Saturday, January 13, 2007
transatlantic reception
Perhaps this then, the problem.
No second guessing. So I continue.
It is you. Now, it is you.
And like you, once upon a time, I had another who loved me.
You had lovers. I cannot say if you loved them or they you.
I was not there. Not privy. You no wish to share.
Not my business anyway.
My love, his love, this I know. It was singular.
It was young. It was innocent. It was bittersweet.
It was sacred. It was sin. It was my only absolution.
Yes… you hate it… he was my cousin.
But listen, there is no need to prove your desirability.
I need not tread heavily down the same road
to where you bedded your first love,
youthful desire, requited, unrequited.
Your twenties in Paris.
I say nothing about that.
In my life, history does not repeat.
My love is changeable. Unique.
I can’t judge this as good or bad. Does it matter?
That was then, this is now.
This year it is as if there is an unbreakable glass between us –
a safety glass you have erected.
I see you, I love you, but nothing gets through.
Are you there? Do you hear? Have you hold of the receiver?
Or have you let the line go dead?
Or are we lost in translation … what you want instead?
You tell me, my French, mediocre at best – and no doubt, you are right.
I cannot write more than simple words.
The situation calls for something more complex.
We are no longer breathing one breath.
I am not her or her or her. This you made clear at Saint Lazare.
In two seconds you tore me down.
I know I’m not her.
So why am I, why are we here?
I’ll tell you what I do know –
true love is requited, -
in every day, in every moment, in every spoken word,
in every kiss, in every shared breath.
Each day you take a thing a way, you undo all that has been do.
You edit out the good and in one feel swoop of your red-pen
you erase all that I have been, all that I try to be.
No longer am I me.
in this moment, I am ...
A gingersnap blonde thing.
Patina-eyes like marbles – do you think them lucky?
Would you win them in a game? These wide-eyed shooters.
I startle easy – a dove.
Shy as a doe, naïve of the hunter.
I am a glass of white wine, tasting of summer and of pears.
At times, unsteady – a figure painted by Chagall.
A gamin floating in the air – are you still with me?
Can you follow?
In my dreams, I am always running.
Will you stop? Will you pick me up? Will you save? Do you want to?
I am the poet you trust to speak for you.
The writer who will write what you most fear.
This much I can do.
Can you accept the All?
If so, will you gently hold my hand?
Do you really see me as I am?
This is all I ever asked. Now, what of you?
pont neuf affirmation
Right there.
Step off the curb and you can see the widow –
colored stones reflecting back the Paris light – this and your reflection;
a stained-glass double-exposure.
We have been here before.
The evidence on my finger: a shining star of stones – like the window, Notredame.
We return. Our odd renewal of vows – unspoken, understood.
The proprietaire lays out the rings against a black velvet cloth.
Each gleams like a wish, yet now quite right.
I tell him, I will regard others in the window –
and it is there that I see it; a scalloped square of diamonds and rubies,
delicate, carefully cut, the sides diamond leaves – they buoy up the center.
An open blossom, it has been begging for years to be noticed.
A Cinderella slip-fit: perfect it sits.
This now, is ours and here, absorbs the all of Paris.
It listen as I sigh, as I scream when we make-love,
when the church-bell tolls the hour – this too a renewal.
The dulcet tone of bell enters through open window, filling up the room.
This too an affirmation.
This is how we do it.
This is how we love.
how to be kissed
More a lively parting of the ways – this is how it starts.
The origin of fiest between two.
The blood begins to run rich, hot with possibility,
that possibility tho, remains vague,
with neither knowing which is what –
or what the other is thinking: there is no rule book.
Missives sent, shyly, disguised quotations; how we hide
our true selves in such code, ones and zeros...
Needs we spend dreaming. Days; guessing, supposing
– if, then, perhaps.
Not unlike fencing – you walk a narrow line.
Approach, approach – quick retreat before you meet.
A two flirt tango; so easy to lose your footing –
hence the blush, awkward hush, easy over laugh.
Only the shy will dare and double-dare –
This because they are unable to take that step forward.
All of this known but not intentional.
No guided, deliberate plan, but known to both players.
Neither knows quite what to say.
So it is then, somehow the gap then bridged.
If this, if close-enough, then a kiss.
After all of that, all either wanted was this.
verite
This, and in black-and-white – rewrite: shades of grey.
Life, of course, cannot be frozen.
Appears deceptively in stokes of brilliant color.
