Chapbook News

Just off the phone tonight with Phil Memmer, who let me know that my manuscript "Touch Me Not" has won the Two Rivers Review Poetry Chapbook Prize. I'm very happy: these are some of the poems that will (eventually) comprise my next (hopefully) full-length book ("The Boy Who Reads in the Trees"). And I'm delighted to follow on the heels of last year's winning chap, written by my friend Scott Withiam. (Yo, Scott! We're on the same page!)

Going out for celebratory ice cream. . .

Indiana Review arrives

The new Indiana Review is here: the collaboration/collage issue. Some of the usual suspects, a few whom I adore. Some nice surprises, too. And a little poem that I co-wrote with Katie Hays, a former student and dear friend and collaborator, who claims not to be a poet (she's an awesome fiction writer), though I know better.

It's an odd bounce, to see a poem finally in print, even though one knows it's coming out, expects it (or sometimes forgets all about it): the poem on the page always lags behind, somewhere in the vee-wake of our moving forward, writing (or fretting about writing) the next thing. Maybe we're facing that wake and see its little face bobbing in the water. Maybe we're too busy facing forward and don't pay enough attention. I'm building this lameass metaphor but it feels appropriate nonetheless. It is a little bounce. It doesn't last. We always want the next thing.

Tonight, anyway, I'm happy that our poem's in IR. And I'm delighted to still be collaborating with Katie (umm, that sonnet we're doing? It's your turn).

Cleaning House

Bleh. How much e-mail collects on my office computer! I've been setting up mail filters to auto-dump stuff I don't need to see. But still, it's daunting. All this because I'll be changing offices soon. Let's not even talk about the boxes of paper, which I swear I am not carting home until everything can fit into one box: one single box and no more. The attic is not an option.

The home computer crashed. Sent a couple of odd error messages the day before, which I now recognize as its bleeping attempt to warn us of the impending flatline. I said to Randy, rather idly, "We should back up our files" (all the while wondering if I even knew how to move stuff to a CD or DVD) . . . The campus tech desk took the tower and said they'd try to retrieve our data & reinstall our OS. Will see. I've never even used "OS" so casually in a sentence before. And I still don't know how to back up my data onto a CD.

Skating along the thin ice of cyberspace.

What I'm reading now, again, with continued admiration: Brian's book is simply terrific.

Hanging with the June Poets

The June Seminar is in full swing, and I'm happy to be working with another batch of talented young poets. It's pure delight to spend time with Mary Ruefle, our visiting poet: I haven't seen her since grad school. Her work still stuns me...