Jessica Lee Jernigan: Cultural Criticism and Beauty Tips

Handmade Holidays: Food Edition

Here’s the gift I best remember from last Christmas: Two jars of pickled quails’ eggs that my sister gave me. I also remember—with longing—the orange Bundt cake she made for our grandma and the ceviche she gave our dad. If you like to cook, then you know the pleasure of feeding someone else: Food is love in one of its most elemental forms. And food gifts are also great because you’ve probably got a good idea of what the recipient likes to eat—the same cannot necessarily be said of knowing, for example, how the recipient likes to smell. Once you’ve realized that, yes, food makes a wonderful gift, you’ll probably come up with plenty of ideas of your own, but I’ve scoured the web to find a few recipes that look delightful to me. Here they are

Let’s start with pickles. So easy! So delicious! Martha Stewart has a nice pickle primer with recipes that might inspire you to experiment. From pickles, it’s just a small step to stuff preserved in oil. If you search for “preserved in oil” or “conserved in oil,” you’ll find a ton recipes. These mushrooms look pretty awesome to me, as do these peppers. After oil, of course, we turn to vinegar. This balsamic glaze is gorgeous, and infused vinegars are simple and pretty. And, while we’re on the topic of infusing, I would like to mention homemade liquors and cordials. If you try this honey and saffron liquor, please make a bottle for me.

Candy is classic. Again, Martha Stewart is a great source for ideas. Check out her basic bark recipes if you want something easy and sure to please. The grownups on your gift list might appreciate some no-bake rum balls. Brown sugar-rosemary walnuts sound like a glorious combination of sweet and savory. And these gum drops! Just look at them! Imagine them in unexpected flavors—herbal, maybe?

This list would obviously be incomplete without cookies. This Santa cookie wins the prize for sheer adorableness, but Martha Stewart’s holiday icebox cookies are pretty sweet, too. I’m a big fan of icebox cookies, especially when I need a large quantity of cookies. The other thing that’s great about icebox cookies is that you can give someone frozen or chilled dough so that they can make fresh cookie themselves after the holidays. I can personally vouch for the wonderfulness of these chocolate-black pepper cookies. And, as long as we’re turning on the oven, both Heidi Swanson and Nigella Lawson have incredibly enticing gingerbread recipes.

MORE HANDMADE HOLIDAYS!

Bath and Beauty Edition

Etsy Edition

Handmade Holidays: Etsy Edition

You want to give beautiful, one-of-a-kind handmade gifts. Of course you do. But maybe you’re insanely busy this season, or just not feeling crafty. Etsy to the rescue! I’ll be posting some more handmade ideas soon, but today I’m introducing you to some of my favorite Etsy shops. It’s an odd little mix, and you won’t find something for everyone here. But you might find something perfect for someone—maybe even yourself.

Eleneetha Aromatics is my preferred purveyor of handmade soap, and possibly my favorite shop on Etsy. I love Anastasia’s scents because they are deep, earthy—sometimes even a little dirty—and thoroughly grownup. I generally have at least one bar of her Old Whore soap on hand. I like to let it cure on my bedside table before I use it. My bedroom smells like a seraglio—or, I guess, what I imagine a seraglio might smell like. But that’s what Anastasia’s scents are like: They inspire. Just read a few of her product descriptions and you’ll see what I mean.

Hand-carved rubber stamps are my new little obsession. I like making them myself, but I also like to see what other folks are up to. Tyr at This Is Just to Say has a wonderfully eclectic mix of imagery, and the quality of her work is excellent. I’ve purchased the moon set which is—obviously—fantastic. I also bought Huginn and Muninn, which is mounted on a piece of tree branch and really satisfying to use. It is, alas, a little late to be ordering Christmas presents from Sweden, but Tyr also does kickass custom stamps—portraits, pet portraits, Lego guy of your choice—that you can purchase now, give as a gift, and let the recipient send Tyr the details—kind of like a gift certificate. (I checked with Tyr, and this is totally cool with her.)

