Quick Note: the word conveys personality

I've been using Facebook for a year and a half and it has increased my sense of community immeasurably. Indeed, all of cyberworld has done for me what my time in academia couldn't, and as a matter of fact refused to do--given me good friendships in writing.

I don't mean to give the impression these new friendships are my first such friendships but they are reinvigorating. I joined a poetics listserv first and then dug into Myspace. Both seemed such nervy actions to me, at the time. I remember the moment I decided to use my first and last name on Myspace. I held my breath and clicked the mouse so that all the world could access "Sarah Sarai."

I was no longer hidden or hiding. I quoted a phrase from an acceptance letter, "cute and profound...and different" Blackbox, which I thought accurate enough in describing me and my writing. I set up links, tried to remember the HTML I'd had to learn when I was a Web producer (really, an editor).

The odd thing is that through the listserv, less so with Myspace, I learned of poets who lived in New York City but travelled in different, uh, stanzas than I did. I had quit writing poetry (long story) and took it up or it took me up about five years ago, and so I hardly knew anyone. No book. I was no one.

My letter of introduction was my cyber contributions, comments I shared on the listserv and my Myspace presentation. Then came Facebook, with its little photos and, in its glory days, room to romp, to interact in an approximation of real time by way of comments.

I've now met enough people through Facebook--in the flesh--to know I can trust my instincts. People I find a delight on Facebook are the same in life. I'm not saying there isn't a need to reckon with the flesh when we meet--to assimilate our emotions, our bodies, our intensities. Certainly anyone meeting me in person has to realize I'm more than clever.

But it has worked out. New and real friends, shared interests (most of my friends on Facebook are poets, a few are fiction writers, the rest are true and dear friends), a match. I've learned more about long-time friends and about warm acquaintances through Facebook. Yes, you're right. It's a time suck.

But also verification that the little bits we write about ourselves, about politics, about poetry, family, our cats, movies, Gaza, Obama, poverty, life's insanity express who we are. The word can be trusted.

Writing by hand, online, typing drafts: untenable - and good - examples

Once a poem’s online I forget about it. In once sense only that’s a blessing, and I’m not sure there’s much sense in that sense because a poem is a thoughtful creation, crafted, not a geyser of emotion or cleverness, erupted.

I have posted a few unpublished poems on this blog, and in a few cases typed first runs right in. And then forgotten about them. What’s the point?

With rare exception, I work on and over and in poems as long as requested. With NO exception (except a few on this blog as mentioned previously) I write first drafts of poems by hand, then type, print, edit, type, print, edit . . . And when there’s nothing else to be done I send out the poem. Sometimes I send the poem to Siberia, a file where poems that just don’t work live. They are warm and fed but their biospheric life does not include guests. Kafka’s messenger never reaches them and they don’t care. These poems aren’t sullen. They’re differently abled and know it.

A poem submitted to a journal is most often rejected at least once and when I get it back I take another look, ask if it wants to get off the bench and back in the game (Look, Ma! I wrote a sports reference!) or needs a massage. Maybe an amputation.

However, as far as prose and nonfiction are concerned, this blog unstuffs me and that’s been a great victory.

Most reviews I’ve posted here were typed into the blog and “published” or gone live. I might spy a typo or stupid sentence construction and go back in to fix. It’s not like the blog is a dangerous mine and reentry risks life.

When I wrote reviews as a freelancer for The Seattle Times each one took an enormous amount of time. I was utterly convinced I was a slow writer, no change possible. If my current reviews were worse than those, less insightful or fun or effective in tribute where called for, I’d agree I should return to those awful weeks in front of computer, me trying to hammer out a greater piece of writing than I am capable of creating.

But what I write now, although each could be expanded – now, that’s for sure – is fine. I am writing for a blog, not an journal, and length needn’t be too long. No one’s paying me for this. A few pieces here on my life might claw at me later. They might demand more attention, more words. We’ll see.

No poem is ever done. But some poems, many, are done talking to me and so they live out in the world, make new friends and decisions about me I may not like. That’s the deal.

So no more poems typed into my blog. Only poems pasted from my collection or after they’ve been in print long enough I do no disrespect to the kind journal.

The Future Is Happy: a Best Of 2009 Book {Guerilla Girls On Tour!}

Hoorah. The Future Is Happy - my poetry collection from BlazeVOX [books] - made the Guerilla Girls On Tour! Best of 2009 list along with books by poets Marie Ponsot, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Kim Addonizio, Sarah Gambito, Anne Waldman, Rachel Zucker and a slew of others. I agree with you (or my imagined you, resembling my doubting oldest sister, ready to pounce on any achievement of mine) -- it's not as if I'm in a top ten list such as the notorious Publishers Weekly list which recently printed a top ten for fiction writers, each of whom was male.

