scorsese | the dylan interview ~ no direction home

It’s great to see Bob Dylan at any time, really, with the exception perhaps of the Ed Bradley interview, which to me anyway, was painful and so brief that it seemed almost not worthwhile. IT was Dylan pulling his usual press routine. But to see him in the Scorsese interview is to see a strikingly candid Dylan, telling his story as if for the first time ever.” Yes it may be well be the apt time for a Dylan retrospective but as Dylan might say, It’s not dark yet…” http://tantmieux.squarespace.com/bob-dylan-articles-reviews-of/2005/11/10/scorsese-the-dylan-interview.html

recollections of you

The tap pants you bought me
The bra with the apricot ribbon
I found in the monoprix in the 19th
and the flowers you bought for no reason
before we went foraging for dinner, returning
home rich with thick clumps of vegetable
radishes, cabbage, carrots, our rich spring onions
a garden of lettuce, tomatoes
the roots still clutching and from each would fall
handfuls of dirt, of this French soil.
I could smell it.
The earth redolent and lovely
as our days in the country
and the photograph of you
snapped at Baudelaire’s tomb;
how you rested, so casual and,
so easily comfortable, already no
stranger in this thick foreign land
but a citizen, like me, European
so easily loose-limbed and elegant
in that way that only the romantic
can afford. The look in the eye,
the present pursed pout, how we stand
hips thrust forward as if made for the fucking -
for true and real kissing on the parched
peck of America . This is why:
I love you. One reason, yes:
but it makes us kindred
woven of same fabric
our silks so easily intermingling
how we lie down together
how we pull the shutter
how we shut out the world,
& how we open ourselves.

the time is now...

After a whole blog of being Bored that I wrote while back, in which I was then bored with film, bored with life, bored bored and more and worse, damn boring myself in my black and dark mood, I have become still boring but less bored.

In fact, now it seems there is almost too much going on and in my effort to not be bored, I have taken on yet more work and more, including podcasting for www.Teleread.org of which I am glad and am highly recommend as a venue to visit and comment for anyone interested in publishing issues, but I’m also writing now for BBC h2g2 as well as BBC Collective as well as here as well as any number of poetry journals not to mention that I edit two of them and not to mention that now, now at the end of Paul Weller’s Long Hot Summer I find that I have landed the much coveted fulltime job for which I had longed for after a leave to work on my own book (which is, I am pleased to say, almost finished and looking to my and my editor’s eyes good, and you read part of it here as Fugues & Fireflies and BBC took another chapter called Waltz XO. Why then the need for a corporate job, albeit in the most creative division of the company, I admit, it does boggle mind, if only slightly.>>>>>>more, select link
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/08/26/141438.php

grist for the mill

image: ralph gibson

i never thought i'd find myself podcasting or into the e-book scene after so many years in print and yet oddly, here i am at www.teleread.org where i encourage you to go. That said, I remember years ago working in a friend’s barn and running the old letter press and greasing the rollers with the blackest ink and selecting the Monadnock paper from the sheets he had (and there were many) and then setting the type by hand on a block, fitting in the leading for space and using the old Perpetua face that is so rare and changed, if findable, these days.

Just the rhythm of running the press… the way one had to crank the shaft and then slip in the paper and turn, how it felt like a ballet privee once you adjusted to the movement of it. How you fell into a pattern and a rhythm all your own and could lose yourself in the printing process itself ~ I suppose much in the same way you can lose yourself in the writing of any book. So as i write now, i wonder if i will find my way into a print book or an e-book for any that i write... certainly both would be welcome but there remains something for me in the printed word, even though i plan on publishing a collection of poems at www.lulu.com another site i strongly encourage you to visit.

the point? we come full circle and we never know where we will land. Not exactly anyway, and that is always grist for the mill and keeps things interesting.

sadi ranson-polizzotti for teleread.org

Another collaboration between Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti & Mark Caywood.

http://grandmal.blogspot.com/2005/08/variations-on-theme-by-mark-caywood.html

Columbo – the complete third season
There is something that makes Columbo just so loveable.
It’s Peter Falk, no question, who as a child, I remember thinking he was this older man because he wore that great bit overcoat and appeared always stooped over and that made me think he was older than he really is. Now, as I watch the episodes again, I see that he can be hardly more than his early forties (if that) and that really, he’s quite a handsome guy, not the old geyser I had imagined, but someone I could>>>>> more http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/08/12/153345.php

waltz xo makes BBC The Post/UnderGuide

Read up on the latest piece on the BBC, the story Waltz XO (after the title by Elliott Smith). A brief short story.

copyright basics | not so basic afterall

In these almost Wild Wild West days of the Internet and other media as it develops at the speed of sound there seems to be much debate about copyright law, so it only makes sense that for any reasonable discussion of the issue, we first layout the copyright laws as they stand at present before moving on to a further discussion about how they have changed. It’s all to easy to whine and complain, but first, one needs a basic understanding of not only copyright law as it is today, and as it was and is worldwide, for example, but also, what this means for both the author (the copyright holder – here I use author in a general sense) as well as the person wishing to use the author’s work and seeking copyright permission or more, anyone infringing on copyright laws as they exist and what this could potentially mean in legal terms >>>more>>>
http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/sadi-ranson-polizzotti-article/2005/8/7/copyright-basics-not-so-basic-after-all.html

dirty pretty things ~ what price?

If you are not an immigrant and want to know what the immigrant experience is or wereever curious, then see Dirty Pretty Things directed by Stephen Frears and starring Audrey Tautou, the dark-haired beauty and incredibly gifted girl who starred as "Amelie,” though don’t expect to see the same light –hearted, albeit melancholic girl, because Tautou is far too talented for that. She is changeable, the sort of actress directors dream of. a dream before camera;’ you can hear the words, “The lens loves her,” and indeed it does; those eyes! that mouth! Note too that this is Tautou’s first English-speaking film and she is exceptional in her language in this way and her Turkish Mulsim accent. click here for more. or cut and paste into your browser if the link does not work: http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/sadi-ranson-polizzotti-article/2005/7/17/dirty-pretty-things-audrey-tautou-breaks-out-a-review.html

sadi ranson-polizzotti, july, 2005

monogamy, mistresses, wives and other loves...

There is just so much to say about marriage, relationships, being a wife, being a mistress, being the husband or the lover, the abandoned, the abandonee and i can tell you from all ends, no matter where you are at this moment in time, the situation is difficult for all concerned.

The wife will think the mistress has the easier course and in some ways she is right: after all, she is not "being left." Yet at the same time, she does not "have" her man in any way that society anyway, would count as meaningful. That may change of course: marriages do end, relationships come to a close and things move on and one day, despite all the heartache, you find that you are glad you lived through it (really) and just to feel the wind on your face again becomes a joy. To rediscover yourself, your indepence, the fact that yes, you can fix the toilet all by yourself and buy a ratchet set and all those things you thought you could never do, by god, you can and will do them.

At the same time, being cheated on, whether mistress or wife or husband or lover, is one of the most profoundly painful experiences i know of and having been on both sides of this issue, i can assure you both wife and mistress, that both roles are fraught and for the days of suicidal weeping that you may have (or perhaps you are more grounded, i cannot say), i can guarantee you that the other party, as much as you may loathe him or her, is going through the exact same thing.

I remember once not being able to deal with the guilt at the end of my marriage, even though as we know, it takes two to tango and in his way, he too had cheated on me. Perhaps not with a person, but by being unavailable and thus cheating me out of years of my life and while i am grateful for the happy years, i cannot and never will get back those lost years of my earlier life. I hold no bitterness or resentment and neither does he ~~ anymore. But for a time, yes, we both did. This is normal. I can also tell you that now, both my ex, my husband and his exwife all four of us are very dear friends and i call my husband's exwife among my best of girlfriends. This, a woman who formerly in her words, "detested me" has become someone whom i love and who loves me in return.

