Snowfall at night and the Streetlight

So much going on right now--busy at work, my father very ill, so I have been traveling back and forth from Chicago to Detroit quite a bit--I am tired of being worried about him all the time, but I sure want him to be here on the planet so I can worry about him.  I'll get back to regular blogging at some point. Until then I am grateful for the snapshot moments of beauty: the first real snowfall, and being out walking in it.

Ten Sentences I Wrote Across the Pages of an Art Magazine

So I am getting ready to move into a new place, and I'm trying to get rid of a lot of stuff in my place: books, clothes, magazines, etc.  I have a lot of art magazines I brought home from work over the past few years--to get full credit from the distributor, a bookstore only needs to return the cover of the magazine, so I was able to take a lot of coverless magazines for collage and so forth.  I have a long history of stealing sentences from art magazines, but sometimes I leave sentences behind, written on ads and images from exhibitions.  I tend to think of these sentences as springboards--a position to dive from and write my way into something (and then back out again.) Here are ten from one magazine, written down so I am free to recycle said magazine and not move it to a new home two blocks away. Feel free to borrow a springboard if you need one.

1. He was terrified of waiting in the airless glass room.

2. When she thought about her mother she often became anxious.

3. The suspicions never end at the bus stop on Broadway Avenue.

4. I wondered if it was time to bring out the bucket of nails.

5. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever allow myself to feel that rage.

6. At night the river was made of black glass.

7. Sometimes it's best to sit on a stone bench, and think.

8. Ever since she was a little girl she wanted to marry a man with the head of a bird.

9. The sight of his blood came as a relief: the body continues to be a factory.

10. I'm still working out the way to seal my heart off from the far greater world.

Little Red Riding Hood Walked on While the Wolf Ran Ahead

A few weeks back I found some language arts cards at Four-Sided, a framing and ephemera shop on my street. I don't know if they are actual pages from a book, or cards that came in a lesson planning kit, but I wish I could have all of the ones around the story of Little Red Riding Hood.  (I bought three, and thankfully they are double-sided.)

Here is Exercise 2, in it's entirety:

Exercise 2.

Draw, cut out, or build with sticks:

1. A pair of shoes.

2. A shoe under a bed.

3. A doll with closed eyes.

4. A man's foot.

5. A horse's foot.

And here's another section of one card.  Eyes on your own work.

A Poetry Prompt from the Good People

The Good People of Right Hand Pointing, that is.


Here's the deal: (and I quote) 

"Issue 48 will be a special issue, due in March 2012.  We’ll start reading for it now.  In addition to our usual flavor of short fiction, all the poems accepted for that issue will be short narrative poems.  Our usual length guidelines apply.  (75 words or less but up to 100 words if it’s 16 lines or fewer.  16 lines or fewer, but up to 20 lines if the poem is 75 words or less.)  By narrative poems, we mean poems with at least one character and a plot.  It's a challenge, getting a story told in a short poem, but it can be done!" 

And then they deliver up an Alice Walker poem as proof.  It's recommended that you submit your poem in the next two weeks to have a chance of being in this issue.  So ready, set, write.  (Or scramble through your archives and see what might fit.)  

In the General Excitement, Gratitude, and Pride Department

Things have been very busy here at Lives of The Spiders.  Three of the prose poems from my Artistic Statement series just went live at kill author. Three spider poems, two of recent vintage and one (An Unknown Species) that was written in the late 1990s were just published by THIS magazine. And the fine folks at THIS saw fit to nominate that poem for a Pushcart Prize.  I have always been both proud and baffled by that poem--it came out of nowhere and was not similar to anything I'd written before. I think it was one of the first things I wrote where I used something, a quote in this case, as a diving board, to jump into the not known, as close to the unconscious as I can get, and just write what wanted to be written.

I'd like to thank the Academy.  And the editors.  And also Bill Yarrow, who met me at a reading and suggested I send some poems to THIS. Excuse me, I'm off to make some metaphors or hammer some bricks or drink some champagne or something.

Keep an eye on this space. In late December or early January I'll be announcing an exciting new phase of Lives of the Spiders.  More webs!  Different weavings!  And an invitation to join in some writing mischief.

Artistic Statement # 20

Artistic Statement # 20

Based on your elderly neighbors’ recipe, I have created a new form of meatloaf, where an excess of ketchup is a glimpse into a life. Spatial relationships between breadcrumbs and eggs become an indication of tension or emotion. The psychological state of this particular kitchen is emphasized and described through the interaction of salt and pepper. I think we’re going to need to scub this rust off the cast iron skillet to get things started. Rust or dried blood, only grandma knows the truth.

Night Arrives So Soon These Days

I just got back from The Chicago Book Expo, a gathering of independent Chicago-area presses held in the building in Uptown that once was a Border Bookstore, an irony not lost on the many participants.  (So few items now in that space would have been carried by the big box bookstore.) I wish I'd planned and plotted better to take advantage of all the opportunities: workshops and readings and panels, but I just walked in off the street.  After running into some people I knew, I did a bit of the walk around and look at tables and talk to people thing. I was able to feel chipper and conversational about twice before my usual shyness took over, but at least I bought a sturdy handful of books and journals, my own small economic stimulus package for small press publishing.  Once I had decided I could not make small talk with another person, because let's face it, I'd done it four or five times in the space of a half hour period and was really at my limit, plus I was getting sweaty from social anxiety and too much clothing on in the warmish space, I exited into the dim November afternoon, thinking that I should use the artistic vibe I'd been breathing and sit and write something. The closest coffee shop was a Starbucks, and the nearest independent coffee shop was full-up, so I walked home, for a much more wallet-friendly cup of tea.  Kate Bush's new album playing on the internets courtesy of NPR, and the biography of Van Gogh I am reading calling me to sit on the couch and spend some more time in that life of sorrow and delusion and brilliance.