WhimsyLand

Sweet Junie's in town, so I'm not blogging like I'm wont to.  We have had snow on the ground for a record 7 weeks and the high was about 35 today.  Still, that's 40 degrees warmer than the high in Eau Claire, so she's happy.

There's some nice work in Cimarron Review.  Contributors include Mike White, Bruce Covey, Eric Trethewey, E.G. Burrow, and John Ashbery.  Yes, that Ashbery, I was surprised, too.  Cimarron Review's general editorial aesthetic strikes me as similar to that of Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and Crab Orchard Review and, not surprisingly, the bios of the poets include these and similar journals.  I tend to think of litmags as stars in disparate constellations, and a meticulous reading of journal bios tends to support this thesis.  There's a constellation anchored by Fence, for example, and another whose brightest star is the Boston Review.  (Pleiades, is of course, it's own star system).  But, I digress.  I loved the bios in CR.  One contributor Joseph Richie is 16 years old and "hangs out at coffee shops with weird and shady characters".  Julie King, an MFA from Queens University, stars in "B" horror films.  The somewhat conservative critic Adam Kirsch pens a poem in blank verse, something I usually view as daring nowadays when successful.  Hilary Sideris contributes three pretty damned funny pet poems (I hope they were meant to be), including Adult Short-Haired Domestic Male, which starts out "Tonight I tried to kill him / when he knocked from the table, / on purpose, my last glass / of pinot noir.  Threw him on the fire / escape ...".  Intriguing enjambment, of course, and a few other tricks up her sleeve in Custody and Baby.  A lot of the work in the issue is chatty, narrative and descriptive, and most is quite readable.  Ashbery stands out, as always, by being chatty and urbane, while leaving purposely breadcrumbs to places he never ends up:  "... Imagine a movie that is the same / as someone's life, same length, same ratings. // ... // How do you judge when it's more than / half over?  As pastel tundra / crowds in from all sides like a mandala/ ..."

If you wonder what the rich do with all their money, one thing must be purchasing wine.  The 100 best wineries in the world have been able to raise their prices repeatedly to the point where they are beyond the reach of even upper-middle class on expense accounts.  The 2005 futures (that is, wine which you won't receive for another year and you can't drink until 2010) are running $200 to $600 for the French first and second growths. Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Margaux, Haut Brion and La Tour run about $600 a bottle, while Cheval Blanc and Yquem are close to $700.  Futures prices for the world renown Pomerol, Chateau Petrus, are almost $3,000 a bottle.   It won't do you much good to look to prior good years, either.  The case of 1985 Chateau Margaux that I bought (and subsequently drank) in 1997 now retails for $550 a bottle.  The long-gone case of 1982 Penfold's Grange Hermitage would now set me back $275 a bottle.  I guess it's good that I drank those wonderful wines when they were a lot cheaper.  If I had them now, I'd probably get a case of the guilts, sell them, donate some to charity and put the rest in my IRA.

More tomorrow.