Things change. Read Advice to a young Girl from an Old Mistress ~ an invaluable book if you wish to be married and yet be a mistresss and lover to your husband at the same time (i assure you, this is possible).

But what of those "emotional affairs" in which there is supposedly, they say, "no phyical contact, oh, the occasional hug or quick kiss on the cheek for comfort, but as i've heard "it means nothing." This is simply not true. It can and does mean everything. It is as much of a red flag as a full-blown affair if not more so because it invovles a certain amount and depth of feeling, perhaps more than any physical affair. In the emotional affair, real feelings are involved. Real parties are involved and real discussions are had, the hardest and most hurtful part, discussions about you. Talk about betrayal.

I condone neither, but nor do i judge; i stand by and watch as we not only fuck as it were, but fuck it all up. It's high time we learned the hard lessons and grew up and in the words of one song i know "did some shit" which means that we stop acting like the little GenXers we are or Baby Boomers who were the "me" generation because no matter what your age, give yourself or your partner an ultimatum. Yes, that's right, i said ultimatum. An ultimatum is not a "bad" word, it means quite simply choosing between one or the other. And likewise, give yourself the same ultimatum if you re on the giving end of this and make a real choice.
Jimmy Carter said to commit lust in your heart is adultery and cheating and i quite agree. It should not be a "choice" not to screw around or cheat, but just a thought that never occurs because one is so in love, so engaged, so caught up in the other person that this is not even a thought that passes the mind if "just for a moment", as i've heard. Or the "on some level i liked her" crap that is dissembling and means absolutely nothing. Come clean, tell the truth, and get real.

Whatever you choose to do, do it openly and honestly because if you believe enough to it in the first place, then show you have a backbone and back up your actions. Be brave and do not give in to social pressure that says "monogamy is not natural" and then ask yourself why it is that even whooping cranes and certain gulls are monogamous. Is this some accident of nature? Are they more evolved than you or I? I don't know. I only know that it is possible and that is enough to give me hope for true and lasting love and passion.
Never settle. You are worth so much more than that... and you know it.


s.r.p.
July, 2005.

time out of mind ~ Dylan | really?

I admit: I am in slightly taken with “Time Out of Mind”, the Dylan album that I’ve had long arguments with people about because they like others more and sure, they’re good and we all love the old Bob, but frankly, I’m partial to the new Bob and I’m worried. Very worried...

Argue all you want, but I think it is one of the most honest Dylan albums that I’ve heard in ages, and while many have come before (that I truly love), in terms of more recent music, it is Time Out of Mind that appeals.

“I’m sick of love….that I’m in the thick of it.” he sings in “Love Sick” about a certain kind of love (“this kind of love, I’m so sick of it.”) What kind of love, I wonder. Is he talking about a true and lasting love (if so, it doesn’t sound it). Is it a sort of fight and fuck love that we’ve most of us dealt with? Is it groupie shit that god knows, we’ve heard rumors but the hell with rumors, or is it still the hurt from years ago or a more recent hurt? NO matter which way you cut it, the first cut is apt: He is, as he says “love sick” and the rest of the album bears it out. >>>> more.

bob dylan | world tour 66 through the lens of mickey jones

World Tour, 1966
The Home Movies

Through the Camera of Bob Dylan’s Drummer Mickey Jones

What is it about Dylan, then and now, that makes that voice so damn sexy, so damn workable. I mean, I can listen to “Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues.” and I practically melt every time, especially when he says Your debutante knows what you neeeeed, but I know what you waaaant…” and that “oh, Mama, or “ahhhugh, mama.” It could even be crude coming from someone else, but from Dylan it is damn sexy.

On anyone else it would sound cheap and stupid, but with Dylan… as I said: never.

http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/sadi-ranson-polizzotti-article/2005/7/2/behind-the-camera-of-mickey-jones-bob-dylans-66-behind-the-scenes-documentary.html

summer, 2005 ~ june greeting

Welcome to Sotto Voce;

"matin" by alain daussin

Why this image? We change this Splash page weekly to keep articles, new poetry and other news updated, and at that time, we sometimes change the image here as well. We have reached the long, hot, sultry days of Summer and the Eastern seaboard feels as though it had been coated with a heavy wet wool blanket. It is humid, languid, and in another context, perhaps it could even be considered sublime. But as we rush about going to and fro interviews, meeting business friends and others, and of course, just getting out to see the world and lately, visit the old haunts to be sure that neither they nor we have forgotten our roots, the weather leaves us ragged, hot, wrinkled, slumped. Still, I always feel a great sense of hope this time of year. It is the time of year when women are, i believe, at our most beautiful. We emerge in our summer dresses, our long legs slightly burnished (but not too much), our impossible but lovely strappy shoes on, our newly bobbed hair that looks as if it didnt' care, a pink glow and a flush to our cheek and the promise of hope. Yes, it can be hard to slog through such weather, but we do it and we do with a grace and an ease that were we to see ourselves, we would be, i think, most pleasantly surprised. I post a Daussin picture here, though it could easily be one of myself ~ the same pose, same aspect, same mood and tone. Perhaps next week, i'll use myself as the model. For now, enjoy the moment and know for as heavy as it may feel, there is always lightness just around the corner. Summer brings hope ~ I am a firm believer. Life is, if nothing, fleeing, and to always anticipate the next wrong thing is a mistake; it will come all by itself and your worrying or not worrying about it will not change a thing. All you can do is feel the joy in this moment.

Most exciting this month: video poetry with sound and vision so check it out. Instructions for download are there, though technically you should just be able to click and it will download on its own. I hope you enjoy this; i'm slowly adding more as i go along, and yes, i know i look doofy, but hey...

There is so much here that rather than try again to give you some introduction, it's better you explore. Whatever you are looking for, i do hope that you find it here at Tant Mieux or one of our sister sites which you can easily get to from our Links sections. More, you can Google my name and find various and sundry pieces either by me or about me. There are duplicates of course, but my goal is to provide top-level content in every area for which i write. To that end, Welcome again and enjoy browsing our sections - Poetry, Images, Articles, Book and Literary Criticism, Film Comment and Critique, Cultural Comment, Generational Articles and GenX Work, Prose and Original Fiction, Creative NonFiction, Geek Work and Audio Blogging.

New this week - a big focus on Bob Dylan with, for now, two articles to check out - Don't Look Back (footage of the '65 tour)and, how could we not do that without also doing Eat the Document (the '66 tour) as well as our article about the film, Masked & Anonymous starring Bob Dylan, as Jack Fate, all available at www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/

We're happy to report that all pieces have already been picked up by the best Dylan sites out there and if you would like to link, please do - just drop us a line and let us know. Dylan remains one of the most influential musicians/poets of our time, so if you are asking me Why now, my answer is Why not now?

Summer is here full on, with lazy days and the sultry humid Eastern seaboard where the air is still as a wet blanket and our shirt backs wetten with the heat and yet, the future looks bright to me. Summer brings a renewed sense of hope. The feeling that anything is possible, and though perhaps this is illustory, a feeling that we are in control of our own destiny. I pray this much is true.

Be sure to join us later this year for reportage from Paris. If you're looking for work from Paris now, visit either France Poems and Chants here or Tant Mieux Paris. New poems that we particularly like in this moment are The Beginning and another about Pressigny and love and all of the great human emotions: Three O Clock in the Afternoon Pressigny, www.tantmieux.squarespace.com in our France Poems & Chants section or at www.tantmieuxparis.blogspot.com/

Thanks again to all of you for making us a success- and welcome again to the Tant Mieux Project.

