Amber Tamblyn

2010derly.

Hello poetry board.  I thought I’d start out the year with a silly subject pun.  How did I do?  Feel free to use it in your daily correspondences.

It’s a dry, warm Southern California day today and I’m looking out over my Venice Beach porch to the East.  The Hollywood sign sticks out of the Mountain’s cleavage like a hand made toothbrush shank. 

01.10.10 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (4)

Amber Tamblyn

Last Night, A Dream.

I’m floating in a Hawaiian ocean, belly up to the Trade Winds.  Hands up over my head.  Eyes closed.  Cocooned in the Pacific salinity.  The sun is the most attentive lover.  I can hear nothing under.  I feel everything above.  The current begins to calm.  I wonder if I’ve drifted too far off shore.  I open my eyes and look back to the beach where tiny people under tiny umbrellas poke out of the thread thin sand line like miniature willows.  It’s quiet where I am.  I can see hugely dark storm clouds in the distance coming up over the mountains and towards them.  It will pour on their towels first.  Maybe I should stay in the water where I’m already wet?  Let it pass?  The cloud is so big, I can’t even make out which way it’s moving.  West?  Southwest?  There are bursts of blurry plum colored thunder from deep within.  Looks like a fire’s smoke.  I’m in awe.  I’ve never seen something that shade, a cloud so confident.  I hear the human oars of a backstroke coming up behind me.  I turn.  Benazir Bhutto has stopped her swimming 5 feet from me.  Her head bobs up and down in the water.  Mouth, no mouth.  Just eyes and nose.  Mouth, no mouth.  Just eyes.  She’s paddling with her hands, keeping herself in place.  She’s staring at me.  Her hand comes out of the water, she places her index finger against her lips.  “Shhhhh.”

12.08.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (7)

Amber Tamblyn

How a murderer sleeps.

Marin County, California.

My sister lives in Fairfax California and my Father was there visiting her and her kids. I was in San Francisco for a poetry show, but decided to stay at the same hotel with my dad outside of the city so I could visit with the whole family as well.  Dad got us two rooms at the Marriott Villas, which is a fancy term for decent coffee and $11 impotent bacon plates.   At 8a.m. the morning after my show, my eyes shot open and I couldn’t go back to sleep.  I checked my phone and saw a text from my dad who was staying 2 floors below me.

“I know it’s early but I can’t go back to sleep.  Wanna go for a walk?”  He asked.

11.22.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (22)

Amber Tamblyn

The One That Got Away.

I’m finally back in New York Citayy on a mini break from tour.  Good thing too, because some H1N1-style critter has crawled up into my throat and built a throne, barking exhaustive orders at my immune system and leaving me couch ridden.  Prior to the cold, I was able to make it to Rachel Mckibbens’ book release party at the Bowery Poetry Club.  I had my book release party there as well back in September, and the energy can sometimes be stressful and a little crazy.  Rachel was incredible and her book Pink Elephant is filled with the kind of poems some women spend their entire lives trying to write.  It was a magical evening.

11.01.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (7)

Amber Tamblyn

“You’re Nobody Until Somebody Kills You.”

I just finished another leg of this Bang Ditto tour which has felt like, at least for me, a great success so far.  This past week I did 5 shows from Oakland to City Lights Book Store and ending at Beyond Baroque in Venice last night.  Each show had it’s own unique charm- whether I got to finally meet the crazy guy whose been writing me through Rebelasylum.com for over 3 years, sending me a picture of his cat Amber each time, or whether I was reading poems about my Grandmother’s death under the hairy, naked, cupped scrotum portrait of Allen Ginsberg.  Each place brought about a Mélange of feelings and interesting experiences.  In Oakland, I got to sit and have pre-show coffee with my Mormon cousin who I was closest to growing up, though we have little in common since our adulthood besides lineage and a love for hazelnut.  He is definitely the person I am closest to on that side of my family and he is a kind, generous man.  We got to talk about the things neither of us sees eye to eye on.  Those types of conversations far surpass, for me at least, talking about the things that can be agreed on.  I found his soft spot for Cowboy poetry.  He got me to agree on a few positive George Bush points (by  “a few” I mean half of one half of one).  The New Republic magazine was a nice neutral ground.  Everyone can agree that the extinction of fish by 2043 because of the gaming industry is bad news, am I right America?

10.11.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (27)

Amber Tamblyn

Welcome Thy Hallucinator

“Don’t bother,” said the tiny, weary voice in my head when I first read the invite to blog for the Poetry Foundation.

“Only linguisticons and master craftswomen of the word are welcome there, not actresses who write poetry.  Metaphor aficionados and such.  Look at you, spell-checking the word ‘aficionado’ and correcting it.   You can’t even spell.  You’re a Hollywood actress who can’t spell, who doesn’t even live in Hollywood but none the less that’s what you are, because I am your subconscious and I say so.  Like any good thespian subconscious, I live by the labels others have given you;  Professional Poriferan.  You’re the Beyonce of Susan B. Anthonys.  None of the writers at the Poetry Foundation will take your writing seriously.  Seriously.  Stay in your safe zone where your publicist can help control your image and do stuff like “photo kills” so your flabby Scottish arms don’t look like over-cooked Tagliatelle in fashion layouts.  You’re about to embark on your first major poetry tour for a book that took you four years to write, why not just focus on that?  It’s a real tour, for real this time.  Not just a pinch of Los Angeles and a dash of New York between shooting episodes of ‘Joan of Arcadia’.  You’re gonna read at Prairie Lights Book Store in Iowa.  That shit is for real!  You are real this time.   Why open yourself up to the judgments of a prestigious poetry website?  Like you know shit about Voltaire or Tanka poetry.  Stay safe.  No more crying over that old Amazon review of your debut poetry book that was subliminally based on a badly lit sex scene you did in a movie 5 years ago.  That review didn’t even make sense!  But you cried anyway, didn’t you?   You sobbed your tiny prune heart out.  Questioned everything you feel, everything you should be, everything you cannot be.   Even I, your subconscious,  am tired of sounding like the 10th Woody Allen movie that sounds like a Woody Allen movie.  So why bother.

10.01.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (12)