Hello, all!
Well, it’s April, which real HattHeads know is my1 Decorative Gourd Season, of sorts. That’s right: April is National Poetry Writing Month, y’all!
For the uninitiated: During NaPoWriMo, I write one poem per day, every day, for 30 days. And then at the end, I have 30 poems. It’s been a very long time since I DNF’d2 a NaPoWriMo, thanks in no small part to the friendship/accountability support of my longtime love and fellow poet Ms. Molly Bilker. We send each other every poem, every day, no matter how rough the draft. And ooh, baby: sometimes the drafts are ROUGH!
Speaking of, here’s a rough draft for ya. For Reasons (to be mentioned momentarily!) I am a bad correspondent this week, and cannot be relied upon to deliver good or even adequate NaPoWriMo programming, like the myriad prompts and incessant drafts my subscribers received last year. However, I can promise you a poem per week–a rough draft! a ROUGH draft–and some more content TK3 for paid subscribers.
Here’s the poem I wrote on Wednesday night, after workshopping a novel-in-progress:
The Poet Tries Her Hand at Fiction And fails, miserably, but fails in such a way that it disguises her nature–every star-crossed metaphor a back door left open, an escape to form, to monkeybars, to hammered-tin slides hot in the near-spring sun. She bristles at well-meaning suggestions (“plot,” “characters”) because meaning is the opposite of well, is inherently sick, the expectation that she would or should explain herself. She could. Of course she could. But to be understood is to be misunderstood, to be misinterpreted. Better to leave the story unconjugated, open to revision, redirection. So the poet looks at her story and peels it away from the deckled edge, to mock but also to tease, flirting dirtily with the writer she sometimes thinks about being. Somebody tells her You could add more context, and that This is a lot of exposition, so she scrubs clean the sky and replaces it with every word for blue she can find, cerulean lapis lazuli aquamarine dejected despondent cobalt azure obscene sapphire blueberry glum lewd periwinkle, she wants to be so bloated with prose that she becomes ungovernable, she thinks the phrase lyrical resistance and then she digs her penknife out of her purse and into her notebook and she disassembles the story until it is a poem, and then it is every story, all at once, then it is stranger than fiction and truer, too, because it has room for all the things a poem needs to say by leaving them unsaid. She steps back into the margin. She can finally breathe.
Oh, Hell, Why Don’t We Have Another Poem
So along with the writing workshop I am also in a reading workshop, a series of discussions on the book Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss. I love it. The class, that is, but also? The book. I mean, it won a Pulitzer Prize4, so like, people agree. In the most recent class, which was also our first in this six-week program, we ended the discussion by going through the book and flagging our favorite sonnets in the collection, so as they come up in our discussions, we can talk about them.
Here’s mine. Page 69 in the book, if you have it handy. Also, trigger warning, if you can’t do self-harm or violent imagery right now, skip this poem and come back later!
How do you stand being so virtuous? My only virtue is my lack of virtue. My only fear my fear of a virtuous mob. Once my son sawed through his wrists with a pair of scissors. Burst into my bedroom, I was sleeping a rare sleep, dreaming a rare dream, and he cried that he had tried to kill himself. Even as I called for help he sawed away. He was fucked up, drunk, he knocked the phone out of my hand, maybe I slapped him, he says I slapped him and I believe him. They sent him home after they stitched up his wrists, wouldn’t even keep him for a 24-hour hold. I made threats, pulled rank. I’m a social worker, I yelled. Oh. Well then. Ha. He’s still got the scars. I saw them when we were playing Scattergories. For a while, I hid everything sharp in the house. Even pencils and paring knives. But you can’t really live without sharp things. “If I want them I’ll find them,” he told me. I use the scissors now to cut my bangs. One clean slice straight across my forehead. Through virtue’s flimsy yellow curtains there are many rooms. –Diane Seuss
I had to give a brief explanation for why I like this poem. I said, “It’s a liquid that makes good use of its container,” because God forbid I ever say something decipherable. What I mean is: There’s a staccato rhythm throughout this poem that we don’t traditionally associate with the sonnet, but it’s deployed as a safety valve for the content’s inherent fluidity, the onslaught of feeling and experience. It’s a poem with multiple quotes, but only one set of quotation marks. It’s a poem full of truisms, pocketable phrases, but it’s way too big for Instagram. I have had so many flimsy yellow curtains in my life, and this poem leaves me wondering why I picked them every time. You can’t really live without sharp things. No, Diane. You really can’t.
