Ada Limón

May is NOT National Poetry Month

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:29:00 +0000

Thank you for reading our drafts of April poems. I made 23 of them and now they all must be edited. Jason made 7 lovely little ditties. I shall write more things soon. If you are wondering how the tour wrapped up, here's a little recap.

Also, since I've been selected as a judge for the 2013 National Book Award, all I am doing (aside from freelance work) is reading. It's really wonderful, but also overwhelming. It requires a lot of space and time and quiet. But the the books are just a joy to spend time with.

Also, I have joined the faculty for the 2014 Low-Residency MFA Latin America for the Queens University of Charlotte which means you should join us.

Sending love from sunny California where life is nice and slow and we are doing our work and counting our blessings and eating too many popsicles.

National Poetry Month, It Begins, It Beats, It Bellows

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 01:47:00 +0000

This year, we join the gang over at NaPoWriMo in yet another clumsy attempt at creating a draft of a poem every day for the month of April. Jennifer L. Knox will, very unfortunately, not be joining us, but Jason Schneiderman will!

We ask only a few things from you:

1. Don't touch the wild poems. We ask that you kindly do not remove, copy, or share these baby poems on your own blog or website. (Even though it's awesome that you might want to!) Feel free to comment or share this link, but we take these drafts down after a bit in order to work on them, submit them to magazines, and put them in our books.

2. Be gentle. These are drafts. We don't write a poem a day every month because it's really really hard. If you see something on here that you don't like or that isn't very good, both of those things are OK and we understand. Just don't judge us.

Gulp. Here it goes.

AWP Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 02:24:00 +0000

From what I recall, the writers' conference went something like this....

We drove and luckily avoided all the storms. We stayed in a creepy hotel outside of Cleveland and we listened to audio books and the dog slept the whole time like 13 hours was nothing.

When we arrived, it was time for dinner and Lily Bean & Sophie were reunited. They cuddled. They didn't want to go to the writers' conference.

There was so much snow. It was hard to get out of bed and go. I went and then there was so many faces and names and blurs and beauties. I was overwhelmed and overjoyed...

The conference was insane and wonderful. So many panels. So much talent. So much love. Here's Nick Flynn reading an Alan Dugan poem (an amazing event).

Milkweed Editions threw a special party with Manhattans. And we brought bourbon from Kentucky. Adam Clay was a king.

I found some stolen time with Nicole Callihan and Dawn Lundy Martin and Kristin Dombek. We drank pink champagne and we were surprised that the whole thing was legal.

This was my first AWP with Lucas and now he'll have to go every single year from now on. I just decided.

AWP Keeping the Sanity

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 14:19:00 +0000

Later today, once we are all packed and our work projects are complete, we'll start our long drive to Boston. It's my first AWP (Association of Writers & Writers Programs) Conference since Denver in 2010. It's also my first AWP where I'll have the great pleasure of being accompanied by my man. I keep trying to warn him, but he has no idea what he's in for. I'm posting my schedule here for 3 reasons. 1. For my mother so she can see all the things that I'm doing--this way when I call her exhausted later at the beginning of next week, she'll understand. 2. For those of you who are coming to Boston and would like to meet up with me, here's where I'll be, please come. 3. So that I can view my blog on my phone and see my schedule in case I forget where I have to be while lounging too long with bloody mary's in some Boston bar with the people I love. Okay, here it goes!

Ada’s AWP Events

Wednesday: Bob’s house to drop off dog.

Thursday:

check in to conference

Milkweed Editions Party 5:30-7:30pm (convention center, they serve manhattans)
Sheraton, unconfirmed room as of now.

Offsite Event: New America Anthology

Date: Thursday, March 7

Time: 8PM

Locaiton: Outpost 186

186 1/2 Hampshire St., Inman Square

With: Connie Clegg Hales

John Hodgen

Burt Kimmelman

Ada Limón

Sheryl St. Germain

Evie Shockley

Hal Sirowitz

Patricia Smith

James Tolan

Sandy Tseng

Estha Weiner

Friday:

Event: FAWC keeping it real

Date: Friday, March 8

Time: 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM

Location: Room 201

With:

Mark Wunderlich

Daisy Fried

A.J. Verdelle

Jill McDonough

Event: Book Fair Signing, Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine

Date: Friday, March 8

Time: 12-1pm

Location: at the University of Iowa Press tables (E1 and E2) at the AWP Bookfair

Event: Teaching (and Learning!) with First Books of Poetry  

Date: Friday, March 8 

Time: 4:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.  

