happy (belated?) birthday siren

*

If I get this posted by midnight (I've been watching Stephen Colbert a lot lately, which has interrupted a few relationships of mine, like my long-standing nightly dates with Charlie Rose, and now it seems I can't type a few sentences past 11:30...) I can still say happy birthday, Siren. The first issue went up online three years ago, and the sixth issue went up recently. Bravo to all sixty-one writers and artists who have made it grow.

*

sufferin' til suffrage

*

siren's new issue!

*

photo by Gundega Dege

*
Finally... it's issue six!

POETS Michelle Bitting * Mark Cunningham * Valerie Fox * Amy King * Ryan Laks * Gareth Lee * Karyna McGlynn * Natasha K. Moni * Sally Molini * Cait Rappel * Paul Siegell * Elizabeth Volpe

ARTISTS Gundega Dege * Matina Stamatakis * Lafayette Wattles

& News & Notes from former contributing authors and artists Arlene Ang, Kristy Bowen, Stephanie Dickinson, Jehanne Dubrow, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Ira Joel Haber, Dorianne Laux, Rachel Loden, Kiki Petrosino, Peter Schwartz, and Alex Stolis
*

art by Matina Stamatakis

**

google boggle

*
It seems the little glitch with Google was, fortunately, short-lived, and is now fixed. For a short time, trying to travel to Siren via Google took a route to a spam site, instead. That has been remedied, though, thanks to a helpful Google rep, as well as the Siren readers who first alerted me to this problem. 'Gratitude all around.
*

between starshine and clay

*
For Women's History Month:
*
untitled by Lucille Clifton
*
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
*
*
Also see Clifton's poems, "blessing the boats," "a dream of foxes," "poem in praise of menstruation," and essays about Clifton's representation of "the female experience," here.
*
(Some time in March I hope to post a women's poetry reader. Any suggestions?--Let me know.)

rebel fronts

*
For Black History Month:
*
America
by Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

*
see also "Africa," "The Lynching," and "The City's Love."
*

my sweet lovable pittsburgh steelers

*
are going to the Super Bowl again. Even though I'm only one of a gazillion fans, when you're raised in Pittsburgh the relationship you develop with the Steelers and all their many accomplishments can feel very personal. 'So I think how nice of them to do this.

Climate change, an awful economy, eight-years-of-Bush/Cheney-fatigue-syndrome, and other global maladies. But tomorrow the Steelers are in the Super Bowl and that just makes me very happy.
*

very cool cows

*

*

*

I have a new friend who is very cool, and this very cool friend has a very cool website/blog. Actually, two very cool websites/blogs. You can check out the first site, which the drawing above is from, here at somecows. The second one is a suitable surprise, and its link can be found on "somecows," whose name, by the way, reminds me of a great Bob Hicok poem ("great Bob Hicok poem" -- how redundant) called "My new neighbor." An excerpt:


The cow had a metal tag in its ear,
orange with the black numeral 42.
... 42 has large brown eyes and lives in a field
beside a small Presbytarian church.
I guess this makes 42 a God fearing cow
and all cows have large brown eyes if 73 and 12
are a fair sampling. They pretty much do
what 42 does seven days a week, which is eat
and which suggests they are atheists after all.
... It is comforting to talk
to large animals, whether they listen or not.
I said, it is comforting to talk to large animals
whether they listen or not.


(from This Clumsy Living)
**

I think I'll take this opportunity to say eat butternut squash, not cows.

Or at least less cows, more butternut squash.
*

ten favorite quotes about poetry: # 2,1.

*
Someone emailed me recently, simply writing, "so what are your top two favorite poetry quotes?" Last year, responding to a tag in a meme, I posted a little series of my ten favorite, but apparently never did numbers one and two. So here goes:

(To read the others, click on the following: #8-10, #5-7, #3-4.)


2.) Artists love what is raw and degraded as much as what is seemingly fine. They are awed by creation and cannot let a single aspect of sensuous experience go unadmired.

