what the church marquee down the street told me today
November 29, 2007
Service is not serve us.
insects rock!
November 29, 2007
I just found out a piece of mine has been accepted by Ivy Alvarez and Marly Youmans for Qarrtsiluni as part of the Insecta issue. I’m stoked. It should be published soon, but I don’t know exactly when. I’ll link to it when it’s posted.
why i avoid large metal objects and toilet seat covers and parties on boats
November 29, 2007
Today I hit my head really hard while attempting to get in my car. My forehead went right into metal, and I was sure it was going to turn into a nasty welt that would have my co-workers wondering why I stay with my abusive husband. I had to do creative things with bangs to cover up the problem area.
Things got even worse when I went to the restroom after arriving at work and was unable to remove the toilet seat cover from the backs of my thighs upon standing. I kept thwacking it away, and it kept sticking to me.
Static cling. Apparently my thighs are staticy. Who knew? I went to the restroom later in the day and the same damn thing happened with another toilet seat cover: I’d bat it with my free hand (the other hand of course being employed to hold my pants up), but the pesky cover would go right back to plastering itself against my thighs.
Having made this discovery, I bet I could do some pretty cool party tricks involving balloons. But anything with balloons and my thighs is bound to get all PG-13 real fast, and we can’t have that. Plus, doing party tricks would entail attending parties, and we can’t have that, either.
Speaking of parties, I was invited to hang out on a poetry sailboat this weekend. What’s a poetry sailboat, you ask? It’s a sailboat full of poets. Can you imagine? Maybe the idea is to lure all the Seattle-area poets out into the Puget Sound then dump us like so much toxic waste.
Probably not. It’s probably just a party, like the invitation states. But you never know. I’d better stay home, where I can do balloon tricks and know I am safe. (Unless there’s unexpected popping. That could get dangerous real fast.)
on poetry and audience
November 28, 2007
From a 2002 interview with Billy Collins:
… the good news is that the audience for poetry has grown exponentially and poetry has become a more noticed and respected activity in American life. The bad news is that it is a closed circuit. The audience for poetry is other poets … As Joyce Carol Oates put it: the number of people who read poetry is about the same as the number who write it. I would change that to ‘is slightly less than’ because some people who write poetry have no interest in reading it. Strange but true.
what’s helped keep me going the past few days …
November 27, 2007
… receiving postcards from strangers as part of the perennial poetry postcard fest. I went weeks without receiving any, and now I am getting them almost daily. These are wonderful gifts, and they’ve made me really happy — as happy as I can be right now, anyway.
untitled #3
November 26, 2007
I woke up at 1 a.m. and started crying. I didn’t stop until about 4 a.m. I kept thinking about a dog I rescued from a shelter years ago. Her name was Misty. She had been abused and then abandoned on a highway in Oklahoma. She was so scared she would go stiff and wet herself whenever anyone came near her. She would then shrink to the floor and shake uncontrollably.
I spent hours every day with Misty for about a week trying to get her to eat, to stand, to walk. Nothing worked. I finally sat on the floor next to her, picked her up and laid her across my lap. Too scared to move away, she sat there and shook.
This is what we did for hours on end day after day. I would lift her, lay her across my lap, then talk gently to her and pet her. Every few hours, I would carry her outside so she could go to the bathroom. I would then lay her across my lap outside so she could look at birds and smell all the outdoor smells.
She was such a beautiful dog, and to see her fettered by fear was nearly too much to bear. I would cry and cry as I held her. I would beg her to understand that nobody would ever hurt her again.
I’d never seen a dog as wounded as she was, and I wanted more than anything for her to feel like a dog again — to know she could chase the birds and stick her long nose into the wind to smell everything it carries.
Anyone else would have given up on her, but I didn’t. I couldn’t abandon her like that. And so our routine did not vary for months: the holding, the carrying, the petting, the soothing, the waiting, the hoping. Finally, Misty felt safe enough to walk around in one room of my apartment. Then she felt safe enough to go outside on her own.
It took about a year before she would explore the entire apartment and before she could see a pair of men’s shoes and not stop dead in her tracks. But she did it. She healed. And I never let anyone hurt her again or even come near her if I thought they might show her any degree of unkindness.
I kept thinking about Misty last night, and about how I am not that different from her. I am immobilized by fears — old ones and new ones. I have been hurt in ways I will never be able to speak of publicly. I am afraid to move, to be myself, to trust others.