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, June 2005

June, 2005

Bob's Fate | Bob Dylan & Masked & Anonymous

Masked & Anonymous

Starring Bob Dylan as “Jack Fate” and a whole host of other characters with so many cameos that I eventually lost count, though to note a few: Bruce Dern, Giovanni Ribisi, Luke Wilson, Val Kilmer (as an animal rights activist and farmer), Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange, John Goodman, Christian Slater, Mickey Rourke, Penelope Cruz, and on and on…

Here is the set-up: Jack Fate, played by Bob Dylan, is in jail, though why exactly is unclear. Let’s just say it has something to do with the corrupt sort of guerilla government in the country in which the film takes place, supposedly America. But no ordinary America, this is America at some point in the future, and boy, it is a mess. It is run by corrupt officials, rebels, a sort of Sandinista government and to really top it off, the leader the entire mess, as we will find out in due course, is Jack Fate’s own less than beloved father, El Presidente, and though we never meet him directly, we see his image carried throughout the film, either directly in front of us as a frame or hovering in the background as a framed poster on the wall. He is a lurking presence and a not-so-gentle reminder of Big Brother who sees all and could give a shit. (select link for more)

http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/sadi-ranson-polizzotti-article/2005/6/6/bobs-fate-bob-dylan-masked-anonymous-review-by-sadi-ranson-polizzotti.html

the devil in the front row | Oppenheimer's biography of Vogue editor, Anna Wintour

Front Row
Anna Wintour: The Cool Life & Hot Times of Vogue’s Editor in Chief
by Jerry Oppenheimer


One cannot say with any real authority or certainty whether or not the road to success has been particularly easy or particularly difficult for Anna Wintour, now Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue, a position much coveted by Wintour for, it would seem, her entire career, if not her life from when she was as young as fifteen. Wintour had set herself from the very beginning on the trajectory that would take her to where she wanted to be, carefully planning each job, rarely moving laterally, always moving up, and often moving up with the help of the current lover or boyfriend of the moment. To say this is not to say that Wintour did not or does not earn or merit her current (or really any) of the various and impressive positions she has held; she has proven her talent again and again. It is simply to state the fact, that like anyone, Wintour knew enough to use not only her stunning and coquettish good looks (which, even as a young girl, the young Anna quickly learned to manipulate), to her excellent connections in publishing already established by her father, Charles Wintour ... (link for more)
http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/sadi-ranson-polizzotti-article/2005/6/3/the-devil-in-the-front-row-a-review-of-jerry-oppenheimers-biography-of-anna-wintour-and-the-devil-wears-prada.html

gracefully insane | a history of mclean hospital ~ then & now | review

McClean hospital has long been a place for the elite. Since it’s founding and original location near Charlestown and eventual move to Watertown on the outskirts of Boston, McClean has had a certain panache that other institutions just don’t have, and we are talking here of mental institutions, or perhaps a more polite term, places where people can get some rest from life, take a breather, get the help that they need and set themselves back on track.

<>Unlike twelve-step programs and the like, McClean is by contrast almost a country club. Yes, certain wards are locked wards, and true enough, when the famous Olmstead designed it, he created myriad underground tunnels so that residents did not travel above ground from building to building, thereby lessening the odds of escape. The tunnels connect almost every building, save for a few, which had remained largely independent. (select link to read more...)

http://www.blogger.com/http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/sadi-ranson-polizzotti-article/2005/6/1/a-graceful-insantiy-book-review-about-mclean-hospital-belmont-massachusetts.html

http://gracefulinsanity.blogspot.com/

down came the rain | brooke shields on postpartum depression, a review

On the glossy, slick surface of things, it seems that actress and model Brooke Shields has led a life of privilege and success with few problems. Considered one of the great beauties and sex symbols of our time, Shields has consistently courted the image of herself as the girl with the “right” morality (remember how publicly Shields spoke out about virginity and cigarette smoking?) and the all-American girl next door.

As an actress, Shields managed to portray a highly sexualized young girl in the film Pretty Baby without tarnishing her lily white, so-pure-it-floats image and more, Shields possesses that rare beauty that seems effortless; that comes of good-breeding and chance. And while anyone else with those bushy dark eyebrows may look simply under-groomed or inelegant, on Shields they became part of her signature look, even lending a sexiness that simply didn’t work on most others. And more, whatever she did, whether it was modeling or acting or being interviewed, Shields always seemed to have it all figured out: she was always poised and whatever role she happened to be playing, she played it convincingly, even in The Blue Lagoon, which would have been rather insipid in most ways were it not for Shield’s performance which made it seem almost conceivable that this beautiful, lithe long-haired girl lived a life of bliss and fist love, her long lithe (and nude) body slipping through the depths of the aqua water. (link to read more...)

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/25/134913.php

recent poetry publications | april - may, 05

Recent poetry publications include new work appearing in the esteemed Adagio Verse Quarterly and we're proud to be in such good company, so here are two recent poems (select link or click here.)

http://www.geocities.com/adagioversequarterly/p12.html

&

We're also proud to add that yet more work has found its way to Underground Window, an excellent publication with two terrific senior editors and founders. Click here to see this work or select the link below.

http://www.undergroundwindow.com/sadiapril05.html

mood of the moment | may, 2005

May rains and rains and I find myself focusing more and more on writing and becoming absolutely absorbed in obscure material and old texts, filling my head with all sorts of fascinating information that, on the surface, would appear to have no practical use, yet if you look deeper, such things - philosophy, math, chaos theory, Taoism, programming, and certain sciences - are at the very core of our lives. Without these things, we have no ability to analyze, to think logically or in any sort of linear fashion (let us bow down to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), and our self-discipline that keeps us going everyday no matter what (Marcus Aurelius), and how things work (Newton), and how to be revolutionary in everything that we do and take on -

These days, I turn to Guy Kawasaki, an amazing entrepreneur and former Apple Fellow who went on to form the VC firm Garage.com - highly successful - and then penned several books, one of which is Rules for Revolutionaries - a must read for anyone wishing to do anything and intending to make a difference.

I've taken up kick-boxing and tae bo, and see a marked change not only in my body (strengthening, lengthening), but in my mind as well: focus, will-power, determination.)

As you likely know by now, there are those that would gladly tear you down. And yes, even those whom you have trusted can turn in a heartbeat, and though it may not make sense at the time, my advice is to move forward, to not look back and try to understand because there is no understanding the purely irrational behavior of others. The best you can do is understand yourself - take yourself to task - know thyself - be firm, courageous, willing to take a chance when it feels right, and never afraid to jump from the high-board when the situation calls for it.

As Nelson Mandela said, "It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us..." and he ends by saying, "ask yourself, Who am i not to be? And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same." (inagural speech).