- James Agee


1.) There's this little old Jewish guy with a bald head sitting at a piano and he's being interviewed. And I suddenly realize I'm looking at Igor Stravinski, the great Russian-American composer. The interviewer is saying to him, "So Mr. Stravinski, what is the greatest moment for you? Is it when you finally write the symphony?"
And he says..."No, No, No..."
He sounds like a New York cab driver.
"Is it when you've heard it played the first time by a symphony?" And he says...."No, no, no..."
"What about opening night when they premier it and herald it as being one of the greatest works of the 20th century?"
And he says...."No, no no..."
"So what IS the greatest moment for you?"
He was sitting at the piano with music on the thing there and he says: "I'm sitting here at the piano and for three, four hours I'm trying to find a note. I can't find the note and I'm going 'bum, bum'....'bum,bum'....'bum, bum' for three hours. Finally after three hours I find the note. That's the moment. There is nothing like it. That's everything"
So I started crying because I realized, I had just done The Graduate with Mike Nichols who had helped and had the patience for Anne Bancroftand Katherine Ross and myself and everyone else and the NEED to find that note above all else. It was to find the note day to day. That's what kept me going, you know like even the years before that film when I was lucky to be doing a play in front of ten people -- that moment when you find the note.

- Dustin Hoffman

*
The meme, I think, started on Nick Bruno's blog, They Shoot Poets - Don't They, and asked to “Give us at least 10 quotations pertaining to poetry - from 10 different writers &/or poets which best coincide with your philosophy vis a vis ars poetica. They can be posthumous or otherwise. The order is not important - unless it is to you.”
*

the tao of broccoli

*
I recently had my wisdom teeth removed, and after my dentist (who looks like House and is also so nice I can't help but have a crush on...) administered the local anesthesia, he left the room for a few minutes until the lidocaine started to work. Sitting there with nothing to do I guess I could have meditated but instead my eyes fell to a poster on the wall. The poster (and I'm convinced that my version of McDreamy had nothing to do with the decorating) was a collection of quotes by people "ages 5 to 95," and was entitled Things I've Learned. Most of the reflections were from adults and unsurprisingly included the typical dose of the patently false or downright cliche: I've learned that nothing is impossible; people are like the colors of the rainbow; etc. Then there were some others from adults that were more accurate and even sweet but trite: a marriage or intimate relationship is like playing the violin: to be any good you have to work at it every day; happiness is like perfume: if you give it to someone, you can't help getting some on yourself .

But then this from a seven-year-old: I've learned that you can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.


(File under: reasons why everyone should spend at least an hour every week with someone under the age of ten.)
*

an old rule for a new year

*

Thou Shalt Not Treat People Like Dirt

Just yesterday I came across the work of artist Andy Kehoe, who is the painter of the (above) wonderful painting with the compellingly straightforward statement-title. When I find poems, paintings, and all kinds of other art I never experienced before, if it just penetrates me and my day as if I never saw a painting ever before, never read a poem before, living seems, if only for a few minutes, completely elevated. That's what the dazzling, hypnotic work by this artist did. And does. Follow these links to view his blog, go to his website, or check out his store where signed prints are sold.
*

happy happy

*

******holidays holidays

*

yes virginia there still is a siren

*

and most of the things I needed to finally build a new issue recently arrived under my Christmas tree, which is a little evergreen that lives outside in the dirt year round and is one of the first things I look to when my belief in Santa Claus wavers.

So now when there's no snow outside in which to play, I can have my fun peicing together the sixth issue of Siren. It should be available online in early May.

If you have submitted work and have not heard from me either not at all yet or not in quite a while, I will be in touch soon. If you submitted work that was already accepted, I will contact you first, right after Christmas. I will respond to everyone else after that, but as there's such a backlog now, depending on when you sent a submission, that could possibly be as late as mid-March. But I will do my very best to contact you as soon as possible. My sincere apologies if it's been too long since you've heard anything: much of 2008 I was more tired than usual and just not quite up to par after a knock-down-drag-out wrestle with meningitis and encephalitis. And of course thank you so much for your patience.

Maybe tomorrow morning I will find a co-editor in my stocking. If not, I will not be accepting any new submissions until further notice (check back here or at the magazine itself in about a month or so for news), but Siren will be out and about again in 2009.

pssst: thank you ryan laks for reminding me a little bit of the guy in the big red suit

*

raindrops on roses & whiskers on kittens

Tonight was the perfect night to take a walk: after days of temperatures down in the single digits (farenheit) with the wind chill, tonight was 55 degrees. And raining just enough for a mist. I love walking in rain, and below 50 degrees or so, light misty rain is the best. And it looked so film noir outside too. Unfortunately, I couldn't take a walk because I've had a cold that had started to go away before I then went out on Saturday night and it came back with a vengeance. sigh.

