Reading table

On my reading table--where I hope they don't simply gather dust:

Katie Ford, Deposition
Sandy Longhorn, Blood Almanac
David Hernandez, Always Danger
Jake Adam York, A Murmuration of Starlings
Mary Jo Bang, Elegy
Mark Ameen, The Buried Body
James Allen Hall, Now You're the Enemy
Peter Covino, Cut Off the Ears of Winter
A. Van Jordan, M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A
Ada Limon, Lucky Wreck
Diane Wald, The Yellow Hotel
Jon Pineda, Birthmark
Lisa Lewis, The Unbeliever
Lisa Goett, Waiting for the Paraclete
G. E. Patterson, Tug
Jean Valentine, Little Boat
Stephen McLeod, The Borgo of the Holy Ghost
Vandanna Khanna, Train to Agra
Michael Dumanis, My Soviet Union
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The other night, on the way to the hospital, I grabbed Paul Guest's Notes for My Body Double. It wasn't just the morphine: these are awesome poems.
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Click here to read about the McCain/Palin haiku contest at The Nation. What fun.

bile

Woke at three this morning in severe pain. Long story short: the E.R. doc diagnosed a gall bladder problem. We were released at about nine; I crashed around ten after e-mailing my students to reschedule some appointments and slept until four. I'm okay.
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We're sitting in the living room tonight and in walks a white cat--maybe five months old?--utterly silent and suddenly there. She was very friendly and walked from room to room. We followed her to the kitchen where she poked her face into Sadie's food bowl and water bowl, then went up to Randy--purring, friendly--and for a few moments, I thought of how much I missed having a cat around. She could catch the mice! She could remind the squirrels and chipmunks to leave us a few peppers. . . then, of course, Sadie came tottering into the kitchen. I don't even know if she saw the cat. But the cat saw her. And was gone into the night.

Mice and men

It was such a pleasure to hear Adam Zagajewski read this evening--it's been years. Adam was this year's Sojka Poet at Bucknell. He read several poems from his new book, Eternal Enemies, including two in both English and Polish, and a series of four "self-portraits" written over several years--I thought the third poem was just stunning, achieving the kind of incantatory liftoff that's characteristic of his best longer poems.
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Coffee with Eduardo was fun this afternoon. I'm not naming any names.
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We caught a 4th mouse this morning, larger than the other three. I'm really hoping this is the last of them. I'm starting to feel really weird walking down the alley with a mouse in a paper bag, scoping for a place to set it free. . .
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REFUGEE

A man carries his door,
the door of his house,
because when the war is over
he is going home

where he will hang it
on its hinges
and lock it, tight,
while he tries to remember
the word for welcome.

If his house is gone
when he returns,
he will raise it from rubble
around his door.

If he cannot return,
the door will remember
the rest of the house
so he can build it
again, elsewhere.

And if he cannot go on,
his door can be a pallet
for his rest, a stretcher
to carry him, his shade
from sun, his shield.

:: Richard Hoffman, in The Literary Review (2005)

Kudos

Congrats to Greg Wrenn on his chapbook win: Greg's a wonderfully talented poet; I've been hoping and waiting to see a collection and can't wait to get this one.

Meeting the parents

This morning I headed up to campus to participate in our Faculty Open House, a one-hour event in which (presumably) all the faculty are corraled and nametagged into a central area into which visiting parents (with and without their enrolled offspring) are poured. It's a civilized kind of fracas: each department has a small table and identifying sign around which we cluster as parents wander around in search of Junior's professors. . . This year, nearly half the parents I spoke to had no real details of their kids' actual schedules--either the students had neglected to provide this basic information or had failed to show up at the appointed hour of ten AM--and as a result, we were forced to send the parents along the line, from one of us to the next to the next, until someone (hopefully) brightened with an "Oh yes! Your daughter/son is in my class!" It was sad.

The few parents I was *hoping* might turn up (and provide some clues, consciously or not, about why, for example, Junior just can't stop rocking back & forth and muttering softly in my class) (I made that one up but some of the behavior is just as disconcerting) did not, alas. But I quite enjoyed chatting with the nine or ten who sought me out (because I teach first-year composition, I tend to get the longer queue). The drive home reminded me that it's nice to be out of the house on a Saturday morning.

Randy, meanwhile, had offered to take the car to its 1:00 appointment for new tires, so I was able to get cracking on a fresh stack of essay drafts. It's nice to have the Saturn running again; I hope it lasts us another ten years.
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My folks finally had their power restored on Thursday, though it's still out at Dad's shop, and Mom says he's starting to get "sour" about it. They're in Cincinnati, where the remnants of Ike tore down quite a number of large trees.
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Number of very small mice captured and released since last week: three.

Number of blocks I walked the second mouse before releasing: two.

Number of times Randy reminded me that mice don't find their way back all that easily (they do, after all, need to be trained to navigate mazes: thankfully only one (he really could have rubbed that in for a while).
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I hear geese. Summer ends tomorrow. Our crabapple tree is loaded this year; we're planning to make jelly again. Last time, it turned out wonderfully.
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E-Z Borrow books on my reading table: Peter Covino, Cut Off the Ears of Winter; Sue Owen, My Doomsday Sampler; G.E. Patterson, Tug; Eric Gamalinda, Zero Gravity; Greg Orr, Concerning the Book...; Jon Pineda, Birthmark.

I'm trying not to go overboard; I can only keep each book for 4 weeks. Thank you, Penn State and Carnegie Mellon, for your poetry libraries.
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Back to work--

New York stuff

I've mentioned before that Chris Torockio is a terrific fiction writer. I just heard that he has a reading in Brooklyn next Tuesday, September 23. If you're in the area, do check it out. Here are the details:

Readings by Louella Bryant & Christopher Torockio

Where: The Perch Cafe, 365 Fifth Avenue, in Park Slope, Brooklyn

When: 7:30 PM, Tuesday, 9/23

Louella Bryant will read from While In Darkness There Is Light, her nonfiction title about the life and disappearance of Charlie Dean during the Vietnam era. Christopher Torockio will read from Floating Holidays. Both titles are publications of Black Lawrence Press.

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Also, check out the new play by Leo Cabranes-Grant: Modified Affections starts this weekend.

Say hello to ma leetle friend

So cute. So tiny. Really, my thumb is larger than this miniscule mouse. Such cute whiskers. Such tiny perfect ears. Such pink little hands--err, paws. If not for the shiny black droppings. . . eww. I mean, double eww. Ickity eww.

How far from the house is far enough to release Miss Mousie?

A rat in the house may eat the ice cream. . .

but will the wee mouse we saw upstairs go for the cheese/ peanut butter/ kibble treat inside this plexiglass box?

Welcome to Whispering Pines--err, Shrieking Pines--uhh, Twisted--err, Windfelled--oh, screw it

Hard to believe, but the remnants of Ike ripped down two enormous white pines at my parents' house in Cincinnati. They--and many others--are without power, but okay.

During my visit in August, a large hickory tree fell from the woods behind their house. We were lucky that it had broken halfway up: only about fifteen feet of it landed in the yard.

One plants a tree, it's been said, for the next generation. . . We expect them to outlive us. I know--knew--these trees. They could be seen from a half-mile away. They marked the turn into my parents' driveway the way three church steeples here in Lewisburg, seen from across the river, mark the block where I live now. One of the first trees I ever climbed as a child was a white pine: the "short pine," we called it, because its top had been blasted away by a storm.

