www.poetrycurator.wordpress.com blew me a little kiss with the SUNSHINE AWARD.  I’m embarrassed by how much this pleases me.  I love her blog, and just ambled through her recent post on Emily Dickinson’s home from a poet-POV camera angle, which was fun.  I’ve done the pilgrimage to Amherst, and spent the better part of one Saturday afternoon sitting in her garden all covered in “yellow sunshine noise” as I pondered her fate…her sad fate. The interior of the Dickinson home wasn’t on tour, so I just sat there listening to the bees, her busy bees, in the ghosty-garden.  I felt an uncanny connection to her mind and motivations, maybe we all do and that’s why she works.  I was so obsessed with her in college that I actually looked up what happens to the body during kidney failure (her cause of death) and that’s how I learned about “urea frost.”

For the record, I have never had call to use that information, not even in a trivia game.

Thank you, Poetry Curator, for the Emily post–the very thing I love visiting your blog to see.

The requisite fact-romp thru me efficiently combined with five blogs (hard to limit this) that I highly recommend:

1.  When I was visually touring Emily Dickinson’s home via poetrycurator’s blogpost, my mind jumped ahead of the camera as it moved up the steep stairs.  I knew the second door on the right was her room, although I don’t know how I knew that.  My thought upon looking around the room (via the camera) was that they had her bed in the wrong spot.   According to the narrator, Emily wrote all her poems in this room, but trust me, this is not true, some were written in the garden.  And some were written and are still hidden away.

Here’s the link: http://poetrycurator.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/emily-dickinson-angles-of-a-landscape/

And here’s another poetry blog I follow: http://kvennarad.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/fragment-216/

2.  My fifth grade teacher told us that a study of the English language had been made to discover which words sounded prettiest in combination.  She said the results were:  cellar door.

—  I have absolutely no idea why I remember that story, except maybe that it’s sort of remarkable that I know this to be the exact experience that taught me what “subjectivity” is all about…
At any rate http://ngtolentino.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/the-kiss/ is from Neal whose pretzellogic is entirely sound.

3.  Random fact: I wrote a book about a kitty when I was five years old…I made a cover for it out of tin foil wrapped over cardboard.  I also did the illustrations featuring this cat with a little bouquet of flowers hovering perpetually over its head.  I gave this book to my dad, who say he still has it.  Some girls are just writers.

It’s one of the reasons I like http://writingthegirl.wordpress.com/things-i-wish-id-thought-of-first/

4.  Sometimes I see a picture that needs to be taken and I’m the only one there who can do it… but I’m such a novice/newby/greenhorn/pretender that I do this little intake of breath, hold it and try to channel a real shooter whose name is a bit similar to mine, which on the metaphysical plain might mean I get to draw on her energy:   http://leannecolephotography.com/2012/09/23/country-markets/

5.  I just like the thoughtfulness of this writer…and his pictures:  http://burungaar.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/chance/ and I like that he’s in Brussels now, because I was there once for one night and don’t know how I’ll ever make good on the promise to myself to go back.

6.  I do get to go lots of interesting places with my work.  Wherever I go, like everybody else, I like to have a souvenir.  But I’ve long-since stopped buying the t-shirt.  Instead, I’ll bring back an ordinary kitchen utensil or tea towel so when I use them back at my own home, I remember where they came from and smile inside.  When I was in Venice, I bought an absolutely awesome cheese grater.  Here’s a blogger who loves Venice as much as I do–I pretty much love everything he posts:

http://bogdandanphotography.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/sighi-turn.jpg