My publisher Geoffrey Gatza, a most enthusiastic literary world angel e-mailed me: "It's huge." I'll go with that; I didn't know anyone knew about me or my book. I've managed to attract a little attention on Facebook, but haven't had too much feedback on my book yet. Reviews are scheduled. My song of self-pity: I'm not an academic so there is no way I can create a readership - tra la.

Write a book and they will come.

To see the full list go to the Guerilla Girls blog:

http://guerrillagirlsontour.blogspot.com/2009/11/best-books-of-2009.html

Poem: "Something's Falling"

Because, and here’s my point,
because now, because loosened
by small destructions, because
shrapnel of civilization down
dizzy slow, because a little hand
drowning. Something’s falling.

Because empires of our beliefs
could inherit us promised days
but something’s falling. Now,
because we summon armies and
thugs unoriginal, barter a future
placid for a present spooked,
something’s falling because weary
apples weary, over and again.

Because only history supports
as we rant at kids on stick-
trembling legs, weep on fallow
chests, join neighbors one to
a four-cornered sheet stretched
to break the inevitable, study
a sky’s hindsight: Should it have

loosened more rain, moisting drops
to shimmer oily in sun, adorned
itself nirvanic swim-pool
aquamarines it’s marveled over
or painted indigo paisleys of a Hindu
bride across its breathy canopy?

Because what else? Recode
the Rosetta of history? Or will
love to our ones as cool heat

lifts soothing to the viridian
moss out of reach but scudding
close still, because the drowning
little hand, little hand, can touch it.

Sarah Sarai Threepenny Review Summer 2007

The Great Nomadic Peoples: at a poetry reading

One of my early demonstrations of independence from my family was in a movie theater with my mom and three older sisters. My father would have stayed home with a glass of Scotch, Bach sheet music, a James Bond novel, Nick and Nora Charles on The Million Dollar Movie.

Usually, the minute lights dimmed, we five became alert to the possible intrusion of extraneous sounds: a piece of Juicy Fruit being unwrapped, a too-loud engagement with molars and popcorn, a whispered comment. We were guardians of the quiet, Swiss guards for hush, lookouts ever vigilant against intrusions on our concentration.

The screen with its handsome flickering images was all. Double features (that's how long ago this was) were to be our atmosphere, landmass, weather system, internal and external organ. And if we heard a fatal crinkle of a candy wrapper we'd have to move. Sometimes my mother or a sister would venture a stern, "Shush!" but that held no truck with the Milky Way lover. Nor should it have. Candy and popcorn are inalienable rights. A movie ticket is a bearer bond for sweet and salty joys.

So the Hershey Bar would be unwrapped by a happy patron sitting behind us, a handful of popcorn noisily consumed and, as if a starting shot had been sounded for the greyhounds, my family would be off and running to another row, a quieter row, a perfect row.

I found moving from one row to another, having to yet again judge the height of the people in front -- potential blockades to Sidney Poitier or Elizabeth Taylor -- tiresome, and not cool (whether or not that was the word I used when I was thirteen).

My rebellion? I stayed put. After years of moving from seat to seat, I refused to collude with my mother and sisters in making fools of ourselves. I'd frown. I'd cross my arms over my unformed chest. I'd say, "No."

And watch their tribute to the great nomadic peoples of the world as they moved, sometimes several times in one movie. I'd hear evaluative whispers, especially if my oldest sister, who'd had the most pressure from circumstance and family, was in from San Francisco. The irony of their creating distraction -- when in fact they fled distraction-- escaped them.

And how does this relate to poetry readings? Well, I was at one today (a wonderful reading at the Bowery Poetry Club). The audience was attentive and the poets strong. Personages in my row, however, were not practiced reading attendees.

We're not talking teenagers (capable of anything). These people were older than me (hard to believe). And uh-huhing and yessing and commenting. I kept my tongue. But then my friend S-- was up and this nice lady next to me became not simply a bit distracting but, well, chatty. It's as if she were a Patriots fan sitting with six other Patriots fan in a den or sports bar (with the television on and all sorts of processed snacks hot and steaming); she began narrating the events in an unaware (bless her) stage whisper.

"He seems a bit nervous." "Oh, yes, I've met his mother. She's like that, you know, just like in that poem." And, as S-- began reading the last poem of his set, she turned to me to ask, "Oh, how do you know him? Are you a student or a poet or---" At which point my genetic material took over. Not the nomadic impulse--this was a full house and fleeing to another seat was not an option; no, the "Would you please be quiet" (whispered) impulse asserted. She became quiet.

