I Am So Going Home!

I almost forgot. I am one of the contestants on Poetry Idol this week. Gag!!

That Devilish Twinkle

This made me quite sad when I read it this morning before leaving for work. I first met William Meredith at Bread Loaf many years ago. He had already suffered his stroke then. But he still had a devilish twinkle in his eyes, and I couldn't stop thinking about how Thom Gunn had told me how when he was a young man how William Meredith chased him around a kitchen table all the while growling mild obscenities at him. That twinkle was still there. And when Jacob and I got married, we asked Michael Collier to read Meredith's poem, "Tree Marriage." It is the poem of his I love, and it was heartbreaking to hear him recite it at Bread Loaf from memory (the stroke didn't take away his long-term memories). I post it here for you:


TREE MARRIAGE


In Chota Nagpur and Bengal
the betrothed are tied with threads to
mango trees, they marry the trees
as well as one another, and
the two trees marry each other.
Could we do that some time with oaks
or beeches? This gossamer we
hold each other with, this web
of love and habit is not enough.
In mistrust of heavier ties,
I would like tree-siblings for us,
standing together somewhere, two
trees married with us, lightly, their
fingers barely touching in sleep,
our threads invisible but holding.


--William Meredith


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Even in Chelsea, homophobia exists!










(via Towleroad)


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I have decided to write songs from now on. No more poems. Just songs. Already trying to get in touch with Maroon 5.


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Clue: Bamboo


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Mightier Than the Sword

Martin Espada's Hampshire College Commencement Address: I both strongly believe and disbelieve what he says here. And this frightens me. The feeling of belief and revulsion is so strong in each direction.


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Don Share tells me the room was named for George Edward Woodberry , an 1877 Harvard graduate and Columbia University professor who wanted to establish a "place for living poetry." Share has been curator of it since 2000 ; he leaves at the end of July for Chicago and a new position as senior editor of the prestigious literary magazine POETRY.


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My head continues to be empty of poetry. I guess I should have known this was coming. After a ten-poem burst last year, I should have known this would be a fallow year. I am too wound up, too flighty of thought to bring together a poem. I mean I could make myself sit down and write something, but this never seems as worthwhile to me as it does to others. I am not afraid to stay away from the pen and paper, the computer screen, whatever. I know when the time is right I will return to it. My head is too jumbled right now. Too much data moving through. Too much static and echo. I used to just keep writing through this time many years ago, but then the poems I produced during those times were never satisfying to me. They would almost always end up in the trash can a few months to a year later. Now I just don't go there. I just wait. It is one of the only things in my life in which I can exhibit patience. One of the only things.


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Pen, meaning almost. As a prefix. As in penultimate, meaning almost last. And Peninsula, meaning almost an island. Within Pen- is not just the "almost" but the notion of lacking. It makes a word into something lacking... There are so many things buried in the words we use every day.


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Congratulations are in order for Aaron Smith! Stop by and show the man some love.


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Clue: Pensive


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Victor # 17

Well, Jacob has finally selected the winner. And the winner is John Gallaher for:



"Sorry boys, my balls, my rules!"


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Congratulations, John! Bragging rights are yours as the victor.


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Runner-up this time is Ryan Wilson for: "Handball: it's not what you think."


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As always, Jacob and I thank all of those who entered. You all rock!


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Update

I haven't forgotten. Jacob should have the winner of the Caption Contest sometime later today. As of now, the contest is closed and isn't taking more entries.

Looking for a Place to Submit Now That Summer Is Here?

Poets Jeremy Halinen and Brett Ortler are editors of a new print literary magazine called Knockout. The first issue is scheduled to appear in September 2007. Knockout is not an LGBT magazine, per se (meaning that it’s open to everyone), but it will have a strong LGBT emphasis or presence (at least 50% of each issue by LGBT poets).

The first issue includes work by Carl Phillips, Carol Guess, Larissa Szporluk, Laurie Blauner, Lynn Levin, Timothy Liu, Jonathan Williams, Thomas Meyer, Jim Elledge, Christopher Hennessy, Antler, Ronald H. Bayes, CA Conrad, Gerard Wozek, Jeff Mann, Aaron Smith, Michael Montlack, Jeffery Beam, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, Ger Killeen, Thomas Lux, Denver Butson, Dan Pinkerton, Todd Boss, Charles Jensen, Brent Goodman, Theodore Enslin, Alberto Rios, David Mason, and Joseph Massey, among others.


The editors are now reading submissions for the second issue, and request submissions of 3-6 poems, sent all in one file, preferably an MS Word document, to the following two email addresses:

knockoutpoetry[at]gmail[dot]com
jeremyhalinen[at]yahoo[dot]com

Please note that the editors are NOT considering unsolicited fiction or nonfiction submissions at this time.

To be considered for our second issue, please submit no later than August 15, 2007 (although the editors recommend sending them much sooner, as the issue may fill up much sooner than that). A submission received after that deadline will be considered for the following issue. Response time is generally two weeks, but never more than a month. Payment for accepted work will be two copies, one for the contributor and one for a friend of the contributor.

Theft

Kate Evans graciously features my work today on her Poetry Monday feature.


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Jacob and I are glad to be going home today. Yesterday was a disaster. I hate to feel violated, and that is exactly how I feel. Yesterday, while we were getting our massages, someone got into Jacob's locker and took $100., his visa card, and his debit card from his wallet. He didn't notice until hours later. The sick part is it was done by either someone who works there or by another patron who watched Jacob enter his code (electronic locker). The person went out and spent $1900.00 at Neiman Marcus, and Citibank let the charge go through. This despite the fact Jacob has never charged that much at a single time on his visa card ever. And add to that he hasn't used the card in 8 months and the fact the charge was not in San Francisco. They didn't shut down the card until the perpetrator went to another store and tried to charge $4000.00! We called and cancelled the debit card and visa. But it kind of ruined the night. Jacob could let it go, but I couldn't. In this way we are very different. The weird thing is that the manager of the spa said the same thing happened yesterday! At around the same time!!


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We fly home in a couple of hours, have dinner with a good friend in town, and then get back to normal life.


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Clue: Sara Lee


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*

Blonde

Today is a Spa Day. I love Spa Day. Jacob and are will be "ocean detoxing" and then getting an 80 minute massage each. After that, we will melt into a lounge chair and try to move every so many minutes. Most guys are afraid of spas. They think it is too girly or gay. Well, I think this perception is changing. I keep seeing more and more guys at Spas, and not just metrosexual guys.


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Jacob likes terrible movies like "Legally Blonde." So odd.


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Have you entered the Caption Contest yet? Jacob is getting close to naming a winner, but that doesn't mean you can't sway him with your own entry.


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I love when bloggers make statements that are ambiguous and makes a reader feel as if they are being chastised or condemned. I mean, some bloggers make it an art form.


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Clue: The Desert Planet


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From the Cloister

I am still humming the Maroon 5 song. It is disgusting.


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John Gallaher is so going to get it! And he knows why...


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I heard a woman this morning (with a Belgian accent) tell her son that Starbucks was, unfortunately, indicative of what American coffee is like. I felt ashamed.


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Robert wants to lose himself in the elegy. Can you help the man out?


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Across the lake, Paris!


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And why, for God's Sake, is there an Ocean's Thirteen? I barely recovered from the wretchedness of Twelve.


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Did I mention I am still totally madly in love with the new Maroon 5 song?


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Clue: Mai Tai!


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Makes Me Wonder

Well, Jeez, I had no idea Paul was a Wingdings kind of guy!


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A couple of weeks ago, Maroon 5 performed on American Idol (not surprising since they are produced by BMG). Well, I remember them singing this song, "Makes Me Wonder," and I remember not really liking it all that much. The weird thing is that every time I have heard the song since then I find myself liking it more and more. I hear the regular version on the regular channels and the dance version on Energy 92.7. And now I like it so god-damned-much that it is now my effing ring tone on my cell phone. I am so not joking here people. I am now obsessed with this song. When I fall, I fall hard.


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Have you entered the Caption Contest yet? What are you waiting for? It is in the post right below this one.


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We are sneaking away for the weekend. No, I can't tell you where we are going. All I can say is it involves a flight. And we fly out tonight.


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Maybe I should write to Maroon 5 and beg them to let me write them a song. I mean, why not, right? I have never written a song before, but why should that stop me? I mean, can't you see me writing songs for a pop band? Seeing I haven't written a poem this year, maybe I am supposed to become a writer for Maroon 5. I mean, just a thought...


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Clue: Sinatra


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Caption Contest #17

Yup, you guessed it. It is that time again. For some, you have been waiting patiently. For others, you hoped it would never happen again. But alas, it is time for the caption contest once more. For those who are new here, the winner gets bragging rights and may or may not win a surprise monetary prize (already decided by us here at The Muse before posting this). Captions should be left in the comment section below, and the winner will be selected by our resident judge, Jacob.

Winners of the Caption Contest this year so far are:

#12 : Justin Evans

#13 : Anne Haines

#14 : ADT

#15: Joseph Massey

#16 : Eddie Dixon


Will YOUR name be added to this list? Or will one of these caption gods and goddesses simply shut you out? Will one of our previous champs return to show you how it is done? Give us your captions, and tune in to see what happens.


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Let the games begin...


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Results

So, we finally got the 100 votes on the issue of Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog. Though the numbers aren't exactly enough for a proper scientific study, the results are interesting:

Total Votes: 100

I LOVE "Harriet": 5 vote(s) (5%)


I like the multiplicity of voices and read it every day: 8 vote(s) (8%)


I read it sometimes, but not often: 23 vote(s) (23%)


It is too schizophrenic, too many voices: 37 vote(s) (37%)


Harriet? I have never heard of this blog: 27 vote(s) (27%)


The most interesting thing here is that 27% of respondents had never heard of this blog. I would like to think more people are now aware of it.

Finally

Even in a time of war, we are still clinging to our prejudices. I find this really pathetic.


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I didn't even watch the American Idol finale last night. This is a first. But to be honest, this season was a disaster in so many ways that it seemed fitting to end the season by just not watching it. I figured Jordin would win considering she was competing with Blake.


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Check out Collin's final Idol roundup. Even Collin sounds exhausted by Idol.


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Not sure why, but I have very little to say this morning. I feel disoriented. And I need to get oriented quickly. I have to head off to the hospital for work.


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Clue: Mask


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Turbulence

Made it back to San Francisco okay. Lots of turbulence, but otherwise everything went as scheduled.


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I still need about 25 more responses to the "Harriet" poll. So, if any of you haven't voted yet, please do.

Harriet

"Harriet," the Poetry Foundation's blog, replaced their weekly journals some months ago.

What do you think of the format used for the Poetry Foundation's blog?

I LOVE "Harriet"
I like the multiplicity of voices and read it every day
I read it sometimes, but not often
It is too schizophrenic, too many voices
Harriet? I have never heard of this blog

View Results

Create your own myspace poll



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Still getting over a cold. I don't do well when I am sick. I am a terrible patient.


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It is 80 degrees in San Francisco and people are freaking out. I can't remember the last time we hit 80.


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Just received the new June issue of POETRY, but haven't had a chance to look it over yet. I think this is the all-poetry issue.


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Clue: Vespa


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Consequence

Sitting at Sea-Tac waiting on my flight home. When I went to hail a cab this morning at the hotel, they offered me a Town Car for the price of a cab. As a consequence, it only took 14 minutes to get to the airport (the driver was clocking 80mph). So, I am here early, but I would rather be early than missing my flight.


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Congratulations to Monica Ferrell, who won this year's Morton Prize from Sarabande Books.


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It was good to see old friends here. Very hard to believe an entire decade has passed since I first met these folks. It seems like only a few years ago.


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Has anyone been to New Orleans recently? Are things getting back to normal there?


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Clue: Salmon


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Clair de Lune

Although we don’t like to admit it, people can change us. People change us in ways we could never have imagined. I once dated someone who loved Elton John. At first, I thought this odd. But in the time we spent together, I actually learned to appreciate and even like Elton John. Another friend opened my eyes to the works of Jasper Johns, talked me through the first painting of his I ever saw. It was late afternoon in the old MoMA. The light kept playing tricks on me. Still a painter then, I didn’t know what to focus on in Johns’ work. I was so self-involved I kept looking at it terms of what I could do given those materials. But my friend shocked me. He said something like “I won’t be here in a few years, so I have to get you to understand this. Just listen to me, Dale, just listen for once.” I have made my way back to that painting many times since that afternoon in 1989. That friend who opened my eyes to Johns is gone, one of my last friends to disappear to the strange shadow known as AIDS. If only he had stayed around a little longer, the cocktails would have been there for him. And all I have of him now is a strange lecture given to me about Johns while wearily standing in the MoMA. In my heart, Jasper Johns’ work and this friend are forever linked. People change us. They change how we live in the world.

This morning, the hazy grey light over Puget Sound was gauzy and almost oppressive. The clouds overhead were thick. And all around me were the droning noises of the city. And what would come to mind standing at the window looking out over the Sound? It is hard to explain this, but right then and there a melody began playing in my head. I was stunned by it actually, because the composer who wrote this piece is not one I used to particular like or admire. But I realized in that moment that I had been changed again. As Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” played in my head, I knew that there was only one person who could have put it there. Only one man I know could have placed that song in me. That this song was in my head, that it appeared as I was looking out over the Sound, I was awestruck by the idea that we move through the world changing people and things around us, whether we like it or not. This is by no means a revolutionary idea, but I was completely blown away by it. So thank you Mark for Elton John. And thank you Andy for Jasper Johns. And most of all, as I sit here watching boats cut the waters of the Sound, thank you Jacob for Debussy. I wish you were here. Something tells me you would know exactly what to say.

Recording

Not sure how I missed this, but here is an interesting take on John Ashbery.


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I was just asked again to write a prose piece on Poetry for a national general interest magazine. And, once again, I declined to do it. I must be honest here. I am not jazzed to write prose. Sure I started out wanting to write fiction, but I was not very good at it. And critical prose? Well, I have always left that to others. I don't know what to say in a general interest essay about poetry. To be honest, I never really know what to say ABOUT poetry in general. In the end, all I can do is champion poets I admire. I do my part but in a different way. I realize this might be seen as a cop out. And maybe it is.


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The helicopter that keeps circling over downtown Seattle is making me nervous. Helicopters always make me nervous.


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Walking through the gardens yesterday toward the Locks, I got into a discussion about the need some have as children, even as adults, to list and record things. I suddenly remembered how at around age 6 to 9 I obsessively recorded our garden: when things started to sprout, when plants flowered, how quickly trees lost their leaves, etc. I cannot remember now why I was so obsessed with this stuff. But I think I may have thought that by charting these things I would figure out how the world worked. Strange to think about that now. And it sounds so nerdy! I think I loved the quadrille notebook paper more than anything I charted on it. Loved the different colored inks and stuff. The only thing in this that carried into my adult life is note taking in different colors. In Med School, I kept notes and highlighted things in different colors to help me order and rank what was important. Pink was always the MOST important. Ha!


