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Arts & Life
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- Written by: Ted Kooser
Beginning writers often tell me their real lives aren’t interesting enough to write about, but the mere act of shaping a poem lifts its subject matter above the ordinary.
Here's Natasha Trethewey, who served two terms as U. S. Poet Laureate, illustrating just what I’ve described.
It’s from her book “Domestic Work,” from Graywolf Press. Trethewey lives in Illinois.
Editor’s Note: This column is a reprint from the American Life in Poetry archive as we bid farewell to Ted Kooser, and work to finalize the new website and forthcoming columns curated by Kwame Dawes.
Housekeeping
We mourn the broken things, chair legs
wrenched from their seats, chipped plates,
the threadbare clothes. We work the magic
of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes.
We save what we can, melt small pieces
of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones
for soup. Beating rugs against the house,
we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading
across the yard. Late afternoon, we draw
the blinds to cool the rooms, drive the bugs
out. My mother irons, singing, lost in reverie.
I mark the pages of a mail-order catalog,
listen for passing cars. All day we watch
for the mail, some news from a distant place.
American Life in Poetry does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. It is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2000 by Natasha Trethewey, “Housekeeping,” from Domestic Work, (Graywolf Press, 2000). Poem reprinted by permission of Natasha Trethewey and the publisher. Introduction copyright @2021 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.
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- Written by: Tim Riley
‘CRIME SCENE: THE VANISHING AT THE CECIL HOTEL’ ON NETFLIX
A tourist checking into a hotel would usually check out at the front desk at the end of a stay. What happens when a guest arrives at a hotel, settles into a room and there’s never a sign of departure?
That’s the mystery behind the bizarre case of a young Canadian visitor taking up lodging in a sketchy hotel in a dangerous part of downtown Los Angeles, which is uncomfortably proximate to the widespread homeless encampments of Skid Row.
Netflix’s four-part docuseries “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” explores what happened to 21-year-old Elisa Lam, a student at the University of British Columbia and a prodigious blogger who used Tumblr as a personal diary.
Director and Executive Producer Joe Berlinger (“Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes”), a serious filmmaker with landmark documentaries to his credit, has expressed a fascination with what can make a certain place a nexus of crime.
“The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” is equally focused on the unfortunate disappearance of Elisa Lam and the history of a once glorious hotel built in 1924, which one of the many talking heads in the documentary asks is “consumed by a nexus of dark energy.”
For another person, the Cecil Hotel is described as “an exalted space of crime, of violence, of spookiness that continues to call to us.” But it’s the affordable room rate that draws Elisa Lam to the Cecil on January 28, 2013.
At about the same time, a young couple from England checked in to the Cecil, observing their awe of the very spacious lobby that was beautiful and grand, and indeed it appears to be exactly that.
Another talking head found the Cecil to be a “very deceiving hotel. There’s a lot of beauty to it, but it was the complete opposite of beauty.” He’s either been a guest in a shabby room or was ruminating about the hotel’s notorious history.
This docuseries should be a cautionary tale for any unwary traveler unfamiliar with their surroundings. LAPD Detective Sergeant Jim McSorley says the neighborhood is “Ground Zero of one of the most dangerous and violent places in the United States of America.”
Interestingly, what we learn about Elisa as a person is exclusively derived from her prolific social media posts which paint a fascinating picture of the mind of a person eager for adventure while coping with a bipolar disorder.
Her first days in Los Angeles appear to be normal activities, with a visit to a fabled bookstore and a television show taping where it is revealed her odd behavior had her escorted from the premises.
Whether a flight of fancy or insightful, one of Elisa posts on Tumblr divulged a thought process in her state of mind that could be very telling: “My mouth is my downfall and it will get me in trouble.”
The night of January 31, 2013, is the last time that Elisa is seen, and it happens to be from video surveillance of a hotel elevator which fuels a wide range of conspiracy theories and speculations that consume social media, blogs and YouTube.
In the video, Elisa is seen acting strangely, entering and exiting and then re-entering the elevator, pushing the buttons of multiple floors, making odd hand gestures and looking as if someone might be in the hallway, and then hiding in a corner of the elevator.
When this video is released by the police in hopes of getting clues to her vanishing, internet sleuths and conspiracy theorists go into overdrive, with some accusing the police and the hotel of a cover-up and others targeting a potential suspect.
With nothing more to latch on to than a death metal video, a musician with the stage name of Morbid (Pablo Vergara), the lead singer of Dynasty of Darkness and worshipper of Satan, is identified by a foreign news outlet as a suspect.
As it turns out, Pablo Vergara stayed at the hotel a year earlier and the police found he was not in the country at the same time as Elisa. In an interview, Vergara sums up that the Cecil is “just a portal to hell. Once you step in there, bad things happen.”
Amy Price, the hotel’s general manager at the time, adds her views to the hotel’s problems with drug dealers, prostitutes, and murders, noting that around 80 deaths occurred during her ten years.
The Cecil was even the home to infamous serial killer Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker. Was Elisa Lam a victim of a murderous guest or one of the low-income tenants? Was she a victim of a psychotic episode due to her bipolar disorder?
A fascination with true-crime stories is trying to figure out what really happened. In this case, there are so many questions, and the best reason to watch “The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” to the end is likely your own thoughts about why and how Elisa Lam wound up in a bad place.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – From Purple Haze to the Orange Blossom Special, Dirty Cello is all high energy fun.
This four-member band is perfect for starting up a funky, electric dance party in the comfort and safety of your own home.
Rebecca Roudman plays the cello like it was a lead guitar and she sings like a rock star with attitude. Her group has played all over the world putting a highly danceable and original spin on blues and bluegrass.
The Soper Reese Theatre presented Dirty Cello in virtual concert on Feb. 14.
The concert will be available on-demand through Feb. 28.
For tickets, pay what you can. Go to www.soperreesetheatre.com.
For more information, email
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- Written by: Ted Kooser
In many American poems, the poet makes a personal appearance and offers us a revealing monologue from center stage, but there are lots of fine poems in which the poet, a stranger in a strange place, observes the lives of others from a distance and imagines her way into them.
This poem by Lita Hooper is a good example of this kind of writing.
Editor’s Note: This column is a reprint from the American Life in Poetry archive as we bid farewell to Ted Kooser, and work to finalize the new website and forthcoming columns curated by Kwame Dawes.
Love Worn
In a tavern on the Southside of Chicago
a man sits with his wife. From their corner booth
each stares at strangers just beyond the other's shoulder,
nodding to the songs of their youth. Tonight they will not fight.
Thirty years of marriage sits between them
like a bomb. The woman shifts
then rubs her right wrist as the man recalls the day
when they sat on the porch of her parents' home.
Even then he could feel the absence of something
desired or planned. There was the smell
of a freshly tarred driveway, the slow heat,
him offering his future to folks he did not know.
And there was the blooming magnolia tree in the distance—
its oversized petals like those on the woman's dress,
making her belly even larger, her hands
disappearing into the folds.
When the last neighbor or friend leaves their booth
he stares at her hands, which are now closer to his,
remembers that there had always been some joy. Leaning
closer, he believes he can see their daughter in her eyes.
American Life in Poetry does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. It is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. From Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, University of Michigan Press, 2006, by permission of the author. Poem copyright © 2006 by Lita Hooper. Introduction copyright @2021 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.