Sandra Beasley's Blog, page 28
October 18, 2010
10 Small Forms of Wonder
Some days you have to pause and recognize that, for all its flaws and exhaustions, it is an amazing world we live in. Need specifics? Here we go~
-There are people in this world whose livelihoods are based in the industries of windchimes, DJ'ing, and peanut butter.
-Wombats are categorized in two main categories: common, and "hairy-nosed."
-Waggle your fingers in some random/rapid range of motion you haven't otherwise used this week. Hadn't you almost forgotten your hands COULD do that?
-Someone bothered to define the anapest.
-You will someday love someone who, when they first came into the world, was a complete stranger whose birth meant nothing to you. Imagine all the things that had to line up for you to know each other now.
-A healthy birch tree can produce as many as a million seeds in a single year.
-Eva Cassidy's vocals--live, mygodshecoulddothislive--on "Autumn Leaves":
-Tater tots.
-Any and every day, people can make videos like this...all it takes is a high altitude weather balloon, a camera you're not afraid to lose, and a dream.
High Altitude Balloon from David Stillman on Vimeo.
-Antoni Gaudi's Sagrada Familia: 18 spires, three grand facades, Cubist and Symbolist detailing. Still a work in progress, to be completed in 2026--a full century after the death of its architect. Of the construction time for the Catholic cathedral, prolonged even in Gaudi's life, he said only..."My client is not in a hurry."
-There are people in this world whose livelihoods are based in the industries of windchimes, DJ'ing, and peanut butter.
-Wombats are categorized in two main categories: common, and "hairy-nosed."
-Waggle your fingers in some random/rapid range of motion you haven't otherwise used this week. Hadn't you almost forgotten your hands COULD do that?
-Someone bothered to define the anapest.
-You will someday love someone who, when they first came into the world, was a complete stranger whose birth meant nothing to you. Imagine all the things that had to line up for you to know each other now.
-A healthy birch tree can produce as many as a million seeds in a single year.
-Eva Cassidy's vocals--live, mygodshecoulddothislive--on "Autumn Leaves":
-Tater tots.
-Any and every day, people can make videos like this...all it takes is a high altitude weather balloon, a camera you're not afraid to lose, and a dream.
High Altitude Balloon from David Stillman on Vimeo.
-Antoni Gaudi's Sagrada Familia: 18 spires, three grand facades, Cubist and Symbolist detailing. Still a work in progress, to be completed in 2026--a full century after the death of its architect. Of the construction time for the Catholic cathedral, prolonged even in Gaudi's life, he said only..."My client is not in a hurry."
October 15, 2010
Wind-whipped
Lovely: I am profiled as the "October Spotlight" over at Write From Wrong.
Lovely: Martha Silano writes about teaching "Cherry Tomatoes" over at Blue Positive.
I am just returning from a dash to the post office, to make a 5 PM postmark deadline on a fellowship application. The October wind has blown my hair into total disarray, I'm wearing a favorite shirt that has a bleached spot on it (damn kitchen cleaner!), and--given I never got around to making myself up in the first place today, other than putting my contacts in--I'm feeling a bit ragged.
Ah well. Today is a day to recover. Yesterday I drove to Annapolis for a visit at the Naval Academy, a respite at B B Bistro that featured a bowl of amazing homemade soup (chickpeas, spinach & sundried tomatoes--support your independent coffee shops), and a cozy evening reading at The Annapolis Bookstore (support your independent bookstore, too). The audience at the academy was fantastic, including a classroom of students who had NOT chosen the major of English, not one of them. So I had to seduce them with a "Love Poem for Wednesday" & a "Love Poem for College," and break down the myth of the Minotaur beat-by-beat so that "The Minotaur Speaks" made sense...which is as it should be. Poets should have to work hard.