He can’t quite grasp why it is that I want so much to photograph, to be photographed.
It’s verite, but not. Life, but frozen.
In reality we are animated – always in constant motion,
speeding all too fast to mortality.
I’m too aware of this. I know it.
I try to catch you in the buttery-fly net
the quick shutter of the lens.
I turn away from an inevitability.
A petulant child, a woman in love.
Ode to BD – Southern France

There is no contradiction here.
St. Maure, Southern France
just Another Side of Bob Dylan
We pass, up, down lit country
hills under the red sky,
only now just appearing –
no hard rain, only sun…
‘in the jingle jangle morning
I’ll come followin’ you…”
So where am I then? No direction home.
Desire? Where?
So we drive, infidels
me with ever-present camera, a black and white self-portrait.
Here, gentle Europe, no John Wesley Harding cowboys –
These are hardly modern times, more time outta mind.
No trains, no tracks, no blood on the tracks – endless horizons of gold.
Yesterday we fought, I said, “Good as I been to you…” –
a real French empire burlesque a deux –
Well, at least here, disagreement is accepted,
almost expected –
Street legal anyway.
All I really want is shelter from the storm…
Oh, mercy!
Monday, October 30, 2006
hit shift, return

Where is home? This has always been a question for many people worldwide, certainly for Jewish people who feel or have felt they have no home and thus, Israel, they were given a home - and then the Palestinians displaced so then where then is their home- wars are waged over such things, and they always have been and always will be. You only need look, or witness, as I did growing up in central London, the politics of the IRA and the bombings throughout the seventies and eighties.
It becomes an absurd construct of Who Was Here First, as if we could all just plant our flag on a place and call it ours and life would be that simple. I wish it were. But it very obviously is not. More, the world is not dictated by constructs of finding a 'homeland' for people or such ideals as democracy or not so much as it driven by, frankly, finances and money. The countries that matter, that get the most press, that other nations seem to have a vested interest in are usually those rich in natural resources that have some worldwide commercial value and i don't think that this is an accident.
I didn't mean to get into politics here because i don't like politics and i think it's stupid to get into it unless you really have lived that life or walked a mile in someone else's shoes... really. Til then, sit back down and shut up.
But what i do mean to talk about is belonging, so in that sense, yes, 'home.' Where is home if you are raised a protestant, are part jew, come from a family of catholics, confirmed episcopalian, studied Taoism, believe in Taoist philosophy but have followed organized religion and even served on the Anglican altar? Where does that leave you? What do you believe in? Which door do you enter when you go to worship and do you leave your shoes at the door? Do you cover your hair? Do your cross yourself? Does your husband break a glass with his foot at your wedding? Is it mandated that he make-love to you on Friday nights? Can first cousins marry? What else? All these slippery and strange things that are buried in our organized religion and passed down religious texts, which fascinate me so much, that i almost want to pick and choose and make my own religion.
But i'm not that charismatic so i could never do that. Not that i want to start a cult, never that. I just want to take the best of the best - like a worldwide religious anthology, The Best of Organized Religion, 2006, Edited by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti and we could all follow that as our guiding text. Wouldn't thast be handy? I mean, just think, we could all have agreed upon principals there; we'd stop arguing. There would be something for everyone and i rather like that idea. I like bits and pieces of so many things, but then, i am made of bits and pieces.
My husband says, my blood runs clear as Tanqueray i'm such a WASP. What would they think if thought that perhaps, just perhaps, that somewhere in that gin there might be a little bit of matzah ball soup... or god help us, something that we can't even pronounce!
We fear what we cannot define. We feel the need to define and when someone does not index easily, does not feat neatly into one of the registers in our brain it sort of pisses us off and so we come away not really liking that person, not because of anything they did, but because we can't pigeonhole them and that makes us uncomfortable. The very fact of their 'interestingness' for lack of a more elegant way of putting it, makes them a problem. Can you imagine? But it's true. It's absolutely true.
Be what people cannot define, what they cannot neatly package and they will fucking hate you for it. I am not easily wrapped and tied. I am the christmas gift with the odd angles that tears at the paper and needs too much tape. I require the wrapper with the most patience when the others have given up. I know this. I am all odd angles and sharp edges - like Howard Hughes, right, not like other people, and that's okay with me. Somewhere in there i know that people fit too readily into my registers and for the most part it is so so boring and it gets so old and so predictable. I can tell you what so and so will say and do and i can predict that x will go running away because x is a coward and so will do y and he will do y because he is z and after a certain period of time which we'll call a. he'll come running back to b. at which point a, if a is smart, will send him sliding fast down the hypoteneuse of c.
