Quickster

70 million viewers?! That is unreal.


****************************


Another book prize is born.


****************************


I think I now know what he meant!


****************************


Clue: Feedback!


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Vespacio

This week has flown by and crawled at the same time. I am finally feeling better, throwing off the cold I seemed to have picked up in Arizona last weekend. I have to get through the weekend, Monday and Tuesday; after that, I am off from clinic for almost three weeks, first to go visit my folks in Florida and then to go sailing in the Caribbean.


***********************


I can remember, in the way one remembers a dream, the endless days of my second year of medical school: up at 6:00AM, classes and lab in the morning, lunch for an hour at noon, classes and labs in the afternoon, dinner driving in the car to the library, then studying until 11:00PM, bed around 11:30PM. Repeat. I don't think I could do that now. I am not sure how I did it then!


***********************


I hope to get the chance to finish up some of my personal reading this weekend. Reading submissions, too.


***********************


Clue: "Red Light, Yellow Light, Green Light, Go!"


***********************

LA Times Book Award Finalists

Poetry

Marvin Bell, MARS BEING RED (Copper Canyon)
Elaine Equi, RIPPLE EFFECT: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (Coffee House)
Albert Goldbarth, THE KITCHEN SINK: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, 1972-2007 (Graywolf)
Stanley Plumly, OLD HEART: POEMS (W.W. Norton)
Jean Valentine, LITTLE BOAT (Wesleyan)

Investigation Continues

"American Idol" contestant David Hernandez is doing his best to work it in this MySpace profile picture of his. I love it all--the unlikely armchair in the middle of nowhere, the exposed arm pit, the ever-so-suggestive finger pointing at his crotch--it has all the elements of a successful social networking profile pic." (J Harvey from A Socialite's Life)


Hilarious!

Wolves, Wolves, and Wolverine!

"The granddaughter of Argentine poet Juan Gelman urged Uruguayan courts to reopen a probe into the 1976 disappearance of her dissident mother on Wednesday, weeks before her grandfather is to receive the Spanish-speaking world's most prestigious literary prize."

************************




First look at a shot from the upcoming Wolverine movie. I am sorry, but Jackman/Wolverine is so HAWT!


*************************


"Episcopalians are reeling from the news in this week's New Yorker that the late Bishop Paul Moore - the 6-foot-5 patrician whose political activism drove many parishioners from the church - was a closeted homosexual who had a gay lover for the last 30 years of his life. While the Episcopal Church has embraced gays and ordained lesbian priests, Moore's secret life came as a shock. Moore - who made the cover of Newsweek in 1972, when he took over the Archdiocese of New York - died in May 2003. His daughter, Honor Moore, the eldest of nine children he had with his first wife, Jenny McKean, writes that six months after his death, "the telephone rang. [The caller] had a confident voice. Andrew Verver (as I'll call him) was the only person in my father's will whose name was unfamiliar." When Honor asked "Verver," who had traveled with Moore to the Greek island of Patmos the summer before, about her father's sexual life, he replied, 'I was his sexual life,'"

The Honor Moore mentioned here is none other than the poet, Honor Moore.


*************************


Is it possible to be sad when listening to Michael Jackson's "PYT"?


*************************


Clue: Mesmerized


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Easy to Burn

Some newsnotes about Dismal Rock.


****************************


Four more days in clinic, including today, before I finally get vacation: almost three weeks of vacation! I cannot wait. I am practically counting the hours. I love being a physician, but it is tiring work, demanding work. My specialty is also demanding emotionally and psychologically. I need to be recharged, rejuiced. I need this vacation for many reasons.


****************************


Collin might review American Idol, but leave it to us at The Muse to dredge up the dirt. We are all about real investigative journalism here. Hahahahaha. Anyhoo, Idol's David Hernandez used to work as a shirtless bartender in Arizona at a gay bar named BURN. The folks over at Votefortheworst.com posted this pic:




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Speaking of American Idol, Collin fills us in on the women of last night.


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Clue: Poolside Beverage


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Recent Reviews

From Publisher's Weekly:

STARRED REVIEW National Anthem Kevin Prufer. Four Way (UPNE, dist.), $15.95 (82p) ISBN 978-1-88480-083-2

Anyone with doubts about the place of politics in poetry should have this book thrust in his hands. Prufer (Fallen from a Chariot) makes the political personal and the personal political, all in the service of sinuous, moving free verse. He has a rare gift for bringing the inanimate to life on the page. The American West becomes a drifter on a raft, his chest “brown and flecked with hair,” and the title poem begins with a shopping center calling out like a lover. Elsewhere, ancient Rome, its empire in slow, steady decline, is found “curled on a pew, asleep,” a haunting parallel for contemporary America. Poetry—a possible source of salvation?—is a boy locked in a car's trunk, screaming and refusing to die. And there are people in these poems, too: a speaker who writes love notes he describes as “empty and vaguely/ sad.” Dead children, soldiers and those left behind in an evacuation speak and are spoken about. An absurdly large parachute falls over a suburb, and the speaker writes letters to his lover while trying to find his way out from under it. Near the end of the book, Prufer writes, “I don't know what to do/ with the doomed, the chilled over and gone,/ but drink until my fingers become twigs.” This powerful collection, Prufer's fourth, is an ongoing elegy for a dark time in American history(Feb.)


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STARRED REVIEW Boy Patrick Phillips. Univ. of Georgia, $16.95 (63p) ISBN 978-0-8203-3119-5

This second collection from Kate Tufts Award–winner Phillips (Chattahoochee) is haunted by memories, could-have-beens and what-ifs, as when an infant son dies instead of recovering from a fever, or never even makes it through birth. Phillips is consumed with his vulnerability as a parent and finds himself lost in the cyclical recurrences of time: “What happened never happened on its own/ the future and the past collide.” Fatherhood, of course, also recalls mixed memories of being a son. Phillips enacts the anxiety and grief of the knowledge that there is no escape from death, no matter how much we may love and protect someone. “It will be the past/ and we'll live there together” the final poem begins; it ends: “It will be the past/ and it will last forever.” (Apr.)


*************************

Twins

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned...


****************************


OMG! Paul Guest and Barack Obama are twins!


****************************


And yes, another only in San Francisco moment:





****************************


If its got an Idol in it, Collin is ALL over it...


****************************


Q: Is this a Poetry Blog?
A: No, not really.
Q: Are you sure?
A: No, not really.
Q: Shouldn't you know these things?
A: No, not really.


****************************


Clue: Nicanor Parra


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National Anthem

Kevin Prufer's brilliant new book is out now from Four Way Books. You can order it directly from Four Way for a whopping 32% off!

Quickly

100 years ago, from the pages of JAMA. So weird.


************************


"The film strays from the text enough to make the past five generations of high-school English teachers roll over in their graves. But it fills the screen with imaginative action and it moves like a bullet."


************************


Still sick. Still working alone in clinic. Still tired. Basically, I am still me!


************************


Clue: Planet


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Lotus

Made it back to SF almost on time yesterday. Discovered I had a fever. Went to bed early after taking some tylenol. Felt better this morning. No fever now. Went to clinic.


************************


Microsoft Founder leaves millions to gay rights organizations.


************************


Copper Canyon Press is acquiring Ausable Press.


************************


Anti-'s first featured poet is Aaron Belz.


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Clue: 101


************************

Still In the Desert

Still in Tempe, Arizona. I checked the United website and, of course, it says the flight is on-time. But then I checked the FAA webste, and it says all flights in to SF are delayed 1 hour to 1.5 hours. I got the hotel to give me a late checkout, but I will still likely have to hang out at the airport for a few hours before heading home. The ASU Conference was great. I got to see Charlie Jensen in all his type A managerial duty coat.


****************************


Andrew Shields has started up his Daily Poem Project again, which I refer to as Poetry Idol. Notice how it comes back around the same time as American Idol does? If you are interested in voting, swing by his blog.


****************************


Robert Creeley reviewed in the NYT.


****************************


Clue: It's my prerogative...


****************************

Arizona Bound

Gone to the desert! More later.

Semi-

Found this via Christopher Hennessy. It is a hoot:

You Are a Semi-Colon

You are elegant, understated, and subtle in your communication. You're very smart (and you know it), but you don't often showcase your brilliance. Instead, you carefully construct your arguments, ideas, and theories – until they are bulletproof. You see your words as an expression of yourself, and you are careful not to waste them. You friends see you as enlightened, logical, and shrewd. (But what you're saying often goes right over their heads.) You excel in: The Arts You get along best with: The Colon

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

****************************


Collin has it out with the Girls of Idol.


****************************

Still Haunted

Alfred Corn has a blog! Welcome to the blogosphere, Alfred.


****************************


Lots of errands to do today. I am off tomorrow to Arizona, Tempe to be exact, to teach a class, sit on a panel, and then do a reading at the ASU Writers' Conference. All of this will be on Saturday, so it will be a full day. I fly back here to SF on Sunday. It should be a good time.


****************************


A friend of mine is in Egypt right now. And I am so jealous. I have always wanted to go to Egypt. But every time I get close to going, something bad happens and I forego going. But I have this thing in me that says I have to see the Great Pyramids and the Temple at Luxor before I die. I think I have wanted to see them since I was maybe 8 and read about them in books.


****************************


I had a bad dream last night I was back in college, freshman year, sitting through Art of the Italian Renaissance. I was such an idiot then. I was sitting there with one of the world's experts on the Italian Renaissance as my teacher, but all I wanted to do was be somewhere else, specifically in studio or doing mock-ups of paintings. I would sit there and think how my teacher sounded like Dr. Ruth Westheimer. In the dream last night, she called me out in class, asked me to analyze and critique Fra Fillipo Lipi's "Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple." In the dream I freeze because instead of the painting she wants me to critique all I see is some odd sculpture I believe is by Donatello. I am trying to explain this to her, but she keeps getting more and more angry with me. Finally, she says, "Get out! Don't come back until you take the past seriously. You will never be a great artist without being able to see what has come before you!" She then threw a scarf around her neck and turned to another student who quickly critiqued the painting in question. I woke up.


****************************


Clue: Pedal


****************************

Town Crier

Matthew Thorburn has some good news to share. Congratulations, Matthew! Congratulations, also, to my friend, Monica!

Medicine

Jason Sanford dispenses some "harsh medicine" for writers.


****************************


Call For Submissions: 2008 Grub Street Poetry Book Prize for a
non-first book of poetry from a poet outside New England. One winner
receives $1000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to Boston plus
accommodations for a reading, book party, and citywide publicity, and
prominent placement at Harvard Bookstore. The prize offers an exciting
opportunity to promote your work in Boston's thriving literary
community. Postmark deadline: March 15th, 2008. Reading fee/donation:
$10. View guidelines here.


****************************

Because Most Are Blind and Deaf

Rigoberto Gonzalez gives a shout out to James Hall. This is about James' great new book, Now You're the Enemy (Arkansas 2008).


*****************************


Collin takes on the guys! Um, I mean reviews the guys on American Idol last night.


*****************************


"A poem can be a fine place to pinch a title. Much like songs, good poems are filled with lines that resonate, long after a book is closed and the reader has returned to the work of the world."


*****************************


One parent said her daughter told her that several students exchanged text messages the day before the shooting that talked about what the suspect planned to do. Crombach acknowledged that several students told police they heard about 'comments, statements and threats' that were made but that they didn't take the chatter seriously and that there was no evidence that it was reported to school officials. (from LA Times)

&

"In my LGBT community, we argue about who is more pro LGBT rights, Obama or Clinton.

It's been days since Lawrence King was shot dead. Neither candidate has issued a statement or said a word. The national media has done a complete pass on the story.

Both candidates make me sick." (Sara Whitman from Huffington Post)


*****************************


Clue: Never say Never


*****************************

Helios

Well I'll be damned! I never thought he would give up power except through death.


****************************


Spent the weekend finalizing my read of a manuscript. Got my comments and ideas all written out. Sadly, it was not my own ms. but someone else's. I never got to my own ms. But in the end, it was the right decision. There is no rush for my ms. The ms. I wrangled with was filled with good poems. It has the potential to really sing. And I am a good editor (at least I have to believe so...). So, I did the right thing. Not that I don't have regrets, but I did the right thing. I will get to my own ms. soon enough.


****************************


I have been better about trying to send out poems. I have actually gotten acceptances from a few places lately. I used to be really good about keeping my work out, but I have become remiss about sending work out over the past four years or so. I am also busier, so time disappears from me. But I made the first step toard cutting down/cutting back. I resigned from one of the Boards of Directors I was on. More resigning and saying no to come. I would like, by the end of the year, to have medicine, editing, and teaching be my primary responsibilities. I have two more Boards from which to resign, and I have to serve out my term as Chair of Membership for my specialty's national society. I plan to step down as consultant to two organizations. I am serious this time. The next Board resignation is this week.


