WhimsyLand

Sweet Junie's in town, so I'm such a slacker this week (so far).  Mainly, I'm waiting for various projects to advance and lots of clients are out of town, on holiday, or just ignoring me. 

I note with some delight that the Raven Chronicles' Whimsies issue (Volume 13) is about to come out.  I'm in it, as are blogmates Kelli Agodon and Peter Pereira, among others.

Tomorrow I send off my manuscript to the Emily Dickinson First Book Award.  Since 95% of the poets I know are under 50, and virtually all my blogmates, I will be contending mostly with people I've never heard of.  Of course, they've probably never heard of me, either.  I found a narrative arc, first with the help of Suzanne Frischkorn, and then with some selection/ordering help from Junie.  That's only fitting, as Junie is in 15% of the poems in the manuscript.  This time, I've included Notes on the Poems and Mathematical and Scientific Notes.  My end notes are perhaps atypical, in that they don't mention Zukofsky, allude to Miles Davis, or make reference to Herbert.   Here's a sample:

At Which Point, We Lose Volume IX:  The subjects mentioned are all discussed in Volume IX of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th Edition.

A Leap Implies An Anchorage:  The title is taken from a line in G. C. Waldrep’s Wedge.

A Thin Grief Called Sincerity:  The title is taken from a line in Jorie Graham’s Untitled.

Confluence of Hungers:  Constantine spent much of his early years in Trier, then the Western capital of the Roman Empire.

Cantos:  The poem contains the names of seventeen literary journals.

Just Stay With Me:  The reference "It's not the years, it's the miles" was spoken by the fictional archeologist Indiana Jones, in the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Sans Jeter Un Regard Rétrospectif:  It has long been the custom of Tour d'Argent, an exclusive Parisian restaurant, to pay for the illumination of the  Notre Dame cathedral for viewing by their dining patrons.

Catenary:  The poem is composed of bridge engineering terms:  cantilever, arc, truss, parabola, tension, dome, bending moment.

Spin:  Among the many other objects capable of spin, quarks are unique in that spin is one of their basic properties, along with mass, color, flavor, and charge.

Capitulation:  In 1997, "Judas goats", tagged with transmitters, were released in the Galapagos islands to lead hunters to the flock, in an attempt to return the islands to their former ecological state.

General News:

A 50-ton bowhead whale that was killed off the Alaskan coast was found to have a 100-year old harpoon lance fragment in its neck, proving that the whale was between 115 and 130 years old.  Also sentient, in a whale way.  Don't matter, though, because "Whaling has always been a prominent source of food for Alaskans, and is monitored by the International Whaling Commission. A hunting quota for the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission was recently renewed, allowing 255 whales to be harvested by 10 Alaskan villages over five years."  Most developed countries decry Japan's "traditional whaling", but not so for indigenous Alaskans.  There's also a lot of (mostly nostalgic, Native American-friendly) information available that is at odds with analysis, or for that matter, with itself.  One article says that the average Eskimo family requires 60 pounds of whale meat a year. Another says that 15 whales per year are sufficient for nine villages.  Roughly 250 whales at an average of 50 tons apiece is the take here (adults can grow to over 100 tons).  That's 25 million pounds of whale.  Admittedly, it's not all meat, though many articles point out the "the Eskimo uses every part of the whale, including blubber, baleen and tongue".  So maybe you get 6 million pounds of "whale meat"?  That would supply 100,000 native Eskimo families or over 250,000 individuals (BTW, Eskimo is apparently preferred to Inuit by natives of Alaska).  Wikipedia puts the entire Inuit population – including those from Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Russia  – at 150,000.  I'm not sure I can reconcile all these factoids, but I am sure that whales are getting killed.

Iran's parliament voted for a bill to execute porn stars.

Chinese paleontologists have unearthed a new bird-like dinosaur species that was 12 feet tall and 26 feet long.  It was feathered, had a beak, and delivered up to 1,200 pounds of white meat to co-habitating, grill-savvy early men, like the Creationist Museum says.

Poetry News:

Jonathan continues to crack me up:  "I agreed with Reginald in his general points until I noticed he could be talking about people like me. When I make a critical statement that seems irresponsible, it is usually something I can back up. My sometimes hyperbolic style shouldn't fool you: I actually do know what I'm talking about."  Another Mayhewesque reference by Ron, concerning the former's "Merwin or McKuen?"challenge.  Judging from Jonathan's responses in the comments, I didn't do very well guessing.  That's really interesting, as I've read a lot of Merwin.  I wonder who else would be a good match-up?  Vivian Shipley vs. Jewel?

Poem Fragment One:  "Sister cut in stone. What is done cannot be / undone except by my heart which has no teeth / to chew, will not swallow what I cannot digest".

Poem Fragment Two:  "Sometime I turn calico / trying to fathom /   your fall / you turn shades / to an indigo quiver".

Speaking of Ron, he says that Donald Allen's The New American Poetry is "unquestionably the most influential single anthology of the last century".  If I ever get my manuscript published, I'll be looking for blurbs roughly along those lines.