But I had a great night nonetheless. I finally figured out a Beethoven peice on the piano that had been being very uncooperative with my hands for months until tonight. I love muscle memory.

And I got some good news after I finally submitted a few poems the other night, after a fairly long dry spell, not of writing, but of sending my work out for publication. I've always had some strange reluctance about submitting, that I think has something to do with that fear, that I've heard some other poets (and writers, artists, etc.) express as well, that every time I write something that I consider of some value, it will be the last half-decent thing I'll ever write. That seems to lead to some strange hoarding behavior that I don't seem to have with anything else. 'As if I won't have anything left to submit, so I better save my better work for some nebulous someday. But a few days ago I finally overcame that bad habit and submitted to elimae, a journal I've respected for quite a while: its content is consistently fresh, innovative, and genuinely eclectic. I've also always liked its clean look that seems to reflect a professionalism that it has maintained for a long time -- at a time when literary magazines come and go so often and so quickly, elimae has been around since the nineties, a long time for an online publication. Only a couple of days after I submitted my work, the editor emailed me back with an acceptance. I'm quite pleased -- so much so that I immediately put together another submission for another magazine. I'm determined to turn this into a good habit of not letting my work sit in my drawer or hard drive and age for years as if its wine, before doing my best to get it out there. The work accepted for elimae, which is quite new actually, will appear in the journal's next issue which is due out in only a week or two. (If you would ever like to nag me with questions of whether I've been keeping up with what Anne Sexton called the business of words, please feel free.)

And of course I still got to open my windows and enjoy some unseasonably warm sweater-weather, and hear the rain.
*

of the day

*
POEM: "Primp," by Olivia Cronk, in the most recent issue of elimae. Ohhh this poem. The poet also has a really wonderful, really smart chapbook, titled Gazooly, that one can read or download, for free, at Beard of Bees.

STAT: On average, the best paid doctors are neurosurgeons. The top-earning 1% of these highest paid physicians make an average of $2.7 million per year. The top 1% of hedgefund managers make, on average, $877 million per year. (From CNBC's "Untold Wealth.")
*

PERSON: Bill Nye, the once and always "Science Guy," has a new show on the Discovery Planet Green channel called Stuff Happens. Watch the show and/or check out the website to hear Nye explain the toxic effects of PDCB naptholene, which is the active agent in mothballs and what to use instead (lavender or cedar); how to save $ and avoid waste & toxins by making dust spray from lemons and olive oil; what common products contain formaldehyde and how today it takes one half the amount of formaldehyde to embalm bodies than it did 25 years ago because these days our bodies have so much of it already when we're alive (eww). At the show's website (or Planet Green's site home), also check out the green menu links, and especially the blue "Go Green" menu link, for some fun green-ideas and eco-friendly tips. These pages are really helpful for the holidays and have gift-giving ideas, recipes, and a lot of other relevant holiday info.

FIND: Jasper Bernes' superbly named blog, "Little Red's Resolution Trust Organization." Besides having one of the best-ever titles around, the poet's blog gives me new hope that poets, yes, are indeed often a highly evolved lifeform. High intelligence, high art, and high socio-political awareness, without the high drama that seems to infect so many poblogs and group-poblogs.

QUOTE: 'What someone in power doesn't want people to know - that's news. All the rest is just advertising. ~Dan Rather
*

santa baby

*
a secret santa for literary types? i'm jumping right into that bag!
come in and join me right here.

(by 5 december
so you don't get a lump of eco-unfriendly coal in your stocking
or under your tree.)
*

where's habeas?

*

*

click to help find him

*

yes sir

*

there's a very cool new literary journal to check out

*

o captain, my captain

*

*

What greater thing has happened in this country and to this country and from this country in recent memory? And a Democrat-controlled Congress as well. How Rainbow Connection.