I'm going to miss those trees.
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This week's featured chapbook, Joshua Poteat's Meditations, was published in 2005 as part of the Poetry Society of America's chap series. Joshua doesn't need me to laud this collection--his work is hip-deep in accolades--but I have to say that I love reading and re-reading these poems.

Here's part six of "Meditations in the Margins of the 1941 Catalogue of Dover Books":

vi. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book

Today, the sky is the color of a pigeon's throat,
not the roof of wild pear. And the light
a sluggish vellum that gauzes the mountain
and the fields below it . . . the cow pond
cowless, weighted with leaves that are turning
the water slowly black, so when winter comes
the ice knows where to go.
This is what I'm talking about.
All that decrescendo, from sky to ice,
isn't going to get us anywhere.
There's no passion in it, no star
to navigate the pyre of wasp nests
in the orchard. I remember my sister, years ago,
furious at the piano, her small hands cramping
the notes meant for a four-hundred-year-old
harpsichord. Morley, Byrd, Bull, Gibbons.
Names that would haunt her all summer
with notes only ghosts compose,
names that swarmed our house,
until the 17th century fell deep into
the dog's mouth, the goldfish bowl,
in the red-headed woodpecker
hammering on the shingles.
Our father, who feared nothing
but sleep, escaped to the pine bower
to soak his ears in sap.
There are songs that have saved lives,
and songs that have ended them.
These were neither.
I'm not complaining.
I want the air, for once, to clear
and the night to come down to me as it used to,
there under the pines, as I watched
my father close his eyes against the evening,
the piano a distamt wind over the marshes,
but close enough to hear the blossoms
of my sister's arms wilt and crumble.

Clark's Big Ball

Found these at the local antique shop a couple weeks back, and at a great price! Guess what I'm gonna do with them?

Solicitation & rejection

Thanks to Eduardo for linking to this post. I think the discussion has outgrown its original boundaries--in a good way--and had to throw my own two cents' worth in.

Two new chapbooks!

Over at Seven Kitchens, I've just posted the announcement of our first fiction title: Dan Jaffe's One-Foot Lover, with gorgeous cover art by the incredible Brian O'Connor. You can pre-order Dan's chapbook for only $5 postpaid until the release date of November 21. Why not double down and nab a copy of Judith Barrington's forthcoming chap as well? Lost Lands won the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize, and comes out on October 1.
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Stay tuned for an announcement about our new fall reading period. Any day now. I'm just dotting the i's and crossing the t's.

[9/15 update: The news is up. Please spread the word!]

Bounty

I did take time yesterday evenng to harvest a nice bunch of Sweet 100 tomatoes (from Sasquatch, who's slowing down but still loaded with greenies) and Fish peppers. A nice tang in the air this morning as I drove to campus through rain and fog: autumn approaches.
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SEARCHING FOR TATS: I'm looking for images of tattoos--specifically, on males--to consider for the cover art of a poetry project. Please direct me to your ink!

First cold

First cold of the season: I woke this morning with a sore throat; this evening I'm a phlegmy mess. Oh, well. Best to get it out of the way early.
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Very sorry to hear of Reginald Shepherd's death. It's hard to imagine such a light extinguished. I have vivid memories of his short stint on the faculty at Vermont College. . . I'll keep those to myself for now.
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It's a little freaky to see Ike bearing down on Houston. Hope everyone's okay in the old neighborhood.
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THE HIVE QUIET FOR NOW

Sons gone,
my parents quiet
in their mountain kitchen.
A last tomato quartered.
A long time ago my mother
ran up the mountain
trailed by yellowjackets
like the train of a dress.
A groundhog
squeezes into the garden.
In the valley a building
goes up in smoke.
They call the smoke a scarf.
They know better.

:: Peter Waldor, Door to a Noisy Room

Jobs and po-news: great source

I hope by now that everyone reading my wee blog subscribes to Allison Joseph's CRWROPPS-B list. If not, here's how:

Instructions for joining the list: Go to http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/crwropps- b and click on "Join This Group." Follow the on-screen prompts to join. Or: Send a blank e-mail to crwropps-b-subscribe(at)yahoogroups.com (replace (at) with @). You will be sent an e-mail message with further instructions on how to join the list.

And here's a job posting from today's digest:

creative writing job: Iowa State University: Assistant Professor of English in creative writing. Tenure-track. Beginning August 2009. Accomplished writer in one genre with the ability to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in a second genre for our newly-formed MFA program in Creative Writing and Environment. We seek a colleague whose work demonstrates an ecological perspective and who has an interest in place-based, environmental literature, and in writing about the natural world. Applicants who have a demonstrated commitment to environmental thought and action in tangible forms such as publication, research, and/or fieldwork experiences will be given preference. Successful candidate will be asked to bring fresh perspectives and take an active role in helping to shape our unique and growing MFA program. MFA or Ph.D. and record of substantial publication required; one book and teaching experience preferred. 2/2 teaching load to begin. Interviews with selected candidates may be conducted at the AWP Conference in Chicago. Applicants are invited to apply online at http://www.iastate.edu/jobs by November 1, 2008. AA/EO Employer. Women and members of historically underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.

CFS: Asian American writing: Kartika Review

Kartika Review is accepting submissions for upcoming issues of our online Asian American literary magazine at http://www.kartikar eview.com/. We accept: fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, poetry and visual art by Asian American artists.

We are a quarterly journal and read submissions all year. Simultaneous submission are okay, but please notify us immediately if your work has been accepted elsewhere. Full submission guidelines, including the email addresses for submitting work, are available at our website: http://www.kartikar eview.com/ submit.html

Kartika Review serves the Asian American community and those involved with Diasporic Asian-inspired literature. We scout for compelling Asian American creative writing and artwork to present to the public at large. Our editors actively solicit contributions from established virtuosos in our community in hopes their works here will inspire the next generation of virtuosos. We also want to promote emerging writers and artists we foresee to be the future powerhouses of their craft. Ultimately, Kartika strives to create a literary forum that caters to and celebrates the wordsmiths of the Asian Diaspora.

Call for applications: The Stadler Fellowship at Bucknell

Call for applicants: The 2009-10 Stadler Fellowship at Bucknell University's Stadler Center for Poetry offers professional training in arts administration & literary editing in a thriving, university-based poetry center, while also providing the Fellow time to pursue his or her own writing. The Stadler Fellow assists for 20 hours each week in the administration of the Stadler Center for Poetry and/or in the editing of West Branch, a nationally distinguished literary journal. The Fellow also serves as an instructor in the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets in June. The Fellowship stipend is $20,000. In addition, the Fellow is provided a furnished apartment in Bucknell’s Poet’s Cottage & health insurance, as well as access to all campus academic, cultural, & recreational facilities.

To be eligible, an applicant must be at least 21 years of age, must have received an advanced degree in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry (i.e. MFA, MA, PhD) no earlier than spring 2004, & must not be enrolled as a student during the period of the Fellowship. (Persons enrolled in a college or university at the time of application are eligible.) The Stadler Fellowship is potentially renewable for a second year.

Submit the following items by postal mail: letter of application, curriculum vita, three letters of recommendation, a poetry sample of no more than 10 pp., to: Stadler Fellowship, Stadler Center for Poetry, Bucknell Hall, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837. No materials will be returned; please do not send originals. Postmark deadline: December 6. Notification: late spring 2009.

