One of my favorite memories is of bringing my mother dandelions I'd picked from the yard. I was just a little girl, and didn't know that they were weeds and not flowers. I just thought they were pretty... Anyway, my mother would always take them and thank me as if I'd brought her a dozen roses. She'd put them in this little glass vase that sat on the windowsill in the kitchen. At the time, we lived in Wisconsin... Those dandelions looked so pretty on the windowsill, with the sun shining on them. The vase was brownish, but when the sun shined on it, it glowed a kind of orange. I found out later that the vase used to belong to my grandmother.
Uma Thurman, if it were going to be someone other than myself. Not because she's beautiful---although she is---but because she has a sort of vulnerability that lets you know that in spite of her confident appearance, or "face", there's more under the surface. She acts in layers. I loved her in Henry and June.
Well, of course, I'd like to be the kind of writer and poet that moves people. I'd like to write songs that inspire others to be better people, that tear down some of the barriers we put up in an effort to shield ourselves from ourselves and each other. I'd like to write plays that can go on, that can be performed for years to come and still be valid, relevant, important somehow. It all sounds very "hands across America", I know, but I really can't think of anything else I could do that would be more significant--- especially given the opportunites I've been given as a citizen of a country that, despite its problems, is one of the only places in the world in which women are able to have a voice.
My favorite contemporary poet is Anne Sexton.
Joni Mitchell's, Blue. I love every single song on that album. And anything by Tori Amos. Ani Difranco's first album. Um... Can I throw in a fourth album? Peter Gabriel's Shaking The Tree. And if I could throw in a fifth, could it be my own? That one's still in the making. If I was going to go Classical we'd have to talk Chopin. Jazz? -I'm into Stanley Clarke right now...
The smell of garlic and onions sauteing in a little bit of olive oil. When you smell that smell---you know that something good is going on in the kitchen.
I admire people who give of themselves in an effort to improve the quality of their lives and the lives of others. Unfortunately, we don't hear a lot about those people. So many of them are unsung! But I think the cosmos, God, whatever it is that's out there---knows and recognizes them.
That's a tough one. I'd say For Whom The Bell Tolls by Hemingway because it's a long one and because I love that novel, but since I've read it, I probably wouldn't bring it on a plane with me tomorrow. In truth, I'd probably bring The Self-Publishing Manual by Dan Poynter. I'm trying to put out my own e-book at the moment, and need all the help I can get! But I wouldn't forget to bring some poetry with me. I recently bought a collection of Robert Lowell's poems. I might take that with me. I'd bring a notebook, too---to write in.
There's a line or two in one of Michelangelo's poems... I've never been able to get over it. It's: "a great joy endures a great anguish". Coming from him, that line means oodles.
I'm a woman. I'm a poet. I'm a lover. I'm a friend.