A HONEY OF A REVIEW

as well as a one-act passion play! You're welcome, I say, to Rebecca for her review of Galatea's honey. To make that honey, the girls (what we in the trade call the bees) sip/pollinate from many oak trees, Mexican sage, tons of roses, lavender, the vegetable garden, sunflowers, tons more flowers that I cannot name ... and the water which is better than anything bottled hence the name of my street, "Crystal Springs."

I'm posting "You're welcome" here because I can't comment on Rebecca's blog for some reason -- but not surprising to Moi as mountain internet is not capacious ... anyway, You're welcome and Enjoy!

THE GLORIOUS VARIETIES OF MOI MIDDLE NAME

Now, unlike with that country song, moi hubby did promise me a rose garden!  So, we mostly leave the mountain to rest in its natural glory.  But the hubby did carve out a rose garden whose blooms I can bring into the house.  And, with spring sprung the roses have bloomed!  Here's what I brung to the kitchen:

Here's where they came from:

You most definitely should click on the images to enlarge.  As for Moi?  I'm delving deep into the closet for more vases!

POETRY = GIFT

I understand why folks rarely gift me poetry -- coals to Newcastle and all that.  But, this year, I wanted poetry books under the tree and so prompted the hubby on what to get for said purpose.  Entonces, I received two items: the marvelous LOST AND FOUND: THE CUNY POETICS DOCUMENT INITIATIVE SERIES III and Dodie Bellamy's THE BUDDHIST which I've desired for a while:

With the above, it seems a timely time to post what's likely to be my last 2012 update to my Bought Poetry List (poetry books or books in other genres by poets):

LOST AND FOUND: THE CUNY POETICS DOCUMENT INITIATIVE SERIES III—comprised of

DIANE DI PRIMA: THE OLSON MEMORIAL LECTURE, Edited by Ammiel Alcalay & Ana Bozicevic

EDWARD DORN: THE OLSON MEMORIAL LECTURE, Edited by Lindsey Freer

LANGSTON HUGHES, NANCY CUNARD & LOUSIE THOMPSON: POETRY, POLITICS & FRIENDSHIP IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, Edited by Anne Donlon

JOANNE KYGER: LETTERS TO & FROM, Edited by Ammiel Alcalay & Joanne Kyger

LORINE NIEDECKER: HOMEMADE POEMS, Edited by John Harkey

MICHAEL RUMAKER: SELECTED LETTERS, Edited by Megan Paslawski

JOHN WIENERS & CHARLES OLSON: SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE, Edited by Michael Seth Stewart

THE BUDDHIST by Dodie Bellamy

LARYNX GALAXY: PROSE POEMS by John Olson

NEW & SELECTED POEMS (1995) by Ron Padgett

CITY OF CORNERS by John Godfrey (I already own it! Another case of buying books I couldn’t remember I already owned. So, this “spare” copy is placed on moi Community Book Shelf in case you want to trade!)

WHAT THE STONES REMEMBER: A LIFE REDISCOVERED, memoir by Patrick Lane

PUTI/WHITE by Patria Rivera

LOVE POEMS by Rene Ricard

5 SHADES OF GRAY by Eileen R. Tabios

***

Before we opened presents, of course, the hubby had to gift us breakfast -- David Eyre's pancakes!  Thanks Tom!

Served with Galatea honey reflecting the terrain of the mountain.  So ... sweet!

SPRING FLOWERS

Keep having intermittent showers as winter clings on. But today's walk among the flowers just make me even more eager for ... Spring!















And the flowers are just beginning to bloom!

REVISITING WINE POETICS

Brilliant poet Sharon Mesmer asked me a question recently, and I know she speaks for many of you 9 billion Peeps, when she asked:

SM: I keep wanting to ask you this (and it's something I should know!): what is Galatea's Mountain??!!

