Week in Review

I meant to post yesterday and the day before. Oh, well. Here's what's been going on of late:

• Last weekend I finished a blurb for Jeff Mann's new book of poems, On the Tongue, which is due out this summer from Gival Press. Check out Jeff's web site for more on his (prolific!) work.
• We got our new cell phones on Friday. Randy had studied the on-line reviews & compared models, so it was easy to go along with his recommendation. So now we have flip-phones, kinda neat: they take photos (with flash!) and do all sorts of things that I will probably never learn or need.
• My sister, whose job takes her all over the country, offered to provide us with a rental car so we can drive to Ohio to see the family. I promised to send her my schedule so we could coordinate a visit. We have a truck, and it's been very dependable, though it doesn't have air conditioning. (My Saturn is still parked in the alley: one of the first things I want to do when my new salary kicks in this fall is get my car roadworthy again. This will probably mean new tires, new battery, new hoses. It's just been sitting there. Our money goes to pressing things like food and rent. I don't like to talk about it.) Randy thinks that I should go, if I can, in mid-May, and then later this summer (late July, after summer session) we can both try to go.
• We need rain. It's been, like, sixteen days, and this, added to the relatively dry winter, has our region in the early stages of a drought. It's maddening to watch the radar and see rain showers just an hour to the south, knowing it won't reach us.
• My friend D's manuscript is a finalist for the National Poetry Series. I'm so excited for her. I know they select a pretty large number of finalists, and that chances of winning are only one in ten at this stage, but still it seems to me an incredibly validating event, especially given that so many of the poems are new--I've seen several of them over the past six months as D has been writing them--and since I don't know anyone else who's a finalist this year (I'm sure I probably know *someone* else, just haven't heard) I am totally rooting for D (whose anonymity I preserve here because it really is *her* news, not mine).
• Still waiting for my copy of Amanda Auchter's new chapbook, which I ordered back in the Pleistocene.
• The columbines are blooming: these are "Barlow" columbines, generally double-flowered: they look like very full petticoats and so far each plant bears a different color, which is exciting because I started them from seed last year and the wait is finally ending as to what they will actually look like in bloom. The first to open was a dusty rose-pink, very nice. Then a deep violet which, though not double, is (so far) Randy's favorite. Then another pink, much paler, with a cream interior. Then a sort of rust-red. I planted I think twelve seedlings along the shaded side of our back walkway, and those in the sunniest area are large and robust, but even among the five or six plants in deeper shade under the white pines, two have sent up smallish bloom stalks. I also gave several seedlings to the Kellys next door, and one of theirs is the same pink as ours. Also, the last time I visited the folks, I dug some seedlings of wild columbine from their (gravel) driveway. These are the great-great-great offspring of columbines that grew in Rue's garden, which I still remember vividly from my childhood. (More about Rue some other time.) The species is Aquilegia canadensis, the common eastern columbine that grows in rocky forest crevices--the same plant on a limestone shelf might grow six or eight inches high; in our garden, they are two feet tall. It will be great fun to collect the seeds this summer and see what sort of crosses may have developed. Randy says it's fine with him if I plant *lots* more columbines. I'll take photos to post soon.
• Paula (Closson Buck) has wonderful news: her second book, Dogs at the Temple, was taken by LSU Press and will be out in (I think) 2008. LSU published her first book, The Acquiescent Villa, in 1998. I've seen many of the poems in the new manuscript over the past couple of years, and it's really strong: I think its publication was inevitable, just one of those extraordinarily good works that has to eventually land a good home. And though LSU's titles are off-puttingly expensive, it's a pretty fine press to call home.
• Eric Leigh (according to Eduardo) is a winner of this year's Nation/Discovery Award! I love Eric's poems--we published a couple in West Branch a while back. Very happy to hear this!
• I wrote Eduardo a postcard--twice--while he was at MacDowell, but the first time I didn't have a stamp and I stuck the card in a book. The second time, what I'd written just seemed sappy and pretentious. I need to get better at this.
• Oh, and my P&W entry came up really quickly, within less than 48 hours I think--I received a e-mail notification but haven't yet gone to look myself up.

It's cool and cloudy today. I'm writing upstairs and trying to remember to check the laundry once in a while. Randy called his dad this morning--R has had dreams several nights in a row now about his late mother--and heard a little about another ancestor, a Rowsey I think he said, who was married to a guy who helped to guard Lincoln's casket. Our local mail carrier, Mike, has written several books about the Civil War era, so R flagged him down--I could hear them outside talking about how to research this name--and pretty soon R was online and had located some interesting stuff.

I can't believe it's almost 3 in the afternoon. We've both had rotten headaches all day; I'm just trying to push along but there's this out-of-time-ness to everything I do, a dull throbbing bubble I can't escape.