Matthew Hittinger's Blog, page 9

Favorite Reads of 2013

Publishing this on time this year and not four months into the new year. =)

Now that 2013 is over I can present my annual list of books I enjoyed reading over the previous year. As always, I present these in alphabetical order by author. They are a mix of poetry, prose, and art monographs, and I should note this is just a sampling (a mish-mash of books recently published and books I either finally got around to reading or have discovered years after they’ve been published):

O Holy Insurgency by Mary Biddinger
Red Doc> by Anne Carson
An Elephant’s Memory of Blizzards by Neil de la Flor
Blowout by Denise Duhamel
Sisterhood by Julie R. Enszer
Brit Lit by D. Gilson
Supplying Salt and Light by Lorna Goodison
Clay by David Groff
Jess: O! Tricky Cad & Other Jessoterica by Jess, ed. by Michael Duncan
Imago and Subways by Joseph O. Legaspi
Straight Razor by Randall Mann
Corpse Whale by dg nanouk okpik
A Book of Variations: Love, Zygal, Art Facts by bp Nichol
Obscenely Yours by Angelo Nikolopoulos
Mezzanines by Matthew Olzmann
Corona by Bushra Rehman
Later Poems Selected and New: 1971-2012 by Adrienne Rich
The Human Fragment by Michael Ernest Sweet
Butch Geography by Stacey Waite
Sacriligion by L. Lamar Wilson
We Have the Melon by Gregory Woods
Nefarious by Emanuel Xavier

Looking at my stack of unread books, I realize there are so many books I didn’t get to this year. And a handful I haven’t had time to finish (all those Canadian poets I started reading this fall). And probably a few I’ve forgotten. But I’m looking forward to some books from my Christmas haul, including titles by Alison Bechdel, Jeanette Winterson, Samuel R. Delany, and Erna Brodber. Onward!

Ornament Stories: Day 31

Last day of the year, and last day for these ornament posts. Rather than focus on a single ornament today, I give you all of them in one shot on my little tree. I hope you’ve enjoyed these little vignettes over the past month. I decided to do this as part of a “30-Day challenge” to get me writing every day, to do some memory work, to generate some words for a project I’ve been dabbling with on and off for ten years now called “The ABCs of Bethlehem.” Maybe one day I’ll finish it. I still think I’m too young to be writing any kind of cohesive memoir. And writing about loved ones is always tricky — your memories and interpretations of events can differ from theirs. I’m also not as confident in prose as I am in poetry, so I tend to let the prose pieces sit in their folders rather than try publishing them. Writing here helps lessen the pressure a bit. Anyway, you’ll have a new book of poetry from me in the new year, and who knows, maybe I’ll get around to publishing some of my essays finally.

Have a safe and fabulous evening as you ring in 2014 tonight!

 

Ornament Stories: Day 30

 

Michael went to a conference in Rome earlier this month and brought back some trinkets from the Bartolucci woodworking shop where they specialize in handmade Pinocchios, including this new addition to my tree. I just realized that his body is backwards in the photo below, the single silver circle on his chest a magnet for hanging him on the fridge when it’s not Christmas. On the other side he has two buttons. We like to call this guy the emo Pinocchio since whoever painted his hair put the fringe over one eye.

Ornament Stories: Day 29

Happy fifth day of Christmas. Today I bring you a paper Moravian star, which you can buy already folded and tree-ready at the Moravian Book Shop. I remember an orange and red one on our tree growing up, but I’m not sure where it got to. You can also buy kits to make these stars yourself in the shop on the second floor of the Smithy next to Hotel Bethlehem.

We are in the period where we wait for Epiphany (Jan 6, the last day of Christmas), when the Wise Men came (who are following the star to Bethlehem). This origami-esque star dates to the 1850s when it was used as a lesson in a geometry class for boys in Niesky, Germany. Every year I attempt to make my own and get about halfway through before giving up. Part of the problem: instructions that are about as clear as mud (seriously, I’ve done a fair amount of origami and whoever wrote these instructions is probably better at showing the steps in a live demonstration than trying to articulate the steps in the written word), with illustrations that confuse more than help. Since these are for ages 8+ I guess I’ll just have to get my niece or nephew to figure it out for me.

Ornament Stories: Day 28

Well, thanks to my older sister, check Marilyn off my ornament wish list. Here she is decked out in the dress she wore in the opening number, “Two Little Girls from Little Rock” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I gave my older sister a sparkly ice blue owl, with lots of cut-outs and negative space in its spread wings, very different from the snowy owl I got Emily. I have a feeling this may be the first, but not the last Marilyn ornament my tree will see. For now my ornament wish list is one step closer to being complete. Now to get She-Ra represented!

Ornament Stories: Day 27

Happy third day of Christmas. Another train post. My dad wanted a Santa Fe Lionel engine when he was twelve. He settled for the same style diesel in the Erie line, bought it with his paper money when he was 14. The Santa Fe engine is expensive now, but Michael found a Santa Fe locomotive ornament which he gave him for Christmas. We didn’t put his Lionel train up this year, but maybe next year we will. It’s overdue for a run around the tree. And I wouldn’t mind seeing the town of Plasticville again zoned between the tracks.

 

Ornament Stories: Day 26

Happy Boxing Day. It’s become a family tradition in recent years to go have lunch together at the Brew Works in downtown Bethlehem and then walk up and down Main Street and pop into shops like Donegal Square and the Moravian Book Shop. That’s where the beeswax angel came from on my tree. The cloying smell of beeswax always brings me back to the Moravian history units we did in elementary school, field trip days to the historic buildings along the Monocacy Creek where we watched actors in colonial garb work in the tannery and the waterworks, and roped off quarters under the Hill-to-Hill bridge. In 2003 they reconstructed the smithy, and you can watch them work metal in there now on the first floor. On the second floor you can buy things like kits to make the paper Moravian stars we had on our tree as kids. I’ll be trying my hand at one in the coming days.