Swoon Fibers offers the kind of luxury that’s hard to buy for oneself—even for me, and I’m pretty good at buying luxuries for myself—so it’s an ideal place to choose a gift for the yarn-crafter on your list. This is the only place I’ve ever seen mink yarn. I bought a few skeins to make a scarf and it’s delicious. (Like I said, buying luxuries for myself is one of my special talents.) The baby camel is also divine, and the skein of yak-bamboo I have in my stash is one of the softest, springiest yarns I’ve ever handled. And if you’re thinking “Minks! Baby camels! Jessica, how could you?” I can assure you that these supersoft fibers are brushed from living animals—just like collecting angora. UPDATE: Mink and camel yarns are 10% off until December 25!

A couple of years ago, I went looking for moonstones, and I found Puffluna. I’ve probably made more purchases from Julie than I have from any other seller on Etsy. I just love her mix of vintage findings and semi-precious stones. Her pieces are charming—even a little whimsical—without being fussy or too-cute. I would link to my favorite necklace currently at Puffluna, but I think I might just buy it for myself...

MORE HANDMADE HOLIDAYS!

Bath and Beauty Edition

Food Edition

Handmade Holidays: Bath and Beauty Edition

A couple of years ago, Frances and I made scented bath salts to give as Christmas gifts. Frances chose the essential oils and mixed them up with the sea salt. I packaged the finished product in hand-stamped glassine envelopes, and everybody loved them. This year, all the ladies on my gift list will be getting homemade bath and beauty products.

The web is full of recipes—some of them as easy as our bath salts, some of them a little more involved. If you have a natural foods store in your area—or even a well-stocked supermarket—you’ll probably be able to find most of the supplies you need. The rest you can get online (Mountain Rose Herbs is a great source for all kinds of organic ingredients, and Bramble Berry Soap Making Supplies has a great selection, too.) After considering a lot of options, I’ve decided to make six products, many of which call for the same ingredients, which makes shopping for supplies a little easier and a little more economical.

Sugar Scrub

I posted my sugar scrub recipe here not too long ago. I’m thinking of playing with some new fragrances this time—neroli, black pepper, and vetiver, maybe? I’m also omitting the coffee grounds, for two reasons: It seems kind of rude to give someone the gift of a really messy bath tub, and some ladies might not be too excited to get a present that says, “Hey, girl, thought you might like to do something about that cellulite!”

Lip Scrub

Exfoliation gets rid of chapped skin while it stimulates circulation in the lips, and the honey found in this recipe is a wonderful humectant. I’m thinking of adding a little cinnamon-leaf essential oil for extra plumping.

Salt Polish

Like sugar, salt is a great exfoliant, and sea salts are full of minerals. I’ll probably opt for Dead Sea salt, because it mixes well with other ingredients. I’m going with avocado oil—rich in fatty acids and a whole lot of vitamins—and I’m leaving out the coloring. I’m thinking a bright, citrus oil will be nice as fragrance. (Recipe here.)

Body Butter

This body butter looks great, and I’m excited to try it out myself. Jojoba oil is a fantastic moisturizer, because it’s chemically quite close to the moisture produced by the sebaceous glands. I’m thinking I’ll make a custom scent for each recipient.

Lip Balm

There are a ton of lip balm recipes online, and a number of shops sell kits. I chose a recipe that uses many of the same ingredients in the body butter. I’m making cardamom lip balm for the grownups (including myself). I’m not adding coloring, but Bramble Berry has some pretty interesting options, including mica if you want a little sparkle. I’m pretty sure Frances will approve of this chocolate lip balm for the kids (NB: I really don’t recommend using “an old candle” for lip balm. Food-grade beeswax isn’t hard to find.)

Bath Teas

This is a great way to get beneficial herbs into the tub without making a huge mess. Heat-sealable tea bags are available from several sources online. I’m planning to use calendula and chamomile petals for their anti-inflammatory properties, and Dead Sea salt.

Packaging and presentation can be as fancy as you want. Mountain Rose Herbs sells some nice tins and glass jars, and you can reuse jars destined for the recycling bin as long as they’ve been carefully cleaned and sterilized. You might also think about using a food-storage container, so that the recipient can repurpose the container when the beauty product is gone. Mountain Rose Herbs and Bramble Berry both sell tubes and pots for lip balm, and, as much as I hate disposable, plastic pipettes make lip balm production a lot easier, and they also prevent a great deal of wasted beeswax and cocoa butter. I’m probably just going to hand-letter paper tags for most of these items, but I plan to get waterproof printer paper to make my own lip balm labels.

MORE HANDMADE HOLIDAYS!

