I have her book, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems 1954-1962. It was one of many things given to me by my grandmother — long before she passed. The copy she left me (a collectible) was not read but boxed away for when I finished college and lived a more solitary existence. I picked up an old paperback version of the book somewhere in New York when I lived there. I felt less guilty turning the pages of an old paperback. It is a great book of poetry. I’ve no idea where the paperback is now. The collectors hardback is on a shelf — unread and without an advocate. I recommend it to you now.

Death wistfully calls attention to its own inevitability while apologizing with the reminder of forgotten poetry.

An excerpt from North American Time by Adrienne Rich

I am thinking this in a country
where words are stolen out of mouths
as bread is stolen out of mouths
where poets don’t go to jail
for being poets, but for being
dark-skinned, female, poor.
I am writing this in a time
when anything we write
can be used against those we love
where the context is never given
though we try to explain, over and over
For the sake of poetry at least
I need to know these things

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At Guerica, Xiaoda Xiao: Prison Paintings, and earlier piece, Nixon’s Nose.

Post and paintings by Xiaoda Xiao, the activist, painter, violinist, and author of The Cave Man, and the forthcoming book The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life

Xiaoda Xiao is a former political prisoner, sentencedat at age 22 (without benefit of a trial), to a 7 year term in a labor camp, for defacing a poster of Chairman Mao.

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A comment free lunchtime posting.

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I’m not as well schooled on the Vietnam era as I am on other things, though I know more about it than most people my age, if only because I find it more interesting than shopping for Jim Choo’s — they are out of my price range and my legs look quite fine without heals because they are fairly long.

I gather, from what I’ve read on McNamara’s passing, that people think he owns Vietnam, or he should. So they’ve assigned it to him. Understandable, but I’m not convinced he should be sole owner. It’s as convenient, and right, to blame Vietnam on the likes of McNamara as it is to blame Iraq on Bush and friends (liars), a congress unwilling to listen to the sense of Robert Byrd (cowards), and complicit or incompetent journalism (caught in the middle with you). Next time it will be our fault.

History has changed things. So has the internet. We saw that with the presidential election, we are seeing it in some way now with Iran’s Executives of Construction Party dismissing the vote and siding with the opposition. Next time we will be to blame. As the internet continues to grow, and access to real and substantive sources of information increases, there will be fewer excuses for complicit apathy by way of intentional ignorance. Yes, it is still a free country, and everyone should be free to practice both ignorance and apathy as they see fit. No one should be denied their preferred intent. This is merely a reminder that we should enjoy the scapegoats while we can.

I’ll have to do more reading on Vietnam. Not immediately, as I have my second summer session, work, and Infinite indiJestion, along with My Sister My Love, will consume most of my summer reading time. I’m am up for general or academic reading suggestions on Vietnam though.

Speaking of Infinite Jest. I haven’t been an end note virgin for years, but now I am an end note whore, having given myself up to my first 9 8.4 page end note experience. Isn’t this a rite of passage? Shouldn’t there be gifts and parties, or at least a dinner out, for this?

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