Marilyn Kallet's Blog
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May.06.2009
I'm sitting on the patio next door to my studio, where I can get wi fi access. Today was a perfect day, and it's not half over. I wrote all morning, a poem that may hold up under scrutiny--"What Would Baudelaire Do?" A love poem, of course, filled with perfume.
Ate some good crusty...
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May.03.2009
The light is golden. The wine is cheap and velvety (2007 Bordeaux, oak casked). I'm using the office computer since wi fi isn't up yet. Soon as it is, I'll post some photos.
I'm the only writer in residence until tomorrow, when two more fellows arrive here in Auvillar. They are painters. It...
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Apr.28.2009
Within minutes of asking Rabbi Beth Schwartz for a travel blessing, she responded with this beautiful prayer. I will tuck it in my bag:
Yehi ratson milfanecha, Adonai. May it be your will, Eternal our God, and God of our ancesters who traveled so many paths, to guide Marilyn in peace. May her...
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Apr.28.2009
Thursday I'm off on the sky road to Toulouse, then, God and the GPS willing, to Auvillar. The phrase my new student Robert offered was "Je vais ficher le camp!" That either means, "I'm hitting the road," or, more literally, "I am going to screw the entire regiment....
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Apr.26.2009
I missed Lou's phone call from La Selva, Costa Rica, where he is working at the ecology station in the rain forest. My cell phone rang just as I was getting into my car in the parking lot of Sitar, where I had met Kali for dinner. I didn't recognize the caller number, so I blew it off. Then got...
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Apr.26.2009
My letter to the Times came out in today's book review. I wrote protesting the absence of women writers in Jim Holt's "Got Poetry?" essay a couple weeks ago. I did mention at least one Red Roomer who is a "find" for me, and I hope for other readers--Evie Shockley.
http://www...
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Apr.25.2009
Never fails. Whenever my husband's out of town, a prisoner escapes from Brushy Mountain Prison. It's all over the news. I don't know how these guys get wind of the fact that my husband is out and about. This morning he left for Cost Rica. Soon the local news will be broadcasting descriptions...
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Apr.23.2009
Yesterday I was racing around like a rhino, trying to get 100 things done. Unfortunately, I rushed communications with friends and made a couple of miserable blunders.
Friendship is an art, too. It deserves the highest quality attention. Once, a long time ago, I wrote a poem to a friend whom...
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Apr.22.2009
If you pray, now would be a good time to put in a word for your poet friend, who will be flying off to Auvillar (well, Toulouse) next Thursday. I'm feeling more anxious than excited just at the moment, though that will change once I get on the plane.
I'll be writing poetry for three and a half...
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Apr.17.2009
Recently the New York Times called for blog posts about ways in which the economy has affected artists. I found myself writing about online resources, especially about blogging for Red Room, about learning to do my own publicity (just like the rest of the authors in the U.S, at this point), and...
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Apr.14.2009
The Times is publishing my letter protesting an essay, "Got Poetry?" by Jim Holt (April 5), in which a dozen male poets were quoted as delicious to learn by heart. Women writers not worth memorizing? Not Emily Dickinson, or Elizabeth Bishop, or Sharon Olds, or Lucille Clifton, or Joy...
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Apr.14.2009
The suicide this week of poet Deborah Digges has saddened the writing community. I didn't know her personally, but was an admirer of her work. She was a professor at Tufts, where I took my undergraduate degree.
Her death has opened the conversation again about other poets who committed suicide...
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Apr.12.2009
My faculty friends from Berea College mentioned to me that they would not ever ask students to be "friends" on Facebook. If a student asked them to be friends, then they would probably say yes. Other faculty members said that they would decline altogether to pursue online friendships...
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Apr.11.2009
Tonight is Hector Quirko at the Laurel, strong blues even without booze. Lou's running sound, I'll be by his side. And I'll buy up five or six signed copies for old and young in Paris and in Auvillar. My friend Chantal is married to a musicologist who specializes in jazz, he'll want a copy. My...
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Apr.10.2009
More than 35 years since the divorce, and no rancor, no sadness left. The past is more like an Indie movie, colorful, a bit racy, like something created by the director of Juno. The characters delude themselves but escape into happier lives relatively unscathed after all.
The only regret I...
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"Eternity is in love with the productions of time."”
—William Blake
About Marilyn
Marilyn Kallet was born in Montgomery, Alabama, and grew up in New York. She is the author of 16 books, including The Love That Moves Me (poetry); Packing Light: New and Selected Poems, Black Widow Press; Circe, After Hours, poetry from BkMk Press; The...
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Causes Marilyn Kallet Supports
Southern Poverty Law Center, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, ACLU, Amnesty International, Save Darfur.