Etsy Edition

Food Edition

Some Things I Need and/or Want

Creative fulfillment
Adult conversation
A spa day
New slippers
More time with my family
More time to myself
More friends
More time with my friends
Rewarding work
Apple brandy
Moonstone earrings
Physical fitness
Peace of mind
More time for writing
More art
More making of art
More jewelry
More energy
A well-organized home
A better phone
An iPad
Professional success
Things that smell good

DIY Beauty: Sugar Scrub

Long, long ago—when there was still such a thing as a giant Marshall Field’s in the heart of Chicago—a gal at the Laura Mercier counter convinced me that chemical exfoliation was meaningless without physical exfoliation. I have come to believe that she was right, and that is why I love sugar scrubs so much.

Why sugar? Rich in naturally-occurring glycolic acid and granular in shape, sugar functions as both a chemical and physical exfoliant. At the same time, sugar is a humectant: It moisturizes as it sloughs off dead skin.

Fresh Brown Sugar Body Polish was the first commercial iteration of the sugar scrub, and it remains the most luxurious. Like every Fresh product I’ve ever used, it feels and smells delightful, and the results are terrific. I also really like Bliss Blood Orange + Black Pepper Sugar Scrub, and I recently discovered Biggs & Featherbelle Sweet Coffee Scrub.In fact, it was while I was considering the ingredients list of this scrub that I thought, “I could totally make this myself.”

So I did, and you can, too.

Here’s what you need:

Turbinado or demerara sugar. This is actually American and British for the same type of sugar.

Carrier oil. Vitamin E oil is great for cleansing and moisturizing the skin. Sweet almond oil is also nice; it’s antioxidant rich, it has anti-inflammatory properties, and the scent is subtle and pleasant. I used both, but you have a lot of choices. This is a pretty comprehensive annotated list, and there’s a wealth of information online, so finding carrier oils to suit your specific skincare needs should be easy.

You can stop with just these ingredients—all of which are easy to find at a big supermarket or health food store—and make yourself an awesome scrub simply by mixing oil into the sugar until it’s about the consistency of a nice, fruity jam. You can also customize your scrub with essential oils or other scents, but make sure that any scent you choose is safe for cosmetic use.

I like adding coffee grounds to my scrub. Caffeine is a vasoconstrictor—even when applied topically—and this can reduce the appearance of cellulite. The effect is temporary—there’s no cure for cellulite—and I can’t honestly say that I’ve noticed a difference, but, then again, I haven’t exactly been doing a close before-and-after comparison of my thighs each time I scrub. But the coffee gives my scrub an invigorating aroma, and the grounds also work as a physical exfoliant. I use the grounds leftover after making a pot of coffee.

All of these ingredients are stable, so you can make up a good-sized batch and store it in a clean jar with a tight-fitting lid.

Using the scrub on dry skin before a shower is a deeper exfoliation, since there’s no water to dissolve the sugar. Using it at the end of the shower will leave some oil on your skin for enhanced moisturizing. Either way, your skin will look and feel great. (Don’t neglect your hands—I find that a good sugar scrub is the next best thing to a paraffin dip.) I was inspired by Biggs & Featherbelle to add vetiver to my scrub (which seems like it shouldn’t smell right with coffee, but it does), and I enjoy using my homemade scrub as much as the more expensive—or much, much more expensive—products mentioned above.

NB: Using sugar scrub is messy. Using sugar scrub with coffee grounds is really messy. You will have to spend a little time cleaning out your tub, but I promise that it will be worth it.

A Poem I Do Not Hate: The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays

Fox Face

I have it on good authority that the arctic fox is one of my spirit animals. When I saw this ring, I decided that I wanted to have this vulpine beauty looking out for me.

The Fox Face ring is part of the Spirit Animals collection from Species by the Thousands. (It looks like this ring is no longer available, but this design house is still most definitely worth checking out.) Mine is bronze, and when I pair it with butter LONDON’s Wallis, I feel like a barbarian queen.

