Hi Heather!

First of all, I greatly miss being in your class, and I am jealous of every one of my friends that is in your class this semester!

Second, thank you for instilling a love of poetry and writing in me!  I worked at the library tonight for three hours.  Not a single person came to the media desk seeking assistance with anything.  As you might guess, I was extremely bored.  So…I wrote some poems!  I used the event poem format from the Handbook of Poetic Forms, and I wrote event poems about all of the random objects I could see in the library.  I had a lot of fun doing that, and it made the time pass by pretty quickly.  So, thank you for teaching me how great poetry truly is!

sincerely,

Amanda

Usually, he fell asleep at these things….

“This was the best one,” he said. “I come to them all, and usually, I fall asleep at these things. This was the best reading I’ve ever been to.” We were at the reception, after the reading we did at Hudson View Apartments.

And it was, it really was, good!

First, the setting, in Manhattan, at the very very top tip, was stunningly beautiful. The Hudson View Apartments, built in 1924, were designed around the idea of intentional community living. The Lounge was always intended for artists and writers and lecturers. Communal dining was optional; each apartment was outfitted with a dumbwaiter so if you didn’t want to eat with your neighbors, your food could be sent up.

Hudson View has the most amazing views of not just the Hudson, with ice sheets floating down softly, like sweet banter, but the also the wild cliffs across the river from the Cloisters, land bought by Rockefeller when the Cloisters was assembled, so that the views from the faux monastery would always be pure. If that isn’t enough, Hudson View also has a stunning view of the city itself, south, and boroughs shimmering to the north, a sparkly blanket of beauty. It’s just like being in a book or a dream, being in this place. I had such a hard time coming home.

Soho Voce, an a capella group of super geniuses, opened. This was my favorite moment of all. Hearing these women sing. I could listen for days and days. They do things with sound that seem to me to be more powerful than what we can do with words. I was star struck and levitating. They made the room into this angel palace. That’s what I stepped in to, when it was my turn to read. The angel palace space of those voices. I think I’ll never forget that moment. That song they made. They make it up together, as they sing, improvising with their voices. It’s absolutely amazing, how they do this, building these little platforms and taking turns standing, turning, dancing sound.

I read my essay from O magazine, “Cups of Men.” I love to read my work aloud (who doesn’t) and I love to read wearing a brand new dress, which I was, happily: black wool lace and boots and the silver necklace, made of threads and knots.

Song between the pieces, threads and knots, stitched the whole event together. When Sarah showed her movie, “Bone on Bone,” which is the most delightful, savvy, sweet and smart delineation of hip replacement surgery, in any form, I was so happy to see her beaming. Hudson View is her home, and this was her party. Song on song, word on word, laugh after laugh—what a happy perfect Sunday afternoon. In New York. In winter. Awake. We were all so very deliciously awake.

It was the best one. I’m so lucky to know these women—Ruth, Kate, Laurie, Sarah.

My Winter Vacation

In New York, on this recent trip, I had the highest highs, and the lowest low. The Very Difficult Family Situation unfurled with a power and intensity I couldn’t prepare for, couldn’t metabolize. But my hotel was practically next door to the most amazing cathedral, Saint Mary’s, and every morning I went there, to Times Square of all places, to this sacred space.  Usually I go to St. Thomas, the Cadillac of cathedrals, for services sung by the internationally beloved boys and mens choirs. St. Mary’s is the VW bus.

There, I sat before the crèche and I thought a lot about that image of Family, and I thought a lot about my own, so wrought by pain and disfigured by fear. It helped so much to sit, to light candles, to pray and pray and pray. Or whatever you might call it, when a person sits alone and still and whispers please and help and thank you.

Really by the end of the week I felt like a member of the congregation, known and welcomed and festive and belongingish. Partly because of the beauty of the services. Partly because the homeless sleep in the pews so softly. Partly because of all the pain held in all that beauty. This church, this space, the words spoken there, formed the spine of my trip. Everything magnificent that occurred, and there was much, spoked from Saint Mary’s.

The highest highs: the generous wisdom from colleagues in publishing. The plays: Next to Normal, a fantastic production about mental illness in the family. A View from the Bridge which hits hard, like a fist, and Time Stands Still, which I admit I went to only because I wanted to see Laura Linney in person. I saw Soledad Barrio, flamenco, in the Village, a refreshingly under-produced, wholly uncommercial enterprise, sweetly frayed at the edges and seering in the center. Only Next to Normal had that duende on Broadway.

I didn’t see art this time, like I usually do. I saw people. I made new friends.

I ate at Arno’s, Junior’s, Oceana, and Pigalle, and the Museum of Modern Art bar. I saw lots of friends and slept and walked slowly and found the boots I have been looking for ever since I moved to Michigan fifteen years ago—the boots, at last! On Bleeker Street.  I dragged Wolf Hall every where I went. This is not a good book to travel with because it weighs twelve pounds. But I couldn’t leave it at home. I couldn’t put it down. And thematically, to see the Cloisters and stay at tudor Hudson View and listen to Anonymous Four and Ruth Cunningham, well Wolf Hall, though weighty and red and huge, fit right in.

Every night, I dreamed I was teaching. My teaching dreams are never anxiety dreams. I dream my classroom is large and full, and the students are happy to be there, and my only worry is the semester won’t be long enough. That it will end.

So I know in my deep soul I am looking forward to the semester beginning today, but I’m not ready to go back. I’ll be happy, back at Hope, happy teaching. And I love New York and when I am here, I never, ever want to leave. Both. At once.