****************************


Clue: Bedchamber?


****************************

X

"His great-grandfather was Yuan Shih-Kai, the first president of China when it became a republic."


*****************************


I was right to "celebrate" Saturday because the weather yesterday and today were pretty crummy. Overcast, cold, damp.


*****************************


Jacob and I have been watching The Tudors on DVD. It is actually pretty good, even if historically inaccurate at times. I am actually thinking of switching from HBO to Showtime just to see the second season starting up soon.


*****************************


Is there really such a thing as Generation X? Does it really play the role some suggest it does in the Art World, in Literature? Jane Deverson supposedly coined the term Generation X when she was studying teenagers in, get this, the UK. In the sociological study she did, she apparently wrote that these teenagers "sleep together before they are married, don't believe in God, dislike the Queen, and don't respect parents..." She went on to write a book about this study and titled it Generation X. Most would say this "generation" comprises folks born between 1962 and 1982. But is there something about the folks born in the 20-year period that binds them together? Can it really be a global phenomenon considering cultures vary so much across the world? I am fascinated by this, if you couldn't tell.


*****************************


Clue: You have $200 dollars and an hour at Mood....


*****************************

Terrible Lie

I was going to play a terrible joke on all of you in this post, but I decided against it at the last minute.


****************************


More on The Paris Review and its supposed "connection" to the CIA.

"As it turns out, Humes’s belief that he was being followed wasn’t entirely paranoid. After filing a request through the Freedom of Information Act, Immy Humes learned that the government had kept tabs on Humes from the time he applied for a job with the Marshall Plan in Paris in 1948 until the late ’70s. One document has a note from J. Edgar Hoover himself advising someone to check the files on Humes, Immy said."

It just goes to show you aren't paranoid to think people are following you when they are in fact following you!



****************************


"I am hearing what you are saying, but I just can't make a sound...."


****************************


I didn't look too carefully at the new manuscript this morning for fearing of dismantling it. But I did add the last poem. I kind of knew where it should be. Knew the poem it followed and the one I think it precedes. If all goes as it has in the past, I should be able to read it objectively in the Spring. Jacob has read it. I was surprised by what he had to say...


****************************


Clue: You would never guess who has an agent


****************************

Sunshiney Day

It was one of those rare morning where San Francisco actually felt as if it were in California. Driving up the Great Highway, the Pacific off to my left, I suddenly and unexplicably decided to pull off my shirt, open all the windows and the sunroof, turn up the music and floor it. And that is what I did. I thought the car was going to take off when I hit 80 mph and the wind whipped my skin. It was kind of ecstatic really. Once I got up to Land's End, I pulled over, put my shirt back on, closed the windows, and turned down the music. I laughed out loud by myself for the first time in a long time. I laughed and laughed like a crazy person.


****************************


It is amazing how taking people's clothes away equalizes them. Sitting in the hot pool today at the Japanese Hot Springs, I almost burst out laughing again. But I stayed quiet for fear of the old man hitting the gong to call me to silence. I figured, after driving 80 with my shirt off, that today was one of those days where I would just do wacky things. So I keeled myself backward into the cold pool (a mere 52 degrees). Talk about feeling alive. Gasping for air feeling alive. My heart began racing. I could feel my blood in my neck. I stayed under for what I thought was 2 minutes but was likely only 35 seconds.


****************************


I ate a fudge brownie for lunch. Why? Because it is that kind of day.


****************************


Concert tonight at the Symphony. I don't even know what music is being performed, but I don't care. I am just happy to be going.


****************************


When I got home this afternoon, the sprinklers were going next door. I had a mind to run around in them, but I kept it in check. I walked inside slowly, looking at the sprinklers with a kind of slow motion longing.


****************************


Not a poem in my head.


****************************


Hahahahaha. Yes, indeed.


****************************


Who comes to me now bearing gifts and rich fabrics? Who will look me in the eyes and tell me they they like the dark timbre of my voice? Who will dash a mandolin on the ground like an electric guitar in a metal concert? Who will call me Lord without snickering?


