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2011-11-20T11:01:00.001-05:00

BACK

As in here again but also my aching--
last week at work as I bent repeatedly
picking up trash others had abandoned
on the receiving area floor, I felt something pop
and haven't been right since. This is not
a complaint. I'm pushing through, pushing on,
though it hurts to stand, hurts to sit, hurts
to maneuver down the stairs one at a time
like some octogenarian. Putting on socks
in the morning's an ordeal. I can't kneel
at work to scan the bottom shelves when
taking inventory. Friday, buoyed by pain
relievers and caffeine, I knelt to retrieve
an ink cartridge for a customer and burst
out a yelp like a kicked dog. Apologized.
Handed the cartridge up to her and waved
her to the register across the store, thinking
Can't stay here, thinking How the hell
do I get up? This is not
where I thought I'd be, I said to Marjorie
after the poetry reading on Tuesday, my
first chance in months to attend language
joyfully, publicly, finally free of the shame
of not getting that job, yes, but also
and more importantly of dreading
the what-are-you-working-on chitchat
unavoidable when meeting old friends
who (still) teach. And she agreed, of course
it's odd for us all to look around, look
back, think How on earth? This is not
the end of the world, to be employed
when so many are not, though the pay's
obscenely low--fully half this month's
wages are going to my mechanic to keep
my 15-year-old car roadworthy, and though
the second bill was a shocker (the check
engine light flashing the very day after
the Saturn passed inspection, following
two hundred dollars' worth of repairs),
and though I moaned You guys are killing
me here as I wrote out two more post-dated
checks, handing over half of what
I haven't yet earned, of course I remembered
to thank him for a job well done.

Printing & folding & mailing & designing but mostly I'm at work

2011-10-09T21:18:00.001-04:00

And so go the days. I'm past the midpoint of an eight-day workweek and yes, I'm tired. Tired, tired. Not in the sense of the mental exhaustion that accompanied teaching, but in the rubber-to-the-road sense, the don't-cross-the-store-without-something-in-hand-because-there's-always-more-to-do-than-anyone-can-accomplish sense, the yes-I'm-happy-to-discuss-your-business-card-design-setup-while-your-screaming-child-throws-saliva-sodden-Fruit-Loops-at-me-and-knocks-everything-from-the-counter sense. And thank you for letting us serve your copy and print needs. And do come again.

Meanwhile, I have a micropress to run. My god, I'm so grateful for the huge response we've had over the past year. It may not be huge by anyone else's standards, but it definitely set me months behind. I'm used to doing all this by myself, but now there's so much more of it to do. Was it a mistake to take on so many titles and commit to keeping 90% of them in print? I still don't think so, but I've realized that these delays have probably left more than a few folks bewildered or even pissed off. I'm trying, I'm really trying, to catch up.

I think I have the design figured out for Lou's chapbook--sending a mock-up to the author tonight. And printing out more page sets of Ava's chapbook, in hopes of getting copies I owe out by mid-week. And working on assembling Daniel's copies, also to send out mid-week. And trying to get this fresh batch of Catherine's chap packaged up to go into the mail by Tuesday. And I need to buy paper to finish a fresh set of copies for Boyer. And Pedro's page sets need to be tied.

And my feet hurt. And I'm sorry to have missed the Small Press Festival in Pittsburgh this year. Sigh.

Fair days

2011-10-06T10:46:00.000-04:00

The fair days of fall are here--no rain forecast for the next few days at least--and I'm stuck this week with a split shift, 12-8, that lets me enjoy neither morning nor evening outside. I'm ready to get back to my 7-3: as much as I hate getting up at 5 (okay, more like 5:30 after I hit the snooze button once or twice), I love coming home in mid-afternoon and feeling like there's something left of the day.

The Hoagland reading was as expected: good, but nothing to take away and ponder, no lines ringing in my head, no images that rang with sudden recognition. I'm not being completely fair. It was a good reading. He brought race into the conversation, which is admirable. I'm pretty familiar with several of his books, so wasn't expecting to be too surprised. He's a lovely person. I hear his Q&A went very well. In the end, I just didn't feel that the poems went far enough. Maybe that's an unfair expectation. I'm just sayin'.

Must rush to shower and stop at the post office to mail four chapbooks. I have about a dozen more of Catherine Staples' chapbook ready to mail and hope I can get those out tomorrow. Tonight, assembling more covers of Daniel Terry's Days of Dark Miracles and thinking about the cover design of Louis McKee's forthcoming chap.

This is all I do.

In haste--

2011-10-04T17:52:00.000-04:00

Managed to schedule the day off so I could attend Tony Hoagland's reading at Bucknell tonight. It starts in an hour--ack!--and we haven't had dinner yet.

Met with my friend Paula H to talk about a possible logo design for Seven Kitchens Press. I've already seen some good designs from someone who responded to my FB post last week. Paula's going to try a different angle. Looking forward to seeing what she comes up with.

Assembled 20 chapbooks today, mostly copies of Mary Meriam's The Poet's Zodiac, which catches me up with those orders (assuming I can get them into the mail tomorrow). A steady, busy day, punctuated now and then by sunshine. I hear tomorrow's going to be beautiful.

The last morel

2011-05-08T21:29:00.000-04:00

Discovered this in the garden while trying to get a good photo of the columbines blooming under the white pines--too late in the evening for good light, and taken with my phone's camera to boot, but here's what may be the last morel of this bountiful crop:

(Sorry it's blurry.)

Prodigal

2011-04-30T14:00:00.000-04:00

I'm completely in love with Ed Madden's new book of poems, Prodigal: Variations (from Lethe Press), and have been reading it slowly, one or two poems a day, since it arrived earlier this week. Full disclosure: I published Ed's chapbook, Nest, in a limited edition of 49 copies last summer. Some of those poems are here, but it's not for their familiarity that I'm so drawn to this book. It's simply gorgeous: attentive to detail, personal yet mythical, each poem draws me in quietly but with a sure-footed lyrical eye and ear. A gorgeous collection. Go read this book.

apathy spire

2011-04-24T15:38:00.001-04:00

Sadie's wet nose woke me at 5:30 this morning. I thought it was Saturday evening as I got up, dressed, and headed downstairs to take her for a walk. Apparently, I slept straight through yesterday evening after coming home from work. Mehh, rest is what the body needs sometimes.

There were two text messages from my sister (I carry my cell phone and keep the camera setting on--you never know what you'll see: an egret in the creek, curling birch bark against the light, petals on a wet black bough. . .): 1) "Marm has cling on letters to the kitchen window that state HAPPY EASTER! (the ! can be substituted for an i)" and 2) "Work your magic and I'll make it happen."

I know there are anagram generators out there, but I like trying the old school method. First to mind was a pithy spree, which I rather like for its sound, even if it is a bit lispy. Then I arrived at apathy spire and decided I could do no better on this easter Sunday, averse as I am to the mob of christians singing joy, joy, joy every year on this day in the park where Sadie takes her dumps.

But no one else was in the ark--err, park this morning as we walked our usual route, the rain misting gently, the streets empty for now, not a drunk Bucknell student in sight. Sadie nosed about, sometimes gently tugging on the leash if I took too long trying to focus the camera phone. A compact digital cam sounds nice, but there'd still be the tugging. How many dog-walking photographers do you know? (I can think of one, Jeff Oaks, whose joyful play with Bailey when I visited last fall thawed my unreadiness at believing there'd ever be a new dog in my life whom I loved as much as our original Sadie, and whose photos from their--his and Bailey's--morning walks I always look forward to seeing on Facebook.)

I do have a great digital cam, a Canon Power Shot S2. It's about five years old, I think, and it's the cam that finally seduced me away from David's old Canon with all the wonderful lenses, tripods, and accessories (which I was happy to pass along to my friend Gretchen last year). I enjoyed working in the darkroom at Bucknell when I taught there and dabbled with the photo club, but for me, digital wins because (a) it's cheaper, (b) the satisfaction (or chagrin, depending) is pretty much immediate, and (c) I still don't know what happens, ultimately, to all those photo processing chemicals, some of which I fear might end up in the river.

The Canon has a decent macro option, and I find that my preference in photography is for extreme close-up shots of very small objects (or portions thereof) and also, though unrelated, for images that play with shadows and low-light subjects.

So once in a while I'll drag the camera along on Sadie's walks, but mainly I rely on the phone's built-in cam. This morning I took four shots (three on purpose--the fourth was a crosswalk stripe, totally blurred and of no interest):

Something about the daffodils in such dim light appealed to me, as if they themselves were a light source that was just waking up. (As I said, I'm drawn to shadows.)

This one's blurred by happy accident (Sadie's leash tug); I think it nicely captures the early-morning, lightly-raining, not-quite-wakeful walk back home.

This one is taken from our back yard; I cropped out the neighbor's house at the end of the alley. A bit of moon through the budding crabapple.

resurrected

2011-04-22T20:19:00.000-04:00

I'm back. I've missed you, too. After juggling more plates than I could manage, I confess it was a small relief to hear several crash and splinter around me. Still picking and sorting.

Winter was a reminder that, when the show and pizzazz of topside greenery & finery, of fancy & ambition, are lopped by life's cold shears, it's always possible to return to one's working class roots. And so I took a retail job in December, grateful to have gotten an interview, then another, then an offer. I'm working at Staples in Selinsgrove, about a 15-minute drive from home. There's a Staples in Lewisburg, where we live, but they didn't offer me an interview (phhhtt!).

I've been working my ass off. Learning something every day, mainly about the myriad nuances of the copy & print world and the machines we use at the store, though once in a while I make a brief but sincere human connection with a customer, many who say things like "I could sense that you were deeper." Than what? (Don't answer this, please.)

And the pay, as many of you must know, is staggeringly, mind-blowingly insufficient. I won't make other comparisons between my former life in academia to my current work week, except to say I thought that, with no essays to grade, I'd be writing more.

