Nearing Winter

Still not writing, and still experiencing poetry as a foreign language. I miss it, I do. I almost got it back as I was driving back from St. Louis on Monday afternoon - something about the particular combination of alertness and meditativeness that highway driving engenders has often brought me to bits of poetry. But alas, the words just flitted around the edge of my brain, laughed at me, and left.

What can you do?

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Thanks for the kind words about my poem's appearance in Field - it's nice to share good news with people who appreciate it for what it is. Of course, the world keeps its balance, and I've had a few rejections this week too. C'est la vie. Book manuscript #1 is still out to one place, which I'm expecting to hear from just any day now; I'm holding off on sending it elsewhere at this point, until I take the time to give it a long hard look & see if it wants a big revision. (I imagine sitting it down, giving it a stern look, and asking it "do you want a big revision?" like a bad mom asking her child if he wants a spanking. Sigh.)

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A week ago tonight I was in St. Louis for a Springsteen show. I met up with some friends before the show, and three of us went to get our wristbands together (when you have general admission tickets, you get there a bit early and get numbered wristbands; they draw a random number and the person with that number gets to go in first - so if you want to be together in the GA area you have to show up at the same time for your wristbands). We ended up doing pretty well in the lottery, about 150 back from the number that was drawn, so we ended up about 2 or 3 deep in front of the stage, pretty much right in front of Nils Lofgren's mic stand. (The picture here was taken a couple hours before the show, right after we got into the arena. We actually ended up a little closer to the stage than we are here.) I'd never been up close on that side of the stage before, so as the show progressed it was fun to have eye contact & interaction with the guys on that side, particularly Clarence Clemons & the aforementioned Nils Lofgren - who gave me quite a few great smiles throughout the show. It's no hyperbole to say that Nils is one of the greatest living rock guitarists, and it was very cool to be able to watch him play from so close. From all accounts he's also a very sweet guy, and I have to say his energy onstage is very light, almost constantly in motion but very peaceful at the same time - a lot of fun to watch.

The show itself - what do I say about it that hasn't been said? It wasn't an epic, awesome, one-for-the-ages show like the St. Louis show last year. But not every show can be that, by definition. People who weren't there say that the setlist was boring, and it's true that there weren't a lot of surprises or rarities (though the fan who brought the gorgeous sign requesting that Bruce play piano got us a wonderful, uncommon solo piano performance of "For You" which showed that Bruce's voice, even this late in a long tour, is holding up remarkably well). But everything that was played, including the Born to Run album straight through, was played with a lot of heart, a lot of presence, a lot of commitment. "Backstreets" was mesmerizing and heartbreaking, sounding more and more like all the band's history and love has been poured into it; when Bruce sang "we swore we'd live forever" I'm pretty sure Clarence Clemons was looking at the little "altar" he has set up onstage, which houses pictures of several departed friends including the late E Street organ/accordion player, Danny Federici (Clarence writes about the altar in his new book, Big Man). So that was a touching moment. And after delivering the final, intense, wordless wails at the end of "Jungleland," as the spotlight slipped off of him, Bruce bent nearly double at the microphone, breathing heavily, seemingly exhausted by the force of throwing every cell in his body into that vocal. Theatrics? Sure. But also, the physical commitment he puts into his performance is unmistakable.

(Incidentally, the Bruce-as-blur photo here was taken with my crappy little cellphone camera. I didn't bother taking many, because they hardly ever come out worth anything, but this one struck me as kinda cool.)

I find that, as an alleged writer, I am envious of musicians for the physicality of their art. I get a little taste of what that's like when I do poetry readings, which I experience as a very physical thing (it matters what boots you wear, how you stand, how you breathe when you're reading, even if you're just standing there at a podium in front of twenty people). And it's a lovely feeling, a means of settling into your own body as home. But it's not just the performance aspect that I envy, though there is that. It's the way you make music, if you're doing it right, with your whole body. You can kinda do that with poetry, but you can also forget to do it, very easily. If you hold your breath while you're writing a poem, you still get a poem (maybe not a great one, but). If you hold your breath while you're singing, you get ... silence, y'know? You don't have the option of remaining disconnected from your physical self. And I envy that.

I also envy the communal aspect of making music. Being in a band. You can collaborate in poetry, but it's not the same thing. Watching the E Street Band from so close, it's wonderful to see how they communicate. A nod of the head, a wave of a hand, can change the whole course of a song. (And when Bruce decided to do the "Detroit Medley," which starts with "Devil with a Blue Dress On," he told the guys closest to him & they ran to spread the word to the rest of the band - and I noticed Nils making little devil horns on his own head with his fingers instead of verbally telling everybody what the song was, a game of rock & roll charades. I got a kick out of that.)

In my next life, I'm gonna get over myself about 20 years earlier, so that when I'm in high school I won't be too shy to talk to other people who love music, and can start a band. Yeah. That's what.

