Ada Limon's Blog, page 4

Poem 3

Dream of the Men #3

At the beach that was so gray it seemed stone--
gray water, gray sky, gray blanket and the wind 
some sort of gray perpetual motion machine--
we gathered like a blustery coven on the blanket 
from Mexico woven with white and gray threads 
into a pattern of owls and sea birds. Then, 
they came: the men. Blankets full of them, talking,
talking, talking, talking and our mouths sewn
shut with patient smiles while they talked 
about the country where they were from, 
their hands like seaweed, everywhere, 
unwelcomed, multicellular, touching us. 

Poem 2

Dream of the Raven #2

When the ten-speed, light weight bicycle broke down
off the highway lined thick with orange trees, I noticed
the giant raven's head protruding from the waxy leaves.
The bird was stuck somehow, mangled in the branches,
crying out. Wide eyed, I held the bird's face close to mine.
Beak to nose. Dark brown iris to dark brown iris. Feather
to feather. This was not the Chichuahuan raven or the fan-
tailed raven or the common raven. Nothing was common 
about the way we stared at one another while a stranger
untangled his claws out from the tree's limbs and he,
finally free, became a naked child swinging in the wind.

Poem 1

Dream of the Return #1

At the tequila tasting bar called Izquierda Iguana
where the silvery agave plants were pure hydroponic
and upside down so you had to swerve around them
to get served, I suddenly remembered you were coming
in that evening, a special return. I rushed to the cavernous loft
where the power was all on one ancient grid so the lights
flickered each time someone opened the refrigerator,   
I put on the white dress that you had said made you look
like an angel once with its real swan feathers and fool's gold,
then, I sat for a long time in the night and waited. At dawn,
I woke with feathers sticky on my tongue and I remembered 
you were dead all over again. 

National Poetry Month: Dream Poems

I've been terrified of April first coming around this year. If the ghost town that is my blog is any indication of my 2015 writing habits, you'll see I've been a non-writing tumbleweed. We moved back to Brooklyn for the Spring Semester on January 1st and I started teaching three days later in the NYU January intensive program. Then, the semester started in earnest and I began teaching two workshops at NYU and a graduate seminar at Columbia. (In addition to my awesome low-res MFA students from Queens University of Charlotte and my online class for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.) It's been amazing. I have been loving my classes so much that it's ridiculous, but also, in my need to throw myself into things completely, I lost my own writing. I have no idea how my fellow teacher friends have kept it up so much throughout the years. In fact, I found it much easier to write with a full time office job, than a teaching job. But the teaching, of course, is a way of thinking about writing and a way of keeping yourself engaged in poetry, even when your pen is not even hovering near the paper. This is starting to sound like an excuse. Perhaps this tumbleweed just needs to pin herself to a corner with the wind and write.

For almost ten years now, I've been participating in National Write More Poetry Month (NaPoWriMo) founded by Maureen Thorson. This is the painful and useful process of writing a DRAFT of a poem a day. Note a say DRAFT. Note I say it LARGELY with LARGE type. These are exercises in making the brain think poetry, daily, for thirty days. Last night, before I went to bed I thought what if I write dream poems? I don't know if I'll stick with it, or if I'll remember every dream, but I thought it might be an interesting way to get back into writing and reconnect with my own wired-tight brain.

So, that's what the project will be: 30 dream poems in 30 days. These will be based on REAL DREAMS. This, from the tumbleweed who has only written one poem this year so far. Here we go; wish me luck. And good luck to you if you're doing it as well. May the writing wind be with you.

xxoo,
Tumbleweed (and Hi, Mom!)

Because Sometimes You Just Need a Pie

Lala's Late Summer Tomato Pie (For Dan & Lucas)
This recipe was adjusted from a combination of this recipe (Garden & Gun Tomato Pie) and this crust recipe (F & W Chocolate Pecan Pie)


CRUST1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour2 teaspoons sugar1/4 teaspoon salt1 stick (4 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces1/4 cup ice water