On the plus side, I have rocketed to my current level of part-time Copy Center Associate, which is a promotion (of sorts) over the level at which I was hired. I was even selected Associate of the Month for February. In short, ladies and gents, I am making lemonade. So. Much. Lemonade.

* * * * * * *

I also thought I'd somehow get ahead of the production schedule over at Seven Kitchens. Uhhh, no. I'm further behind than ever; it's embarassing. Growing pains of a three-year-old with too-big ambitions? Maybe. Somewhat. But I'm in love with those ambitions (a new series for writers of color; a no-fee open reading period; our long-overdue anthology series; working with co-editors TK and EC).

Today at the store I met a young artist who needed to print some work for his portfolio. I was totally blown away by his work--fresh, creative, very insightful, very professional designs. I wished I'd had the budget to hire the guy right on the spot! (Someday, maybe, if I'm lucky and the press continues to grow. . .) Besides, I'm already lucky to have worked with some madly talented artists on our chapbook designs. I really do count my blessings in that regard.

So if you're wondering what's going on at the press, I'm still here. Our production schedule is seriously out of whack, but I hope to get caught up by the end of summer. How can I help, you ask? Aww, thanks. As soon as I have a couple of hours and a clearer mind, I need to write out a call for volunteers (interns) (whatever you want to call yourselves). I could use help in about a dozen areas--interviewing our authors, updating the Word Press site, researching libraries and other collections, designing chapbook covers, trimming and folding pages, sewing/tying/assembling chapbooks, preparing review copies for mailing--these are just a few off the top of my head. And, of course, you can always buy our chapbooks; they make great gifts for the readers in your life--and shipping is free during National Poetry Month.

* * * * * * *

In which I'm sort of participating, but in a very low-key manner (as opposed to last year's write-and-post-a-poem-each-day-in-April NaPoWriMo challenge madness). I'm re-reading all of our Seven Kitchens chapbooks, one each day, in the order that they were published, and selecting one line from each to work into a poem. It's not going all that well, partly because I'm trying to catch up with other, more pressing tasks each evening when I get home from work, and partly because I just feel so tired a lot of the time. But even if I can't write a poem a day, I'm determined to work through the sequence and see what comes of it.

On a somewhat related note (I'll just toss this out there), is anyone interested in writing a collaborative poem or two? Bearing in mind that my writing schedule is *very* spotty right now? Hit me up; let's talk about it.

Books in brief

2010-12-04T18:47:00.000-05:00

I finished John Daniel's Looking After last night, wishing I liked it better but determined to stick through to the end. In brief, here's why.
I suspended the Free Book Friday giveaway because--well, because I wasn't getting reimbursed for the postage. Which isn't a huge deal, but could become one if it continued. May bring it back later; we'll see. Meanwhile, there's always paperbackswap.com, where I've already given away about 70 books, most of them traded for poetry or quilting books, which makes me very happy. It's like a perpetual birthday at the post office these days.
If you're a Goodreads fan (and if not, you should be) and have any favorite LGBT poetry titles, please consider adding them to this list. I set it up late last night after searching and not finding one in their Listopia section. It's woefully incomplete, and I will add more titles, but I can only tack on about 25 more before reaching the limit and the ones I've posted already are more alphabetical than in any order of "bestness"--so please do add/vote for your favorites.

We're having Indian for dinner. The house smells incredible. I mean, I-could-lick-this-smell-off-the-walls incredible.

Brief chap review

2010-11-24T23:59:00.001-05:00

Helen Mirren Picks Out My Clothes by Andrew Terhune

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes I'm a total sucker for this kind of jaunty, topical, oh-so-clever pop art. I opened this very slender item at the press table at this year's Small Press Festival in Pittsburgh, read one random poem, and had to buy it. I was not disappointed.

View all my reviews

Free Book Friday #5: Goodies in Spanish

2010-11-12T23:59:00.001-05:00

Up for grabs this weekend are a few books in Spanish, including one bilingual Spanish-English collection:

Los relampagos de agosto by Jorge Ibarguengoitia, a nice 1979 paperback edition purchased in Puebla, Mexico back in 1991. Great condition.
La barca sin pescador by Alejandor Casona: first American edition, hardcover, published in 1955 by Oxford University Press. Spanish with an English introduction. Book is in good condition, but spine and part of back cover have some cloth deterioration ("scabby" spots).
Y no se lo trago la tierra by Tomas Rivera, published as a bilingual Spanish/English volume. The translation, And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, is by Evangelina Vigil-Pinon. First paperback edition, published in 1987 by Arte Publico Press in Houston. Pretty good shape, with some edge wear to the covers.

Remember: you may claim any book for free by posting a response here (to this blog post) or on Facebook (I cross-post there after this post appears). I will ship your book(s) by Media Mail; all I ask is that you reimburse me for the postage.

Free book Friday #4: Leitch, American Literary Criticism

2010-11-05T23:59:00.001-04:00

Up for grabs this weekend is Vincent Leitch's American Literary Criticism from the 30s to the 80s, a nice clean paperback copy with just a tiny bit of pencil underlining on a few pages. I haven't cracked this book since my undergrad days & don't know whether it's still a useful tome, but it was essential for the lit theory class I took at the University of Houston back in the day.

Remember: you may claim this book for free by posting a response here, to this blog post, or on Facebook (I cross-post there after this post appears). I will ship your item(s) by Media Mail; all I ask is that you reimburse me for the postage.

Speaking of free books, if you haven't heard of PaperbackSwap.com, you should really check it out. I managed to unload eight books within 48 hours of joining, and can't wait for my "swap credits" to roll in so I can... err, get more books, yeah.

Free Book Friday #3: Octavio Paz; James Wright (audio)

2010-10-30T23:59:00.003-04:00

Cover of Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith

Well I uckfupped the posting & missed my Friday deadline, but here it is, better late than never: this weekend's free book giveaway is a hefty goodie: Sor Juana, or, The Traps of Faith, by Octavio Paz. This is the paperback 1988 first edition put out by the Belknap Press at Harvard. It's in English; the translator is Margaret Sayers Peden. I bought it for fifteen bucks back in May of 1991, and it's a good clean copy.

I'm also giving away an audio tape (for those of you who still use that technology) of James Wright reading at the Guggenheim on 3/20/64 and 10/28/78. This was produced as part of the Academy of American Poets' Audio Archive; I somehow have two copies and so it's easy to let this one go to a good home.

Remember: you may claim either item (or both) for free by posting a response here, to this blog post, or on Facebook (I cross-post there after this post appears). I will ship your item(s) by Media Mail; all I ask is that you reimburse me for the postage.

Because I'm a day late posting this, we'll give everyone until Tuesday morning to stake a claim. Next week I'll try to get back on my regular schedule.

Free Book Friday #2: Robert Peters, Terry Eagleton

2010-10-22T23:59:00.002-04:00

Up for grabs this weekend are two books: Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction, a clean, bright paperback copy I bought for fifteen bucks back in 1993, and a fun little book from 1983, The Peters Black and Blue Guide to Current Literary Journals.

A few words about the latter: obviously, "current" as used in the title refers to journals from the '80s. Nevertheless, if you've never read Robert Peters' criticism, this provides a quick dip--sort of a birdbath dip--into his take-no-hostages blunt assessment of what was being published in the main literary mags of that time. Think of this as a companion volume to his awesome Hunting the Snark. First edition copy from Cherry Valley Editions, paperback, purchased in April 1985 from New World Books in Cincinnati (sales receipt still in the book). Ink illustrations by Meredith Peters.

Remember: you may claim either book (or both) for free by posting a response here, to this blog post, or on Facebook (I'll cross-post there once this post goes up at midnight tonight). I will ship you the book(s) by Media Mail; all I ask is that you reimburse me for the postage.

Next weekend: some Octavio Paz. Stay tuned.

Before the frost

2010-10-22T20:58:00.000-04:00

This morning glory from just last week:

Free Book Friday #1: Ethan Canin, Emperor of the Air

2010-10-15T23:59:00.000-04:00

Okay, the first book up for grabs is Ethan Canin's Emperor of the Air, his first book of stories published back in 1988. Yes, you can find this on Amazon for under a buck, but then you gotta pay shipping. I'm offering it up for free to the first person who claims it by commenting on this post--all I ask is that you reimburse me the postage once your book arrives.

This is a paperback copy, first Perennial Library edition. It has a corner cut out of the front end page where my name and the date used to be inscribed. I probably won't do that again.

Who wants it?

Overbooked

2010-10-15T23:42:00.000-04:00

I'm overbooked. I mean, I don't know where else to put them: my books. I have four moving boxes full of books in the trunk of my car, three boxes on the only chair in the kitchen, and three boxes here by my laptop waiting to be "sorted" so I can decide which I need and which will be relegated to the attic.

Some of these boxes have not been opened since I packed them in Houston in 2001. Or thereabouts. I can't remember. So it was a joy this evening to slit the yellow packing tape, open the corrugated flaps (dusty! phew!) and find my copies of William Stafford's You Must Revise Your Life & Writing the Australian Crawl sandwiched beneath the fantastic anthology Another Republic (which I bought in Houston for Garrett Hongo's undergraduate poetry course) and the hmm-why-do-I-still-have-this Roadside Flowers of Texas.

Oh, books. I love you but I can't revisit all of you. It's such a shame to lock you in the attic for another ten years. I've already given hundreds--hundreds--of you away to a couple of college libraries. Mainly poetry, yes, which takes up so little space compared to the Encyclopedia of Aquarium Fishes and the Pequeno LaRousse Ilustrado and Philip Lopate's The Art of the Personal Essay. Last night I dreamed that I picked one of you each week to give away, orphaning you one at a time to lessen the pain of parting, by setting a fresh book out on the front stoop each Friday with a little note tied around its middle: Free to a good home. This afternoon I remembered the dream and thought, Why not? I'll call it "Free Book Friday" (so original) and maybe, ooohh, maybe I can post a cover scan or a book synopsis or a sample paragraph (or stanza) online the day before so if anyone online wants the book they can call dibs before it Yes, this could turn my personal loss into a collective gain! What's not to love about this idea?

