Sassistas! Our dish on the social soup.

Farewell, Poetry Month

 

For those of you who may not get one of Flannista's favorite New Yorker cartoons, the most famous line in T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Wasteland" is: "April is the cruelest month."

Holy Matrimony!

Cor blimey, chaps and lassies!

It's the Sassistas! in London on our way to the Royal wedding!

As you can see, Matissta just tossed her disguise toward Kate

(who, God bless her, will need it after today) . . .

and Flannista is serving as a Royal carriage footsista

decked out in her Royal cowboy hat!

Stayed tuned today for our special Royal wedding sass!

Royal Crapola

The Royal wedding between Prince William, heir to the throne of England to Miss Catherine Elizabeth Middleton is about a day away . . . and that means one thing for sure: lots of Royal Crapola!

Clearly in a class of its own is the limited edition replica of the ring betrothed to "Kate" -- the same ring William's mother, Princess Diana, received as her engagement ring from Prince Charles nearly 30 years ago. According to its website, "The beautiful simulated 'Ceylon' sapphire represents the original quality of the centerpiece and is surrounded by breathtakingly brilliant Diamond X-4 CZs and prong set in silver plate." 

Ya had us at "X-4 CZs".  Plus it's only $19.90 and comes complete with a hinged decorative jeweler's box. Ya had us again with "hinged"!

But wait, there's more.  Click here to view a photo gallery of other Royal Crapola!  The Sassistas! are rather partial to the Prince William and Kate tea bags. 

As we revealed about a month ago, the Sassistas! received an invitation to the Royal wedding and plan to be sassing live from the streets of London.  However, we haven't yet chosen the wedding gift that best represents the sassosphere.  

Today we covet your sassgestions for the perfect royal wedding gift from the Sassistas! 

Thanks much!

Daisy Zamora

Many thanks to PEACEsista for introducing us to Daisy Zamora (pictured below), poet, painter, psychologist and former combatant of the national Sandinista Liberation front who served as Vice President of Culture after the 1979 revolution. She currently lives in Nicaragua where she has been active with groups concerned with women's issues.

 

URGENT MESSAGE TO MY MOTHER

All would be queens

and truly reign,

but none have been queen

in Arauco nor in Copan . . .

-- Gabriela Mistral

 

We were educated for perfection,

so that nothing would fail and we would fulfill

our fairy princess destiny.

 

How hard we tried, eager to prove true

those years of hoarded hope!

 

But the bridal gowns grew old

and our hearts tired,

last survivors in struggle.

Into the reaches of ancient wardrobes

we've tossed the yellow veils, the wilted orange blossoms.

Never again will we be submissive or perfect.

 

Forgive us, mother, for the impertinences

of presumptuous old hens

cackling the cutness

of docile and innocuous daughters.

 

Forgive us for not having stayed

where tradition and good taste

directed us.

 

For daring to be ourselves

at the cost of all your dreams. 

 

(translated by Margaret Randall and Elinor Randall)

Mountain Poet

Let's give a big sass welcome to Bnbsista who today contributes her very first post in the sasssophere!  Thanks Bnb!

I am a daily reader and infrequent commenter on Sassistas! blog.  I am also an infrequent reader of poetry and more likely to pick up modern fiction or a mystery to read on an everyday basis.  However, in honor of National Poetry Month I subscribed to Mountain Poet on my blog feeder, and have been enjoying GrannySu's poetry all month.  

