Kondo Your Undies, and Other Tales of Had Enough

 

At Christmastime, my sister made a point of saying she is careful about covering the grey in her blonde hair. I didn’t bite. I am in fact wishing my greys would get a move on. So far, it only looks like random tinsel in my brown locks, what’s left of them. It does shine in the sunlight, and my stepdaughter Emily told me how pretty it is. Now, who would you believe?

I am in the ‘at my age’ phase of my writing, and along with purging possessions and projects that no longer serve me, I am leaning into avoiding that which makes me uncomfortable or unduly annoyed. This includes going barefoot in winter, keeping the thermostat turned low, skipping naps, and traveling over ten minutes to attend an event, even on the weekends. I came close to walking out of a movie on Friday night, but my Beloved seemed amused so, for $10, I stuck it out. It did pick up towards the end, but not enough where I might have regretted leaving after all.

I can’t say Marie Kondo has been a life changing influence on me, but I do fold my bras and undies in a more efficient way now. I am also trying to release items I have schlepped with me for four decades, from apartment to apartment, and now even to this house I’ve been in for over twenty years. I thank it, remember who I was when I bought it, then let it go. Our charities are overflowing with COVID era donations, and Salvation Army isn’t even in the running these days because of their vile actions against the LGBT community, but there are Tibetans nearby who can use the stuff.

This selective mindset includes my poetry life as well. There are fewer “live” readings to attend, but that doesn’t mean I cram my Zoom dance card with virtual events. As I teeter on the edge of retirement (from my mouth to the Calendar’s ears), I find that more and more of my peers are scheduling events for midday or afternoon, making it impossible for me to attend after my workday ends. Many of these include events well out of my ten minute range, I am sorry to say.

When I was single, I thought nothing of zipping up to the Capitol District, or down to Beacon or Middletown any night of the week, and still get to work by 8:00 a.m. the following day. My eyesight has held so far regarding night vision, but it’s the energy I’m lacking. I get up most days at 6:00 a.m. to enjoy an hour or so of diddling with words and stalking my fellows on the Internet before my actual workday begins. Now thank goodness for remote channel changers, because pressing buttons is pretty much all I’m capable of after 6:00 p.m.

When I plan to attend a reading, I research the poets that will feature. At this point, I know whose work is just plain self-indulgent drivel (this includes my own work very often, but I try not to inflict it on the general public without apology), whose work is repetitive, and whose public reading skills leave much to be desired. I avoid certain hosts who do all they can to outshine the very features they’ve selected, in the most outrageous ways possible. My filter wanes, and I may someday do myself significant mouthy harm when it comes to being invited to any of these events, but I care less and less every day.

You might say I’ve been Marie Kondo-ing all aspects of my life. I hope to squeeze another twenty years out of this before I’m finished, and every minute counts. Every evening I spend flipping through YouTube with my Beloved counts for a lot.  Selectivity, and nicely folded undies. Can’t beat it.

**Where Have All the Workshop Venues Gone?**

 

Since the Pandemic, there has been a tremendous overturn of venues that used to happily host open poetry mics. Some have closed, and some are no longer willing to make the space available. Zoom has become a contender, and has its advantages as well as drawbacks. In a Zoom reading, one can interact with poets from across the country and around the world, a rarity at best in the Before Times. Unlike a live reading, however, interaction is limited to private chats and public conversations instead of intimate chit-chats in a dark corner of the coffee shop. But nothing is perfect. With Zoom, Calling All Poets (CAPS) would have been doomed, and it still maintains an ambitious online schedule while waiting for its next physical venue to emerge. The Woodstock Poetry Society currently holds hybrid meetings at the Woodstock Library, an ironic twist since its previous incarnation, the Stone Ridge Poetry Society, had its origins at that town’s library. The ART BAR is no more, so Teresa Costa’s Word of Mouth Poetry series (WOMP) is on hiatus, with hints of a future resurrection making the rounds.

But readings are one thing, and have ebbed and flowed in the 40+ years I’ve been attending. The current difficulty for me personally is finding a venue to offer my RANDOM WRITING poetry workshop at. Past locations are often history, or have incarnated into high priced rentals that are out of reach of my wallet. Talks are in the works for a session at the Poetry Barn, a fine addition to the poetry scene here in Ulster County. I am also making plans for a one-day event at a private home here in Kingston, NY, a generous offer I will tell more about soon. But the old days of a side room at the library, a bar, a church have all evolved in this newly “upscaled” valley into big buck endeavors.