One of the students pointed out something I'd never thought about (at least, not consciously): all of the amusement park rides in "Another Failed Poem about the Greeks" come straight outta Kings Dominion. Which ideally gives the biographer something to play with someday, should I be lucky enough to merit one. But will anyone merit a biography, in the age of blogs and Facebook updates and aggressive self-reflection?
Ah well. Today is a day to recover. And watch as the wind blows the leaves against my balcony window again, again, again.
Lovely: Martha Silano writes about teaching "Cherry Tomatoes" over at Blue Positive.
I am just returning from a dash to the post office, to make a 5 PM postmark deadline on a fellowship application. The October wind has blown my hair into total disarray, I'm wearing a favorite shirt that has a bleached spot on it (damn kitchen cleaner!), and--given I never got around to making myself up in the first place today, other than putting my contacts in--I'm feeling a bit ragged.
Ah well. Today is a day to recover. Yesterday I drove to Annapolis for a visit at the Naval Academy, a respite at B B Bistro that featured a bowl of amazing homemade soup (chickpeas, spinach & sundried tomatoes--support your independent coffee shops), and a cozy evening reading at The Annapolis Bookstore (support your independent bookstore, too). The audience at the academy was fantastic, including a classroom of students who had NOT chosen the major of English, not one of them. So I had to seduce them with a "Love Poem for Wednesday" & a "Love Poem for College," and break down the myth of the Minotaur beat-by-beat so that "The Minotaur Speaks" made sense...which is as it should be. Poets should have to work hard.
One of the students pointed out something I'd never thought about (at least, not consciously): all of the amusement park rides in "Another Failed Poem about the Greeks" come straight outta Kings Dominion. Which ideally gives the biographer something to play with someday, should I be lucky enough to merit one. But will anyone merit a biography, in the age of blogs and Facebook updates and aggressive self-reflection?
Ah well. Today is a day to recover. And watch as the wind blows the leaves against my balcony window again, again, again.
October 13, 2010
The Unemployment Show!
On Friday, October 1, I had the pleasure of driving up to Pittsburgh to be a guest on Dave English's "The Unemployment Show," which is hosted at the Schmutz Lodge on 5405 Broad Street (Garfield neighborhood, for those who know the city).
We had amazing craft services via "The Goodie Truck," which pulled up to the Lodge an hour before the show to sell sweets.
The three-story Lodge, which has uneven stairs, squeaky floors, a demonic resident cat named Toots, and a lot of charm, doubles as Dave's house. Dave--an incredibly talented puppeteer and artist in his own right--has generously turned his space into an artist-residency, meaning there was plenty of amazing work on display, both his and that of others. Like cork people. 
Or a chair-cum-attack dog. 
Or an embroidered tank. As for the show itself...We laughed, we cried, we gave away some strange prizes. We had a band playing over our heads. The full show can be viewed via the series of YouTube clips below. Enjoy!
October 10, 2010
Hijinks in My City
Between being on the road and moving Don't Kill the Birthday Girl through the first round of edits, I've been a little frantic disheveled busy. But when I learned an old friend's job was about to be sent him to the West Coast for four months, we decided a night out was in order. Off to the H Street neighborhood, an emerging section of Northeast DC.
The first time I ventured over there was a few years back, to hear Alexi Murdoch at the Rock & Roll Hotel. The strip was rough--my friend, working sound at the club that night, insisted on walking me just the three blocks back to my car. H Street has come a long way since then but there is still a lot of raw construction and empty store fronts. But there's also Sticky Rice, which serves sashimi and tater tots with equal flair--and hosts speed bingo Thursdays. Sidamo pours organic, fair-trade, shade-grown coffee. The chef at Granville Moore was featured in a Throwdown with Bobby Flay over his moules-frites...and our guy won.
This fall, two of the early H Street mainstays--The Red & the Black, a New Orleans-style bar, and the burlesque-friendly and oddity-filled Palace of Wonders--are combining forces to reopen as "The Red Palace." There will be music and vaudeville; I hope they bring the novelty acts back. Nothing like a martini to be swallowed with a side of...swords. Or fire.