For more information on the Stadler Center for Poetry, see the website: www.bucknell.edu/stadlercenter.

A poem by Maria Flook

FOR A FATHER

Inside his serious desk,
the black cardboard silhouette
of a fourth grader maintains
its crisp profile.
One blue valentine
from a teenager on probation
is turning violet.

If we take a colored slide
and hold it up,
the little girls inside
show us how far we have gone.
The lamp behind, cool white--
some call this cruelty.

Remember the grassy hill
where a father
made the movies.
Two daughters
somersaulted single file
until they rolled out of view.

And if he called them back
they did not listen,
it was better to keep tumbling.
Pink seersucker deepened
a blood-like green.
Into the dark
they fell.

:: Maria Flook, ReCKless Wedding

Gratitude

Stayed up late a few nights ago to work on a new poem: that tingly buzz when the language starts to click.

Up past my bedtime tinkering with another new one. Hope it looks as promising tomorrow as it feels tonight. Grateful nonetheless.

In a perfect world . . .

. . . more English departments would do nice things like this.

Laboring

Happy Labor Day to all, & esp to those of us who labor away. . . Traffic was nonexistent this morning as I drove up to campus; heading down one long hill, I drove into a bank of fog: from the hilltop, it looked like a cloud resting its belly in the valley, the sun warming its back. Another reminder that the days are turning. Soon the maples will flare.
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A public Thank you to Kathy G, who not only answered my query about Randy Brieger, but mailed me a copy of his manuscript! I've been reading it in small increments, accompanied by memories and ghosts from those Houston days. . .
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I'm continuing my practice of reading a poem each day at the start of class. Not sure yet how my students feel about this, but they do sit quietly and appear to listen. Today's poem is by Lynne McMahon, from her 1993 book Devolution of the Nude:

SLOW

Do you know, the fortune-teller asked him,
that one of your children is slow? And he, stricken, said
I don’t know that yet. And it was no longer a carnival
gaiety. I can help you, she said. But nothing more
about the baby. There was still the arcade before us
and the ferry with its lights. But he had answered
yet. The still-to-come.

I’m not a believer. I’m not afraid. But I write this
anyway, as an exorcism or countermagic, that if he’s slow,
he’s slow to anger or despair, slow to see
a mortal correspondence in those heavens
where he carries water from one god to the next.

Featured chap: Justin Goldberg: Speaking Past the Tongue

Justin Goldberg's Speaking Past the Tongue was selected by Henri Cole as part of the Poetry Society of America's New American Poets Chapbook Series in 2004. Here's a sample poem:

WITCH HUNT

I was told as a child that my ancestors
had been chased from their village in White Russia,
follwed from their homes by a fallout of ash
to a dark bog on the outskirts of town.

I stand with them as they turn to look back from
the water's edge, their neighbors drawing
close enough for us to make out their features
twisted, unfamiliar, before we wade in together,

hide underwater in a tangle of limbs.
Refracted through the surface, they curse
as bullets make the severed, blood-stained
reeds dance in mid-air. We hold our breath.

A few reach the far shore, swim entire oceans.
The others cry out in bubbles, the last light
of their faces flaring as their throats burst
and betray them. I search the darkening water

for a face that is mine. Those who hold out longest
scold me with their eyes before giving in
for the line of air that binds me to my body.
I go on breathing, speak with my mouth full of mud.

Go Read This

I would call it unbelievable, but it's all too true--and it makes me sick to my stomach.

Go read this.

Vintage moi

Is that a little potatohead or what? Found some neat old photos at Mom & Dad's on my last visit; I've been scanning and printing new copies. Above: circa October 1960--my sis and brother, with Mom holding fat little me.
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I had a delightful meeting with Eduardo yesterday afternoon--chatting over coffee, plotting our revolution (naah, but he is gonna help me put some chapbooks together). I'm so glad he got the Roth Rez.
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Early to bed. Classes start tomorrow. Wishing all my hard-working colleagues out there a great semester.

Pressed

Here are some of the morning glories that have all but invaded the laundry room--we keep tying the vines up and away from the back door, but they're growing like crazy. . . I'm not complaining.
(Attempt at an artsy shot--floating the blossom in a bowl of water.)
This one intrigued me: I think the rain plastered it against the window glass, where it stuck as it dried, like a pressed flower.

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Worked on two new chapbook covers--very exciting--and spent a couple hours folding & cutting, folding & cutting, folding & cutting pages.

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Oh--and we went out this weekend to buy my new school shoes. Found a pair I liked: waterproof, scuff-resistant, super comfortable. (I'm really hard on my shoes.)

Bookmaking

--aaaaaand we're back. I keep reminding myself to get back to the blog, but days (and weeks) pass. When classes start in two weeks, I'll be navigating a major speed bump: it's not *all* about time management, but organization definitely helps. My dreams are all about teaching. . .
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At the press: 1) Assembling covers (and full copies) of Deb Burnham's chap. It looks good. 2) Narrowing down the cover art options for Judith's chap. 3) Typing up our first fiction title, to be announced any day now. . .
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Matthew Hittinger seeks advice regarding the apparent implosion of the press that was to have published his chapbook. . . Click here to read all about it and send support, advice, well-wishes. . .
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In the garden: the morning glories have covered half the back dooryard and are now scrambling up into the trees. Three nice colors: an almost-sky-blue, a rose pink, and a small white with pink "star" markings. I've taken pix but keep forgetting to load them. Soon, soon. . .
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Time to help with dinner. I'm making the tomato/basil/mozzarella salad [chop cherry tomatoes into quarters; mince fresh basil; cube a few ounces of mozzarella; toss with fresh cracked pepper, splash of lemon juice & two or three splashes of balsamic vinegar] [= yummy garden goodness]

Back from Ohuckiana

I'm back from Ohuckiana, where I spent a super week-and-a-half at my parents' house: weeding and mulching some of the old flower beds, Canasta with Mom & Sandy, fabric- and book-shopping with Mom, lots of quilt chatting but not much actual progress on our respective projects, though I did help "square up" Mom's blocks for the quilt she's piecing. . . Flew home yesterday, on my burfday, and fell asleep during the flight--woke as we descended through big blobby white clouds over the hills and farmland and past the two active/two dormant stacks of the Three Mile Island plant (practically next door to the Harrisburg Airport).

Lots of correspondence to catch up on, as well as lesson plans for my fall classes. . .

The garden! Four o'clocks are just starting to bloom; white and purple phlox are in full show; the first nicotiana sylvestris has started blooming (nowhere near the 3-4 feet tall that we expected, and I haven't gone out at evening to check the scent) (raining tonight); the morning glories are HUGE and threatening to sprawl into the laundry room; all my wee impatiens plantlets, set out from rooted cuttings last month, exploded into full bloom while I was away; the buddleia bushes have finished their first round of flowering and need deadheading; the rudbeckia and echinacea are completely loaded with blossoms; the cactus-flowered zinnias I started late from seed are sturdy but no flowers just yet. I picked about 30 tomatoes from Sasquatch--just the ripest, though tomorrow there'll be as many again to pick. And the crabapple tree, absolutely loaded this year, is sagging even more under the weight of so much fruit. (We'd noticed this before, of course, but after several days away, the progression is evident. May need to brace some limbs before this is all over.)