Talking and silence, cell phones, involuntary and unconscious oohs and ahas, small comments, cheers, boos, laughter, bartenders -- they are all part of a poetry reading. There's no conclusion to be drawn from the above except I'm a silly goose. Yes, she was outsized. But I keep getting annoyed and it is not doing me any good. I want the calm of the great nomadic peoples of the world, to be able to pick up tent in silence -- but only if really very necessary.

A high point in eye candydom: Finch, Bates, Stamp

Some of my radical sisters in Feminism or brothers and sisters in anti-consumerism and death to the status quo may consider what I am about to write as politically reprehensible and certainly not correct. I can't say as I blame them. I write of a pinnacle of western civilization's white male eye candy, as achieved in John Scheslinger's adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd.

When I watched the movie last night, Alan Bates rising from the hay, Peter Finch striding the marketplace, Terence Stamp a slim Grenadier, I wanted to shout out these were the three most handsome men ever to walk the planet. Quickly I realized that old tendency of my race to assume itself sole proprietor of the world was a knee jerk I wanted to fight. All I needed was one adjective, to wit: white.

An anthology of poetry I have been rereading, Chief Modern Poets of Britain and America,Vol. II: Poets of America, is a great reminder of fine poems, it reminds only of fine poems by white people and should be: Chief Modern White Poets of Britain and America,Vol. II: Poets of White America. Ditto these three heart breakers are to be clearly labeled.

Three of the grandest white men to descend from Olympus as ever white men were to descend from Olympus are Peter Finch, Terence Stamp, Alan Bates. Three sets of blue eyes, handsome faces not bland. My people of the white race will have much to account for in our final days. Know we can offer these three men (and Julie Christie) as proof our hearts beat wildly and in the right place now and then. We can offer Thomas Hardy's novels, every damn last one of them, most Schlesinger movies, most Nicholas Roge (cinematographer for Madding) movies, all Thomas Hardy Poetry, Wessex country and the great uneven and red-cheeked English countenance, with a hope St. Peter'll curl up on his high stool in rapture.

Sarai family motto upheld: There is no expiration date on poetry (review of Bidart)

This review was published online in The Pedestal Magazine, Issue 31, 2005. I republish here to honor the motto on my family crest (There is no expiration date on poetry -- but Saraians say in Latin and do in Esperanto.) The review is okay but I like the change in my style as evidenced by reviews and personal essays on this blog. More and more in poetry as in blog I talk to you, the reader(s). Involvement between writer and reader, between reviewer and the object of her attention does, in my case, make for a better read and more convincing review. That said, expiration date and all that, here goes:

Star Dust by Frank Bidart
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN Number: 0374269734

Proven by reading Frank Bidart´s Star Dust: Spondees are not soporific. Also: You can take the boy out of California.

I wanted to review Bidart because I am an out-of-state Californian of a sort, as is he, though we sort out differently. I admired his early poem “Golden State," with its sights and sounds of the endlessly unyielding desert, of Barstow–I don´t know what it´s like now, but back then it wasn´t much–Edward Hopper in the Mojave, and that´s a glamorization. “Golden State" is in part a recollection of the poet´s flawed mother and father.

In Star Dust´s “Advice to the Players," Bidart renews his assessment of the folks: “My parents saw corrosively the arc of their lives."Same set-up, different parents, maybe drawn from Steinbeck instead of Eugene O´Neill, and their seeing might have been a reevaluation, perhaps even an illuminated understanding, rather than bitterness. Unlike his parents, the poet does have a handle on things and tips his hand to his philosophy: “There is something missing in our definition, vision, of a human/being: the need to make."

Rather than being political animals, Bidart sees us as aesthetically driven. In “Young Marx," we´re reminded that the maker, the laborer is “estranged from labor the laborer is/self-estranged, alien to himself." Bidart´s suggestion is to shape with a graceful rather than corrosive arc: “But being is making: not only large things, a family, a book, a busi-/ness: but the shape we give this afternoon, a conversation between/two friends, a meal."

The words “making" and “maker" crop up frequently, hinting at a theme, a philosophy, but they are of greatest value as an observation. And that is the one of the best tools of a poet, the power to observe. So who is this observer named Frank Bidart?