Thanks for listening,

s.r.p.
may, 2005
www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/

bob dylan | don't look back documentary '65

It always comes back to Bob Dylan. Or it does for me anyway. So why should it be a surprise that again, I wanted to watch the two tour films, Don’t Look Back (1965 tour) and Eat the Document (footage of the 1966 tour). There is something about Dylan in these early recordings that captures and holds me the way it captured and held so many. (select link for more...)
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/16/175908.php

bob dylan | eat the document footage of '66 tour

Watching Eat the Document, the footage of the Bob Dylan 1966 tour and the documentary that followed Don’t Look Back (the 1965 tour footage) is a perfect illustration of just how relative time can be. For Dylan, the differences between his 1965 young, acoustic, and fresh-scrubbed self and his louder, electric 1966 self show a markedly different man – and one who was not always accepted by even the most true and loyal fans who had shown up expecting a nice, quiet, acoustic show and were met instead with a screaming electric band and a Bob Dylan they did not recognize. (select link for more...)
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/18/160638.php

virtually yours | love and friendship in the computer age

How to write about this without being supremely bored or boring is the challenge, because although I could fill volumes on the topic of human interaction in general as have for many writers, particularly on the subjects of love and friendship, it seems that it’s all been said before and that there is nothing unique left here. Yet the newest form of human engagement always struck me as preposterous and yet intriguing and until recently, I did not have any first hand experience with the internet relationp, that is, the idea of meeting people online and forming so called “real” relationships with them.
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/02/113545.php

Penn's Right

Where have I been living? Obviously nowhere on this earth because I wake to find that Sean Penn is one of the best actors I’ve seen in recent years and I mean this sincerely. Oh disagree if you want, but I’m serious and likely you all know this and I’m again the odd man, or odd woman, out. This fact struck me after seeing his performance in both Mystic River and in 21 Grams. (link to read more...)
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/10/141147.php

the edge of reason | has Bridget Jones lost the meaning?

I always had a fondness for the first Bridget Jones film, Diary of Bridget Jonesliked the book by Helen Fielding and thought the film adaptation excellent and as true to the book as anyone could want. Bridget, in many ways, was every woman. She was perfect in her imperfections, slightly overweight, slightly squinty eyed, slightly neurotic, a bit man obsessed, yet expecting true love and yet at the same time, not immune to a good shag on the side herself, but at the end of the day, we all knew that Bridget loved Mark Darcy – select link to read more...l
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/27/182710.php

Blogcritics.org: pleased to meet me | down the rabbit hole and straight to hell

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the use of medication and whether or not I really need it for these darned seizures of mine, and this annoying epilepsy, for I have to tell you, it seems to me that I am a heck of a lot more productive when I am off of this medicine and that I write more coherently, more intelligently, and just plain more, and while I am well aware that quantity should never be sacrificed for quality....more>>>
Blogcritics.org: pleased to meet me | down the rabbit hole and straight to hell

sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - the chrysalis factor | lolita & now voyager

Why is it that I turn to Now Voyager again and again and certain books like Lolita. I suppose we all have our favorite reads and our favorite films, and though Nabokov is certainly my favorite author, Now Voyager though , it may be a great, old Hollywood production, is also one of the hokiest films I have ever seen. Still, the film holds and as I watched recently I couldn’t help but see the surprising similarties between the two stories – between the nymphet and the spinster aunt, both stuck in their cocoons and both subjects of the tyranny of others. ...more>>>
sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - the chrysalis factor | lolita & now voyager

sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - in the looking glass | the real you

I recently discovered a thing that is perhaps known to the rest of mankind but was previously unknown to me, which is that we are never just one self, but more, we are an amalgam of selves. Oh, yes, I mean of course I knew we all had different “sides” as I’ll call them – our social side, our good side, our sweet side...more>>>
sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - in the looking glass | the real you

Blogcritics.org: Woolf's Long Hours: Virginia Woolf's Temporal Lobe - sadi ranson-polizzotti

Say what you will, but it cannot have been easy to be Virginia Woolf, and having learned that she “suffered of fits” as the language goes, a thing I know a little something about, I find myself empathizing all the more.
Blogcritics.org: Woolf's Long Hours: Virginia Woolf's Temporal Lobe

booksquare - sadi ranson-polizzotti takes a long, well-considered look at adultery in literature...

read more information from Book Square, with links to original Blogcritics article

Expression, Discussion, Reflection - Email sadi

for Underground Window Poetry Journal
email s.r.p. questions about poetry, writing, anything related to poetry and writing that strikes your fancy...
Expression, Discussion, Reflection - Email sadi

Underground Window - a monthly poetry journal

for new work from sadi ranson-polizzotti
Underground Window - a monthly poetry journal

sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - ted hughes | why birthday letters

I always felt sad for Ted Hughes.

Even in death, he cannot find peace. There are still groups of people who hold Hughes, and Hughes alone, accountable for the death of his wife the poet Sylvia Plath. If only life were so simple. More >>>
sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - ted hughes | why birthday letters

auntie sadi's advice for girls

auntie sadi's advice for girls
visit, learn, read, get advice, ask questions and find the answers to the questions or at least, get some opinions, about those things that nobody ever bothered to tell you about from a wizened old tart who has seen pretty much everything and can aid you in your journey.

write to aunt sadi with your deepest, darkest problems. simply use the comments section from the link above and your questions will be answered promptly.

aunt sadi's pledge to you.

sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - why wax me Barbie!

I remember years ago ago to seemed when women had some degree of bodily hair and wore it proudly.
sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - why wax me Barbie!

blue sunday

blue sunday
Originally uploaded by sadijane.

the mean reds or the real blues, depending on who you are.

pau azucar

pau azucar
Originally uploaded by sadijane.

taking the veil 3

taking the veil 3
Originally uploaded by sadijane.

sotto voce | tant mieux - links page

Select link below to be taken to our bridge page with a list of our links and a brief description for each. More links are available at www.tantmieux.squarespace.com or by selecting this link
sotto voce | tant mieux - links page

Blogcritics.org: living language | learn french again

Raise your hand if you were forced to take a language course in school – you know, the usual Spanish or French, and if you were in a better school district, Italian, Latin, German and even Chinese as my son just told me was offered.
Blogcritics.org: living language | learn french again

Blogcritics.org: grieving and surviving | on my word

Grief is never easy, no matter what your religious beliefs. The idea that your departed, your quick and your dead may wind up sitting on a cloud one day with fairy wings and a halo all sweetness and light is nice, but it isn’t really the same thing as having them here, with you now in this moment in which you can live life together and hold onto them for dear life and never again take that person for granted, because you know you did, and though you hadn’t meant to, now it’s too late. More>>>
Blogcritics.org: grieving and surviving on my word

Blogcritics.org: The Calling | it's your Father on the line

A friend rings today and Lord, it is good to hear his voice. My friend Charlie, who went from being a New York editor extraordinaire and is now a Midwestern priest -- also extraordinaire, for he is good, no great, at what he does. My, how life is odd. Imagine going from publishing literature in New York and hanging out with the likes of me and people like me who talked about work in translation far too often and far too vehemently, who smoked too much, who wore too much black and generally took the whole publishing scene far too seriously. Not say that it isn’t important. It is. Perhaps it is that we took our role and ourselves in it too seriously, for after all, we were editors and as such, we determined what the future reading of tomorrow - who would be big, who would not. However, don't blame me for Brett Easton Ellis, please. More >>>
Blogcritics.org: The Calling | it's your Father on the line

Blogcritics.org: epilepsy and the workplace | carpe diem

There are big debates in our family these days, and they stretch from the closest branches to the furthest reaches of the family tree, the highest fruit, who all seem to have some very strong and vehement opinion about whether or not someone like me, that is, someone with known physical complications and illness, particularly that nasty epilepsy thing that causes the “big bad” – our grand mal – and of course, bien sur, le petit mal, which isn’t so petite when it’s happening to you. The issue, of course, is whether or not I should work a fulltime job again, because working fulltime is naturally a stress of the first order and has in the past, certainly caused seizures... more...
Blogcritics.org: epilepsy and the workplace carpe diem

ken*again, the literary magazine. Winter 2004/2005

scroll down on the list to my name and read work just published in Ken*Again, an excellent journal which i'm very proud to be part of.... ken*again, the literary magazine. Winter 2004/2005

tant mieux banner January

tant mieux banner January
Originally uploaded by sadijane.