Location: Room 201, Hynes Convention Center

Event: Reading Gulf Coast/Bat City Review

Date: Friday, March 8

Time: 8:30pm

Location: David Friend Recital Hall

With:

Jeffrey McDaniel

Ada Limón

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Jamaal May

Matt Hart

Darcie Dennigan

Timothy Donnelly

Saturday:

Event Title: Against Veils -- A Tribute to Alan Dugan 

Date: Saturday, March 9 

Time: 10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. 

Location: Room 202, Hynes Convention Center

(Reading Love Song I & Thou)

With:

“Love Song: I and Thou”

Ada Limón

“Elegy”

John Skoyles

“On a Seven-Day Diary”

Gail Mazur

“Last Statement For a Last Oracle”

David Wojahn

“Note: The Sea Grinds Things Up”

Michael Morse

“Takeoff on Armageddon

—For Ronald Reagan”

Nick Flynn

“On a Desolation of the Animals at Night”

Adrienne Su

“Suburban

Ada Limón

“On Flowers. On Negative Evolution”

Matthew Lippman

“On a Desolation of the Animals at Night”

Adrienne Su

“Suburban Exorcism”

David Rivard

“Spring Song for Symplocarpus

Foetida and Me”

Jill McDonough

“On a Myth. On a Conventional Wisdom”

Victoria Redel

“In Favor of a Free Public Library System”

Michael Collier

“Closing Time at the Second Avenue Deli”

Alan Dugan

Event: PBQ at 40, An Anniversary Reading

Date: Saturday, March 9

Time: 3:00 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.

Location: Room 309, Hynes Convention Center

With:

Jason Schneiderman

Gregory Pardlo

Keetje Kuipers

Leave Boston.

Small-Hour Love

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:17:00 +0000

Last night, after a lovely Valentine's Day (and my mother's birthday as I've noted before), I woke up at 4:30am and couldn't get back to sleep. I tried my meditation, I read a poem on my Poetry Daily app (this one, it's great), I checked my email (thank you, Jason Schneiderman for giving me a great email to read at 4:30 in the morning), but nothing seemed to lull me back into the sweet black of sleep. So I thought. And I thought.

I thought about the future, and what it is going to be like, I thought about money (because that's what we do at that hour), I thought about the dog's little rash on her chin, I thought about moving to California, I thought about staying in Kentucky, I thought about Lucas and his career, I thought about Cynthia, I thought about my grandparents, I thought about my brothers, and my nephew, I thought about my parents, I thought about my friends, I thought about the animals of my friends, I thought about my body, my health, my weight, my eyes, my teeth. I thought about the weather and the earth, I thought about the moon and the ocean, I thought about my novel, and I thought about poems, and I thought about this new idea that I have which could be a play or maybe a young adult novel, or maybe nothing at all, and that's how I let the 2 hours pass. In the dark. With all those thoughts. This morning, a little worse for wear, I realized maybe I needed that. It was Valentine's Day after all, maybe what I was doing was just giving a little bit of love to all those things.Today, I don't want to call it "worry." I want it to be more like "attention." Maybe those things just needed attention. Maybe they needed a little early morning, small-hour love. And if you woke up from a dream wondering if someone was thinking of you, someone was. It was me.

Object Love

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:48:00 +0000

I was trying to write about something; I wanted to have interesting thoughts, but I had none. So I wrote to my friend Trish on gchat. She asked me if I had seen the show Girls, and I hadn't. Then we were silent for awhile and I said, "Okay, I have to go now and do Pilates." To which she replied, "Love." And I don't know if that was the subject she was suggesting or just her sweet way of signing off. But I took it anyway as Valentine's Day is tomorrow (which is my mother's birthday), and all the world's advertising is telling us how important love is. I agree. It is the most important thing.

Photo Credit: Linda Todd-Limón

So many different forms of love. This week my heart has been stinging because my dad sold his house in the Northwest. A house I had seen built when I was 15; it was the house my little brother was raised in; it was the house my stepmom passed away in. It's hard to see such a beloved place no longer belong in the family. I wasn't raised there, but it felt very much like my family home; I'm going to miss it, and the land surrounding it, immensely.

