Deviant Dispatches

Source The World Turned Upside Down was written in protest of Parliament. Legend says that the song, referenced in the musical Hamilton, was played by the British Army upon their surrender to the United States. Listen to me and you shall hear of government gaslighting, opulence, fear: Since  Galileo in days of yore, you never heard the like before. The truth is despised, “alt facts” are devised, And science is kicked out of town. Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turned upside down. Astrophysicists did rejoice to see gravity waves; others sang with one voice That climate change is humanity’s thing, that now genes may receive editing. ( Let all honest folk take example and note That truth is not false, being bound.) Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turned upside down.   Our  Commander thinks himself a king, reddens to hear we’re organizing; Upon the border he’ll set a wall; Muslims already are part ...

" Pomegranates on black" by PiskunovArt Sunset skin hiding pinpoints of blushing ambrosia easily burst as the whole breaks in two, then more while mining the seeds dull and placid promises now stripped from the bitter flesh.

This weekend, I went to the Memorial Library Book Sale with a group of friends. It's part of the Wisconsin Book Festival every year, and this was my first year attending. (Last year, when I was in the book business, I was required to work rather than go to it.) This book sale is terribly exciting because on the last day, you get to fill up as many bags as you can carry, and each one is only $4 (though some friends were charged $5 for an extra-large bag - still a great deal). At an event like this, when all the good stuff has been picked over in previous days, you don't expect to find much that you've been meaning to read, but you do always find some little treasures that make you squee in delight. Following are some of mine. Legends of the Ferengi by Quark, a.k.a. Ira Steven Behr  I'm excited about this one because I'm a geek (obviously), but especially because Spousal Unit and I have been watching lots of Deep Space Nine lately. I tried to get him to wat...

Some days suck for no good reason. Yesterday was one of those days for me. I was mentally tired all day, and little things kept getting to me. (In the light of a new day, they weren't that  little, and it's kind of reassuring to know they were things worth worrying over.) I struggled through the morning, and then fought my way through work. By the time I left at the end of the day, I decided that only a bottle of my favorite wine would make me feel better. So I stopped and got one, and it turned out that my favorite wine is not my favorite anymore. (Or maybe I got a bad bottle.) It made me want to throw things and break stuff and scream, but instead I just sat in bed with Spousal Unit and hated on crossword puzzles. On days when I can't figure out what set me off in the first place - days when I'm just a little down or need an extra hug and no one's around to give it - I always end up thinking of a particular poem. Reading it, while it doesn't cure anythin...

April is National Poetry Month . Now that the month is almost over, I ought to mention something about it. I love poetry anthologies, mostly for their element of surprise. You never know who you'll find in them, or which poem will be your new favorite (because the book isn't usually named after it). Some have themes, like love, or a certain author, or cultural tradition. Some anthologies are mostly terrible. But I believe that as long as an anthology introduces me to at least one great new poem or author, it's done its job. A Thousand Years of Vietnamese Poetry  (tr. Nguyen Ngoc Bich) is one such anthology. I discovered it at a used bookstore in downtown Eau Claire, which may or may not yet exist. The poems and poets provide an intriguing view of Vietnamese history, culture, and folklore. My favorite poem is an excerpt from "Sorrows of an Abandoned Queen" by Nguyen Gia Thieu. Speaking of her prince, the queen laments: And oh, within the screens, his awe...

Technically, it is at last spring. The last week or so has felt like a fast forward to July, but at least the mornings still have a little bite and the grass is dewy. One or two trees outside are budding, confused by the odd winter and odder rush of heat that came after. The lakes have melted; ducks and robins aplenty are pooping happily all over the parks again. And, with the sun setting later in the day, I can take glorious sunset pictures again. One week ago today, I planted an amaryllis bulb my brother-in-law gave me for Christmas. It's already in full bloom, with two more buds waiting to be unleashed. Fall and winter are always in competition for my favorite season. Usually, fall wins out, but spring is so invigorating that I always reconsider it on arrival. (It eventually loses out because of bugs and impending heat.) This is our first full spring back in the Midwest, and part of me is surprised at all the green appearing, almost as if I didn't exp...