Expression, Discussion, Reflection - poetry slam sub: what adam thought he knew

sadi's participation in Underground Window's poetry slam:

sadi's participation in poetry slam:

Part one: starts tenderly enough.
I am light air bright.
So luminous, infact,
Firelflies flash their greens,
A halo about my head.
I am sainted, near pefect
Giver, and sustainer.
The night creatures draw near.
(read more>>>)
Expression, Discussion, Reflection - poetry slam sub: what adam thought he knew

questioning beauty | imaginary planet.net

Sadi writes a long book review essay about the nature of beauty. Questions to think about: Can a person contemplate the physical form of a woman without linking it to sexual attraction? Is sexual attraction an appropriate metaphor for discussing beauty as a philosophical concept?
More>>>

sorting through the shards with sadi ranson-polizzotti | on idiotprogrammer / imaginary planet.net

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, poet, essayist and frequent contributor to blogcritics, has been taking the world by storm over the last six months.
More>>>
http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/index.php?p=83398132

Blogcritics.org: the family myth

Another year whizzes by and the older I get, the faster they pass, and it seems only yesterday I was twenty-something and living what at the time I thought was surely both the highpoint and the low point of my life. Now, looking back at forty, I see how much and how little has changed. What I see at this time of year is not exclusive to me, but is a thing that perhaps we all experience and that is our role in our own family myth. The you you are around your family, or the you you are perceived as, perhaps more accurately. More>>>
Blogcritics.org: the family myth

Blogcritics.org: winter's sloth | overcome the dark days of winter

I was listening to Pillow today, that great song by Tom Verlaine who I just can’t get enough of these days and those lyrics just hit me right where it counts, and although it is years since I heard this song, when I hear the line “you are remembered well. Putting on that overcoat in June…slipping off that old corsage… it’s nothing, really nothing. What does the dove see? There at the window. These pains are very hard.” and I agree. More>>>
Blogcritics.org: winter's sloth | overcome the dark days of winter

Blogcritics.org: Holly Golightly | Fifty Dollars for the Powder Room

I was watching Breakfast at Tiffanys, again, and wondering why in the world it is that so many women who really, compared to our Audrey are let’s face it, rather subpar, seem to think of themselves Holly Golightly or more, would want to think of themselves as Holly, who is, by all accounts, a kept woman in many ways and one who is dependent on her fifty dollars for the powder room. I noticed this just the other day when someone changed their name on their instant messager to Holly Golightly and i thought this strange...more>>>
Blogcritics.org: Holly Golightly | Fifty Dollars for the Powder Room

outsider ink

this month, my work has been spotlighted in Outsider Ink and i've been asked to be the Poetry Editor for future issues and am quite happy about this. It's a good journal and worth reading. To read my work visit http://outsiderink.com/spotlight.php.

Blogcritics.org: beauty will be convulsive

"beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all" wrote Andre Breton. I've been reading a lot of philosophy lately, going back to my roots of the ancient Greeks and I came across a lovely little book called "On Beauty and Being Just" by Elaine Scarry. I had been thinking in lofty terms lately - notions of true Beauty and Love, all with capital letters, and wondering if such things existed, and if so, then could I still define them as I had so cockily and confidently in graduate school. Had I, at my wizened old age, become more cynical and less certain of absolutes, or was I more convinced. Scarry's book, which I use as a framework here, so if you like this, you'll enjoy Scarry (select link to read more)
Blogcritics.org: beauty will be convulsive

Blogcritics.org: mystic river | endless shades of grey

"It's that old expression about the wings of a butterfly changing the world. How one thing affects another thing and so it goes. I keep thinking of this when I see the film Mystic River, a film about three boys and their childhood growing up in a town that I once lived in, in exactly that part of town, and so I watch these characters and I see my old streets and the corner market and the local liquor store and I hear the accent that is done remarkably well by the actors in this film, save for a few guffaws that make it seem that anyone from Boston must sound slightly retarded, overall, here is something perhaps too accurate for comfort, and as one who still visits the old hood, Mystic River touches home every time. Well, Dennis Lehane should know. "
Blogcritics.org: mystic river | endless shades of grey:

Blogcritics.org: it's just a silly phase i'm going through | charisma, you

Suppose you count yourself lucky because people love you - men and women alike seem to fall at your feet (metaphorically, we hope), and it's not because you're so damn gorgeous because the truth is there is always someone more beautiful - really, and also, there's no one size fits all beauty, so what may be beautiful to one is hideous to another and thank god, because we'd all be chasing the same person and wouldn't that suck, but let's talk about that other thing that draws people to one and other and that is that slippery, tricky thing called charisma.
Blogcritics.org: it's just a silly phase i'm going through | charisma, you

sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - lover's spit | why adultery?

I had written a review of The End of the Affair, the film adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, for Blogcritics - a film, I felt captured an affair as realistically as any I've seen, for there is both romance and pain, and at the end, though this may not always be the case in life, Sarah, one of the lovers' and the adulteress, must pay the ultimate price for her perceived sin and for this, she must pay with her life; the end of the film, after all those months of amorous and sexy and soft light lovemaking will end with Sarah, exhausted (who wouldn't be) and washed up and lying on her death bed, waiting for the boom to fall, the Christian price that one pays for adultery and to know Greene is to know that he struggled somewhat with thorny concepts of right and wrong, particularly as they related to the divine or to religion and faith. (select link to read more)
sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - lover's spit | why adultery?

Blogcritics.org: is it really the end of the affair? - sadi ranson-polizzotti

"Not long ago, I read a great article on Blogcritics that was about Julianne Moore, an actress I've long admired, and though her work lately has tended to the too commercial for my tastes (the bad comedy with Pierce Brosnan that I saw on the plane on the way home from France - not my thing). But I remember Moore in The End of the Affair, and I recall too that I had read the book by Graham Greene and was curious as to how a director would handle a book that I, anyway," (select link, and do read the comments at the end of this piece as they really add a great deal. srp)
Blogcritics.org: is it really the end of the affair?:

new poetry, medusa in oil | published in Buzzwords.uk.

Medusa in Oil
Slut, she imagines herself
In riches. An Indochine seductress
Oiled yellow skin on which men
Will slip. Spit, fingers greedily seeking
A thing they cannot name. Teats hang
Flat, as pastry bags, emptied of their
Sweetness. Nursemaid to the wounded (link for more...)

For more click here.

Review of "Eels" by sadi ranson, review by Corinne McKay for the Boston Book Review

Lovers of tearfully poignant stories of ill-fated romantic affairs will delight in Sadi Ranson's new work Eels. Ms. Ranson's book, consisting of a novella and selected poems, is the vehicle through which the heroine Esther recounts the story of her adulterous romance with Daniel...link to read more...
Corinne McKay-Freelance Writing and Translation

sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles

It?s always disturbing to see someone harassed at work; to hear the snide gossip, the nasty comments, etc, and always it is awful to see a woman, or for that matter a man, sexually harassed by a co-worker or worse a superior. But today I speak of these things, but more, I write again of bullying, as I have in the past (see Meet the New American Bully).

sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles

beyond indigo | how kelly baltzell can help you move beyond grief | the interview