****************************


Clue: Bastard


****************************

The Way Back Machine

This summer will mark five years since I was a Fellow at Bread Loaf, and someone recently asked me who my other fellows were. I couldn't remember all of them off the top of my head. When I asked my friend why, he joked that he loves lists like this because it is always amazing to him how many people on awards lists simply disappear within a few years of winning things. His strangest example was the Walt Whitman Award. He named off at least ten poets who had won this award that I have never heard of at all. He claimed they never published another good book. Anyway, Andy, here is the list of Fellows at the 2003 Bread Loaf Writers Conference. From my cursory glance, I think most of us are still around, still writing and publishing.


2003 Fellows at Bread Loaf


Tom Bissell--Bernard De Voto Fellow in Nonfiction

Christopher Castellani--Theodore Morrison Fellow in Fiction

Ann Cummins--Amanda Davis Memorial Fellow in Fiction

Beth Ann Fennelly--Richard Soref Fellow in Poetry

Tom Franklin--Jane Tinkham Broughton Fellow in Fiction

Jennifer Grotz--Katherine Bakeless Nason Fellow in Poetry

Helon Hebila--John Farrar Fellow in Fiction

James Hoch--John Ciardi Fellow in Poetry

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers--Alan Collins Fellow in Poetry

Tayari Jones--Fletcher Pratt Fellow in Fiction

Sally Keith--Margaret Bridgman Fellow in Poetry

Suji Kwock Kim--Meralmikjen Fellow in Poetry

Dana Levin--Robert Frost Fellow in Poetry

Lisa Michaels--Alan Collins Fellow in Fiction

Naeem Murr--Margaret Bridgman Fellow in Fiction

Michael Perry--Katherine Bakeless Nason Fellow in Nonfiction

Sara Pritchard--Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellow in Fiction

Sarah Stone--Shane Stevens Fellow in the Novel

Monique Truong--John Gardner Fellow in Fiction

Vendela Vida--Shane Stevens Fellow in Fiction

C. Dale Young--Stanley P. Young Fellow in Poetry


************************

7even

Michael S. Harper is the winner of this year's Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America. (registration may be required)


************************


TGIF. What else can I say!


************************


The Hollywood round is over, which means it is time to start watching American Idol. And once we start watching American Idol, there is only one Idol critic we at The Muse have to read faithfully: Collin Kelley. His post on the top 24 is a mere warm-up. He is sharpening his claws. He is doing his stretches. And we are ready for Tuesday night!


************************


Clue: Lust! One of the 7 deadly Zins...


************************

Oh YES!

Try this. You'll like it. I promise. I swear.

Blackout!

Prepare to have the top of your head cleanly taken off!



Can I get a Hallelujah? Can I get an Amen! I am so excited I may start speaking in tongues....


**************************

Abrazos y besos

Happy V-D! St. Valentine is surely spinning in his grave today. That said, any excuse to cherish one's beloved should be taken.


*****************************


Brent Goodman has some good news to share. So stop on by and give him some love...


*****************************


More from Oxnard. The irony? There are people out there who believe no child should ever learn that gay people exist, that to let them learn such people exist would somehow destroy them. Sadly, when kids never learn about diversity, they can grow into monsters that destroy others! Literally...


*****************************


This is from my first book, The Day Underneath the Day (Northwestern 2001):




*****************************


Clue: Arrow


*****************************

Victor #25

Jacob has spoken. And the winner of Caption Contest #25 is Adam Deutsch:




"New from Victoria's Secret: the Push-Up Wonder Thong for Men."


******************************


Congratulations, Adam! You win bragging rights, a $25 gift certificate to Amazon, and entry into the Year End Caption Contest Throw Down! Adam needs to email me so we can set up his prize. My email can be found on my regular cdaleyoung.com website.


******************************


Runner Up: Nate McClain for "And Jimmy misinterprets, 'Why don't you strap on a rubber and let's take a dip?' Heather is doubly disappointed."


******************************


As always, Jacob and I thank all who entered for bringing us much fun. Until next time!


******************************

Soapbox

Hate remains alive and well, and we continue to teach it to our children...

(S)urges and Sailing

Apparently, the U.S. isn't the only country experiencing a surge in people's desire to study ceatve writing.


