Today, I’m posting the villanelle, “The Nap,” because it it feels to me to have an autumnal aspect–after the fall, as it were.  (I was in upstate in New York when I wrote it, when the leaves were fallen, brown, and slowly drying out.)

To all those who are afraid to try writing a villanelle–you’ll see that  I cheated!  I modified the repeating lines;  in other words, I gave priority to meaning over manneristic form.   (Ha ha!)

Reading suggestion:  line breaks, in my poems at least, are not intended to denote pauses, unless there is also a specific punctuation break, such as comma or period.

Thanks as always for reading this blog.  I very much appreciate your sympathetic interest and time.  Comments are also always welcome.  Thanks again.

The Nap

Side by side, we slid to a dry, still, place.
It was not a woeful drought of age or dust,
the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.

We never used to find this quiet space.
Any closeness quickly clambered into lust.
But side by side, we slid to a dry, still, place

where hands touched in a sweat-free interlace,
fatigue overwhelming pheromone fuss
with the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.

Some other time we’d find that moist embrace
where pleasure mounts to such synaptic bust
I find myself side-sliding to a place

as blank as emptied well, as capsized chase.
(My brain reacts so badly to heart’s trust,
the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.)

But today, we two, exhausted by the pace
of time and life and words like ‘should’ and ‘must’,
side by side, slid to a dry, still, place,
the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.

 

I am submitting this post into the Gooseberry Garden’s Poetry Picnic, with the theme of love and lost love.

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson.

Also check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle
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