Shopping is out, but poetry is still good

Happy New Year.  

Today is the first day of my BUY NOTHING three months. For Christmas I gave The Mister this beautiful, handmade Ipod dock and the promise to buy nothing new (groceries and toiletries accepted) for three months.  The reasoning is threefold: 1. we lack the proper funds for shopping 2. we have enough shit, and 3. the cornerstone of environmentalism is using less.  Oh, and also, The Mister's nickname is "The Flinty Yankee" so this sort of austerity program is really up his alley. And actually, I am kind of looking forward to it.  I'm curious to see whether I am really the sort of Ivana Trumpesque spendthrift The Mister thinks I am.  If he's right, we should be just absolutely flush with cash come April. 

The shoe thing will be hard, but luckily I got these in bronze for Christmas so I should be OK until spring. 

A thing I like

This marvelous, lascivious and tender poem in the form of a letter to Gary Snyder by the great Richard Hugo.  I love poetry tinged with machismo.  It makes me want to weep.

Letter to Snyder from Montana

Dear Gary: As soon as you'd gone winter snapped shut again

on Missoula. Right now snow from the east and last night 

cold enough to arrest the melting of ice. My favorite 

bouncer, wind, stopped throwing clouds out of the joint for being 

too gloomy. In short, you're gone and we've gone back to being 

a small dreary city.  Some of your grace hangs on. I still 

have a date with that round pink girl. For her I have evil plans. 

I am rubbing my hands like a monster. I am planning trips 

to remote lakes in spring. I know it's not modern to think 

of seduction as evil, but damn it that makes it more fun 

and the more fun it is the more often I'll do it, I hope. 

Students still buzz about your reading. Those who had turned you 

into a god were happy to find you human. I should 

have warned them. Should have warned all western Montana, 

a warm force is coming. Snow will run off. The rivers 

will scream and crack their banks. Winter will take a breather. 

Speaking of love being fun, you never in your remarks 

mentioned those two-minute male orgasms perfected 

in India by, if I have it right, mystics. Why not? 

Nor did you bring up those ancient Chinese techniques 

for tortuous titillation.  Remember, forests and land 

(for me, especially) are not all that's worth saving. 

There's also loving.  Shit. Why tell you? You preserve that 

everyday without trying. But of course you're not here. 

Last night, 20 below. A mass of tall arctic air 

stands over us like a cruel father, though the weather now 

is really a mother and this mother may go on forever. 

What it needs, what we need, I, is another visit 

from Snyder. For that, the glaciers are waiting, and bears 

(for you especially, fish) and the green flaring pageant 

of sky mating with hills. This letter was found wadded up 

in a bum in the tundra who send his warmest regards. Dick.

From Making Certain it Goes On: The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo