I am (gradually) moving the contents of this blog to my new site, Reads in the Trees. You're welcome to follow my writing there.

Glitch

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

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

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

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

Fresh callas I bought this week.

Poetry book giveaway: the winners are...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

:: bloop ::

Day 24: Late Testament

:: bloop ::

Thanks for reading. Six days to go.