Elinor Nauen

I have been visiting South Carolina regularly since I was 19—more than 40 years. My friends, and their friends, are not hate-filled racists. They are parents, grandparents, sons, daughters, mothers, gardeners, artists. They are involved in their communities. They hate the Confederate flag that flies over their state capitol.

Remember these names: Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons Sr., Sharonda Singleton, Myra Thompson. They too were grandparents, sons, graduates, reverends, coach, mothers. They were all deeply involved in their community. They were murdered in their church.  Read More 

I seem to be singing more & more in public—the Double Yews, at my synagogue—but I don't really sing. What does that mean? It means I have no training.

I do now! I went to my first-ever singing lesson this morning, in the parlor of a grand Washington Square building, now a senior center. We did warmup exercises, both physical & vocal, then sang folk songs ("Shenandoah," "Greensleeves"), popular songs (something by Irving Berlin) & rounds ("Freres Jacques"). The teacher, Richard, was encouraging & had specific directions, most of which I couldn't exactly follow, but some I could & it made an immediate difference.

So fun to learn something new! Aprenc tant existeixo! I learn therefore I am!

Update: Oh my! I just ran into Richard—he lives around the corner—& I thanked him & said I guess it was obvious I've never had a voice lesson, and he said, "Oh, you'll be able to do anything you want–I don't say this to everybody."  Read More 

It's well established that people have a “bias blind spot,” meaning that they are less likely to detect bias in themselves than in others. But how blind to our own bias are we Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have developed a tool to measure the bias blind spot, and found that those who believe they are less biased than their peers—which is almost everyone—are less likely to be a good judge of situations and actions.

For example, physicians assume that gifts  Read More 

Why do chickens lay eggs every day? Other birds don't do that, right? Does someone sit around training—coaxing? whipping?—chickens to lay daily?

It turns out they lay an egg a day till they have a clutch of about a dozen eggs that they then sit on. If the eggs are taken away, they keep laying.

Some further facts & a question:
* Some hens are bred to have a  Read More 

Hitchhike
Study Sanskrit
Yiddish camp
Sleep with Derek Jeter
The heart attack
Marry Johnny Stanton
To the moon
Play third base for the New York Yankees
Change my name
Throw a couch out the window

Robyn fell for Bosch at the Prado—I mean, who wouldn't?—and emailed me the other day: "An internet genius in the modern age blew up this bit and transcribed the notes into playable music and someone else on the internet decided to write lyrics to the butt-written tune and record said song in Gregorian chant style. This is why the internet is the greatest thing ever!!!"

While I love all the cute kitten and tear-jerking dog videos, the  Read More 

I just read that "moist" is "the worst word ever" and a 2012 New Yorker poll that asked readers to choose a word to scrub from the English language in 2012 chose moist by overwhelming consensus (I would have nominated "knotty pine"). Why?

In three experiments, researchers from Oberlin University in Ohio and Trinity University in San Antonio found that more than 20 percent of participants where averse to the word.

Again, why?  Read More 

Dance to the Music of Time, by Anthony Powell (1905–2000) is 12 volumes of autobiographical fiction & even though I'm only halfway through I am already looking ahead to—well, starting it again, most likely.

It's fun to run across gems like the below but reading the whole thing is like floating in a warm pool on the first day of vacation: you can't imagine ever doing anything better.

Some Powell quotations:
The nearest some women get to being faithful to their husband is making it unpleasant for their lover.

 Read More 

Oh my darlings Sylvie & June!

Sylvie, age 7, gives the most fervent hugs ever. We are planning a date, just the two of us., & we're both excited to think of something special to do. "When I was little."

June is at the age (4) where she likes jokes but  Read More 

= Eddie, my beloved mailman, is retiring August 1.
= Eileen is going away for most of the summer.
= My dermatologist said, No one from the office calls you back? No one here takes MY calls.
= Michelle emailed, "I tried to leave and she told me I have to stay because they paid for me to be here" so we  Read More 

Some information & instruction (translated from Korean):

Application for Special Population
1) Sub-health people with weariness, ennui and unknown etiology.
2) Office worker of sitting and standing for a long time, and driver.
3) People of treasuring own body, pursuing the health, worried about aging and illness, and liking building stronger bones.