Wallis

Wallis Simpson was a frequent subject of Cecil Beaton’s photographs during the 1930s. Shortly before Simpson’s marriage to the Duke of Windsor in May 1937, Beaton was asked to take some official photographs of the bride-to-be at the Château de Candé, where she was staying as a guest of Charles Bedeaux. Since many of the past photographs of Simpson were unflattering, Beaton suggested more romantic-looking pictures, including an image of her standing in the château’s garden wearing a Schiaparelli dress printed with a large lobster. The infamous lobster dress was a design collaboration with Salvador Dalí that grew out of the lobsters that started appearing in the artist’s work in 1934, including New York Dream-Man Finds Lobster in Place of Phone, which appeared in the magazine American Weekly in 1935, and the mixed-media Lobster Telephone created in 1936. Dalí placed the lobster amid parsley sprigs on the front of the skirt (and apparently was disappointed when Schiaparelli would not allow him to spread real mayonnaise on the finished gown), and master silk designer Sache translated the sketch to the fabric. Beaton took almost a hundred photographs during the session with Simpson, and Vogue devoted an eight-page spread to the results. For Dalí both the telephone and the lobster had sexual connotations. His placement of the lobster thus charged the design with erotic tension, effectively defeating the public-relations purpose of Beaton's photographs.

I was reminded of this anecdote—recounted by Dilys E. Blum in Shocking! The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli—when I was painting my nails with butter LONDON’s new polish named after the infamous Mrs. Simpson. Wallis is a glimmering gold-green. It’s hardly a radical choice today, but it’s a distinctly off shade, and I can easily imagine it being worn by that scandalous divorcée who was so fashion-forward that she had no idea just how fashion-forward she was.

Sealing the Deal: The wet and wild world of selkie romance novels

It began with my friend Julie. At some point in our early adolescence, she started giving me her mom’s romance novels, helpfully dog-eared at the raunchy bits. My parents were into mystery and science fiction—my copy of Judy Blume’s Forever was probably the smuttiest book our house—so Julie’s supply of mass-market romances provided me with a welcome surfeit of sexually explicit scenes and situations.

Now, decades later, I know that the books I was skimming for words like “shaft” and “thrust” were a direct result of the awesome success of Kathleen Woodiwiss’ The Flame and the Flower. First published in 1972, this novel reinvented romance fiction by making explicit what had previously been decorously implied—which is to say, penetration. While there are still readers who prefer a chaste romance, and while there are still publishers happy to cater to this audience, sales figures for The Flame and the Flower made it abundantly clear that most romance fans wanted action, and lots of it. The book was a bestseller as a hardcover original—most romances debut as paperbacks—and more than four million copies had been sold by 1978. The Flame and the Flower is still in print. It’s even available in electronic editions.

Woodiwiss’ breakthrough provided the formula for pretty much every romance I read in the ’80s. As I worked my way through Julie’s mom’s castoffs and rummaged through neighborhood bookshelves during babysitting gigs, I encountered the same scenario over and over again: Naïve young woman experiences sexual awakening when she succumbs to older, very powerful man, while older, very powerful man is domesticated—but not in any way emasculated!—by aforementioned naïve young woman. True love and lots of intercourse. This is the formula that helped romance dominate bookselling. (Romance consistently beats every other category in consumer publishing, and the genre has, in recent years, proven itself recession-proof, continuing to grow even in a shrinking economy.) This is also the formula that inspired the pejorative “bodice ripper”—a reference to both the bosom-heavy art on the cover and the many garments torn from women’s bodies within—and earned the genre the enduring scorn of literary critics and feminists.

Indeed, if you’re not a romance reader, your perception of—and disdain for, perhaps?—the genre is probably based on the typical romance of thirty years ago. To be sure, there’s plenty to hate about the form Woodiwiss pioneered. The Flame and the Flower itself makes for difficult reading—and not because it’s intellectually challenging. The characters and conflicts are thin, insipid copies of prototypes by Jane Austen and the Brontës. (I am not alone in recognizing this: Scholars of the genre have long identified these nineteenth-century authors as the progenitors of modern romance fiction.) Heather Simmons, the protagonist, is like Jane Eyre without Jane’s intelligence, passion, and self-reliance. Innocence is a vital component—perhaps the vital component—of her appeal as a heroine, but her much-discussed naiveté manifests mostly as the most exasperating kind of stupidity. This line is not the best example of the aforementioned dynamic, but it’s probably the most (unintentionally) hilarious: “Her eyes traveled downward innocently to his pants.” Brandon Birmingham (the man with the pants) is, like Rochester, a hero in the Byronic mold—Heather even compares him to Satan—but he’s only like Rochester if Rochester raped Jane while under the impression that she was a prostitute, which brings us to the most troubling feature of the subgenre Woodiwiss spawned.