Glad to have rain tonight.

Thanks to D & S for the birthday wishes!

high ratchet

High ratchet: the sound of cicadas in our back yard. Once, in my first creative writing class at Houston, I wrote a (bad) poem that included oily blue-black grackles and cicadas, their ratcheting parabola. A couple of years ago, I read a poem somewhere that also used parabola to describe that sound, and I thought yes!
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7KP news: we got our ISBNs from Bowker today! Weeeeehaw!
* * *

Thanks to Brent for the chap exchange. Great poems, buddy. This has rekindled an old idea in my head. . . more details soon. . .
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Kudos to Zachary Harris, whose three poems appear in the new West Branch. I just got a copy today. I heard him read both "Old World Monkey" and "New World Monkey" last summer--good poems! Curiously, the WB web site lists him as "Zachary Harris Willett."
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Our tomato tower toppled last week in a rainstorm. New neighbor propped it gently against a patio chair. When I noticed the felled greenery, I went out in the rain. Neighbor joined me. We agreed that the chair was the best option for the moment. Many green marble-sized tomatoes were scattered across the patio; we picked them up and set them on the table. . . Later that afternoon, I drove a stake into the ground (doo-dah, doo-dah) and tied down one corner of the tottering tomato tower's cagey infrastructure. It stayed upright and has continued to deliver tasty tiny tomatoes, one or two per day. Today: more rain, but just before it arrived, we screwed giant cup hooks into the patio beams and tied down two more cage corners, hopefully securing our vegetal fountain.
* * *

How does one discourage chipmunks from nibbling the garden greenery? They've been devouring the tops of our pepper plants all summer.
* * *

Finally, does anyone out there have any (published or unpublished) poems by the late Randy Brieger? I knew him back in our Houston days, and I know he was circulating a manuscript before his untimely death. . . I contacted Angela Ball, his undergrad mentor, a few years back but we couldn't come up with an address. (For his family, I mean. I am hoping that someone out there can put me in touch with Randy's family.)

Intermittent rain

Intermittent rain much of today, which has been nice because we needed it. Early this afternoon Randy hollered from the back yard Your tomato's fallen over! and I hurried out to help him set it back up. It's actually three tomato plants (Sweet 100) in a great big plastic tub planter, big and rangy and absolutely loaded with clusters of mostly-still-green fruit. We started out with one steel wire tomato cage, then wired a second on atop the first; now we're using cotton twine to secure the various errant limbs. It's loaded. It's top-heavy. It's seven feet tall and shows no sign of stopping. It sucks up all the moisture in the soil and must be watered each day. A strong gust of wind knocked it over. I braced the bottom with two heavy bricks, but I'm thinking now that maybe the bricks should go in the planter, not against it.

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Three days to go: submissions for the Keystone Chapbook Prize must be postmarked (or received via e-mail) by July 15, and they're coming in steadily. Thanks to everyone who's helped to spread the word, or bought a chapbook, or sent well-wishes. Our wee press is having a good year. Next week, I hope to post the cover image for our second title, Deborah Burnham's Still--the final proofs were mailed out on Friday, so I'm just waiting for the go-ahead--and our publication date is set for August 15th . . . I just heard from Robin Becker that she's ready to announce the winning manuscripts in that competition (I don't know yet, but I'll post the news on the 7KP blog as soon as I've been in touch with the authors) . . . Also, we're planning to announce our first fiction title this fall, hopefully in September, if all goes well: more on that in--well, in September, I guess. Do check out the Seven Kitchens blog for all the offical newsy updates.

* * *
Special thanks to Louis McKee, who's been kind enough to let me pick his brain about some publishing questions, and who graciously sent me some chapbooks, including an early one by Harry Humes, and a beautiful hand-letterpressed broadside, No War by Stephen Berg, produced by Banshee Press.

* * *
Heading off to Cincinnati at the end of the month to hang at the family homestead (thanks again, Sis, for the plane tix). Then it's all about gearing up to teach: classes start the last week of August. I'll be ready, but I'm sooo glad I have a month to prepare.

Oh, oh! And Eduardo rolls into town in late August. He'll be living at the Poet's Cottage. We'll dish. We'll put some chapbooks together. We'll maybe get back to writing some collaborative poems. Looking forward to it!

Time flies--

--when you've stacked up so many summer projects, yet I somehow managed to get into a nice groove today and worked on several--five or six?--revisions of poem drafts. All had earlier versions--some pretty rough--but I've been thinking about them, or checking in on them (You still okay back there? In that little-used corner of my brain? Need anything?) or maybe neither, just letting them be, letting them chill out while I stayed busy with other stuff. Anyway. Finally heading up to bed after putting 31 pages of poems together. I'll print them out tomorrow, cut a few, move the rest around, cut some more. Goal? To have a new chapbook manuscript, one I feel solid about.

We'll see.

Lots happening over at Seven Kitchens. Stay tuned . . .

CFS: Imagination & Place Anthology

passing along another call for submissions:

The Imagination & Place Press seeks poetry, fiction, essays, and images for the first book in a new series to be published annually. This first book will be titled, "Imagination & Place: An Anthology". We encourage writers and artists to think, feel, dream, and imagine place in complex and innovative ways. Submit no more than five poems, fiction and essays of no more than 7000 words, and images in JPG format to laciandpress@sunflower.com.

Include a cover letter with a brief biography. If submitting hard copy manuscripts or images, mail to Imagination & Place Press, Lawrence Arts Center, 940 New Hampshire, Lawrence KS 66044; enclose a cover letter with a brief biography and a self-addressed, stamped envelope for reply; no more than ten images, if sent in an envelope. No manuscripts or images will be returned without proper postage and packaging materials. No previously published works are acceptable, although we will take simultaneous submissions with the clear understanding that if work sent to us is accepted elsewhere, we will be notified immediately. Deadline: August 1, 2008.

CFS: New journal: Collective Fallout

passing this along:

Call for submissions: Collective Fallout: A literary magazine of queer genre fiction & poetry.

Collective Fallout is a literary magazine dedicated to queer-themed sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and mystery fiction and poetry. It will be a print journal published 2 or 3 times a year. The Collective Fallout blog is where readers will find reviews, interviews, and other editorial content, and is where readers are encouraged to comment on and reply to the forthcoming print journal.

We welcome submissions for our premier issue.

~Submit content for the print magazine electronically to collectivefallout at gmail dot com.
~Please attach files in DOC, RTF, or PDF formats.
~Short Story submissions must be queer-related, and fall into one or more of the the science fiction, fantasy, horror, or mystery genres. Stories may not be longer than 10,000 words.
~Poetry submissions must be queer-related, both form and free verse, and of a surreal, metaphysical, or similar nature. Up to 5 poems per submission, no more than 450 total lines.
~Simultaneous submissions accepted.
~Collective Fallout will print one full-color image per issue as its cover. Digital image submissions should be submitted via email as an attachment with a minimum 300dpi resolution.
~Contributors will receive one contributor copy of the magazine.
~Collective Fallout acquires and retains First North American Serial Rights.

