Cati Porter

This week has been a boon for me: two readings by two stellar women poets.

The first was Alicia Ostriker. My friend and associate editor Judy Kronenfeld, recently retired from UCR’s creative writing department, facilitated this reading and it was something I believe she was personally looking forward to.

Ostriker was very warm and friendly, and I learned a bit from the reading — like the feminine aspect of god in the Jewish tradition, which comes up quite a bit in her Volcano Sequence collection, which I picked up along with her Mother/Child Papers, the one book of hers that I was familiar with. The poems in Volcano Sequence Ostriker described herself as “channeling”, in that they just came to her basically whole and in the order they are presented in the book. She allowed herself to write them without letting herself get in the way of the poems. An interesting thought.

I must admit, though, that the reading I was most looking forward to was Matthea Harvey’s, probably because I’ve been reading so much of her lately, and because I identify so much with her work. She read some new poems, most notably a poem that was inspired by an image of a fur-covered pacifier. Also, she read many poems from Modern Life, which is the collection which won the Kingsley Tufts, given by the Claremont Graduate University, the school which organized the reading. I had a chance to ask her a little about the Gurlesque, but mostly I was interested in process.

How does she come up with such interesting poem ideas? Well, as an example, her poem “Implications for Modern Life” came out of a dream she’d had after hearing on NPR that there were particles of bbq in the air over Texas; that night she had the dream about ham flowers, which was a little disconcerting. Then she wrote that poem. Others are sparked by something absurd or interesting that she hears or sees. Also, of the recent books she’s read, the only poet that I recall her noting is James Tate, but I can certainly see how he might be influence on her way of seeing and writing, which is certainly unique. Makes me want to tear up all of my recent poems and start over. I *have* done that before, you know. So it’s not entirely out of the question.

She, too, seems a genuinely warm and interesting person. We spoke just a little about collaboration. She is working on a project with her sister, who is doing the illustrations, and I am, too. Did I mention that? No, maybe not. My youngest sister, who was suddenly taken ill early in the fall and has had to withdraw from art school temporarily (she was supposed to graduate in December, so she’s pretty bummed, I think) is doing illustrations for my Desire series of poems. They’re pretty great, if I don’t say so myself. I’m very excited to be able to work with her on this and hope (hope hope hope) that we have a publisher for the project lined up in the near future.

In the meantime, I’ve started a new series, tentatively titled Deviant Abecedarian Bestiary Cookbook, comprised of weird little prose poems about mutant cakes and doing devious things with tarts and bakers. I may have to enlist my sister again — she has this great illustration of a devilish girl holding a cupcake that is looking back at her. Yum!