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Despite what I just wrote, I am only mildly obsessive-compulsive.


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Off to University of Washington in a couple. Then the reading tonight at Open Books. Should be fun.


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Clue: Terminal Sales


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From Seattle, With Love

Flew out of SF this morning. Got to Seattle and went to lunch with my friends Rick and Ben. After that, we went to Open Books. Rick had arranged a private hour for us to peruse the books (they were technically closed). I found a lot of books, including some first edition hardcovers I didn't already own. After that, we went to the Locks and watched ships traverse from Lake Washington to the Puget Sound. It was all overcast and dimly-lit. Now, I am on the 44th floor looking out over the water, mountains in the distance. And guess what? It is raining. I swear every single time I have come to this city it is raining. Is it ever not raining here?

The Pun

Yay! Cleared my desk of NER stuff. I know this is only temporary, because I would bet money in Vegas that more submissions will be arriving here soon enough. Is it May 31st yet? Most exciting poem found? A five part sequence of poems from an as-yet-to-be-published poet! I just about did a dance in my living room.


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Found this review of the new book up on the Open Books site:


C. DALE YOUNG

In The Second Person ($14.95 Four Way), C. Dale Young has composed a moody book of longing, loss, and eroticism. Many of the poems are set in Florida, with tropical intensity and a mysterious distance alive in the interpersonal and the environment. The poetry is rich in imagery, but Young questions the purpose of things of the world -- "Whip of sea-grass covering the dune / or the child's kite blown from her hands: / on what should the eye train itself?" Feeding the over-riding elegiac tone are glances toward a disinterested god who exists on the periphery of a failed relationship that Young relives and grieves. There is humor, too, as with the title of a homoerotic poem likening lust to a force of nature. That title? "Maelstrom." Young is a medical doctor, and this collection includes poems pertaining to that field, interestingly focusing on failure. The close of the piece "Prognosis" finds him considering telling a patient his cancer treatment has not been effective -- "Do not let a man // abandon hope, says Saint Luke, / for hope is a step toward salvation. / Just then, the silence will be almost palpable." The sadness in these poems is alive and oddly comforting.


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Um, Florida?! I think the reviewer means California. Either way, I appreciate the review. I love the fact the reviewer used the word failure. I almost titled this book My Book of Failure. Of course, everyone talked me out of it. But the book, in my mind, is all about failure. And it will always be my book of failures: in love, in medicine, as a parent, etc.


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I have this seriously old solar-powered calculator. It is a total mess of a thing, and yet I cannot seem to get rid of it. I mean it usually takes me several tries to get it to work correctly, but I seem to have become attached to it. I cannot for the life of me remember when or where I got it. it seems to have always been in my studio on my desk.


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Clue: the Brothers Gibb!


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Poetry Idol & the Virgin

Eric Pankey has a poem up today at Poetry Daily. The poem first appeared in NER. And I wouldn't be a good editor if I didn't say we are always looking for more subscribers. If the contents look interesting to you, or you want to take the plunge and get a year, you can use the discount code "SPCNER" to get a year of NER for only $20 (instead of $25).


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Peter writes about Poetry Runway, but Andrew is running a kind of Poetry Idol. They are already up to Week 8, but you can read more about rules and what is involved in the first post about the contest.


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If, for some reason, you think I don't like you. You are probably right.


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I know, I have an odd sense of humor.


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So far, we are only roughly half way to the number of votes I am aiming for with the "Harriet" Poll. So please vote if you haven't done so already.


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Virgin America has been approved! This is great news for those of us who live in the Bay Area. Virgin America’s first flights will be between its home base of San Francisco (SFO) to New York (JFK). The airline also plans to serve Los Angeles (LAX), Washington/Dulles, San Diego and Las Vegas within its first year of operations.

The airline expects to serve as many as 10 cities within a year of operation and up to 30 cities within five years of service. Additional cities under Virgin America’s consideration include: Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Hartford, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Nashville, Newark, New Orleans, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Providence, Portland, Ore., Raleigh-Durham, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Jose, Calif., Sarasota, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa and West Palm Beach.


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Clue: Grillin' and Skillin'


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New Books Noted

Poetry Reviews from the May 21, 2007 Publishers Weekly

Mars Being Red
Marvin Bell. $15 paper (82p) ISBN 978-1-55659-257-7

In his 19th collection, Bell warns, "I am up late in wartime," seeing "war's imprint with all of us who now/ die of the earth." As grimly demotic as ever-but perhaps increasingly attuned to current events-Bell (Rampant) continues to display his familiar virtues: his poems project a consistent voice, direct, laconic, and unsusceptible to illusion. He is also, now, "old, terribly aware that I am now old," and interested in the poetry of old age, when "Each person gets worse/ in her own way." The ongoing sequence The Book of the Dead Man (on which Bell has worked for over a decade) continues with its sad invocations and flat free verse, one sentence per line. What sets the new poems apart from those of the 1990s also brings them close to some poets of the 1960s: they speak out directly, angrily and almost despairingly against the current administration and the war in Iraq. There are "too many body bags to bury in the mind." Unlike many poets of protest, though, Bell ties his antiwar sentiment to an awareness that, even in peacetime, we all must die: "We need to think of what might grow in the field/ from our ashes, from the rot of our remains." (July)


STARRED REVIEW
For Kid Rock/ Total Freedom
Michael Scharf. Spectacular (SPD, dist.), $15 (96p) ISBN 978-1-934200-01-8

As much a work of conceptual art, docudrama, theoretical investigation and political critique as it is a book of poetry, PW editor Scharf's third collection uses Freytag's pyramid of dramatic analysis (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement) as the framework for his five-part exploration of the sociopolitical climate circa 2002 to 2003. The five sections take multiple forms: a short play; a list of years that hover menacingly above the names of corresponding countries; a 20-page list, in alphabetical order, of corporations, organizations, nations, acronyms, and individuals; short verse poems ("you have to have/ a place to physically put the past/ to move it"); an extended essay ("Since it's predicated on finitude, capitalism couldn't work if people didn't die"); and responses to a sign held outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that attempted to call attention to the role of imperialism in the acquisition of art ("I'm in a bourgeois panic and have no response"). This is not a book concerned with the sublime, expressive subjectivity or even the making of beautiful poems, but a tour de force coupling of humor and terror, an expansive and necessary indictment of the pervasive encroachment of narcissistic rock-stardom into all realms of American culture, and an argument for "[p]oetry as a struggle/ for psychological liberty." (May)


The Biplane Houses
Les Murray. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23 (96p) ISBN 978-0-374-11548-6