Here Is What I’m Up To
As you read this (or, I guess, as it reaches you–I don’t presume to know how you prioritize my emails over the emails of others), I am shipping up to Boston for Day Job Purposes. I’m excited! It SNOWED there this week, so, y’know, that’s promising for my shoe-related decision-making. I was in Boston last May and I made VERY good outfit choices, including a would-be maid-of-honor dress that proved too suggestive for a wedding but was PERFECT for meeting my boyfriend’s entire family.
Anyway, I was traveling last week for Easter, and I’m traveling this week for work. At some point in the last year, I realized I am a Person Who Travels a Lot. I feel a little stupid! Because I didn’t notice! In 2022, I thought, “Oh wow, I have a lot of travel booked this year.” And then in 2023 I thought “I have travel booked EVERY month this year except February.” And THEN in 2024, I thought “I have travel booked every month this–WAIT A SECOND.”
This is not to brag, and it’s also not to make an excuse–maybe it’s a little to make an excuse!–but the point of it is, I’ve mostly calibrated my life around being A Gal on the Road, and look at me, I am still somehow publishing two whole newsletters this week AND writing poems every day.
But that is about it! This is gonna be a short one today, gang! If you REALLY miss Hattie stuff following this somewhat truncated newsletter, click the little link-a-roonie above (that “two whole newsletters” business), because maybe you want to try an upgraded Substack subscription and see what I have to say in the super-top-secret paywalled content. I drop some hot beauty industry goss in that newsletter!
Detritus
Here is a Dottie triptych. She is the most popular girl in the whole world.
Last year for Valentine’s Day, my mom gifted me a mug. On one side it says “Like mother, like daughter. Oh crap!” On the reverse, it has a picture of a mom and daughter in leopard-print tops and heels with their legs crossed. We tried to recreate it.
And we were successful!
Also, I pointed at a beer sign.
My friend Theo designed these awesome stickers–they design a LOT of awesome stickers, but this book-centric one is what made me finally place an Etsy order. My haul included some gifts for friends, so I can’t show the whole shebang, but please observe how good this’ll look in the ol’ book nook:
Finally, cat apostrophe. NOT to be confused with catastrophe.
What I Did Not Buy This Week
Y’all know the drill! Well, most of you. I love to buy things! But sometimes, I reserve my money for essentials such as: grocery, asthma medicine, toys for Dottie. Or maybe I just spend it on cheaper, dumber stuff. The choice is yours mine!
It’s Friday…so here is What I Did Not Buy This Week.
If You Musk, the Bath and Body Works fragrance that is allegedly a dupe for the discontinued Bath and Body Works fragrance Kaleidoscope
Weird shirt at a military surplus store? It’s from Houlihan’s?
The Catrice under eye brightener that has great reviews and is super cheap…but my eyes are pretty bright! Perhaps I should sleep less and then give this a go.
Cat scratching post dress!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Modern Poetry, the NEW Diane Seuss poetry collection, which I want
All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess, which I want and which I feel like I SHOULD buy because…the title is telling me to?!
Avalon Organics Rosemary Shampoo and Banfi hair rub, which are both hair-growing products I learned about in a Reddit rabbit hole
Hot Mess salsa seasoning, which I tried while at home and is SO TASTY that I am sure I’d run out of it in record time
Whispers in the Walls, a journaling RPG, which…hmm…should I start trying to make myself scared in my diary? Should I write frightening lies in there and gaslight myself into thinking I’m being followed by a monster? Much to consider!
Okay! Bye! Thanks for reading. Let me know if you want me to pick anything up from Legal Sea Foods! Oh I hope it’s crab.
This marks the third or fourth time I’ve linked the Decorative Gourd Season piece, and I will never cease to link the Decorative Gourd Season piece when I think it applies.
Which is often.
Book-blogger speak for “did not finish”
Editor speak for “to come”
I just want to say that, as a poet-journalist, I think it’s 100% reasonable that I think I can and should win a Pulitzer someday, alright?