Long ago he shook off the desert sand at Harvard; recently co-edited The Collected Poems of Robert Lowell; has several full-length poetry collections in print; and was nominated for a Pulitzer a few years back for his chapbook, Music Like Dirt. That chapbook, with the inclusion of the long, narrative, and somewhat epic poem, “Third Hour of the Night," comprise Star Dust, a National Book Award nominee this year. Frank Bidart is a wonderful poet and deserves all the notice he gets, but also the notice he´s not likely to get (I´ll explain later). These poems revolve around concepts and themes and the poet; are a set-up for an explosion, things changing and remaining the same; demand engagement.

And what about the spondees, that girl-qua-BAN-SHE-group of metrical foot Bidart uses to begin many rogue lines in the 43-page “Third Hour of the Night"? The poem references The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Cellini being the Michael Graves of Renaissance salt shakers. The poem´s sections are built on couplets divided by single (which I call rogue) lines. It begins:

When the eye
When the edgeless screen receiving light from the edgeless universe
Then the eye first
When the edgeless screen facing outward as if hypnotized by the edgeless universe

Whose eye? Creator´s? A maker´s or the artist as maker? A predator´s or the artist as predator? What´s with the screen? What´s edgeless? Eternity? Life in process? The bombardment of inquiry this lead-in inspires is a muscular send-off, and while I question any use of muscular in discussions of literature, I felt a certain vitality in Bidart´s lines. Some pages later, Bidart as Cellini writes: “To be a child is to see things and not/know them; then you know them."

Which describes us all, of course, as willing readers. Which means knowledge is a blending of initial image, emotions, senses, intellectual reckoning, and time. Which means things can be known, sooner or later. As the poem reveals, Cellini was accused of theft at one point in his turbulent life. There´s a reckoning:

At this, the Duke looked at me
sharply, but said nothing.
All Rome knew that though I had disproved
the theft that was pretext for my arrest, Pope Paul
still kept me imprisoned, out of spite–vengeance of his malignant son Pier Luigi, now
assassinated by his own retainers.
One night at dinner, the King´s emissary gave the Pope
gossip so delicious that out of merriment, and about to vomit
from indulgence, he agreed to free me. I owed King Francis
my art, my service. The same stipend he once paid
Leonardo, he now paid me; along with a house in Paris.
The house was, in truth, a castle…

Who would I encourage to read this book? Certainly any poet, as the poems merit dissection and study; the lines are consciously rhythmic, crafty, and exemplary. As for civilians who love poetry…among them who will be content with Frank Bidart? He´s not a comfort. “Third Hour of the Night" ends with a strange, channeled, first-person description of violence against and rape of a woman. There´s plenty of violence in life and literature, but to end a made work with violence is, perhaps, defiant, as if the poet didn´t have the reader in mind. But maybe defiance is part of Bidart´s gift, and no one chooses his gifts. In the end, the reader must decide if this is a book for him or her, but I´m not off target in wondering about what audience Bidart attracts, large prizes granted and looming notwithstanding. Granted, he attracted me.

From “Little Fugue": “beneath every journey the ticket to this/journey in one direction."

It could be a serious omission that we´re not given readable maps. And many a trip begins in the dark wood, before final glory is achieved–and all for the price of a single ticket. Life is a wonder, really, and the push and pull in these poems, as in the need to make versus the condemnation of some corrupt manufacture of a life, the poet´s reconciliation with both, in his scraping off the corrosiveness, testify to Bidart´s appreciation and acceptance. “Music Like Dirt" draws its title from a song by the Jamaican ska and reggae singer/songwriter Desmond Dekker. The title´s repeated four times–the percussion of repetition–and the poem ends: “I will not I will not I said but as my body turned in the solitary/bed it said But he loves me which broke my will."

Sounds like a story to me. Whatever else he´s up to, the un-Californian is up to making good poems.

The above review is also at: http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/gallery.php?item=1962

The image is a Lichtenstein nude.

Creating a space for poetry (poetry, rich and independent as the Vatican)

Poet Marilyn Nelson recently announced she was about to clean up to create a space for writing.

(If I mention names it's simply to give credit and not to drop. I've met Marilyn once; she is a poet and human I admire vastly.)

Granted, a tidy bedroom or desk may not generate safety and fortress for every writer. In the movie Smart People, Thomas Hayden Church, playing Dennis Quaid's charming slacker half-brother, is told by his teenaged Republican niece to make his bed. “It sets the tone for the day.”

“How do you know what kind of tone I want to set?” he drawls, becoming a hero to Sarah Sarai (who is ever hopeful slackerdom will come through with a living for her one day).

