"A total gushing fangirl"

I dragged Adam to the "New Reading Series at 21 Grand," which steps into the void left by the ending of New Yipes ("old" yipes?). It was a chance to see Lyn Hejinian read (and also K. Silem Mohammed).

Lyn Hejinian is the reason I became a poet. OK, not quite true. I was a poet before I read Hejinian. However, she is the reason I became the poet that I am. Her book My Life changed my life when I encountered it at 18 in my first year at Mills College. (I suppose grudging thanks are owed to Stephen Ratcliffe.)

I'm not even equipped to review the reading last night. As I told Brandon Brown (new curator of the "new" reading series), I'm a total gushing fangirl when it comes to Hejinian. I was just relieved to see her feet were not made of clay (or rather, aren't we all, but it didn't matter). There is something appealing and girlish about her in person, which may be reflected in the playfulness of her writing. She read from her new work, and of course it's the sort of poetry that washes over you at the time, with only snippets and snatches making any impression, and leaves you with a strong feeling of wanting to re-encounter it, slowly, on paper, with a cup of coffee and a long afternoon (or maybe a late evening, she said these are "night poems").

I bought a copy of the book she had on sale at the reading (not the one she read from, which is as yet unpublished and tentatively titled The Book of a Thousand Eyes). I'm looking forward to spending some time with Situations, Sings, a collaboration with Jack Collom.

The best political analyst on MSNBC

I have a total girl-crush on Rachel Maddow, who hosts her own show on Air America and appears all the time on MSNBC. She is so smart -- and liberal -- when younger women are rarely allowed to be either on television. I just adore her.

Check out her bio here. A choice bit:

"Rachel has a doctorate in political science (she was a Rhodes Scholar) and a background in HIV/AIDS activism, prison reform, and other lefty rabblerousing.

She shakes a mean cocktail, drives a bright red pickup, hates Coldplay, loves arguing with conservatives, spends a lot of money on AMTRAK tickets, and dresses like a first-grader."

I want to go get a beer with her.

"He humiliated me and shamed me."

So says Dina Matos McGreevey, describing the experience of having her husband, then-Governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey, confess at a press conference that he had a gay affair.

And I think that explains the feeling I have for Silda Wall Spitzer, just hurting for her, and understanding that Gov. Spitzer's hiring of a call girl is not separate from her. The idea, and this may be a modern notion, that her husband's infidelity reflects poorly on her. And I'm finally understanding, in a way I had not before, Hillary Clinton's struggles. I am older now, and I can identify with the wife instead of the intern.

[Sidenote: In the case of Mmes. McGreevey and Spitzer, their husbands' scandals compels the news media to give them back their maiden names. A way of reclaiming their personhood separate from the scandal-plagued spouse.]

I'm watching Eliot Spitzer resign right now, and Silda is standing by his side. She looks less blindsided than she did Monday. A few interesting comments from the XX Factor blog on Slate.

"In defense of the political wives who go to the press conference, smile forced smiles, and say nothing: Speaking (ahem) as a political wife myself, I can see one clear advantage to this option: It's all over quickly. And no one asks you for a follow-up interview. You appear once—and then you vanish forever, along with your husband's career. If you've been clever about it, you've kept your maiden name and can thus return to your own career. Those who make other, more attention-getting choices will later be forced back into the limelight to explain themselves, which is gruesome." — Anne Applebaum

"Each time they cut to footage of the Spitzers at their news conference, it only compounds my feeling that the sight of his dutiful wife is too sad to bear. Over and over, there she is, so mortified she's unable to lift her eyes from whatever piece of paper her louse husband is fiddling with. Doesn't it seem like this was longer than two days ago? My real problem with this scandal is not that it's none of our beeswax, but that I can't get past wanting to bake something for Silda—and then I hate feeling like that, too, because nobody wants pity-inspired sticky buns." — Melinda Henneberger

Quote of the Day

"And there's nothing inherently ennobling about ugly shoes." — Mary Elizabeth Williams, reviewing new book How Not to Look Old in Salon.