Moi: I molt, I mean, I live on a mountain. I named the place Galatea after the Greek myth Pygmalion and Galatea (made into movie "My Fair Lady") where sculptor Pygmalion sculpted an ivory statue of a lady so beautiful he fell in love with her. So he prayed to the gods to make her alive. The gods indeed turned the statue into a human. But the myth ends (I think) with the woman stepping off the pedestal with no info on whatever happened after she stepped down from the pedestal. So I "continued" the myth by positing that Galatea, as a human lady, became interested in nature, art, poetry and wine (stuff in which the household is interested). Interestingly, the house is named "Pygmalion" because the house now doesn't move (it's the "statue" today). Reason is that Pygmalion was a misogynist and one can assume that once the statue became human, he became disappointed too in Galatea's inevitable human failings. So I "froze" Pygmalion into a statue (house) where he is frozen forever in his love for Galatea (albeit the image of rather than human reality of Galatea)....so that on the mountain he is *fixed* as an embodiment of love rather than misogynism.

I believe I concocted all that when I was into moi wine cups...

SM: Well, goddess bless ton wine cups! I love your application of myth to life. I knew about the Galatea/"My Fair Lady" connection, but not the rest, and your re-framing of it, which is really brilliant. I teach a class at the New School called "The Muse Singing: Myth in Poetry From Antiquity to Today" and I am always wondering why contemporary (and peer) poets have seemingly abandoned myth. It's like they're embarrassed by it or something.

Interesting, ain't it? To quote RL (Hi to you, too!), and that's THE END.

ABOUT THOSE ASIAN AMERICAN FEMALES...

I find this photo hilarious -- a bride and groom by Stella Lai's installation, "Don't Touch Me."



I've always thought this installation is one of Stella's best-conceived works. Those heads are wax. Then she crocheted blue and white masks to put over them, such that they'd come to form the phrase "Don't Touch Me" when you walk away from the wall and look at them from a distance. That is, the phrase is not evident if you're nose to installation.



So many concepts--both art-world bred and general--are addressed by the installation. Lissen up for your art-reading du jour:

First, this is an exercise in making and not just concept, referring to ye olde discourse in the art world. Crocheting all those masks must have nearly given Stella carpal tunnel syndrome (said syndrome being a sign of the commitment to the making). And yet what are being made are repetitive, both the molded heads and the masks, such that it evokes the factory, except the factory is one. It's worth noting that the artist had come to install it in the house and after the installation, she then signed her signature on the wall beneath the piece's lower right-side corner. By itself, that gesture says something about the commercialization/commodification of art, nay the fragility of existence! -- how, if the signature is part of the work, and I believe in this case it is, then the installation is no longer independent by itself but tied to the life of the house (which can be sold, demolished, damaged by an earthquake et al). If the house owner had to move from the house, for instance, is this an art work that can be moved/separated from the house? Take that, ye art collectors vs art appreciators!

Second, and I do believe Moi contributed to this (such is my role for ye artists, of course), by happening to have a white wall for the installation. That is, this area is the house's foyer and the hubby and I determined a long time ago (much to the distress of some visual artist friends) to keep the walls free of art, in part to focus the eye to the view of nature just beyond the French doors opposite the front door. We made an exception because the installation, with all of its white heads, is not obstrusive. Not obstrusive -- almost invisible, like the hidden subtext of this work by a Chinese female.

Or, perhaps, Chinese-American now since she's been working for years now in the U.S. where she surely couldn't escape ethnic / immigrant issues including the stereotypes of Asian Americans and/or Asian American females. So, close up to the installation, you don't see the message of "Don't Touch Me." What you see are faces, but you may not necessarily see the true face or identity -- they are masked!

You have to walk away from the installation in order to see the true message, "Don't Touch Me"! There has to be distance between you and the installation. If the installation is a persona, it means you can't be infringing on that persona(l) space. You can't be colonizing that space. You have to be respectful.

But the message is obviously belligerent. Well, belligerence is not what's been associated with certain stereotypes of Asian(-American) females, yah? What are those stereotypes? Quiet, model minority, demure, exoticized for the male gaze et al -- all disputed by belligerence.