The mash-up of Moravian and Lutheran traditions permeates my childhood, and it was with some dismay that I visited home this year to discover we are one of the few houses in the neighborhood with electric candles in the windows. Each year on the first Sunday of Advent, Jean Jackson across the street had her candles in the windows and Moravian star hanging from the light fixture on their side porch, which, being on a corner lot, faced our house. The Jacksons no longer live there, and the house is mostly dark, as are many of the houses where younger couples have moved in. And the few older couples still around, who have yet to sell, are now spending Christmas in warmer climates. But not my parents. It isn’t Christmas if they’re not celebrating here in Bethlehem, PA. I guess it’s the same for me. Except for that year in California, I’ve celebrated 34 Christmases here. I know the day will one day come, when my parents are no longer around and I have no family here to return to for the holiday, but for now this is where I want to be this time of year.

Ornament Stories: Day 25

Merry Christmas! I hope the Santas in your life were good to you today. Today marks the beginning of the twelve days of Christmas in case that ever confused you (we all know how marketing and radio hosts like to screw that up), the period from now until Epiphany on January 6th when the wise men arrived. So don’t go throwing your Christmas trees out just yet, friends, as Christmas really has just begun. Sadly you’ll be hard pressed to find any Christmas specials on TV or songs on the radio by tomorrow. Odd that consumer, retail America never caught on to the twelve days of Christmas. Imagine all the presents you’d have to buy!

I received two new ornaments for Christmas that I’ll feature in the coming days, but first one of my favorites, an ornament from my partner, Michael. He gave this letter M to me at our first Christmas four years ago (‘M’ is what we call each other) and I love the way the tiny Swarovski crystals reflect the twinkle lights.

Also, 30 years ago I received an iconic gift: Castle Grayskull. So many of my childhood Christmas gifts were He-Man and She-Ra action figures that the holiday and the brand are inseparable to me. And there’s that amazing He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special which was probably the longest commercial for the lines ever, but a favorite of mine to this day. Mattel released a new Castle Grayskull this year after much fan demand, in scale to the new MOTU adult collector line that started in 2008. Since I’ve been collecting the new line, I of course had to have the castle, and it’s brought me as much delight now as it did then. Even it it seems a bit absurd to devote valuable space in my NYC apartment to it.

Ornament Stories: Day 24

Christmas Eve. I’m headed to Christmas City, USA today with Michael to celebrate the holiday with my family. There will be carol singing tonight, and egg nog drinking. My father will watch the Pope’s Christmas sermon like he does every year after we get back from the Christmas Eve church service. Growing up, the Christmas spirit didn’t hit my father until the church services were over and the last notes of “Joy to the World” were echoing in the narthex. Perhaps that comes with the territory of being responsible for the worship service, getting the church decorated, training acolytes to know when to light candles and assist with communion, preparing a sermon that would try to temper our materialistic dreams of toys and gadgets in the morning with the message and gift of the birth of the savior. And what pressure, to be host for an event that was one of the highest attended services of the year when all the C&E (Christmas and Easter) members of the congregation came out to worship.

I always loved the drive home after that service, it officially Christmas as church ended at just about midnight, all the houses of Bethlehem’s west end lit up with candles in the windows, a Moravian tradition dating to the founding of the city in colonial times, the candles to light the way for the holy family. As we warmed up in the car, we’d make bets as to how many of the luminara lining the sidewalk and walkway outside our house (the whole neighborhood did this) had caught their white bags on fire and burnt to hard mounds of wax and sand.

I am no longer religious. Blame it on being a preacher’s kid, but I saw firsthand all the politics that go on in religious organizations and it left a sour taste in my mouth. I also have great discomfort with the daddy god of the monotheistic religions. When I learned of the pre-Christian mother goddess and her son/sun god destroyer/lover it complicated things a bit, especially since so many of Jesus’s miracles (walking on water, healing the sick, transforming water and loaves and fish) were common attributes of the son/sun god around the Mediterranean. But I go to church one night a year for my dad, because it means something to him that his family worships together. I don’t believe a word of anything said in the liturgy, but I enjoy the Christmas carols and the time spent with my family. It was after one of these Christmas Eve services a few years ago that I made this video of me reading “Twas the Night Before Christmas”:

Since I’ve swung to the secular Christmas, an ornament for Santa. I rescued this Santa from the trash. His presents had broken off from his hand, but I glued them back on and adopted him for my tree. Many years ago I started signing all my Christmas gifts “From Santa Matthew.” I guess we all play Santa Claus to our loved ones this time of year. Here’s to the Santas in your life being good to you tonight!

Ornament Stories: Day 23

Some of you may be familiar with my Christmas poem, “The Pickle and The Pear” (you can read the poem here.) These are the two ornaments that inspired it (I told you more pears were to come!). In fact, some of the other ornaments mentioned in the poem have appeared in these posts. Perhaps I should send you on a scavenger hunt to see if you can identify them all.

Do you know the tradition of the Christmas pickle? My pickle’s out in the open, but you’re supposed to hide it in your tree and whoever should find it gets a special gift, or good luck in the coming year. I always thought it was a German tradition given the German roots of my family, but I did some research and found this isn’t true, that it has American roots to the late 19th century. My cynical side likes the theory that it was a marketing ploy by Woolworth’s to sell German glass ornaments in the 1890s. Sounds about right for a holiday steeped in competing spiritual/material traditions.