I'm really missing my books lately, especially the poetry ones. Hopefully we'll be reunited soon, but in the meantime, I plan to find some of the poets I don't have yet. Reading more poetry is, believe it or not, a step in working on my novel, to make my prose more lyrical. (All of these poets and more can be found on the Poetry Foundation's website .) Robert Hass is one of these. He's known as a poetry translator, along with writing his own poems. If you think poetry translation is just a matter of knowing another language, think again. When a word can have several different meanings, how do you choose which one is just right? How do you keep the feel of a poem when it translates with such different sounds? It's a difficult thing, which Hass does well. Several years ago, I went to a reading of his in Chicago, and he was delightful. I'm not looking for a specific book of his; anything will do. Another poet I'm seeking is W.S. Merwin , author of The ...

William Carlos Williams is one of my favorite poets. One writing exercise I like to do involves mimicking my favorite writers, so I wrote this poem, based on W.C.W.'s poem of the same name , which involves fewer governments and more plums. This is Just to Say I have disbanded the government of which you were so fond and which you probably wanted not to change. Forgive me; it was horrible, so rotten and so vile.

When I was in high school, I was part of the Forensics team. (Not the crime-solving, fingerprint-collecting kind, the drama and presentation kind.) My category was poetry, meaning whenever we had competitions, I would get up before a group of people and read my selected poetry outloud before peers and judges. Junior year was my best in Forensics, when I read the poem "Ball and Chain Record Store" by Ellyn Maybe. In the poem, the main character ends up calling her boss a pig, wreaking havoc on the store, and waltzing out to the beat of a drum nobody's playing. I went to the state competition in Madison each year I participated, but junior year was when I received a perfect score and a gold medal - not an easy feat. But I'm sure half my success is owed to the poem I chose. (The other half goes to my coach.) I found that poem in The American Bible of Outlaw Poetry , edited by Alan Kaufman. A copy showed up at work the other day, and it's sent me into a fan...

Remember how I was hoping for snow yesterday? It snowed last night! It snowed last night! It's perfect.

A week ago, the Great Outdoors behind our apartment was a snowy winter wonderland. Now, it's... you know... not. Yes, there are some snowflakes in that picture. I was looking at the weather report for New Mexico earlier, where they've gotten one blizzard and are expecting another. I was wistfully wishing for a few flakes of our own when I looked out the window and saw them! Great, fluffy white things, prompting me to think of this poem my mom always recited when I was little: It snowed last night! It snowed last night! The sky bears had a pillow fight! They tore up every cloud in sight And let down all their feathers white. It snowed last night! It snowed last night! I still recite it to Spousal Unit every morning after a snow. Unfortunately, after I had taken a few pictures, trying to capture the molecules of frozen water, they completely disappeared. Now the sky is empty once again, full of only longing and heavy clouds that say, "May...

Yamuna’s Table by Yamuna Devi takes Indian cuisine and Westernizes it. There are some incredible recipes in here, like Blackberry-Filled Baked Apples with Saffron Pastry Cream – the main one that caught my eye. And amazingly, even that recipe looks like a simple task, despite the extravagant name. At first, I didn’t really buy the book’s tagline, claiming that this is healthful vegetarian cuisine. Almost every other recipe seems to have some sort of cream sauce. But the saffron pastry cream is made with skim milk, skim ricotta cheese, and nonfat yogurt. There’s a watercress cream sauce, also made with skim milk and only 1 tablespoon of butter, and the avocado cream doesn’t even contain dairy: just avocado, lemon juice, and grape juice. So on second glance, it’s pretty healthy after all. Devi has an interesting past – she’s sung backup for the Beatles and prepared food for John and Yoko (as mentioned in her recipe for Quinoa Mac and Cheese with Veggies), and also for Indira Gandhi. If n...

Not my picture of the poet Today is E. E. Cummings's birthday! This is a big thing to me because when I was in high school, I went to a library book sale with my mom and found a copy of 50 Poems by him. I was completely blown away by his work. I couldn't believe that "l(a" was considered a poem. And that was one of his more understandable poems. His style of work really made me rethink what I thought poetry was and led to experimenting with my own. I still identify with a lot of his work. "i sing of Olaf glad and big" is one that I especially took to heart when the wars started. Be warned: it's an anti-war poem and gets kind of graphic. Cummings's poetry is part of what made me so against war early on. Garrison Keillor on Writer's Almanac read one of my favorites this morning, "you shall above all things be glad and young." The last two lines are beautiful: "I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousan...

