Placeholder for the new year

The new year will begin with a full moon, a migraine, a stomach infection. It will begin with a hive desiccating a little every day. It will begin with a hungry cat.

The new year will be smaller, with fewer things to do that will, all the same, appear to be undoable.

No. The new year will contain within it all the predictions that will fail, no better than they did before.

In a few hours, I will not magically begin to write, write better, more, more efficiently.

In a few hours from this beautiful morning, there will be another one that I might sleep through, but more likely that I will watch from out my window, as I usually do.

Happy 2018!

Goodbye to all that

Goodbye to the musicians, the film makers, the actors, the writers, the politicians, the scientists, the environmentalists.

To the ones who were on the threshold of life, the ones who had to flee, the ones who died too young.

Goodbye to the deaths, the accidents, the illnesses, the life changes in each one of your lives.

Goodbye also, to the good things: whatever they were, and however various, small, briefly overwhelming. (We are all unhappy in the same ways; the ways of happiness are more slippery and indescribable).

Goodbye to the warmest year, month on month, since ever. Goodbye to the polar icecaps.

Goodbye to the friendships and the relationships that ended. To the ones who went away, to the things that were completed.

To the things you gave away, gifted, sent on, shared out, distributed.

Goodbye, 2016. We thought you'd never end.

Hello, 2017. We're watching you (even as we're being watched).

Resolutions: 'Work' by Raymond Carver

Work
Raymond Carver

Love of work. The blood singing
in that. The fine high rise
of it into the work. A man says,
I'm working. Or, I worked today.
Or, I'm trying to make it work.
Him working seven days a week.
And being awakened in the morning
by his young wife, his head on the typewriter.
The fullness before work.
The amazed understanding after.
Fastening his helmet.
Climbing onto his motorcycle
and thinking about home.
And work. Yes, work. The going
to what lasts.

~

Up there is my resolution (such as it is) only minus the motorcycle, the typewriter and the young wife.

Happy New Year, everyone.

The Sideways Door: Decemeber Response Column

This month, being about shapes and concrete poems and poems that rely hugely on formatting, I anticipated some work while putting up the column. I didn't realise it would take quite as long as it did but finally it's up.

Here it is.

That's it from me for this year. I'll see you all on the other side. Be good! (And have a happy end of year.)

'One sweet wind'

My resolutions, such as they are: 

1. Claim (more) words

2. Keep a record of how things shift.

3. Make poetry.

In the spirit of #3, and as a way of carrying myself over into 2015, I give you some Magnetic Poetry:

Happy New Year! (As always, be good).

Hanging by a thread

(It's not spider-silk but it's just as strong, so I don't despair.

Every time I announce a long silence on this blog, I break it almost immediately. This time, while not doing precisely that, I can't let the year go without looking back just once. At least just a little way.)

The year in reading has been amazing. I don't keep a reading diary - maybe I should - but off the top of my head, my stand-outs have been Rahul Soni's translation of Shrikant Verma's Magadh, reading and re-reading Sundara Ramaswamy, getting annoyed with Kalidasa in Iowa City, among other things.

But there's a book for every phase in one's life and while it was all Book of Disquiet five years ago and A Lover's Discourse two years ago, this is the year in which Daniil Kharms' Today I Wrote Nothing became my I Ching. What can I say? When I need divination, solace, when I need to bury something in someone else's words, I dive into this one.

Other things I've been reading recently: Miroslav Holub's Intensive Care which is basically some new poems and all his Selected rearranged in strange but informative ways. There are bits of paper sticking out, where I've marked lines and pages and the plan is to write about one book of poetry I've read at some regular interval as yet undecided upon.

When? Who knows. Some time soon, I hope.

Also Tomas Salamun's On the Track of Wild Game which, I don't know, is lik he was trying to be Bukowski, and was disappointing. I should put it away and return to it some other time.

Currently reading: Kazim Ali's translations of Sohrab Sepehri's poetry, The Oasis of Now.

On my Next Up list:

Tsering Wangmo's A Home in Tibet.
Naiyer Masud's Occult
Nirmal Verma's Days of Longing & The Red Tin Roof
Forugh Farrokhzad's Sin (in a less than satisfactory translation by Sholeh Wolpe, I already know this, but Farrokhzad has been the guardian angel of my recent writing, so it must be forgiven)
Kazim Ali's Skyward
M. Nourbese Philip's Zong!

This last is a book I have long wanted and when Kazim just gave me his copy of it, I almost swooned with gratitude. It deserves close and careful reading and extensive, maybe even running, commentary so I will definitely be writing about it, if not here then somewhere.

So that's the reading year, both gone by and coming up. It's not a blow by blow account - god! why would I do that to you guys? but it's some kind of highlight.

*

I haven't watched and don't plan to watch The Desolation of Smaug. I feel the shorter and more entertaining gifs on tumblrs around the world are enough. And, Jennifer Lawrence notwithstanding, Hunger Games does nothing for me.

The Sherlock mini thingie yesterday! Did y'all see it? The hair, oh gawd! So terrible! I predict an awful season, but I will watch it anyway.

What will make me both happier and weepier, will be this evening's Doctor Who, in which Peter Capaldi says hello and Matt Smith says goodbye.

All this seems to indicate that I watch more TV than films and this is true. The last film I remember watching is Four Lions which is funny and sad and problematic and in which it is proved that Brit Pakistanis can outswear Malcolm Tucker.

Other films in recent times included the loooong, strange and strangely fun film Kin Dza Dza! There was the harrowing Act of Killing and the epic-but-went-by-in-no-time Jai Bhim Comrade. And oh yes! - there was Recollections of the Yellow House and Offside, which were easier because more familiar types of filmmaking, without asking too much of the viewer. I regret to say I didn't finish watching 12 Storeys, which I found unrelentingly bleak; but now I wish I hadn't skipped it.

*

Music, I dunno. I said nasty things about whiny midwestern American singers who hide their faces behind their long beautiful hair and thus might have offended a friend. There was a lot of salsa music at the IWP, as well as lots of belly-dancing.

I mean, I listened to all the big releases and all - Kanye, Beyonce, Daft Punk (that was this year, wasn't it?) but the thing that really got me was a mixtape of tango that Kaash put up somewhere. It had 'Tango Apasionado' from Happy Together on it, so no more words necessary.

*

I cannot talk about the people. They have been the most important.

*

I am trepidatious about the new year. If I've had a good one - and I have - it must follow that the universe has a mega-balancing k.o punch in store for me, right? Right? Therefore I am nervous. I feel like I'm being set-up and I want to finish the year in hiding and/or hibernation so that I can fly under the radar and make myself small and invisible until it becomes necessary to show myself.

But that's just me. I hope the new year will be good to all of you.

See you on the other side.

New Year Resolution (Singular)

How many of you read that as Will Work For Free?

No.

(Also, Happy 2013. Be good!)

Goodbye 2011!

That's it for the year, folks!

Be good.