Anyway, last night we went to Ethiopic. DC is renowned for its Ethiopian food, mostly available in a 9th & U Street NW DC neighborhood at the edge of Shaw sometimes referred to as "Little Ethiopia." Ethiopic isn't putting on any great pretensions--they left a bullet hole in the front door handle, evidence of the neighborhood's not-too-distant past--but they've distinguished themselves at the outset by furnishing their space with spare, modern wood furniture (though traditional messob woven-basket tables are available) and offering a menu that offers spicier variations on the traditional dishes.
I appreciated that their vegetarian dishes are all prepared vegan--butter is fairly prevalent in the cuisine, which usually keeps me away from the meat dishes. I got the sampler that included herbed collard greens, red lentils in red pepper sauce, tomatoes diced with garlic and jalapeno, potatoes simmered in curry, and (my favorite) yellow split peas. It's a slightly simplified variation on the dish shown here--image credit to James M. Thresher for The Washington Post, in conjunction with Tom Sietsema's June 2010 review.
My friends had never eaten Ethiopian before, so I showed them the basics: ladling out an array of meat and veggies on the big round of bread that doubles as your plate; tearing off bits of the moist, chewy, slightly sour injera and combining pinches of different dishes; by the end nibbling on the "plate" itself, which will have sopped up any juices. So sloppy. So good. And African beer is never a bad idea, either.
Afterwards we headed down nine blocks to H Street Country Club, whose astro-turfed portico hints at its prize jewel: an upstairs nine-hole mini golf course. Thought the putting greens are short, there's enough variety in the design to keep you interested, and the course's artsy sculptures all have a DC theme (K Street robot-lawyers; the undead Presidents; King Kong scaling the Washington monument). Fritz Hahn did a great play-by-play for The Washington Post and took this shot of a hole that combines two great icons--the majestic sculpture of "The Awakening" that used to live in Hains Point and now resides out by the National Harbor, and, um, politician Marion Barry.
I was worried that on a Saturday night the crowd would be drunken and fratty, with long lines for each round of play, but not at all. We never had to wait for our turn, people were super-polite, and the house specializes in rather tasty high-end tequila cocktails. Afterwards, we played a few rounds of Skeeball downstairs--which at 50 cents a pop has to be the cheapest fun to be had in this city.
Moral of the story*: get yourself to H Street! Those independent business owners need your patronage a lot more than Adams Morgan. There's even free shuttles that run from the Chinatown/Gallery Place metro station, so you can get there from the Yellow, Red, or Green lines.
*Moral of the story (part two): I am a skeeball queen.
The first time I ventured over there was a few years back, to hear Alexi Murdoch at the Rock & Roll Hotel. The strip was rough--my friend, working sound at the club that night, insisted on walking me just the three blocks back to my car. H Street has come a long way since then but there is still a lot of raw construction and empty store fronts. But there's also Sticky Rice, which serves sashimi and tater tots with equal flair--and hosts speed bingo Thursdays. Sidamo pours organic, fair-trade, shade-grown coffee. The chef at Granville Moore was featured in a Throwdown with Bobby Flay over his moules-frites...and our guy won. This fall, two of the early H Street mainstays--The Red & the Black, a New Orleans-style bar, and the burlesque-friendly and oddity-filled Palace of Wonders--are combining forces to reopen as "The Red Palace." There will be music and vaudeville; I hope they bring the novelty acts back. Nothing like a martini to be swallowed with a side of...swords. Or fire.
Anyway, last night we went to Ethiopic. DC is renowned for its Ethiopian food, mostly available in a 9th & U Street NW DC neighborhood at the edge of Shaw sometimes referred to as "Little Ethiopia." Ethiopic isn't putting on any great pretensions--they left a bullet hole in the front door handle, evidence of the neighborhood's not-too-distant past--but they've distinguished themselves at the outset by furnishing their space with spare, modern wood furniture (though traditional messob woven-basket tables are available) and offering a menu that offers spicier variations on the traditional dishes.