*****************************


In a month, I will be sailing in the Caribbean. I wish to God it was a month from now. Right now.


*****************************


I hope to close up the caption contest by around mid-day. So, if you haven't posted an entry and want to do so, you might want to do so now. And yes, the man in the photo is John Mayer. Would I make this kind of stuff up?


*****************************


D.A. Powell has a poem up at linebreak this week.


*****************************


Clue: The Missing One


*****************************

C is for Caprica

A big thank you to Joe Massey for reminding me of this poem. I have always had a love for this poem. Those who know me well will know why.


******************************



DRUNKEN WINTER

   Oak oak! like like
   it then
        cold some wild paddle
   so sky then;
   flea you say
   “geese geese” the boy
   June of winter
   of again
   Oak sky

--Joseph Ceravolo


******************************




Of course I do the various things I do. Why do people find that such an odd thing? There are many copies of me. Destroy one of us and the one destroyed will simply download to the others. Kill one of us and the other copies will know you did it .


******************************

Pot o Gold

It is so strange how things work in life. I finally sent out some poems, and suddenly I get multiple solicitations for poems. This Murphy's Law thing is too weird. I am not sure I even have any poems to send now. And writing any is out of the question.


*****************************


Have you entered the Caption Contest yet? Well, for what are you waiting?


*****************************


It is posts like this that make me love Ron Silliman. And no, that is not a dig...


*****************************


Tom Sleigh wins the Kingsley Tufts Prize and is $100,000 richer.


*****************************


Clue: Frosty


*****************************

The Church Is Always Suprising Us

*****************************

Caption Contest #25

There was a change in the air. You knew it was coming. Yes, it is that time again. Time for the caption contest. As always, the rules are the same. Post captions in the comments box below. Jacob shall select the winning caption. He is the Judge extraordinaire. The winner gets bragging rights and may or may not receive a monetary prize (usually a $25 gift certificate). The award of money is decided before the contest opens. You know, another level of surprise.

The photo this time is:




*****************************


Well, will you enter? Or will you just watch from the sidelines? Let the games begin...


*****************************

The Forest

If, for some reason, you have missed this, you may want to check it out. A lot happens in the comments section.


*****************************


Beautiful day yesterday. We drove up to Napa with our friends JF and MC. The Brown Estate wine release party was great. We stopped at a couple more wineries on the way back, and then once back in the City, we went to a Burmese bistro for a quick dinner. And then all hell broke loose. Yes, Jacob and I discovered Wii, specifically Wii bowling. Dear God, that game is pure addiction!


*****************************


On a different note, this slice of brilliance:

"the giant machinery of poetry—all those schools, CVs, conferences, retreats, blogs, publishers, and reviews that eat up so much of the foreground for those of us hustling in the art—ratchets down to a one-on-one encounter with a reader that no grant can really measure. True of all the arts, but especially so with poetry, where there's no reliable yardstick of "the popular." For all the welcome talk about community, poetry's paradoxically most political and subversive, for me at least, where it's most anti-social; where it turns the late-capitalist pyramid on its head, putting its trees and factories and foundries and editors and ink at the service, for an instant, of the 91-year-old person who listens."


*****************************


David Bespiel takes a look at Olena Kalytiak Davis' work.


*****************************


“I don’t know if it’s better to speak out or keep silent, but if everyone keeps silent, the truth will be buried,” (registration may be required)


*****************************


I think I am starting to see the scaffolding of the new manuscript more clearly. I am incredibly jealous of poets who can see their next book as they are writing the poems. I do not have this skill or talent. I cannot see the forest. I walk around it placing white chalk X's here and there all the while praying I can find my way out.


*****************************


Clue: Tony Arzadon


*****************************

Less Than a Thousand Words

Jacob's Etude was amazing. His was the first piece performed, and it was wonderful to hear the piece sung. I had heard the piece before played digitally, but the computer doesn't do voice well and substitutes a flute. Totally not the same. Before the concert, we had dinner with our friend Jenn. And today, we are off to a Zinfandel release party. I saw my friend and former student BJ at the concert. He recently had some poems accepted at a very prestigious journal. Made me happy all around. A great night.


*****************************


Jennifer Grotz is up at Poetry Daily today with a poem from the last issue of NER.


*****************************


Paul Guest has a release date!