Chuck (Church) is hapless and forgetful, but moral. He is, as we say these days, appropriate with his niece, and therefore a man who has created space in his life to be a true adult. By way of counterpoint to my beloved messy slackerdom I recall reading a profile of writer Ray Carver, who could find exactly whatever story he was looking for in his cleanly organized files, without missing a step. He probably didn't even devote an hour a week to searching for his eyeglasses.

I won't tell you how I create space to write, partly because my technique is haphazard and partly because it is a protected moat. I guard carefully my writing -- egress, inspiration and the activity of it.

Public writing is the horse of a different color. I am not a workshop person (it would take years, years and years, to unpack that simple sentence). But I showed up for two stand-alone workshops over the past year. One of the workshops revealed I am part of something, poetry, rich and independent as the Vatican. It has many novices and novitiates.

What I'm working toward is that no one workshop exercise or series of workshop exercises will make anyone a better poet. What does the trick is creation by the workshop leader of a space for the writing of poetry. Enthusiasm and joy help with that. An ability to reside serenely in his or her body while in front of a class, to push out from the core, exude energy and light—marks of a writing facilitator who creates a beautiful space.

When leading a group of poetry lovers, abandon self-consciousness. When pointing the way to The Way Of Poesy, be yourself and know you are rapid sunlight, joy, a reflection of greatness (no need to be great when we can reflect if).

There are as many writing exercises as there are names of the God. All refer to one and the same thing, a source of holiness. Belief in deities unnecessary; belief in poetry is, however, vital. Not a belief in grants or awards. Not a belief in status, ranking, publications, copies sold. A belief in the lifesaving poem.

And voila! (as Julia Child might say), you have a lovely chicken or a lovely poem. Hard to argue with either...

(Thanks to poet Lee Ann Roripaugh, whose stray comment got me thinking.) Also. Note to self: Time to start sending out resumes to teach? Sarah, you want to try creating a space in which others can writer, don't you.

Review: WARHOL-O-RAMA, Peter Oresick and Pittsburg's saint

I don't live far from the Empire State Building and sometimes send love to the ape atop, batting at airplanes Misunderstanding and Fear. So I was predisposed, when I chanced on Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick on a low-neon-lemon-forced-into-a-shout yellow large as New York's event-structure of cinematic and architectural history, for more memorable strangeness.

And was made pleased. As revealed to poet Peter Oresick, WARHOL-O-RAMA, is a triumph of verisimilitude--recreates the feel of the man and his art machine. There had to be such a triumph, sooner or later. Oresick is a son of Pittsburgh. As you know and have known since before you were born at least if you live, lived or planned on spending a lifetime anywhere a poster or tomato soup can or Andy Warhol's Dracula--wirrrrr-gin bloooooood--Warhol is not only son of Pittsburgh but its greatest commodity and export. Warhol might be odd, but he is in Paradise and Carnegie, albeit born in Scotland, is stoking coals.

True, Warhol made his reputation here, where I live, but New York City claims many artists without fully understanding it serves only as studio. The real work, beauties, brutalities and attitudes, is born in the crucible of hometown.

Dispensing with the query, Was Warhol really an artist, does Oresick's "For Andy Warhol Was a Flake among Artists" (which I reproduce in full):

But an artist among flakes.

Amen to that. "Andy Warhol for Willem de Kooning" is a one-liner relineated. "I hate Andy Warhol I hate Andy / Warhol I hate Andy Warhol I / . . ." and so on. Knowing de Kooning outdistanced him as a painter, Warhol mimicked the remarkably handsome and not always so-nice artist. His white wig reproduced de Kooning's do. Of Warhol, de Kooning said he was "nuttiest of all" the pop artists.

"Andy Warhol for Photoshop®" is a stanza by stanza how-to on reproduction as Andy reproduced, with image, not biology though with destiny. More than being a primer to the artist whose worth as artist exceeds that of mere phenomenon (and it is partly that, primer, Warhol not for Dummies but for Hipsters), WARHOL-O-RAMA (the title itself evocative of American's silly bold pitch) is loving tribute, a compilation of found (such as a letter to Warhol from a Campbell Soup executive) and original poems.

Oresick's passion shows in "Andy Warhol for Philip Johnson":

Infamous architect, whose ignoramus idiom was glass, sat sadly,
in chair, in tedium, in his 98th year, in his famously all-glass house--
fabulous essay in minimal geometry--when his eyes rose gladly
past clear walls of willow & birch & proportions he'd espoused--

slick effects: reflection & transparency--to the fluorescent silkscreen:
a copier. Hung above the copier! Bemused, he slowly slumped, serene.