The latest from Australia's most eminent living poet may be his best since 1999's Fredy Neptune. Perennially rumored for the Nobel shortlist, Murray pursues in off-rhymed stanzas and confident verse-paragraphs his signature mix of subjects: rural Australia and the dignity of rural labor; his own Scottish-Australian farming heritage and Catholic faith; the bounty and diversity of nature; the hypocrisy, cruelty and self-destructive overconfidence of cosmopolitan, secular civilization. Murray's vivid world includes unparalleled descriptions of flora and fauna-"dolphins, like 3D surfboards/ born in the ocean"-and quips about social class, housing, transport, belief and doubt, with some insights no one else could have: "Whatever the great religions offer/ it is afterlife their people want." His lines, as always, are mouthfuls, sometimes awkward, sometimes winning in their sheer force. Though he can be unfair to his political targets-satirizing "gentrifical force" (i.e., gentrification, bourgeois tastes, hipness) as if it were a horseman of the apocalypse-the emotion is genuine and carries with it not only a defense of "working people's farms," of "beautiful innocents" and unpretentious families, but a very modern understanding of the ways in which our modern lifestyles have put our planet at risk. (June)


STARRED REVIEW
Duende
Tracy K. Smith. Graywolf, $14 (104p) ISBN 978-1-55597-475-6

Federico García Lorca famously described duende in relation to flamenco music, but understood it as the dark wellspring for any artistic endeavor. As interpreted by Smith in her Laughlin Award-winning second collection, duende is the unforgiving place where the soul confronts emotion, acknowledges death and finds poetry. Smith writes from various unconsoled spaces, where "[k]nowledge is regret" and "[e]ach word is a wish." About the view from a failing marriage, Smith says: "I liked best/ When there was nothing/ That I could/ Or could not see." These 30 poems are roving, alluding to diverse countries and political situations, often shifting perspectives and locations abruptly between sections. Identity and history are often sources of pain, and Smith adopts various marginalized personas (Flores Woman, Persephone, John Dall, Ugandan girls sold into wifedom) unhinged by displacement. Identity politics bleed into personal lyric, where the poet admits, "I am not/ What you intend me to be." Writing in the voice of a Ugandan girl, Smith says, "Somewhere in every life there is a line./ One side to the other and you are gone./ Not disappeared but undone." Although the site of undoing may well be the source of duende, the poet's lyric brilliance and political impulses never falter under the considerable weight of her subject matter. (June)


Nervous Systems
William Stobb. Penguin, $16 (70p) ISBN 978-0-14-311199-3

Stobb's well-titled debut begins smart and ends tender: it starts with crisply layered bits of scenes, many from the rural or industrial Midwest, then moves through sometimes melancholy, sometimes delighted reflections on the poet's young daughter and on his anxious middle age. Landscapes compel in Stobb's writing whether their components, encountered in real life, would delight or appall. Here is an inventively stereoscopic view of a gravelly rural trail, with "Twelve thousand version of twelve dozen ivy blossoms/ in the compound eye"; there are rusted-out "northern resorts/ where men in fishnet hats drink coffee." Filmic quick cuts (and metaphors from film and music) suggest the techniques of August Kleinzahler (who selected the book for the National Poetry Series); luminous descriptions call to mind the early Robert Hass. Yet Stobb turns his attention ultimately from things back to the people who live amid them. Midway through the volume, we find Stobb "hoping our nostalgia and middle-aged foreboding/ would give way to an elegance that had always been east of us." Stobb's best poems-at the start and the end of the volume-include not only observation and tenderness but jazzy dissonance: "I don't know my mangles// from my obtuse angles.... These are words for things." (June)


Miscreants
James Hoch. Norton, $30 (128p) ISBN 978-0-393-06486-5

Troubled young men and boys scarred by their gritty surroundings animate this careful sophomore effort from Hoch (A Parade of Hands), much of it focused on the city and the blue-collar suburbs of Philadelphia, where the poet grew up. The well-handled 22-part central poem, "Bobby Almand," takes its name and subject from a gruesome murder case: the titular boy becomes both hoodlum and victim, a sacrificial representative for the tough teens who run through the rest of the book-"Like wild dogs, we were raised/ in packs, by packs." A wry lyric opens "Stoned, I go into a gas station"; an ode about playground basketball evokes "The air-guitar/ player, the air-baller, half-court rim-clanger... talking trash, snatching loose balls" to eclipse or evade their grim, marginal lives. Hoch's weighty, short lines suggest Linda Gregerson's, but his moods (and occasionally his allusions) instead conjure American singer-songwriters-doomed and sensitive Elliott Smith, blue-collar laureate Bruce Springsteen, whose Jersey shore territory crops up here too. Neither Hoch's scenes nor his moods seem terribly original-and yet he makes them memorable even so: "a...boyhood// shotgun cocked against your head." (June)


Circadian
Joanna Klink. Penguin, $16 (80p) ISBN 978-0-14-303884-9

Nearly every poem in Klink's sophomore collection has at its emotional center a pastoral bewilderment born of the tension between the physical world and the metaphysical split between self and other. Klick's rampant use of nature imagery-of light, wind and snow accentuating fields, paths, fir trees and waterways, and of the numerous animal inhabitants therein ("Around the lake, the air/ filled with moths, light as pencil outlines")-gives way to a tone that is meditative, aphoristic, at times cold, creating an external foil for the interior conflict between the speaker and the addressee ("single star streaking in cracked silence/ above our argument"). Klink (They Are Sleeping) is at her best weaving together multiple narrative threads-ones that hint or gesture toward larger stories-in order to ground her poems in the natural world; at times, her extended descriptions progress with an overly distant feel. However, perhaps this is the point: one is never sure of each poem's central concern ("Perhaps there are two seas,/ one below the surface and one above"), and when the disparate elements come together ("an animal crosses the wide field/ in you"), one is left, quite satisfyingly, in what this poet calls a "silence clean of every concept." (June)


STARRED REVIEW
My Soviet Union
Michael Dumanis. Univ. of Massachusetts, $14.95 (96p) ISBN 978-1-55849-585-2

The 40 poems in this strong, Juniper Prize-winning debut are obsessed with, and at the same time refuse to acknowledge, dislocation-from history, literature, love, place, yearning and speech itself-with a barrage of verbal explosives. Reimagining such figures as Pol Pot, Mayakovsky, García Márquez and Joseph Cornell, and traveling between places as far-flung as Long Island, Vietnam and West Des Moines, Dumanis, coeditor of the controversial poetry anthology Legitimate Dangers, restlessly submerges the reader in his perceptions. He buries the soon-to-be-buried in the tumbling inventory of "Today, on the Obituary Channel" ("The self-proclaimed Sultan of Cockfighting / Heir to the throne of Qatar/ Later an interview with his betrothed/ Now stay tuned for a tour of the Providence morgue"). The book is also lush with political conflict and eros: "Swore I knew nothing of/ the Schlieffen Plan, the Bay of Pigs... as she turned to me and ran/ her satin hands over my eyelids, toward my lips./ Knowing the war would never end, we kissed," In rare moments, sonic tics and play overshadow the matter of the poems, but mostly Dumanis overwhelms with intelligence and emotion. He is certainly a poet to watch. (May)


Threads
Jill Magi. Futurepoem Books (SPD, dist.), $14 (144p) ISBN 978-0-9716800-7-4

Magi's full-length debut follows in a recent tradition of investigative cross-cultural autobiography, incorporating images, philosophical and personal reflections, indirectly related texts from artistic peers and, most notably, imaginative reconstructions of her ancestors' lives under foreign occupation. Magi's choice of thread as central metaphor-strings that bind two lives, two pages or two cultures together-is born out by her crisp, spare writing and the primary visual motif: decayed and torn, often artistically written-over pages of historical transcripts. But Magi's Estonia-a country that has changed hands several times since the 16th century, and only surfaced from Soviet rule in 1991-is a nation whose identity cannot easily be healed: "Dear Grandmother: You fed yourself hard candies from a personal dictionary that snapped shut while slipping folded up twenty dollar bills into my palms. [...] Did you prefer Swedish to Estonian or English to Swedish?" Magi deftly weaves together translations of poetry, travelogue and cultural reconstruction. The book is saturated with the quest for lost memory; a cellphone in contemporary Estonia seems anachronistic, and reproduced pages of documentation about her relatives' activities against Communist rule, leading to the Singing Revolution, make for fascinating reading in themselves (when in English). This is a confident, careful and unpretentious first volume. (May)