I was thinking of those women; the women who marry buildings and structures. The San Francisco woman, Erika Eiffel who married (can you guess?) the Eiffel tower. The Swedish woman Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer who married (can you guess?) the Berlin Wall. And how--to a much lesser degree--we can all love objects. What we pour into an object or a place, can be as powerful and as "real" as what we pour into a person. I feel that way about the house. We called it the Lodge when Cynthia, my stepmom, was alive. Afterwards, when Dad was getting back on his feet and learning to live alone and finally looking for love again, we called it Second Wind. And the name Second Wind proved a good luck charm in ways. It blew him right into the arms of a woman who couldn't be more perfect for him. It blew him straight to love-town, and with the new marriage, and a new life, retirement and all the kids out on their own, they're looking for a new home together. It's ideal really, the kind of good thing you would fall down and ask the universe for, your father's true happiness.

Photo Credit: Linda Todd-Limón

Except, what do you do with the love of an object, a place, a home? Where do you put it? This morning, I was thinking you may have to grieve it as you would a real relationship. You might have to think about it and cry and finally get to that place where you can hope it has a good life without you. You may have to write stories for it and poems and honor it. Of course then, it made me think of the poem One Art by Elizabeth Bishop (which is my favorite poem), the lines:

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then, I thought of Yeats's The Lake Isle of Innisfree and the lines:

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

And so many more. Love poems to places, to objects, to memories. Then, I thought that's why poets don't need to get married to buildings. We write poems to them instead. That's how we honor. So I have no need to be Ada Limón-Second Wind. I could just be me and let the "art of losing" lead me to a poem. That's how we love.

Life, Friends, is Not Boring. It's Just Cold.

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:12:00 +0000

According to this here online journal/blog, the last time I updated was near Halloween. Which was nearly 3 months ago. Occasionally, when I worry about not posting enough, the worry turns into a slight (or severe) phobia and then I just give up and won’t post at all. I’m not saying that’s what happened, but maybe something a little like that. The longer I went without talking over here, the more I felt some desperate need to explain what I’ve been doing with myself for the last 3 months, like confession. Blogger, forgive me, it's been 3 months since my last ramble.

Most of November was spent in California visiting family and friends, writing, and working freelance. Both brothers visited, wine tasting was accomplished, beer tasting was accomplished, major dog-love was accomplished. While were were out there in Sonoma (my heart, my home), I wrote an essay for Jennifer L. Knox’s Chick Flix series over at Delirious Hem, which then got picked up for inclusion in the next edition of the best-selling textbook, The World is a Text.

Most of December was spent in New York City, and upstate New York, visiting family and friends. I read for The College of New Jersey for INK, and the conversation afterwards was amazing. We talked about love and how to stay present in the world, and crushes, and heartbreaks. It was a supremely satisfying evening full of hungry young souls and a great open-hearted conversation about creating. Then back to Sonoma, California for more Valley love and old elementary school friends (the Dunbar Demons reunited), then back to New York again where I got to catch up with friends that I'd been sorely missing.

Most of January was spent right here in Kentucky working hard on the ongoing novel. I
finished a strangely gratifying 6^th draft that someone may or may not be reading right now. (I’m trying not to think about it.). Luckily more freelance work came and it was work that I love. Then, my online class with the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center launched on January 7. (It's truly a wonderful workshop, I'm not lying.) Then, there has been the great return to poetry, poetry, poetry. I am trying to write a poem a week in 2013. So far I have five, so I'm right on track. It helps if you make yourself do every assignment you give your students. Also, I had two poems come out in TriQuaterly Online and one of them got picked up for Poetry Daily. Oh and Adam Clay and I started a reading series here in Lexington, KY called The Black Sheep Reading Series. We are still getting it off the ground slowly, but it’s so good to have poets visit and bring us work and life and laughter and a reason to toast.

Still, like everyone, I look around and say, “Whoa where did all that time go? What have I been doing with my life?” It turns out that life, friends, is NOT boring. (Forgive me John Berryman). Yesterday, all day, I kept thinking. I want to write something really fantastic. (I’m not making that up.) That’s what I kept saying to myself. In between work emails, and dog emptying, and my daily exercises, I’d stare at the screen, or pour tea, and I'd think, “I want to write something really fantastic.” But I didn’t. Oh sure, some poetry was revised, and I did some good work here and there, but nothing earth shattering. Still, I keep going, like a slightly busted up car that still starts and is happy when that’s all that’s required of it.