A few years ago, my plane was grounded by a snowstorm as I returned home from my grandfather's funeral in February. Layovers like this are never welcome and with the tears and the grief and my grandfather's rings in my hand, I was in no shape to be sitting still in an airport. By sheer chance, I was seated in the airport and I couldn't have been in a better situation. Soon, I found myself sitting next to a stunning young woman named Kelly Baltzell -- a young woman with an open and kind face, and of course, soon we got to talking (delays form fast friends). But Kelly knew right away all was not well with me and informed me of her work, which is to work with those who are going through grieving the loss of a loved one. Kelly, I found out, is also the President of a Web based site called Beyond Indigo that offers vast resources for those who are chronically ill or who are grieving, but more, she offers services that are just amazing -- like virtual memorials and votives, grief journals and more. That she does all this and it is not maudlin is remarkable -- she has successfully formed a real community, perhaps the only one of it's kind, where people can gather or simple be alone and honor their loved ones, educate themselves, build memorial Web pages, and so very much more. The resourcefulness and energy of Kelly Baltzell are simply exceptional and more, does it not so much for profit, but out of a need, or a gap that she saw in the community. Her works have been rewarded and she has won Best of Forbes for four years running. Read on, and I do hope that you will... Friends, meet Kelly Baltzell and Beyond Indigo. (select link to read more)
sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - beyond indigo how kelly baltzell can help you move beyond grief

Blogcritics.org: so you're a porn star? did you even know it? abuse, voyeurism and you

Fellow Blogcritics may wish to know that their names are being used for sites that offer live sex cams and bondage singles for those on the prowl. I recently did a search of my name to see where my work had been picked up an syndicated – I’m sure many of us do this just to keep track. I want to personally tell Mac Diva, RJ, and Eric Olsen too that your names were used along with mine for a bondage site that had live sex cams with different women.
Blogcritics.org: so you're a porn star? did you even know it? abuse, voyeurism and you

ray of light | journeys through melanoma

ray of light | a journey through melanoma
Compressed, the ozone measures only 3mm, no thicker than the skin of a grapefruit. This protective shield, billions of years in the making, has been damaged in less than fifty, in large part, due to the breakdown of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as they reach the upper atmosphere and upset the fragile balance of molecules. sadi

sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - Idols of perversity by Bram Dijkstra

The subtitle of this book says it all: "Fantasies of the Feminine in Fin-de-Siecle Culture." Sadly though, so much of what this book contains may have began as fantasy but ended with reality. Though an older book, this is not one to soon forget or an excuse not to buy and read and read again and again. Here is a book that speaks of the cult of the pale and dying Ophelia, the original grunge GenXer, all pale and tottering with a "vampire gaze", as if she were high on heroin, and about to fade. Women, in the late 1800s and early 1900s as now, somewhat, were creatures to be both revered and feared. In any event, they were creatures, quite unlike their male counterpart.
sadi ranson-polizzotti - tant mieux articles - Idols of perversity by Bram Dijkstra

rebel yell | sir richard branson's reality

all of these reality show have me mostly bored, that is, until i saw The Rebel Billionaire, with one of my personal heroes, Sir Richard Branson, who as i recall, was ditched by his mother ina field when he was three or four and told to "find his way home." He had no help, no one to aid him in any way, and yet he found his way back to the country estate. Since then,Sir Richard Branson has been carving his own wide swath through the world, and not minding the shoulds and oughts that seem to apply to the rest of the world. They clearly do not apply to Sir Richard Branson, or they do and he has rejected them.
sadi

ray of light | melanoma

"ray of light a journey through melanoma
Compressed, the ozone measures only 3mm, no thicker than the skin of a grapefruit. This protective shield, billions of years in the making, has been damaged in less than fifty, in large part, due to the breakdown of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as they reach the upper atmosphere and upset the fragile balance of molecules. "
ray of light melanoma :

underground window

underground window. check out the new work at underground window - we're very excited to have been published here and this is brand new work.

underground window bio
underground window poems



image from underground window, all rights reserved by the artist

scams, the elderly, and you

The ongoing argument is always in this society what do we do with our old people, or more respectfully, the elderly. If you ask me, I think we should build shrines to them the way they do in some countries, and when they pass on to some other life, or blackness or whatever it is we pass on to, that we keep an altar in our living room and get down on our knees and thank god for their existence and all that they did for us, for without them, we first, wouldn't be here, and second, likely wouldn't have many of the lovely things we have if we ever inherited even a dime from them, but mostly, we wouldn't have a sense of family or rootedness, and while I know that my own family is as dysfunctional or more or less than the next person's, I also know that I would not be who I am without them, both good and bad.

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/11/11/132749.php

ZudFunck has sampled us!

We've had the honor and have been sampled by ZudFunck -- visit our pages, and see our mentions for two tant mieux sotto voce sites

at the Bob Dylan Willie Nelson Double Bill Lookin' For a Soft Place to Fall

and here for tant mieux. Visit us on ZudFunck then hope around on the site. Lots of great sites are noted, the best of the best, and we're proud to be among them and return the favor.

Visit now now now, and don't forget to visit the new sotto voce Number 1 Audio Blog.

srp november 2004

election day blues

As a non U.S. citizen without any legal right to vote, it’s been interesting these days to watch as the election unfolds all around me and I hear opposing sides, and yes, have opinions but not a damn thing I can do about how I feel.>>>More.

new! number one audio blog

visit the new Number 1 Audio Blog,

a new extension of tant mieux, sotto voce. Listen to audio poems, new work, and more. You can also download and burn audio discs, but check with me first just because that's polite and a nice thing to do. Visit www.number1audioblog.blogspot.com

I'll try to post the text of the poems as well, but if you do not see it there, you can open another browser window and find most of the texts at www.tantmieux.squarespace.com under November Poems or New & Selected Poems. Review poems by title in the Archives to find the one you want.

as always, thanks for visiting. To return to Tant Mieux home, click here.

sadi ranson-polizzotti | november | 2004

1 

dancing in the dark | an open letter

Dear ....

Recently, I was thinking about that stupid film Unfaithful, with the annoying Diane Lane and her oh-so-suburban affair with a younger man and how it leads to, poor Richard Gere who played her husband, killing the guy with, of all things, a snow globe. It wasn't the film really, it was a line from a book that is read in the film and it said, "This moment is your life."

I keep coming back to this, because although it seems trite, it brings to mind other lines, particularly John Lennon, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans..." and how very much those lines struck me when I was still very young and now, at my ripe old age, how they strike me more. >>>More.

all soul's day | a brief history of halloween

The history of Halloween is a long and complicated one, and I will attempt to put it together for us here so that we may come upon this Halloween or All Souls Day with a renewed perspective and respect for this once solemn Pagan and Christian holiday that originally went back to the Druids and the ancient Romans. Note that the Druidic tradition was an oral tradition and the Druids did not write down their history and so it was left to the Romans to do so; what the Romans gave us is not entirely to be trusted for this reason for surely they had some agenda of their own and wanted to promote their own gods and belief systems. >>>More, on blogcritics.org

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/10/29/112127.php

all the rage in Paris | muslim headgear banned at school and the fallout

Recently, France banned the wearing of supposedly all religious headgear in classrooms in Paris, where it hit especially hard with yes, Jewish students, but more than this, with Muslim students, many of whom felt that they in particular had been targeted by this new law that banned the wearing of religious jewelry and other items that could identify you as “different” – read, “not Catholic”.>>> More

this article orginarlly appeared at http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/10/25/150316.php

control alt delete | system reboot

oh, to survive office politics and a shitty economy and come out the other side. Read "I don't look so good from a distance, but i tell you i'm the one..." >>>More.

ripe | audio poem

imagine | audio poem

memorial | new york city | 2004

mp and srp getting ready for fk's memorial nyc, october, 2004

This week, we made the long trip to New York City to attend the memorial service of a friend and our editor that one of us anyway, had known for quite a long time and the other, for not so long but had some sense of him from our work together. Both of us had worked with Fred over the course of only a year for one, and many for the other, but he had become to each of us a kind of mentor, and certainly a mentor any writer who was interested in, or mired in the subject of biography, for this was Fred's stock and trade, and one in which we too had dealt or were dealing.

