My sister and I have never been particularly competitive, or if we have, I’ve never known about it. She did her thing, and I did my thing, and those things didn’t often intersect, so that was good. But she did one thing in her teens that I never did, and I always wished I had, but by the time I was interested in it, I didn’t much have the chance.

Well, roughly 22 years after she did it, I’m doing it. I’m going to see Duran Duran!  I have tickets with friends on May 21.

Word of my joy spread quickly through the Twitterverse (since I twittered it) and soon, the messages and Facebook wall posts were streaming in, my favorite from Amy Minton, who said:

Please. If you love me. Bring me the autograph of John Taylor. It must read: “Amy, I have always loved you, too. -John Taylor.”

This is what the band looked like when they released Astronaut a few years ago.  (”Reach Up for the Sunrise,” the first single from that album, was the song Ladybug and I woke up to for almost a year.  We were, in fact, reaching up for the sunrise.  Or the snooze bar.) So I guess I can see why Amy’s still in love with John Taylor, though I have to admit that Andy Taylor looks shockingly like the woman who taught my fifth grade class.

Here’s a link to one of the songs on their new album, a collaboration with Timbaland, who would collaborate with a horny toad if they paid him enough.  (And he’d probably make the toad sound good.)

Duran Duran - “Skin Divers” (mp3)

I’m not a big jazz fan, but I have been sitting here for a while, browsing the web on the new 24″ widescreen monitor I bought a couple of weeks ago, listening to Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain. And it’s pretty amazing. I’ve tried to listen to Miles a few times before, but just never found that it was my thing… I mean, I still listen to Nickelback*, for chrissakes, I’m not nearly refined enough for jazz. And Bitch’s Brew still irritates me some when it finds its way into my iTunes shuffle. But it’s a quiet night in the house, and Sketches of Spain really just hit the right note. “The Pan Piper,” in particular, has me blissed out. (no mp3 to share, but here’s the m4a file)

* Really. But not that often.

My initial intention for this packet was to read and discuss some Robert Lowell, but Van fired back a suggestion that was a little surprising– Robert Browning. I’m looking now at how Browning manages syntax in “Love Among the Ruins.” In some ways, this in infinitely more fun than Lowell.

The perfect music to accompany Browning– sexy and subtle: Morcheeba. I’m listening now to “Otherwise” (mp3) but most anything from Charango would suffice. Now if I only I could get this weird taste out of my mouth (unrelated to Browning or Morcheeba… I think it’s my new medication).

Every so often, you hear a song and it just blows you away. Though you heard the song only one time, it sticks in your brain. You walk around humming to yourself. You hear other songs, but they don’t measure up. You think about that song, think about its melody, and determine to purchase the album that contains that song. Sometimes, this action proves to be a brilliant bit of foresight on your part: maybe you bought Vivid by Living Colour. Other times, your gamble does not pay off.

Perhaps when I arrived at the store to purchase Sia’s Some People Have Real Problems, I should have been cued in by the absolute idiocy of the cover. But her song “The Girl You Lost to Cocaine,” with its whiny, Nelly Furtado-like vocals and killer hook was deeply, deeply embedded in my brain. I was fully prepared for a few of the songs to be filler, but I ignored the obvious warning signs presented by the cover and it’s MS-Paint sprawl.

Seriously, I bought an album that looks like this:

God, what was I thinking?

Well, here’s what I was thinking: “The Girl You Lost to Cocaine” (mp3)

I have been a fiend on the music blogs recently and have been richly rewarded for it. I am listening to some great music. “Buildings & Mountains” by The Republic Tigers has been the best of the lot so far. (I’d credit the blog where I found it but I can’t seem to find which blog right now.)

I got a new laser printer and paper cutter for Christmas. To top it off, my new Bostich long-arm stapler arrived this week. I love my Swingline, don’t get me wrong, but I am hella looking forward to the sliding red guidebar which will give me a more accurate length on each sheet of paper. I get excited about these things. It’s a sickness, yes, but it’s a sickness I use to make magazines for you. You should subscribe.

Congratulations to Deborah Ager and 32 Poems– one of the poems they published this year will be in Best American Poetry.

Everyone and his brother has started a game of Scrabulous with me lately. I cannot possibly keep up with them all. But I will try. Just don’t expect much play during work hours, OK? I really have to get some work done.

Courtesy Wade:

I feel bad for you son.

I do not feel bad for you son.

After a weekend of intense scrabulizing, I have won a couple more games and lost a couple more games. Curiously, I’m now beating the people who are pretty good and losing to people who aren’t; I think I truly play to the level of my opponent. (Granted, against the better players, if I can’t find a 30-point word right away, I’ll let the game sit for a while and come back when I have more brain space and patience. Against the opponents who don’t play me so tight, I’ll play a word each time I open the game.)

I spent much of today working on poems, revising a small handful (minor edits here and there, things like snipping an article or strengthening a line’s rhythmic qualities) and working for a while on one. In November, I wrote a poem called “Man on Ski Lift Passes Reindeer,” triggered by, of all things, a Starbuck’s commercial. When reviewing the November output, this poem, which was really dashed off and felt, at the time, woefully incomplete, was the one that interested me the most. I’m now using it as the basis for a poem that I agreed to write one night in July after several glasses of wine with Dean Young. I was surprised at just how thoroughly “Man on Ski Lift…” adhered to the rules I knew I would want to set for this other poem… without realizing it, I’d begun a poem I’d been intending to write for some time.

I bought the new Foo Fighters album, knowing before I listened to it almost exactly how it would sound. Turns out, I was right. Do they have software for crapping out their new albums? Have they inserted a microchip in my brain to ensure that I will like each one?

Grouchy to giddy in 3.2 seconds: Breeders tell all about new album

Should you find yourself looking to sample fine music before purchasing it from the industry that treats you like a criminal, BeeMP3 is a terrific search engine for mp3s. I’m currently listening to Bruce Hornsby’s “Mandolin Rain,” which is much cooler in my memory than it is in real life.

Check this class description for an upcoming class at WWC:

The repetition of phrases and sounds is a technique many of us use to give our poems rhetorical as well as emotional emphasis. Too often, though, our poems are overwhelmed by this gesture and devolve into so much noise. In this class we will look to Whitman and Hopkins’ highly charged poems of ravaged landscapes to consider how one might “repeat” (or return) as a means of making the poem and its argument /more/ muscular and fluid at the same time. We will look to issues of craft to guide us. As such, students will be expected to participate fully in lively discussion.

Friends have already e-mailed to ask if I’m drooling with delight. I’m drooling.

With one of those rare clear days on my calendar, my priorities in decent shape, and only a few things that were pressing on my to-do list, I shut down e-mail for much of the day and did some writing and editing. But instead of concentrating on poems, as I was sorely tempted to do, I wrote most of a two-part series on social networking for Instructify.

And, as with a day or working on poems, I’m bushed now. To reward myself for my hard work, I hopped over to iTunes and bought Pearl Jam’s cover of The Who’s “Love, Reign O’er Me.” Say what you want about Pearl Jam– Eddie Vedder has some pipes. Fuhrillz.

I’m about to head home from work and write the last poem in my two-month grind. I took last night off– I was allowed four days off in November, and ended up taking only one.