Umm . . . what about all that postage?

Oh, yeah. Crap. It would cost me an arm & a leg to downsize that way. Not all at once, maybe a knuckle or toenail at a time, but still, it's money I do not have. Books I have; money--not so much.

And then I thought about the internet, and Facebook and Goodreads and Paypal and all the readers and writers I'm linked to, and you know what? It doesn't sound that crazy to me. It could actually work. If someone really wants the book and she doesn't live close enough to nab it from my front stoop, surely it's worth the price of shipping. Media Mail is pretty cheap.

So how about it? I can post this weekend's victim--err, selection--on Friday at, say, midnight (Pennsylvania time) and the first person to claim it can reimburse me for shipping once it gets to wherever it's going. If no one wants it, I'll set it on the stoop come Monday morning.

I'm going to give this a whirl. And I'm counting on all you interconnected cyber-readers out there to help make this work. I'll post the first giveaway at midnight & cross-post on Facebook, just to get us started. Let's do this!

Garden catalogs

2010-09-29T09:45:00.001-04:00

Now that I've imported my (few) posts from my garden blog into this one, all that remains before deleting The Rusty Dibbler is importing the few links I've saved to garden catalogs. So here's that list:

Cyndi's Catalog of Garden Catalogs - just what you'd expect.
Johnny's Selected Seeds - an old favorite
Richter's Herbs - located in Canada; a terrific range of herb seeds & plants
Seed Savers Exchange - for those all-important heirloom varieties
Thompson & Morgan - an extensive catalog with some unusual offerings
White Flower Farm - I feel like I'm stealing from Martha Stewart's garden when I order from here

. . . And that's it, short and sweet. I liked the idea of trying a separate garden blog, but it just makes more sense to post about gardening (and quilting and everything else) in the same place. Hope your autumn gardens are bountiful.

Thanks

2010-09-27T21:15:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to publicly thank Amanda Auchter over at Pebble Lake Review for accepting three new poems a couple of weeks ago. I've been overwhelmingly focused on preparations for the Pittsburgh Small Press Festival (which went really well) and on getting Gabe Welsch's chapbook out on schedule (which we did) and now, after a good night's sleep and a rainy day spent organizing and assessing what needs my attention next, I realize I hadn't shared that very good news.

Thanks.

Fifteen and (not really) counting

2010-07-31T02:02:00.002-04:00

I stopped at the post office this morning on our way out of town--a quick trip to Harrisburg to find Choe's Asian Market, recommended by Paula H. The box was crammed with colorful envelopes, which puzzled me for a moment, then: aha. Mom. Fifteen birthday cards. I glanced over at the counter, where V was shaking her head: I processed those, she said, and I kept thinking--
     What makes him so special? I offered. She laughed. I told her next week was my 50th and that there might be another 35 cards coming in. My mother really should have bought stock in Hallmark in the Sixties.
     Opening the cards at my desk after we got home and reading the little notes was an exercise in memory and forgetting: Remember the chestnut tree? Remember when you painted the fence and thought you'd never get done? I brought you cold drinks . . . I do remember the fence (split rail, and I painted it a dark, dark gray, and had to cut down an enormous forsythia bush) but I didn't remember the other part. How spotty is memory. Or maybe just mine?
     Bright envelopes: blues, yellows, some greens. Little stickers of dogs, cats, butterflies. One with a row of baby ducks, which triggers the memory of getting six tiny ducklings as a birthday surprise for her, and trying to keep them hidden in my bedroom closet for a whole day: six peeping birds in a cardboard box. Another story, but the look of utter joy on her face when we dumped them onto the living room carpet. . . And of course I will save the cards in the same box where I keep all her letters, but I keep looking at the envelopes: What can I make of these?
     --A quilt, of course. Of sorts. A paper quilt. Ohio Star? Too complicated?

And by the way, the trip to Choe's was a great success. We bought oodles of noodles, mung beans, hot pepper paste, a huge jar of kimchi . . . Then we tracked down a Vietnamese shop and got more goodies, including fresh gai lon and a big bag of the cutest little baby bok choy--I mean I wanted to kiss them, they looked that cute. Why does baby bok choy affect me the way most people respond to actual babies? Why ask why? We're eating well this weekend.

Glitch

2010-07-22T18:05:00.002-04:00

Okay, I admit I'm all thumbs when it comes to setting up anything on the Internet. But the new Seven Kitchens site over at Word Press was going along so well--so well that I thought installing those little Paypal "Buy Now" buttons would be a snap. They were a snap to install on Blogger. But even though I can see the HTML code pasted correctly on my Word Press pages, I don't see the button when I switch to view the saved page in regular ("visual") mode.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Maybe they are only visible once the site is publicly searchable? --That doesn't make sense, because I want to get everything loaded before it goes public.

I'm flummoxed. I'm walking away from it for a little while. Ah, gardening: something I'm really good at.

Up too late again

2010-07-22T02:40:00.003-04:00

Dear 3 AM: WTF?

I mean, yes, I can always find something to do (two new chapbooks launched the same week, am I that crazy?) but I am not, I repeat not, a night owl.

We've got to stop meeting like this. I'd rather see you in my dreams.
_____

Yes, two chapbooks: To the Refrigerator Gods by Terry Kirts came out on Monday--#8 in the Editor's Series, and on Wednesday (today) (though it's already Thursday), Guillermo Castro's Cry Me a Lorca came out--#4 in the limited-edition Summer Kitchen Series. I've been up late putting together a big batch of copies and cheating on my Red Sox by half-watching the Mets' lackluster effort to avoid being swept by the Diamondbacks. I gave up in the 12th inning: don't know, don't care.
_____

I've spent hours every day this week typing in book & author data for Seven Kitchens' new online home. Yeah, we're jumping over to Word Press on August 1st, ready or not. I think we'll be ready. All the book pages are loaded. I need to add Paypal links (which should be easy, having just done this last week on the Blogger site) and move all the author updates to new subpages. That'll take about a week. Then a few days to let our authors preview the site and hit me back with any fixes that need attending to. Then we launch!

I should have a party. Or even better, a sale. But I wanted to have a sale this fall on our three-year anniversary, if I can figure out exactly when that is.
_____

Slowly cutting through the pile of papers and files on my desk. There were two piles; now there's only one, and I made a good dent in it today. Progress! I want to make room for my old printer here on the desk beside the laser printer: I need it for color scanning and for printing drafts.
_____

Harvested the first good handful of tomatoes today. We've been eating the yellow pears as they ripen, one at a time. These are thumb-sized, red tomatoes, I can't remember the name. And the yard-long beans, which I planted way too early in May, have suddenly come alive after languishing beneath the peas for months: tendrils snaking everywhere, and even a couple of flowers, though they were surprisingly dull--I was expecting more yellow or pink or even cream-colored blossoms, but these were a drab dirty-dishrag off-off-white. If I were a bee I wouldn't even stop to investigate.
_____

There's a birthday with my name on it, and I can almost hear it slouching towards Lewisburg: the Big One. The half-century mark. I don't know what fifty is supposed to feel like, but I do admit that as I edge daily closer to this milestone, my ability to accommodate it as a tangible aspect of my reality, my identity, sheers off increasingly into disbelief.

Aaaand then I look into the bathroom mirror. No need to pinch me; I know this one is real.

New venue for reviews of poetry and nonfiction

2010-07-02T21:48:00.002-04:00

Palmer Hall has launched a new online venue for reviewing poetry and nonfiction: The Yanaguana Literary Review. You can find it here.
. . .

Turned in my keys and ID today at Lyco. They asked for my parking decal as well. (Sure, no problem.) The only surprise was that there's no way to store & retrieve three years of e-mail, unless I go back in, have someone unlock my old office, and painstakingly forward each e-mail to myself. Umm, I could have used that information a few weeks ago; at least I'd have had time to forward some of the important stuff.

Other than that glitch, a very satisfactory three-year gig. I will miss it.
. . .

Waiting for callas

2010-06-23T12:04:00.002-04:00

Last year we bought some lovely yellow callas. I can't remember how long they bloomed, but I was eager to try to keep them over the winter and see whether they'd repeat the show this year. Late in the fall, when the leaves had started yellowing, I brought them into the kitchen and tucked the pot (a rather large brass pot that I'd lined with a heavy plastic trash bag) against the corner of the kitchen table where it would be out of traffic. The remaining leaves died quickly and were gone within a week.

And that was that. I think I sprinkled a little water on it once over the whole winter.

Then, in early March or maybe even late February, I started getting curious. I watered the soil sparingly, then, a week later, more generously. And as soon as I saw the tiniest points of green emerging, I moved the pot to a bench in the laundry room--more susceptible to changing temperatures but also to steadily increasing sunlight.

And the plants have leafed out beautifully. I especially like the small translucent spots in the leaves. But so far, no blossoms. The pot sits on the corner of our back door stoop, where it gets bright light for most of the day and a couple hours of direct sun. I'm feeding and watering regularly. Are leaves all we can hope for this year? Did some process of "forcing" that the callas may have gone through in order to be sold at market last year render them "spent" for this year? Are they recovering the urge to bloom? Or am I just being hasty: are they waiting for high summer?

Will report back on any new developments.

1984: Friends don't let friends buy Ziggy cards

2010-06-14T17:20:00.004-04:00

Oh, God.

I've been cleaning the upstairs bookcases at the rate of roughly one shelf per day. So many books to sort through--keep out? box away for now?--and then there are the binders. Binders dating way back. Binders containing every rejection slip I received for my poems. Binders full of correspondence. Binders of journals from high school. Binders documenting people (and years) I don't even remember.

Oh, God. Did I ever buy Ziggy cards? I think I did. And smarmy pastel Blue Mountain Arts cards with insipid verses by Susan Polis Schutz. I always thought it was Schultz. But no, here's a card copyrighted 1982, all salmon and purple, and it's Schutz: When the/world closes in/and lies so heavily upon you.../ remember that I care. (It goes on. I won't.)

Oh, God. Who was I?

queer calls

2010-06-13T09:35:00.003-04:00

June 27th is the deadline for this year's Oscar Wilde Award (Gival Press) for the best previously unpublished poem in English that best relates GLBT life. The reading fee is $5 per poem of any length, form, or style. The winning poem will be published on the Gival Press website and carries a prize of $100. Previous winners are Chino Mayrina, Stephen Mills, Pablo Miguel Martinez, Dante Michaux, Julie Marie Wade, Jeff Walt, and some guy named Ron Mohring. Visit the web site for complete details (click on "contests" and then "Oscar Wilde Award-Guidelines").

July 1 is the deadline for the anthology Queer Girls in Class: Lesbian Teachers and Students Tell Their Classroom Stories, a collection of personal narratives. . . For more information or to submit work, e-mail: queergirlsanthology@gmail.com.

July 1 is also the deadline for entries to the Atlanta Queer Lit Fest's Broadside Contest. The winner will receive $200, 100 copies, and a keynote reading invite at the festival. Full details are at http://www/atlqueerlitfest.com/.

[Thanks to Jameson Currier's queertype blog for this information.]

proofing

2010-06-12T16:41:00.003-04:00

[photo: peony, Mom's garden, May 2010]

I've spent time every day this month working on chapbooks: proofing pages, printing, folding and cutting and tying, mailing copies. I'm still not caught up with some of the copies I owe, but the new titles are coming along very well and I think I can stay on track with the summer schedule.

It's fulfilling work. It nourishes a part of me that exists mainly in solitude. I can't emphasize strongly enough how deeply I love this work.

What it doesn't do is pay the rent. June, June: Will you bring me a new job?

Old Iris

2010-05-13T00:21:00.003-04:00

I can trace this iris back 45 years to the first garden I remember, though what I recall most intensely is lying on my back beneath a blue sky full of papery Oriental poppies--bright orange--waving on hirsute, wiry stems. The original garden was bulldozed to make way for a convenience store the summer I was ten or eleven, along with the first house I clearly remember living in. The iris--or a piece of it--moved when we moved. Most recently, I snagged a fan from beneath an encroaching blue spruce at my parents' house about five years ago. I planted the spruce trees--25 of them--and can't believe how large they've grown.

Submit to the Pilot

2010-05-11T21:10:00.004-04:00

Passing along this CFS from our buddies at Pilot Books:

We will read chapbook manuscripts postmarked in May of 2010. The selected manuscript will be published in our Meddling Kids Series in 2011. Please submit two printed copies of your original poetry manuscript (10-20 pages) each with two cover pages: one with manuscript title, your name, address, email and phone number; the other with manuscript title only. Entries should be postmarked in the merry month of May, 2010. Manuscripts will be logged in by an impartial third party and read anonymously by the Pilot Books Editorial Board. No SASE necessary; we will communicate via email. Post your entries, along with a $10 reading fee (make checks out to Pilot Books) to the address below. All entry monies will fund the production of the selected manuscript.

Send to: Pilot Books, PO Box 60551, Florence MA 01062

Zinnias at Rapid Run

2010-05-08T16:45:00.002-04:00

This afternoon we drove out to one of our favorite greenhouses. The woman who runs it had baby goats two years ago running free in one of the three greenhouses, and every year we see hummingbirds there well before they show up in our garden.

No hummers today (and no goats): we're under a wind advisory, and the constant snapping, vibrating plastic was a bit unnerving. Long rows of hanging baskets swayed as the poles they hung from vibrated and quivered, the whole creaking structures feeling as if they wanted to take flight. I snapped the photo of these zinnias with my phone camera. We bought some lovely cream-striped ornamental grass (it's outside on the patio table; I'll check the name later), a few yellow pear tomato plants (Randy's favorite tomato), and a big flat of cosmos, which I plan to set in a big mass into the garden this year instead of popping them here and there all over the place.

We've shared fish pepper seedlings with the owner in past years, and I fleetingly thought about taking along a six-pack (I have eighteen plants growing on the windowsills) but didn't. Turns out, she didn't have any. We said we'd bring them next time, and made arrangements to trade them for some ancho pepper plants. (I really don't have room for eighteen pepper plants, but that doesn't usually stop me from growing them!)

Windy and cool--I almost said cold. Windows barely open. Glad I'm wearing socks.

Working on getting some review copies sent out of Rebecca Lauren's new chapbook, then assembling more copies of a few other titles. I'm hoping to catch up this month but could really use some help. If I put out the call for a summer intern or two, I wonder if anyone near enough would respond?

Tonight's the long-awaited episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Betty White: can hardly wait!

Fresh callas

2010-05-07T22:40:00.002-04:00

Fresh callas I bought this week.

Poetry book giveaway: the winners are...

2010-05-01T00:39:00.004-04:00

If you've friended me on Facebook, you can see several more photos I took as I documented the selection process. Congrats to the following nine folks, only one of whom I've met (to my knowledge)--which is pretty awesome:

1) Tara Mae; 2) Stephanie Goehring; 3) Jen Gresham; 4) Matthew Thorburn; 5) Marie Gauthier; 6) Eldritch1313; 7) Carl Palmer; 8) totalfeckineejit; and 9) zooeylive.

You've won the following books, in corresponding numerical order:

1) my book, Survivable World; 2) Daniel Rzicznek's Neck of the World; 3) Boyer Rickel's reliquary; 4) Christine Klocek-Lim's The book of small treasures; 5) Deborah Burnham's Still; 6) Kevin McLellan's Round Trip; 7) Christina Pacosz's Notes from the Red Zone; 8) Matthew Hittinger's Platos de Sal; and 9) RJ Gibson's Scavenge.

You can read more about the last seven titles over at Seven Kitchens. Meanwhile, I'll be contacting y'all for mailing addresses this weekend. Congratulations and Happy National Poetry Month!

The 30th day: a ten-minute spill

2010-04-30T13:17:00.004-04:00

Well, here we are on the final day of NaPoWriMo. I'm glad I did this: some real crappy drafts, yes, but a few that feel promising, definitely more than I'd have written without the daily public deadline.

Which I do not plan to adhere to: at least not the public part, though the daily aspect has certainly made me more consciously aware of language and its little surprises, something I thought had become part of my nature but which, I realize now, had been dulled (by not enough reading, by isolation from other poets, by--ehh, we'll leave it at that).

So here's my last offering, the only poem this month generated by an exercise--specifically, Rita Dove's "Ten-Minute Spill"--though I kept tinkering with it past the initial ten minute mark (more like an hour and ten minutes):

:: bloop ::

Thanks for reading, y'all, and for the encouragement to hang with this project.

Day 29: on synaesthesia

2010-04-29T12:12:00.003-04:00

Busy day today, and I'm late heading up to campus. This is as far as I can get this one to go for right now:

:: bloop ::

. . . And that's all he wrote of that one. Still grading papers here and not much time for writing, but I'll give it my best tomorrow morning and see what comes of the final--yahoo, the final!--poem-a-day post.

Day 28: Putting on the Patsy Cline

2010-04-28T12:31:00.001-04:00

Putting on the Patsy Cline is a phrase that's been stuck in my head for a few years now, one I want to do something with--I think it may be a chapbook title if I can ever write the rest of the poems that comprise that collection. Scavenging through my journals this morning in search of a line to launch a fresh poem, I ran across the phrase again, as well as a line that our neighbor's youngest daughter uttered while trying to reach our cat: Allie, don't you want to pet me? And that's the line that started off this poem:

:: bloop ::

Well, that's that: two days to go. No idea what I'm writing tomorrow, but this has been an awesome experience and I want to thank y'all now for your supportive enthusiasm.

Day 27: Adrienne Rich

2010-04-27T11:57:00.001-04:00

I started this draft in June then abandoned it, so it's not "fresh" like the others, but it's all I have to offer today as we near the end of NaPoWriMo. The poem borrows language from Adrienne Rich's "XIII: Dedications" in An Atlas of the Difficult World. "Borrows" is too mild a word; the poem is literally constructed around passages from Rich's poem to the extent that I'm nervous about posting it, nervous at using so much language from another source. I do think, though, that there might be something new in what's created here. And I love, love, love the source poem.

:: bloop ::

Thanks for reading, y'all.

Day 26: Villanelle on a line from Ned Rorem

2010-04-26T12:34:00.005-04:00

A few years ago in my creative writing class, I gave my students a three-page list of lines I had collected from various sources, both poetry and prose, as potential "starters" for poems. This is one of the methods I use to write collaboratively with another poet: it brings a third voice to the table, and each of us responds both to this initial voice/statement and to each other as the poem progresses.

One of my students wrote a powerful, beautiful villanelle from a line by Ned Rorem, a line I'd been carrying around in my head for a few years: Here is the boy who will breathe my air. He wrote it in response to an ultrasound image of his soon-to-be-born son. His poem was at once a celebration and an acknowledgment of his own mortality. In many ways, his poem is better than the one I finally wrote this Saturday.

I didn't post this on Saturday because I'd written something else as well, but also because it's about a particularly crushing moment in one's career and--because anyone who knows me knows where I've worked for the past ten years--I didn't want to hurt any feelings.

But fuck that. It's a poem, for Pete's sake, and it's driven as much by its form and meter and rhyme scheme as by any "truth" at its heart. And the scene it describes happened only in my head, not where I work(ed). So all disclaimers aside, here's the villanelle I have been trying to write:

:: bloop ::

Thanks for reading, y'all. See you tomorrow.

