Elinor Nauen

I got this a couple years back from the tree seller on my block. They used to be in front of the Rite Aid on 5th & 1st for years but not lately, probably because of the endless onstruction on the block. This year I remembered to pick up a branch to refresh its tail & antlers. Do I have to throw it out when I've mastered the Japanese art of tidying? Oh gosh I hope not. It brings me joy!  Read More 

Steve (aka Willis) is someone I've loved since the day we met. I love him & I love our past: we met at the last big anti-Vietnam War demonstration on April 24, 1971, & have been friends ever since. I love knowing someone from such different circumstances: the South, after all these years of visiting him in South Carolina (& defending the state to my northern friends), the South still seems foreign at times. For example, I was down there recently & met a group of people, more or less my age, who remembered colored & white drinking fountains. I'm from a different South indeed.

Anyway, I love this photo, which Steve sent me recently. I could put up photos of old friends for a month & say why each of them is important to me. One of the great pleasures in life is having longtime friends, that's for sure. Read More 

I was already in Brooklyn twice this month, for the WWI documentary & to rehearse at Annabel's place on Avenue I for the Double Yews gig at the Poetry Project on New Year's Day. We have a drummer now, at least for that gig. We're doing poems by Bernadette Mayer (to Streets of Laredo) & Ron Padgett (to Turkey in the Straw).  Read More 

We often meet our destiny on the road we took to avoid it.
~ Jean de La Fontaine

Somehow that seems to be about my relationship with Johnny. I didn't want a husband, I barely wanted a boyfriend. Somehow he caught up with me & convinced me this was a good idea—not by explaining but by being fascinating & lively & handsome.

I guess I don't know how to explain this quote at all... Read More 

I spend my time loving Johnny. It's what I do. It's probably why so much else falls out of my head.

& happy birthday to two friends, Ken K who I've known since high school & Bill McF who I met right after high school.
& now the long slide to Christmas, as another old pal memorably called it, is reversed. No wonder I'm a happy winter baby.
& it rained.

I love busy undramatic days. Today I went to class, stayed after & finally nailed one of my "new" katas + the first 10 (of 55) moves of a second. I told pregnant Mei I'd give her $1,000 if she named her baby (due in April) Galveston; she just laughed. Kyoshi Greg gave me a loaf of delicious rosemary bread as a thank you for assisting him with the kids. I went to B&H to say happy birthday to Mike & have a grilled cheese sandwich. I bought 2 books at the used bookstore on St Marks & 3 pounds of coffee (beans, baby!) at Porto Rico. I took 2 books back to the library & checked out 3. I took a bath. A satisfying day & if that's the entirety of my life, I'm OK with it.  Read More 

What was especially striking in the WWI documentary was how awful most of the men’s teeth were. Men: a lot of them were teenage boys, yet had many black or missing teeth. Very few had all of their teeth. My grandma had full dentures, which she kept at night in a glass of water. I thought they were hilarious & always begged her to take them out & put them back in. Dentists used to tell people they’d be better off without the trouble of maintaining their teeth. F Scott Fitzgerald told Sheilah Graham she had good teeth for an English girl. I guess my mom does too: She’s 95 & has most or all of her teeth & they’re in great shape. I remember when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan the first time, my mother came into the den to see what the fuss was about, took one look, said “they all have terrible teeth” & that was the end of the Beatles for her.  Read More 

World War I has always been "my" war. My dad, born 1906, was a child during it, & my mother's father fought in it—not gloriously: he was badly injured trying to open a box of ammunition by hammering on it. Until this week, I hadn't known that my dad's father had also fought (for Germany), after telling his wife, If they call me up, we know we've lost the war.

So when I read about a documentary that restored & colorized WWI footage & matched it with interviews with veterans, I had to see it. It was only playing for 2 days & I had to go to Brooklyn to get seats. So moving to see those scratched black & white faces come to life, grinning, scared, relaxing, adamant, to hear their thoughts from 50 years later.  Read More 

He wins every hand who mingles profit and pleasure, by delighting and instructing the reader at the same time.
~ Horace

Aw, I just want to throw up something from my current poetry crush Horace, the Frank O'Hara of the Augustan world. So funny, louche, smart... I'd love to find a cheesy middlebrow novel about the Augustan age & BFFs Virgil & Horace, with Ovid & Catullus as part of the pack. Has it been written? So juicy! What are all the classicists waiting for?  Read More 

Sheila & Manny's December party is the best event of the holiday season if not the year. Full of extravagantly interesting & gorgeously well-dressed people, from babies through the very old, it could only be a New York East Village do. They live in a house on St Marks Place they bought decades ago, with high ceilings and a million cool objects. They cook for a week—or weeks: cookies, latkes, homemade applesauce, tables of fish & meat & pasta dishes. What makes it so great is how happy they are to welcome & feed us. There's never a martyrish whiff of "what a lot of work this is, are you appreciating it enough." I don't know them very well (we fell to talking on the street one day is all) but I get as big a hug as anyone.  Read More 

I was reassured when Maggie said lots of people are discombobulated this week. I sure am! I lost my beautiful Norwegian hat, & it wasn't the only place I could figure it had to have been so I immediately bought a new one, & it's fine but not the one I got in Lofoten with Robyn & Tone; it's just a hat. I put my socks down & couldn't find them, not by dumping out my bag or looking in the room where we'd changed. One of the students picked them up from the counter behind me: "Socks?" And on & on. I need to hire someone to follow me around & pick up whatever I drop.  Read More 

This was taken at the same time as the picture I used yesterday. A little before or a little after. You can't see it but I'm giving him rabbit ears. I like this guy.