*****************************


Clue: Um, Stewardess?


*****************************

The Republic

Someone emailed me asking for a James Hall poem since I raved about his new book earlier. Well, here is one of his poems:




PORTRAIT OF MY MOTHER AS THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS


After my mother won independence in 1836,
she dysfunctioned as her own nation, passed laws,
erected monuments to men who would never again
be slaves to order and pain.

Remember the Alamo? That was my mother.

Then in 1845 that always-pleasing church-mouse voted
for annexation. My mother had too many selves and the desire
to enslave them all. Pregnant, she was forced
to become the twenty-eighth child of the American family.
Lone star no longer.

She joined a lineage of jacked-to-jesus hair, developed insatiable
cravings for honey barbecue. Her uncles sauntered up, stroked
the thin lace of her, declared she looked mighty good.
She let them say mighty good while grinning at one another.

Nothing grew then on the prairies of my mother.

Then she learned dissent, demanded men recognize her
sovereignty. She organized an embassy in a silver trailer
shaped like a virgin bullet. My mother renamed herself
The Republic of Texas, unfurled her flag all the way

into the 1980's, when the Republic kidnapped her neighbors,
Joe and Margaret Rowe, to highlight abuses she'd suffered.
My mother was an American terrorist.

Don't mess with Texas.

She died in the standoff. My new mother was elected
by a landslide and moved to Cuero, a city whose largesse
depends on retirement pensions. My peaceful mother
holds weekly rallies: 'What do we want? When do we want it?'

Her lipstick stains the bullhorn mauve.

In her spare time, my mother receives foreign dignitaries
and does dry-wall. The Global Conglomerate of my Mother
opened her first staffed consulate in Barcelona.
She insists visitors speak American.

Currently, the Republic is facing lean times.
The former treasurer neglected May's utilities,
refuses to return the funds. Pledge your support today.
My motherland is standing by
the rotary phone, waiting for your call.

Love her or leave her.


--James Allen Hall
from Now You're the Enemy (Arkansas 2008)

Surely Insured

Oh Dear God! This is out of control. Maybe I should insure my...


******************************


Yes, my maternal grandfather is named William Richard Extant August. The William in my name is his.


******************************


"Cathal O'Searcaigh, 52, who is one of Ireland's best known poets whose poems are taught in schools, has been accused by a filmmaker he befriended of having sex with under-16 boys in Nepal."


******************************


Another MFA Program is born...


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I am so excited to hear Jacob's "Etude for Soprano and Harp" tonight. If any of you want to stop by the San Francisco Conservatory for the concert tonight, it is free and open to the public (though they do request donations, if possible).


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I have almost finished reading James Hall's new book. It is captivating and incredible. No wonder it sold out at AWP.


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Clue: "You put word in Mommie mouth..."


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Autumn After Rain

If you are in the Bay Area and want to come hear some good modern classical music, come to this. The first piece being performed, an Étude for Soprano and Harp, was written by my very own Jacob. You can now find Program Notes for the concert.


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Alone in clinic again. Unexpectedly. Rough.


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Thanks for the good words some of you gave me about the sneak peek look at "In the Cutting Room." Now I just need to actually send some poems out.


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I am tired. Bone tired and weary. I think something is wrong with me.


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Clue: the Penthouse Life


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Blue, Blue Like the Comma

I have spent almost the entire day so far reading submissions. I still have about an hour or so more to go. I am suddenly struck by how many people out there write poems. I guess this is on my mind after the recent AWP. A young man, likely a graduate student, asked me if I had any advice on how to be succesful. I was so struck by this that all I could answer was "Successful in what way?" And as we talked, I realized I had no idea how one is successful in Poetry. So much depends on what a poet wants from his/her writing. In the end I said the only thing I could: read, read, read, write, read some more. I don't know how else to become a better poet much less a successful one. But as I sit here reading submissions, I wonder if this mantra of reading and writing is even enough. I don't know. Maybe you could spend an entire lifetime reading and writing and never get any better. Maybe not. Sometimes, I think I think too much...


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I am re-reading some Genet. Genet is one of those writers that seem more difficult to me each time I return to them. Their works become more difficult with successive readings. I am fascinated by this.


