1. ensure that there are equal rights under the law for all.  

2. remove the death penalty.  people are too stupid to kill people.  people kill people. thus:

3. buy atheist bloggers coffee or tequila.

4. light candles, let zaniness ensue.

5. education is compulsory.  tax the dead to pay for this.  

6. "do not commit adultery"  

7. Stop instating statues, calling them sculpture.

8. Remove hassles and obstructions.

9. Be nice.

10. Don't be the "Jesus Lady."  Get a hobby.  I recommend scrapbooking.  

11. End massacres.  

12. Support scholars.   (see #3)

13.  Don't be superstitious.  It makes you look stupid.  See #2.

My Life, My Version

So I'm driving down RCA (formerly Monet), which has a scary 45 mph speed limit for a two lane, unlit, no- shoulder shortcut road.  I am thinking to look at some computers in person, and then get them cheaper online, as is everyone.  The hood of the car flies up and shatters the windshield.  Driving blind, I'm able to pull to grass.

Now, if it were my car before it was cleaned, it would have some rope in it.  Instead, I have a lot of suits I haven't "let go".

Tomas, who sees me, from doing some landscaping @ a house he used to own across RCA, joins me.  While our first thought is just to bend the hood back, replace the windshield, he shows me how, no... that won't work.  He goes back across the street, gets some rope, ties down the hood.  I introduce myself, shake his hand, go home.

I call the most awesome car glass replacement people ever, and they give me advice.  While I'm on the phone, I msg an fbook friend -- same set of advice from Marc.  Just as I have located a salvage BMW 318ti hood online, Kmal psychically calls.  He's got the day off work and lives near the yard.

I know Mom is at PT, and I can't find my key to M&D's house.  I duck tape the hood, drive there anyway, because I've just returned Dad's metric ratchet set to him.  Dad is there!  So we poke around the garage, and we can't locate the tools.  I limp the car to Kmal's, visiting Dad's fave salvage yard en route. (Milena is super smart, but the yard doesn't have a hood.  Many phone numbers exchanged -- a back up plan.) I continue on.  Kmal is working on his garden.  He drives me to the yard.  The guy looks up the non-public version of the database in which I had located a BMW 318ti.

"Good luck, it has been here more than 60 days; the hood can't possibly be there."  Kmal and I decide that @$2/each, this is worth the price of admission.  We walk to "I21" the compact imports aisle.  Everything is wonderful.  The hood is already detached (note, I couldn't find tools) and leaning on the front of the car.  So Kmal lifts is up, and carries it to the cashiers, just as the yard is closing.  $50.

But wait, the hood would have fit into MY car, but never Kmal's.  Kmal quickly convinces a very nice man in a truck leaving the lot to drive the hood to my car.  I gave Kmal $10 to give to him, which is far less than his gas and time.   We wedge the hood into the back of the car, tie down the hatch, and tie down the wounded front hood.

Updates to follow.

Dietary Laws

I'm sick and tired of dietary laws.

As a former anorexic and bulimic person, I should be able to eat whatever.  As a person with severe food allergies, I should eat whatever doesn't make me violently ill.

Really, poetry constraints are sometimes fun, and so are others, but really, poetry comes from a complete opening and engagement.  Doesn't food?  Sustaining and wow, tasty.

I'm not writing this as a person who has not been without refrigeration for years, all totaled and told:  some practices are, well,  practical.

Some Cars

I have several pages of this list from grad school... somewhere... nevertheless

Mom's Red Vega.  My sister was passenger when some guy slammed into her car at a four way stop at the corner of Decatur and Monroe (near where a friend and I mistakenly placed a "Daly for City Council" bumper sticker on a stop sign.  That was not easy to remove.).  Mom's knee went through the dashboard, and she had a big Y-shaped scar.  I think that might be the knee that just got replaced.