And here we are; the first month of the year done and accomplished and complete. It's cold outside (9 degrees!) and I am still wishing for warmth. Snow is on the woodpile and these days the dog rushes indoors quickly to her favorite heater vent in the kitchen and shoves her face right down in it to get warm. I suspect, like all poets, I am terribly anxious for spring. I will be another year older in March, a new poetry tour will begin in April. And life will continue to not be boring, even if sometimes we wish it so. All year, I will attempt to write something fantastic; hopefully all my pretty little failures in between will keep me warm until then.

The Dark Side

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 15:09:00 +0000

Halloween is my favorite holiday. Aside from Cinco de Mayo, I'm convinced it should be every poet's favorite holiday. It has all we need to stoke the fires of the bizarre poet's heart: celebrating the dead (us poets love to celebrate our dead, "Turn me into song; sing me awake."), altering of characters and personas (let us be another so that we can be ourselves! "The natural madness of the hatter."), bonfires ("Rage, rage against the dying of the light."), and lastly, a wild foray into the darkness ("We grow accustomed to the dark--"). This year, All Hallows Eve has coincided with some strange rhyming obsession that's hit me recently and hasn't stopped. Like most of my obsessions, there was nothing to do but hop on the train and hope that at some point I'd be let off eventually. So, I've given in and started writing children's poems. This one in particular if for Dimitri, my awesome four year old nephew who loves Halloween as much as I do. What can we do, but embrace whatever new poetic device comes knocking at our door? Let it in! Let it in! Give it candy and gin!

(*Thanks to Kaelea Ann for making it pretty and four year old friendly!)

Big Audio Bibliophile

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:24:00 +0000

When I was out for my walk today, as I took this photo on the left, I was thinking of all the little changes that life offers. Not the big ones, but the little funny ones that seep into your bloodstream and become part of you before you're even aware of it, the smallest revolutions of the mind and the body. One of the many things that has altered over the past two years of my new vagabond life, is that I read almost 150% more than I did when I lived and worked in New York. I always read poetry, sometimes more than 5 books of poems a week, and I always read my favorite poetry books over and over again, nightly even, but now that I've journeyed to the outskirts, I've fallen in love with the long form again, the fiction books, the memoirs, the mysteries, the fantasies, all of it.

Not only do I have a book that I read by my bed, but I also have a book that I'm listening to. When I take the dog for a walk into our neighbor's tree farm (Thanks, Tom!), or when I'm driving through town, or when I'm cleaning, doing the dishes, making dinner, and so on, there is very often an audio book playing in my headphones or through the speaker. My best friends back in the city like to tease me about this. I'll say, "I read this great book!", to which they'll reply, "You READ it? Or you LISTENED to it?" They want to make sure that I'm aware of the distinction, that I don't go around saying I read two novels a week, when in fact I've listened to one novel, and read the other. I understand their concern, and I very much appreciate the difference. They are each entirely independent visceral experiences. However, that doesn't discount the incredible pleasure I get from listening to a well-written unabridged novel, with a gorgeous, layered story, read by a talented multi-dimensional narrator.

It started when I had to pack up my apartment for my sub-letter (sigh, and now the apartment is no longer mine). I had a month to go through everything I had accumulated over the twelve years I lived in Brooklyn. Papers, cocktail napkins with poems and lists, pictures, and so many shoes. So so so many shoes. A woman I worked with connected me with her friend who worked for a large publishing house. She, very very sweetly, sent me a dozen or so audio books that she had laying around the office in order to congratulate me on my decision to write full time. (Supportive strangers? I could not, I repeat, could not, live without them.) In the bunch was Jonathan Franzen's, Freedom. All 24 hours and 14 minutes of it. Read by David LeDoux. It kept me company during the sorting and the filing and the terrible throwing away. I was hooked.

I have always loved being read to. When I was little my dad would read stories and make up stories for us before we went to bed, my mom read to us all the time, and my stepdad read books to us with such talent and enthusiasm that sometimes we'd be too wound up by the story to go to bed. Oh Ramona & Beezus, Oh Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, let them go on forever. Sometimes, I think it's why I've always liked to attend poetry readings and fiction readings, so that I could hear someone reading out loud. But have you ever been to a reading where the author doesn't get it right. You think, "Wow, that's your own work, and you're not doing it justice!" I have. Now, imagine if the author reads in such a voice that the story unfolds so beautifully and smoothly that an entire eight hour drive could go by in the blink of an eye. That's how I feel about audio books.

