VOTE TOMORROW!!!

Today, I'm worrying about the integrity of the election - hacked machines, voter suppression, etc. I just can't stop hearing that voice in my head that maybe 2000 and 2004 were rigged somehow. For some frightening pre-election reading, go to this full-text copy of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s article in Rolling Stone, Was the 2004 Election Stolen? (You know what Tom Stoppard said, right? "It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.") But I am STILL optimisitic - I've sent my ballot in. Please, don't forget to vote.

While I wait for tomorrow night's first reports, I offer up these delicious few lines of a long and wonderful poem which plays on McCain's "Straight Talk Express" and on "Joe the Plumber" - it's by Elaine Magliaro over at the Wild Rose Reader and you can read the whole poem here :

Who’s on Board the Straight Squawk Express? or Joe the Plumber Et Al

Joe the plumber,
Mack the Knife,
Hal the husband,
Val the wife,
Don the dentist,
Dick the doc,
Phil the farmer,
Hank the hawk,
Gail the grocer,
Ken the catcher,
Pat the daft
Police dispatcher...

El Dia de Los Muertos and Vermont College's Ghost

In honor of the Day of the Dead, I'm linking this clip from Vermont Public Radio about the Ghost of College Hall (pictured to the right.) The ghost inhabits the upper stories of the building, which is the architectural centerpiece of Vermont College of the Fine Arts in Montpelier, where I teach. Some people say there is a malevolent spirit that claims the basement....

Poetry Friday - The Love of Stationery Goods

If you want a Halloween poem, click here for a Google Books look at an early edition of Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti (especially that horrible moment when the goblins are all over Lizzie, trying to mash ripe fruit into her mouth - yikes!) The painting to the right is from the edition illustrated by Arthur Rackham.





Meanwhile, here's a poem from me to all you stationery supply addicts:


PENCIL BOX

I put four bits on the counter
and the box was mine.
Six yellow pencils fit there
side by side, I was perfectly addled,
I was a goner – even before I knew
the alphabet, I knew its cedar perfume –
I flew over the high-humped bridge
painted on the top, over the willow,
the m-stroke for a bird, everything
was suggestion then, before
the putting on of too fine a point.
People expected me to come
to my senses, save the change
in my burning pockets, after all
the box was wooden, cheap
Chinatown, but half a dollar
went a long way toward heaven
when heaven was closer.

----------------------------------------



It's always been my theory that you could predict who was going to be a writer by the way he or she behaved in stationary stores when young. An early love of pencils, pens, erasers, rulers, graph paper, tracing paper, architectural supplies, index cards, blank books, ledgers.....a love of those is a good predictor, for some reason, of a later love of words.

The poem was first published in The Threepenny Review. If you subscribe to just one literary journal, that's the one you should subscribe to - the editor is Wendy Lesser (who wrote the fascinating Pictures at an Execution and edited The Genius of Language: Fifteen Writers Reflect on Their Mother Tongue) and she fills every issue to the brim with wonderful essays, poems, stories, reviews and art (often photography). TTR is stimulating and intelligent, and it never disappoints. Think about giving a subscription to someone (even yourself!) as a gift.


To see the round-up this week for Poetry Friday, go to Sylvia Vardell's wonderful blog, Poetry for Children.

M.T. Anderson's Scariest Line???

REMINDER:

Don't miss the prize to be won over at Through the Tollbooth. Tami Brown posted it as part of a great interview of M.T. Anderson (and all you have to do to enter is pick the scariest line from one of his books!)

Poetry Friday: Giving Metal a Tongue

Here's a "small poem" by Valerie Worth (1933-1994) from her collection, All the Small Poems and 14 More. Some of those small poems I like - short meditations - some not as much (that's true for any collection, from Basho to Auden) - but this one particular poem - titled simply bell - is nearly perfect, in terms of the way it falls on the ear first, then comes in through the heart and mind, and the way it serves as a metaphor for what we do as writers - giving metal a tongue.

bell

By flat tink
Of tin, or thin
Copper tong
Brass clang
Bronze bong
The bell gives
Metal a tongue
To sing
In one sound
Its whole song.

Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Kelly Herold at Big A little a.