Aimee Herman's Blog, page 36

new year speaking words.

Thank you to Bruce Weber for co-organizing the annual ANYDSWPE,��Annual Alternative New Year’s Day Spoken Word / Performance Extravaganza. This is a video from January 1st, 2015. What a great way to begin a new year.

http://www.cakelab.com/rantrecords/anydswpe/geode-a-herman-prv.mp4
Filed under: SHOWS | video, WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", Annual Alternative New Year's Day Spoken Word / Performance Extravaganza, ANYDSWPE, body, Bruce Weber, filmstrip, gender, how to get through all this, New Years DAy poetry Reading NYC, Nuyorican poetry, NYC Poetry, sexuality, Spoken Word

beneath the curtains of your body…

Experiment #71:��When it rains, you might notice a collage of confetti’d water altering your view. Walk toward your nearest window. Preferably the one beneath the hardest-working cloud. Stitch your eyes into one of the drops collecting your attention. What colors do you see? Green. Faded red. How cold is the window and how does your body react when you touch it?

Remember that time you cried so hard that one of your lungs pushed its way up to beneath your rib cage and your chest grew taller?��And your breaths felt as though they were imprisoned or housed inside a barred fist. It was springtime.��Remember? And everyone around you was dry. It’s like your body had become this cloud of salt raining over your limbs.

Beneath the curtains of your body is every weather pattern that ever existed and a hybrid of several that we aren’t used to seeing together. Open that window.��I know it’s cold; yes, it is wet too. But just slide it up and scream out your weather pattern. Scream out your temperature. Your precipitation. Allow the air to breathe you in.

 

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, body as weather, experiment, poetry, rain, water, weather pattern, writing, writing prompt

(how are YOU) meant to wake up feeling?

Experiment #362:��Go to your book shelf. If you have a designated��poetry section,��go there. If not, well, quickly make one, alphabetize according to author and pause. Perhaps it is time to introduce a new book to your shelves. Go to your “H” section. Can you make some room?

Now, (bare with me), purchase a copy of my newest poetry collection,��meant to wake up feeling. You can find it HERE.��Or��HERE.��Or HERE.��Or even��HERE.

Take a deep breath. (I always do when I purchase something on the Internet).

Next, I want you to email me. Nothing fancy.��Just something like: Hey, I bought it.��OR: Did what you said,��now what?

In your email, give me your address and I will send you a personalized letter. I know what you’re thinking: I’m going to put you on some mailing list. Nope. Or I’m hoarding addresses to publish in well-trafficked bathrooms. Ummm…..nope.

I think there is nothing more intimate than giving away one’s handwriting. (OK…..maybe there are a few other more intimate things….) Taking the time to use ink or lead to write words on paper, stuff into envelope,��with a stamp! and then mail it??!?!?!

After you purchase a copy of my book, I will write you a REAL letter. A good one. With lots of words on a��handmade card. And a stamp, of course.

So…here’s my email:��aimeeherman@gmail.com

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", great weather for media, handwriting, letter writing, letters, meant to wake up feeling, pen pal, poetry book, purchase poetry book get a letter

the currency of concern.

“A body holding its own dusk/ That is what a predator is, mostly.” ��–Elizabeth Robinson

A body shuts down.��It is night and there is only enough room for airplanes and crickets and moon and sleep.��

Here is how it goes. The author sits wearing wet hair and long underwear. Breath of peppermint and coffee, barley and long-distanced lover’s tongue. Outside, one could pretend it is spring, but it is too cold to title it as such.��The author has consolidated their loans; the author has consolidated their bones.

Monthly payment does not match bank account and when asked how many members in family, suddenly��one sounds synonymous with��failure.

A body searches its contents and recognizes only the stink of bones, but cannot recall if that is��actually what they are called.��It is a time congruent to morning.��

It can be immensely humbling to prove one’s��poorness. There is enough food in cupboards and shoes to wear and enough options of laundered clothes to fill a drawer and closet. Hot water and heat paid for by unseen landlord. The author can even afford capers, but chooses to wait for tax return.

However, the amount owed far exceeds the amount author��owns��and on this morning of unzipped blue denim sky, the author cries store-brand version of tears and swallows store-brand version of oxygen.

A body exhales and spits out the dust of agony.

This is��not about educational tabs running over. Nor is this about economic class or the woes of a poet in search of a space safe enough to wrap skin around. This is not about what plagues a body. Nor is it a prompt for pity.

This��may be about what it feels like to occur. To be the one folded in the corner of rooms wondering why every circumstance is a reminder of what you do not have.