Of all the great new habits I've developed in my new outlaw-style of living, listening to audio books might be in the top five. It gives me more "reading time," and it deepens my appreciation for old classics I've already read. It allows me explore other genres that I might otherwise ignore, because they might be an enjoyable road trip book, or because I know the narrator is going to be good. Seriously. Who doesn't want to hear Neil Gaiman reading, Neverwhere? (I can hear him saying, "Richard Mayhew" right now.)

I know that there are people who listen to audio books because they are visually impaired, or recovering from illness, or who have trouble with the written word because of disabilities, but I would suggest that even if you are perfectly happy to read a good book in its original, beautifully designed hard cover edition, you might also want to listen to a good book, too, when you get a chance. If the narrator is solid, the power of the story will come through, if the writing is beautiful, the writing will be read to bring out the full complexity of its music. If it's read by the author, you'll get insight on not only that persons weird extraordinary brain, but also the way he or she hears things like dialogue and rhythm. Sometimes, I've read the hard copy AND listened to the audio version just so I can really focus on what the author is doing, it's an extraordinary experience. The Sun Also Rises read by William Hurt, is wonderful. Ever want to revisit Virginia Woolf's, To the Lighthouse? This is a good new way to do it.

Perhaps, and I'm not ashamed to admit this though I probably should be, I also love listening to books because sometimes my brain is just too damned loud. Don't get me wrong, I love a quiet space; that's the place I write from. I love the meditative dark that I have inside me when a real self-aware silence comes. But sometimes, when I've had to clean out the basement or pack up an apartment, my nutty, sometimes torturous thoughts come at me so hard and fast and furious, that it's nice to be guided into someone else's story, someone else's epic imagination. In the last couple months I listened to both Dark Places, and Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn and, though they are both deeply disturbing, they were also incredibly well written and fiercely truthful. Cheryl Strayed's, Wild just graced my ear buds last week and it made me want to hike a million miles. Simply put, in these two years I've developed a new addiction, yet another delicious way to surround myself with words. And that sounds pretty good to me.

The Work: Two Years Later

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 21:00:00 +0000

It was almost two years ago to the day that I quit my sweet cushy job as the Creative Services Director for a national travel magazine in New York City. At the time, I had saved up enough money to live on for a year (or at least I hoped it would be enough for a year given the fact that I'd be paying little or no rent for a small apartment gifted to me by friends in Sonoma), and had big dreams of writing a novel, finishing the novel, publishing said novel, and then perhaps returning to New York City where I would go back to making a nice living, wearing pretty yellow heels, and working on poetry. Aren't dreams funny? Aren't they adorable?

Despite having truly believed that I would be doing this all alone, having given up (I'm not being dramatic), on finding any viable partners in New York, or perhaps anywhere, the exact opposite turned out to be true. Five months before I left on my self-imposed writers exile to the valley I grew up in, I fell in love. He had been a friend for years and then, well, suddenly it seemed ridiculous that we hadn't been together the whole previous 6 years we had known each other. It quickly became clear that my journey to discover my inner fiction writer in silent isolation was going to transform into an entirely different kind of journey.

Instead of spending all my time in California, I spent a lot of time in Kentucky, where my mister was working in the horse racing industry, having left New York City to follow his own vagabond dreams. Instead of locking myself in my cabin on the mountain, I now leave my office door open in our apartment (an old tobacco weigh station) in bluegrass country, so that our dog can come and go, and we can occasionally holler words of support back and forth down the hallway. Instead of shunning all my worldly possessions like some inconceivable monk of the written word, I started building a household. Instead of returning to our much-loved New York, we both decided we were marvelously contented (and a great deal more at peace) out here in the awesome nowheres. Instead of planning my life alone (and not unhappily alone mind you), we are planning a life together. All the obvious "what nexts" you might expect from a couple that fell in love in their mid-thirties and decided to runaway from the city where they made good livings are swarming around us like insistent needy bees. Instead of staying put in my little place of isolation and only writing my inner world, I've traveled extensively, verging on one big trip a month, including poetry tours that sent me all over the midwest and the northeast. In fact, I've traveled more in these two years than I did when I worked for a travel magazine.