FILLING4  shallots, minced3  garlic cloves, minced4  tbsp. extra virgin olive oil, divided1  tbsp. Dijon mustard1  lb. assorted heirloom tomatoes, sliced ¼-inch thick2 ears of fresh corn, cut off the cob1.5 oz. goat cheese, crumbled & 1.5 oz smoked goat cheese½  oz. fresh basil chiffonade 1  tbsp. Grenache vinegar (or red wine)½  cup fresh bread crumbs1  oz. grated Parmesan cheeseSalt and pepper
For the dough
1.     In a food processor, pulse the flour with the sugar and salt. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the ice water. Knead the dough 2 or 3 times on a lightly floured surface and pat into a disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
2.     On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to a 12-inch round. Fit the dough into a 9-inch glass pie plate. Trim the overhang to 1/2 inch, fold the edge under itself and crimp decoratively. Refrigerate until firm.
For the pie
PreparationPreheat oven to 400 degrees.
3.     In a small pan, sauté shallots and garlic in 1 tablespoon of olive oil until tender, about 3 minutes. Stir in mustard, and set aside.
4.     Layer in half of the tomatoes and corn, and season with salt and pepper; spread shallot mixture over top. Add soft goat cheese and half of the basil, distributing evenly. Layer in remaining tomatoes, and season with salt and pepper. Drizzle 1 tablespoon each of olive oil and vinegar over the tomatoes; top with remaining basil. Layer 1. 5 oz of smoked goat cheese over tomatoes.
5.     In a small bowl, combine breadcrumbs, remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and Parmesan cheese. Sprinkle evenly over tomato filling.  
Bake 30 minutes, or until topping and crust are golden brown.

Ways to Be in the World: Notes from Past Lives

When I was 17 or so, I started going to a physical therapist for my scoliosis. Unlike the typical physical therapist, Analea McGarey held her appointments in her house that was situated on a rising hillside in Glen Ellen. You had to cross a bridge to get there, over the wooded Sonoma Creek, and loop up a steep hill where you'd park by her overgrown garden and enter where the cats stood licking their paws in welcome. Her house always smelled like lavender and multivitamins. 

Aside from being a remarkable therapist and the woman who was greatly responsible for the majority of my back healing, she was also a great source of advice on how to exist in the world.

One appointment, when were were sharing our joint anxieties about our futures (I was in my late teens and she was in her mid-40's) she told me that her new routine was to wake up every morning and say, "Today, I will love myself." We laughed at how obvious it was, and yet how hard it was to do. Shortly after my appointment, I vowed to do the same thing. I'd start every day, I promised, with "Today, I will love myself."

When she died of cancer in 2007, I remember thinking, "Well, f*ck it. What good is loving yourself if you're just going to die anyway." Because that's how I looked at death back then. "She died anyway," was my initial thought. Then, of course, after I recovered from losing her, I went back to saying it and, this time, I kept in the back of my mind, "because I will die anyway." And we will, won't we?

This is a long introduction to the poem that just recently came out in The New York Times T Magazine. The poem is about that choice to love yourself, even when all the outside world (or maybe just your inside voice) says you shouldn't. I don't know why its publication made me think of Analea, but it did and she's always worthy of honoring. And today, like most days, I try to love myself. 

You can read the poem and hear my read it here. It's paired with a beautiful piece by the artist, Pae White. Many thanks to the editor, Meghan O'Rourke for publishing the poem. 

Buenos Aires: To Be Remembered

I am trying to remember what has happened over the summer. Do you remember? What did we do? Picnic? Break hearts? Write poems? Eat cherries and sleep on the cold hardwood floor with the air on? Did we dance in the small bars of Buenos Aires and sip on caipiroskas? Watch the moon rise and cross our fingers for more of them. Yes. Some of us did.
After a whirlwind of a trip to California, then to Buenos Aires, then back to California, then off to Chesapeake Bay, VA and then home, I was both exhausted and ready to melt into the couch of my own mind. But, it’s hard to return to reality, when your reality is a country (and a world) torn apart by so much rage and violence. It was as if the elevator dropped me off at a floor that had no floor at all, but a sheer drop down into the abyss of my god, we humans are really messed up.
A kiss on the wallSome of you may know that I struggle, like many writers and artists, with anxiety. I worry about things. A lot. And sometimes that means I don’t sleep or it means that I get odd stomachaches or brain aches or need to be alone for a long time at the bottom of a well. Still, I am always trying to find the way out, the ladder thrown down so I might find my way back in the world. For me, that’s always poetry, both the writing and the reading of it. Poetry and the return to the microcosm. To remember love in the midst of everything terrible. To remember love in the midst of everything terrible. To remember love in the midst of everything terrible. 
Let me first remember Buenos Aires for a moment, before it is lost forever in some scrim of vagueness that we call memory or nostalgia. Each day began with café y medialunas and drifted into discussions of poetry and ended with raucous dinners with rogue poets and fiction writers. I was often enthused and ignited. I was also often tired. It was winter there, and there was so much to read and see and eat and drink and soak up. I was the overwhelmed doll in the window watching the world go by. I was both small and large at the same time. Infinite sponge, infinite hard glass, I was both.
Day 2: We explored La Boca and ate our first alfajor (Argentinian cookie that is now my favorite food).