Mom's Illinois Power car.  It was purchased from IPC; all their company cars were dark green.  I skidded out of control in some sleet, steered to the skid, and ended up with a choice:  house or tree.  I chose tree.  I'm bleeding, the accident having wrecked my chin.  I knock on the house door, ring the bell.  Nothing.  I walk several blocks in the freezing rain to Perkins Cake n' Steak on Pershing Road.  The hostess is really nice, and somehow I get change for the payphone to call Dad, and wipe up some of the blood.  Since I couldn't really speak at this point, I think she might have called.  I distinctly remember writing a number out for her.  Decatur Memorial ER stitches up my chin, and by this time DPD is there in the ER.  I don't remember if I got a ticket or not.  I think I did.  Leaving the scene.  The car is moved to the parking lot on the same road  where my Mom had a shop.  Friends of the family salvage the car for us:  perfectly driveable, just a foot shorter than it had been.  The plastic surgeon removed the stitches next day, with the comment, yeah, you never put stitches in a young girl's face if you don't have to do it.  Years later, I have two of my bottom front teeth finally replaced.

Mom's big fancy car, white with a blue interior:  Thunderbird.  It is my third birthday.  Everything is set up on Friel Court, and Mom and I go to the bakery to pick up my cake.  I am wearing a red plaid dress, and have a rockin' updo.  A tri-delt backs into us as we are entering the park.  The handle flies off of the passenger side (mine).  I remember sitting on the floor, and after Mom has called everyone -- including her friends (toddlers can't wait birthday parties -- someone ran to A&P to get a sheet cake, I'm sure) -- the police and the girls coax me out.  [this might be a repeat post; my memory is failing a bit]

My parents bought the Austin-Healey Sprite in England, I think.  It had a grille plaque from England.  Since it was so tiny, they sold it when Mom was pregnant with my sister.  She couldn't drive the car.  Good family friends' daughter bought it, maybe not from my parents, but it is not as though there were many Austins around Central Illinois.  I found it again, in the Classifieds, when I was 14.  Dad and I went to visit it.  Maybe there were some balance sheets involved, how I shouldn't spend any money on a car, especially one I couldn't drive.

Walking Home from School

Grade school walk home from school:

Library:  check out children's books on how to learn Chinese.  I think they were still using punch cards at this point.  Look at the elaborate punch card machine and files. Old Post Office:  it was a pricey candy stand manned by a blind man; this is where I once heisted a PayDay candy bar and had to return it and pay for it.  Look at the Wanted postings on the wall, and all of the marble and old light fixtures.  Black's Hardware:  old fashioned wood-floored hardware store has, upstairs, chemicals for when one runs out of chemicals for your chemistry set (common exchange:  hmmm... tannic acid and sulfur... ???). Kirlin's :  smell all the differently-scented candles, look at the peepul watchers (pom poms with google eyes), and miniature Peanuts-branded products.  Go to (local department store that begins with an "M"; I don't remember the name) and has a tea room on the mezzanine, a tea room with giant jaw breakers and other candy.  Order tea.  It came in a glass carafe.    On first visit, get asked, "Do your parents let you drink hot tea?"  Parents may have been called.  Become a regular.  Drink tea and examine the elaborate faux Victorian menu.  Invite friends for tea.  Carson-Pirie-Scott has tiny Hello Kitty-branded items.  Roth's: homemade peanut butter fudge sundaes. Del's:  just stand there and breathe, or go in and loudly wonder what pralines taste like. Enloe's:  no tax on candy bars. Bolay's Hobbies (next to Enloe's):  slot car racing, love beads.  Dodge the Jesus People (although the hippie chicks are nice, the guys are scary); dodge the (unaffiliated) Jesus Lady.  (I have accepted Jesus into my heart too many times to say.  You're just a walking target in a catholic school uniform.)

Junior high (same walk):

Go into Post's, The Legacy, etc. and look at all the pretty jewelry.  Check LPs, Videos, and strange paintings out of the library.  Look at 60's Vogue microfiche and current Harper's & Queens.  Go to the office supply store.  Visit that clothing store that was so very 30's Hollywood (Van... hmmm), with a grand sweeping staircase, and briefly had a disco basement.  From home, start walking back to downtown to the thirft shops.  Find a $20. bill on the street, together with a friend.  Try to turn it in to the thrift shop near where we found it.  Shopkeeper says no one has reported that missing.  It is ours.  We decide to blow it, of course.  Go to our favorite weird bodega/toy store.  Buy the most ridiculous sunglasses we can find:  my friend wisely purchased sparkle purple frames with pink-to-purple mirroring that made her look like a fly, I chose green sparkle frames with green and yellow mirrored lenses that made me look like a fly.  I do not recall how we spent the remaining $15.  Probably at Fannie Mae:  she loved peppermint bark, and I was a mint-melt-a-way devotee.

