{"id":592,"date":"2013-07-25T19:57:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T19:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/?p=592"},"modified":"2013-07-26T05:08:55","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T05:08:55","slug":"what-melissa-hotchkiss-has-been-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/what-melissa-hotchkiss-has-been-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"What Have You Been Reading, Melissa Hotchkiss?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Leslie Scalapino, <a title=\"Considering how exaggerated music is\" href=\"http:\/\/www.spdbooks.org\/Producte\/0865470669\/considering-how-exaggerated-music-is.aspx\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Considering how exaggerated music is<\/em> <\/a>(North Point Press, 1982)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When I first started writing poetry, it was an accident. I\u2019d always thought I was a fiction writer, but my lines on the page kept shrinking, compressing, and then one day\u2026.oooops a poem. So I figured I\u2019d better read some poetry. I picked up <em><a title=\"A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now\" href=\"http:\/\/www.randomhouse.com\/book\/8868\/a-book-of-women-poets-from-antiquity-to-now-\" target=\"_blank\">A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now<\/a>,<\/em> edited by Aliki Barnstone and Willis Barnstone. Under the name of the last poet in the book, Leslie Scalapino, there was a poem titled \u201cEPILOGUE: [<em>anemone<\/em>].&#8221; When I read the poem, a light bulb went off: I realized there must be infinite things language can do. I often go back to this book, and this particular semi-prose poem, as to a conversation with an old friend. Here is an excerpt:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I was able to describe my feelings:<br \/>\nby saying it was like being an insect who puts its feelers<br \/>\nout into the flowers of a plant,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and sucks from them,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 as we were<br \/>\n(sucking)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 from the restaurants and bars of the city. . .<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I realized later there was an odd foreshadowing in the poem of how\u2014as if by a long seduction\u2014I would grow into the city and the city into me, but all the time still with a sense of being outside myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leslie Scalapino, Considering how exaggerated music is (North Point Press, 1982) &nbsp; When I first started writing poetry, it was an accident. I\u2019d always thought I was a fiction writer, but my lines on the page kept shrinking, compressing, and then one day\u2026.oooops a poem. So I figured I\u2019d better read some poetry. I picked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":616,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions\/616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}