Postscript

After a bit of research (which our librarian is ashamed to say she did not do before), she would like to state for the record that she now knows "I Know There's an Answer" is, indeed, a Beach Boys cover.

Ah, summer...a perennial time of transition for our other poeta, Elizabeth. She also recently graduated - from library school - but finds herself ungainly and unemployed, and living the cliche of living with her mother. She is, however, trying not to be anxious about the lack of a job and morose about the end of her grad-school existence in Boston and the people that filled it. Because here's another cliche - and what are telenovelas for if not cliches - everything passes and everything changes, and sometimes what's on the other side is wonderful in this way you couldn't have imagined before.

And of course, there are the people who stay with you as both of you change and move, and our other contributor is, of course, the paragon of this sort of person. A reunion in the flesh is on the horizon; perhaps you will hear about it, dear reader.

Hum to yourself, if you will, a theme song for our librarian: "I Know There's an Answer" by Sonic Youth, which contains the simple yet potent phrase "I know there's an answer, but I know now that I have to find it by myself." Stay with us as Elizabeth tries to find answers in bike rides, library books, poems, and journeys to Kentucky, Indiana, and California.

Well, ladies and germs... It has been a spell since our last installment of las poetas desesperadas, and much has transpired in the lives our heroines.

Of late, Clare has finally graduated from university and finds herself happily married and gainfully employed. She is surprised by the stability and tranquility of her life to such an extent, in fact, that she feels she outside looking in at times. The summer and her part in it is absolutely idyllic.

The only thing she feels she's missing is the opportunity to write. Yes, dear reader, she feels a lack of writing in her soul, down deep. And so she must write. She misses, also, her muse and friend, who helps encourage her by her very existence to tap into that creative part of herself. Hopefully that friend will have an installment soon; watch for it here next time, on LAS POETAS DESESPERADAS...

Episode 1: Coincidence?

Facebook isn't the only place one can look for revelations. Both our characters believe (at least some of the time) in the oracle of the found. The highly appropriate song that comes up on the radio or the iTunes shuffle, the same phrase found in two completely different sources in the space of a day, et cetera. It's simply not, as Milan Kundera would point out, coincidence. (Is that the first time you've heard Kundera mentioned in a telenovela?)

In tonight's episode, our library student comes home from a long day and consults one of her daily pleasures/sanity maintainers, Poetry Daily, and comes across "Serious" by James Fenton, which - naturally - comes very close to approximating her state of mind/hopes, romantically speaking. You see, our dear library student has a knack for having crushes on people with whom relationships are unlikely to prosper in real life.

But she is trying to be patient, so she closes her window against the Boston night verging on snow, studies for a test, and goes to sleep, knowing that she still has her fellow poeta desesperada halfway across the country. More on our student's romantic and other dysfunctions...stay tuned.

By the way, here's the poem.


Serious
by James Fenton

Awake, alert,
Suddenly serious in love,
You're a surprise.
I've known you long enough—
Now I can hardly meet your eyes.

It's not that I'm
Embarrassed or ashamed.
You've changed the rules
The way I'd hoped they'd change
Before I thought: hopes are for fools.

Let me walk with you.
I've got the newspapers to fetch.
I think you know
I think you have the edge
But I feel cheerful even so.

That's why I laughed.
That's why I went and kicked that stone.
I'm serious!
That's why I cartwheeled home.
This should mean something. Yes, it does.

Pilot episode

Welcome to the first ever installment of the soon-to-be worldwide phenomenon, Las poetas desesperadas. This new blogonovela combines the best of your favourite telenovelas with the pithy campiness of the runaway American hit (turned clichéed American telenovela in the manner of Dynasty), Desperate Housewives. This blogonovela chronicles the ups and downs of two intelligent and perhaps somewhat bewildered young women in their 20s. One is a savvy, statuesque student of library sciences on the East Coast, who spends her days pining for a mate who revels at the wonders of Dewey's Decimals as much as she, and who shares her passion for poetry and all things written. The other is a boisterous (and perhaps overstretched) college student in the Midwest/South, a wife and caregiver for 3 children! She spends her days looking for revelation in all the wrong places--namely, Facebook.

Follow this blog to find out what victories or tragedies will befall these two lovely brunette lasses in the next installment of...

¡Las poetas deseperadas!

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