WhimsyLand

Rumors of my demise are exaggerated.  I have actually been working pretty much 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and only noticed that my blog had gone dark when my son mentioned it.  It's been that long, I thought.  Needless to say, the mail and news has been piling up like garbage bags during a New York strike.  First, the silly ones:  Dean & Deluca showed up with their usual goodies, quickly followed by a catalog from Mackenzie Limited, an apparent competitor.  Mackenzie seems to have pretty much everything D&D does (no wine, though).  The Tsar's Cut of smoked salmon runs $60 a pound, and there are a dozen other salmon offerings from around the world to be had, all about the same price range.  Caviar samplers, natch, and a variety of mini and full-sized comfort food offerings, such as escargot en brioche, crab artichoke dip, olives in puffed pastry, mini crab Wellingtons, Mediterranean purses (phyllo dough stuffed with Med goodies), 72-layer biscuits, Lobster Newburg, sweet potato casserole, and even mac and cheese.  How much?  Well, the mac and cheese runs $35 for two servings, so you can figure what the rest are running. 

Next up is The Bounty Hunter, which is a ridiculous premise:  this guy goes around Napa and finds great wine and puts out a nice catalog about his finds, as if you couldn't find this wine anywhere on the Internet.  If I had the money, my pick would be the Gaja (pronounced gie-ya) '99 Conteisa at $225 a bottle, but unless you're paying, I'll pass.

I'm also stacked up with issues of Time, one of which has the rather ambitious General Petraeus who recently mentioned privately to aides that he wouldn't be running for president until 2012.  One issue showcases The Case for National Service, which would be fine for me, since I'm too old for that nonsense anyway.  Taking the prize for stupidest Time cover in recent memory is the issue with The Running Mates on a faux commemorative dish, including of course the smiling face of Prez Bill.  The most entertaining article is 10 Questions for Fitty Cents, who answers them with his usual hubris.

APR's issue is at least partially dedicated to elegy.  Bob Hicok has some subdued and excellent poems about his experience at Virginia Tech.  Robert Hass is on the cover (and inside as well with some poems).  I have only seen him once, at the Napa Valley writing thing I was at, at the side of his wife Brenda Hillman.  They also have a lot to do with the Squaw Valley workshop, as I recall, and I recently saw that they're organizing a workshop in Africa during the winter (ours, not theirs). 

I received a new copy of ZYZZYVA from Howard, and love reading all the Bay Area ads and news.  The writing is quite good, as one would expect, but there's a sassy sense to ZYZZYVA that makes you want to turn pages. 

Harper's has a terrific article on Disaster Capitalism that spells out why much of Corporate America is rooting for more Katrinas, 9/11's and war in general.  In short, there's big money in tragedy now that the government is outsourcing every imaginable job at rates 3 to 10 times higher than it would cost if we just hired (or re-hired) Federal employees.  The best of the Harper's Index:  US immigration to Canada is up 46% in the past 3 years;  GW Bush now matches the record disapproval ratings of Truman and Nixon;  chance that a Global 2500 CEO was forced out in 1995 and this year:  1 in 8, 1 in 3;  number of cattle that Fidelity Investments keep on their Fort Worth campus to avoid $328,000 in taxes through agricultural exemption:  25;  number of poetry book sales per week it takes to be on Poetry Foundations best-seller list:  50;  number of escort services and MacDonald's in DC:  26 and 25, respectively;  percentage increase in the amount of food you will eat if you accompany 1 other, 4 other or 7 other persons to dinner:  +35%, +75%, +96%.

Of course, the new BAP is out and I'm slowing plugging the names and numbers into my Massive Best American Poetry Database.  I'll be back this week with the stats, but a word about the work:  I think it's my favorite BAP of the past decade, maybe two.  First off, MJB is in there, always a good sign (BTW, she's in a Notre Dame Review that came in but more about that later), and Heather McHugh has put together a great collection of poems in which even the Old Guard seems to be brief and quirky.

More tomorrow.

No, really.