Wideawake Field
Eliza Griswold. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23 (80p) ISBN 978-0-374-29930-7

Named for a WWII airbase in the South Atlantic used by the U.S., journalist Eliza Griswold's poetic debut tracks round-trip missions through disaster, both personal and national, from the aftermath of a crumbled marriage to the minefields of the Middle East. Five sections alternate between home and away, exchanging familiar landscapes for foreign battlefields and finding displacement and disappointment in both. An award-winning foreign correspondent, Griswold writes terse poems that unfortunately too often bear the uncomfortable and worn trope of the observer. Other cultures are pressed into the singsong of iambic rhythms and hard rhymes: "The prostitutes in Kabul tap their feet/ beneath their faded burqas in the heat./ For bread or fifteen cents, they'll take a man to bed-/ their husbands dead, their seven kids unfed." In the collection's strongest pieces, the speaker turns her unsparing eye on the rubble of her own relationships, as in "October," when she softly admits, "I mourn you sometimes/ in places you would have been." Though the speaker travels great distances in these poems, the imagination does not; while investigating the complex ruins of war and love, Griswold attempts to snap each poem shut with a summation or moral, often to diminutive effect. (May)


Embryos and Idiots
Larissa Szporluk. Tupelo (Consortium, dist.), $16.95 (80p) ISBN 978-1-932195-52-1

To the fluid imaginings, brilliantly slippery language and maternal obsessions of three previous books, Szporluk (The Wind, Master Cherry, the Wind) now adds enticing elements of narrative: these one- and two-page lyrical works comprise an original story, or myth, about Anoton, the child of a primordial god, who struggles with his divine parents, whose head becomes an island, and who gives birth to talking animals and quarreling adults. "You were two people,/ the sun and the moon," Szporluk says; her entities absorb and refract more familiar tales (Adam and Eve, Don Giovanni, Joan of Arc), splitting and blurring personalities in order to reach deeper truths about the feelings we never entirely understand and about parent-child connections. Szporluk's readers discover why "The sea is the greatest mother," and why "we still come back to her rim." The story of Anoton vanishes near the end, and the book becomes simply a collection of (striking) lyrics; until then, his legend, such as it is, provides a thread to connect, and an excuse to elaborate on, Szporluk's supremely quotable conceits, her images and aphorisms about creation myths and procreation, babies and language, planets and bodies and love, in which "The newborn's a reborn; every// beloved is the same." (May)


Indeed I Was Pleased with the World
Mary Ruefle. Carnegie Mellon, $14.95 (80p) ISBN 978-0-88748-0-467-4

The title of Ruefle's 10th collection of poetry is evocative of a divine pronouncement upon creation, yet the statement's past tense suggests an ominous future awaits. It is this beginning and end, in all its myriad tellings, that Ruefle interrogates, crafting parables/poems, remaking the world and reckoning with a coming apocalypse. The poems are unsparing in their indictments: "only a human being could hammer another one/ to a board," she remarks in "Gathered on a Friday in the Hour of Jupiter" as a crowd assembles on a bright day, surrounded by sunflowers, to watch an execution. In "Speak, Zero," she sharply observes: "From finches we take feathers for our hats/ From us they take hair for their nests," suggesting the vast divide between humanity and nature, between the necessary and the frivolous. These poems grapple with despair and cruelty in a voice that is devotional, obsessive and quirky, as if the right words might offer a spell for salvation. As she writes in "Quick Note About the Think Source," "Fortunately for us,/ the world is not that complicated:/ eventually, words like torpor and muddle/ came into being, and then torpid, muddled/ accounts of the universe took over the populace." (May)


Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006
Carl Phillips. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $15 paper (208p) ISBN 978-0-374-53078-5

Phillips is a scholar and translator of classical Greek and a writer of syntactically complex, desire-drenched love poems that subtly, and beautifully, reinvent classical tropes and forms. Phillips has published eight books of his own poetry: this selection pares down a rapidly expanding oeuvre to its sharp essentials. Phillips's first three books, published by Graywolf, show him working out his relation to the tradition-from "the Famous Black Poet" to Yeats ("I recognized/ something more/ than swan" to Sappho ("My tongue still remembers")-and to AIDS and its aftermath: "I watched as each boat fell to flame:/ Vincent and Matthew and, last, what bore your name." Pastoral (2000) finds Phillips confidently making the tercet into a representation of the lover's body, a practice that has culminated in four subsequent books rapidly published in the '00s-including The Tether and The Rest of Love-that contain extraordinary and strange examples of Phillips's trademark writing about the bonds and bounds of sex and couplehood: "-Singing inside the mirror,/ to no one, to// itself, the body folding, and/ unfolding, as if map/ then shroud, its song." (May)

Bali and Background Noise

Bad allergies last night and today. Sore throat. The yuck of pine pollen.


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Much work to do today, but what I really want to do is go somewhere with friends and hang out. I sometimes feel as if all of my time is eaten up. I really need to start winnowing things down.


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Reginald Shepherd has a poem up today at Poetry Daily. Check it out.


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Oh, and if you have a chance, answer the "Harriet" poll for me. I am trying to get 100 respondents.


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Clue: Pleistocene


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Clouds and Fog

This is too weird for words (pun intended)


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I guess I don't use the word dark as much as I thought I did, though this cloud business doesn't really count variants of words, in the case "darkly" "darkened" etc. And thank God "sadness" isn't the top word. A friend wrote me and told me to brace myself because reviewers will most certainly notice my repeated usage of the word.


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Harriet

"Harriet," the Poetry Foundation's blog, replaced their weekly journals some months ago.

What do you think of the format used for the Poetry Foundation's blog?

I LOVE "Harriet"
I like the multiplicity of voices and read it every day
I read it sometimes, but not often
It is too schizophrenic, too many voices
Harriet? I have never heard of this blog

View Results

Create your own myspace poll



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Yay, I am no longer on-call! I am definitely going to the Japanese baths tomorrow.


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Clue: Assassin


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Stop the Insanity

Ah, one of those days where all day long I kept thinking I was going to have more time. Anyway, I cannot post for long because I have charts to dictate so I can get out of here and head home. My birthday present from Jacob finally arrived today. Yes, he is totally insane and bought me this insane grill:



I haven't actually seen it yet, but the description makes me think it is out of control. I just wonder if it can cook my rib eye the way I want it, melt some herbed butter on, and serve it with Yukon Gold mashed potatoes. Now wouldn't that be great?


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Clue: Pot? Yes, Kettle...


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Quickie

Running late this morning. Will post more later today. That said, I have to say I am still in shock after last night's Idol elimination show. Now that Melinda has been eliminated, I don't even need to watch the final show of the season. In fact, I will be reading my poems in Seattle next Tuesday, and I don't even plan to watch the show on TiVo when I get back. Why? Because neither of the two finalists remaining are good singers. Despite America's infatuation with the fact Jordin is 17 and has talent, she is not YET a good singer. And Blake? Give me a break. He has given more karaoke performances and imitations this season than anyone has ever done on Idol ever. And the judges always give him a pass card. Someone please tell him he doesn't really know how to dance and that beatboxing is sooooo 1989. Melinda Doolittle will be the next Chris Daughtry. No, not in terms of style, but in terms of having a successful career despite being booted from Idol. Okay, enough Idol talk. After this season of Idol, I am happy for the reprieve of no Idol for 10 months.