I was looking up the patron saint of failure (Bridget of Sweden) & when I pulled the book of saints off the shelf an envelope of photos came with it. They're from Tara's wedding I think 15 years ago. This is one of them. I like this guy.

Someone—not Buster—referred to himself in an email as a didactic dick, which of course made me love him all the more. Buster I couldn't love more. Sometimes—like when he wakes me by leaping onto my toes—I love him less.

Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.
~ Cesar Lombroso

The more original a discovery the more obvious it seems afterwards.
~ Arthur Koestler

In other words, no one has any idea what makes for genius or originality.  Read More 

In the summer we kids would get to ride in the back of the station wagon in our pajamas to the A&W on Minnesota Avenue & maybe 28th or 29th Street. We usually weren't allowed to order a root beer float with ice cream but we did get baby-size mugs of root beer. So delicious. I loved those heavy glasses.  Read More 

When I was in Egypt in 1989, I bought a silver cartouche engraved with our initials. At dinner one night, a woman leaned across the table & almost shrieked: "Is your name Enjs?!" Ever since, that's been a name we've used: Team Enjs. I call Johnny "Jsen" sometimes.

It's 32 years today since my dad left us.

Several of my friends are dealing with failing parents.

I envy that they've had their fathers so much longer than I had mine but not what they're going through now.

The only good thing about his death is that I don't have to go through it again.  Read More 

This was Tuesday: I had to buy a new microwave. It's stainless steel rather than white. If stainless steel is more popular than white or black, as Silvio the salesman informed me, why does it cost less? I had to go to the dentist: OUCH, & it was work that was being redone because the lab lost the first impression for my new crown. I saw my beloved friend Liza & went to an event honoring a social-justice group we both do work for. I'm still pooped. I like those in-the-thick-of-small-things days.  Read More 

When you are watching a dance performance, there is no research to be done and there are no special methods or, tricks to be studied before you sit in your seat. The big secret that dance lovers have discovered is that there's no secret at all. It's your experience, and the interpretation of it is all yours.
~ Arts Alive, on appreciating dance

Not infrequently someone will say to me after a reading, I didn't understand your poems but I liked them. And I say, if you liked them you understood them—you don't have to translate or critique them.

I happened to go to Alvin Ailey  Read More 

Tomorrow is December 1, 2018. This picture is from around 30 years ago based on Tara's size. What was going on? As usual, I'm not a good reporter of facts. I have a few things stuck in my head but the circumstances of this picture is not among them.

Yesterday Marion called to tell me she finally figured out why she could remember one random baseball name: Freddie Patek. She also had Davey Lopes in her head but that's because he played for the Dodgers, she said.

She had run across this poem of mine  Read More 

What do these words have in common?

Sanction / Oversight / Left / Dust / Seed / Stone / Trim / Cleave / Resign / Fast / Off / Weather / Screen / Help / Clip / Flog / et al

They are all contranyms—words that also mean their opposites. Click on the caption for more.

What if hurricanes were named after poets? These are all poets who've rocked my world.

A.R. Ammons
Bernadette Mayer
Charles Reznikoff
Doug Oliver
Elizabeth Bishop
Frank O’Hara
Gregory Corso
Homer
Ishmael Reed
John Keats
Kenneth Koch
Lord Byron
Michael Lally
N (I can't think of anyone!)  Read More 

I ate the last treat I brought home from Norway. Just in time—it was definitely a little stale. But delish!

"Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust"
~ Robert Lowell
from "To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage," in Life Studies

Lowell died in 1977 but this line sums up so much of what is despicable & sad about tRump. Well, would be sad if he wasn't full of the ability & desire to do harm.

The last two lines of the poem:
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant.  Read More 

There's this woman I was friends with when I lived in Maine but haven't seen for 40 years. I guess we only really knew each other a couple of years, although in one's 20s a year of friendship is a lot more than it is now. I lived not far from her sister when we Mainiacs were living at Idiot's Point in Prospect; she lived on Nantucket, still does, as far as I know, but came up a lot.

The thing is, even though I very well might not recognize her on the street, I can't forget her birthday. It's not something I try to remember: birthdays stick to me like thistles. Always have. It was my big party trick but thanks to Facebook it's no big deal these days to know everyone's birthday. I always try to think how I could make money in a bar with my idiot savant talent. Any ideas?

And yet, obsessed as I am with birthdays, the only poem I could recommend for my sister to read at a birthday party of a couple both turning 60 was a variation of Ted Berrigan's immortal:

30
the fucking enemy
shows up  Read More 

I know, I know, it's hard to figure out what's even going on in this picture so how could it have (almost) ruined my marriage?

If you look closely, you can make out that it's a picture of a couch falling. It's a couch falling because we threw it out my window. It was aqua-green with a kind of nubby finish & no legs. It was curved too. Not comfortable & it took up a lot of room, given that only one or maybe 2 people could sit on it.

Johnny was new in my life & I had one of rare fits of home improvement. Or maybe I threw it out to symbolize the future. What a satisfying hollow explosion it made falling into the courtyard!
 Read More 

Today I'm remembering the mid-80s, when I hosted several Thanksgivings for 30 or more people. Everyone in the building made food. The years when Maggie had to be at work at 3, we called dinner for noon. We were late-night folks then & I remember sleepy guests & undercooked capons & chili.

I guess my holiday tradition these days is  Read More 

The snow was beautiful but wet & heavy, and the leaves still on the trees added their own weight plus held the snow. As I walked around, almost every block looked like this, where branches had come down. In no case could I see the wound on the tree or anything missing. How could that be?