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People are, by their very nature, cruel. I believe this. I believe it is in our genes. The instinct of survival sometimes drives us to eliminate the other. We like to think the mind more powerful than the body. But it isn't. It isn't in the slightest.


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I know, I am a big downer today. At least the sun is out right now in San Francisco. And I am alive, which is always nice.... Trying to be funny.


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Clue: Ice Cold


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No News Is Good News

I thought this was pretty funny, so thought I would share it with you all. A friend emailed it to me not long ago:


The Demographics of American Newspapers

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country .

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in colorful pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country -- if they could find the time -- and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a poor job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who is running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure if there is a country or that anyone is running it; but ! if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.

12. The Oregonian is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something in which to wrap it.

Heart, Attacks

NBCC releases its new list: Good Reads --- Winter List


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Twice in the past 10 days I have had the same dream. I dream that I am dreaming. Specifically, I dream that I am having a nightmare of some kind. In both dreams I wake up and am my 10-13 year old self at home in Florida. In both instances, I know it is a nightmare but ve no idea what it is about. And in both, I am completely shocked to find myself back in adolescence. I mean, I know I am not supposed to be 12 in the dream. What is up with this dream? What the hell does it mean?


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I did not go to hear John Ashbery when I was at AWP. I didn't want to freak out seeing him in real life. As long-time readers know, he shows up in my dreams fairly often. Well, at least once or twice a year. Seeing him in real life might have given me a heart attack.


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I need to update my recomended book list over in the side bar.


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Joel Brouwer reviews Robert Pinsky. (may require registration)


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RIP, Jorge Liderman. The pain is now gone.


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Clue: Repetition


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Five Fires

Wow. People really do love them some Mary Oliver.


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Our flight back was delayed, but other than that it was a decent trip back. We ran into friends at the airport, which helped the time pass a little bit more quickly while waiting. Today, back to work.


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Oscar has a few words for the Poet Laureate.


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I have had this song in my head now for over 24 hours. I know little about the singer, but I am impressed by the way he carries pain in his voice at key parts in the song.




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Clue: "Dear God, man, do they want tea?"


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Coffee and Consequence

AWP is over. Am sitting drinking coffee looking out over New York Harbor at the Statue of Liberty. In some ways, this was a good AWP for me. Staying at a non-conference hotel is a life-saver for helping preserve mental normalcy. I like seeing friends and chit-chatting, but I don't want to be in the middle of AWP for the entire conference. AWP is one of those things you can make of it what you want. If you want panels galore, you can do that. If you want something less formal, there is that, too.


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I heard more gossip this time than ever before. The best part is to hear the gossip filter back about ME! Most of it is so far-fetched, you have to wonder how on earth such a rumor started.


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Jacob bought too many pairs of shoes in New York. He kept finding sales and, well, he couldn't pass them up. I bought nothing.


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We ate at a Mexican seafood place last night named Pompano. It was delicious. All in all we had some wonderful meals here.


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I met several people at this AWP that I have "known" on-line but never met in real life. In all instances, they were nice people.


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An Interview with Major Jackson.


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Clue: Weimar


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Winding Down

AWP has gone by in a blur, for the most part. The Bookfair is out of control. Three floors of craziness. I did my book signing yesterday. A big thank you to all of you who stopped by to say hi. The Four Way Books 15th Anniversary Reading is today at 1:30 pm in the Regent Parlour on the second floor of the Hilton. I'll be one of six poets on their list reading. I am sure there are tons of other things happening at the same time because this is, after all, AWP. And this is how AWP works.


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Dinner at Buddakan last night was fantastic. Sadly, the Buddakan in NYC does not serve the ginger mojitos like the one in Philadelphia.


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Glad to be flying home tomorrow. I love NYC, but I love SF more. Sorry, NYC.


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The Conference and Bookfair is open to the Public today. It might be total mayhem when I get over there. We'll see.


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Clue: Caption


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The Rain

Le Colonial was great last night. I think, however, I like the one in San Francisco better. After dinner, Jacob and I went to the Warren Wilson reception, which was fun but really loud! A weird band played jazz and an assortment of other things with the focal point being a really loud trombone.


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Pouring rain today. If you are here at AWP, I am signing books today at the Four Way Books table from 2 to 3 PM. Stop by and say hi.


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Saw Reb Livingston last night. That woman really is a livewire!


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Clue: Stella!


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