Rhapsody

Poetry Hut's Jilly Dybka will be taking a short leave, but she leaves us with some of the most odd news stories seen in a long time.


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God help me! Despite eight months passing by, I still find this to be one of the funniest things I have ever read on-line.


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I spent twenty minutes this morning obsessively listening to Jacob's "Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra," and I have to say that the iTunes visualization feature was most certainly designed by someone who did a lot of acid in the past! I mean a lot.


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It may be because of the Rhapsody, but I have the phrase "land's end" in my head. What a truly mundane expression, and yet it carries with it so many oddities of memory and recollection, so many associations of the supernatural. Jacob's piece was once titled "Rhapsody at Land's End." And then there is the spot called Land's End here in San Francisco, replete with the ruins of a once gigantic bathhouse (no, not that kind of bathhouse) built at a time where the ocean's water was pumped in and warmed using steam piping. And the trees there, bent from the constant flow of the breezes coming off the ocean, the odd groves, and the dangerous and rocky cliff sides. Land's End: something entices us to visit a place like that.


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Congratulations to Aaron Baker, winner of this year's Bakeless Prize in Poetry.


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Clue: MacArthur


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Okay, Fine

I said I wasn't going to do this. I even said to someone that as much as I like memes, I hate this one. But now, after being tagged 5 times, I am feeling all high school and peer pressured. I mean, I suddenly have long hair again and think I can live forever no matter what I do to my body. Okay, enough of that.

Fine, 5 songs which have knocked my socks off:

1. "A Day in the Life," The Beatles
2. "I Know It's Over," The Smiths
3. "What's Going On," Marvin Gaye
4. "Boys of Summer," Don Henley
5. "Kashmir," Led Zeppelin

Of course, the minute I type those, I can think of ten other songs, but these 5 songs are ones I return to over and over. I particular have a soft spot in my heart for "I Know It's Over." It has some of my favorite lyrics in any song ever written. When Morrissey sings "See, the sea wants to take me / The knife wants to slit me / Do you think you can help me ?" I always get mild goosebumps. And there are these lines, that sappy as it sounds, I sing to myself all the time:

It's so easy to laugh
It's so easy to hate
It takes strength to be gentle and kind
Over, over, over, over
It's so easy to laugh
It's so easy to hate
It takes guts to be gentle and kind
Over, over...

I always get lost in that song. In fact, the combination of Morrissey's voice and lyrics combined with Johnnie Marr's guitar is about as close to perfection as I have ever heard. In fact, all of the songs I have listed have lyrics that haunt me. Sometimes, I wake up singing one of these songs. The Marvin Gaye song, in particular, is a haunting song. I heard someone cover it, and it had none of that quality at all. I mean the cover was good, but it wasn't Marvin. The voice could not move me the way his can. I guess these aren't just songs that knock my socks off but songs that haunt me. Certain books haunt me. Certain songs haunt me. I like the way things can infiltrate the mind, can hang around in a dark space in your brain for years and years at a time.

Jimmy Carter Never Fails to Amaze Me

This is just one more reason why Jimmy Carter remains a human being I can look up to... With all of the work he has done to promote Peace in the world, and with all he has done to help poverty-stricken peoples in the world, it amazes me that he stands up for what is right. He never backs down. THIS is what we are lacking in government today. Today, the senate cares more about public ratings than they do about doing what is right (and they have longer terms than Congresspeople!). Jimmy Carter, I salute you. You make me and so many people want to better people. Thank you for pointing out that well over 20 countries have eliminated homosexuality as a restriction to serving one's country.

Parrots and Bait

Justin accepted the bait (as I suspected he would) and addresses the whole Brokeback Classroom thing. He brings up a lot of the things that make me feel conflicted about this particularly strange story. I mean, whenever I had a substitute teacher in grade school, we had to do regular class work. I never got to watch a movie in class. EVER.


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A patient of mine asked me to pose shirtless for a fundraiser. Um, I am afraid to find out what kind of fundraiser this is...


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I am more than half way through Carl Phillips' Selected Poems. It is good. It is really good. The selections from each of his book are apt. It is a beautiful rendering of his body of work. Even though I have read each of the individual books, I am still spellbound by this selected volume. Phillips must have spent a great deal of time deciding what to cull. A beautiful thing so far.


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You know who made an appearance in a dream last night. This time, he kept repeating things I said. He was wearing an Armani suit but with a huge Fedora. And he kept sneering and then smiling. It confused me, his facial expressions. I kept saying "Why are you here?" To which he would say "Why are you here?"


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If I ever meet John Ashbery in person, I will probably have a mental breakdown. He has appeared in so many dreams of mine, it would be total freak out time if I met him in real life. I mean, I would completely wig out!


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Clue: Xanadu


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Hallways of the Mind

I am very conflicted over this. Part of me says the teacher should have been teaching instead of showing movies. Part of me says this is ridiculous. Part of me wonders what is this really about.


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In the dream early this morning, I am standing at a urinal in a dingy barely-lit bathroom. I keep hearing whispering voices, but I don't see anyone. Suddenly, these rolls of toilet paper, stacked in the corner, start unspooling about six sheets at a time and tearing off before catapulting across the room. A young girl runs through the room screaming. There is blood in the sink. I cannot find the door out. I feel the toilet paper strips whizzing by my face. I wake up screaming.


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Saw Spidey 3 yesterday. It was fine. Not great. Not awful as some have suggested. I really think it is all about expectation. Like Star Wars movies, I never go in expecting that much. I just want to be entertained for an hour or two. So, it was fine. I mean, it's Spiderman.


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This totally makes sense to me! Totally!


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THE TREE FROG


[Vanished]


--C. Dale Young, from The Second Person (Four Way Books, 2007)



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Memory is a very strange thing.


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Clue: The Red Pill


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Dia de las Madres

The New York Times Magazine has a short interview with recent Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Natasha Trethewey. Although the Times opted to use it for Mother's Day, I find the part dealing with her mother the saddest thing in the whole article. (registration may be required)


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Here is an announcement for the upcoming reading in Seattle.


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Because hypocrisy is still alive and well.


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I woke up this morning with that "How to Save a Life" song in my head. Why? I have no idea.


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Remember, call your Mother! It is Mother's Day, and mothers go a little nuts if you don't call them on this day.


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There is a very interesting article on distribution of poetry books (and other small press books) over at the Poetry Foundation website. It is definitely well worth the read.


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Clue: Popcorn


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Cellophane

Not sure if many people know this:

Summer reading period announcement:

In June, July, and August 2007, POETRY will only consider work from poets who have not previously appeared in the magazine. We encourage writers new to these pages to send work to:

POETRY
444 N Michigan Ave., Ste. 1850
Chicago, IL 60611

The magazine's guidelines are here.


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Well lookee thar! John Gallaher has a poem up today at Verse Daily.


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Jacob is busy writing a new piece for violin. I am envious, but glad to see him busy at his desk in his studio.


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Clue: Serendipity


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Brought To You by the Number 9

Don't forget, the postage rates change on Monday! Jeez. I sure am glad they are starting to make "forever" stamps.