Indeed, in order for the work to be installed, the wall behind it had to be penetrated as many times as there are heads. That is, each head is at the end of a big nail that had to be screwed into the wall. The act of installation was a furious experience -- loud, noisy, messy. It was not ... demure. I can easily imagine the act of installing to have been a performance of acting back at how the Asian American female has been objectified in the past.

Indeedy, you can push the above lines of thought to say the impossible commercialization of the installation says something about the impossibility of owning the (Asian American) female body -- doesn't that resonate in light of such matters as the mail order bride, sex slavery/trafficking, domestic worker abuse etc?

Okay, nuff said. I can say more and I could have said the above more intellectually but what do you expect from a two-minute posting? Let me now get to the point of this post (hah). We interrupt our regular programming to share photos from a wedding that took place on Galatea a few months ago. The groom is our best friend, such a good friend we built a house just to throw him a wedding someday. Which is not to say we don't feel sorry for the bride. But, okay, Best Friend: here are the scenes from the crime of your bride's appalling taste (and don't forget what I said about us Asian American females!):

ARCHITECTURE POETICS

When you accommodate the environment instead of trying to colonize it, you can create Beauty:



Galatea--the loving intersection of nature, art, poetry (well, and of course, wine!)...

The light, not the walls, are pink, btw -- I guess the walls miss F. Oh! Those palms need a haircut! Chatelaine duty calls....!

A THOUSAND WORDS

A colorful sunset over Galatea...



Photo by Jane who runs marathons through Napa Valley.

HOUSECLEANING -- A PATH TO POETRY

I LOVE ART and of course appreciate living with art. To keep track of the progression of artists whose works enliven our living space, I keep art files. Basically, anything related to the artists' works -- from exhibition announcements to correspondences (love hearing from artists) to media -- gets filed.

That is, they're supposed to be filed. Instead, for the past five years, I've tossed these bits of info onto a windowsill in the library, intending to file them. Well, this week, the files are updated, courtesy of Michael. I needed to give him a chore and thought filing also would give him an excuse to read and learn about other artists.

What I discovered, though, in going through the five-years-plus information piled up on the windowsill were some old poems whose existence I'd forgotten. I occasionally stumble across old poems in various nooks and crannies, and this sheaf of three were, I realized, poems from a stay at MacDowell years ago. So I read them -- which was interesting because after several years of separation I could read the poems as a reader and not their author. What a relief to discover that I loved "Opera For William Carlos Williams," a long poem about the sexual lives of visual artists; its epigraph -- and may it amuse you as much as it must have amused, and still amuses, Moi -- is

"the derivation of the adjective venereal is from Venus!...I was stunned!"
--Dr. William Carlos Williams

Not only that, it's a long poem -- 216 couplets! I immediately thought it'd make a neat chap! Interestingly, one line was from what my notes say was a breakfast conversation with then co-resident Lucy Grealy!

I also discovered a 22-part poem, except the first three parts are missing; I don't yet know what to do about the missing parts. I might do a "Dave Brubeck" on it, in terms of how he ended up composing/finishing "The Time of Our Madness".

The third poem was a silly one-pager about martial arts and I must have thought it also unsatisfactory at the time I wrote it as I hadn't bothered to transcribe it yet from handwriting.

Still, this is a pretty good haul to discover -- I often wonder what's lurking within moi voluminous files. In any case, perhaps I should clean house more often!

SPRING

likes to come early on Galatea. Here's a picture of the garden just beginning to bloom...the hubby insists I give him credit for the landscape design sloping down the mountain so yadda (there are animal hay(na)ku on each panel of the octagon base of the fountain where Achilles and Ajax play draughts):



This is our last year of construction around la casa, but it is nice to be able to see this much progress, notwithstanding the still bare fruit trees. Hopefully, we'll do better with flowers than we've done with veggies & fruits. Until I start embarrassing moiself by counting a city slicker's harvest again, here's the latest Relished W(h)ine List:

PUBLICATIONS
Hay(na)ku for Haiti (Click HERE for more info and free book offer!):
#1: PARTICLE AND WAVE and FROM THE CHAIR by Jean Vengua
#2: On A Pyre: An Ars Poetica by Eileen R. Tabios
#3: Hay(na)ku for Haiti by Tom Beckett
#4: when the earth moves by Lars Palm
#5: After René Depestre’s “My Definition of Poetry”, as translated by Edwidge Danticat, with lines at the end by Lafcadio Hearn by John Bloomberg-Rissman
#6: Mrs. Quake by Nicole Mauro
#7: Through Having Been, Vol. 1 by William Allegrezza
#8: Through Having Been, Vol. 2 by William Allegrezza
#9: blonde topography: a terse set of tercets by steve dalachinsky
#10: Drop, Portion and Assignment by Peg Duthie
#11: As I Speed to Your Place by Amanda Laughtland

NINE TEEN HOURS (RADIO EDIT), poems by Jim Warner (very clever conceptual underpinning: hay(na)ku written during a nineteen hour plane ride between the Philippines and U.S. Good for chapbookpublisher.com for yanking this out of the author!)

MUCH LIKE YOU SHARK, poems by Logan Ryan Smith (very clever music from a fallen angel)

GENJI MONOGATARI, poems by Mark Young (freshly clever and musical take on intertextual reading)

NTST: THE COLLECTED PWOERMDS OF GEOF HUTH (a freshly rolicking read)

LETTERS TO AN ALBATROSS, poems by Anita Mohan (a freshly auspicious debut)

I WAS THE JUKEBOX, poems by Sandra Beasley (the muscular confidence underlying these poems are a fresh antidote to the more common self-deprecation found in contemporary poems)

HER FRIENDS DOWN AT THE FRENCH CAFE HAD NO ENGLISH WORDS FOR ME, poems by Patrick James Dunagan and visual art by Jason Grabowski (lovely intimacy)

MORTAL, EVERLASTING, poems by Jeffrey Levine

THE FAT SHEEP EVERYONE WANTS, poems by Bern Mulvey

FATA MORGANA, poems by Reginald Shepherd

MAINSTREAM, poems by Michael Magee

THE IT-DOESN'T-MATTER SUIT, children's story by Sylvia Plath, Illustrated by Rotraut Susanne Berner

TOUCHING THE VOID: THE TRUE STORY OF ONE MAN'S MIRACULOUS SURVIVAL, memoir by Joe Simpson

THE INNOCENT, novel by Harlan Coben

TELL NO ONE, novel by Harlan Coben

THE WOODS, novel by Harlan Coben

FIFTY GRAND, novel by Adrian McKinty

THE DEAD YARD, novel by Adrian McKinty

DEATH MATCH, novel by Lincoln Child

HOSTAGE, novel by Robert Crais

L.A. REQUIEM, novel by Robert Crais

CHASING DARKNESS, novel by Robert Crais

THE FORGOTTEN MAN, novel by Robert Crais

KILLER INSTINCT, novel by Joseph Finder

AWAKENING, novel by S.J. Bolton


WINES
2006 Peter Michael Chardonnay "La Carriere"
2006 Long Meadow "house red" cabernet blend
Veuve Cliquot Brut
2005 Luce Abbey cabernet
1998 Torbreck "Descendant"
1994 Penfolds Bin 707 cabernet
____ Penfolds Dawson's Creek shiraz-cabernet blend

FROM GALATEA'S MOUNTAIN

one can see the center disc of the galaxy, and from such shimmering "cloud" a spiraling shimmery arm: a broken circle denoting the spiral. On the left side of vision, bright Jupiter. On the right, the Big Dipper. From Galatea's mountain, no night -- just a canvas of non-metaphorical stars, less than a touch away:

what happens when
air is
clear



And now you know why blue is my favorite color -- ye music of the spheres...

THE HAY(NA)KU IN THE WORLD

As a poet who believes in letting go of her poems, who believes poems are not the property of anyone including their author, I have enjoyed the hay(na)ku for having an ideal journey out there in the world. It spread through the internet, of course, swiftly leaving my loving hands. And it's appeared in journals and books viz authors who really can do this form way better than I can. (That others can do the form better than its so-called inventor is a significant part of my and the hay(na)ku's poetics, but that's a rambling discourse for another day...)