For more than a decade after the publication of The Flame and the Flower, rape-as-a-plot-device was a nearly ubiquitous element of the successful romance novel. The best explanation for this phenomenon is that it was more socially acceptable—within the pre-twentieth-century settings of historical romance, but also within the modern contexts in which readers were consuming historical romance—for a man to assault a young woman than it was for that young woman to willingly have sex. In a chapter devoted to rape in Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan summarize the situation thusly: “[R]ape scenes gave the heroines permission to explore their sexuality without appearing to be sluts.”

I would like to say that I stopped reading romance novels when I realized how regressive they were, and that my budding feminist sensibility was shaped by my outrage at their persistent portrayal of women as victims, but that would totally be a lie. What really happened was that I could no longer take the tendency of romance authors to build a plot out of a stupid, easily avoidable misunderstanding that metastasizes. Also, I discovered Showtime After Hours Presentations, the nation’s premier source of softcore porn during my most hormone-addled years. My surreptitious reading was replaced by late-night cable viewing—with the sound turned way down to avoid waking my parents—and that was it for me and romance novels.

Until, one fateful day in 2008, when I got a call from my friend, Sarah. She was standing in line at a drugstore, and she had, on impulse, plucked a novel from the rack. “You have got to get this book,” she told me. The novel Sarah recommended was Sea Witch by Virginia Kantra, and, just looking at the cover, I knew that this was not the romance novel as I remembered it. There’s no passionate clinch, no heaving bosoms—no bosoms of any kind, actually—simply a lone woman, naked and viewed from behind, rising from the ocean beneath a full moon. The novel’s opening line is just as arresting: “If she didn’t have sex with something soon, she would burst out of her skin.” Clearly, this was a heroine who did not need a man to force her into sex. She just needed a man—as soon as possible.

The preceding was the original introduction (cut for length) of my latest piece for Bitch. You can read the published article here.

BONUS! Archival interview with Virginia Kantra

An Amusing Situation of which I Was Reminded by a Recent Facebook Exchange

Last summer, my sister came home from the mall with a bunch of clearance items. She was feeling a little dubious about some of her purchases, one of which was an embellished T-shirt with some insets made from really crappy nylon lace and floral appliqués that looked like they had been cut from thrift-store sheets. It was just a hideous mishmash of bad or, at best, poorly executed ideas. As my sister held this garment up for my opinion, I pretended to consider it seriously for a several moments and then I said, “You know what would make this totally work?”

My sister gave me a penetrating look and said, “If I cut up the hem to make fringe?” Which was totally what I was going to say, so I cracked up and she gave me the finger.

Horror Fiction by Women: An Appendix

During the semester just past, I took a seminar on horror fiction by women. It was a great class by any measure—it was wonderfully well-organized, the professor pushed us in our writing, and my fellow students were sharp as tacks—but the reading list was particularly superlative. We started with Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which I had never read before. I got exciting new insights into one of my very favorite books ever, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. And I was introduced to the awesome Elizabeth Hand; after I read Generation Loss—an odd and satisfying thriller—I continued through much of her oeuvre. The high point for me was rereading Kathryn Davis’s Hell, a novel that should be on anybody’s list of contemporary American masterpieces. I chose Hell for my final paper, which allowed me to write about food refusal among medieval holy women, Victorian “fasting girls,” and Julie Kristeva. That alone would make me love this book, but it’s also brilliant and funny and creepy and heartbreaking.

Anyhow, as the semester has progressed, I’ve been compiling a kind of shadow syllabus composed of books that complement those we read or bring something new to the mix. This is that list.

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker

This book occupies the same space in my mind as We Have Always Lived in the Castle, although Barker is not nearly the misanthrope that Shirley Jackson is (few of us are, for which we should be thankful). I haven’t read this book in several years—I found the experience overwhelming, and I am still not sufficiently recovered to attempt it again—but I did write about it when my feel for the story was still fresh, and you can read that review here.

Every Day Is Mother’s Day

Vacant Possession

by Hilary Mantel

Mantel has long struck me as an author who does not have the audience she deserves. I realize that this is largely because I am American, rather than British, but I will also note that the latest editions of these two books represent a second attempt to get us to read them. When they were first launched into the American market—along with Fludd—I discovered a new favorite author, and I was lucky enough to interview her at the time (you can read the interview here). I just reread both books, and they lived up to my memory. I imagined the interiors in a completely different way this time—which was pleasantly disorienting—but my sense that Mantel is able to perfectly balance the perfectly nasty with the utterly humane remains intact.

