Dear Scott,
I made you this internet collage comprised of (beautiful) images that remind me of you. I really hope you like it.
Love,
Taylor
Happiest of days to you, friend. I hope your weekend is full of even better things than Ellie giving the sneaky middle finger to you in a photo, though it’s hard to imagine what’s better than that.
I went to AWP last week, for what felt like a week. For you nonwriters, AWP is the biggest literary conference of the year. Workshops, lectures, readings, a bookfair big enough to kill any sane person’s love of books, famous writers all around, lots of glasses, lots of beards, lots of notebook scribbling, lots of beers. I schlepped apricots, trail mix, water, my phone, notebooks, and about ten pounds of books around the city of Boston for three days straight. Other things that occurred: lattes, reunions, inspiration, Anne Carson, free chocolate, free pens, free buttons, literary journals, poet swoons (see: Anne Carson), and I met my pen pal for the first time, with whom I have been corresponding for a year. Magic! Below are some tidbits from the weekend too good (read: weird &/or awesome) not to share.
“I believe that the future of poetry belongs to dead poets.” -Valzhyna Mort (poet)
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“I prefer myself to Charles Simic.” -James Meetze (poet)
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“You’re some kind of something and I like it.” -Dara Wier (poet)
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“They will try to make you choose between the things you love but you do not have to choose.” Muriel Rukeyser, as quoted by another passionate woman
THEY WILL TRY TO MAKE YOU CHOOSE BETWEEN THE THINGS YOU LOVE BUT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO CHOOSE.
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“For nonconformity, the world whips you with displeasure.” -Emerson, as quoted by a college professor dude
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“I am just another person in all normal regards except for my love of lemurs.” -James Tate (poet), as quoted by another poet
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“Lanyards are a great way to humble people.” -Jacob Otting (poet & comedian)
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“This wig is terrific.” -Terrance Hayes, reading one of his poems (SWOON)
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And here are some patterns I am loving this week, by Phoebe Wahl.
And that is all for now. Besides for the joy of another friend engaged, the speed of a new (old) car, the sound of the rain (rain! not snow! woah!), the crunch of breadcrust littered with seeds, and the feel of a hot mug in my hands.
I was given a fur coat for my birthday this year (by my mother-out-law, who gives amazing presents–raw silk scarves & notebooks & dark chocolates & the most pristine and gorgeous hand-me-downs). I’m not here to give my opinion on fur, mostly because I’m not sure of my opinion on fur. But this is what I do know. This coat is a beauty. This coat is so warm that when I walk outside in it, I feel like I’m still inside. It covers my entire body and it is both warm and beautiful and utterly deluxe. Here’s a picture of me the day I was given it, which was a very very snowy Saturday, a day I was not expecting to leave the house but then I did and wonderful things happened.
Today I wore the coat outside to let out the chickies. The chickies had no sense of my my unnecessary glamour, but they were pretty pumped to hop up and out of the coop. Tomorrow, I’ll wear it to a black tie Academy Awards party downtown, which I am attending mostly so that I can wear my new fur coat. Also for the company. Also for general deluxeness, which is scarce in February in Vermont.
And soon friends will arrive in Vermont & it will be my birthday & I will wear the fur coat again. And then spring will come & the snow will melt revealing the hidden garlic & I will be twenty-seven & eager to plant things & eat them. And the fur coat will hang graciously on its soft pink hanger, waiting until I need it again.
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Photos by Misha, who else.
* Do you know how to use a letterpress with agility?
* Do you live in the Northeast?
* Are you interested in the woods? Do you like cabins?
* Are you willing to work for free?
The last question is the ugliest, this I know. This is really a call for a friend with letterpress skills. Are you interested in being my friend? I have a frequently-updated blog and a really cool boyfriend! I have a lot of eggs to give away! I enjoy dancing even outside of dancehalls! I am short but can jump high! I don’t care if you have a weird haircut, in fact I like it! Do you want to embark on a literary project together?
Here’s the deal: I had a letterpress dude, Sean, who was going to be Head Typesetter but now he has to move back to Arizona. Sean’s a poet, we took a book arts class together in grad school, he excelled at it (big time), whereas I just hammered along, finishing with some pretty but unskilled books. I don’t have the real letterpress abilities that would allow me make books I’m proud to sell. That’s where YOU come in.
This is a project in its early stages. The state of Vermont has given me their seal of approval: the company is Press House Press. The vision for the press goes something like this:
Envision a small cabin where, in previous times, a family may have pressed their apple cider during autumn. Envision inside it: good lighting, a cider press, a letterpress. Perhaps a chair or two, or a small bed. No big equipment. Just enough to make some cider to quench our thirst (and the thirst of visitors) and a small letterpress to make pamphlets, chapbooks, cards, mini-broadsides.
Please note: the press house does not yet exist. The letterpress has not yet been purchased. This is a project on the road to actuality. If you help me build it, it will come.
If this wild, insanely human, deliciously rural and thoroughly unpaid position interests you, we should meet up at AWP and talk. If you’re not going to AWP, we can meet up on the internet. Either way, you should email me. I can tell you a little more about myself and a lot more about how this press is going to happen. Maybe you’re just the person to collaborate with me. Maybe we’re going to make some gorgeous and inspired little papergoods together. Goodness, I hope so.
