Wow. Today somebody out there found my blog by searching for it by title. This is a first in the animal’s blogging career. It makes me feel that there is now some pressure on me to start writing properly and expressing real opinions rather than reiterating what other intelligent internet entities have said. That’s part of what blogging is about, I guess, but since I have a brain which functions fairly well, I should probably use it from time to time. No promises, because I tend to break those, but I would love to start writing more about birth and pregnancy and sexual health, and how we think about women’s bodies in all of these contexts – for that matter, how we think about men and their bodies in these contexts, because they are often overlooked. I would love to give myself some leeway to write frivolous things about fiddling (as in, playing the violin, you dirty bastards) and books and cats and my little prairie life. It’s a pretty great life with some pretty great people in it. So try not to mind if I occasionally remove the stick from my ass to talk about the things that make me happy to be in the world, rather than all the things I wish were different.
Thanks for making my morning, Google user.
Listening to Neko Case can be dangerous for me; her lyrics seem so intense sometimes, and there’s something about the twang that makes it extra emotive. Good old alt-country. I can sing my lungs out along with her, and break down crying in the middle of a song. “Wet shoes drag you off to school, shoes that never dry…”
Also very evocative is a poem called “The Onion” by John Thompson which I came across this afternoon in The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English. Strange that a poem about a vegetable should yank the heartstrings so. I’ll include a few lines, at the risk of defying copyright law (it can be found here if you have access to Jstor):
…
I cup the onion I watched grow all summer:
cutting perfectly through its heart
it speaks a white core, pale
green underskin, the perfections
I have broken, that curing grace
my knife releases;
and then you are by me, unfolded
to a white stillness, remade warmth on warmth.
So we turn from our darkness,
our brokenness,
share this discovered root,
this one quiet bread
quick with light, thyme, that deep
speech of your hands which always
defeats me, calling me through strange earths
to this place suddenly yours.
Sorry for the big line breaks, I’m not sure how to change that. Being technologically inept is definitely not all it’s cracked up to be.
Anyway. Those are the last few stanzas; I love where he places his line breaks and lines like “that deep/ speech of your hands which always/ defeats me.” I think poetry and I may be getting back together, so to speak. Writing well, and also reading well (please see Zadie Smith for discussion), take time and effort. I still have a lot to learn about poetry and writing in general, but I love the feeling of turning out a line that seems right. I want to work at being a poet along with all of the other things I’ve become while my writing life was on hiatus.
It sounds supremely pretentious to talk about my “writing life.” Who the fuck do I think I am? Two publications in a university journal do not a poet make. But I’ll work on it.