GrannySu is a West-by-God-Virginia storyteller and writer and I began following her blog Granny Sue's News and Views after reading some of her folklore.  I enjoy it because I don't think I experience a lot of the mountain heritage here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia where most of my neighbors emigrated from DC and Baltimore.  They (my neighbors) don't have the Scotch-Irish roots and ties to the land that are typical of other parts of the state.  Anyway, it turns out that Granny Sue is also a poet.  For National Poetry Month, she is writing one poem per day and posting it on Mountain Poet.  Susanna lost one of her grown sons to a car accident a year ago, and her poems often reflect her grief at his passing. I told Flannista I am the least-qualified of all the blog readers to discuss poetry, so I won't.  Not every poem of GrannySu's speak to me but enough of them do that I will be keeping her poetry blog in my reader after April.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Following is a poem called "Grete" that GrannySu wrote in honor of Grete Waitz, the great marathon runner who died last week of cancer at age 57:

I heard about her on the news

dead at 57,

three years younger than I am today,

a runner who broke the records,

blazed the trail for other women

who ran behind her.

At 60 I am not interested in running but only

in moving gracefully without pain.

I dream about running,

about moving freely and gracefully with the wind

as she did.

But I am a mother, rooted to earth, not born to fly

and so

I listen and admire

and continue on my earthbound way

while she soars

into the next adventure.

Oxygen

At the beginning of the month, the Sassistas! invited you to share a favorite poem or poet with the sassosphere to mark National Poetry Month. We heard from three of you. Today we share the poem barista sent to us; tomorrow a poet introduced to us by Bnbsista; and on Wednesday, a poet introduced to us by PEACEsista. Thanks much.

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine

 

stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice.  I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a

 

stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely.  You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your

 

right shoulder which aches
all day.  You are breathing
patiently; it is a

 

beautiful sound.  It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know

 

where to drop the knife of
separation.  And what does this have to do
with love, except

 

everything?  Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame.  Then it settles

 

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.

-- "Oxygen" by Mary Oliver from

New and Selected Poems, Vol. II

 

 

 

Yes

 

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph 
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

-- "God Says Yes to Me" by Kaylin Haught, from Palm of Your Hand

April 2011 Open Mic

The Sassistas! normally sponsor Open Mic

on the last Friday of every month, 

however, next weekend we will be in London

covering the Royal Wedding for the sassosphere!

Please step up to the mic and dish whatever you like.

We're listening.

Out of Sass

As Flannista writes, it's 3:43 a.m., and I've been wide awake for about an hour.  Since March 22, I've traveled many thousands of miles -- at least 8,000 -- and every time I close my eyes, I see a road ahead of me.  I can't stop moving, even though I'm out of sass. 

I took the car through turns, down long roads,
along wood fences, and saw horses, just two,
far off, in a field. One turned its head toward me—
the other stood motionless so long
I began to wonder whether it was real or a fake
put there to keep the other company,
until finally it bowed its head
earthward. Farther on, I saw a flock of small birds
pulsing together as points over the brown grass,
like tiny buoys responding to air currents,
rising and dipping, the air moving
the smallest feathers on their bellies.

-- Elizabeth Twiddy, "On a Cold Day in Late March, Near Easter" (from Love-Noise)

I feel like a small bird, rising and dipping.  Unable to alight.  Rising and dipping.

Rising and dipping.

Miracle

Yesterday, PEACEsista and Flann received the following email from Gwendolyn after she saw her doctor before beginning her second round of palliative chemotherapy:

Dear Women,

 Good news from the doctor's exam today. While she can still feel "disease" it is soft, and that's a good sign. She was so dire in her outlook before because the two patients that had my tumor type on which she tried my current regime did not respond at all. I am responding rapidly, in that the belly swelling is controlled and I have energy to go walking.

 She did use the word "miracle" somewhere in the conversation. I had already gotten IV benadryl which makes me very sleepy, but Robin was there to help me listen. So the dire prediction about my upcoming demise was because if I didn't respond to this chemo, that would be it. But I am.

 Thank you for your thoughts, prayers, incantations, chants, candles. I feel spiritual support from all of you has kept my body responding to the chemo.

Love,

Gwendolyn

On March 22, Gwen's doctor told her that she had, at most, two months to live.  During our weekend visit, Gwen shared that her doctor had changed that prognosis to "less than six months."

Do you believe in miracles?  Today, I do.  And for love of Gwen, I will tomorrow.