WARHOL-O-RAMA offers poems of poetry, poems of political commentary, poems of biography, poems of verification for Andy's Catholic church (how many more verifications needed) that Warhol made miracles and copied them, over and over and over again. See for your yourself. See for yourself. See for yourself. See for yourself.

http://www.warholorama.com/press/

http://www.warholorama.com/press/

http://www.warholorama.com/press/

http://www.warholorama.com/press/

Be my diva, sweetheart: 65 and counting

When I was young I wanted to be a gay icon. Maybe it was a plausible fantasy for a yet-to-be-tested bi-sexual. Maybe my heterosexual selfhood believed that offered the likeliest male attention I'd get. Maybe it was something I should have followed through on. The fellow I lived with for five years in my twenties scored (scored, not bought) front-row Bette Midler tickets, knowing I worshipped her. I often felt I should have been born gay and male, a thought that strikes me as silly now that I accept the mutable slinkiness of sexuality and gender.

My parents were not homophobic so I didn't have excessive attitudes about gay men, although my sisters' taunts about being a lesbian terrified me. Judee Sill, later one of the shining lights of music and a lesbian, was one of my sister's friends, someone I knew when I was nine-years-old, so even there, contact had been made. When things got beyond ugly at home (the divorce) (I was about eighteen), I was shipped up to San Francisco, where I had a sort of Margaret Cho experience.

Unlike Cho, whose parents managed a bookstore in S.F.'s Tenderloin, and who lived among the loving (or not), brave (or not) and sometimes self-hating flamboyance of gay San Francisco in the seventies, my dear friends were, um, cultured.

I stayed with Alois, who still owns a house in the Haight. He was German (Catholic), had been a gay boy in Hitler's Germany. I'm still not sure of the details, but he was escaped from a Russian prisoner-of-war camp in Yugoslavia when he was thirteen; he wasn't there because he was gay. Boys were being shot as he escaped. After the war, his uncle told him to get out of Germany, and he ended up in San Francisco where he opened a coffee house of the real food, real conversation sort only possible in the late fifites and early sixties.

It was the Coffee Cantata, named after Bach's cheery musical number. Alois gave me a bed in his apartment (he rented out the first floor of the house), fed me incredible and very European whole foods, and resounding music (my father's classical tropes didn't include the great church music).

Alois had sold the Coffee Cantata by the time I lived there - its new crass owners moved it to Union, made it the coffee house equivalent of a fern bar - but Alois was Alois. Cultured, brilliant with languages, European for crissakes - and gay. One of the household's many running jokes was "he invented it." "Leonard Bernstein? Sarah, he's so gay he invented it." And so on.

If Michale Montlack, editor of the newly released My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them, were to ask Alois who his diva was, Alois might consider Elly Ameling, a pure soprano who interpreted leider purely though not exclusively. Or, hey, he might choose Suzy Ormand, the financial dyke wizard. (Who knows.) My intention is to suggest my sense of diva as a gay term, yes, and also as an accessible example of female power and vulnerability.

Who would I choose? Are Emily Dickinson or Helen Keller - two heroes - divable (diva-able?)? Laura Nyro is. Agnes Martin? Emily Carr? Dorothy Day (pictured)? Certainly Judee Sill. Unfortunate though her statements about Palestineans were, Golda Meir is a woman I find stunning. Among the divas in the My Diva anthology are Helen Reddy, Joan of Arc, Julia Child, Princess Leia, Liza, Grace Paley.

It's a nice, okay, poignant feeling, to sit here and think about women I admire, to consider who is a heroine, who is an icon (a word my friend, poet Patricia Spears Jones, wants retired), and who is a straight-ahead "diva." It's heart-expanding to think about women men admire. I want more women admired. I want more.

My Diva: http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/4584.htm

*you say. say.* says it in New York City. Also, happy November.

November is begging for a blog. The tidiness of blogging on the first of the month asserts itself. The authority of being a purposeful November 1 is kindly requested by November 1. Clearly I have fallen short, this and other months; I resolve to be better. Blog on the first and the last of the month, men, and hoist the sails. Please accept this late effort.

The time change is knocking me out as it always does; also I haven't quite recovered from having fun on Halloween - an awful lot of shouting in a Soho bar, after an Uphook Press** reading.

On Halloween the you say. say. group rose up for our first reading in this grimy, loud, expensive and infectiously lovable city. (An attentive reader of My 3,000 Loving Arms may recall you say. say. read in Philadelphia after visiting Ben Franklin, later seen strolling with a pitcher of Kool Aid [you have to see the posting to understand*].)