Now, the hay(na)ku continues my vision of a poem's ideal journey by leaving the "poetry world" and moving forward to the larger world (where I believe poems ultimately should find their way). To wit, I'm purrrrred to discover that a chained hay(na)ku (which will appear later in THE CHAINED HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY) has appeared in a corporate newsletter! The form was taken up by the company's in-house editorial staff, then came to find its way onto said newsletter. If I told you the company's identity, it'd be a more impressive achievement but I, for a complicated reason, can't reveal said identity. But the hay(na)ku -- a poem -- has appeared in a corporate publication, complete with a footnote about the hay(na)ku form itself.

I love it -- poetry infiltrating the capitalist sector. May it brighten up some worker's day -- lighten the drudgery, make a Man relax his uniformed shoulder, ... mayhap make someone who otherwise ignores poetry read and even attempt this very inviting form.

*****



Speaking of the hay(na)ku, the big, burly men are back on the mountain. We are working on implementing a humongous fire protection system, among other things. The "other things" include installing a marble fountain that features statues of Achilles and Ajax playing chess (an image taken from one of the most famous Grecian black-figure vases, 530 BC). They plot and strategize their chess moves within an octagonal base. On each side of the octagon, a hay(na)ku is featured about some of Galatea's most beloved citizens: Achilles, Gabriela, Scarlet, Artemis, Michael ... and Galatea herself.

Well, yesterday, I happened to look out the window and became fascinated watching one of the big, burly men reading the poems. After he installed one of the bases along the octagon, he stepped back to read the poem. Then he began slowly circling the fountain to continue reading the other hay(na)ku. I held my breath, waiting for him to show some sort of bemused reaction -- like maybe raising a hand to scratch a sweaty brow or sumthin' that otherwise indicated he thought the poems silly. But, no, this big, burly man just kinda gave a brief nod to himself after he finished circling the fountain...and moved on to the rest of his day.

I am optimistic over his response which I interpret (or maybe misinterpret, but allow me my idealistic canoodling here) as receptiveness. Through his reading of the fountain slabs, I hope he'll remember in the future how, one day, off he went to work and ended up reading poems. Poems -- they should be part of everyday life...

!

WRITING REALITY

Hadda go into San Francisco and spend the morning going over legal papers for, ahem, "Galatea Winery and Vineyards, L.L.C." Always a frisson when I'm there all lumpy in my farmer's garb as I sit in my lawyer's sleek skyscraper office. Anyway, whilst signing signing signing -- and being all grumpy about it because the promised bagel with cream cheese didn't appear -- I noted the need for business cards so that I can impress the hawks ever-circling over Galatea.

Moi: So what's my corporate title?

Lawyer: What do you want to be?

Well, Wall Street always had the most boring titles so after some thought:

Moi: THE EMPRESS!

Lawyer: [silence]

Notary in the room: [stifled laughter]

Moi: Didn't like that? Well, what's actually my legal title in the company?

Lawyer: "Member"

Moi: Are you serious?

Lawyer: Yes. Legally, you're either a member or a manager and you happen to be a member.

Moi: But shitski, Legal Peep. That is banal. Okay, how's about --

THE IMPERIAL CHATELAINE!

Lawyer [after sigh]: Your peeps will think you're just a fat bottle.

Moi [suddenly noticing her wine-plumped belly]: Okay --

THE IMPERIOUS CHATELAINE!

Lawyer [another long-suffering sigh...]

Moi: Okay. Let's make it simple. From hereon, I am the company's

CHATELAINE!

*****

And what does all of that have to do with Poetry, youse ask? Well, the "Chatelaine," I remind y'all, was something Moi concocted for the delectation of poetry blogland. And now it's a reality. Thus continuing my 1,000% batting average on writing things viz poetry ... that then become true!