I appreciated that their vegetarian dishes are all prepared vegan--butter is fairly prevalent in the cuisine, which usually keeps me away from the meat dishes. I got the sampler that included herbed collard greens, red lentils in red pepper sauce, tomatoes diced with garlic and jalapeno, potatoes simmered in curry, and (my favorite) yellow split peas. It's a slightly simplified variation on the dish shown here--image credit to James M. Thresher for The Washington Post, in conjunction with Tom Sietsema's June 2010 review. My friends had never eaten Ethiopian before, so I showed them the basics: ladling out an array of meat and veggies on the big round of bread that doubles as your plate; tearing off bits of the moist, chewy, slightly sour injera and combining pinches of different dishes; by the end nibbling on the "plate" itself, which will have sopped up any juices. So sloppy. So good. And African beer is never a bad idea, either.
Afterwards we headed down nine blocks to H Street Country Club, whose astro-turfed portico hints at its prize jewel: an upstairs nine-hole mini golf course. Thought the putting greens are short, there's enough variety in the design to keep you interested, and the course's artsy sculptures all have a DC theme (K Street robot-lawyers; the undead Presidents; King Kong scaling the Washington monument). Fritz Hahn did a great play-by-play for The Washington Post and took this shot of a hole that combines two great icons--the majestic sculpture of "The Awakening" that used to live in Hains Point and now resides out by the National Harbor, and, um, politician Marion Barry. I was worried that on a Saturday night the crowd would be drunken and fratty, with long lines for each round of play, but not at all. We never had to wait for our turn, people were super-polite, and the house specializes in rather tasty high-end tequila cocktails. Afterwards, we played a few rounds of Skeeball downstairs--which at 50 cents a pop has to be the cheapest fun to be had in this city.
Moral of the story*: get yourself to H Street! Those independent business owners need your patronage a lot more than Adams Morgan. There's even free shuttles that run from the Chinatown/Gallery Place metro station, so you can get there from the Yellow, Red, or Green lines.
*Moral of the story (part two): I am a skeeball queen.
October 8, 2010
TBD Does Story/Stereo
If you want a less-biased take than mine on the awesomeness that is Story/Stereo, check out
this article
by Ally Schweitzer of TBD. Here's the lede, plus a great photo (credit: TBD staff) of poet Allison Benis White preparing to read on stage...
Story/Stereo at The Writer's Center:
Why rock bands like to play poetry readings
Later in the article, I even make a cameo appearance:
Okay, for the record, I am a total nerd. I can own it.
[Thanks to TBD, full text HERE, and hope to see you at tonight's reading...]
Story/Stereo at The Writer's Center:
Why rock bands like to play poetry readings
D.C. musician and producer Chad Clark wants to restore dignity to underground rock music.
"If you're in a rock band, you're traveling around in all these abject, scummy situations. [Rock music is] not treated as a high art form."
But putting underground rock music in a dimly lit auditorium, where a seated, presumably sober audience awaits their performance — now that's dignified. And we haven't even gotten to the poetry part yet.
Later in the article, I even make a cameo appearance:
At last month's event, the evening's ebullient MC, poet Sandra Beasley, scarcely masked her giddiness about sharing a stage with a bunch of rock dudes. "I wish I got to introduce the musical act!" she exclaimed. ("Musical act" being how a Barnard Women Poets Prize winner says "band.")For the record, I'm not a total nerd. My wording was purposeful: I went with "musical act" because I knew that multiple incarnations of acts featuring John Davis (including a Q And Not U reunion) were about to come to the stage. But we had only advertised it in terms of the one band, Title Tracks, I didn't want to spoil the surprise.
Okay, for the record, I am a total nerd. I can own it.
[Thanks to TBD, full text HERE, and hope to see you at tonight's reading...]