The Philadelphia try-out being succesful, the illustrious editorial triumverate of you say. say. brought the act to New York, to premiere at the Dactyl Foundation. Hard not to love an art gallery named after a poetic foot. Query: If there are poetic feet, are there also poetic shoes? Hmmm. The Dactyl Gallery is pictured.

you say. say. is, in addition to being an extremely interesting, clean, tidy, challenging, diverse, rhythmic, complicated, simple and fanciful collection of poesy, or pomes, as my friend Steve Tills would say, an organic entity, ever changing and growing. Not the book itself, which obeys all sorts of laws of physics as most of us do, no, but the group of readers is changeable. In Philly there were four of us. At the Dactyl there were seven or so of us. Future readings at the Cornelia Street Cafe (November 12) and KGB Bar (December 9) include more and different readers, and who knows - maybe in a postmodern triumph the mic itself may read itself.

Did I mention the time change is knocking me out as it does twice a year. I realize I'm lame ass and pantywaist, that I need to man up my powers of transition. I shall attempt to do so. In the meantime, dear child held in those of My 3,000 Loving Arms that aren't scratching my backside, I'm signing off. Later.

*October 14: http://my3000lovingarms.blogspot.com/2009/10/uphook-press-you-say-say-opens-in.html

**Uphook Press' you say. say. anthology: http://www.uphookpress.com/

About poetry: I don't believe in free will

A poem of mine was recently accepted by a review. These things happen. These things are what poets who are foolish as I am think life is made of. (It's not. Life is made of 360 degrees plus a galaxy with swirling planets and burning patient stars. Life is made of Steamboat Willie plus infancy. Life is made of palms on skin plus revolution of every sort.)

The poetry co-editor suggested I send an additional batch of poems -- as many as possible -- so editors could select an additional poem. Feverish me sent off twenty or thirty more poems. I hadn't even figured out page breaks on OpenOffice.org.

The review accepted one more poem. Fine. I have a poem accepted therefore I exist. Fine.

But when I later took another look at the "additional" poems I excitedly sent off - my resubmission was shortly after my book was published, so everything I sent was relatively new - I realized I'd sent incomplete and sometimes awkward work. I knew, not for the first time, that given my battles with focus and clear thinking, the incredible effort it takes to whittle away enough of the stuff around me, to gently befriend my "self" with all its confusion, resentments and fantasies, the "self" that's taken so many years to produce Sarah Sarai's first book, that, practically speaking, I can only be sure of five or six poems at a time.

Why am I writing this? To learn something about myself. To possibly learn to contradict what I believe about myself. To get it out. See, as far as I'm concerned, my book is a miracle. I now know there'll be other books - one novel is ready, the two novellas are almost ready, the next poetry collection is being formed. They are standing on the shoulders of giants of literature, but also on my confused inner linebacker.)

I don't believe in free will. All these years of giving free its due, of being fair, of being judicious about my role in things, I realize I no longer believe in it, in free will, the ability to utter a saucy "no!' to distraction and get the job done.

Why? Because exercising my will is too difficult to be considered a routine choice or path. I try. It's easy to be willful. That's a knee jerk, a promise of danger, a reflex, a chance to say or do something that will bring me shame, a chance to repeat stupid patterns which I learned or which I created. Why don't I believe in free will? Because I have this sense my every action is predestined by my physiology, my body's chemistry, my brain's receptors and neurons. To exercise free will, I have to yoke a double team of reluctant oxen to my chest, and pull.

That isn't free, that's punishment. Granted, the reward for that punishing motion in a sane direction is serenity and sanity, but if that is free will, then free will as debated by philosophers is far more difficult than suggested. (Granted my knowledge of philosophy after Hobbes is a bit light.)

I know I am a complainer; maybe the above is a complant and I'm too close or arrogant or (oh please no please no please no) self-pitying to accept that the slew of thirty-something poets with good work out there are like Helios able to work with their team of oxen and horses every day, able to make the sun shine every day. I feel better if I allow the sun, Helios-led or simply inevitable, shine on my life. Am I a self-absorbed poet? Sometimes, sure. But sometimes I'm absorbed with the $100,000,000 Bloomberg has spent on his 2009 mayoral run. Or with putting Cheney and Bush aren't in stocks for commiting heinous acts of savegery. Or with why racism is stronger than ever in the face of its inevitable demise.

I believe in free and I believe in will. That's a start. Without writing poetry I wouldn't be able to celebrate either.

poem: Sarah Kent (Clark's mother) ". . .with / dazzled flourishes. . ."