Now, it is America for sure, and Capitalism still reigns supreme, even as the costs of housing, food, and healthcare rise to criminal heights. Everybody has a right to make a fair and reasonable buck. But now more than ever, we need arts that are accessible to the other 90%, people who can tell the stories of life without trust funds and safety nets. Groups like TMI are doing this good work, putting out there tales of the real world that most of us populate. And certainly I charge a fee for my workshop, too. Nothing I could actually pay the light and water bills with, but what I believe is fair compensation for my time and experience.

I have an opportunity to offer a session of my poetry workshop under the auspices of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild. The stipulation is that it needs to be free to participants. A $100 stipend will cover my small expenses. However, I have reached out to three area libraries with no reply, even while emphasizing that the class would be free. I am at a loss now where else to look. Churches that once offered the use of their space for free or nominal charges are now making a business of it, it seems. I cannot think of a retail space that would be appropriate either, understanding how much they are all being overcharged for their own square footage. Finally, my own home is truly too small to host more than a couple friends at a time socially, let alone an eager group of poets!

Any ideas? I am open to suggestions. Perhaps in the spring one of the local parks would be an option. If the rent isn’t too high.

** HIATUS **

 Time to recharge, renew, reinvent life. I'll be officially taking a break from the blog, and most other literary endeavors, until the Fall. Please read my previous entries (there are a lot of them), comment so I know I'm not just puking into the void, and look for something in September.  -CAR

Hughes Vs. Hitler: The Absurdity of Keyboard Researchers

 

Early this morning, during my usual Facebook perusal, I noticed a particular comment on a friend’s post. Don Levy is a fine poet, and an active reader who shares his interests with others on the web. He’s been posting about a different poet every week, and last week his poet of choice was Ted Hughes, former Poet Laureate of the UK and widower of Sylvia Plath.

Hughes’ role in Plath’s suicide has been debated for decades now. An ardent band of Plath devotees has gone so far as to regularly chip his surname off her headstone, blaming him entirely for her sad ending. Whether these folks take into account her long history of mental illness prior to meeting Hughes is unknown.

Even here in 2023, Don got so much flack for his choice that he felt the need to apologize. Many people supported him, and made the argument for the work and the poet as being separate entities to be considered apart from each other. One gentleman however, with research on Wikipedia to support his opinion, declared Hughes a “psychopath,” and likened his so-called killing spree to that of Hitler.

Anyone’s suicide is a long reaching tragedy that affects many more than can be anticipated. To make Hughes’ case more complicated, his lover, Assia Wevill, lived with for several years afterwards, and ended her own life and that of their small daughter in a similar fashion to Plath. Hughes’ son with Plath, Nicholas Hughes, committed suicide as well, in 2009 and well after the deaths of both his parents.

Considering her long history of mental health struggles in particular, it is difficult to blame Hughes directly for Plath’s suicide. Theirs was a marriage fraught with struggles, the plight of artists as well as husbands and wives. Only those two know the full stories, and we are left to piece together the truth, or some sensible version of it, from diaries, letters, and most unreliably, their poems.

Certainly comparing Hughes to Hitler is an absurdity not even worth discussing with Professor Wiki. Hopefully his next source of “facts” won’t be the wretched Gwyneth Paltrow film of several years ago that exploited the agony. Surviving daughter Frieda Hughes wouldn’t even give permission for their poems to be used, and the producers were reduced to fictional Sylvia and Ted quoting from Shakespeare like starry-eyed freshmen.

Full disclosure- for almost a decade I was the host of an annual event I called, “The Sylvia Plath Bake-Off.” Looking to draw attention to a monthly open mic here in the Hudson Valley, I came up with several themes, and this one took off with a life of its own. I don’t regret the events now, although as I age I do become more acutely sensitive the pain that drove Plath to the oven. No one came in laughing about her method of suicide, although the usual levity was present, the same that one often experiences at funerals. Poems were sympathetic odes, not satirical rants. I have no plans to revive the series, although many remember it with great fondness. I am too old to find much more to ask of Plath and Hughes, having given all I could expect to my selfish cause.