Function Characteristics
1) Promoting the blood circulation and smooth to eliminate the weariness.
2) Adjusting the rhythm of sport and relaxing to improve the sleeping.
3) Enhancing the metabolic functions to keep the bloom.
5) Adjusting the secretion of balance function to build stronger bones and keep beautiful face.

Application Method
1) The foot massager machine is made from natural wood.
2) The use time of foot massager machine is within 2–10 minutes.
3) When using the foot massager machine, body need to be kept the upright posture, left and right feet need to be alternately trampled (i.e. trample on the same place). Read More 

Probably the first poem I learned by heart—I must have been 4 or 5—was "One Misty-Moisty Morning," which I always assumed my mother brought with her from England. South Dakota, being a prairie state, didn't get much fog, but I recited it any time we got a little, and I still do. I've only ever met one other person who knew it.

One misty-moisty morning
When cloudy was the weather
There I met an old man
Clothèd all in leather.
He began to compliment
And I began to grin.
How d'you do, and how d'you do
And how d'you do again.

There are variants on these words but this is the way it's in my head.  Read More 

Fun! We had fun & I think the audience did too. Or so they have said.

Fun. Yes, a good thing in poetry indeed.

Our show had the right combination of amateur & professional—that is, enthusiastic in execution but not necessarily polished, and professional in knowing what we were doing in putting the works together.

Set list: Read More 

Nervous & excited to play tonight. I was going to wait till tomorrow & report how it went but pretty distracted at the moment. Annabel Lee & I have been matching up the work of American poets with popular & familiar tunes. Then we play them with lots of different instruments—guitar, harmonica, fiddle, piano, noisemakers, & more. It's fun & I hope it illuminates both the poems & the songs. More on this tomorrow.  Read More 

My face looks like that because we advertised ourselves as doing Mud Boxing. There used to be an exfoliating product called Mudd so our suggestive lure had a basis in reality. I fought Rose Lesniak, who kept saying "don't hit me in the face, I'm an actress!" Finally, I said, on the count of 3 let's both just fall down. We did, & everyone yelled Fixxxxxxxxxx! I guess she wasn't that good of an actress. This was part of a Jeff Wright extravaganza at Charas called More Party than Arty. Early '80s.  Read More 

Lorca got sick pretty suddenly but it turned out it was evidence of some terrible problems. Today Maggie took the difficult & responsible step of euthanizing her.

Lorca—a cat more full of curiosity than any I know, who took an interest even in the vet's room, sick as she was. A fat cat who got skinny. A 15-year-old who was almost put down 14 years ago—truly a rescue. A cat who saw Maggie through an awful lot. A tolerant cousin to my spitty Dante & hungry Buster. A lovely presence.  Read More 

I love Shanee Epstein's work & have been to many of her shows at her gallery in Brooklyn. I never bought anything, partly because I liked almost everything so could never make up my mind, partly because I didn't trust my eye, partly because I wasn't sure it was OK to spend money on art.

Luckily, Johnny doesn't have a problem with any of these. We finally agreed on a colorful piece ("Skylight"), only to find out it had just been sold. So he ("we") bought the piece I liked best from the start. I love the 3D texture and subtle prairie-like colors, and it reminds me of a bookshelf—but Shanee calls it "Sail." Emily Dickinson, thank you: "there is no frigate like a book."  Read More 

When I was an 18-year-old hitchhiker, I had a mission: to find the best hot fudge sundae in the world (really, the Midwest). I ran out of appetite pretty early on, having never really been a collector, but not before the prize went to a diner on the outskirts of Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

It was good to have a goal.

Some things were easier then. For example, no one had invented multitasking.

Some things were harder. At least now I no longer have to decide whether to keep studying Sanskrit (nope), become a cobbler (good heavens, not anymore), break up with so-and-so (yes! what was I thinking? yes!).  Read More 

September 9, Whole Foods
             “In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities.” —Rimbaud

hot here

ah

a breeze flies by

cafeteria roomy
they don’t bother you

“Someone stole your bag while you were in the john.
You didn’t say  Read More 

I miss the days when my neighborhood was raggedy & people just hung up their underwear to dry, unconcerned about looking good every second. Now I'm just an invisible lady with gray hair that the cute girls knock into while texting. Wait! I'm not complaining! (I'm on Complaint Restraint this month.) It is what it is. Shabby always makes me happy & I loved seeing this the other night in an Allen Street backyard. Read More 

I've had a line stuck in my head since I was a teen: "little beings of pure spirit whose normal body temperature is 125°." It's from Salinger's Seymour: An Introduction, & I have no idea why it's followed me all these years, anymore than I know why I remember the words to "Winchester Cathedral" or the birthdays of half the kids in my second grade class. He's talking about birds.