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Today, high of 55 and low of 49. Hello? What happened to Spring? How are already having summer weather?


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John Gallaher has some photos from his recent jaunt to the East Coast. I even make an appearance in one of them.


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Once again, I am here to ask some of you out there to think about donating some money for a good cause. Today, that cause is Kundiman. Last year, Kundiman had a number of donors, which is incredibly important for this small organization that relies heavily on donations. So far, this year, the number is not quite as good. So, I am asking you to think about donating something to Kundiman. Even if all you can donate is ten dollars, please do it. Kundiman does so much, and it does it almost entirely via generous poets willing to donate their time, energy, and money to a younger generation of poets. Even ten dollars will help. If every reader of this blog gave Kundiman $10, they would have almost six thousand dollars to help maintain their operations, fund their scholarships to young poets trying to attend their retreat/conference, help fund their readings and other activities, etc. So, think about it. And I almost forgot to mention that donations are tax-deductible. Okay, I will stop my Sally Struthers self now and return to regularly scheduled activities here at The Muse.


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And look what is now in the world!


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Clue: Boxers, not boxer briefs


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Exactly

This is the best post about poetry contests I have ever read. I absolutely love it! LOVE IT.

Quiver of Arrows

Quiver of Arrows is a generous gathering from Carl Phillips’s work that showcases the twenty-year evolution of one of America’s most distinctive—and one of poetry’s most essential—contemporary voices. Hailed from the beginning of his career for a poetry provocative in its candor, uncompromising in its inquiry, and at once rigorous and innovative in its attention to craft, Phillips has in the course of eight critically acclaimed collections generated a sustained meditation on the restless and ever-shifting myth of human identity. Desire and loss, mastery and subjugation, belief and doubt, sex, animal instinct, human reason: these are among the lenses through which Phillips examines what it means to be that most bewildering, irresolvable conundrum, a human being in the world.


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Quiver of Arrows: This is a book many have been anxiously awaiting, an incredible book. It gets my highest recommendation for recently published books, and everyone should be checking it out. I am making wagers in Vegas that this book will win a major prize for Carl Phillips. No one else today sounds even remotely like him!

Phoenix

Well, both Delta and Northwest are climbing out of bankruptcy. This should make a lot of folks happy, especially if you fly these airlines often. But it should also make you pause. In recent years, airlines that came out of bankruptcy usually offered a significantly worse product the minute they were even one month out of bankruptcy! Hello, United? That airline is now one of the worst airlines when it comes to on-time departures and arrivals. It has horrific service. There is no reason whatsoever to fly United unless you are forced to, in my opinion. So, Delta and Northwest folks, watch out. Pray to God these airlines follow their codeshare partner, Continental, and stick to high levels of customer service.


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Thinking again about urgency. But also thinking again about desire and failure. These things are all wrapped up in poetry for me. Not poetry the product, but poetry the writing, the act. It isn't just urgency, but desire and failure play a role. I cannot explain further right now. Too many thoughts. And so it goes.


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Am I biased? Of course I am. You are, too!


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Clue: Arrows!


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After Time Passes

The flight back yesterday seemed to go on forever. The minute we walked off the plane, walking in the jetway, Jacob said, you can smell the Bay Area. And he was right. The cool air, the moisture, the smell of salt water, it was all immediately noticeable. I only notice it when I come home.


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Came home to some nice emails from folks about the new book. I am still amazed at the job Four Way did with it.


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Amazing the things that show up after time passes.


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Wow, this is still going on! It must make money because they keep doing it and have been doing it for what seems like forever.


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Still haven't seen Spidey yet. It may have to be a weekend thing now. I understand critics aren't thrilled with it. But I still feel like I need to see it.


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I have been told Lakisha was eliminated last night. Also told that all four sang terribly this past Tuesday. It is on TiVo, but I think I shall pass.


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Clue: The gold beneath the lamp...


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Looking Out Over the Hudson

The Four Way Books benefit last night at Poets House went well. And so, today we fly back to San Francisco. Jacob enjoyed NYC a lot more this time. Yesterday, I got to spend a good twenty minutes staring at one of my favorite paintings ever created, David's "The Death of Socrates." It remains, for me, one of the most arresting paintings:



Jacob had never been to the Met, and I hadn't been in almost ten years. It really is one of the most amazing museums in the world. After hours there, we wandered through Central Park on what seemed like a perfect afternoon. But I am excited to head home.


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And speaking of Poets House, check out this odd article.


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Well, I need to go wake up Jacob so we can get our stuff packed.


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Clue: Daughtry


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From NYC, With Love

The readings on Sunday and yesterday went well, I think. I can never really tell if I give a good reading or not. It is kind of like not really ever knowing how you sound. You know, the way you surprise yourself when you hear a recording of yourself. There is that moment of "Is that really me?" Well, same for me with readings. I always walk away from the mike wondering how on earth I came across. This is why I love when Jacob is at a reading. He will not only tell me but even compare it to other readings I have done. And this helps me get a sense of how I did.

But I think both readings so far went well. On Sunday, I got to meet Matthew Thorburn. He looks just like his picture. And he is as warm and sincere as his famous smile. Some of the Warren Wilson students showed up, which was nice. some old friends, like Sean Singer, showed up. It was a cool space. Last night's reading also had some old friends who showed up. It was great to see some of my Bread Loaf friends, Patrick, Merrill, James, etc. And of course, it is always fun to see Mark Bibbins. Tonight's reading is a very brief one for a Four Way Books Benefit.


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Jacob and I are off to The Met today. Friends last night told us we have to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge before we leave, that we need to make out at the very center of the bridge. We haven't decided yet if we shall do this. We are, after all, kind of shy.


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I love visiting NYC, but I actually miss SF. It really has become my home in a way I could never have predicted.


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I am sure everyone knows this already, but in case you haven't heard: Lucille Clifton is this year's recipient of the Lily Prize.


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The Publisher's Triangle held its award ceremony last night. I couldn't go because of the time conflict with the reading. The winners are:

Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry: Justin Chin for Gutted

Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry: Jennifer Rose for Hometown for an Hour

Congratulations to both of them!


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Clue: Cinnamon Raisin bagel


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Verse Daily

Well, thanks to Anne, I just discovered that one of my poems is up at Verse Daily today. I had no idea at all. Anyhoo, you can check it out here. It is the poem from which the new book gets its title.

Latte in Hand

I slept more on Saturday night than I have in years. Literally. I went to bed at midnight and was shocked to find it was 10:20 AM when I woke up! The hotel room was so dark, I just had no idea what time it was. Got up, had some breakfast and then made it over to The Bowery for the reading. The Bowery Poetry Club is a cool place to do a reading. The audience was great. The space is great. And the we went to B Bar and had drinks. Jacob and I went back to our hotel after that and then eventually went out for dinner. Thankfully, Jacob is liking NYC better this time around.


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I keep having bizarre dreams.


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If any of you NYC folk are up for it, I am reading tonight at Readings Between A and B with Linda Gregerson and John Gallaher. Reading is at 7:30pm and the venue is at 510 E 11th Street (between aves A and B).


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The Financial District is buzzing outside. Traffic has doubled since yesterday. It is kind of interesting to watch. Jacob is heading to midtown to go to MoMA. I still haven't decided if I am going. I do love their new space. And some of my favorite pieces by Johns are there.


