The Little Workshop

Climate Change

2011-01-05T00:28:00.000-05:00

Sudden, gale-force understanding: the role of a poet in the face of catastrophic climate change is to shelter and incubate ideas, like seeds from lost species of plants.

Wall to Wall- a facebook found poem

2010-10-05T21:07:00.002-04:00

What's on your mind? Write something ...

Milestones

2010-09-17T16:02:00.002-04:00

Starting to write again, uncurling my fists like a baby learning the social smile.

First Snow

2010-09-17T15:55:00.002-04:00

Dreamed last week about the near future- my tiny daughter, seeing her first snow.

Irony and its Opponents

2009-05-12T21:34:00.004-04:00

This article in the NY Times by Andy Newman posits naivete and irony as foes. But I wonder about this. By definition irony seems to me a creature turned upon itself - an awareness of theduality of awareness.Do you know where you are/and will you follow your own gaze?To me the central battle of the mind is to steer insight, noise and fear towards something like cohesion. My notion of a harmony of

Ugly, Lovely

2008-05-09T22:48:00.008-04:00

UglyA forlorn identityfor self-defense.Tightness in the chest,dimensionless work.Sleep deprivation at dawn.Fearing silence,fearing books,fearing art.LovelyNo total darkness,no purity of lightjust a large dusty house of facetedlaughter - even forests given room,and in the morning there is not perfection.

2008-03-19T20:26:00.004-04:00

Henry Rollins

2008-03-06T16:51:00.006-05:00

Freaking amazing man. I saw my first Henry Rollins performance this week in Rochester and became a fan within the first 3 minutes of the 3 hour, nonstop monologue Rollins delivered, on topics ranging from vacationing in Pakistan to Van Halen, to the problems of the unexamined rallying cry.

2008-02-25T19:14:00.001-05:00

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

2008-02-15T16:44:00.000-05:00

Sound of Tomorrow

2008-01-30T15:00:00.000-05:00

Newsflash!Episode 15 of Sound of Tomorrow is now online. In the words of Jimmy Spaceboy:"Were they lost in space? Victims of interstellar piracy? Stranded in the time of the dinosaurs? Nah. They were just takin' a break. But the Spacebridge crew is back in the year 2008 with an all new episode. Sarah Smart is here to tell it like it is in her celebrity news round-up, and special guests George

Reel to Reel

2008-01-02T13:11:00.000-05:00

Rochester lives and breathes the moving image in many ways. George Eastman House and its Dryden Theater; The Little Theatre; Kodak and its long history from box brownie cameras to silent film reels to disbursement in the digital age; a huge medical imaging industry (filming inside the body - how wonderful and strange, this medical breakthrough); Rochester Instituteof Technology's film

Happy New Year 2008

2007-12-26T13:23:00.000-05:00

My new year's resolution is to keep moving. One of the places I'm moving towards is one of more frequent publication, on blogger and elsewhere.Often, during silence, I have an image in my mind of walking through a dark field, towards a watery light in the distance. Stumbling over stones, through the grass, in the general direction of the light. I don't know the way, but if I walk towards that

A Word From Our Sponsors

2007-10-17T14:34:00.000-04:00

For those who can spare some online minutes, here is some random fun - plus way too much of the sound of my voice! Actually this podcast is always really enjoyable and I am grateful to the hosts for inviting George Getman and myself for Episode 4.Hope you enjoy, you can download it at www.soundoftomorrow.comThanks for your support!Cassie

Red roses too

2007-10-06T01:38:00.000-04:00

I will never forget the watching the original BBC version of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.Like most things, the show was both funny and sad. In the final episode the Earth has been destroyed and a few stragglers begin rebuilding. A rudimentary economy springs up, trading leaves instead of money. Except, leaves have no value.Someone has the insight that the trees must go, so that leaves

Thank you for smoking

2007-08-29T04:53:00.001-04:00

I woke up in the middle of the night - about 20 minutes ago - and could not figure out what was wrong, why I was so restless. After much thought it seems to me that I never want another cigarette.(I quit 2 months ago but have been smoking a few socially.)Strange - very strange, and very wonderful, the tide washes back.I will never be the moralistic type - I think the tobacco industry, and not

Night Comes on like a Documentary

2007-08-24T13:56:00.000-04:00

Under an impudent blue sky tanks churn up the strip.. Everything runs uphill, even water. There’s a fracturedblack line between the hours,like a bridge. Run to cross it. as night falls. Guns are fired because words cannot describe the brute force of words.. This scented field full of dahlias, I arrive there, see my own ghost walking there. This BBC film, the blossoms of gunshot wounds on mens’

Plato's dream

2007-08-24T13:39:00.001-04:00

My house is full of ghosts -

Links

2007-08-24T08:54:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed updates to this site - I'm now at work on a revised link list to other blogs, thank you for your patience. I also switched the blog language to Australian English from American English, only because it still feels more intuitive syntactically though this was a hard determination to make after 7 + years in the U.S.