Most of my friends at the St. Louis show were headed to Kansas City for the show the next night. Not me - I wasn't able to swing both shows, so I left STL on Monday morning. Before leaving town I took a tiny detour to Left Bank Books. I was instantly greeted at the door by a six month old tabby kitten named Olive, who followed me around the store and pounced on anything that even thought about moving and was generally crazy as a loon, which is what a six month old kitten is supposed to be. I picked up a few books as well as a magnet that says "If you don't grow up by middle age, you don't have to" (quote attributed to James Gurney). Seemed very appropriate for the moment.

When I got home I got a call from one of my friends at the Kansas City show. They'd done the lottery for the general admission folks & had everyone in line, when all of a sudden they announced the show was cancelled due to a death in Bruce's family. Needless to say everyone there was fairly stunned. This is not a band that cancels shows if they can possibly help it. Turns out it was Bruce's cousin who died, who had worked as the assistant tour manager for the band for the past ten years. He was in his mid-thirties, so one assumes the death was entirely unexpected and certainly very sad. Just goes to show you - you never know when a show will be your last. Or as the great Warren Zevon once said, not long before his own death: "Enjoy every sandwich."

I have one E Street show remaining - Nashville, in less than three weeks. After that it's going to be a long winter.

Fuel in Field

One more snippet from the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion (or is that the Shameless Department of Self-Promotion?): My poem "The Fuel" appears in the brand-new issue of FIELD, hot off the press -- I got my contributor's copies today. Check out the table of contents; I'm tickled to be in some pretty darn good company!

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Went to a very good concert the other night: Alejandro Escovedo and Los Lonely Boys. Escovedo is a terrific songwriter and impossible to pigeonhole; he's got punk, rock, alt-country, and various other influences in his sound. His set was intense and heartfelt, accompanied by a second guitarist and a terrific violinist (who grew up, as it turns out, here in Bloomington). Los Lonely Boys, doing an all-acoustic set, sounded about like I expected them to -- great harmonies, smokin' guitar work. My friend and I commented to one another that it was so obvious the band members are brothers; the way they interacted onstage, you can just imagine what it would be like to sit at the family dinner table with them (probably kicking each other under the table and flinging mashed potatoes) or to go on a road trip with them (eek).

The opening band, Hacienda, was relatively unmemorable -- four guys with two guitars, percussion, Hammond organ, and vocals. Sort of a Tex-Mex thing, I guess. I would rather have had their 30-40 minutes divided between Alejandro Escovedo and Los Lonely Boys; Escovedo's set in particular felt way too short. I really need to see him do a headlining set someday.

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Off to St. Louis tomorrow for what promises to be yet another fantastic Springsteen/E Street Band show. Yeah, I do expect it to be fantastic; would I drive 228 miles each way if I didn't? Here's a great clip from the last Springsteen show ever at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, a few nights ago. This is their cover of "Higher & Higher" and it kind of explains why I go so far to see these guys. How can you not want to be in the same room as this much joy? Check out the huge grin on Bruce's face. This is a cheesy thing to say, I guess, but in this video it's like he is a man possessed by radiance. I've heard from more than one person who was at this show & it sounds like this song was a truly transcendent moment.

Words fail me

After almost a year and a half of pretty intense productivity, it doesn’t surprise me that I’m not writing at all lately. I don’t really believe in “writer’s block” but at the same time it seems pretty normal to have periods when the writing just doesn’t happen. That’s happened before and it will happen again, and especially given that I’m in the very last stages of completing a big project, doesn’t freak me out at all.

What does freak me out, somewhat, is the fact that I don’t seem to be able to read poetry right now. I get to a page with a poem on it and my eyes just blip right over it, almost as if it’s in a language I don’t read. It is the damnedest thing, and I don’t remember it ever happening before. Maybe for a day or a few days, but not as an ongoing thing like this.

Maybe this is my reflexive way of ensuring that I don’t go back to my new manuscript until I’ve gotten some serious distance from it and can be somewhat objective. Maybe I’m spending too much time on Facebook and Twitter and just don’t have the attention span (or the depth of focus) necessary for poetry. Maybe zombies ate my brain. I have no clue.

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

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Also, there’s one thing that is annoying me right now about aforementioned Facebook and Twitter, and that is how the real-time nature of it gives me all kinds of reasons for envy (a feeling I do not like having). It is easy to become painfully aware of other people who have time in the middle of the day to write a poem, go for a walk, curl up with a book, send out manuscripts, take a nap – while I’m sitting in my cubicle or working with students at the reference desk. I like my job. I like it quite a bit. But man, I don’t really need to be reminded of how nice it would be to have more time for writing, and of how much better a writer I think I’d be if I had more time to give to it.

Assuming, of course, I would actually write if I had time. Which, right now, who knows.

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On a happier note, this weekend I am off to St. Louis for one more Springsteen/E Street Band show. This will be my next to last show of this tour, which is to say, my next to last E Street Band show for the foreseeable future. After November the band is going on hiatus for at least a year and a half, possibly/probably longer, and there's no guarantee of another tour. At the very least, it seems unlikely that, two or three years down the road, these guys will be doing the three-hour-plus, full-throttle rock shows they've been doing. Not impossible, but ... unlikely.