How to populate with only words. How to birth without heteronormative consumption.��

Here is how it goes. The author hikes toward the closest mountain found within the nooks of mind. Digs torn-up fingernails into soil that is highlighted by the sun. Fondles the pebbles and branches, which feel like found currency. Puts loot into pockets. Continues traveling up. Up. Higher. The author pretends to be unafraid of heights; the author does not look down. Up. Higher. Until. The only thing that matters is the wind. The curves beneath each step. And the way down.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, currency, Elizabeth Robinson, human, life, meditation, mountains, poem, student loan debt, what is owed

reminders.

 

“breathe.”

My father reminds me to remain. When his mileage grows further than my eyes can reach, I press yellow post-it notes to borrowed walls to remind myself what to do.

Exist. Write. Nourish. Be kind. Be patient. Be present. BE.

When I ask my students why they write, a list of words unravel off their tongues reminding me how necessary it is to even question this process of documentation.

I write because��it keeps me here.

My father is a novelist. I can say this now because he spent many years curving his back toward various computers, writing words down. Amidst the stress(es) of life, he found time to accumulate over 70,000 words into organized chapters and plot twists.��A writer writes.

Each time we speak, he asks me how my writing is going. Am I sending work out? Am I broadening my audience? This check-in reminds me my purpose.

I remind my father that��he keeps me here too. As a writer, I have grown accustomed to being so enclosed within my thoughts, it has created a distance inside me. I can reveal all my secrets on stage, but that is because they have already been written down. In person, I am zipped-up; this can be a lonely existence.

My father reminds me how I used to be. Before ______. And before _______.

When I was younger and my hair was yellow and soft, we used to listen to old radio shows, barter at garage sales and hoard other people’s junk. My body was less creased, less angry; there were far less stockpiles of scars on my skin. It’s difficult for me to recall that human that once was��me.

My father reminds me that there is still happy in me; I just need to be open to rummaging a little.

I remind my father that there is still��peace in him; he just needs to be open to some rummaging as well.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", a writer writes, breathing, first time novelist, life, Martin Herman, remaining, reminders to live, writing life

a poetic collaboration

Aimee Herman performs the piece “a meeting of selves through the salve of love” and an excerpt from “Postulation” in the Nerve Lantern poets’ theater show: An Afternoon of Sparking Poetry.

Additional performers: the phenomenal poet, artist, music making Trae Durica.

Intro by Kris Lew.

Hosted by Medicine Show Theatre as part of its Word/Play series of writers��� readings. New York City. July 19, 2014. Co-organized by Kris Lew and Ellen Redbird.

Nerve Lantern: Axon of Performance Literature is a literary journal published by Pyriform Press and edited by Ellen Redbird.

This program at Medicine Show Theatre was made possible in part by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

Videography by Caryn Waechter

Video editing by Dan V. Weiss

�� Nerve Lantern

Filed under: SHOWS | video, WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", experimental poetry, Medicine Show Theatre, Nerve Lantern, performance poetry, poetry, poetry and ukelele, poetry show, Trae Durica

spread.

Now, when I travel on the subway, I look for men with spread legs. I like to pretend that I am a knife cutting them in half. When I sit between to men practicing this��posture��(with the minimal space they leave open), I feel like I am silently reminding their knees that it’s OK to make contact.

I want to whisper into their ears:��Are you airing something out that cannot wait until you get home?

I want to spread��my legs and practice a yoga pose that is inconsiderate for train travel and see if anyone notices.

When I sit beside/between these men, I locate the geography of my body. Everything is squished together like the suffocated insides of a sandwich. I can barely turn the pages of whatever book I am trying to read because even my elbows are forced to squeeze against my sides.

I search for these male-spreaders with my eyes. They are everywhere.

A male on the 4 train heading uptown takes up 3 seats! I agressively/politely say, “Excuse me,” as I fold my body into one of the orange squares, forcing him into 1.5 seats.

Another on the C train heading into Brooklyn could fit an entire refrigerator box between his thighs pushed��apart like wings.

Now, people are documenting these��spreaders.��There are websites and pages giving notice to this epidemic of inconsideration.

But is there a cure?

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, Egon Schiele, gender, manspreading, men on subways, NYC transportation issues, poetry, spread legs

in defense of.

“What needs to be defended in writing is what’s offensive.” �� –Charles BernsteinI travel with a poet through six states toward a place where there are five banks within five blocks and when I ask where the best place to get a cup of coffee, I am answered with: “7-11.”