But Grrrr and shame on you to all those in California, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas who are responsible for the passing of the propositions to ban gay marriage. All that time, money, energy, and messing with Constitutions, and all those lawyers, Mormons, and political strategists and spin doctors for something that has the simplest of solutions: if you are against gay marriage, don't have one. Take a cue from South Dakota, where a proposition to ban (legal) abortion was defeated.

Click on the photo to go to change.gov, the website for the Office of the President-Elect. (How cool does that sound?)

It was an honor to be one of so many who was involved, even in the smallest of ways, in the fruition of the dream.

*

shame, shame

**
Last night before going to sleep, I was talking on the phone to a friend about the Presidential campaign, and at one point we were talking about where we have voted in previous years, what time of the day we usually vote, and maybe some other little personal Election Day traditions-of-sorts. We also talked about how easy it's always been for us to vote: how we've never encountered long lines, have never been hassled, etc. (We both have almost always been registered to vote in predominantly white, middle class, or upper-middle class areas. For example, for most of the years that I have lived in my home state of Pennsylvania, I have kept my legal, "permanent" address as my parents' address, mostly for reasons of convenience, because I used to move a lot. An added benefit of this, as I saw it, was that I could vote in the more conservative, suburban, swing-district of my childhood, rather than inside the city where I've usually lived and which never needed my liberal vote.) Then this morning when I fed my cats and brushed my teeth and just generally tried to wake up, I watched some of the film, Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, on television. I learned some frightening things and pondered some others:

Florida, 2000
Along with all of the other questionable election practices that occurred there, including the use in some districts of the confusing "butterfly"ballots, the many old, dirty, clogged, and broken machines (mostly in areas of many African-American voters, who tend to vote -- at approximately 90% -- for Democrats) that resulted in the famous "dimpled," "hanging," and "pregnant" chad, and the Supreme Court ruling to discontinue the recount there, a lesser known injustice occurred when about 20,000 legal voters were purged from the rolls because their names resembled the names of convicted felons, who in Florida do not have the right to vote. This decision to expand the list of purged voters to include voters with names similar to ex-felons was made by Katherine Harris, the Republican Secretary of State for Florida, and a leading member of that state's Campaign to Elect George W. Bush, at the time. About half of these 20,000 (non-felon) citizens denied their right to vote were black. (source 1)

New Hampshire, 2002
Allen Raymond, former GOP operative who was arrested for campaign "dirty tricks," recently explained: "What happened was I was contracted by the Republican National Committee to jam Democratic phone lines. So, there's only one thing that goes on, on election day, and that's getting out the vote. And, so those phone lines on election day were used to call people to remind them to vote, where to vote, incoming phone calls telling them where to vote, could they get a ride to the polls, that type of thing. And my job back then was to stop those phone lines from being able to make calls going out or coming in. And it was very effective for the bit of time that we did it." – In his new book, Mr. Raymond writes that these practices were implemented in other places, in other years, and some were sometimes widespread. (source 2)

Ohio, 2004
"People waiting in line nine hours to vote, some getting discouraged and actually going home without exercising their franchise."
- Tim Russert, NBC. 10:59 pm, Election night, 2004. (source 3)

"People waiting as long as fifteen hours, in line, because they only had two places [working voting machines] to vote
-Tom Brokaw, NBC. 11:38 pm, Election night, 2004. (source 3)

Tactics observed, testified to, and otherwise evidenced in Ohio in 2004: Voter intimidation, voters purged from the rolls, barriers to registering, poll observers banned from polls, voting machine failures, too few voting machines, redrawn precincts, pre-punched ballots, ex-felons (who are allowed to vote in Ohio) threatened, fake flyers with false information about when and where to vote, phone calls with similar misleading information, illegal recount procedures, Kerry votes "flipped" to votes for Bush, long lines.
That year, Ohio's top election administrator was also co-chair of the state's Re-Elect Bush Campaign. Bush won Ohio, without which he would not have won the election.
(source 3)

Sources: 1.) Recount, HBO Films, 2008
2.) Real Time with Bill Maher, 10/24/08
3.) UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections

To find out ways that you can protect your right to vote, help protect others' right to vote, or document anything questionable you witness, GO HERE and/or HERE.To read a few tips from Tim Robbins, GO HERE. To find out where to vote, GO HERE.

**