Day 2: The railroad tracks in La Boca.
Day 2: La Boca

Day 4: Evita, Evita, everywhere Evita. Day 4: At Cafe Tortoni, toasting to Borges. 
Day 5: I shall only eat empanadas forever.
Day 7: En Estancia La Porteña de Areco. We ate these things. Day 7: En Estancia La Porteña de Areco. We sat in the winter sun.
Day 7: En Estancia La Porteña de Areco. Where writer Ricardo Güiraldes wrote.
Day 7: En Estancia La Porteña de Areco. The dance of the gauchos. 
Day I don't know: En Palermo. The streets! The streets! Day I don't know: En Palermo with Sangria. We ate these things.
Day 10: En Palermo, I signed my name in the cement of Buenos Aires so as not to be forgotten.

Love in the Time of Blah, Blah, Blah

I had this idea the other night when I couldn't sleep, that the dog, with her head pressed up against mine, was actually trying to soothe and ease my thoughts. I'd worry about money or the future, or I'd just be remembering the Spanish word for something, or thinking of an article I wanted to write, and she'd burrow her forehead into mine a bit more and I'd go marvelously blank for a bit. I needed that. A warm pug mind eraser. 

The problem with having a good memory, is that everything comes back to you from time to time. The problem with being a writer, is that you suddenly feel like you should write something about what is suddenly coming back to you. 

Over the weekend, I read this wonderful essay in The New York Times (T Mag) about two writers meeting, falling in love, and parting at a well known writers' colony. I have an idea about who the man is in the essay, and it felt both exhilarating and wrong to be reading about the intimate details of their relationship. I also had this overarching concern: What if all of us writers suddenly started writing about what goes on at colonies? (Beads of sweat. Dry throat.)

I've long believed it's best to keep some secrets. I can be confessional to a fault for sure. Hell, I've kept this blog for almost a decade now and most of my life can be skimmed through by scrolling down the sidebar. But, some things I vow to stay silent on. Until, perhaps many years have passed or a new door opens in the mind. 

I loved the story of these two writers, the colony, the aching, painful beauty a new heartbreak gives the world. I guess what I'm saying is, it made me want to share some of my own. But, let's be honest, most of my relationships have already been pinned like the butterflies and beasts they are to the pages of my poetry books. What more can one say? 

A lot. That's the thing. When you get into a writing jag, nothing feels off limits, or over; everything feels ripe for the plucking and thick with sticky wine only the years can perfect. But when do you hold back? When do you stuff your old losing tickets back in the drawer where they belong (because we would never actually throw them out, nothing gets thrown out)?

For now, I guess my sometimes loose lips are zipped and old flames and flickering wicks can live on in their shadowy world. Besides, it's almost dinner time and we're going out to a friend's house. My man is getting ready and I am too. I'm sure, at dinner, we'll tell some secrets, that not even The New York Times could pull out of us. 

Summer is for Sitting

One of my best friends is a girl who likes to sit: at parties, at bars, at antique stores, whenever the occasion calls for standing, she’d like to do the opposite. She came to visit recently and an old college friend of hers said, “Oh we used to say that all the time, ‘H likes to sit.’” He waved his hand dismissively as this was apparently old news. "H likes to sit." She had never really thought of it before. At least not in the way that entailed heavy thinking about ones own habitual behavior.
But now, we get pictures of her sitting in random places all over New York City: one was a picture of her on a fire hydrant next to a pile of trash in midtown, the next was of her in a throne-like chair, which I assumed was at some well-heeled bar in Manhattan, another, my personal favorite—because I am prone to black humor and black spells—was a picture of her sitting in total darkness.

My first thought, when she sends me one of these pictures is, “I need to sit immediately.” I know, I know, there are the recent studies about the dangers of all-day sitting and the articles about how “sitting is actually killing us!” (I own a bike desk that I love, and I regularly use a standing desk, so yes, I know.) But sometimes one needs to just stop moving, stop thinking, stop doing, and just sit down.
This is where I’m at right now. I would like to sit. I survived the winter (believe me it felt just as “Game of Thrones” as that sounds), and now I’m of a mind to take a clue from my favorite take-a-seat-girl, and sit, stare out at nothing, and do the work. Time to make progress on the new book (it’s going, moving, rattling along), time to write more articles, and time read and write more poems. The time of sitting has come. Grab your lawn chair, picnic blanket, bar stool and join me.
And if you’d like to read while you sit, you can sit and read a new poem of mine that came out 18 days ago (but who’s counting) in The New Yorker. It goes good with bourbon. There’s also this poem which was just recently given a Pushcart Prize. Hey, good news comes to those who sit. Now, if only I could write a poem that scratches off lottery tickets for me.
In the meantime, the world and the weather is saying, sit down, stay awhile. 



 

April 20th

(poem was here)