I must confess, it rhymed. I believe my penitence will be be 2 Our Fathers and 5 Hail Marys. Oh yeah, and go forth and rhyme no more.
For a bit of a treat, here Stephen Dunn reads Talk to God from his book, What Goes On—Selected and New Poems 1995-2009. Check it out.
I want an Eskimo Pie.
I want it cold
and hard as marble.
I want to peel the chocolate layer off
in two halves.
First eat the vanilla inside.
Hold the chocolate clothing;
admire its sheen.
Afterwards consume it-
until we are one
and the rush of dopamine flashes
inside my arcade head
sending me round and round
in a ball of worked up heat
wanting more and more.
Thursday night I was fortunate enough to be in the audience at a Kansas City reading by Aimee Neshukumatathil. Aimee read from her book Miracle Fruit, her latest book titled At the Drive-In Volcano and from a newer, yet to be published manuscript.
Aimee's writer voice is not the particularly powerful voice that I usually am drawn to. Nor did she quite seem to meet the template for an academic poet. She is perhaps more in the style of Naomi Nye… a gentle voice, a voice of knowledge, a voice that is zealous and vibrant, a layered mingling of her pedigree and contemporary American culture. Among my favorites from the reading, Corpse Flower, Swear Words, and Fishbone.
She’s a very relaxed reader who commands the audience attention with a balance of humor and casual storytelling in addition to her poetry. Her tone of voice when reading is a pleasant and reassuring one.
I enjoyed reading through Miracle Fruit last night and today. Her poetry is tight and neat and relies upon a wide range of knowledge of the plant and animal kingdom as well as ethnic and cultural insight.
As news of this has trickled out to the mainstream media slowly, I'm sure some of have perhaps heard that Nicholas Hughes died on the 16th of this month at his own hands. Nicholas was of course the second of two children born to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
He was in 46 and made his home in Fairbanks Alaska when he was a prominent fish biologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Not surprisingly he inherited his fathers fondness for fishing and nature.
His passing might have only made the local papers, but the the word of his suicide made the news around the U.S. and across the Atlantic in Europe as well. He was after all the son of Sylvia and Ted. There is so much tragedy associated with the family already and this will only rekindle the debates about his mothers death.
Nicholas was less in the limelight than his sister Frieda who like her mother wrote poetry and and painted as a serious artist herself. In a statement by Frieda released as she departed for Fairbanks she noted that her brother had been battling depression for some time.
Already I've seen stories that have popped up talking about a "suicide gene." There is statistically a high percentage of suicides among individuals who have lost a family member to suicide, but so far not real scientific evidence that links the act directly to genetics. It is true that the conditions, both environmental and by some predisposition to depression may increase the tendency but that linkage is more indirect.
I want to make note of a video my daughter Meghan passed along to me and some of you may well have seen it, but for those who haven't it's an uplifting story, the kind that toughs at the heart.