I’m certainly going to savor every moment of what's left, every bit of thunder.

Still shameless

The new issue of Coal Hill Review is up, including poems by Chana Bloch, Maureen Seaton & Neil de la Flor, yours truly, and others. My contribution is "Blue Afternoon: The Middle Distance" which is about being a middle-aged, bifocals-wearing person. Hey, you take your material where you can get it, eh?

Shameless self-promotion

My poem "Swallowed" (originally published in 2007) is this week's "Poem of the Week" over at the Valparaiso Poetry Review blog. This poem was always a little different for me, maybe even an odd duck, though reading back through it now I see a slight similarity to the tone of my current project, which also features fictional characters. Though that similarity may be all in my head...

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Five Women Poets, one of the groups I'm a member of, has its annual reading on Saturday evening, October 10. If you're near the Bloomington IN area, you are most cordially invited: 7 pm at Rachael's Café on Third St. The group consists of Patricia C. Coleman, Deborah Pender Hutchison, Antonia Matthew, Helen May, Carol Paiva, Anya Peterson Royce, and myself (yes, that's seven members of Five Women Poets; we're poets, not mathematicians!) and Bonnie Maurer will be our special guest poet. Drop me a note if you need directions or further details. I have no idea what I'm reading (or, more importantly, what I'm wearing) but it should be fun.

Fragmented

There are some things I don't know how to do without talking about them.

There are some things I do that I don't know how to talk about.

And there are other things I do that I know neither how to do nor how to talk about.

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Rolling Stone: You've talked about the E Street Band being so close now, but you quit the band back in the Eighties, and Bruce later broke the group up for 10 years. How do those two decisions look to you now?

Little Steven Van Zandt: There is no doubt that those two things were mistakes. I tell everybody, if you've got a band that works, it's a miracle. It's never going to be perfect, but if it works on some level, hold on to it with both hands and don't ever let it go. Bands should never break up. I had this conversation with Bruce. One of the reasons why we got back together is I really feel a moral obligation. You ask people to fall in love with you. To need you. To want you. To buy your records and come see you. You have an emotional contract with people. To break up is to violate that contract. That relationship has now been restored, and we are feeling it more than ever.

[from the October 1, 2009 issue]

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Something about the trajectory of morning rain, a runner all in gray on the sidewalk.

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Things get stuck inside your head sometimes in a way that makes you sad but not sorry.

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In the end it all comes down to love & thunder
and the things you are willing to lose:
love & thunder, love & thunder, love & thunder.

Past the autumnal equinox

I miss poetry. Sometimes you have to take separate vacations even when you love each other, though. I just hope poetry and I can reconcile in time for us to whip some stuff into shape before some upcoming deadlines.

Speaking of which, I picked up a rejection slip at my PO box on my way out of town to go to my mom's and then to Chicago, last week. It had, as they say, "ink" -- the editor had particularly liked one section of a longish poem, which is one of my favorite poems from the new/current/ongoing project. So that was nice. Maybe I'm on the right track.

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Last night I saw Lucinda Williams perform in a smallish club here in town. The place was packed and enthusiastic. I was about four deep in front of the stage, a nice spot. I hadn't seen her before, though I've been a fan of her music ever since Sweet Old World came out years ago; in honor of the 30th anniversary of the release of her first album, she's doing a chronological setlist on this tour, playing several songs from each album starting with the first and going through her current release. It was really cool to hear how her music has evolved over the years, from the rootsy acoustic folk/blues she started with to the rock-your-face-off sound she has now. Her backing band, Buick 6, opened with a very good instrumental set which definitely set the tone for the rock-your-face-off portion of the evening.

Sometimes, what you really need is just some LOUD. And loud felt really good to me last night.

This show was just a few days after Lucinda married her manager onstage at her Minneapolis show (a ceremony which included her father, Miller Williams, reading a poem) and she seemed to be in a fantastic mood. She also seemed to enjoy the high energy of the crowd and the rock vibe of the club (maybe she just needed some loud, too). If you're fond of good songwriting and bands with a lot of electric guitar, check out this tour if it comes near you. Good stuff.

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Dave over at Wings for Wheels has a particularly nice appreciation of Bruce Springsteen in honor of his 60th birthday (Bruce's, not Dave's); if you liked my post about the show in Chicago, his seems to come from a similar impulse. Yesterday's "Happy Brucemas" brought a plethora of articles, posts, tributes, lists, and other appreciations -- far too many to list here; if you really haven't had enough Bruce-related reading in your life lately, check out the links over at the Backstreets news page (scroll down just a bit for the birthday tributes) and the big honkin' linkfest at Blogness on the Edge of Town.

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The trees are starting to turn -- I notice it a little more every day. Summer's definitely over. I always feel like I write more, and better, during transitional seasons. Sure hope that turns out to be the case this time around. I miss poetry.