Day 25: Bathroom Window, Cat

2010-04-25T16:50:00.004-04:00

An attempt at a more minimalist approach to my usual narrative bent:

:: bloop ::

Day 24: Late Testament

2010-04-24T19:48:00.003-04:00

:: bloop ::

Thanks for reading. Six days to go.

Day 23: on a line by Gertrude Stein

2010-04-23T12:13:00.001-04:00

Stein wrote of Glenway Westcott in her Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, "He has a certain syrup but it does not pour." From which I made this today:

:: bloop ::

Read this now: Terrance Hayes

2010-04-22T17:14:00.001-04:00

"The Golden Shovel"

The top of my head flew off. My brain is still fizzing.

Day 22: The Fires

2010-04-22T12:47:00.003-04:00

I was thinking about Hurricane Andrea from a few years ago, how folks in Florida were practically praying for the storm to bring rain to douse their wildfires. That satellite image of Andrea's noncompliance. And so came up with this:

:: bloop ::

Wow. Only one week to go.

Day 21: Practice

2010-04-21T12:39:00.001-04:00

This old guy is in my head today. Who knows why. Here he is:

:: bloop ::

Day 20: Deer & Dog

2010-04-20T22:05:00.002-04:00

I missed yesterday's post, but here's a big ol' mess of a poem draft to make up for it:

:: bloop ::

Thanks for reading it, y'all.

The 18th day: 1965

2010-04-18T22:00:00.003-04:00

Not much I can say about this one. I've been thinking a lot about the store my mother worked at when I was a kid:

:: bloop ::

Thanks for reading.

Day seventeen: back into it

2010-04-17T20:53:00.004-04:00

I went verseless yesterday. There's a lot going on right now, but no excuses: I just couldn't get to it. Here, though, is a fresh draft drawn from a messy block of a freewrite in my journal that I wrote in response to finding a dead hummingbird on the sidewalk years ago:

:: bloop ::

See you tomorrow.

Late in the middle, I steal another line

2010-04-15T20:30:00.003-04:00

LATE IN THE DAY IN THE MIDDLE OF NaPoWriMo,
I OFFER THIS POOR LIMERICK, THE SECOND LINE
OF WHICH WAS PROFERRED BY KATE HANCOCK
BACK WHEN SHE WAS KATE HANCOCK IN OUR
UNDERGRADUATE DAYS OH SO MANY YEARS AGO

An inventive young lad from Bombay
used to sit on his elbows to pray.
Though scorned and abused
he steadfastly refused
to pray the traditional way.

Day 14: five o'clock muse

2010-04-14T17:15:00.002-04:00

Well, the last student conference of the day went well. I gathered up my must-do pile and closed the door. I sat and thought. I turned to a line I carry in my head, a line from a poem by Bill Olsen. And twenty minutes later, I have this:

:: bloop ::

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow at the halfway point.

Day 14: waiting

2010-04-14T11:24:00.002-04:00

A full day of student conferences: their major essays are due next week. No poem yet. Hoping to carve a niche from my schedule somehow today to close the door & summon the muse...

13th day

2010-04-13T12:01:00.001-04:00

Nearly halfway there. Here's a draft I wrote just before going to bed last night:

:: bloop ::

Thanks for reading, y'all.

Day Twelve: Downtown

2010-04-12T12:45:00.001-04:00

:: bloop ::

The eleventh day: between the lines

2010-04-11T12:45:00.007-04:00

Just this:

:: bloop ::

Glad to hear so many of you had good times at AWP. Hope everyone is safely home soon. See you tomorrow.

NaPoWriMo: Day Ten

2010-04-10T16:53:00.003-04:00

Today has been full of setbacks and delays, but I didn't forget about the daily poem. This one kept morphing on me: every time I thought it had solidified into a draft, I'd go back to tinkering with a word, a line, and off the poem would race again. Even now, I'm afraid I've tried to curb it, rein in its energy just for the sake of having something to post by the end of the day. So here it is, without further apology:

:: bloop ::

Thanks, y'all, and see you tomorrow.

The ninth day: Awe, Woe, Rue

2010-04-09T12:35:00.002-04:00

This poem started with a photograph and owes a debt to Facebook, which provided the venue for some private dialogue that, were I not a writer, should remain private. But I'm a writer, and I confess to having felt that familiar split viewpoint even as the dialogue occurred over the course of a few days: part of me in it, part of me already tinkering with its structure . . . This is what we do. Does it change the past, set right a wrong, to create of it a small, made thing? No matter how well- or poorly-made, the poem that exists as the means to an end is a tragic mistreatment of memory. If nothing else, my goal with this one is to achieve some empathy. I've already talked too much about it, more than this little poem has "earned."

:: bloop ::

Thanks for reading. Back at it tomorrow.

Eight in eight

2010-04-08T13:32:00.004-04:00

Last night I couldn't sleep and kept reaching for my notebook in the dark, writing down lines that kept coming to my head. This morning I tried to decipher the notes. There's something there, something mean and angry. This is not that poem. This is a memory from when I lived in Houston:

:: bloop ::

Seeya tomorrow.

Day Seven

2010-04-07T12:39:00.006-04:00

Seven poems in seven days: I can't possibly maintain this pace. Can anyone?

Wishing everyone at AWP in Denver a great conference. Since I last went, the bulk of my acquaintance-making has been virtual (though no less "real"). Maybe next year in DC we'll all meet for realzes.

Here's this morning's poem:

:: bloop ::

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

Day Six

2010-04-06T12:47:00.005-04:00

As I worked on this poem this morning, I thought at one point that it wanted to be a sonnet, but thirteen lines feels right. This poem is for Karl Patten:

:: bloop ::

See ya tomorrow.

Day Five

2010-04-05T12:33:00.004-04:00

I think I know where this one might be going, but for the moment this is all I can come up with. Let's file it as a scene in search of a conflict, a starter block. A key?

:: bloop ::

See you tomorrow.

Day Four

2010-04-04T12:45:00.001-04:00

Okay, this one's not for the youngsters, but I had to pursue the image. Here we go:

:: bloop ::

Tomorrow's Monday; it'll be interesting to see if I can keep this going during a regular workweek. Stay tuned; see you tomorrow.

Day Three

2010-04-03T12:22:00.003-04:00

The fact that I dreamed last night about writing today's poem seems like clear evidence that this process is starting to get to me. I've dreamed many times about writing, but rarely does any element of the dream translate to my waking life. In this case, what I remember vaguely is the process: a mash-up of sorts, a random pairing of ten intentional lines (ten in all, written toward some intent or direction) with other lines pulled from--what? In my dream, they bobbed and swirled around me, easy pickings. Alas, none of these actual lines has stayed (consciously) in my head.

So here we go, blindly:

:: bloop ::

See ya tomorrow.

NaPoWriMo: Day Two

2010-04-02T12:41:00.005-04:00

Last evening we ate out on the back patio for the first time this spring: a beautiful day, leafbuds popping open all around us--the euonymus hedge, the curly willow, the Japanese maple, the crabapple all greening in slow motion. I wondered what it might be like to actually hear all that rustling and unfolding, the clicking of clasps as stem by stem unlatched and opened into the warming air. Such beautiful late-day light in the buds of the little quince bush beneath the hedges. Would it be a gift, such synaesthesia? Or would it be cacophany?

Here's my poem draft for Day Two of National Poetry Writing Month:

:: bloop ::

See you tomorrow.

NaPoWriMo: Day One

2010-04-01T11:15:00.005-04:00

Happy April, everyone. It's a stunningly beautiful day in my neighborhood, and I'm hoping to leave work early enough to maybe snag a little hammock time.

Congrats to Todd Davis, whose poem "The Saints of April" is scheduled for today on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. Here's a link to that file: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2010/04/01

(Thanks to Katie for the heads up!)

And great good luck to all the poets participating in NaPoWriMo this month. Here's my own first effort:

:: bloop ::

See you tomorrow.

Poetry Book Giveaway: You Can't Lose

2010-03-31T17:00:00.006-04:00

Here's another wonderful idea: po-blogger Kelli Russell Agodon has launched a poetry book giveaway to coordinate with National Poetry Month (that's April, y'all). I'm happy to participate. Click here for Kelli's full post/explanation on her blog.

I will be giving away one copy of my book, Survivable World, and one hardcover copy of F. Daniel Rzicznek's Neck of the World (winner of the May Swenson Poetry Award and published in 2007).

All you have to do is write a response to this blog post (this one, right here, the one you are reading right now) before midnight on April 30th. On May 1st, I will randomly select two of the comment posters; each will be mailed one of the books. (So if you post, be sure that I have a way of reaching you in case I need your mailing address.) You don't pay a thing.

Let's play!

Update, 4/06: I've decided to sweeten the odds. For every five persons who respond to this blog post, I'll add a chapbook from my micropress. Right now, we have fifteen comments, so I'm adding three chapbooks to the giveaway pile: reliquary, by Boyer Rickel; The book of small treasures, by Christine Klocek-Lim; and Still, by Deborah Burnham. Feel free to spread the word!

4/19 update: We've surpassed 25 comments, which means two more chapbooks are up for grabs: Round Trip, collaborative poems by Kevin McLellan and fifteen poets, and Notes from the Red Zone, by Christina Pacosz. Thanks for spreading the word, y'all.

4/24 update: Keep the comments coming! With 30 folks responding, I'm adding a copy of Matthew Hittinger's Platos de Sal.

On top of everything...

2010-03-30T23:42:00.002-04:00

. . . On top of everything else I have to get done, I'm throwing my hand in with the poets for the month of April. Yep, I'm gonna try to write (and post) a poem a day for this year's NaPoWriMo. I'll try to get 'em up during my lunch hour (no guarantees) and ::bloop:: they'll vanish from the blog by midnight.