Did you get all that? I hope so. Pythagorus would. He started his own religion, did you know? Yes, i'm serious. He even had followers... it's an interesting thing that someone so smart can be so convicinging and with such charisma. That's really what you need: smarts, convincing, and charisma... the rest, like our friend a. up there - let's just let him fall fast down the sharp angle of c and see where he lands. Maybe he'll land safely at home plate. Maybe he'll land safely. Maybe safe is what counts.
That said, the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing...
Now, voyager...
Sunday, January 15, 2006
the big catch up
Here you'll find general writings about France, book reviews (of French books) French news, cultural comment, memoir, French film and so much more.
These days we're excited about our poem podcasts which you can listen to at Tant Mieux. Set your browser to tant mieux and select Poem WAV files from the left navigation. Note that poems can be downloaded and burned as well. We even got wind that several people were somehow using the poems as ring tones, though don't ask me how (i have no technical knowledge on this front, but the poem that came up most in this front is called Calculus 101, which you can find by selecting Poems Archive and scanning each section by title until you find it. Not the one i would have picked, but then, i'm just the author and authors are
notoriously bad and picking out their best work as i well know from many years as an editor.
One last mention: i encourage you to visit www.teleread.org where you can learn about all sorts of technical issues regarding handheld devices and where you can hear me podcast on a regular basis. Editorial Director is David Rothman. Visit, comment, and join in the discussion.
I hope you enjoy the work you find on the many Tant Mieux sites (you'll find the links). For yet more work, you can, if you want, Google my name, though i can't be responsible for all that is out there... the Internet is like the Wild Wild West these days with a bunch of cowboys and indians. I'm no Cowboy, so I must be a peace-loving Indian whose land will likely be stolen, my village pillaged, and more, while I sit peacefully smoking my peace pipe. It's high-time we learned that sometimes violence must be met with violence, sadly. Here is the playground rule we had: a kid hits you at school at recess, you find him, hunt him down, and hit him back but ten times as hard. Rather like the Israeli's after the Olympics as so well depicted in the film Munich.
Don't take any crap; keep cool.
sadi ranson-polizzotti, 2006
image courtesy: lizzie tadoinot parsons
Thursday, September 08, 2005
leaving home | the home coming
I was always amazed at the people I worked with who were or are from India. Those who grew up speaking Hindi and Telegoo and yet had better language skills than a lot of us English and Americans. Truly. It never ceased to amaze me and I knew that had I been in India, there was no way I could get by, though many explained to me that they had grown up learning English in school as a requirement.
We too have our requirements though language isn't really a big focus and seems to be dropped by many students after minimal requirements are met, if there are any. And as for translations, we rank almost if not the lowest in the world to carry books in translation.
Visit Paris and you'll find in any bookstore a section for books in German, French, and English etc etc. I visit most American shops and I can only find books in English, which troubles me somewhat because there are books I’d love to read in French that aren't available yet but the shipping alone is hardly worth the price of the book. How to get around this? To lug them all home in my suitcase? To have friends rush out and purchase them and send them to me? Certainly, that is looking more and more like a valid option though one hates to be an imposition. Or I do. Most of us don't like to be such.
So off I go to the place I call home, or once called home because I feel divided. It is my London, weary and wonderful after terrorist attacks; my America, of which I am deeply proud and honored to live, and my France, a childhood home of sorts and place of frequency to which I return again and again, telling myself each time how this time I’ll stay. This time will be different and we'll set it up and it won't be a thing said in the moment.
It's not about romanticizing. God knows there are so many foibles to living in Paris, or France. Everything is expensive, even simple things like linens and appliances. Flowers are cheap but you can't eat them. Rents are expensive but nothing compared to what the appliances and beds cost and try getting one delivered to your house as you would here! Hah! I've heard you have to venture far out of town and then get a truck and bring them back yourself.
Yet still... still... I find myself yearning. I’m not even there and already I’m missing it. How awful. One thinks, then just go! If you love it so much then just go, but like anyone, I suppose it is inevitable that we romanticize places where we do not live and holidays are notorious for this. Off you go on some wonderful jaunt and come back believing you could really make a life for yourself in Thira, Greece, where you would serve up cappuccinos to willing tourists who would ask you how you like living in your one room, studio type white stucco house with the small little garden and the zillion Greek quilts and the sound of donkey bells at night and you know, just know it won’t be like this.
