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Baked Beans and Gr眉nkohl: The Boston-Hannover Channel
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"> <channel> <title>Baked Beans and Gr眉nkohl: The Boston-Hannover Channel</title> <link>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/blog-joey/</link> <description></description> <dc:language>de</dc:language> <dc:rights>Copyright 2020</dc:rights> <dc:date>2020-09-29T16:09:00+00:00</dc:date> <atom:link href="https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/rss_2.0-joey" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /> <item> <title>Sigrid Nunez’ The Friend. A Review</title> <link>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/sigrid-nunez-the-friend-a-review/</link> <guid>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/sigrid-nunez-the-friend-a-review/#When:16:09:00Z</guid> <description><![CDATA[Sigrid Nunez has just published a new novel, What Are You Going Through?, which I'm just now reading. Its female narrator faces and reflects on the ending of a life, as did the narrator of her previous novel, The Friend. I went back to reread my notes on that thought-provoking book and decided to publish them on my blog, in case any of you are also tempted to dip into Nunez' uniquely appealing prose! The Friend. Sigrid Nunez. 2018. N.Y.: Riverhead: Penguin. National Book Award for Fiction, 2018. The first-person narrator of this winner of the 2018 National Book Award for fiction is a woman perhaps in her 60's, a writer and college teacher of writing. She recounts her reactions to and life after the suicide of a close "friend" and earlier, short-term lover. She often slips into the second person, speaking to the dead friend, who remains nameless, as do all creatures appearing in the book except for Apollo, the friend’s statuesque Great Dane, whom she is persuaded to "adopt" by her ]]></description> <dc:date>2020-09-29T16:09:00+00:00</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Heat Advisory Amidst Pandemic</title> <link>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/heat-advisory-amidst-pandemic/</link> <guid>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/heat-advisory-amidst-pandemic/#When:14:57:00Z</guid> <description><![CDATA[Heat Advisory Amidst Pandemic You shouldn’t go out today – stay home and hydrate! My daughter’s texted warning echoes my own good sense: Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun. And yet I crave my forest fix my walk past laughing gardens into the wooded park under a glass clear sky. The months of social distancing have left me strangely dulled, devoid of motivation. Thrown back upon myself I’m forced to inner contemplation to find what’s at my core. Looking for wisdom, longing for joy – intensity of feeling a ghost now in my memory, I muster all my senses. A welcome tender breeze caresses neck and shoulders so long so bare of touch. My eyes lift skyward drink in translucent blue, fringed round the edges by softly swaying green: The canopy above, where sharply structured branches yield patterns, subtly shifting in shadow and the sun. Dizzying, dense – and etched into my brain. Breathing deeply the scents all around – the fragrance of pine, the hint of ]]></description> <dc:date>2020-08-02T14:57:00+00:00</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Unlatch</title> <link>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/unlatch/</link> <guid>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/unlatch/#When:21:17:00Z</guid> <description><![CDATA[This sonnet by Dorian Brooks was first published in Ibbetson Street in 2019. Unlatch A woman from Honduras recalled how officials took away her baby while she was breastfeeding. —The Guardian, June 16, 2018 I wonder, when they came to take away babies from nursing mothers, did they snatch them off, or let the mothers finish, the way midwives and manuals taught them – to “unlatch” as naturally as breathing? Carefully crook your pinky finger and slip it into your baby’s mouth. Turn your finger slowly to break the suction, ease it nearer you a little bit, then rest. I like to think at least a few officials had the heart to let a mother linger – giving one last drink to her child – before they pulled the pair apart and neither one knew where the other went, both left with empty lives for nourishment. © Dorian ]]></description> <dc:date>2020-07-30T21:17:00+00:00</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Poetry Editor</title> <link>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/poetry-editor/</link> <guid>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/poetry-editor/#When:15:08:00Z</guid> <description><![CDATA[Dorian Brooks wrote the two poems “Thalassa” and “Poetry Editor” in memory of her friend and fellow poet Mary Rice, who died in 2011. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Mary Rice was an essayist and videographer as well as a poet; her poems, articles, and reviews were published in several magazines, including Ms. and Sojourner. A feminist and proud graduate of all-women Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA, USA, she also held a master's degree in art history from Boston University. She was an editor of the feminist magazine Second Wave, and later, poetry editor of Ibbetson Street, a poetry journal published in Somerville, MA. Both "Thalassa" and "Poetry Edotor" were published in Ibbetson Street. Dorian also edited Mary Rice’s uncompleted poetry manuscript together with additional poems and arranged for their publication as Angels and Anarchists (Cambridge, MA: Shepard St. Press, 2014). Poetry Editor for Mary Rice After you finish seeing your doctor, we meet ]]></description> <dc:date>2018-10-23T15:08:00+00:00</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Thalassa</title> <link>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/thalassa/</link> <guid>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/thalassa/#When:14:58:00Z</guid> <description><![CDATA[Dorian Brooks wrote the two poems “Thalassa” and “Poetry Editor” in memory of her friend and fellow poet Mary Rice, who died in 2011. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Mary Rice was an essayist and videographer as well as a poet; her poems, articles, and reviews were published in several magazines, including Ms. and Sojourner. A feminist and proud graduate of all-women Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA, USA, she also held a master's degree in art history from Boston University. She was an editor of the feminist magazine Second Wave, and later, poetry editor of Ibbetson Street, a poetry journal published in Somerville, MA. Both "Thalassa" and "Poetry Edotor" were published in Ibbetson Street. Dorian also edited Mary Rice’s uncompleted poetry manuscript together with additional poems and arranged for their publication as Angels and Anarchists (Cambridge, MA: Shepard St. Press, 2014). Thalassa for Mary Rice, who loved Melissa Green’s poem “At the Seashore” with its ]]></description> <dc:date>2018-10-23T14:58:00+00:00</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Magic Mushroom</title> <link>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/magic-mushroom/</link> <guid>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/magic-mushroom/#When:01:44:00Z</guid> <description><![CDATA[Magic Mushroom September 2018 Entering the park I am greeted by a giant yellow mushroom sprouting brilliant from an ash tree’s trunk, bursting with multiple shelves, a proudly swelling corolla. My first thought: someone has tied a celebratory rose around that tree, for yesterday the trunk was bare. But stepping closer I can see it’s Chicken of the Woods. Mother Nature has worked her magic and left a gift from Gaea to lift my spirits, wake me from my worries and call me loudly: attend to the world around you! Walking on to the pulse of the cricket, the hum of cicadas, and into the woods, my sacred space, I raise my gaze to the crests of the trees and worship. Surrounded by my deities, these private goddesses, I slip into a mystic bliss. Quiet titans they stand, and offer themselves like models posing for the artist’s eye, branches arrayed in endless patterns against the sky, straight and strong or bent in shapes surprising. They invite to visual contrast: light and ]]></description> <dc:date>2018-09-06T01:44:00+00:00</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Fairy Tales</title> <link>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/fairy-tales/</link> <guid>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/fairy-tales/#When:14:43:00Z</guid> <description><![CDATA[ Fairy Tales Dorian Brooks wrote this poem about a class she took in Harvard Extension School, taught by a legendary professor at Harvard and the University of Massachusetts Boston. Bob Spaethling was also one of my Doktorväter and a mentor to me for much of my career. Many readers may also have known him, and we hope that all will enjoy this evocation of his magic in the classroom! Fairy Tales for Robert Spaethling In continuing Ed., we read Grimms’ fairy tales in translation. Herr Spaethling, Professor Emeritus, all but dances his lectures. With charming accent he compares the brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, one the scientist, one the poet. He makes us love the colors in Snow White, the girl’s white skin and ebony hair, the scarlet apple. But the dwarfs, he fumes (cursing Disney), must never be named, mysterious beings from earth’s depths. When we come to The Juniper Tree he reads the beginning aloud, lyric hymn to the mother whose pregnancy advances with the tree’s seasons ]]></description> <dc:date>2018-07-20T14:43:00+00:00</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Juneteenth, 2018</title> <link>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/juneteenth-2018/</link> <guid>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/juneteenth-2018/#When:14:15:00Z</guid> <description><![CDATA[Juneteenth, 2018 Walking to the park I hear the strains of celebration – Juneteenth! Booming from loudspeakers the music of jubilation echoes across the fields. The day that freedom came to Texas, belated news: the war was won and slavery dead. The park is full of happy revellers, families with their coolers, smoking grills and wild balloons. Their autos line the road. I leave the pavement and move into the woods, no longer hear the throbbing bass or beating drums, but notice with new clarity that summer has arrived. The green is almost overpowering – from luxuriant grasses weaving and bowing along the track to twisting vines and vibrant shrubs and a gracious canopy above. Mock orange fades already but cicadas start to sing, and butterflies flit past, one white, one black one viceroy, I think! Lost in all this beauty I fail to watch my step as suddenly I come upon a path so full of stones I almost stumble. “Pay attention!” I tell myself, and think about the “stumbling ]]></description> <dc:date>2018-06-22T14:15:00+00:00</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Omen</title> <link>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/omen/</link> <guid>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/omen/#When:14:07:00Z</guid> <description><![CDATA[Omen Walking through the woods in search of solace in need of comfort – too many friends are stricken the threats of age loom large there is no cure you lose all muscle movement and yet your mind stays clear to suffer through in full awareness or else your brain surrenders erases more and more of who you are full of tangled twisting neurons like gnarly branches black against the sky. How can one bear the knowledge the ineluctable decline encroaching on all sides? Above my head an owl glides through the trees a giant shadow massive yet silent graceful and solemn coasting home. ]]></description> <dc:date>2017-10-12T14:07:00+00:00</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Meditation at Year’s End</title> <link>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/meditation-at-years-end/</link> <guid>https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/comments-joey/meditation-at-years-end/#When:20:23:00Z</guid> <description><![CDATA[Meditation at Year’s End (with a nod to William Butler Yeats) Poling along an uneven path and grateful for my walking sticks, a bit off-balance, out of breath, I ponder what to write; what message can I send on this year’s greeting card? Against a pallid heaven the leafless branches etch a dark and twisted pattern: twilight nears. Could this be the time, foretold of old, when some rough beast comes slouching to be born? The slaughter of the innocents, the reigns of anarchy and of false gods appear the order of the day. Where are the wise men, where their gifts, the proclamation: peace on earth good will to all? A star to guide, in darkest night our hope a little child? – 12/23/2016 ]]></description> <dc:date>2017-01-01T20:23:00+00:00</dc:date> </item> </channel> </rss>