Mlle Hazelwood

Vegetarian life: I repurposed my mother and father’s old (deer) meat grinder and used it to make A Cozy Kitchen’s potato gnocchi with a simple homemade alfredo sauce.

8:08 pm • 22 May 2013 • 2 notes • View comments

Oh, hey! My grandmother will be here in a week and a half and I am already mentally counting how many dresses I want her to alter (three, so far) and how much of her time I want to steal in order to learn how to sew (better). This is part of my world domination plan: sewing, cooking, going to the gym. Reading, writing. Being sane.

2:57 pm • 22 May 2013 • 1 note • View comments

Mail call

2:46 pm • 22 May 2013 • View comments

“When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.

You walk differently. In store windows you don’t recognize yourself; you are another woman, some crazy interior display lady in glasses stumbling frantic and preoccupied through the mannequins. In public restrooms you sit dangerously flat against the toilet seat, a strange flesh sundae of despair and exhilaration, murmuring into your bluing thighs: ‘Hello, I’m Charlene. I’m a mistress.’

It is like having a book out from the library.

It is like constantly having a book out from the library.”

— Lorrie Moore, “How to Be an Other Woman” (from Self-Help)

2:33 pm • 22 May 2013 • View comments

“All of life seems like one degradation after another to me.”

— Alex Dimitrov, interview with Anis Shivani for The Huffington Post

10:58 pm • 21 May 2013 • 1 note • View comments

Darling

structureandstyle:

The days fall out of your pockets one after the other.
Soon you’ll need a new jacket with tougher leather

and seams no one has felt. Soon you’ll bring
the old books into your bed and sleep easy

and alone. It must be December again.
This must be the part of the story where you

refuse to say how the bodies you’ve walked toward
continue walking in you. With heavy black boots

in a calm procession of darling and honey—
they walk up and down the narrow streets of your heart.

—Alex Dimitrov

This poem is the last one in Alex Dimitrov’s collection Begging For It. I have a particularly bad habit of reading the last poems in collections first, which is part of why I’m so drawn to this one.

This is a fairly simple poem in the sense that it’s not very long and it’s not too abstract. It’s obviously a love poem, but when you really look at it, it’s much more complex than it seems.

Dimitrov’s entire collection is about sex, love, identity, and the combination of the any or all of those. This poem strikes me because I can sense the intimacy of the knowledge the speaker has. This speaker knows how darling feels. The speaker not only implies that darling has loved quite a few people, but near the end there’s the hint of one night stands or picking up lovers off the street: “With heavy black boots / in a calm procession of darling and honey— / they walk up and down the narrow streets of your heart.” This also implies a sense of loss almost, along with the line “Soon you’ll bring / the old books into your bed and sleep easy / and alone.” This is a melancholy love.

One other thing that sticks out to me is the subtle rhyme in the lines with other, tougher, and leather; seams, bring, and sleep; you and boots; darling, honey, and streets. These aren’t exact rhymes or end rhymes, but they work to keep the reader engaged and moving deeper into the poem.

There are other poems in this collection that are much more complicated, and I hope to tackle one of them eventually, but for now, I really like this brief poem. I get to the end and go back to the beginning because I feel like it takes multiple reads to really get the feel of darling and the speaker’s feelings toward him. It’s a good thing when a poem draws you back to it time and again.

If you want to know a bit more about the collection, check out this interview with Alex Dimitrov in The Huffington Post.

-S

8:33 pm • 21 May 2013 • 7 notes • View comments

“Pisces: This week you’re going to find yourself wanting to do nothing but talk and tell stories and share everything with everyone, every thought you’ve ever had, everything you’ve ever felt. This week, talking’s going to make you feel lighter, talking will make you feel free. It’s a good week to write weird emails to everyone you’ve ever loved, or to write strange small poems about joy and madness, or to stay up late out on the porch, talking to your friends or your dog or yourself. Sing in the shower. Sing in the car. Listen to Rihanna.”

—

the Rumblr

This week. Every week. Talking will make you feel free.

8:30 pm • 21 May 2013 • 196 notes • View comments

Don’t Swallow the Cap - The National

“Everything I love is on the table. Everything I love is out to sea.”

I don’t know. Maybe I just want to think of this as “England,” Part II. But I dig this song and I’m digging this album and this might get me through the summer with more levity than any other album by any other band.

8:22 pm • 21 May 2013 • 11 notes • View comments

“I definitely think some people are a little bit lost. But when I was abroad in my 20s and all my friends were in the United States — the truth is that we were all exploring and lost in different ways. A large part of that is just being in your 20s. I’m so glad I’m not in my 20s anymore.

(Really?)

Yeah, it gets so much better. Your 30s are so much better. Most people in their 20s are trying to figure out what sort of career they should have, what sort of romantic relationship they should be in, what sort of city or town they belong in. In that sense, living abroad is just a more extreme version of that same search for identity that everyone is going through at that age. Part of the reason I like these expatriate stories is because they become a metaphor for the psychological journeys that all humans take — trying to figure out where you belong.”

—

Elliott Holt, interview with NPR

Spot on re: your twenties, the search for your identity, living abroad. No wonder she’s so good when she writes about it in You Are One of Them.