Posted by deborah

Thanks for stopping by! If you're new here and want to keep up on poetry and 32 Poems, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.

Dan Vera’s idea of taking photos a la Millay by a flowering tree in DC sounds like it was a success. Unfortunately, I had other plans. If they hold this event again, I hope to attend.

Check out the photos of DC-area poets posing like ESVM.

Posted by deborah

I thought this looked interesting for you guys.

Lake Forest College, in conjunction with the &NOW Festival, invites applications for an emerging poet under forty years old, with no major book publication to spend two months (February-March or March-April 2009) in residence at our campus in Chicago’s northern suburbs on the shore of Lake Michigan. There are no formal teaching duties attached to the residency. Time is to be spent completing a manuscript, participating in the Lake Forest Literary Festival, and offering two public presentations.

The completed manuscript will be published (upon approval) by the new Lake Forest College Press &NOW Books imprint. The stipend is $10,000, with a housing suite and campus meals provided by the college. Send curriculum vita, manuscript in progress, and a statement of plans for the completion of the manuscript to Plonsker Residency, Department of English, Lake Forest College, Box A16, 555 N. Sheridan Road, Lake Forest, IL 60045. Review of manuscripts by judges Robert Archambeau, Davis Schneiderman, and Joshua Corey will begin May 15, 2008 and continue until the position is filled.

Posted by deborah

Last night, we took dear friends out to eat at Lebanese Taverna in DC to celebrate our anniversary. I’ve known our friend, C, for 21 years. Hard to believe. I’ve known his other half for 11 years. There’s nothing like good friends, red wine, and interesting conversation for a celebration.

—-

Over the years, my grandmother told me a lot of stories. Now I realize how much I learned from what she shared. When my grandfather died, my grandmother decided she’d stay in bed forever. Someone called her and asked her to a party, and she said no. Then, she called back to say yes. She forced herself out of bed, into clothes and on to the party. After that, she began to bounce back.

That’s what I see myself doing. Today, the little one is at music class with papa. Then, we’re headed to a birthday party and to listen to local kid musicians Rick and Audrey (we love supporting those local artists in our town), and then a mother’s day celebration at our place.

—-

And I still have some good things to say about the husband.

Posted by deborah

Read an interview with Michael Kentoff and myself about writing, creating music and making pancakes. Okay, we did not really talk about making pancakes.

Read our write up in The Washington Post’s Style section today:

LITERATURE Music and Rhyme Beauty Pill’s Chad Clark teamed with Michael
Kentoff of the local acoustic indie-rock band the Caribbean and poet
Deborah Ager to host one night of poetry and music at the Writer’s
Center in Bethesda tonight — free. The event, “The Sound of Words: A
Scheme to Rock the Writer’s Center,” will feature performances by
Kentoff, Ager and Sandra Beasley and Bernadette Geyer. In the meantime,
check out the Caribbean’s stuff on MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/thecaribbean). 8 p.m. The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda. Visit http://www.writer.org, click on “Events.”

Come to the event tonight!
The Writer’s Center
May 9, 2008
8 PM
The Writer’s Center
4508 Walsh St., Bethesda
DIRECTIONS: https://www.writer.org/contact/index.asp

Posted by deborah

Many moons ago, I wrote obituaries for a small Iowa newspaper.

Last week, I worked on my grandmother’s obituary with…my grandmother. She dictated in what order she wanted items to appear and which items were to be included. M. called me, asked how I was, and I said, “well, I’m writing an obituary this morning.” It was surreal.

I thought I would have the whole obituary written, but that grief thing keeps getting in the way. I can’t quite bring myself to do it. We have time, I keep telling myself.

Posted by deborah

Creating a garden makes sense to me. Why join a gym when I can get exercise by gardening? I also want to prove to myself that I really can grow something and have some kind of self sufficiency regarding food.

Today, I went to Home Depot. Since the store is enormous, it’s hard to find what I need. All I wanted were clay pots. I could only find fancy ceramic pots at first. After 10-15 minutes of wandering the aisles, I finally found plain pots. I gather these cheaper clay pots are hidden in the back, so you see the fancy expensive ones first. Very clever, Mr. Retail Expert. Only the truly determined — or those on a budget — would spend that extra time walking up and down the aisles to look for them.

What did I get? Nothing. By the time I found what I needed, the line to pay stretched from here to eternity. I abandoned my cart and left. The crowds at Home Depot are awful and the check-yourself-out machines have a lot of problems that make the wait time very long.

I’ll either go to a local nursery next time — where they have real humans to help me — or see what I can find via Craig’s List.

Posted by deborah

I’m not going to hide the fact that I’m extremely sad about my grandmother’s situation. Sure, she’s old. Sure, we should all expect grandparents to die. Sure, I’m lucky to have known her for this long. Sure and sure.

However, all of that does not stop the overwhelming sadness. It’s not just the dying. It was the horrible bedside manner of the doctor. When my grandmother asked, “what are you going to do for me?” He replied, “not much.” Thanks, doc. That was good.

In movies, the dying person says their loving last words and conveniently stops breathing. We said our loving last words nearly every night for a week. Everyone, including my grandmother, thought she would not make it until the next day. Then, my grandmother would ask, “when will I get out of here?” We did not know if she would rally one more time or not. After all this woman survived breast cancer about 40 years ago. Even two years ago, at age 100, she came back after everyone was sure she would die. She heard people saying she was going to die, got mad, and fought to come back.

She’d call us every morning at 7 am to tell us to bring vitamins, bring her sleeping pills, bring her aspirin.

One night, our hearts broke even more. We left the hospital at 10. She’d been uncomfortable for more than 2 hours and then finally fell asleep. When she was uncomfortable, that meant I stood by her bedside for 45 minutes adjusting pillows. When the bones are nearly sticking out through the skin, there’s not much comfort to be found despite the air mattress, regular mattress, extra pads and pillows. When she fell asleep that night, we decided not to wake her since she was peaceful. She called and said, “why didn’t you say goodnight to me? I waited and waited for you to come back.” I wanted to throw up.

Posted by deborah

Why bother? That really is the big question facing us as individuals hoping to do something about climate change, and it’s not an easy one to answer. I don’t know about you, but for me the most upsetting moment in “An Inconvenient Truth” came long after Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case that the very survival of life on earth as we know it is threatened by climate change. No, the really dark moment came during the closing credits, when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs. That’s when it got really depressing. The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart.

and

But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction. The garden’s season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit — will you get a load of that zucchini?! — suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

I’m starting a garden this year.

Posted by deborah

Read this post for more info about the upcoming reading/concert.

THE SOUND OF WORDS: A SCHEME TO ROCK THE WRITER’S CENTER
Featuring The Caribbean and 32 Poems Magazine
DATE: Friday, May 9
TIME: 8 PM
COSTS: Nothing
LOCATION: The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD

Posted by deborah

Dan Vera came up with the idea to recreate the well-known photographic portrait of ESM. A tree in Brookland (a neighborhood in Washington, DC) is reminiscent of the tree surrounding ESM in this picture:

This is the notice I received from Kim Roberts:

Please come out on SATURDAY, MAY 3 between 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. We will be gathering at our favorite dogwood, a spectacular specimen, perhaps the largest in the District, across the street from the Franciscan Monastery in the Brookland neighborhood. Please come to the parking lot across from the main entrance at 1400 Quincy Street NE. The dogwood is to the right of the parking lot (if you are facing the front entrance).

We will have a camera, and a copy of the famous photo for last-minute help in correct placement of the hands, etc. Please bring your most sensitive, romantic looks. Photos will be posted on the Vrzhu blog for the delectation of all, far and wide.

Please RSVP.

If coming by Metro, take the red line to the Brookland-CUA stop. Cross the bus lanes and take Newton Street 2 blocks, then turn left and take 13th Street 3 blocks. Turn right on Quincy; the parking lot will be on your left.

If coming by car, take Michigan Avenue NE. Turn west onto Quincy Street (across from the Turkey Thicket playing fields) and go two and a half blocks. Parking on your left.

Sincerely,
Kim St. Vincent Roberts and Dan Vera Millay

For Kim’s first attempt at Millay impersonation in 2007, see: http://vrzhu.typepad.com/vrzhu/2007/05/visual_fun_robe.html