What I Choose to Remind You

Is that I, Sarah Kent, am
Earthmother of Superman,
rocketed to our planet
for safekeeping when
his homeland imploded,
which is what the universe
did prior to becoming
the universe, and with
dazzled flourishes of
an illuminated manuscript
illuminated really fast.
Like Moses bobbling in
sun-gold rushes, Clark was
a foundling, and like Shadrach
Meshach and Abednego
survived fires unscathed,
Clark’s of impact with
this planet–more than many
I’ve seen do. I raised him
to be respectful and cheerful
kind in an American way.
I am an American Sarah
embracing the visitation
with one joy-spilled tear
and the other Vidalia-sliced
for the stew. I didn’t laugh
but taught my son his civic duty
of salvation, which his new world
seems to need with every turn.

Sarah Sarai, pub. in Juice:

in The Future Is Happy, avail. from Amazon

Note on Martha Kent: In the comic books, Clark Kent's adoptive mother is Sarah. In the TV show from the fifties and subsequent movies, she is Martha.

The illustration is one of Gustave Dore's.

Poem: ". . . and then we killed / a whole lot more people . . ."

A Rhetorical Inquiry Into The Moral Certitude Of Cause And Effect

Today we picked tulips and
stubbed our big toe and went
to war and lost a bunch a arms
and feet and shit and gunned
down a dozen fifty people
and got tired and took a nap
and had a family and raised
a mess a kids and picked
daffodils and scratched our
finger bad and then we went
to war. We blew up some big
stuff and little stuff and people
tall and stupid crying babies
and a whole lot a us puked
and we were buried or they
put us on these lame cots and
we got better and met girls
and boys and had families and
glued pink fuzzy bunny ears
on our sister's headband for
spring assembly and then we
killed a whole lot more people
cause we had to go to war cause
we picked lilies and sneezed and
after you pick lilies and sneeze
or something they send you to
war. Don't you know anything?

Sarah Sarai Eleven Eleven Issue 5, 2008,
and in The Future Is Happy (available at Amazon)

A short-short story: The Really Deep and Proving Slobberoni Kiss

The day Uncle Otto motored me to the Gymnasium in time to make the bus for summer camp, Mama and Papa were wonked out on the floor of our chateau, sleeping off ten years of craftsman-like study of the arts of distillation.

“Little muffin nose.” Uncle tweaked my child-like proboscis, a tweak that would cause sinus blockage in my adult years—but who knew? We were young, granted I was ten and he was forty-five, but young-er than we are now. He cupped my quivering chin in his broad hand the size of the chunk of granite I perched on the next two weeks as I pondered the shadow which had fallen over my life. I felt, as one can feel in the mind’s memory, even then the big wet one he laid on me.

Yet that was it and I was chaste.

Several years later, after my sweet sixteen party at La Plazita, Grandpapa, that twinkle in his eye so like a firefly made of papier-mache doused with kerosene and lit aflame, joked, “Munchen, your education is incomplete, correct?” He leaned over to me, the faint blend of peppermint schnapps, Peppermint Patties, and Depends wending its way in my neo-womanly nostrils so ready to inhale adult scents.

“Little sesame seed,” he teased. My lips, eager to taste all that life has prepared on its half-price-after-9:00 p.m. banquet of delights, parted and felt a tongue wriggling its way in and around my teeth. This was, after all, Grandpapa, a man of experience and also, let’s not forget, a dentist with a nice practice on the upper east side of a small duchy the size of Uncle Otto’s hand. And yet that was that.

Even beloved though contrary, and, to some, dotty Aunt Bertholde, fresh from a lifetime of self-recrimination and badminton, had a go as we ascended the staircase at Vichy Sousa, and strolled towards our rooms, hers actually being in a hotel some meters away. She pressed me against the wall. “Ever tried this?” she lisped. Her hummingbird tongue tasted my gummy honey, darting here, there—yet not everywhere.

Finally, Dad, no longer deferring to sweet liqueurs, called me to his side. I had reached my maturity. Papa coughed several times; cleared his throat. “Kitten?”

I purred.

“You know I’ve let your entire trust fund fall through my hands like chafe through a very large and open space?”

What is one to say?

“Well, you’re going to need something to fall back on.” He drew close as if to finish what others had begun. I pulled back. “Do you know what you’re doing?” He protested. “You could have one heck of an entry in that diary you’re always scribbling in.”

Night became day, and time became tide, and Tide became colorfast. As to Papa and I, the limits I draw around love may be petite and my ignorance of life not inconsiderable, but my memories are licensed and my estate in my lawyer’s dukes, with dark tufts of hair on each finger.

I wrote this in 1997 when Kathryn Harrison's memoir The Kiss created a bit of a scandal.