With hope and a prayer,
Taylor Mardis Katz
Today I bought blood oranges. Like the ones below painted by Emily Proud, an artist I discovered through another artist, Lisa Congdon. I don’t know either of them personally but maybe someday they’ll come over to the farm and eat citrus with me.
I bought them in preparation for The Storm. I also bought bacon, of course. And, as usual, kale. Also milk. And a knobby three-knuckle piece of fresh ginger.
Meanwhile, down at the coop, the chickens are all, “Where is the grass? Why can’t I have it? Why aren’t babies coming out of these eggs I’m sitting on? I’m cold!” They’re huddled on their roosts underneath their red-bulbed headlamps as I write this. If I make a ruckus the rooster Claude will crow & crow until he lets me know that he heard me do it. Having a rooster really gets one thinking about the term “cocky.” That dude walks around like he’s the king of something awesome. Because he is, I guess.
White River Junction is where I live, and work, and eat. It is also where I yoga and latte and gossip and discover treasures. It is where I mail letters & where I show off my extensive hat collection. Joe Brainard passed through here on a bus once (probably more than once), and he wrote about it, and these days I’m reading Joe Brainard again because I think of him as a pick-me-up, even though he was mostly sad and worried about being too skinny and anxious about the concept of being a “painter” and the concept of love lasting. Then how does he make me so happy? Because he enjoyed being alive and wrote a lot just to do it and he drew pictures of things on tables and hung out with James Schuyler, one of my gay dead loves. And he had a good attitude, he did his exercises and illustrated books and drove places with friends. He was one of those charmers, I think. Here’s some of him.
*top image is from The Best American Poetry blog and the bottom image is from my phone’s camera, taken while drinking black tea with milk & honey.
First Snow Sonnet
And the world is sugared, softened
down & battened in. The snow a saucy
mistress touching every twig & every
trim. Nothing prim or proper to divulge—
staying in means fireheat & yokey eggs,
legs piled on each other’s legs. Aloe
plants abound indoors, spread
their prickled fingers wide, keep
their soothing goo inside themselves.
A chicken’s feet can freeze on ground
like this, she’ll lose her beak-picked
way. Inside the house, two lives can stay
preserved like bees in comb, can buzz
around each other in a home.
Can you tell what that is? It’s a teensy tiny PURPLE cauliflower! Leaves and all! Like, OHMYGOSH!
This tiny cauliflower (the variety is called “purple graffiti”) is currently on display with some other small things, in front of the microwave, which we do not use. Oh, and Heather made me that oven mitt! Don’t you want to buy one for your best friend for Hannukah?!?
On the night before Thanksgiving, I am thankful for friends. Thankful for the emails I get from friends like Chase, with this enclosed:
because I’M LAUGHING and because that video is so much like my life, my life is so much of making up songs about loving the things I’m cooking, picking, making, seeing. Thankful for friends who have and will come visit, and thankful for new friends in the making, thankful to be back east nearby closefriends I felt so far away from and thankful for the busestrainsandautomobiles which transport me and them to and from the country where I live. I’m thankful for my family members who are my friends in the deepest sense, the friends I haven’t picked but who have made me and it continues:
Thankful for
winter sun and
a grownup rooster fluffed with feathers (his name is Claude!) and
the shoes on my feet and
good soup and a fire and
the ever-discovery of poems and
the way lighting a candle makes me feel sacred no matter the time of day I do it and thankful
and apologetic to the mice we’ve killed in the basement who did not deserve to die and
thankful for free health insurance from the state of Vermont!
and emoticons and
thankful for sage and sweetgrass and cedar incense and
for the pond that I hopehopehope will turn to ice and hopeful
for finding ice skates at the thrift store for our pond and
thankful for nice thick socks
thankful for nice coworkers and kind customers and a wall of windows
thankful for how cheap a stamp remains and
for letters and packages and our big box from “fungi perfecti”
which means we’ll grow mushrooms underneath the sink throughout the winter and
thankful for the boldness of 2012 and all the good change it’s wrought and brought and
thankful for mittens
and a yellow hat from my sister
and a red hat from the country store which makes me look like a hipster which I am a little bit I guess but mostly I’m just a farmer who likes clothes and colors and thankful for
a grey hat from amsterdam
and thankful for all the things that weren’t stolen from our truck
like eachother and my gorgeous blue rounded piece of sodalite
which a woman at the stone store told me to select
because she said the purple of my aura was sagging that day
and it was
I was sagging that day
I’m thankful for people who help me unsag
like that cosmic lady who made me buy a very dark sodalite and also for my family and friends and
now I’m back to where I began which is thankfulness and
yayness and love and thankful and giving
this tinysmall poemthing in thanks and
in preparation for a bigmeal tomorrow, amen.
Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot
and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing
on the black earth. But I say it is
what you love.
-Sappho, as translated by Anne Carson
photo of Littleleaf by Misha
panache, perhaps 