New (old) quilt (layout)

Here's another quilt I'm working on: this is a classic nine-patch, made with a wide assortment of antique fabric scraps--double pinks, indigo blues, chrome yellows, cheddar orange, grey "mourning" prints, various shirtings--I'll take some close-up photos once the whole thing is actually constructed. Right now, I've only finished the nine-patch blocks and have them arranged (and rearranged) on my flannel wall. I'm pretty satisfied with the current layout. Next step: cutting and adding the setting blocks (in between the colorful ones) and deciding what kind of border(s) to add. I'm piecing this one by hand, and each of the squares in the nine-patch blocks come out to just under an inch across. It's great fun to play with all these wonderful old fabric scraps (many are at least 100 years old) and to try to construct a quilt in much the same way that it might have been done a century ago.

Good poem

Click here to read Bruce Bond's "Horn" in Linebreak.

CFS: AIDS Project Los Angeles Anthology

Call for Submissions: APLA Writing Project 2009 / Co-editors: Tisa Bryant and Ernest Hardy.

Our world is at a crossroads. We daily witness economic meltdowns and uncertain job markets, boiling religious fundamentalism, issues of immigration as borders melt or collapse, age-old and brand new manifestations of racism, and the exploding spread of AIDS in communities of color. But we’re also at a crossroads of enormous possibility, resistance and revolution. It’s an opportunity to create new definitions and terms of success, of blackness and gayness / queerness / same gender lovingness. It’s a crucial moment for reexamining our visions and expectations of self and community.

At this crossroads, we are collaborating with AIDS Project Los Angeles to publish the fourth in their series of book-length collections of writing and images that grapple with the questions of what it means to be, know and love gay men of African descent in the 21st century. Where have we been? Where are we going? What’s on the horizon?

We want to share your responses to these questions with the world. We seek poetry, short stories, essays, articles, excerpts from novels / plays / screenplays, dreams, journal entries, photo essays, blog posts, collages, manifestoes, or email exchanges that imaginatively contextualize black gay men’s lives in connection with your own. Give us some sharp focus portraits, lingering close ups, long-range views, backwards glances of who you’re looking at, where you’re coming from , and what matters most in the worlds you make and imagine.
We especially seek works that explode conventions around racial, sexual, religious or regional identities, that challenge, provoke, are brave and unexpected. All submissions will be seriously considered, from straightforward and linear stories of lived experiences, political activism, and cultural criticism, to experimental pieces that toy with language and cross boundaries of genre and form. What we want, what we need, and what we believe in is your unfiltered but masterfully rendered truth.

Text entries: 1,200 words maximum. Poems must be two (2) pages or less.

Graphic art: B&W, hi-res 300 DPI, TIFF file format. Color art that can be published in B&W will also be considered.

Deadline for submissions – July 30, 2008

Text must be emailed as a very clean (proofread) attachment from a word-processing application, formatted as intended for publication, and must include, your name, title of work, type of work (essay, article, poem, visual art, etc.), length (word count), email address; and a 50-word bio and photograph of writer/artist.

The subject line should read, Book Submission (genre), e.g., “Book Submission (Fiction)”

PAYMENT: $100 for your submission and 10 copies of the book.

Address all correspondence, including queries to, tiscern@gmail. com

Press release

For Immediate Release: AIDS Project Los Angeles Releases third in series of publications focused on Black Gay Men and HIV/AIDS

Los Angeles, Calif., June 24, 2008 – AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) today announced the publication of To Be Left with the Body, the latest in a series of publications created by and for black gay and bisexual men to explore the impact of HIV/AIDS on their lives. Co-edited by Cheryl Clarke and Steven G. Fullwood, the collection features contributions from 16 writers and poets, and a series of photographs by New York artist Artis Q. "AIDS Project Los Angeles is committed to a robust and relevant conversation with black gay men about HIV risk," said APLA Director of Health and Wellness Programs Vallerie D. Wagner, who wrote the book's foreword. "We have a responsibility to take action, stand firm and stem the tide of this pandemic."Gathered into four sections, the essays, poems and stories of To Be Left with the Body pose provocative questions ("Who is the HIV/AIDS virus pushing us to become?") and offer accounts of "bodies . . . at war with themselves; bodies aging, being positive, holding illiness; and seeking and finding their grace." Throughout the book, Artis Q.'s series of seven photographs, "Me and My Shadow," shows well-known New York City landmarks layered with an ever-present black male silhouette. As Ms. Wagner writes in her foreward, To Be Left with the Body aims to expose the "hidden face of AIDS" and begin to conquer the "silence, stigma and denial" that have become the "inevitable result" of the spread of HIV into communities of color. A 2005 study in five major U.S. cities found that 46 percent of black men who have sex with men (MSM) in the study were infected with HIV, compared with 21 percent of white MSM and 17 percent of Latino MSM. Since that time, APLA has engaged a wide network of writers and artists to help drive conversations about HIV/AIDS among gay men of color through cultural production. To Be Left with the Body follows APLA publications Think Again (2003) and If We Have to Take Tomorrow (2006).

To place orders for the book, please contact Patrick Hebert at 213.201.1537. To download a copy, visit http://www.apla. org/publications /publications. html.

Title: To Be Left with the Body
Date: June 2008
Editors: Cheryl Clarke and Steven G. Fullwood
Contributors: Samiya Bashir, Raymond Berry, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Ramsey Brisueno, Jewelle Gomez, francine harris, A. Naomi Jackson, Ana-Maurine Lara, Dante Michaeux, Conrad Pegues, Kevin Simmonds, Pamela Sneed, Terence Taylor, Marvin K. White, james witherspoon, avery r. young.
Publisher: AIDS Project Los Angeles
Graphic Design: Patrick "Pato" Hebert
Images: Artis Q and Steven G. Fullwood
Pages: 84

AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), one of the largest non-profit AIDS service organizations in the United States, provides bilingual direct services, prevention education and leadership on HIV/AIDS-related policy and legislation. Marking 25 years of service in 2008, APLA is a community-based, volunteer-supported organization with local, national and global reach. For more information, visit www.apla.org.

One-day deadline

The postmark deadline for the 7th annual Oscar Wilde Award is tomorrow, June 27th.

Full details from the publisher:

The 7th Annual Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award

Deadline: June 27, 2008 (postmarked) Our dates never change. If the date falls on a Sunday, then Monday becomes the default postmarked date.

Focus: This award will be given to the best previously unpublished original poem written in English (of any length, in any style, typed, double spaced on one side only), which best relates gay / lesbian / bisexual / transgender life by a poet who is 18 or older.

Submittal: Entrants are asked to submit their poems in the following manner: (1) without any kind of identification, with the exception of the title, and (2) with a separate cover page with the following information: name, address (street, city, and state with zip code), telephone number, email address, if available, and the title of the poem submitted. (3) A short bio should also be included. Poems will not be returned, so poets should keep copies of their poems. A short bio may also be included.

Reading Fee: Poets must submit a reading fee of $5.00 (USD) for each individual poem submitted, regardless of the length. Checks or money orders drawn on American banks, routed through a USA address, such as Bank of America, should be made payable to Gival Press, LLC. Overseas money orders are not acceptable. Mail to: Robert L. Giron, Editor; Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award; Gival Press, LLC; P.O. Box 3812; Arlington, VA 22203.

Notification of the Winner: Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) for notification of the winner or visit our website (http://www. givalpress. com), where the winner and finalists will be announced. The winner is usually announced on or before September 1.

Prize: The winner will receive $100.00 (USD), and the poem, along with information about the poet, will be published on the website of Gival Press (http://www. givalpress. com). The winner will be asked to sign a release form for payment. In addition, Gival Press hopes to publish an anthology of the winners of this award along with the best poems submitted to the contest over a period of several years.