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

Having just revisited Every Day Is Mother’s Day and Vacant Possession, it occurs to me that Mantel is assaying, for a second time, much the same material she addressed in those earlier works. This is not a criticism. Beyond Black is a wondrously funny, moving, chilling work of fiction on its own merits, and Joan Acocella explains why much better than I could.

The Keep by Jennifer Egan

I read this novel soon after giving birth, but I feel confident that the eeriness I felt while reading was enhanced by—rather than generated by—the weirdness of mothering a new person and the attendant sleeplessness. This is a tour de force of postmodern Gothic, which is to say that Egan understands that the Gothic is inherently postmodern, and that the postmodern is inherently Gothic. Or something. I will say that Egan’s grasp of the uncanniness of telecommunications put me in mind of Dracula, and that it’s one of the topics we discussed in this interview.

Cold Earth by Sarah Moss

Ghost stories are, by definition, stories about the past refusing to stay in the past. Moss amplifies this dynamic by setting her story on an archaeological dig, the site of a lost Viking settlement. Cold Earth is a remarkably creepy story, and a very strong debut novel.

Affinity by Sarah Waters

Spiritualism has, at this late date, become a bit of a punchline—it was already a joke when Shirley Jackson wrote The Haunting of Hill House. But Waters understands the very human desire to connect, and that infuses her eerie narrative with pathos. Prepare to be chilled, and prepare to be heartbroken.

Honorable Mention

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

I’ve only read this once, right before it was published, and what I remember is being anxious from start to finish. (NB: Fans of The Secret History seem to uniformly dislike Tartt’s second novel. Consider yourself warned.)

The Observations by Jane Harris

Kind of like if Jane Eyre was a prostitute before she landed at Thornfield.

In the Woods by Tana French

French has a very weird way with the police procedural—and I mean “weird” in pretty much every sense of the word.

My Happy Life by Lydia Millet

I have not been able to bring myself to read Emma Donoghue’s Room largely because I am still recovering from this.

More than You Know by Beth Gutcheon

When the subject is scary stories, I can’t not mention this book. I reviewed it here a few years ago.

The Comedy Stylings of Julie Kristeva: The Semiotic and the Symbolic

Setup: In this symbiosis with the supposedly phallic mother, what can the subject do but occupy her place, thus navigating the path from fetishism to autoeroticism?

Punchline: That indeed is the question.

Setup: The precondition for such a heterogeneity that alone posits and removes historical meaning is the thetic phase.

Punchline: We cannot emphasize this enough.

Setup: Although originally a precondition of the symbolic, the semiotic functions within signifying practices as the result of a transgression of the symbolic.

Punchline: Therefore the semiotic that “precedes” symbolization is only a theoretical supposition justified by the need for description

Today is Jennifer Egan Appreciation Day

Jennifer Egan just won the Pulitzer Prize for A Visit from the Goon Squad. If you have not read this book, you should. You totally should. You may also enjoy my piece on this amazing novel in the most recent edition of Women's Review of Books, and I would also like to recommend my interview with Jennifer Egan, conducted in 2007, when the also awesome The Keep, was published.

A Poem I Do Not Hate: The Mermaid in the Hospital

She awoke
to find her fishtail
clean gone
but in the bed with her
were two long, cold thingammies.
You'd have thought they were tangles of kelp
or collops of ham.

"They're no doubt
taking the piss,
it being New Year's Eve.
Half the staff legless
with drink
and the other half
playing pranks.
Still, this is taking it
a bit far."
And with that she hurled
the two thingammies out of the room.

But here's the thing
she still doesn't get—
why she tumbled out after them
arse-over-tip...
How she was connected
to those two thingammies
and how they were connected
to her.

It was the sister who gave her the wink
and let her know what was what.
"You have one leg attached to you there
and another one underneath that.
One leg, two legs...
A-one and a-two...
Now you have to learn
what they can do."

In the long months
that followed,
I wonder if her heart fell
the way her arches fell,
her instep arches.

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
Translator's Note

The Fifty Minute Mermaid

A Poem I Do Not Hate: Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

Frank O’Hara

Selected Poems