Hiya, Cupcakes [by Jill Alexander Essbaum]

I am saddened to announce that I am no longer able to serve as Foreign Correspondent for the illustrious and estimable Best American Poetry Blog.  Nein, nein.  For, these days, I am no longer over-seas, but stateside.  I am not anymore far-off but quite, very quite near-by.  I have sloughed my alien shell for native skin. Ich bin kein Berliner. Alas, my broke-ass heart and her two cats done took a fly-fly in a big ole metal-bird back across that little drink of water that separates Europe from America and that self-same heart, singed though it’s been, shattered though it is, and shut-the-fuck-upped as it ever will be, now grocery shops for one and sleeps alone in a bed made for two. (It is, however, an outstanding bed, I should note, purchased from Craigs List and be-linened with divine plum purple satin sheets).  I am — bluntly stated — no longer a diamond in the duodenum. Which is to say: an exquisite foreign body lodged in an orifice in which it don’t belong.  Adieu, Confederatio Helvetica.  A-mother-effin’-dieu.

But worry thou not.  From the burned up bones of the position of Correspondent rises a fresh Phoenix, a right rickety witch, a me-of-the-BAP-blog version 2.0.  I shall be (for the next week anyway) your Coeur Despondent… your very own Miz Lonesome Heart, here at your simple service, where I shall avail myself and my self’s (occasionally veiled) usefulness to you, my friends, all and only for you. 

Give me your tired, your poor, your befuddled messes— I shall give you the answer you seek (though, Achtung, it may be one you do not wish to know).  Tell me your tale of woe, my Pet — I’ll soothe you with the balm of mine own empathies.  Offer up your worst on the altar of my advice.  I’m here for you, Boo.  And I really mean it. 

In addition, I’m offering line-edits of single stanzas of poems. 

So send your questions and lines of poetry to my email address: jilly (at) essbaum (dot) com.  No problem too big, no stanza too buggered. You will, of course, remain anonymous.

In addition to the above nonsense, you may be subject to seven days of blathering on topics including but not limited to: details concerning the American half of my following-Nick-Cave-on-tour tour (my favorite topic), further extrapolations on the merits and mysteries of Old Time Radio (my other favorite topic), and why you should be reading my friends' books (my other, other favorite topic). 

Wanna take a ride?

-- Jill Alexander Essbaum

Comments

[Stacey]

Count me in, sweetheart!

[Jill Essbaum]

hot dammity damn!

[paulajane]

[she] rises with her [raven] hair...

welcome back state-here-side, jillie.
the lone star missed you bucketfulls

[DL]

Bienvenue aux etats-unis ou liberation rules, mein liebchen.
So generous of you to offer line edits. Here's one that's been bugging me. It comes at the end of the eighth stanza of a nine-stanza poem, and it arrives as a rhetorical climax:
"We must love one another or die."
It sounds good, I know, but it's untrue -- we're going to die no matter what -- and I have this old-fashioned notion that poetry and truth should go together like wahrheit und dichtung or conjugal love and Alberto Moravia.
What should I do? Junk the stanza? Junk the poem? Can you think of a way to save the line? Like maybe changing "or" to "and"?
For your muse-inspired vice and advice I thank you in advance of the guard.
Ton ami
PS How about "the conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder"? That's another line I'm not quite satisfied with.