A Short Story

2007-08-24T00:13:00.000-04:00

Some weather. Some towns.As a visitor to London last month, I felt just the right amount of deja vu.I stayed with an old friend - I stayed with the past, in other words, but it has grown up. There are few things more precious than old friends. Stars' light might appear better, conceivably.No ... To know a person well enough to sense profound good in them, this is what redeems a man.____Cities of

Coffee & Cigarettes

2007-07-13T15:52:00.001-04:00

Chantix, the latest FDA approved quit smoking medicine, works very well. If you are interested in quitting smoking, or even in just being less interested in it, this may do the trick.Maybe they should make t-shirts: "Chantix - the choice of a generation" and then I should wear one. Well, OK. But here's why I am 'spruiking' (Australian word meaning 'advertising' that the U.S. spell check does not

Being 5'8"

2006-10-12T22:03:00.000-04:00

For many years I have thought of myself as 5'9". I was always "a tall girl" at school, and in my addled young mind this translated as "giant monster".So 5'9" seemed reasonable, and also, tall enough to be notably tall, thus converting a curse into a blessing.Recently, I was actually measured for the first time in many, many years. and the factual truth was very different. I am 5'8".I like my new

Bay Area Poetics

2006-06-28T00:23:00.000-04:00

I recently recieved my copies of this new anthology from the San Francisco Bay Area's fascinating underground and all through the sky poetry scene.I also have the privilege of being in the publication, which was edited by my dear friend Stephanie Young.Go to www.fauxpress.com for a booster shot of passion, humor and clarity.

Flute class

2006-06-07T20:08:00.000-04:00

It has been six weeks today since I smoked my last cigarette. I do not miss cigarettes, but I am learning to breathe differently.When I was about fifteen I took private flute classes for a few months then dropped them. It was hard for me to learn to sight read music. At first the flute just wheezed.I felt worn out by how slowly I was "getting it", and stuck to activities like writing, where, as I

2006-05-01T16:27:00.000-04:00

"I walk, needlessly on guard ..."- Neruda, from The Night of a Soldier

Neruda, or the way a person shines out

2006-05-01T15:52:00.000-04:00

Watching a travel program featuring Macchu Piccu, I remembered Pablo Neruda, whose poems I hadn't read for a long time, since I was nineteen. Around that time I had stumbled upon numerous much better poets - some literally sent me reeling. Neruda was cast aside, fondly, as one attempts to cast aside childhood.Mostly childhood just hangs around, benign like a cloud on a blue day. It adds charm and

Day One

2006-04-26T08:44:00.000-04:00

I am actually finishing my last cigarette now. I slept unusually deeply last night and there is a little sun poking through the louvres. This blog is still on Californian time.This is upstate New York. I will have fifteen minutes, at the most, to get ready for work and run to try to make the bus.The cigarette hisses in my hand. It curls its notations around my fingers, flat statements all

Filtered Sun

2006-04-25T21:44:00.000-04:00

When I first started The Jetty, my online writing project, it was because I felt a huge momentum brewing, the start of a series what soon became seismic changes in my life. Quitting smoking was the very first of these.Now it is three years, one marriage, one green card, four jobs, one cat, several yoga classes, one misdiagnosis, a blizzard or two, one cross country move and five apartments later.

Talking to the Sun

2006-01-17T02:01:00.000-05:00

'Little decisions are the kind I can makeBig resolutions are so easy to break'- Paul KellyNew Year arrives with a set of choices presented to me as the sum result of every other choice I have ever made. Words used, gestures of the hands and body, streets I've faced.Frank O'Hara's poem 'Talking to the Sun at Fire Island' ... The ghetto, desert, tundra ... all are watched by the sun. A poet

Homes grow like sunflowers

2005-12-06T06:43:00.000-05:00

Rain in mountain clouds gathering to make riversshows us how pressure builds,drops.Our minds are cloudsthat darken.Stormy woods.We are mirrors holding up the sky. You are watching,you are holding me.Inside is a wolf running across the ice.We are made of water,blue is see through. Concepts drag us down. My life’s work was a confusing dream.

Holidays

2005-12-06T06:25:00.000-05:00

Louise Brooks

2005-10-01T17:10:00.000-04:00

A woman I know told me that the actress Louise Brooks lived outthe last days of her life in the apartment building into which I justmoved.She told me many woman had rebuilt their lives in this building.*I live on the ground floor and each night hear police sirens.*I imagine Louise. She looks in the mirror and sees her beauty,and behind it her youthful beauty.She attends to what must be done.*When

Classics

2005-09-30T10:39:00.000-04:00

"We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time."- T.S. Eliot, from 'The Dry Salvages'

Katrina

2005-09-26T21:32:00.000-04:00

In the wake of natural disasters one is more in touchwith the fragility of the earth, and its inhabitants, butalso with the strength that lies within this.Grappling with this paradox until it was no longer aparadox, I had this amazing dream.*The landscape is muddy, post-apocalyptic. There arefloating bodies, debris. Architecture flattened into adark soup.It seems as though the world has ended. It

Pass It On

2005-07-14T12:01:00.000-04:00

Dear readers,Thank you for your loyalty, and for peeking in the doorof the Little Workshop, from time to time.There's sawdust in clouds and it is very hot here, andthe ventilation is poor. I am working long hours andam exhilarated.My body and mind extend themselves into each project.I am working from a design that evolves from minuteto minute.From instinct.When I get a chance, I'll step back,

Heaven

2005-04-27T16:05:00.000-04:00

" Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens."- Talking Heads

Look Closer

2005-04-21T01:48:00.000-04:00

The line 'look closer' is from that most wonderful of films,'American Beauty'.Most of my reasons for becoming a writer have evaporatedwith time and experience.I used to think that intellectual pursuit would make me wiser.I used to think that other intellectuals would be wiser thanbus drivers, or tax accountants.I used to think that I would be very famous one day.I used to think that whatever fame

Introduction

2005-03-28T11:29:00.000-05:00

Any new work begins with an instinct. Gradually, the instinct finds structures that will uphold it. And so, writing this first post, I hunt my immediate vicinity for driftwood for a fire.Auden's line, "always far from the centre of our names" ... How to translate the crystalline intent of this phrase into a modus operandi? For me, the truth of the line is unmissable.And we are, inexorably, in a "