High School:

Get a ride to downtown, which is walking distance home.

Next Big Todd Baron!

What is the working title of the book?

 

The title that is working is AS  YET

 

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Recently, my books have been about systems of domesticity, of domicile, and what’s in one. Thus music, film, food, people, and conversations both had and imagined. But that’s what a lot of my work is about.

What genre does your book fall under?

David Levi Strauss and Benjamin Hollander, in ACTS magazine in the 80’s coined the term Analytic Lyric for the work we were al doing. I still am there.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

The words would all be Gena Rowlands, John Cassevettes, Timothy Carey, and myself.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

 

The word and its language. The thought, and its staccato voice.

 

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

 

3 years.

 

 

 

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
need. (song)

 

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Poetry is a very specific construct. 

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

 

? It’s already published. Out last month by CHAX PRESS in Az.

Make up a question you think is pressing in way of poetry today.

Who is Jack Spicer and why isn’t he pitching for the Dodgers?

Why aren't you reading Marianne Moore? 

 

The Next Big Thing

What is the working title of the book?

It is called CONFITEOR, a 1,000 page project in ten volumes, three trilogies and one more (for a total of ten).  I feel so very metric.  DaDaDa (2003) consists of Reading Fundamentals, Heresy, and Legendary.  OOD:  Object-Oriented Design (unpublished) consists of Queen of the Sciences, Obj. x, and Eidolon.  Dia (in process), currently consists of (not necessarily in this order), All the Angels & Saints, Trouvee, and perhaps Dark Night.  The fourth volume is Addendum.  

There's also a distaff trilogy.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatæ Mariæ semper Virgini, beato Michaeli Archangelo, beato Ioanni Baptistæ, sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis, et vobis, fratres: quiapeccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem, beatum Michaelem Archangelum, beatum Ioannem Baptistam, sanctos Apostolos Petrum et Paulum, omnes Sanctos, et vos, fratres, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum.

I confess to almighty God

and to you, my brothers and sisters,

that I have greatly sinned,

in my thoughts and in my words,

in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,

through my fault, through my fault,

through my most grievous fault;

therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,

all the Angels and Saints,

and you, my brothers and sisters,

to pray for me to the Lord our God.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Da3:  Sissy Spacek.  Clips of important female interior designers, queens of the Bs, and a James Joyce cameo.

OOD:  Montage of the star girls.  Ginger Rogers and Grace Slick.  If Adeena Karasick and I re-inact my identity theft (stolen money spent on Fifth Avenue), is that tax-deductible?  

Dia:  Catherine Deneuve, Katherine Heigl (All the Angels & Saints are catherines, stealing a note from bp nichol); Fiona Apple, Ani DeFranco, Joan Jett, Marianne Faithfull, Joan Baez (trouvee is troubaritz); Jewel (ok, I would like Jewel to do my version of St. John's Dark Night of the Soul).  

Addendum:  Not sure.  Maybe Justin Bieber.  

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

There's not a synopsis in one sentence, but there's a log line:  

Sex! Algebra! Music!  By turns poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, CONFITEOR is wild, confusing, and true.  

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Da3 took me about five years; OOD, the same, but I tweak it since it hasn't been published in book form.  

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Chris Hamilton-Emery, John Kinsella, female "creatives" <<

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Dear reader:  maybe sex, drugs, and rock isn't enough.  Maybe all womens writing from all places/times through a lens of 20th century art movements bores you.  Maybe you don't care about LINUX, boolean algebra, philosophy, revolutions... and maybe you don't need advice on decorating your house or curating your art collection.  Do you have roses to hoe?  Do your green rashes thrive, O?   

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I have a considered relationship with publishers who are as DIY as I am.  Agency?  I am the agent.  To belabor that, I have agency, particularly in my work.  CAA didn't hire me....  

Make up a question you think is pressing in way of poetry today.

Is it beautiful?

Tagged thus far:  

Maryrose Larkin

http://maryroselarkin.blogspot.com/  coming soon!

Warm Storage – Christine Kennedy’s studio blog
http://warmstoragestudio.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/the-next-big-thing/

Larkin Higgins (coming soon!)

Todd Baron :
http://cadaly.blogspot.com/2013/02/next-big-todd-baron.html

Anna Lena Phillips

http://todointhenewyear.net

ttp://theendearments.wordpress.com