61st Birthday Post: Grandbaby Luciana

Dear family and dear friends,

Usually what I do here for my birthday is post a recent photo (that shows you I haven't changed a lick in 30 years) and tell a little about what I've been doing.

Well, the biggest news is that Linda and I are now grandparents, and we're happily spending a lot of time with our daughter Lillian and our granddaughter Luciana.

Here's a photo of Lulu and me:



Here's a photo of me and Lillian that Linda took in 1979:

 

And here's a letter that Lillian sent out about where you can see some more photos of Luciana, Lillian, Linda, and Me.

Subject: one month old!

Luciana is one month old today, and I thought I would finally send out the updated website with tons of pictures. I have been putting it together in the evening after she goes to sleep and before I finally collapse into bed.

http://web.me.com/lcguzlowski

She seems to be getting bigger and changing everyday and it is hard to believe that she is already a month old. Although, at the same time, I can't remember what life was like before she got here. I seem to remember more sleep, but I don't remember being this happy.

I hope everyone is doing well.

love,
Lillian

Baby's Working For the Man Every Night and Day

My granddaughter is now three weeks old.

Last friday when she was 17 days old, she received her first bill in the mail. It was an insurance bill. She owes $237 to her insurance company for in-hospital baby doctor visits.

I don't know how she'll be able to pay off this money. She's currently unemployed and doesn't have much chance of getting a job locally. Unemployment where she lives in Danville, Virginia is about 14%. I think she would have to move someplace else to get a job. Her mother probably wouldn't be happy with that.

I figure the insurance company will bill her and continue to bill her adding 2-3% to the bill each month. I'm not much good with math but I calculate that she will probably owe Anthem Insurance about a million bucks, maybe two, by the time she's out of high school.

The good news is that her Great Aunt and Uncle (Joan and Bruce) sent her a baby gift of $50. I'm sure my granddaughter will be able to put some of that toward her Anthem Insurance bill.

By the way, if you have some spare change, please send to me, and I'll pass it on to her.

I promise.

And on the Seventh Day God Didn't Mow

Sunday morning.

The rain falls and falls.

My lawn calls to me. A green siren. Mow me! Mow me!


I try to ignore it. The crazy grass, the clover. The tufts of weeds I can't identify.

What did the great gray poet Walt Whitman say about Leaves of Grass?

"Pretty to look at -- long as you don't have to mow!"

I mean who invented mowing? I can't remember Noah talking about it, and Moses definitely never wrote a commandment regarding mowing.

And Shakespeare -- a guy who thought and wrote about everything -- never said a thing about mowing. He never wrote: "Oh that this too too thick grass would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew--or that the Everlasting had fixed His canon against mowing!"

So I'm not mowing today, and I'm not mowing tomorrow either.

Baby Has a Name

After much thought and discussion, Lillian has decided the baby will be named Luciana Calendrillo Guzlowski.

And Luciana seems happy with it!

Lillian's Baby's Here!

The baby's here--all 20 and 3/4 inches and 7 pounds and 11 ounces of her. And boy, are we happy!

Still Waiting

Our daughter Lillian is "9 months plus" pregnant and is really looking forward to not having to wait any longer for the baby to be born. Here's an email she sent out to some of her family and friends about the waiting.

 

I thought I should update everyone as my due date has come and gone (it was, of course, Mother's Day).

I saw the doctor this afternoon. She said that I look good and the
baby looks good, but she didn't seem particularly optimistic that the
baby was going to come anytime soon. If she doesn't decide to arrive
in the next few days, I go back to the doctor Monday and then I'll
likely be induced on Tuesday.

I am hoping that she will surprise everyone and show up sooner, but I
kind of doubt it. She seems very comfortable and is still extremely
active.

I thought, while we're waiting, that I would send everyone a picture
of me in the nursery. Soon, hopefully very soon, there will be
pictures of the baby in the nursery!

Love, Lillian

ps. and no, she still doesn't have a name!

Reading at Spring Southeastern Literary Magazine & Independent Press Festival

Nina Riggs and I are doing a reading at UNC-Greensboro's 3rd Annual Spring Southeastern Literary Magazine & Independent Press Festival. And we'd both like to see you there.

Here's the official announcement:

Finishing Line Press, in conjunction with The Greensboro Review and PoetryGSO, will host a poetry reading by John Guzlowski and Nina Riggs on Friday, April 24th at 11:30 AM in the Kirkland Room Room of the Elliott University Center. A part of the 3rd Annual Spring Southeastern Literary Magazine & Independent Press Festival, the event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing.

You all know me, but you may not know Nina Riggs, so let me tell you something about her.

She's a fine poet and her work has appeared in a lot of good places: Southern Review, Antioch Review, and Threepenny. Her first chapbook, Lucky, Lucky, was published by Finishing Line Press this year. She currently teaches creative writing the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and makes her home in Greensboro, North Carolina.

And here's one of her poems. I think you'll like it:

Constellation


It's dusk here on the bedroom floor
where I've been reading the newspaper --

genocide in Guatemala, a blizzard
in Boston, and the death penalty in Texas.

It's the time of day when people inside
think it's dark out, time to turn on a light,

but people outside find themselves
bathed in a lightly fading sky.

Lying back, the light too dim to read by,
I see the sticker glow-stars on the ceiling

are beginning to come out, at first
a milky way of pale yellow blur,

then, as the shadows shift around,
a newly shining universe above me.

How unfamiliar: shoe level.
I am almost lost

in the sudden dark of my room, wondering
how I could have idled here for so long,

noticing how the world disguises
itself in darkness, as if to remind us

of everything that we can't see.
The ceiling stars become constellations.

An arching cluster over my bed is Lazia,
the goddess of sleeping in. The fat star

above me becomes Jack, my muse
of doing nothing. This mythology

comes naturally as breath, the surrounding
world dissolving as it might for a sailor

alone on deck, his tenth night at sea,
the reach of the dark around him.

____

If you want to see more of her poems, you can find them at Poetry 99.