If you've never heard of NaPoWriMo, click here. There's still time to join us!

Winter boarder: begonia grandis

2010-03-14T17:52:00.005-04:00

Winter boarder: Begonia grandis bulbils sprouting from a pot of dieffenbachia that I kept outside all summer and fall and overwintered in the laundry room. I'm always astonished at the capacity of this plant to propagate from the tiniest, most negligible-looking bulbil: some are smaller than a BB; some grow to maybe pea-sized. And all of them--all of them, if given half a chance (tossed nonchalantly into this pot, for example, not planted with any purpose or worry about light or water), will grow.

What you don't see here is the gorgeous deep pink of the leaves' underside, a large part of what makes them so beautiful all summer and fall in the garden: the afternoon light through the leaves is spectacular. The plants don't blossom until late in the year, and though the flowers are worth the wait--deep pink, cascading from multibranched stems--it's the leaves that make this hardy begonia a standout in the shade beneath our crabapple tree, in the shade beneath the pines, in the narrow alley between our house and the neighbors' where there is literally only a two-inch-wide space to dig in between our flagstone and their sidewalk. It also performs well in full sun, as long as its base is well-mulched.

These tiny plants are up early: they're the last to arise in the outdoor garden, later even than the notoriously is-it-still-there-or-not balloon flowers. When this small, they're easy to tease out of the soil and pot up in their own containers, though lately I've come to play more with companion planting: christmas cactus cuttings interplanted with an ornamental pepper; spider plants in the same pot with the bushy poinsettia that I've kept going for three years now; and (later, once it's safe to garden outside again) heartsease and oregano in the giant pots we use for growing tomatoes.

Air Empathy

2010-03-05T19:37:00.002-05:00

On the red-eye from Seattle, a two-year-old
in the seat behind me screeches

his miniature guts out. Instead of dreaming
of stuffing a wad of duct tape into his mouth,

I envy him, how he lets his pain spurt
into the open. I wish I could drill

a pipeline into the fields of ache, tap
a howl. How long would I need to sob

before the lady beside me dropped
her fashion rag, dipped a palm

into the puddle of me? How many
whimpers before another passenger

joined in? Soon the stewardess
hunched over the drink cart, the pilot

gushing into the controls, the entire plane:
an arrow of grief quivering through the sky.

:: Jeffrey McDaniel, The Endarkenment

This and that

2010-02-28T12:39:00.002-05:00

Today's the last day to nominate a blog post for 3 Quarks Daily's Arts & Literature Prize. Full details here.
~
Day Two of spring break:

essays graded: 0
chapbook review copies addressed & ready to ship: 10
copies ready to ship to buyers (thank you!) and entrants (thank you!): 15
new chapbook covers designed: 2
inches of new snow received: 0
hours till we finally get to see Avatar: 3
spending my Sunday as I choose for once: priceless

Talc

2010-02-19T16:35:00.000-05:00

When you phoned I was far, and sleeping,
but they brought me the message and I ran,
I ran to the phone where you were,
you were speaking, we two were speaking,
when I ran back to the room I no longer
knew we would speak again. Twenty minutes
and I was gone, there was a plane,
and another, there was a friend who took
me to you, you were asleep. I didn't know
there was still any question, I only learned
later, everything later, weeks later I was
still frightened of all that I learned.
I swear though I knew it was there I scarcely
saw the hose taped to your mouth, its ridges
that breathed in case you did not; scarcely saw
the twin tubes coming out of your chest or
the blood running through them and into the pump
that returned to your wrist, quietly, steadily,
what belonged there. The slenderer tubes
that entered the side of your neck I scarcely
noticed; not the empty ones waiting for something
not needed, not the ones drawing fluids
from three labeled bags. They had washed you,
I barely noticed the yellow stains and the blood
that remained on your skin. They had cut you,
I did not see the bandages holding the length
of the chest, they lay where I should have been
lying, I did not understand. I did not see
the wounds on your side where some scalpel or saw
had been dropped or some heated or iced tool
had burned. The monitor's chiming ws nothing,
someone would come, they would turn it off.
The slash stapling the crease of your thigh was
nothing. When the nurse turned the white valve
near the collarbones' nest before opening one
on the wrist, there was not one cell of my body
that needed to understand. I barely felt the bars
where my hand fitted into your hand, the rail
that days afterward still tracked my cheek.
The urine that drained to the sack below us must
have been warm, I must have touched it, I should
have known it was warm wih your warmth but I did not.
I waited. I knew the sweetness I smelled
on your body was powder, was baby powder, I did
not understand, but I knew they had given you back
to this world for a second time and I waited
for you to agree. I waited for you to open your eyes,
a first time, another, another. I waited until
you were sure, until every part of you stayed.

:: Jane Hirshfield, in Five Points 1:3 (1997)

Thankful

2010-02-17T23:02:00.001-05:00

Two things that happen to be going on at the same time this week seem to have overlapped, at least emotionally, in my (what? mind? heart is more like it)--in me.

First, I've been making the rounds in my department, getting letters of recommendation lined up for the necessary and energy-consuming job application process. I'm currently in my third year of a one-year visiting contract: I love what I'm doing and where I'm working, but there's no hope of it becoming a permanent gig. Reality looms.

And second, I'm shooting PDF copies of a chapbook by one of our upcoming Seven Kitchens authors to a few folks who have generously agreed to write blurbs.

I know that writing a blurb is nothing like writing a letter of recommendation. I've done a few of both, though, and I can tell you that to me they feel much the same: in the end, I always feel that (a) I could have done a better job and (b) the friend/colleague/student should have picked someone else (because that someone else could have done a better job).

As for being on the receiving end, the truth is that I come unraveled when anyone says something truly thoughtful, positive, and supportive about my work. You might not think that a Leo should have such difficulty with praise, but I do. I lose it for a moment--a brief moment, like today when I saw the letter a generous colleague had written for me: I had myself a good, quick cry and then, with a scant ten minutes left to prepare for class, I pulled my act together like Mama Rose and threw myself into what I do, sometimes, almost as well as the man described in that letter.

As I said in a quick message to our author mentioned above, it's very good to have such good friends, mentors, colleagues. And I want to thank them--hers, mine, and yours--all of you out there, trying to do what we do as well as we can do it. My life has been so enriched, and I am truly grateful for every gesture, large and small, that all of you have made to help hold someone else up, keep someone going, keep someone teaching and trying and writing and growing.

Just that: one enormous thank you, too huge for me to accommodate in words (see above), but if I could--if I could stay conscious of this feeling and inhabit it with intention, maybe you might could imagine a thank you as constant and quiet and present as your next breath. And the next one. That's me, giving thanks. To you.

Lone Star: all points done

2010-01-24T22:40:00.002-05:00

I finished piecing the central star in R's Lone Star quilt a few days ago. I settled on a blue fabric for the setting pieces: a reproduction Lancaster blue that we got at the PA quilt show in Harrisburg a couple years ago. I'd been saving it--now I know for what.

Most of the setting pieces are attached to the central star now; I only need two squares and one half-square triangle. I'm paper-piecing these as well, and they're kind of floppy and ungainly to work with, but it seems the right approach since I'm butting them against rows of paper-pieced diamonds with the backing still intact and basically joining like parts together.

I pieced four small Lemoyne stars to center in the four setting squares, and have appliqued two of these in place so far. With any luck, I may get the other two finished this week and the three remaining blue pieces attached. At that point, I'll need to decide on borders. I'm thinking a triple border would look great. We'll see.

Here's the second small star I was appliqueing two nights ago; you can really see the Lancaster blue fabric too (I'll take pics of the whole top once it's ready for borders--soon, I hope):

Bibliomancy

2010-01-12T17:34:00.002-05:00

Click here to read a fine poem by Miriam Greenberg over at 42opus . . .

Classes started yesterday. I'm teaching three days a week instead of five--hooray--and hope to get some writing done at home on Tuesday mornings. Today I've been playing catch-up with the press. Trying to get completely back on schedule by the end of the month. It'll be tight, but I think we can do it.

We've been fortunate to have missed the heavy snows that socked so many others. I've warned my morning class to check the college's web page on rough weather days--I won't drive through that for a one-hour class--so of course they're probably rooting for heavy weather. Even in poor driving conditions, I think I can make the commute in time for my afternoon classes, though I'm still not crazy about being out in sleet or heavy snow. Of course this is all hypothetical so far--no actual winter storms yet. Even my holiday trip to Cincinnati went without delay. Lucky, lucky.

On Thursday, I'm attending an all-day workshop at the Writing Center at Bucknell, "Integrating Writing and Learning Across the Curriculum" with Katy Gottschalk and Keith Hjortshoj. Looking forward to that.

Over on Facebook, a recurring meme is making its rounds again: the one where you grab the nearest book, turn to page 54 and post the 5th sentence on the page. I'd forgotten how fun this random selection can be. Not exactly bibliomancy, but mild fun for anyone who loves language and accident's potential . . .

Lone Star update

2010-01-03T16:21:00.002-05:00

I took the Lone Star quilt top along to Cincinnati and was able to make some progress: three of the "arms" are finished now, and I've started "auditioning" background fabrics. A darker print seems appropriate--I had been thinking about blue, but this one looks nice:

The photo was taken with my cell phone, so the quality's not the best.

Last night's Cold Moon

2009-12-02T17:05:00.002-05:00

Winter boarder: bay tree

2009-12-01T22:20:00.002-05:00

December 1: time to bring the bay tree indoors for the winter.

It does take up a pretty big corner of the kitchen, but there's nothing like fresh-from-the-tree bay leaf.