Fred was a great writer and editor and more, he was a great person by all accounts; known in his profession, widely respected as a teacher and writerauthor and known to each of us for we had both contributed to his series, Biography and Source Studies, which came out in different volumes (the last with both of us was Volume 5, editor, Fred Karl and the one to which both my husband and I had the pleasure of contributing our respective views on the art of biography.

I had never met Fred, but despite that, I felt I knew him through our work and so the drive to his service in New York was not a hardship. It was a simple way to pay honor to a man who had been kind to me and smart and had been good enough to ask for my contribution to his esteemed series even when I didn’t think I deserved the accolade. Nonetheless, Fred worked with me, honing the piece and insisting on my contribution, which after months of work was finally in good enough shape and was published. As far as I know, this volume was the last that Fred published before he died and I am honored to be included in such a series with other writers far more talented and widely published than I.

The trip to New York City was longer than expected, the traffic awful, the traffic jam that held us at the tunnel in Boston for over an hour. It was not an easy journey by any stretch, yet still, we were glad to make it for Fred, because we felt it was important to his family and more, we wanted to pay our respects. We packed our blacks, our darkest clothes, we prepared the car and we made our way through the day and arrived just in time to shower and get ready before heading to the service. I also documented the trip with a camera so that we would always remember, the way I document many things with my camera because time passes too quickly and by God, I want to remember and even more vain perhaps, I hope to be remembered the way I see others are; as a good person, as an accomplished person; and as someone who most of all, was loving and even more important perhaps to the insecure among us, lovable. We set out into the New York afternoon and made a path through Washington Square Park to the hall where Fred’s service was to be held.

One is never sure what to expect at such events. Will there be much weeping as I have witnessed, or it will it be like an Irish wake with much laughter and people telling stories of the recent past and regaling us with jokes and humorous anecdotes. As fitting, it was neither. We gathered, about a hundred or so of us, or just shy, in a room off of New York University and one by one, various eulogists spoke of Fred. They were as diverse as he himself was and each had a different side of Fred that they conveyed – the grandchildren spoke of baseball and transatlantic phone calls to get the Yankees score, of Fred’s dislike of the Yanks, of the way he would hide Hershey’s kisses in his beard. The adults, as fitting, more solemn, and spoke of his teaching, his organization, his love of his work, and of course, his friends and family – his lovely daughters – who in groups and one by one told of a man who was frail and small in size but large in personality and who gave to the world as much as he possibly could, always working on more than one book at a time and writing some of the greatest biographies of our time on Kafka, Joseph Conrad and other figures who, in many ways, were no more Fred’s superior but his equal in many ways. A great biographer for a great subject, and he wrote his books and achieved his measure of fame and renown and Fred was known and respected as one of the best and most important, if such words apply, writers and biographers of our time.

But this is not what touched me. Of course, the thing that strikes the most at such events is how very short a life is, how fragile and how brief. We move through it as if we have all the time in the world. At twenty we are invincible, at thirty we are still young, at forty we begin to see commercials for our gray hair and vitamins made just for us, and by our mid forties or even earlier now, we begin to see the depressing commercials about life insurance that states “if you were born between the years 1946 and 1966” and then it strikes you that for as young and hip as you were or used to be or think you still are, for as young as you feel and for as much as it feels like yesterday that you were getting carded at clubs in NY and carded for cigarettes and being told you are “too young” for all sorts of things, you are now almost too old. That you work with people who were born the year you graduated from college, which is astounding to think about. It means you are getting older, and like our Fred, you are nearing that time when your time will be up and somewhere, some day, you pray that there will be those who will honor you in such a way that brings out the very best parts of you and your successes the way I saw so many stand up and do for Fred. He was honored, he was loved, but he was gone, and it seemed to me as I sat there that it was so unfair that his life had been so short. Never mind that he was surely in his seventies or perhaps even eighties (I’m honestly not sure), he still seemed too young, the way I feel too young to have to worry about life insurance or worse, losing my own husband. I always say that I must die first – I must be the first to go, because I could not stand it to live in the world without him.

The same holds true of my friends; I must be the first to die and conquer, if it exists, the brave new world of the afterlife because I am too afraid to be left in this world by myself. Chalk it up to fear of abandonment, but I cannot face this life alone, yet my fear of death, strong as it is, is no match for sitting as I saw Fred’s beautiful but deeply sorrowful wife, at his service. She seemed so alone, so fragile and so strong in her way but just barely masking a fragility that comes of losing someone you love so deeply that life without him or her seems surely impossible.

Yet perhaps the worst part of all is that you life. Most of the time, you live and you go on and the bills still come and you still have to eat and cook for yourself and you have to manage (how I hate the word). You have to “find a way” as they say, when in your previous life with this person alive, the way you found your way was through him or her – only they knew where the slippers were, the remote, the extra blankets. Only they could find the remote, fix the VCR, others tell you everything would be okay (and have you believe them). Only he or she could understand the French subway system, the Metro and now you’re afraid to make a move on your own, unless it was the part of the roof that you held up because without your Other, your partner or other half or whatever you want to call him or her, you are completely and utterly lost. These are the challenges we face after death, and they are perhaps the curse of having loved one person for so long and so deeply that life without that person is agonizing. I watch the mating dance of cranes and I know they mate for life, the way they mimic each other in step and in grace and I wonder, who will know this dance when the other is gone, for one must always go first; rarely do we die together. How lonely will I be when there is no one who can dance in that way with me as well and as knowingly as my own love, who knows me so well that our union, our daily routine, our bed time rituals are implicit, tacit, and a sort of litany or dance or both. When you love, when you love for so long, at the end for al the good there has been the price you pay then is the absence of that good. You can try and dine out on the memories, but it is never the same thing.

As I listened to the eulogists one by one, I held my husband’s hand firmly in my lap and traced the lines of his veins, his crepe-jasmine skin, his light colored hairs, and as I sat there in my black dress I felt blessed that this time I was not the widow and that I hoped I never was; the deal is, as he knows, that I die first. I say it over and over again, because I know that life without him would be unbearable, and besides, I tell him, you are stronger than I am and you’ll survive and you’ll get to go out with all those young girls I see you eye-balling. But, I tell him, if there is a heaven and I go there and then you get remarried on earth and them she dies and goes there and then you die and go there, then you’d better choose me. I will be your heavenly bride. He smiles patiently and says, Of course, darling. Of course I’d choose you, and whether it’s true or not, it is part of our little litany.



This is what I saw – a group of us all trying to be strong and see our way through and tell each other the okays and the yes, we’ll manage and the so on and on and yet underneath it all I knew that there was a greater or lesser part that would not manage. It would be different for each of us, more or less profound, but there nonetheless. In my case, I lose an editor and friend. But rue the day it is my turn or my husband’s turn or my best friend’s turn. God help me should those I love die before I do. I could not stand it, the same way I saw them unable to handle the fear and the loss when cancer almost took my life just a few short years ago and I was still in my early thirties and by measure “young.” On e by one I saw them come to my room, look at me, frail and pale and wounded and missing a third of my leg and laying there on the bed and the mourning had begun. I mourned the lost part of me, the huge part of my calf that was gone (it could have been worse), and they mourned the me that we still did not know would live; Death, at that time, was possible and death is possible even now, today or any day.