October 5, 2010
Story/Stereo - This Friday, October 8
I host the
Story/Stereo
series at the Writer's Center, in which we pair two writers (chosen through our Emerging Voices fellowship competition) with a major DC musical force. We ask the writers to read about 15 minutes each--short & sweet. We ask the musicians to elaborate a bit more on their process than usual--to make the connection between their craft and the Center's focus on composition. Also, we ask them to rock the house.Our next guests are...
-Poet Jenny Browne, author of At Once: Poems and The Second Reason, both from the University of Tampa Press. A former James Michener Fellow in Poetry at the University of Texas-Austin, she lives in San Antonio and teaches at Trinity University.
-Memoirist Jessica Handler, author of Invisible Sisters, one of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's "Eight Great Southern Books in 2009" and Atlanta Magazine's "Best Memoir of 2009." Handler teaches creative writing in Atlanta, Georgia.
-DJ Will Eastman, co-founder of U Street Music Hall and renowned force behind "Bliss," the monthly indiepop dance party held at the Black Cat ten years running.
All this talent will be coming together this Friday, October 8 . It's a free show at 8 PM. You should be there! Especially if you haven't seen a Story/Stereo yet, which the Washington City Paper calls "our favorite free live-music program not set in the summer months." (Translation: Ok, ok, we're no Fort Reno Park Summer Concert Series. But I'd point out that unlike Fort Reno, we've got indoor plumbing.)
October 3, 2010
Today! Yesterday. Onward~
Oh: I'm reading at the Writer's Center today! Free and at 2 PM, details here. I'll be opening for Ron Slate--a superb poet in town from Massachusetts, whose latest book is The Great Wave. Thought I might mix it up a bit, and read some "Chronic Medea" sonnets as well as selections from I Was the Jukebox.
I'll be posting at length about my recent trip to Pittsburgh, where I was a guest on "The Unemployment Show," hosted by my friend Dave English. Yesterday, Dave and I played hooky from our lives and went on a road trip. The destination: Frank Lloyd Wright's Kentuck Knob. Pictures don't really do the place justice, because Wright focused on seamlessly integrating structure and landscape. But here's a glimpse:
Afterwards they tried to tell us it was too late in the day to visit the Sculpture Meadow, but we were having none of that. Here we are, being one with the art:
Later, we stopped off in the small town of Ohiopyle. We watched the sun ebb over the Youghiogheny River. We ordered a couple of local-brew Troeg's Sunshine Pilsners, which were served to us in mason jars straight out of the freezer. I was introduced to the concept of "French fry salad," which is apparently a concoction native to the Allegheny part of Pennsylvania. Happiness.
I'll be posting at length about my recent trip to Pittsburgh, where I was a guest on "The Unemployment Show," hosted by my friend Dave English. Yesterday, Dave and I played hooky from our lives and went on a road trip. The destination: Frank Lloyd Wright's Kentuck Knob. Pictures don't really do the place justice, because Wright focused on seamlessly integrating structure and landscape. But here's a glimpse:
Afterwards they tried to tell us it was too late in the day to visit the Sculpture Meadow, but we were having none of that. Here we are, being one with the art:
Later, we stopped off in the small town of Ohiopyle. We watched the sun ebb over the Youghiogheny River. We ordered a couple of local-brew Troeg's Sunshine Pilsners, which were served to us in mason jars straight out of the freezer. I was introduced to the concept of "French fry salad," which is apparently a concoction native to the Allegheny part of Pennsylvania. Happiness.
September 27, 2010
I Like the Way It Hurts
I am Best American Poetried! I sat next to Sharon Olds (sweetheart) and Thomas Sayers Ellis (sweet shoes). I experienced the verbal cat's cradle that is David Shapiro. I was hidden from the audience by Gerald Stern's hat. Here is a video of Amy Gerstler's intro to the evening, followed by my reading of "Unit of Measure."
