Sharon Olds

Yesterday Matthew and I went to a Sharon Olds reading in Reston, VA. It was a great reading. It was wonderful to finally hear her read her poems out loud. I actually got to meet her and have her sign my books afterwards too.

And, I'm 10 weeks pregnant. Just thought that needed to be put on here. If anyone wants to see our first sonogram of the baby it's up at family.lilius.com

The sonogram is from 8 1/2 weeks. I'm due October 21st.

That's it for now. Off for a nap!

Chapbook Publication!

I'm happy to report that I have a chapbook coming out along with my dear friend Erin Bertram. It's a chapbook of our exquisite corpses. It's going to be published by NeO Pepper Press! We're very excited and can't wait until it comes out. Probably sometime this year. Here's a link to their website:

http://www.tashogi.com/neopp.htm

Hope everyone that reads this is doing good.

Sarah L.

New Poem In Awhile

Well, I haven't been blogging much and I haven't been writing much either. But today I will break that mold of both blogging and writing.

First off, head over to this website: http://www.h-ngm-n.com/combatives/
My friend, Erin Bertram, and I now have our exquisite corpses featured in Combatives, an offshoot of H_NGM_N, the online journal. Sorry that I don't know how to put fancy links into my blog, you'll have to cut and paste. But anyway, the issue is on sale for $2. Dad, you don't have to buy one. I can mail you one when I get them.

Monday I start my second term of grad school and I think I'm ready. Classes I have: Poetry Workshop, Characters and Characterization, and Contemporary Legend (Folklore). Should be an interesting mix.

Well, here's the new poem. Let me know what everyone thinks. Thanks.

Caught

I.

A fly is caught between
the screen and the glass
of a cold window.

II.

A boy on a bicycle
is hit by the car
of the world. He is caught
between tire and concrete.

III.

A picture from CNN.com
shows people walking by
blood pooled in the streets
of Baghdad.

IV.

Bush is sending more troops
to slaughter and to be
slaughtered. Will this war
ever end?

V.

A loaded gun, dirty from dust.
A soldier crying in secret
because his comrade is dead—
car bomb again.

VI.

I open the window
and release the fly.
It clings to the screen
as child to mother.

First term finished tomorrow

I am officially done with my first term of grad school tomorrow night after my last class. I finished a 15 page paper on Whitman and "Calamus" today as well as finished reading Moby Dick. I can't wait to go home and see all my family and friends. Sorry no poetry at the moment. I've been too busy with papers to write. But, hopefully over break I'll be able to get some writing done. I have a whole month off!

Cheers,
Sarah

New Poem Today

Here's a new poem that I wrote today. It was for an assignment for my Forms of Poetry class. We were supposed to write an Imagist poem.

Here goes:

Dream Last Night

Up wooden stairs laced
with snails and caterpillars,
I with my heavy feet
climb.

Soon the water rushes in
like so many oceans and
there is seaweed in my hair.

I find a man there,
slight and pickled skin,
I am fearful of him as
he watches me undress.

Soon I’m naked and
it’s a cold night. My skin
pale and shrinking.

There are cats and
and the moon just a sliver
in immediate darkness.
I shiver and walk away.

Mountains

Hello everyone,

Per request of the wonderful Erin B., I'm posting to my blog. It's been a good month since I made a post.

Today Matthew (my husband) and I visited Shenandoah National Park, a national park that I believe is in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was Matthew's idea and I was glad that he had the inkling. Nature is very inspiring to me. It seems to balance me out.

I have a lot of homework to do. I'm reading Moby Dick, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, "The Overcoat" by Gogol, Whitman criticism, and Satanic Verses/Rushdie criticism. I have 2 papers to do, both about 15 pages. It's not fun. Grad school has turned out to be quite the challenge. But I am happy to report that I received an A on a Whitman presentation that I did. That was a wonderful surprise because I wasn't sure how I did.

I don't have any really recent poems to put up. Well, I do have one that was supposed to be an elegy that I was to turn in to class but I ended up turning in a different one. Let me know how this poem could be fixed as I feel it has many flaws. Thanks. Sarah L.

Chimera

Your death taught me many things.
Don’t take it all for granted and love
those you love with fervor and grace.

A woman’s laughter rose above the crowd,
she is the chimera inside the holiest of buildings.

She jumped the gun, missed the bullet.
Small, she was there merely, and I know

that death will bring me to you
but I keep on day to day.

A woman with wings should be an angel
but not this woman, see her eyes glare red.

See her lion head, her goat body, her serpent
tail. I know I’m not imagining this. She rises.

Your death taught me many things.
I watch for you in dreams and you come
in all your dead glory, floating and laughing.

Some would ask Jesus or God for help
with the pain but I’d rather not.

A man’s voice distinct and rich rose above
the crowd, he is the myriad of what I’ve been

waiting for. I stroke it real. I wait it out.
I find you in the strangest of places,
Buddha statue, incense smoke, coffee cup.

Birthday

Well, today's my birthday. I'm officially 30 and feeling a bit older. I'm ambivalent about the whole thing.
That's all for now.
Hope everyone is doing good.
Sarah