Common Themes, Common Threads

Here are some new blogs I've found. The Laundry Narrative and The Thrifty Poet. Interestingly, the Laundry Narrative blogger doesn't describe laundry as one of the things she's interested in (on her profile) and Thrifty Poet doesn't have any poems on her blog, but they both seem to like clothes, one of them is a mom, and there is a lot of colorful musing going on. I can get behind that. Oh, and Thrifty Poet does list several very important books by poets on her list of books she wants to read. Donald Hall, Louise Bogan, and Eavan Boland -- which is how I found her blog in the first place.

Cassie Premo Steele actually has an entire post about Eavan Boland, and quotes a piece of her prose, one of my favorite bits.

“The more I lifted a child, conscious of nothing but the sweetness of a child’s skin, or the light behind an apple tree, or rain on the slates, the more language and poetry came to my assistance.” ---Eavan Boland

I'm eating my lunch at work and since I don't like to eat at the computer, I'm searching for something new about EB to read while I eat my lunch at my little round office table. I didn't get very far.

But, in other news, I have decided to diary again, and even to try PAD, if I can find the time. Oh, and write my thesis. Remember that?

I've been worried that I needed something 'new' for my thesis, some new spin, and I've been thinking that while so much scholarship about EB focuses on her as a poet, I could focus on her as a mother -- that the role of domestic imagery in her poems is not just political or feminist, but deeply personal. That while she write poems about being a fore-bearer for other women poets (and there is plenty of criticism about that), she's also a fore-bearer for mothers who want to write. She is a fore-mother. Not a forefather. No. It seems that Cassie Premo Steele agrees with me.

"This is why Eavan Boland’s writing is, for mother writers, revolutionary: she asserts that the selfish, interiorly focused mother can be a poet. Not just be a poet, but also somehow a good poet. And a good mother."

Maybe I'll making some progress after all. A photo for good luck.



Found at this new blog, Fiber Fantasies, when searching for a new photo of EB. What luck. So much richness.

Who Could Resist Super Yarn?

I noticed this company and these beautiful colored skeins in the Facebook adverts this morning. I guess those ads are good for something, then, even something beautiful.

Cascade Superwash Paint. A great name, too, for a lovely thing.

Thank you Apple Yarns of Bellingham WA.

I plan to blog every day, now, about the progress on my thesis. Not about knitting, but sort of about beauty and the work of women's hands.

Wish me luck.

Work and Dissapointment

I should be re-writing the new outline and thesis statement to send to my adviser. I had it all done. Then I lost it. (Dang.) But instead of getting back on that horse and riding that bicycle until I'm home, I'm moping. And disappointing myself and everyone else. (I know you're watching.) Maybe I better get over myself.

You know what they say: Human beings share over 50% of our DNA with bananas. Get over yourself.


(Apparently Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College, London is credited with stating this information.)

(Image Courtesy of Church of the Banana (http://www.churchofthebanana.com))

(This is only a Laundry Songs content blog because my thesis is about Laundry. Sort of.)

One poem forward, two poems back

So, I heard today that maybe my thesis prospectus is not good enough yet -- I think they are probably right, I am all over the place, not focused enough, and I didn't really try hard enough in those areas before I submitted it. Can't always fly by the seat of your pants, no matter how smart your pants are.

It's been suggested that I focus on Eavan Boland's poetry, still taking a look at domestic imagery. Does she qualify as an American Poet? She didn't even raise her kids here -- will I let that stop me? What can I find in Boland that will start me up? Here is Poets.org's bio of Boland. It's not a great photo, but it's a start. This is a link to a lovely poem "Pomegranate" about how Boland can find herself in both halves of the Persephone/Ceres myth -- any daughter who is now a mother of a daughter can imagine herself here -- Boland has done it with a Coke can. This is Norton's site, her publisher, and links to her books and other goodies. They also have this photo, which is much better.

Here's a poem, "It's A Woman's World" and criticism of the poem. Maybe I'll be okay in her company. (And because blogspot will not let me put in the line breaks, I do not know why, you have to go to another site to see them -- or better yet, buy the book --)

It's a Woman's World

Our way of life

has hardly changed

since a wheel first

whetted a knife.

Maybe flame

burns more greedily

and wheels are steadier,

but we're the same:

we milestone

our lives

with oversights,

living by the lights

of the loaf left

by the cash register,

the washing powder

paid for and wrapped,

the wash left wet:

like most historic peoples

we are defined

by what we forget

and what we never will be:

star-gazers,

fire-eaters.

It's our alibi

for all time:

as far as history goes

we were never

on the scene of the crime.

When the king's head

gored its basket,

grim harvest,

we were gristing bread

or getting the recipe

for a good soup.

It's still the same:

our windows

moth our children

to the flame

of hearth not history.

And still no page

scores the low music

of our outrage.

Appearances reassure:

that woman there,

craned to

the starry mystery,

is merely getting a breath

of evening air.

While this one here,

her mouth a burning plume -

she's no fire-eater,

just my frosty neighbour

coming home.

Thesis Prospectus Approved!

With reservations - of course - but still!!

I've heard from my Dean today and as soon as my potential advisor gets back to town, I could be in business. I guess I better get down to business. This blog could get very interesting very soon (she says hopefully and with much trepidation!) Here's the working title: The Sock of God: Evolution of Domestic Imagery in American Poetry in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century. But, which poets???? Here's the Stanford bio for Al Gelpi - who, from the look of this bio, might be just the guy for me!

And here's a photo, just for inspiration - one of my heroes -- Anne Sexton. It's her poem, "Snow", from which I derive my title, "the sock of God."

Oh, and what the heck, here's the poem.

Snow

Snow

Snow, blessed snow,

comes out of the sky

like bleached flies.

The ground is no longer naked.

The ground has on its clothes.

The trees poke out of sheets

and each branch wears the sock of God.

There is hope.

There is hope everywhere.

I bite it.Someone once said:

Don't bite till you know

if it's bread or stone.

What I bite is all bread,

rising, yeasty as a cloud.

There is hope.

There is hope everywhere.

Today God gives milk

and I have the pail.