more . . .

. . . links coming soon. Blogger has come a long way since I last complained. (Thank you Blogger!)

If you know of a great (or outrageous) link, let me know about it. I am aiming for something akin to Lime Tree's plethora of places to spend time procrastinating on the web. It is awesome.

I also spent some time catching up on the literary world, and as usual I found stuff of great interest. More on this later.

Writing Report Card: today was a very productive day.

no conures, no more . . .

. . . I have conures. Two of them. And, yes, they are loud. I should have gotten doves.

But I didn't. I have a nanday (notoriously the most destructive and vocal bird ever) and a green cheek (notoriously a biter). They both live up to their reputations.

I have come to the conclusion that I am not overreacting or being overly sensitive to their behavior. They are just obnoxious. This must be what it is like to have teenagers. (I say this tongue in cheek by the way. I love teenagers! They go so well with a balsamic vinaigrette.)

No, I am not comparing my birds to teenagers to food. I would never jest.

All I am getting at is that I am not the one with the problem here. The birds are just annoying. What an amazing (and seven year long) revelation!

***Here at poethussy, we strive for a balanced reporting of life, and delight in the small won battles/revelations.

there is this old john wayne movie . . .

. . . called Donovan's Reef which is what I am thinking of at the moment for the glorious scene where Elizabeth Allen's character goes in search of a swimsuit. If you've seen it, you know where I am coming from, and if you haven't, get thee to a movie rental!

tidbit. . .

. . . which I found interesting, and surprising, coming from the local dot com news feed. Naturally it is in the opinion section, and maybe ten people will read it, but still, the fact that it is there at all was pleasant. (Also I have looked, and have no idea who this person is responding to, but if I can find it, will link that too.)

Op-Ed.

and holy cow, how did i miss this????

Okay, a wee bit of being star struck, as I just found the following comment about my original Natasha Trethewey post.

So, Ms. Trethewey, the pleasure was mine!

total score . . .

at the used bookstore:

Joy Williams: Taking Care, Breaking & Entering

Clyde Edgerton: Walking Across Egypt, Killer Diller

Chad Prevost: Snapshots of the Perishing World

Nathanael West: Miss Lonely Hearts & The Day of the Locust

William Carlos Williams: In the American Grain

James Cummins and David Lehman: Jim and Dave Defend the Masked Man

Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things

Stephen Dobyns: The Church of Dead Girls

Eudora Welty: One Writer's Beginnings

Chris Bohjalian: The Buffalo Soldier

Brigit Pegeen Kelly: The Orchard

Saul Bellow: Ravelstein

E.L. Doctorow: Lives of the Poets

All for under $50. I had to pull myself out of there. But I am super excited about these books. The Prevost one in particular because he is a local Chattanooga author with no connections to the writing workshops at UTC, which makes him a strange and curious anomaly - and he is talented to boot. He did come read at a Meacham, last year maybe? Hmm. Anyway, the other that I am super excited about it the Cummins, Lehman book which comes complete with these amazing illustrations by Archie Rand. I have a feeling this book will be called into play this upcoming semester when tackling poetry in the intro creative writing class. And it just pleases me to no end.

amazingly enough . . .

. . . this time in Europe, I only came across one squatter toilet. It is always fun watching first timers encounter these mysteriously low porcelain holes in the ground. Or the entire experience of trying to figure out how to flush the loo, or the even odder experience of having to pay someone to use the bathroom because that person is in charge of cleaning the bathroom. (This doesn't always mean they do.)

But, having just come across this little gem of how-to info for the world traveler who may be encountering bidets and the like, I thought I would post the link here, because, well, it amused me enough to read the whole thing and I have never gotten a more satisfactory answer.

May it come in handy for someone.

yesterday . . .

. . . I washed all my dogs. All six of them, from smallest to biggest. They took it as a personal affront with sad doggy eyes, and the house smelled like wet dog for hours.

I am slowly percolating some thoughts in my head about this novel which, for better or worse, will have a rough draft out by end of summer. I say this despite having not written a word of it yet (not technically true, but it feels true). I say this because when one is a writer, one must embrace writerhooddom (word??) and say fuck it, and be brash and belligerent with the reticent piece of work. I say this because I am stubborn, and when one is stubborn, one must stick to what one has said until the very last minute when all options have been exhausted and then stubbornness gives way to impossibility and moderate accomplishment. I say this because someone said it was impossible, and so I must naturally prove them wrong.

But really, there are connections being made. This is exciting shit.

i just heard . . .

. . . a fabulous quote from children's poet Jack Prelutsky: "Children are not stupid; they're just short."

How sweet is that? He was talking about his use of big grown up 50 dollar words in his poetry, like gelatinous. This makes complete sense to me, as I can still remember when I encountered some of those big $5o words for the first time as a child.

Kudos for Mr. P, who is creating future poetry lovers even as we speak!

last night . . .

. . . I watched Little Miss Sunshine. Loved it. The dialogue is beyond incredible. You just can't write that shit. (Although, obviously someone did.) I put this movie into the category of others like Wonder Boys, The Royal Tenenbaums, Tadpole, Secretary, Something's Gotta Give, etc.

I tried to read Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History, and after the first chapter I had to put it down. It feels highly over written to me, and the characterization not compelling enough to actually draw me into the story with the fact that she sets it up in a way that I already know the ending. That seems to me a really hard trick to do. This character dies, I am telling you right off, then putting my story in first person, including way too much unconvincing backstory of the main character, and completely esoteric random Latin phrases into the mix. Lol. I mean, it is quite a tall order, and I don't think she pulls it off, but since I couldn't get past the first chapter, I may be way off. Perhaps it gets better. Perhaps. I may try it again later, when I feel less snarky towards it. I really wanted to like it. I did. Swear.

I have managed to do some more revising on some recent poems. So the writing is there. Moderately so. Other things are in the works though while I am in Chattanooga, which include mostly expensive vet trips (impacted teeth seem to be the trend with my dogs at the moment), and house and yard improvements. The downside to that is of course that when you paint the new front door a fresh new color, suddenly the trim needs to be painted. I won't even get started on the other pitfalls of home improvement. But things are slowly getting done.