We are here for a poetry festival and I feel as far from NYC as one can.

At the University where��everything is happening, we go to a Q&A with three editors and hear what��not to do as writers. They end it early, so they can catch the art reception happening upstairs in the library where there will be free cookies and crackers. The artist speaks only briefly because she needs to catch a plane and is waiting for her driver to pick her up.

I start to wonder why we are here.

Suddenly, ��it is suppertime and the only��happening place to eat is a Mexican restaurant, but they serve��hotdogs,��so we head to the cafeteria with three other poets.

Seven dollars to get in and it’s ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT.

As we eat, one poet asks about censorship.��How do you know when to hold back what you say? Like, not say something because it could offend someone?

I think about all the rooms I’ve listened to others and all the rooms I’ve shared with others. We could go around and ask about trigger warnings and words to stay away from and gestures that are offensive, but that may leave us in silence.

I told him that if you make someone angry or make someone ecstatic, it’s all the same. You’ve made someone��feel with your words. Isn’t that what you want? I asked.

Another poet added that if you feel compelled to read something, then go ahead. If there is urgency, give it space to roam.

Today, I take the stage and suck up my allotted twenty minutes. I think about what stirs me and these infamous trigger warnings.

I just want to feel��something. I want you to cause me to write. I want you to give me more words to expand my vocabulary. I want you to cause me to question what I��know.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", censorship, language, on the road, poetry, poetry festival, triggerwarnings, writing, writing life

tell it like you remember

It was a Sunday, but it may have been a Thursday. It was cold enough to forget what��sweating felt like or it may have been summer. There was a rainbow in the sky or printed on someone’s shirt. There were birds flying toward another patch of sky. Or it may have been empty.

There was a pile of letters on the ground as though a postal worker had fallen and all this paper represented the remains.

Someone sprayed graffiti on a building or fence and it read: ����Never Fall. In Love.

You had just eaten a lunch of seventeen sandwiches or cold soup or it may have been breakfast time and all you ate were coffee grounds and haunts from sleep.

It was sometime after 8pm. Before midnight and nowhere near 11pm.

Everyone you passed smelled like buttercream and anise. Frosted black licorice. Your tongue was sore from licking itself.

You were not in love for the first time in over a decade.

Your teeth were like picket signs in your mouth in search of a cause to bite into.

Someone may have asked for your phone number. Or your��order. Or if you could move aside because you were blocking an entrance.

Did I mention it was cold out?

It was definitely February. Probably March. It wasn’t October.

There was talk of poetry or philosophical medical jargon.

Someone was playing an instrument or it could have been the finely-tuned chorus of harmonized voices in your head.

Nope, definitely some strings.

You were wearing elbows and fingernails.

No one kissed you but you could taste the breath of another on your shoulders.

At some point, your wrist reminded you that time is never important. Numbers only exist for those who can add. Sometimes��time is just about what your appetite and eyes call for.

There��was a rainbow and it existed in three hundred and thirty-four shades of burgundy.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", love, mail, memory, pen pal, poem, postal worker

an interruption of sorts.

“If we catch only a little of our subject, or only badly, clumsily, incoherently, perhaps we have not destroyed it. We have written about it, written it and allowed it to live on at the same time, allowed it to live on in our ellipses, our silences.” –Lydia Davis

First, decide if it is unfinished. If you speak no, then you are wrong. How can anything be done if everything which surounds us is a draft. This air has been circulated and past along��and will never exist the same.

All of this is a broken silence.

Interrupt the fragment of your tongue. Barge into your sentence with a sequence of yawns or teeth-clicks.

Everything has been done before but not��right now in this moment��like this.

Discontinue judgement that the salt staining the outsides of your eyes is misbehaving. When your friend confesses they permit only one day per year for tears, interrupt them with a squeeze. Insist upon the need for emptying. Otherwise, there’d be no room for any of us.

Even patterns deserve an interruption. Diet your hair and cut away some weight. Not everything on a body needs to be symmetrical. There does not need to be a reason for elbow pads or bandages.

Travel — down a different block or past state lines. Interrupt your weekly session of chores. Pretend someone is following you.

And at the end of an evening, say goodnight to something else. Not the moon or your lover. Kiss goodbye the wood keeping you warm at night. Or whisper ‘i love you’��to the window panes or vents or the cat which bellows when the dark arrives.

Interrupt your gratitude for those which rarely get noticed.

 

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, living, Lydia Davis, poem, poetic life, silence, unfinished