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Clue: Mantis


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The Reflex

Wouldn't you know it? The one time I fall asleep on an overnight flight and two Russians decide to drink non-stop and talk loudly. And they kept ringing the goddamned call button. So, after two hours of sleep, I woke up and then couldn't fall back asleep because they wouldn't shut the hell up. Luckily for us, the hotel let us check in early at 8:30AM and we got a few hours sleep. We walked along the esplanade for a bit after we got up and had lunch. Tons and tons of people down at Battery Park, many in cues to go see Lady Liberty. Sunny. Warm. Almost clear. I am watching tug boats swim up and down the Hudson. Jacob is off shopping. Some things are almost always the same.


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Sometimes, when I am walking through airports, I suddenly have this urge to run. Where I would run to, I have no idea. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, the urge is strong, almost like a reflex.


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This makes me laugh. To be honest, I am amazed she is actually going to serve time. Good for the judge in this case.


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This is sad but true. Apparently, Amy Hempel has a Collected stories out, and I never even knew. I love many of her stories. She understands sorrow, and she understands the odd difficulties of life. In this way, she is more like one of the great Russian novelists than others would realize. I am totally going to buy a copy of the book.


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Yes, I do like reading fiction. I just don't read it as often as I read poetry. But good writing is good writing. I relish stories by Charles Baxter and Padgett Powell. I return to Dostoevsky and Chekhov often. I am afraid of Welty and O'Connor, but I am not sure why. I return to them though. And Fitzgerald. Lately, I have been re-reading Eric Puchner and ZZ Packer. They all feed something in my head.


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In the messed up dream I had this morning when I was sleeping in the hotel, clouds were changing colors in the sky like chakra lights in some spa treatment rooms. Pink to red to orange to yellow to green to blue to violet to pink. I was floating on a raft of some kind made from bamboo. And there were birds chirping, and there was the sound of quickly rushing water. I was mesmerized by the chakra clouds. I think I was still a child.


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Clue: Terrace


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Background Noise

Need to get to clinic. Long day ahead of me. And when I get home tonight: laundry, packing, airport trauma, and flight departing at 10:15 PM. We arrive in NYC tomorrow morning at 6:30 AM. This coming weekend seemed really far away until suddenly it was here.


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Aw, jeez, you made me blush. Actually, seeing the world the way I do at the genesis of a poem might be a scary thing for many.


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I just realized I haven't written a poem this year. I hope that means I have a burst of activity coming up. Or this could be a year I don't even get 4 poems done. Hard to say. I have fleeting moments where I start to play with words and images, sounds, etc. But none of it is sticking, so to speak. There is no urgency. I have to have urgency. I have to have something driving me to remember, to horde the lines in preparation for when I have the time for drafting. If there is no urgency, it fritters away. There has to be urgency to surmount the flotsam, jetsam, the joys and difficulties of my everyday life. There has to be urgency to make a poem coalesce despite the fact I am doing fifty different things every day. So far, no urgency. Just a kind of static, some background noise.


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I will bet you money that while we are away, the weather here in SF will be amazing.


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Clue: This interview is OVER!!


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Spidey!

It is kind of sad to admit this, but besides doing readings in NYC this coming weekend/ week, I will also be seeing Spidey. Why? Because I can't wait until I get back to San Francisco to see it. Jacob won't even argue with me, because he knows I have to see it. If I could go at midnight tonight, I would. But I have to work early tomorrow morning, and tomorrow night we are on the redeye to NYC. Anybody else's spidey sense tingling? Yes, I know I am geeking out.

Feeling It

First off, swing by and congratulate Anne Haines. She has some excellent and timely good news.


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200 less poems to read for NER after yesterday. But I found some keepers! And I found some I need to spend a little more time with, you know, try to get to know them better. To the person who submitted poems lamenting our switch to no simultaneous submissions for poetry who then, in his cover letter, announces that he was still going to send these out elsewhere: we rejected you. Rules are rules. We stopped taking simultaneous submissions in poetry because we get 45,000+ poems each year and can only publish 65-80. When I started with NER 12 years ago, we received a little under 10,000 poems per year. The amount of submissions we get is becoming unreal. We had to do something. So, we rejected you. And we will reject anyone who submits poems simultaneously to us. We are, for the most part, fairly quick. We respond to 95% of poetry submissions within 9-12 weeks. Our average response for poetry is around 8 weeks, many times quicker.


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Peter is cracking me up with this post.


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America got it right last night. Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson got the boot from Idol. Next week, either Lakisha or Jordin. The following week, either Jordin or Lakisha. The final two will be Blake and Melinda. Why? Because there hasn't been a season of Idol yet where the final two aren't one man and one woman.


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This is unreal. I mean, unreal! Adrienne Rich filling a stadium doesn't bother me. But this kind of does. I just don't understand the appeal.


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Ever wondered what I look like after 2 strawberry daiquiri in Cabo San Lucas? Well, now you need not wonder anymore. Here it is, in all its hideous glory. I hope someone is happy now. Notice I am about to start my third! Gag!!


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Clue: In preparation...


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Victor # 16

Jacob has selected the winner of Caption Contest #16, and it is Eddie Dixon for






"If I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times. Think outside the box."


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Congratulations, Eddie. We would post your blog address or webpage, but your profile doesn't give that info. Bragging rights are yours.


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Runner-up: Ivy Alvarez for "I put my junk in a box."


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As always, Jacob and I thank all of you who entered. I have no idea why this contest entertains us so, but we really do love it.


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The Bunny

Yesterday evening, I got the roster of students who have signed up for my Bookshop/Class at Warren Wilson this summer. I am excited for it because I get to teach one of my favorite books of poems: Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems. Full class. Should be a lot of fun.


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Lots of errands to do today. What's new. But of course the weather sucks. Overcast and wet. I want yesterday's weather to come back. Easier to work when it is sunny. I get more done when it is sunny, even if I am inside.


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Ever notice how often people discuss the weather?


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Collin nails it (American Idol, of course) once again. Last night's show was a new kind of bad. It was yawntastic. And Jordin was a mess. Phil was a mess. Chris Richardson was a big stinking pile of mess. And as much as Blake annoys the living daylights out of me, he gave a good "performance." Lakisha and Melinda were the best, by far. And as much as I like Lakisha, Melinda out sang her, once again. At this point, I would be surprised if Melinda didn't win. She has yet to sing a song badly. Her vocals are almost always spot on.

And Jon Bon Jovi so totally sold his soul to the devil. I mean the man looks young still.


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Robert Thomas goes all "beautiful" on us.


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Jacob should be naming the winner of Caption Contest #16 later today. Have you entered yet? If not, you still have a little bit of time. So, what are you waiting for? Just do it!


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Clue: Energizer


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Drive By

Late in the day, but didn't have time to post this morning. Glad to be off tomorrow, even if it only means work of a different kind. I have too many jobs. Alas.


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If you haven't entered the caption contest below, you should.


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I know this will come out weird, but I am glad National Poetry Month is over. And I am glad that it also means NaPoWriMo is also over. All these folks writing a poem a day made me feel even more lazy and lame about writing poems. That said, I know this is all internal. It has little to do with all the folks writing. It has more to do with me and my own insecurities. Gag!


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If you are in NYC, please come hear me and John Gallaher and others read this coming Sunday or Monday. Short readings! Neither one of us will ever read for longer than 20 mins! We are like drive by readings. We can't bring you a forty, but you can drink one before you come to the reading! Check out the link for more info.


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Clue: Haggis


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