And still despite all of these wonderfully unexpected things, a draft of the novel did come, and then another, and now I think we're on the fifth (though it could be 15, it's terribly hard to say what you should count as a draft or a rewrite). And a new book of poems is slowly forming, as well as new essays. All this is being done while I am supporting myself for the most part with freelance work as a writer, copywriter, speaker, etc.. It's been a good two years of being a gypsy, and a great two years of being a gypsy with my male-gypsy counterpart.

But what I'm constantly shocked by, is the sheer mountainous work of it all. This may come as a surprise. As someone who has worked for magazines, and has written three book of poems, why would I be shocked that writing full time is a lot of work, to quote a good writer friend, a "shit ton of work"? The truth is, the pure self-discipline of it, the lock yourself in your room for hours of it, the don't hate yourself for getting it wrong of it, the if I have to throw this all away I will die of it, the if you don't tell me it's good I will kill you of it, all of that part of it, the pure emotional mess and wreck and wow of it was, and is, new to me. And it's terrifying. For as long as I've been an artist, I have never experienced the pure, brutally intense work of day to day fiction writing. It's bring you to your knees humbling.

Still, while you're crouched at the foot of the giant hairy fiction beast, ready to cut your heart out and give up, you still have to find a way to love yourself, to say, "Oh baby, you're doing great at this. It took so and so (insert many fiction writer friends' names here) ten years to write a novel, and he/she went to Iowa!" You still have to find away to go into your dark safe (and not so safe) place and keep creating, to love the mangy thing you've created and keep nursing it until it's healthy, despite its nasty tendency to bite.

The other surprising thing to me, (you hear mothers and fathers say this about childbirth), is that people do this all the time. People are doing it right now. Look, that person right over there is writing a novel. And that person is writing a memoir because their life is way more interesting than yours. It's happening everywhere. Oddly enough, I find that extremely comforting. Look, he's doing it too! I'm not so crazy! I had lunch with my friend, the poet, Adam Clay last week and told him that despite all the evidence to the contrary, "I really believe that I can keep making a living as a writer." To which, he smiled, patted me on the shoulder, and went off to his job as an awesome professor because that's what smart writers do.

In truth though, I am slowly becoming a smart writer too. And the past two years has made me even smarter. I'm smarter because I'm humbler. I'm no longer saying things like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to go write like an awesome novel and like, be back in the city in a year when I'm done." You don't take a year off to write a novel. Sometimes, you have to change your whole life to write what you love, the way you want to write it. Sometimes, you have to scrape by and let money troubles and insecurity and instability and anxiety in to your life and lie down with those poisonous pests and hug them because they're part of this fantastic choice you made. It's a lot like falling in love. Sometimes, you have change all your plans to make room for the best, biggest, messiest, sweetest unknown plan of all...your one lucky real life.

Making Conversation

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 20:32:00 +0000

In the past few days I have come up with a new idea for a small business, I've picked every room in the house to revamp and improve, I've had so many ideas for art projects that I am having a hard time keeping them all straight. I don't know what to blame this on. I can only say I blame it on Brooklyn. After living in Brooklyn for 12 years, I think I got accustomed to leaving my small apartment in a spring dress and bag containing whatever I was reading, a notebook, and my camera (before iPhones) and meeting up with the girls for iced coffee in McCarren Park, softball games, big beers at the Turkeys Nest (or my favorite, a G&T to go), and letting the day take us wherever it wanted (even if, at times, we didn't want to go there).

We never made plans. In fact, we hated making plans on the weekend. If we had plans, we would try and cancel. The goal was simple: stay local, stay open, and stay in touch (in case we had to split up for an hour a two). It all worked out well. For 12 years, I can say that 90% of our spring & summer weekends were a resounding success.

But now, the city-dizzy weekends go on without me. And I'm in the country left to my own delirious devices. I'm coming up with plans for big creative projects and making new girl dates with new lovely girl friends. But still, the days don't quite unfold with that easy lost haze of Williamsburg when the same 15 or 20 people would meet up at the same 4 bars telling the same stories we all wanted to hear again. Most of the stories we would tell each other, would be about what would happen if we didn't live here? What would happen if we moved? How weird would that be? We would swear we'd never do it. We would promise. We would pinky-swear.

Somehow, I wandered off however. And sometimes, I must admit, it feels like I've wandered way too far from my ladies, from the 10 block radius that we called, "campus," from the late night conversations about art and fame and love fueled by concrete heat and the ever-coming-one-too-many. I miss that sense of possibility. That sense of, "It's all happening right here, right now." But we can't be everywhere at once, even if we desperately want to.

So, today, I spent three hours chilling with a belt sander for one of the summer things I want to make pretty. And all the while, in my head, the conversation with my best ones, who are still in our little hood of Brooklyn, was continuing. Even if they couldn't hear it. Even if I wasn't talking. The conversation, the wandering the world, the exploration, the getting lost and found, the dream of living a full and awesome life, all of that was still going on and on as I missed them, and sanded, and missed them some more, and sanded. I thought, what we make, we make for each other. And that way, when we are creating, the cooing conversation with the world never stops.

Making Beautiful Things

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 23:10:00 +0000

All through the very merry month of May, I've wanted to create something beautiful. I see something and I want to make it pretty and make it do pretty things. Maybe it's the spring time, or all the brimming love in the air, but I have very much wanted to make awesome tiny things. Some poems have come and the novel is in full rewrite mode and swimming along in its creek bed quite loyally. But I want to paint something, or draw, or fix, or wax, or build, or photograph, or design, or something outside of the written word. I'm not sure why; I don't generally feel this way. Still, the way the moon is mooning and the fireflies are pointing out the darkness, I can't help but feel a twinge of excitement for whatever's going to happen next. We plug away and send the bucket down to the well and sometimes you come up with words, and sometimes you come up with something you can't name, still it's alive and wiggly.

In the meantime, we welcome June in with a soft rainy day and a black eyed pea chili in the slow cooker. So many things to desire, so many goosebumps to get. It's a new youth coming, or a new age? Whatever it is, it's summer and peach juice, and lynchburg lemonade, and our new picnic table ready for the evenings of swoon and sour cherries.

Maybe, it's that many of my girlfriends are pregnant this spring, and the desire to give the universe another big soul feels overwhelmingly in the air. But for now, I just want to give it a good book, and some poems, and something beautiful that I can't name yet.

I miss California, but I am loving our home in the bluegrass too. Local baseball games and outdoor music, pool-side with new friends, and all the possibilities of making things matter enough to remember.

I want to memorize more poems this season. I want to keep them in my pocket and my mouth. A little poem song for the summer air. What's next? What matters most is what's now: the smell of jalapeños heating up the kitchen, the green and gray of the high grass, the him in the next room, the here of this feeling.

What was it that Papa said? (Happy Birthday, Walt Whitman!), "Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul."

All this to say, things are brimming up and over between my ears and I want to turn even my bruised up brain into a thing of beauty.

Happy Kentucky Oaks Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:43:00 +0000

I'm reposting this from earlier for those that follow the horses. It's the Kentucky Oaks Day and we're here in Louisville reporting live and wild. This one goes out to the ladies.

(Poem was here)

Ada's for April 24

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Tue, 01 May 2012 03:06:00 +0000

(Poem was here)

Ada's for April 23

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Tue, 01 May 2012 03:05:00 +0000

(Poem was here)

Apologies for My Tardiness

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:44:00 +0000

When I decided to write a poem-a-day for National Poetry Month (I believe it's my 9th or 10th year?), I also agreed to take blogging for the Best American Poetry site. (I also took a nice copywriting job that takes most of my daily energy.) So, I apologize that I'm four poems behind. I will try to make it up to the universe.

In the meantime, here are three blog posts on the BAP site:

Where You Are & Where You Live

We Require Our Animals

The Storage Unit

Also, I found this in the storage unit, and I may count it as a poem for the 21st.

Ada's for April 22nd

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:24:00 +0000

(Poem was here)

Ada's for April 20

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 04:48:00 +0000

(Poem was here)

Ada's for April 19

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:21:00 +0000

(Poem was here)

Ada's for April 18

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 02:01:00 +0000

(Poem was here)

Ada's for April 17

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 02:02:00 +0000

(Poem was here)

Ada's for April 16

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 02:15:00 +0000

(Poem was here)

Ada's for April 15

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:45:00 +0000

(poem was here)

Ada's for April 14

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:42:00 +0000

(Poem was here)

Ada's for April 13

noreply@blogger.com (Limonada) — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 15:54:00 +0000

(Poem was here)