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Author Archives: Eden M. Kennedy
Mac Prose
Mac Prose is a great little program that lets your computer generate sentences/poetry. Some recent wisdom from mine:
“The sky suitcase (the evening) has stumbled.”
“While we were the circumstances, what had the aspects of hell improved?”
I found it on the Connecticut College Web page for my old poetry professor, Charles O. Hartman. You can download it here.
Two Firsts
One: Jackson can now suck on his own toes, and two: he got his first CD liner notes “thank you” (a first for me, too) on Alastair Green’s latest effort, “A Little Wiser.” Alastair is a Berklee-trained rock guitar god who is currently living down the street in a cute little trailer in his dad’s driveway. His site is now up and running.
Monkey Kung Fu!
Damn!
Who do I have to bl — er, KNOW to get the comments link to work?
I am totally thinking of applying for editorial work at this place, even though moving to L.A. is pretty much out of the question. But that fits in nicely with my pretending-to-try-to-find-a-job M.O.
Going to Palm Springs tomorrow to visit Jack’s mom, who is recovering from pneumonia. She got kind of choked up on the phone when he told her we were coming, so we’re hoping that a dose of The Peanut will cure her completely.
Edward Dorn is a damned good poet. If you can find a copy of his “Gunslinger,” buy it.
Vaquero
The cowboy stands beneath
a brick-orange moon. The top
of his oblong head is blue, the sheath
of his hips
is too.
In the dark brown night
your delicate cowboy stands quite still.
His plain hands are crossed.
His wrists are embossed white.
In the background night is a house,
has a blue chimney top,
Yi Yi, the cowboy’s eyes
are blue. The top of the sky
is too.
Birth Day
And to my other friend Steve, who as far as I know does not do yoga, happy birthday!
Here is a Rilke poem that I’ve always liked, translated by Robert Bly. The last line reminds me of something I read recently — “As death is inevitable for the living, so birth is inevitable for the dead.”
I find you in all these things of the world
that I love calmly, like a brother;
in things no one cares for you brood like a seed;
and to powerful things you give an immense power.
Strength plays such a marvelous game –
it moves through the things of the world like a servant,
groping out in roots, tapering in trunks,
and in the treetops like a rising from the dead.
Wow, I forgot how much I like peanut butter.
About three years ago I was walking up State Street when I ran into my friend Steve. He was just back from India where he’d been studying ashtanga yoga; his wife had left him; and now he was getting up at 3:45 every morning, riding his bike to the yoga center to do his practice, and then teaching students until 8:30 (the point at which I normally rolled out of bed in those carefree pre-motherhood times). Before we parted Steve said that in India he was often invited to do things by the phrase, “You come.” And thusly he invited me to his yoga class, though it was about six months before I took him up on it. But once I did, let me tell you, ashtanga yoga totally kicked my ass.
So this morning I got up at 5:30, nursed the baby before he had any idea what was going on, put him back in his crib where he passed out again, and went to Steve’s yoga class, which he now teaches with his partner, Michele. I haven’t practiced much since the baby came, and about a third of the way through I thought I was going to faint. I curled up on my mat for a few minutes and thought about crying. But something realigned itself and I got back up and kept going. When I got home Jack was waiting on the sidewalk, talking on the cell phone, holding Jackson (still in pajamas). I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m always slightly relieved that Jack has managed to keep the baby alive while I’m gone.
Warming
It’s getting so chilly here. e. e. cummings was the first poet I really “got” way back in high school when they were trying to teach me how to write a sentence (in 10th grade, for heaven’s sake! Public education is really a snake pit.). He wrote this in 1923.
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty . how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
Comments
I had to switch over to another host to get the comments link to work, so, unfortunately, the few responses I had (thank you, Steven) are gone. This new set up should work fine, though, thanks to Snorland. It’s amazing what’s available out there for free.
