poetry problem; or I wake up and spend twenty dollars [Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Dearest Bleaders,

Well, Phoebe Putnam I hope you are proud of yourself.  I clicked right through to amazon.com and now await mailbox boxes.  

I'm in a state of being rather abated, or rather, I set out some bait, cake with a note please eat, note to self, let's see what gets ate. then when the wait, like the weight of a lake held at bay by a leaf, or a near spilt stew held back by a bay leaf, gets about time to burst into the having heard, it occurs that one is terrified.  you can shadow box your bruised and boozy heart but you can't fake the shakes and since we all die anyway, why lie?  

why feint when no one cares if you faint.  things have been clear, darker, and louder; faint ain't neither.  

one, two, tuna half, three

i don't care if my numbers agrees.

one thing i learned from the interwebs is that if, while you are sitting at your desk, you rotate your right foot clockwise and, still so doing so, lift your hand and draw a figure 6 in the air, your foot will change direction.  the web note's author added, "and there is nothing you can do about it," which i enjoyed tremendously. It is nice to have an opportunity to submit.  you are the otter of your own fat, as laura Kightlinger once said. 

It is nice to have an opportunity to submit to the universe, ay?  I just invented a drug called egoviagra, you take it and you can start capping your "I"s.   When I semiconsciously fear I'm bragging and might be disliked for it, i started dropping my fps cap case, as a sign of humility, to ditch catching a cuff.  Yeah, wassit to you, i flinch.  (thirst bears and zing you lair.)  (first person singular.)

Yeahbut, nobut, yeahbut, one thing I really should tell you is that I have a poem in the current issue of The New Republic, on account of the great poet C. K. Williams, poetry ed of the NR, reading my New Yorker poem and emailing me to ask to see something for them.  Flattered, much?  

Blissed. Then yes I spent a few days on what to submit and what he took was a poem I'd known by heart from the moment I wrote it.  Now I just heard that the issue is out, on the stands tomorrow.  There is no online link to the poem here, just the Current issue Table of Contents with my name and the name of "Split," which even now it is falling unbidden syllable after syllable off a shelf in my head, like strung beads, slowly, by gravity, unstringing.  Do I believe the poem's strange claim?  I do. 

Also, as I mentioned last week, I have a figurine in a horse race: SignificantObjects.com.  Having stumbled out of the gate, I no longer want to win, but am content to fail spectacularly.  Still, I'd like the figurine to go to someone who would love it a little.  At this point, I think I love it a lot, but I don't want to buy it as that screws with the game as explained.  The auction is over soon, 20 hrs.  In any case, click to the Significant Objects site.  Perhaps another author's item will pop your auction paddle into action.  It's too good a game to miss and, in prediction, for both the talent and the notion, it won't be soon forgotten.  And you can still buy a little hunk of it, cheap.

...

Well, about the waiting: Across the long day of writing this post while tending my garden and kinder (3 and 5), I have heard back from the assistant to what I await to inform that next week is when I'm waiting for.  So I might as well unfreak, for the dime bean.

Thunder has started to rawk Brooklyn.  Boom.  Like the song says.  Above, when I said dime bean, i meant time being.  

I'm excited for my new poetry coming in the mail, Marie Howe has a new book, I mean, that's a wow in full palette where most news are whatevers in green.   Along with Phoebe, thanks and blame go to Nick Flynn for nodding at the delight of its cover, and Brenda Shaughnessy whose review in Publishers Weekly reminded me how much I love Howe (she makes me cry too).  I bought Rebecca Wolff's new book this am as well.  The drawback is that I have no money for this.  But why draw back?  I choose to draw forth.  

Anyway these ladies write poems that actually say things that refer to the way life is, all bleached bones in the body and red sauce on the wall of it, and i need it.  Especially under all this barometric pressure.  

xox

Jennifer

ps after Jury duty sent me home on Monday, me and the fam went to the boardwalk.  i took this pic for you because i love boardwalk fake food, like the fake hanging corn here, and I figured since we have so much in common since you keep bleading, that you probably love them too.  for more on said trip see my rather silly blog, Dear Fonzie.

http://jmh-fonz.blogspot.com/2009/07/after-jury-duty-today.html

more fake corn.  enjoy!

xoxjmh

Comments

[Stacey]

Hey Jennifer, So cool that we hit "publish now" at exactly the same time!

[DL]

JMH, thank you for this spirited post. Almost like having you in the room! I'm in the north of nowhere and I'd love to read your poem in the new TNR. Can you e-mail me a copy?

[phoebe]

jennifer,

according to my mother, "If you start the six from the bottom and not from the top, your foot will not change direction!"

hope you like the Howe and the Wolff.

all best,
phoebe