September 2, 2001

• I met our fellow blogger James Marcus Ross at Bumbershoot today! (Saturday) So cool!
  
  We talked briefly at the Bookfair, where he is volunteering, and longer at the after-hours party tonight for Bookfair participants where this year's literary awards were announced. No, neither one of us won anything. Yet.
  
  I came home with more books. Two were freebies and one a gift from Roberto Valenza, whom I know from his days at StreetLife Gallery as well as his presence in the Seattle poetry scene. He has a beautiful new book out, a record of his experiences in Katmandu, called Under the Precious Umbrella, published by Nine Muses Press. The Bumbershoot site has their own quote from it. This was the poem that touched me first, though, browsing through the book for the first time:
  

  BABS' Baby JUNIPER

  (death of a friend's 4 month old child, written at the burning ghat)

  
  There is a growling thunder around,
  the eminence of a personal death is in the air.
  Can you stand the pain of someone you love dying?
  Tell me if you can stand in the rain and not
                      get wet.
  
  So beautiful the day.
  Are you still here in your body?
  So slight you are, I know you could disappear,
  go back between an inhale and an exhale,
            all the way back to another condition.
  Your suit of clothes hardly worn.
  No one will get to know you because
  when getting home the mass is going on.
  I can't judge whether to be sad or glad
            that the newborn baby is gone.
  
  They'll need so little wood
  and just a little fire,
  hardly any smoke you'll make today,
  down by the river.
  

  
  Yesterday (Friday) the man staffing the Floating Bridge Press table beside me was Peter Pereira. Today I got to hear him read, and I was so delighted I bought his book The Lost Twin and got him to autograph it.
  
  Peter is a physician, and many of his poems are written from that perspective. One of the poems he read was about doing an emergency Cesarean; two lighter ones were about hiccups.
  
  It struck me as I listened that here was one more thing we aren't allowed to talk about in this culture -- physical trauma, surgery, like cutting open bleeding fatty tissues to take a baby out. That's part of why I bought the book. (The other part was the humor in the "hiccup" poems!)
  
  Here's a quote (without the blood):
  

  Now I imagine her baby is like Houdini
  Jacketed inside a treasure chest five fathoms
  down, mouth gagged, lungs bursting, time running out.
  

  
  And I couldn't resist a mystery book from the same press: Michael Dibdin, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story. And oh yeah, I got snagged by a paperback copy of Tracon, a thriller about air traffic controllers by Paul McElroy.
  
  I wish now I hadn't turned in my Bookfair-party invitation for the free drink! It had some wonderful quotes on it. One I wanted to share was by Diane di Prima, something about "You can't not take sides. It's a war against the imagination. You can't be a conscientious objector."
  
  And now I have to get some sleep so I can go back tomorrow.

  • 3:46 am
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