All my life I’ve been looking for someone who will stay in the room with me and do the hard work that needs to be done to help me heal. Throughout my life, people have left the room or refused to enter it in the first place.
But my husband has shown time and time again that he’s willing to stay and fight for me, to do all he can to make me feel safe and loved. Since the day I met him, he has not left the room. And I know that with his help, someday I will be able to heal. Someday soon I will be able to wag my tail and yip with delight. I just know it.
make my husband as happy as possible day
November 25, 2007
I decided to spend the entire day telling my husband all the ways I love him and thanking him for all the ways he loves and supports me.
The day’s not over, and I am not finished putting my feelings into words (and into action), so I am off now to do continue with the talking and the hugging and the kissing and the whatnot.
the most uninteresting post ever written on a blog (the tags on the post are more interesting than the post itself, and even the tags aren’t all that interesting)
November 24, 2007
I spent all day helping a friend paint her house. She has rheumatoid arthritis, so she can’t really manage that kind of work on her own.
Now I am going to treat myself by lifting some weights and then eating a completely homemade unprocessed meal with no sugars or gluten, which I shall follow with calcium, vitamin D and magnesium supplements.* I sure know how to party. I might even play a little Yahtzee with my husband.
*This is all part of my bone-rebuilding project. It’s a two-year plan to make my bones as healthy as possible. Why two years? Because bones grow slowly. Very slowly.
P.S. I don’t think I want to write poetry anymore, but I might get over it. We’ll see.
what would you do?
November 23, 2007
Interesting discussion on Leslie’s blog about editors asking for changes to a poem. Have you been in this position before? What did you do? How would you feel about being asked to alter your work?
collaborative american sentences
November 22, 2007
Just when you thought I was over writing American Sentences — think again! Glad and I spent a couple of days writing a number of them together.
Our process was to work through e-mail and each take turns completing sentences the other person started. Take a look at what we came up with:
When I said, ‘a wing and a prayer,’ I meant something else entirely.
Opt for the comfortable shoes so that other shoes will feel envy.
In the wrong hands — barren branches, but in the right ones — apple blossoms.
Her hair looked like someone had seriously messed with more than her mind.
Broken legs never stopped anyone from political grandstanding.
Mistletoe is better known for its ability to embarrass.
Eggnog, who came up with such a poor substitute for Baileys and cream?
It was difficult to read him when Babelfish botched the translation.
In the blink of an eye you shed your skin and stand there gleaming at me.
While the radiator knocked and hissed we sang along in b minor.
Like a dog returning to vomit feathers and claws, we seek you out.
The sky had a quilted quality that struggled to embrace nightfall.
I would have written but I stopped to listen to cicadas singing.
Faithless, the birds never consider leaving a forwarding address.
Insects: Too many legs to bother with square-dancing or sack races.
Each time it gets easier to focus on flaws where there aren’t any.
Left to her own devices everything was arranged in odd numbers.
The sound of the morning dove is not at all unlike your leaky heart.
Not a day has gone by that hasn’t ended when I wanted it to.
There’s a moment in every day when letting go is a needful thing.
Bound by nothing but twine it was so much harder to keep promises.
Listen, that sound is not unlike the song of emerging crocuses.
The decorations have gone up again, and yet I long solitude.
This is my blog wherein I, Dana Guthrie Martin, write things and stuff. Most of the time, writing and I hobble along in a sort of three-legged race where there is no finish line. (more...)
Any fictionist knows that one event, even if poorly executed, can make another happen, the slightest authenticity creating a path to the hidden. — Stephen Dunn
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beg, borrow, but don't steal
This work is licensed under Creative Commons. If you don’t credit Dana (by using her full name and preferably by linking back to the appropriate post) for however you copy, distribute, transmit or adapt her words, you are being bad. And naughty. And she will have her servant monkeys hunt you down and cut your hands off so you can never copy, distribute, transmit or adapt anyone’s work again and call it your own.
(Unless, of course, you were to use your butt cheeks to manipulate your keyboard with the copying, distributing, transmitting, adapting and whatnot, but Dana fortunately has only met one person whose butt cheeks are that talented. He could play a major third on a piano using nothing but his ass. She kids you not.).
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flick, flick, flick
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i cannot be bought