Anything I say would be trite, so it will just have to be. Live your life now, and live it as you wish to be eulogized and remembered. If you want to be remembered as a good person, then for fuck’s sake, live as one. If not, then be quiet and stop moaning. To not die is not an option in the final account. In the end, it ends and we all die, but for now, we live and by god, while I still can, I plan to live as much as I can while I can and may I do so that many turn out for my funeral and service and that one by one, each person stands and shares a piece of me that is irreplaceable, ethereal yes, but uniquely me.

May the same be true for you.
Amen.

early betrayal | audio poem

Early Betrayal

It was surprising how easy,
I was so sure some electric
barrier would bar the others,
reject with spit and spark
a surge I hoped would push
those boys away, though even
you had been disloyal,
casually not thinking of us
your weeping trinity we cried
while you thought only
of yourself. Such treachery
to kiss some other. So
when he said what he would
do I believed I would cry No,
but a thready voice said OK
and it was done, our fate sealed.

I had been your Mary for so long
thumb-twiddling away the time
squandering my beauty as you
turned to some other, a blessed
one in France and put her on your
pedestal. So when he kissed me
again I offered all my fury, raged
against you as if to prove to the
three of us in that bed, for you
were there, that I was the One.

For once I let myself love back
forget about you and when we
touched I closed my eyes and thought
of you touching her and felt
pure hatred and spite and beneath
that just sorrow, a bottomless
sorry that I tried hard to fuck
away. You couldn’t give her up;
not for me, not for anyone. She
was your goddess, the ultimate
idol against all others would be
measured, and I, I came up short.

But when I fell of your pedestal
surprised to find myself being
raised by this other, he with a furious
love of my auburn hair, a perversion
for my freckles. I watched as he
spit-shined my shoes and every
day told me about my beauty.
He offered sustenance; I took it.
I was dying with your love –
emptying instead of filling.
You never saw it. Never believed
anyone could love you so much
that it would hurt to not
be loved back.

Did you believe after that?
or did it drive you farther away,
your perpetual excuse as you flee
to the waiting arms of whomever –
a name that doesn’t matter –
My love never ended. I left him
at last, broken hearted as I was,
I saw the same pain he felt for me
that I still felt for you and my soul
cried out like the Phoenix on fire
She who never knows whether or not
she will ever rise from such ashes.

visit poems on lit.org

read The Red Hot Ruby of Youth on Lit.org. More poems by SRP are available from that site.

http://www.lit.org/view/18790

The devil wears Prada | a review of lauren weisberger's book

It was almost inevitable that I would pick up the books The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger.

It must be that I worked in that world, the world that they write of, which is fashion, and in particular, New York fashion. For several years, every summer I would leave my job in Boston and my university and head to Manhattan to what was, at the time for what I did, one of the most enviable jobs in the industry. I was what they called a “rover” at the dark and ominous and smoked glass and ever-so sleek and sexy 350 Madison Avenue, home of Conde Nast Publications. It was the building that held the secrets of what next year’s look was going to be. It held Vogue, Mademoiselle, GQ, not to mention almost any other magazine you can name that isn’t owned by Hearst (they own Cosmopolitan and other such publications – the ‘other’ Conde Nast in some ways, but with a different aesthetic altogether; not quite as highbrow in some ways.). >>>more.

exposure | a history of bleach

For years I’ve been a huge fan of bleach. And I mean bleach for everything – I’ll bleach the bathroom clean, the kitchen countertops, the floors, even if they’re wood, my hair, the bathtub, laundry; you name it, I bleach it. >>>More.

this article first appeared on Blogcritics.org.

house painting in october

Listen to all three audio poems from this October. For text for this poem, visit tant mieux, New & Selected Poems (link below).

For more poetry, www.cabinetist.blogspot.com or, visit our sister site, tant mieux at www.tantmieux.squarespace.com and read Poems & Chants from Paris, and New & Selected. You can also visit other sotto voce sites from the Links area.

srp

in your absence | audio poem

The milk is back. As in Paris,
I am filling again with something
that must be sweet, good.
I find it as I drive, the highway
blurring, the speedometer
pricking ninety-five, the
wetness there. This time, you are
gone. I cannot speak or write
of love between us. does it bridge
such distance, love? I feel it
but know that our elastic band
can only stretch so far. Hadn’t
you once said it had broken?
By some awful miracle, we had
lost that thing that bound us
and found ourselves alone, walking
wounded, zombified by grief
the dark, swollen eyes of the lost.

I am nothing without you.
We say it is wrong to need,
to have to have, as if in having
or needing there were a choice
as if any man were truly an island.
I am an isthmus, sea crashing
on three sides, she throws her
grey silks, sucks hard and rough
leaves me raw and dizzied.

The land will not let her have me.
It has attached, the way you
put your arms on my waist
hold me firm in a gale. Your hard
ness pressing. I am all want
This is need.
Without you, I am the sea’s dark
mermaid, asleep in a fossil-curl
waiting for the risen tide,
the waves to lick, the sleep to calm.

at last | audio poem

The woman is blank. Flattened.
There is no softness here.
She is defeated. Quietly,
She moves to the white
sheet. Her lids slide shut.
Behind there is nothing;
just shattered green,
shattered green

Dreams are for fools, for young.
There is no child suckling,
no husband petting.
Nobody will want such clarity.
She is ice that burns the tongue
Her edges slice cleanly
a blade that sinks to a tomato
the line of it even and straight
the juice beading and seeping
a straight line of grief.

Everything is in order.
The dishes washed
The laundry folded.
papers organized,.
Nothing is left undone.
She is ice cold and perfect;
silent as a statue.
The crowd applauds, pleased.
They got their money’s worth.

those things of which we do not speak

The questions which
you say mean nothing that
I know mean everything.
You tend to me the way
a lion tends to his females
always needing to know
where one is in order that
he may be with some other.

If then my hours are thus
knowing i will be suitably
occupied you are then free
to do those things which
we know you do, but that
you insist you do not do
because time does not
permit.

Such practical
matter it be, then where
I am provides guarantee
of hours unfettered, the
morning greys, blocked days
routine created, allowing
promise to take that thing
that you say is not
there, but find anyway:

You then, able to take
to some other, who,
in the hours now emptied
for she of whom
we do not speak explicitly
because to do so would
be too explicit, though
it is, of course, implicit.

You know that I know
and I know that
you know. Game in which
I am to pretend to
believe though, now,
we acknowledge a lie. Still,
my silence is tacit, as if
I created this
routine in order that
another may find another.
Fall to one and do such
things of which
we do not speak.

to be young | going live!

I’m trying to remember what it was to be just young, just beginning to understands the ways of the heart and the body, more to the point. the first stirrings of desire that one feels as an early teen, if not sooner, and you find yourself reaching for classmates and finding yourself in cut-class sticky fumblings and sweet summer fields and those landscapes that lay beyond the closed doors of your parent’s house, because it’s all you’ve got and you’ll take it because what you feel is hunger.>>>MORE

tant mieux featured on SquareSpace

tant mieux

tant mieux, sister site of sotto voce, has been selected by SquareSpace as a featured site. See the feature by clicking here.
To visit tant mieux click here.

all tomorrow's predictions

I’m not the type to read my daily horoscope or put too much stock in my astrological sign and forecast (though that said, I will say that reading it I find it to be disconcertingly accurate, which I ascribe to sweeping generalizations that could be true of everybody, such comments as “you are neat and organized and a real go-getter.” Who doesn’t want to believe this of themselves? I could real Libra and find things there too an certainly in Scorpio I find a lot of things that could likewise apply (you are a deeply passionate person, a terrific lover” - okay, that last may not be entirely true,

but the point is, who doesn’t want to believe that? more>>>>