This is a poem from after my writing started to improve in college. Yes, I wrote plenty of poetry in high school, and some of it was okay. But most of it was bad teen poetry (BTP), and luckily, I was cured of this affliction (I think). If you or someone you love has BTP, please head to the nearest library and read, read, read. And please, don't ever write about how your life is like a black hole. Homage to My Butt My butt goes out and decides not to return. Little clump of fat, wandering ill-lit streets, searching for a dry muskrat den of its own. The toilet seat, the sunk-in couch, a scrap of celestial rug, even granny panties. We all confer, in shambles, hoping to suck it back home though I am most alone now. No butt to call my own, no way to sit or dance or fall flat on my ass which went out for a smoke and hitchhiked to Montana. I hope some dumb goat eats it.

Today, I present for your enjoyment some poems I've written in the last several months. Only lightly edited, and they still need improvement, but I'm willing to let them see daylight. Summer, 1990 Give me the farm instead, fresh manure on the breeze in bean fields, the cloying oil of musty dog stuck tightly to each finger as I separate berries from the vine. Give me the farm and naked, dusty feet where I search for burrs and snakes but never broken glass where love is all around in a faded yellow jingle, and no shattered paper cups listing in the dust. Give me the farm and a broken grey barn and a road where one car is commotion. Where a mud puddle stagnates midst corn all summer and mosquitoes feast on sweaty, red flesh. Give me the farm and you can keep the rest. Toxin Overnight, my food has turned to flower. Damp roots have sprouted deadly blossom and stare out from the pantry daring me to grasp dark purple petals. Tubers are now a morning delicacy, a glory I eagerly devour,...

Vacation is over; It's time to depart. I must leave behind (Although it breaks my heart) Tadpoles in the pond, A can of eels, A leaky rowboat, Abandoned car wheels; For I'm packing only Necessities: A month of sunsets And two apple trees. I'm packing today. What are you doing?

As you all probably know, I like to buck the system from time to time. I especially enjoy this when it comes to a certain heart-infested holiday used to force consumers into purchasing as many obnoxiously sweet gifts as their little pocketbooks can afford. So one year, I cut various organs out of construction paper and wrote these little diddies on them. And they were my Valentine's cards. Written on kidneys Roses are red Violets are blue I give vital organs To no one but you! Roses are red Violets are not My heart is beating My kidney was not. Roses are red Violets are blue Who needs two kidneys? I'll give one to you! Roses are red I like my heart It's very nice And my kidney is not. (The above kidney was drawn to have an eye patch and a knife.) Roses are red Violets are stupid Here is my kidney Instead of a cupid. Written on spleens Roses are red Grapes can be green I'm using my heart So here is my spleen! Roses are red You need a joint I need a heart But a spleen has...

First off: I don't think poetry is pointless. Poetry draws out emotion in a world where many people prefer not to think about what's going on around them, prefer not to question their environment, the past, anything that might come up complicated or controversial. Poetry is the rule-breaker in literature: it doesn't have to follow any specific conventions to be poetry. It is the most finely crafted tool for questions, expression, rebellion, and almost any other situation you can think of. The catch? The above only applies to good poetry, and we all know there's lots of really awful verse out there. David Orr takes on all the crappy modern poets he can get his hands on in this book - starting with Jewel. I owned Jewel's poetry book when I was in high school. I loved it (I was in high school). Now that I'm more aware of what constitutes good poetry, I'm interested to see what Orr has to say about her and other modern poets who threw some words together an...

Our wedding vows, adapted from Ingrid Michaelson's "The Way I Am." Soon-to-be-Spousal-Unit: If you fall, I will catch you You need help writing, I'll get a pen Cuz I love the way you jump on the bed to wake me And you take me the way I am Me: If you fall, I will catch you You need a spark, I'll be your muse Cuz I love the way you grumble every morning And you take me the way I am Soon-to-be-Spousal-Unit: If you are sullen, I'll give you laughter You're sad or hurt, I'll share your pain Cuz I love the way you take things to heart And you take me the way I am Me: The Cubs are losing; I'll ease your pain The world is dark; I'll show you stars Cuz I love the way all things in you run deeply And you take me the way I am Soon-to-be-Spousal-Unit: If you are chilly, I'll be your sweater [Note: He accidentally said 'sweaty' instead. Way cute.] You get too worried, I'll rub your back Cuz I love the way you're cold, but love the snow A...