Judging: Poems will be judged anonymously by the previous winner of the award. The decision made by the judge will be final.

Discount Offered to Entrants: Anyone who has entered a Gival Press contest may purchase any books published or distributed by Gival Press at a 20% discount off the retail price, with free shipment. Credit cards are preferred. Kindly either call us (703.351.0079 - leave a message if we can't answer when you call and we will call you back) or send us an email with your phone number and we will call you, as we only accept the credit card information by phone.

"After the River Crests"

I've admired Taylor Graham's poems for several years--she publishes widely--and was happy to buy a copy of her 2005 chapbook, Under the Shuttle, Awake, from Dancing Girl Press.

Nice sepia-tone cover photo byAlaina Burri-Stone; adequate construction (crooked stapling, pages not trimmed) (sorry, but these things matter); pretty good poems. Here are three:

AFTER THE RIVER CRESTS

The ones who drowned no longer believe
in luck, the random confluence of details
whereby small, intricately-shaped parts
not intended for each other suddenly fit
together and function. They know
everything is intended: the singing of whisks
and the snick-snick of bolts, the shush
of broomstraws, slip of reels, ratcheting
of gears. They’ve learned how everything
draws to this organ-swell, the everlasting
gravity of water. Their eyes have gone
moist as if with joy as, one by one, they
jump to the hooks, amazed as fish.

PHOSPHORUS

Bad dreams pasted the moon upside-down
on the inside of the window.
A sliver moon sharply cut from black and gray
shines above the ancient suck of waves
along the beach, expanses of sand
that once covered dead horses washed up
and left eroding in their natural furrows
as the surf keeps wasting it away.
How terrible the horses with their long necks
pointing out to sea, their snakes of necks not moving.

How can anyone speak of going out
for dinner? Some pricy place
where palm trees hold up the ceiling
and the servers are greasy with prawns.
A tongue is nothing but living muscle
for all its taste of salt.
Here’s this dark box
full of possible pictures. Outside,
the deep sea strikes its light.

WRONG NUMBER

Who are you
anyway? he wants to know.

Never answer in your own voice.

The yellow rose unpetals
in its vase.
The table reflects your own
face in its polish. It admits
nothing of itself except
plain wood-grain.
So much is moving underneath
a dinner plate—

in all the world
so many hungers.

Let him talk.

"After the Long Party"

This week's* featured chapbook is a collaboration between Stephen Dunn and Lawrence Raab: Winter at the Caspian Sea was published around 1998 by the now-defunct Palanquin Press, and it's a pleasant read. Dunn & Raab explain their collaborative process--a sort of modified "exquisite corpse" with a few other parameters thrown in--in the introduction, and confess that their wives, as first readers, were usually dead-on accurate about which prized lines belonged to which writer. I've read much more of Dunn's work (most of it, going way back to Full of Lust and Good Usage--still a great title!--in the mid-80s) than Raab's (though I still feel more drawn to his early work--The Collector of Cold Weather, for example--than the last two books), but found it was easy enough to forego the game of who said what? as I read through the poems, enjoying instead their sometimes surprisingly recursive qualities (surprising because, for me, one of the joys of writing collaboratively is--well--the surprise, the unexpected territory into which the poems sometimes leap--or fall).

The book is handsomely produced on heavy papers with nice cardstock covers. It's saddle-stapled, alas, but I was lucky enough to get a copy signed by both authors. Mine is #88 of 300.

Incidentally, I tried a couple years ago to reach someone at the press when they were still housed at Aiken (USC); I wanted to teach John Repp's Things Work Out along with several other chaps in my poetry class. I left messages by phone and e-mail but never heard from anyone; I heard just today from someone that the press relocated but went under after that. A shame. Maybe somewhere out there is a box with a few extant copies? Why don't a few independent presses step forward and take on the service (because it is, after all, purely that) of distributing these (presumably) remaining copies, or at least piggybacking a small press's backlist onto their catalog or web site? I don't know all that much about such things, but it seems to me that this could be done.

Anyway. Here's a poem from Winter at the Caspian Sea:

After the Long Party

Silence once again was looking to conceal itself
as if there weren’t enough of it to last until morning.
I looked up at the stars, their vague invitations,
and you came out to join me, your words tremulous,
hanging in the stilled air. Then neither of us spoke.
I felt something was burning up all over the world,
reducing itself to ash. Maybe it was language itself,
its misuse, its tendency to adhere itself to power.
You said you didn’t want to be like some circus elephant
made to stand tiptoe among the din of children.
Yes, I agreed, better to throw a tantrum and destroy
the big tent, trample a few of our tormentors.
Things would really get quiet then, I said,
everything so fragile, suddenly small, and desperate.

* - After trying to keep up with my "Friday chap" and then failing even faster with a "weekend chap," I'll do my best to feature a chapbook once a week. Somewhere in the week. Or weekend. Or even Fridays. But don't hold me to it.

New Quilt Top

I had a lot of fun piecing this one by hand: it measures 15 inches square and the little blocks are less than an inch square. All antique fabrics. I'm selling it on eBay, but if it doesn't go, I'll be delighted to keep it and quilt it myself.

Birthday Bro

I meant to post this yesterday in honor of my big brother's birthday (we won't mention the year): look at him, all sass and motion, just waiting for a baby brother to torment--err, to mentor.

And yes, I just noticed that those words are syllabic opposites of each other. Interesting.

Happy birthday, bro.

Trailside

Last weekend, we took our annual orchid-spotting hike (can't tell you where, sorry) and were happy to see that the small colony of ladyslippers is healthy: the number of flowering plants has probably doubled in the past five years, and we couldn't even count the new, smaller plants. Very nice. Here (below) is a close-up:
At the sunny end of the trail, I was disappointed to see that all the raspberries had been mowed down--a 20-foot swathe of bare ground remained, with tractor treads still marking the soil. Though new berry canes were springing up all over, it'll be a few years before they come close to reclaiming their territory (if they're left alone). It was nice, though, to see a few wild blueberries flowering (below):
We're having a cold snap tonight, after a week of awesome weather. I photographed the irises late this afternoon, after the rain had let up, and will try to post a photo tomorrow.

Stuff

My sincere thanks go out to everyone who helped to spread the word about the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. The (presumably) last manuscripts came in today by mail with 5/15 postmarks--it's possible, I guess, that something from oh, I don't know, Alaska might trickle in tomorrow, but the response has been great: 62 manuscripts came in (63, actually, but one was withdrawn, having been accepted elsewhere) (congrats again).

* * *

We're having a cool, damp spring. The laundry room windowsills are jammed with seedlings that I'm reluctant to set out--morning glories, thunbergia vines, hot peppers--because I'm afraid they'll languish in the cold. I haven't even started basil seeds. At this point, I'm just going to buy some plants once we're into consistently warm weather.
* * *
Congrats to Steve Fellner and Daniel Hall, cowinners of the Thom Gunn Award in Poetry for Blind Date with Cavafy (Marsh Hawk Press) and Under Sleep (Chicago), and to Joan Larkin, who won the Audre Lorde Award for My Body (Hanging Loose).