Reevaluating my facile relationship with Nature, or: The first few baby spiders in the laundry room looked so cute until I glanced up--

2009-11-29T21:10:00.001-05:00

--and saw multitudes dangling from their invisible threads and realized they were already in the laundry basket so I threw everything back into the dryer and set it on high then caught as many of the tiny critters as I could in an upturned broom and set it outside in the cold (forgive me) before backing out of the laundry room feeling all prickly and freaked out and brushing myself all over . . .

It's really us or them.

fabric search!

2009-11-29T13:33:00.006-05:00

When I last visited my folks in August, I taught Mom how to paper-piece a six-point star and hexagon: six of each, when combined, make up a block that I was working on. I didn't know yet what to do with these blocks; they were just fun to make and I had a vague notion that they'd make a nice star quilt.

It turns out that, like most quilt patterns I come up with, someone has done it before. Which is fine--it's wonderful, actually, because I'm very drawn to traditional quilting and patterns. The blocks I was making are the basic units for a Seven Sisters quilt.

But they're quite variable, as well: Mom and I came up with four or five variations, sitting at the kitchen table and moving the paper diamonds and hexagons into different combinations. I cut out a big batch of each from the subscription cards I'd taken from her magazines (these cards are the ideal weight for paper-piecing and I'm always saving them) to start Mom off, and before I left to come back home, she'd already finished her first block (and she'd done a very good job, despite her initial misgivings of "Oh, that's too hard; too many pieces").

Which brings us to the fabric search. Here's the basic block that I showed her how to make:

And here is the block variation that she came up with:

Doesn't it look like a snowflake? And completely different from the first pattern. I've been making mine with yellow or white stars in the center surrounded by dark or medium blue hexagons to emphasize the stars. By repeating the diamond points, she's extended the center star into a more complex crystal shape.

The problem is with the first block: she needs more of the center blue to finish off the outer points on that block. We think that maybe I gave her the blue that she started out with, so I've been searching to see if I have any more of it--so far, without any luck. Does anyone out there have a 6 x 8 inch piece of this blue fabric? Here's a closeup, and thanks very much:

Quilt project: Lone Star

2009-11-26T21:54:00.008-05:00

A few pics of the Lone Star quilt top I'm making for R. I'm using an old method, English paper piecing, which basically involves basting each piece of fabric onto a small paper cutout (in this case, little diamond shapes) and then sewing each diamond into place. As each concentric row is completed, the basting thread is removed from the previous row and the paper backing is picked out. In the close-up below, you can see the center eight-point star, the green second row, the third row (a reproduction shirting cotton), and a bit of the fourth row, which still has its basting stitches in:

To photograph the quilt top, I pinned it to a white whole-cloth quilt that Randy made a few years ago. It looks awesome against all that quilting!

But still a ways to go. I try to get in a half-hour of piecing each night. The finished quilt should be about the size of the white one it's pinned against (or roughly 40 x 40 inches):

These photos were taken October 10th. I'll post another pic soon that I took on November 10th. Making slow but steady progress . . .

Dear Wordsworth

2009-11-22T16:07:00.004-05:00

While taking a brief respite from grading, I scanned some of the lower bookcase shelves for a few more poetry books to donate to the library. Found an old copy of William Hathaway's The Gymnast of Inertia, published by LSU in 1982, and of course I had to skim through it before putting it in the "go" pile. Here's a poem for all you fellow teachers:

DEAR WORDSWORTH

I liked your poems "Michael," "We Are Seven,"
and "Idiot Boy" very much, even when
the teacher read them aloud and cried
and blew her nose. "Tintern Abbey" is really neat,
though I don't understand it. I did a walk-
athon for March of Dimes once. I hate your poem
"Daffodils." Ha-ha, that's just a joke,
I just don't know better because of television.
Seriously, why did you become such a crusty,
old poo-poo? Professor Borck at the university
says you got tired of not being rich. My
dad says poor people are happy being poor
because God loves everyone--even poets. I
think it would be romantic to have a French
girlfriend and a dopefiend for a best friend.
I can hardly wait until my creepy sister
goes to college and I can have her room.
My best friend is Veralee Broussard and I can
talk about anything with her. I wish you
could tell me what it's like to be dead.
It would feel neat to lie in a cozy coffin
underneath the flowers and know everything.
Really, you rot and go to heaven or hell.
Well, this is almost two hundred words, so
I have to go. Tomorrow we read Amy Lowell.
Mrs. Curtis says she smoked cigars!

Matthew Siegel has a new website

2009-11-16T22:03:00.002-05:00

and here it is!

Is it Mercury?

2009-11-12T23:53:00.003-05:00

I heard somewhere that Mercury was retrograde; maybe that's the reason for all the idiots on the road lately--have been in a couple of really close calls with drivers who suddenly veered into my lane or glanced up from their cell phone chatter just in time to NOT rear-end me. C'mon, people. Pay attention out there. If I could teleport to Williamsport (oh, now I feel pressured to keep rhyming) I'd do it, but meanwhile it's back on the road where usually my main worry is stray deer.

Well, I shopped around a bit online and then went out tonight & blew a gaping hole in the 7KP budget, an act I hope I don't regret. We needed a printer, a good, dependable, total-access laser printer. So now we have one. It's still in the box: a Canon something-or-other. I'll clear space for it this weekend. And yes, we'll gladly accept donations (of any size) to help replenish the budget. Buy a chapbook! Buy two! Support our independent micropress!

We're still tinkering with the cover, but Erin Bertram's Inland Sea is on schedule to come out this month. Can hardly wait: wonderful poems.

Ugh, midnight. I'm a pumpkin. Night night, y'all.

Back to the blog

2009-11-10T12:51:00.003-05:00

I'm still here: juggling teaching, grading, commuting, and the myriad tasks that come with the press. I need to head off to my next class in six minutes. Just ate a sandwich at my desk from the little coffee stand downstairs--I was going to make a sandwich but the bread had gone bad, something I didn't notice until after taking a bite, ewww. I need to head off to class in four minutes. Last night I tried to preserve some Japanese maple leaves by pressing them between waxed paper layers with a warm iron; I'm not sure it worked because the edges are curling up; I may try again tonight. It's a long winter to go without leaves. Three minutes till class time. We (the press) lost a significant benefactor today; I'm trying to roll with it but I'm not sure yet what the impact will be. Two minutes: time to gather my papers and notes. R just texted me that he found a recipe for kim chee chicken: I'm game. And it's showtime, and I'm off--

Cabbage

2009-10-15T10:29:00.008-04:00

You planted cabbages to please me,
I know.
And there the last three or four of them clung
like pock-marked green moons in orbit
across the muddy sky of the garden slope.

We had to get out the hatchet
to chop the woody stem off the one I wanted.
And then I pulled off leaf after leaf,
each rubbery jacket bull's-eyed
like cigarette burns on an unfortunate table,
where slugs had tried to burrow in.

Before I brought it inside for a good scrub
I hacked off
half-a dozen leaves with my pocket knife
and flung them onto the compost heap,
flicking slugs off,
lacking the zeal even to deprive
them of their disgusting lives.
Autumn is here, and where
is the gardener's thoroughness
that would have been mine in March or May?

The essence of cabbage
as I chopped through its crunchy thickness
on the kitchen counter
was what the word October
smells like.
That pure white-and-greenness
that filled my head
with what grows and keeps on growing
was what I had needed all this
short and getting-shorter day.

:: Richard Tillinghast, The New Life

New chap covers

2009-09-02T15:18:00.004-04:00

Last night I picked up the covers for Christina Pacosz's chapbook, Notes from the Red Zone. I got one copy assembled, just enough to cross the finish line on time (the official publication date is September 1st). More news soon on the 7KP blog--I'm still at the office right now--but here's a peek at the cover:[cover image: "Biblis" by Tim Haini. Used by permission. See more of the artist's work at http://eisenkalk.de]

Follow the poop

2009-08-24T21:56:00.000-04:00

The Milkweed Experiment is a success: I noticed something had been eating the leaves and took a closer look. Caterpillar poop!

Two tears ago I managed to grow one milkweed plant from a handful of seeds. It only grew a few inches tall before winter, but came back like Jack's Beanstalk last year: crazy robust growth but no flowers. And no monarchs.

By this spring, the milkweed had spread, sending up eight or nine shoots! I had to stake them (they're planted right at the corner of a raised bed where the neighbor's downspout overflows constantly, and in heavy rain anything growing there can get shredded) but they thrived, blooming heavily and sending out a half-dozen warty outer-spacey seed pods:

Today, I took a good close look and found two caterpillars munching away: one smallish (pictured below) and another about as big as my index finger (the big caterpillar had tucked inside a curled leaf by the time I had come back with my camera, so no pic yet). We're going to keep a close watch on these guys--hopefully will get pics of a chrysalis soon.

CFS: Tattoo Anthology!

2009-08-11T17:11:00.001-04:00

Click here to read the full article in the Los Angeles Times.

CFS: New online journal for writers of color

2009-08-07T23:47:00.000-04:00

"Kweli Journal is a new online literary journal established to identify, promote and nurture emerging writers of color. We also seek to expand the audience of authors of color who already have a foothold in the industry. Our mission, as editors and publishers, is to find a broad, international audience for the artists that we publish and the work that we find engaging and uncompromising."

"As a biennial publication, Kweli plans to publish Fall/Winter and Spring/Summer editions. We encourage new and emerging artists, as well as established voices, to submit their work for consideration. Kweli is particularly interested in short stories, poetry, and excerpts from novels that are self-contained. We seek high quality literary work that is beautiful and sustaining, profound and powerful."

Click here for complete submission details.

CFS: Final day for Reginald Shepherd Prize

2009-08-01T15:00:00.001-04:00

For all you procrastinators out there, today is the deadline for the Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize. The final judge is Carl Phillips. Click here for guidelines, then step to it!

Kudos

2009-07-24T12:36:00.005-04:00

Congrats to Jeff Walt, whose chapbook manuscript "Vows" just won the Gertrude Press Poetry Chapbook Contest. The news was just posted yesterday, only two months behind schedule (ahem). Best of luck with your new publisher, Jeff!