Beforehand I was lucky enough to be treated to dinner by a quartet of fellow writers--Dylan Landis, Janice Shapiro, Susan Coll, and Joanna Smith Rakoff. There is something very special about women turning out to support each other. (They even sat together in the auditorium, cheering me on.) Afterwards, poet Tom Healy hosted a kickass reception in his Fifth Avenue apartment. I asked him if he'd been able to make the reading, having a vague sense that he'd just been...on the road. Somewhere.
"No," he explained apologetically. "I didn't make it. I just got back from mountain climbing with Russell Banks." All righty then. Best get-out-of-jail-free card, ever.
Now I am back home in DC, andup to my knees up to my neck over my head with edits to Don't Kill the Birthday Girl. This is the nature of it; trying to return to a text and tweak the rendering of facts and metaphor, all while maintaining tone. I feel so lucky Crown is excited about the memoir. While in for a meeting last week, my editor sent out a call ("Sandra Beasley is here--stop by and say hello--") that elicited appearances by five staff-members in the space of five minutes. Still, oof. 200 pages of edits I have to feel confident in by Wednesday.
So I am doing what I often do in moments of crisis: perusing music videos on YouTube. Lately I'd have an affinity for Eminem's "Love the Way You Lie," featuring Rihanna. I don't know which pains me more: that Megan Fox looks so young (she's six years younger than me) or that Dominic Monaghan looks a bit old (and he's only four years older than me). It's the eyes that give him away. "If you've lived well, your smile lines are in the right places, and your frown lines aren't too bad," Sophia Loren once said. But when you're an artist, what equals "living well"?
Beforehand I was lucky enough to be treated to dinner by a quartet of fellow writers--Dylan Landis, Janice Shapiro, Susan Coll, and Joanna Smith Rakoff. There is something very special about women turning out to support each other. (They even sat together in the auditorium, cheering me on.) Afterwards, poet Tom Healy hosted a kickass reception in his Fifth Avenue apartment. I asked him if he'd been able to make the reading, having a vague sense that he'd just been...on the road. Somewhere.
"No," he explained apologetically. "I didn't make it. I just got back from mountain climbing with Russell Banks." All righty then. Best get-out-of-jail-free card, ever.
Now I am back home in DC, and
So I am doing what I often do in moments of crisis: perusing music videos on YouTube. Lately I'd have an affinity for Eminem's "Love the Way You Lie," featuring Rihanna. I don't know which pains me more: that Megan Fox looks so young (she's six years younger than me) or that Dominic Monaghan looks a bit old (and he's only four years older than me). It's the eyes that give him away. "If you've lived well, your smile lines are in the right places, and your frown lines aren't too bad," Sophia Loren once said. But when you're an artist, what equals "living well"?
September 23, 2010
BAP 2010 Launch Reading in New York
A year ago, I sat in the audience for the launch reading of the Best American Poetry 2009; tonight I'll be on the stage. Sometimes you just gotta pause and say Wow. I'll be reading "Unit of Measure," which also appears in I Was the Jukebox.
The Best American Poetry 2010 launch reading
Featuring guest editor Amy Gerstler, series editor David Lehman and a line-up of contributors that includes Sandra Beasley, Mark Bibbins, Peter Davis, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Lynn Emanuel, Elaine Equi, Jillspan
The Best American Poetry 2010 launch reading
Featuring guest editor Amy Gerstler, series editor David Lehman and a line-up of contributors that includes Sandra Beasley, Mark Bibbins, Peter Davis, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Lynn Emanuel, Elaine Equi, Jillspan
September 20, 2010
John Lee Clark and "Deaf American Poetry"
In March I received a query from a man named John Lee Clark, asking for the Microsoft Word versions of my two poetry collections. After some hesitation--publishers don't love it when you unleash texts into the electronic sphere--I said yes. I was intrigued by his motives: he needed to feed the texts to his book-reader. Having first read my work in the Braille edition of POETRY, John had mail-ordered both Theories of Falling and I Was the Jukebox, only to find that his scanning program...