[photo: "Lamp blossom," 5/11/08]

"Three or Four Shades of Blues"

I feel so lucky to own a signed copy of this chapbook. It's a wonderful read, and one of the best chaps published by State Street Press (in 1992!). Here's a sample poem:

Three or Four Shades of Blues

These days in Europe no one is safe.
The terrorist who works at the newsstand
will tell you his country’s government
is like a jazz band that improvises badly
and too often. His accomplice will say
the Prado museum is not a good shelter:
if someone walks in with a saxophone full
of explosives, Guernica will burn again.
He has figured out what it will take
to blow up the canvas, to bring down
every building in Madrid. The streets
will swallow you like night rain.
These days the European rain falls
through the roofs of the jazz clubs,
but no one seems to notice: no one leaves
before the last note of Cryin’ Blues is
dead and the last wine glass is broken.
Then they all go out for walks, thinking
that the streets are only streets. They
pass the museum and make plans to go in
someday. A woman says she’s well acquainted
with an architect who assures her that
those walls will outlive every jazz musician
in the continent. One of them overhears
this and says he’s not convinced.
He wants to hock his five trombones and
move to Mexico before the next night rain.

garden pics

The sweet woodruff is in full bloom.
Rau rom--a.k.a. "Vietnamese coriander"--a great substitute.
Tricolor sage.
White violet.
Lily of the valley. Incredible scent. You'd never expect it to contain fatal poison, muahahaha.

garden pics [2]

Columbine.
Sempervivum ("hens & chicks").
I can't remember the name of this ground cover.
Dwarf iris.
More iris.

Now reading for the 2008 Keystone Chap

The submission period is now open for the 2008 Keystone Chapbook Award (follow link for complete guidelines). This year's judge is G. C. Waldrep!

** ** **
I'm off to Lycoming for Baccalaureate, and then back up to campus tomorrow for graduation. Oh, we like sheep. . .

"hiding the blind spot"

BLIND SPOT

Two days, the eye in the horse's head worked
but with a granular vision. A warning nicker, a turn,

she would knock her cheekbone into the stall door,
bursting the barely mended eye of orbit waters,

half-full, half-empty sight. That flood
on top of which many Edens had floated--

like the tree of radish-small apples, like the grass--
had sprung from the deep channels of the brain

and meandering up would pool in the blank socket
to come into light through the luminous, black pupil.

When there's nothing to do but start over, she
curves ingeniously toward the view, sidling

into the world's crabbed dogs and snapping flags,
hiding the blind spot: what isn't, what can't be.

: Beth Thomas, in Seneca Review (fall 2005)

Happy birthday, Sissypoo!

God, this photo brings back memories. Isn't she cute with her dandelion?

"The Last Time"

Cooler weather. The lawns flecked with sweet violets flicking side-to-side in the breeze. Too cool in the shade to be without a jacket, though I almost never wear a jacket and tend to walk in the shade whenever possible. Less glare.

Hedges of lilacs in bloom, that cloying sweetness, funereal, permeating the entire town. My dad says the smell attracts ticks. I've never looked this up. Not wanting him to be wrong about anything. Meaning: he speaks rarely. Meaning: I miss his voice, its certainty.

The pepper seeds sprouted today: first, the elbows. Tiny latch hooks arching from the soil. Next, the hands. I've filled every possible shelf in the laundry room with seed flats and jars of cuttings.

I walked past the poetry center today, first time in a long while, because I wanted to see the Virginia bluebells in flower--a mass of them among the pachysandra, the blossoms in gradations of pink and violet-blue. As I passed by, my keychain came apart and bing! bing! bounced in pieces along the flagstones. That's never happened before. It's brass, sort of horseshoe-shaped, with a threaded rod in the center that had come undone. I found both pieces.

** ** **

Here's a poem by Amy Meckler, from her book What All the Sleeping Is For, which I'm really enjoying:

THE LAST TIME

He was there, a man from the waist up hovering even after I woke up
and looked back. Light enough to distinguish gray from black, I knew

he was a ghost of someone who loved me. I felt Jason, but is Jason dead?
Cancer still breeding in his bones when I left him, but he looked healthy, still tone

in half his height, a figment I knew I hadn't invented by wishing. He seemed
to be marrying me, his half body like a groom's watching a procession, but

his face was a father's angry at his daughter caught in some forbidden room.
I froze, stared back, said Ok, Ok, meaning You can disappear now, and he did

then the phone rang to prove I was not dreaming. Lime rose
from a glass left out overnight, brought to mind the summer I drove to see him,

waited by his apartment door. I looked up from my book to check my watch and
he was standing outside the glass, looking at me in my summer dress, sunned hair.

The last time I saw him whole. He asked me, and I said no.

Random--

I'm still grading compositions, having divvied them up into manageable batches. Drove up to the office today to put in a few hours. Grades are due online by Monday. Then: gardening! Reading! Time with Randy!
** ** **

On the back of a transfer truck, the following sign caught my attention:

USE DUMMY GLADHANDS
WHEN AIR LINE IS DISCONNECTED.
** ** **

Mom pieced a quilt for my brother and asked us to quilt it. It's coming along well: I'm trying to put in at least an hour each night. Hoping to have it finished before his birthday in June. Meanwhile, I have three or four designs in my head that I want to tinker around with: another reward for finishing up the semester.
** ** **

Ran across several old issues of Evergreen Chronicles today. It wasn't a bad journal; I was sorry to see it fold. Surprised to find that I still have half a dozen issues.
** ** **

In just a matter of days, the garden has erupted into new growth. The wood violets are starting to bloom all along the walkway; it's amazing how quickly they pop open (the lily-of-the-valley hasn't even bloomed yet). The crabapple tree is loaded with pink buds, small and tightly closed. The hostas have poked up, thin green leaves curled tight, not yet unrolled. The ferns are unspringing so quickly, I could almost plop down to watch.

"Street Dance, 1959"

STREET DANCE, 1959

A girl is receiving a tiara
on the bandstand in the middle of town,
that summer night. She leans her head
forward, politely smiles.
The points jab the skin behind her ears.
Seven girls in white dresses turn
in the hot August night. They have pink baby
roses in their hands. She has a whole paper bouquet,
a tiara of glass rubies, shiny black slippers.

I am eight years old.
My parents dance together
on the other side of the knotted rope.
“Have fun,” my mother says, leaning over,
stroking my face with her fingertips.
“Don’t wander off.” My brother
pulls on my hand to dance. The children dance

like children, alone or by twos and threes,
scuffing the dust, stomping
around and around the barricade.
The girl on the bandstand smiles
for the Tribune photographer
and the lights her father aims upward.
Seven white girls in starched dresses
revolve around her stillness. A man
in a black suit speaks the names
into a black microphone; the syllables
rebound, distorting in the air, dispersed
in silent alleyways behind the buildings.

My brother comes and stands near me,
shy and insistent. We hold hands and stare upward.
Over the hot pavement, music scratches,
aimed from big steel speakers above our heads.
I can’t tell what they are singing; we
can’t make it out, though we push our heads out,
poking up our chins to listen, and are held there.

Now the streets are empty.
They glare sheer black in orbits surrounding
the lighted square. It spins and spins;
faster, one step, and I am lost.
I have wandered off, and in the secret of time
this happiness lies safe, still untouched,
and in it we remain
those children. The pale lights, the press
of bodies in a crowd, the night-sultry air,
reach me, beyond coercion, in the sweetness
of absolute privilege. I look up
at girls like flowers, carnations
with twiggy stems and poufy skirts, all turning
around the one who stands there still.