Duty

2009-07-08T02:14:00.002-04:00

I drove up to Lyco today, after meeting Randy for a quick lunch. I had library books to pick up. And to drop off: five more books to donate, including Olga Broumas' Rave and J.D. McClatchy's Hazmat.

"It's our E-Z Borrow guy!"

Yeah, it's me. I brought my own tote bag. Fill 'er up.

Also fiddled with the cover(s) of our next 7KP title. Not so much "fiddled" as took advantage of a super-fast, super-loaded library computer to tweak my cover designs, save them as PDFs, and print out a color copy to stick on my wall for inspiration as I move into the assembly stage of this project. Will post the cover images over at Seven Kitchens sometime this week.

Picked up a print job on the way home: covers for the second printing of Judith's and Steven's chaps. Which look just like the covers for the first printing. But now we're in the second printing.

Some hammock time with At Work: The Art of California Labor before dinner--tandoori chicken, grilled shrimp, basmati rice, curried vegetables, naan, and an ice-cold beer. Oh hell, yes, Randy can cook. And leftovers in the fridge.

Upstairs, what I mistook for a book on the chair in the bathroom. Upside-down, on its spine, the title HEAVY DUTY. I pondered the sound of the words, flicked through a mental list--honoring our parents' wishes, being truthful, burying the cat, signing the DNR form all came to mind before I realized it wasn't a book. It was the cardboard packaging around the new shower curtain. But even then, even after mentally shoehorning the words back into their purely utilitarian place, they echoed with a deeper resonance.

Call for shark poems!

2009-07-04T23:27:00.001-04:00

Please pass this along--what a fun opportunity!

Shark Summer Poetry Contest

CFS: Subito Press

2009-07-02T11:30:00.000-04:00

for all you "innovative writers" out there:

Subito Press of the University of Colorado invites submissions to its annual book competition. We will publish two books of innovative writing, one each of fiction and poetry:

Submissions will be accepted from June 1 to August 15, 2009 (postmark date).
Submit manuscripts of up to 70 pages of poetry or up to 100 pages of (double spaced) fiction along with a $20 reading fee and an SASE for notification of results.
Manuscripts should include two cover sheets: one with title only, the other with title, author's name, address, e-mail, and phone number.
All submissions will be judged anonymously by the creative writing faculty at the University of Colorado; friends, relatives, and former students of University of Colorado creative writing faculty are not eligible.
Simultaneous submissions are ok; please notify Subito immediately if your ms. is accepted elsewhere.
Winners will give a reading at the University of Colorado in the Spring of 2010.
Notification of winners will occur by January of 2010.
Send mss. to: Subito Press, Department of English, 226 UCB, Boulder CO 80309-0226.

Micropublishing fiction

2009-06-22T20:30:00.001-04:00

Please check out Dan Jaffe's article over at Kim's Craft Blog discussing how he published his story, "One-Foot Lover," with Seven Kitchens Press!

Mystery cactus

2009-06-15T22:40:00.002-04:00

A few years ago--maybe five or six--I found a cactus leaf on the floor of a local greenhouse, next to a floor drain. A single leaf, rather small and wan, already limp from having been knocked off its mother plant--but looking around, I couldn't locate the source. I slipped the leaf in my shirt pocket and, fortunately, remembered it at the end of the day. After floating in a cup of water for a day or two, it seemed visibly revived, and I had not much trouble rooting it. I think I had to wait almost six months before it actually put out a second leaf.

Fast forward to last year: the wee cactus has been steadily growing in a narrow wall pocket (planter) in my bathroom and has four or five arching stems. Then, finally, it popped: seven or eight tiny flower buds that opened nearly all at once, after growing and growing for a couple weeks, into gorgeous shaggy multipetaled crimson blossoms. Such a nice surprise.

That was last year. This year, the cactus is a bit larger, though still on the smallish side, and still growing in the same planter. There's finally enough of it that I felt comfortable removing a three-leaf section to root for a friend. And it's blooming again, only this time one bud will appear, grow and swell for a couple weeks, and finally open--expanding open during the day and half-closing at night. Each blossom lasts about a week before closing up for good and eventually dropping off. Meanwhile, a second bud starts to develop on another stem, and then another, each taking its turn. It's a nice extension of the blooming period, but I don't know why it's behaving this way: the plant has been in the same location for years now.

Oh, and I don't know its name. Do you?

How to make a chapbook in five hours

2009-06-15T21:46:00.003-04:00

Spent half the day printing, folding, cutting, gluing, frowning, squinting, correcting, re-printing, re-cutting, resetting margins, re-printing, recutting, re-folding, squinting some more, holding my head in my hands once or twice, getting up and walking away more times than that, coming back, hitting a groove, more printing, more gluing, more puzzling and pondering. Result: one proof copy of Number 3 in the Editor's Series. Two titles in one: Jeff Stumpo's The Icarus Sketches and Crystal Boson's The Icarus Series. It was due to go out in the mail today, but tomorrow will do. More news will be up soon on the 7KP blog, as soon as we get the cover image finalized. The publication date is scheduled for July 15th.

Really fun accordion-style construction, such that you can read both titles by continuously turning the pages right to left--when you reach the end of one book and close the cover, you just open it again and read the other book. I totally owe the construction specs to Michele, one of our spring interns, who figured out how to make what I had tried to describe with my hands in the air by taping little two-inch squares of blue paper together.

Will try to post a pic or two.

Hoya kentiana

2009-06-15T10:45:00.000-04:00

I bought this wax plant at the grocery store I think--or maybe at Lowe's--two years ago. It was tagged as Hoya kentiana. I keep it hanging in the sunny bathroom window. It's finally started to bloom!

Below you can see a second bloom spur developing:

CFS: Chapbook DL extended: Hotmetal Press

2009-06-14T17:35:00.000-04:00

Just passing this along; their guidelines don't exactly sound writer-friendly, if you ask me. . .

The 3rd Annual Hotmetalpress Chapbook Contest
http://www.hotmetal press.net/ PoetryPrize. html

Our prize is $350 and 20 free copies. We also want to send every entrant a copy of the winning collection.

Page Limit: 32 pages
Fee: $20.00
Deadline: extended to Wednesday, July 15, 5 PM
If you are looking for clues as to what we look for a winner, we wish you luck because our selections are unpredictable and eclectic. We like to take risks if the poems interest us. We do not know what poems will interest us either until we see the poems. Sometimes we request poems from the manuscripts for our magazines.
Please make out a check for $20 to Hotmetalpress.
Send it to Carole Towers; 1173 Sea Eagle Watch; Charleston SC; 29412.
Judged by the staff.
Please send a copy of your manuscript in a word document to:sea7@comcast. net.
Your work will be read upon receipt of your check.

The entry rules:

Single spaced poems in 12pt Courier.
Attach title page with your name, address, telephone, and email.
32 page maximum limit including title, content page, acknowledgements, and pages.
Anything with more pages will be eliminated.

CFS: Journal of Lesbian Studies: proposals due 7/03

2009-06-14T17:25:00.000-04:00

passing this along:

ENDED DEADLINE - Journal of Lesbian Studies Special Issue on Black Lesbians- Call for Proposals

Call for Contributors— please consider and let your friends and colleagues know!

Thematic issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies on LESBIANS OF AFRICAN DESCENT: CONTEMPORARY perspectives by Bianca D.M. Wilson and Verlena L. Johnson

The Journal of Lesbian Studies will be devoting a thematic journal issue and book on the topic of LESBIANS OF AFRICAN DESCENT. This journal issue will focus on some of the contemporary topics being discussed among lesbians of African descent, including creation of community, resisting oppression(s) , intersectional identity politics, sexual culture, negotiating family life, etc. Pieces that locate their work and perspectives in the current historical, political,20cultura l, and/or social context will be given preference. We welcome several forms of work, including personal essays, empirical papers, theoretical papers, poetry, and visual artwork. All work should have been written or developed in the last ten years. Authors may use a pseudonym if they prefer.

If there is a piece you published more than ten years ago, you may want to submit a commentary on your own work regarding how things stand now.

For written pieces, please send a one-page abstract of your proposed contribution. For visual art proposals, please submit five images maximum for consideration and a 250-word artist statement/bio. Send all proposals to Bianca D.M. Wilson at bwilson@csulb. edu or Verlena Johnson at verlenasroom@ yahoo.com by July 3, 2009. Abstracts will be evaluated for originality, diversity of experience, and writing style. Please keep in mind that selected 1-page proposals will need to submit full drafts by mid-September, 2009.

Please let your friends and colleagues know about this project. We are limiting submissions to authors who identify as lesbian or same-gender loving women of African descent.

All thematic issues of the Journal of Lesbian Studies are simultaneously reprinted in book form by Taylor and Francis. We hope that the resulting book will be used in social science and humanities studies courses and will be available in feminist and Black community bookstores.

We hope you will consider writing about contemporary topics relevant to lesbians of African descent, so that important aspects of our communities receive the attention they deserve!

In Sisterhood,

Bianca D.M. Wilson and Verlena L. Johnson
Guest Editors, Journal of Lesbian Studies Special Issue

Hosta

2009-06-05T11:00:00.000-04:00

Can't stop photographing these.

The new paper cutter is here! The new paper cutter is here!

2009-06-04T18:35:00.001-04:00

Horizontal view.
Vertical view.

This dandy tool could shave hours from assembly time. I am so excited. (!)

"So that I'm not screwed by a bear"

2009-05-31T02:09:00.002-04:00

Just caught Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno series on the Sundance Channel, thanks to her appearance on the Graham Norton show: wonderful, quirky, fascinating. She's such an intriguing, engaging person. One of the few "famous" people I'd love to meet.

Check out these delightful short films!