Kansas City is Oh So Pretty

I just returned from Kansas City where I was lucky enough to read in the Park University's Ethnic Voices Poetry Series at the Public Library. I also was lucky enough to read at UCMO's Pleiades Series, introduced by my host, poet and editor, Wayne Miller. There were two radio appearances as well. (Radio makes me terrified, I stumble and plummet and um, and um, and um.) All of it was a great joy. There were good crowds full of interesting people with lots of questions about the poet's life, the novel, the New York life, the world, the how, and the now.

Wayne, his wonderful wife Jeanne, and I all had the most amazing barbecue at Oklahoma Joe's. Hands down the best barbecue I've ever had. Anthony Bourdain agrees as he's listed it as one of his "13 places to eat before you die." And now I know how to plan my other poetry readings. Checking off the other 12 places on the list.

After an interview with the great host Jabulani Leffall, on Central Standard on KCUR, I read at the Library for the Park University Ethnic Voices Poetry Series. Virginia Brackett was a wonderful host and the evening ended with another great dinner at Kansas City's West Side Local. Then, in the morning it was off to do a radio interview with New Letters on the Air host Angela Elam. They recorded at UKC, around a small table with a Mexican blanket. I told her, the humble setting made me feel quite at home. Then, I accidentally told her all my secrets. We shall see when the interview appears here soon.

Then, off to UCMO in Warrensburg, which (no doubt you know this) is FAMOUS for the place where the phrase "a dog is a man's best friend"  was coined. This is true. Not only is a dog, in fact, a man's best friend, but I saw the statue of the original dog in the center of town. So it all really happened. Statues are truth. Then, I read for a great undergraduate crowd of young writing students. I later said to Wayne, "I think the trick to reading for a busy and distractible undergraduate audience must be to read all your poems about sex." Which is also true. A dog is a man's best friend, but sex is an undergraduate writer's best friend.

On the way home, I got the chance to read Wayne's new book. Beautiful book. The City, Our City. It's harsh and stunning, with lines like, "What it was that filled me,/filled me entirely./The only space left/was inside my fists." From his remarkable poem, "Street Fight."  Also, I had the pleasure of buying Alex Battles's official album, Goodbye Almira and listening to it on the flight back home. It's an amazing album from the Country Music world of Brooklyn, NY that he helped to establish. "She's an easy girl, easier than the lid on a pickle jar/easier than using your knees to drive a car/easier than leaving her alone." Aw yeah.

So thanks, Kansas City, for the meats and the meetings. I enjoyed you. I shall return. Now, a little writing time before the next trip takes me to Pennsylvania, NYC, and SF for two big readings. Whoa, take it easy world. Keep your pants on. Fall is just getting started.

The Dog Days of Summer: Puppies & Pages

"I don't ask myself what I'm looking for. I didn't come for answers to a place like this"

--Philip Levine

Two momentous things have happened since I last came here to talk: 1. I finished a rough draft of my first novel 2. We got a puppy.

Now, the momentous things that happen seem a little less momentous and a little more in the moment. I take care of this little beast. And, as I do I'm starting the giant rewrite of the book. It's like nothing I've ever done before. The fiction journey is entirely different than the poetry journey. It's so much more about endurance and strength as opposed to hot bursts of wild exhilaration. Oh there is a great deal of exhilaration with the novel work too, but it's prolonged and measured and meaty. A life in chapters instead of lines. The weeeeeeee of writing to the end of the page. The weeeeee of life in the long form.




I never liked pugs. Or rather, I never thought I'd have one. I liked big dogs with big personalties. But we travel a lot. And Lucas loves them. So, we brought home this little girl. That same week, my wonderful friend, Nadia sent me this awesome shirt. (It says Pugs Not Drugs. It does not say Jugs Not Drugs, though I just realized it could possibly look that way.) Now, I've gone from a New York City girl with no pets and a lot of high heels, to this strange and laughing barefoot person. Ah well, I'll embrace the change. I'll love that weird funny animal of life.




Twilight in the Bluegrass with Lily Bean Kudzu reaching out into the abyss of the now. In my best friend, Trish Harnetiaux's play, Straight On Till Morning, she has a cat named, "The Now." I always loved that, "Meow, The Now!" I suppose this pup is saying, "Wow, The Now."



Lucas in the wild flowers with the wild pug. My family has grown. We've adopted a dog baby and a novel baby. I hope I can do right by both of them. Joy sure comes with a lot of pressure to keep it.

In other news, Phil Levine, my favorite teacher, and one of my favorite poets, was just named the new Poet Laureate of the United States (The President of Poetry). He taught me a lot of what I know. And I think he's wonderful. With all the despair in the news, it's nice to get a good word from poetry.

Here's one of my favorite poems of his:

Gospel
Philip Levine

The new grass rising in the hills,
the cows loitering in the morning chill,
a dozen or more old browns hidden
in the shadows of the cottonwoods
beside the streambed. I go higher
to where the road gives up and there's
only a faint path strewn with lupine
between the mountain oaks. I don't
ask myself what I'm looking for.
I didn't come for answers
to a place like this, I came to walk
on the earth, still cold, still silent.
Still ungiving, I've said to myself,
although it greets me with last year's
dead thistles and this year's
hard spines, early blooming
wild onions, the curling remains
of spider's cloth. What did I bring
to the dance? In my back pocket
a crushed letter from a woman
I've never met bearing bad news
I can do nothing about. So I wander
these woods half sightless while
a west wind picks up in the trees
clustered above. The pines make
a music like no other, rising and
falling like a distant surf at night
that calms the darkness before
first light. "Soughing" we call it, from
Old English, no less. How weightless
words are when nothing will do.