It can’t. Like anywhere, it takes on a daily life of its own. A city becomes a place whre you work, live, try to get by and have the usual routines and domestic bliss and not so much bliss as you do anywhere. It’s just a different setting and while I would argue that some settings make it easier to suffer the invetiables than others, I would never argue that the inevitables marvelously vanish once you get there. Nobody could be that naïve, except perhaps Diane Lane and that woman who wrote the book and even then, she didn’t have such a great time ~ it was a great deal of work and if you’ve read Under the Tuscan Sun then you know it. Life ain’t Diane Lane spinning around on her bed in her charming villa and living it up with some cheeky and saucy Italian.
Ah well, c’est la vie, eh? I’ll simply send a postcard. It will read: having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.
xo
sadi ranson-polizzotti
Thursday, August 25, 2005
city of light ~ introduction again
image: ralph gibsonto return to such a place. How can one not?
How is it we left in the first place, this place
you, I call home where we find all that is ripe
all that is good and where we find what we know
which is that love that runs rich as the Seine
through my veins through yours.
The ring you bought. Every day on this finger.
The window at Notredame repeated on my hand
when we touch, when i move my hand down your
flank, your everywhere and when you take my
own in yours and lead me fast through the streets
when you take me to the places of your youth
when i take you to the places of my youth.
When every word, every poem rings true
utter truth. The earth is curved and we spin and we cling to it's utter dark velvet pointing
out the nightstarts, pointing out the lights
of Paris and the rear lights of cars along
the Champs Elysees.
s.r.p. ~ august 25, 2005.
paris | return again ~

So Autumn comes around again and we find ourselves, quite unsurprisingly, returning to our Paris. I am so proprietary about it, perhaps because to me, being European, it seems to me as Native Soul. Native Land.
How do you reconcile leaving your land, leaving my Scotland, my Britain, my France ~ how does one go about feeling okay with this. What i miss most: shaking the dirt from the clumps of vegetables and fruit at the market. How the fruit and vegetables are loose and tied with string and not prepacked and how they are held in giant bins and how you must bring your own mesh bag. How we carried it all home and made for us a feast on our last night and other nights, but it is the last night that sticks the most, the melancholia of it and the fear and sorrow of leaving and wondering if i would ever return.
Yet we do. We do because he feels it too. He feels the same lack in the heart, the absence that i feel for what is too his native land from the years he spent living there. The days cannot go fast enough. I return to much work, this i know and am glad of it. Glad to have the work and in some way, sorry that the timing is so rough, but having planned this for a year or more, how can we pass up this visit. After all of the immigration issues we have been through, how to say No. And yet i would have. I would again have turned by back on it, but i will not. Not this time and never again.
I am ready to take it all on and to speak only that thick and foreign language that wraps so delicately about my tongue and has my bowed lip pouting as i pronounce my eu and my lu and the words that, at one time, did not come so easily.
There was a time when Paris felt that it had been stolen from me: memories associated that were not so good and yet i reclaim it, independely of anyone and now, let no-one ever take this from me.
I walk a path down Rue Mazarine and could care less who was there and when and who you took to you because that is someone else's life and not my own. It is my pace and i reclaim it with all the vigor and elan of youth, of wisdom, of a new found sense of maturity and as i write this, Nick Drake echoes in my ear, Which will you love the best...
I cannot know. Yet it seems unimportant to me now. All that matters is the love of self and of country and no matter how trite, it is the stuff of life.
sadi ranson-polizzotti, august, 2005
Sunday, October 10, 2004
new on sotto voce | tant mieux

tant mieux paris poems and chants from Paris, 2004, and already have new poems from and relating to France, 2005, and the 2005 trip will be documented here. Perhaps the best new feature is our film feature on www.tantmieux.squarespace.com on the navigation under "poetry wav". Actually, not all of the poetry and can be downloaded as mp3 files. I do hope you'll check those out and think that making then was fun and gives a whole new sense of the poem. You can read along if you like by finding the poem by Title in the Archive before beginning the film.
tant mieux home site elected one of the most notable sites on SquareSpace,
Best of the Web.
Also check out new poem audio blogging at Tant Mieux. That's enough for now. Thanks for visiting....
sadi ranson-polizzotti,
Thursday, September 30, 2004
#1 audio blog - paris
#1 audio blog from Paris coming thisSeptember preBlogAmble random blogs beforebien sur!
