happy birthday sylvia

The Lady Lazarus would have been 79 today! Becca K said on Facebook that Halloween seems like the right time for Sylvia Plath to have a birthday, and I would tend to agree - even though I've posted this beachy photo, what we know about Sylvia's usual day-to-day style is that it's all besweatered collegiate chic, and that is certainly right for autumn. I would have loved to see her style at that advanced age. Maybe she would have been on this blog. Did you know Sylvia submitted dozens of times to Seventeen Magazine before one of her pieces was published there? I think I submitted once and gave up. Persistence, that's what this generation lacks. Am I too old now?

food and writing

Look look look! Or rather listen listen listen. Autumn, of the awesome gluten-free food blog Autumn Makes and Does, has started a podcast called Alphabet Soup. It's about the places & people where food and writing intersect, and I was a guest on her second episode. I feel very excited about this topic. We talked about all kinds of stuff, from kombucha to simple cakes to Seventeen magazine, and I read some poems and talked about the food in them. Thank you for having me, Autumn! (Psst: she fed me amazing dinner and cake, and made me a bourbon sour with thyme and honey simple syrup. Yeah, you should be jealous. If Autumn's blog isn't on your foodie radar, it freaking should be.)

Listen to my nonsense and Autumn's very good questions here.

To bookend -- today I made sweet and spicy kabocha in the toaster oven. (Pictured: squash smile.) The kabocha was from the 4th Street Co-Op, where you don't have to be a member to shop! I also have a handsome little butternut squash, waiting to be souped, sitting on my counter. How's winter squash season for you?

west coast!

Headed to &NOW at UC San Diego this Friday. I have a paper on the Fatty poems from the excellent Tytti Heikkinen -- I'll bring some of these XL-lent ones with me. My section is on Saturday, but oh boy am I looking forward to so many other awesome-sounding talks and readings! Look at the schedule! Anna Joy Springer and Amina Cain have done an epic job of putting this thing together. Things I am especially looking forward to:

• Spelling the Beasts
  Spelling the Beasts is a poetic performance of two works, SPELLES and WE, BEASTS, created by hex laboratorium (an entity of inquiry created by Oana Avasilichioaei) and performed by Oana Avasilichioaei, using layered voices, vocal processors, a variety of sampled sounds, pre-recorded tracks and live vocal play.


• Performance/MACHINE: Jell-O, Drano, Meteorology & Shape-Shifting
  Kathleen Brown, Genji Amino, Liat Berdugo, Donna Fierle, Eliese Colette Goldbach, Sonja Greckol, Erin Robinsong, Lia Pas
  performance/MACHINE is a structured improvisation of multi-media experiments combining text, performance, sound, electronic instruments, visual music and animation.deconstructs and re-composes the relationship between audience and performer. The performance consists of six movements or Whe(a)thers that are individual ‘compositions’ playing with futures of text: text’s tomorrow is uncertain, jiggly, re-forming and re-winding, a voice held in puberty’s wavering clasp.


• No Future
  Joyelle McSweeney, Lucas de Lima, Monica Mody, Feng Chen
  Turning away from the positivist, well-lit vista of literary futurism & political progressivism, this panel will semaphor our queer concerns through a discussion of Art-poison; ecstatic states; media and channels; fatal art (not just for the artist); hack art & art-hacks; resistance & submission; the Necropastoral & the viral tree of life/the space in which writer & reader bleed through paper & kiss a dead being/it is embarrassing to be human.

A follow-up report will emerge somewhere after the fact, I'm sure. If you will be at &NOW this weekend, please say hello. You will recognize me by these facts: 1.) I am a shaved-head lady, and 2.) I am generally sporting a feral-looking scowl, but wouldn't you know it that I'm pretty friendly once you get to know me!

PS

"It is disheartening to me that the same leftist press is willing to fall over themselves to report on revolutions abroad but when it comes to the desire to assemble in their own backyard, there is nothing but toxic cynicism."

This (thanks RG). I'll be down on Wall St today.

book four is out now.

I am pleased that Margaret Bashaar at Hyacinth Girl Press has put out my little chap, Book Four. These poems are the bits that survived after I slashed-and-burned a full-sized manuscript; some of them are pretty old (and may be recognizable from other iterations) and some are a little bit newer. My friend (poetry friend and cheese friend) Tricia Taaca described the manuscript as "scary." I think I like that. The poems are a little interpersonal and a lot environmental with a bit of dystopic future. Who can guess what the title refers to (EASY EASY EASY really)?

My talented sister the artist Minna Pollari drew the broken-beaked crow on the cover. I love where this cover went - the book itself is so Deadly Serious and this cover is a little bit goth and it balances out.

I am stealing Margaret's picture, for now. I hope you get the book and if you get it, I hope you like it, and if you like it, I hope you tell me.