Scientists can now tell us  Read More 

I spent Sunday in Philadelphia. LOVED it. I can't think of the last time I was there—it must be 15 or 20 years. Everyone was so friendly, the poetry scene is supportive & enthusiastic while of the highest artistic standards (too many to name), everyone knows everyone in a comfortable & seemingly non-incestuous way. And it's only 2 hours away on the $20 (roundtrip!) bus that's just a few blocks from me.

Kevin Varrone & Pattie McCarthy host an occasional reading in their barn, their kids run around announcing that "more poets have arrived!," he cooked all day long, everyone has a car, Shanna Compton is an amazing poet to read with, I felt happy & welcomed.

Philadelphia, I'll be back!  Read More 

Back on Monday.

Happy birthday, Bob Dylan! Happy birthday, Queen Victoria! Happy birthday, Brooklyn Bridge! And Annie, Greg et al.

Not Monday, Tuesday. Monday's a holiday.

Is a poem still good if you have to hit the listener or reader over the head with how good it is? Does every poem have to work the first time you read it? Frank O'Hara's “The Day Lady Died” has never failed before but when I read it to a couple of non–poetry lovers, they merely paused politely & went on with a different conversation. Maybe it was the way I read it? Maybe all those details are no longer evocative?  Read More 

I'm a fan & friend of Alta Starr, who I knew first as a funder of social justice projects. Her latest career is called Generative Somatics: "The mission of generative somatics is to grow a transformative social and environmental justice movement—one that integrates personal and social transformation, creates compelling alternatives to the status quo  Read More 

I turned an engineering text into line-broke verse and everybody clapped.

I was 20 and knew nothing.

We created Maria Mancini with no idea of being in a thousand-year tradition of personae.

All that I didn’t know, I did.

Why do use the past tense in “I went to the beach this morning”? Surely this morning is not the past! Merce explained to her class (Spanish speakers learning English, taught in Barcelona) that you do so many things on vacation that even this morning feels like long ago, hence the past tense.

The nuances of past, present & future:  Read More 

My friend Abel came by to say fins aviat on his way home to Spain. He's a Bukowski scholar who got in touch a few years ago because we'd featured a nude Bukowski on our 1978 KOFF calendar. He gave me a copy of a book he edited, Bukowski on Cats, 1 of 3 (on writing, on  Read More 

I worked on a project the other day that is about getting more states to use vote-by-mail (VBM) by accepting digital signatures—which the IRS & many other federal and state governments do. I know that in the three states that are entirely VBM, many more people vote. I know it’s the future (as are all things digital).

But… among my earliest & most treasured memories is that of going with my dad when he voted over at Sioux Falls College. I got to pull that big lever & he made sure I understood that what I did mattered. As a refugee & naturalized citizen, he didn’t take voting for granted.

Part of what I like is running into neighbors at my polling place, getting the sticker that announces "I voted," even waiting on line. I lived in Colorado in 1972. While we were still in a long line, someone announced that the election was over and Nixon had won. I was incensed: What about me?! What about MY vote?

Making this civic, communal duty into a private & utilitarian act rubs me the wrong way. I often mention Nelson Mandela standing under the hot sun for hours as a way to show how much voting matters in places where people don’t have or didn’t have or had to fight for that right. Women in this country went to jail for the right to vote.

I know I’m sounding a little buggy-whip right about now, but voting is something I can't be cynical about or indifferent to. I know it is or should be only the beginning of civic engagement, and that it's not the fault of the process if ignorant, crazy pols are elected but of citizens who don't bother finding out about the issues and candidates.

We wandered into a huge park near the Prado, where we took our shoes off & fell asleep on the grass, then found this rose garden. The wildly trained arbors were the loveliest part, the combo of art & artlessness, of small & tall.

Likewise, Spain was a perfect combination of activity (mostly walking all day & admiring the architecture) & indolence—long dinners.

According to Merce, a Spanish expression we don't have is sobremesa (on or over the table), meaning that after the plates are cleared away is when people really settle in for conversation. Here, once our meal is done, we are expected to pay the check and get going. I began to enjoy letting myself lounge over a meal once I realized no one was trying to get rid of me.  Read More