To see her is to enter the future
obliquely, to be taller, smooth and glowing,
to know the quietness of standing on a stage with
flowers. The speaker’s rasp, the gesturing
black-coated man pushing her forward carefully,
mastering, steering narrow shoulders, the lights
above the wooden stage, all these push back
time, pressing this into focus, clean and hard.

My brother stands happy beside me,
singing to himself. He is five. The sweetness
is being pressed out of him by steady
care and correction; his sweet joy
is being broken so he may harden,
and set into a shape. He is all green and open
with no secret place to hide his hope,
his baby joy; it shows all over him
and is being wrung and rubbed
like a stain gotten out. He will not wander
but stand there under the lights not seeing
what shimmers all around him.
He will stand under the lights, ready to clap
his hands and be pleased, to dance around
in a circle, not knowing he shines
like a military objective in the night.

: Cynthia Huntington, We Have Gone to the Beach (1996)

Passing

This afternoon I received news that Eric Van Cleve, one of our June Poets from 2003, died last week at home in Ohio. Eric took his B.A. at Ohio State and would have completed his M.F.A. at Washington University next month. I remember him well, but am sorry to say that I had not kept in touch. I do know that several of "our Junies" ended up in the program at Washington (and several others at UT-Austin), and it sounds like Eric had many friends in his grad program.

His obituary can be found here.

Below are the only two poems of Eric's that I could put my hands on. These are the poems he selected for inclusion in the 2003 program anthology:

POEM

The man who sells mirrors is in denial.

With every purchase,

he loses a twin

but cannot bring himself

to take a chair

away from the table.

When he has finished eating,

he stares into his plate

and watches the one

who will never leave,

the one holding a fork

scratching his clean, white cheek.

** **

It depends.

It depends on the wind

for the man who sells perfume

on a street corner,

beside a hotdog vendor.

Which way does it blow?

Do the hotdogs smell

like prostitution?

Does a cloud of mustard or relish

spread around his tiny glass bottles?

Only the birds

are more confused.

A hungry pigeon,

a poor man, close enough

to peck the other's eyes out.

*** ***

RECYCLING

There will come a point in history,

because everyone agrees

that history seems to be a line,

when, for wood, we will chop down

the last of the telephone poles

and pry apart our log cabins.

There will be no more room

for cemeteries, the dead dug up

to accommodate new bodies, the old bodies

kept in school, being that students

will no longer be with us.

On the way to the bathroom, one night

a man will peek through his curtains

and see a ghost:

a tree, a headstone or child.

Just watch it.

Earl Pickens, our next-door neighbor, is at it again. I can't get this tune out of my head.

April days

R & I worked a bit in the garden this morning, carefully raking leaves and litter (fallen twigs and such, not trash) from one end of the semishaded garden. The moonbeam coreopsis has sent up purply-red shoots, an inch or more high already, and it's managed to spread quite beyond the rock edging. Next weekend, I'll try digging up the runaways and planting a clump or two beneath the butterfly bush.

Speaking of the butterfly bush, I'm happy to see new growth at the top. Now all I need to do is prune it lightly (instead of to the ground, as before) and we should get quite a tall specimen this year. The flowers are butter-yellow, and the plant is ganglier than our smaller purple and pale lavender ones, but the butterflies, bees and hummingbirds flock to it all summer and well into fall.

The sweet woodruff has spread wonderfully, practically doubling the area it covered last summer. I planted one small clump, grown in a 6-inch pot, beneath the dwarf pine three years ago. The first year, it languished. Last year, it had established nicely and covered a few square feet. Now, it's definitely on the move. I hope it extends all the way to the fence; nothing else will grow under the evergreens and giant euonymus hedge.
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R gave me a haircut a little while ago. I truly needed it; I'd developed a full-blown crop of "academic hair" (think Einstein's hair). Don't know why I let it go so long--a fresh, close-cropped haircut always feels so good.
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All right, I must get back to my grading, or I'll end up out in the garden again (soon, soon).

"Amen"

I first read Norman Dubie's Groom Falconer in 1992, three years after its publication (though I was reading then at a voracious rate, I'd not yet found Dubie's poems; it was Susan Prospere, I think, who recommended that I seek him out). In these recent days of various uncertainties, I find myself craving poems that ring with striking clarity, a resonant sense of place, and the sudden shock of slippage--the leap of the mind into a striking and seemingly-unbidden image--that makes this book such a welcome place for my own mind to return to. Here, for example, is the final poem in the book. Tell me if that last line doesn't prickle the hair on the back of your neck! And yet its sudden, jolting arrival feels completely organic to the space created by the poem. Dubie is a marvel. I'll never read enough of his work.

AMEN

[for Patrick & Robert]

Someone calls Duchess, our fawn Great Dane, back
Across the dusty road: she’s nearly to the lawn
When the Buick hits her, she rolls
And then gaining her legs
Runs into the field of goldenrod where my father
Finds her; when he presses
The large folded handkerchief against the wound, it vanishes
Along with his forearm. She was months dying.

One night returning from my aunt’s house, we stopped
At a light and watched a procession of cars
Coming down out of the first snow, down
Out of the mountains, returning to Connecticut. Everywhere
Roped to the hoods and bumpers were dead deer.
The man behind us honked
His horn. My father waved him on. He hit
The horn again. My father got out and spoke
With him in a voice that was frightening
Even for a man with a horn. We left the door open
And the four of us sat there in the dome light
In silence. Wanting to be fair,
I thought of squatting cavemen, sparks flying
From flints into dry yellow lichen and white smoke
Rising from Ethel Rosenberg’s hair.

"Things to Be Afraid Of"

Poems retrieved: Thanks to the patient advice of Randy, Sebastian and Eric (the latter one of my former students), I was able to retrieve my files from the laptop, where they were indeed backed up (and hidden) just before the flash drive strangled itself. Phew. What a scare: such a visceral loss of identity--I realize now the degree to which I believe I am what I do.
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I owe Eduardo a phone call.
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Here's a poem by Patrick Lawler, from his wonderful 1990 book A Drowning Man Is Never Tall Enough:

THINGS TO BE AFRAID OF

Light. The cities’ aortas of light.
Things to be afraid of: nowhere
And platitudes. White places.
And places to dance. Apocalyptic
Ceremonies when we find the language
For them. Nothing. To be afraid. There is
Silence and words. The breaking leaves.
The effortless. Schools of white
Butterflies, like schooners, like bits
Of torn paper. There is nothing. Our names.
Pictures of a beautiful woman
Touching the eyes of a yellow ding
Man. Things to be afraid of.
Plagiary. The planes of air. Anything
Permanent. The breakable. Winter,
Charts, spare rooms, matches, songs
Nailed to the chest. Anecdotes.
Manganese and mythology. Extra
Innings. Enumerations. Always
Nothing which is nothing to be afraid of.

Reeling

The sick, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach is the dawning realization that I've experienced a massive loss of data this evening on my computer: my 4G flash drive has somehow malfunctioned and I can't retrieve anything from it. Among the missing: all my 7KP data, including the PDF files of Harry's book; tons of journals and correspondence; nearly all my poems--many of which might be retrieved, in part, from my pocket journals, but I had a whole folder of drafts, and both manuscripts--oh, crap. Crap, crap, crap.

Head in hands--