Reading Edith Pearlman

is such a treat that I have to hold myself back or there'll be nothing left on my plate. (Fortunately, Edith's stories only get better with re-reading.) Savoring now: How to Fall, her newest collection, which Sarabande released this spring. Included is "Trifle," a story we ran in West Branch a couple of years ago. Please check out this marvelous fiction writer: she's at the top of her gift, and she totally deserves the prizes that are coming her way.

Fall of the Medici

At one this morning, we were jarred awake by a resounding shatter from downstairs. I was out of bed before Randy (for once) (he'd been sleeping with his headphones on). Even as we stumbled down to the kitchen, I groggily noted that he'd had time to pull some pants on (I was wearing only my glasses), and that he was urging me to "wait upstairs." [In situations of perceived danger, R's bear emerges protectively.]

Flipped on the blinding lights to see that it wasn't a window, but a teapot in smithereens, literally all over the kitchen floor. It had rested on top of the cupboards. I had moved it a wee bit closer to the edge the other night, to make more room for Allie (cat), who has gotten into the habit of leaping from floor to counter to fridge and then into a smallish empty spot at the end of the cupboards, where she perches like a ginger gargoyle to supervise our cooking and dishwashing.

So: top of cabinet + impact at counter = stupendous spray of fine white bone china shards. I found Allie hiding in the living room and made sure she was unharmed. Randy sent me back up to bed (I have an early start this morning and won't be home from Penn State until pretty late tonight).

It's not like the teapot was functional. It had a hairline crack, which I noticed one day in Houston when it started to leak delicately on the countertop. I had visions of it exploding all over me (or worse, over me and the dog or cat) immediately after being filled with boiling water. I set it in the back of the cupboard, packed it up with our other must-haves when we left Houston, and have carted it from apartment to apartment since. I even considered sticking a plant in it, but the image of a fern growing out of a fancy Wedgwood teapot seemed way too fey, as if it might open a door to the influx of tatted doilies and fuzzy toilet seat covers.

But I couldn't throw it away. I'm not even sure what it's come to represent (though after ten years you'd think I'd have a keener perspective). This was David's china, an elegant pattern--"Medici"--with a small blue and gold shell design around the rim. He picked the pattern, though we bought it together, and in fact we even registered at a big department store in downtown Houston (this was the mid-eighties and the clerk was flummoxed at the suggestion; I think my name was entered in the "bride's" column). But the truth is that I'm just not a Wedgwood sort of fag, and I never will be. After David died, and once I was able to realize that hoarding a Wedgwood setting for eight* was ridiculous, I sold it all on eBay.

And now the last of it is gone.



* more on my hoarding tendencies some other time

Another Common Wealth reading

I'll be bopping over to Penn State for another reading by Common Wealth poets: this one's set for Saturday, November 19, 2:00 pm at the Barnes & Noble in State College. Will post an update if I get more information.

(The reading was initially scheduled for October 22 but has been rescheduled.)

Pepe LePew!

Okay, we're in a pretty small town in rural PA, so it's not unusual to see (or smell) a skunk scurrying along the street. Nice, eh? Often in the evenings, a malodorous local critter wafts its lovely essence through the open windows: it's noticeably strong, enough to make us glad that Sadie has never encountered a skunk on her evening walks. (We actually did get about ten feet from one last summer; Sadie was on her best behavior.)

So tonight, when a sudden overwhelming ODOR completely permeated the living room within seconds, we suddenly realized how much worse a skunk encounter could be. O. My. God. I just about gagged. My eyes and throat started burning. Randy ran for the Lysol--it doesn't help--and slammed the windows shut. Too late.

I'm typing this through streaming tears and a wheezing, sneezing allergy attack. I think my throat is actually swelling. I cannot fucking believe this smell.

What I'm reading now

Between Camelots, stories by David Harris Ebenbach.

Weekend proofing

Spent a big chunk of my weekend proofreading the new West Branch (#57, our fall/winter issue): it's nice to come in during the last stage of this process, when literally months have passed since the work was accepted, and most everything feels fresh and not-too-familiar. I found only about a dozen errors, roughly one in every ten pages, and though I know there's probably something that we've all overlooked, I'm proud at how clean this issue looks. We've also redesigned the cover and interior, and the cover art by Ken Beck looks awesome.

Not to miss: super fiction by Joseph Bathanti and Edith Pearlman, poems by Mike Dockins, Charles Jensen, Matt Ladd & Shane Seely, and a lecture/essay on sentimentality by the incandescent Mary Ruefle.

We're reading now for issue #58, so send your fiction (to wbfiction@bucknell.edu) and your bestest poems (by snailmail to West Branch, Bucknell Hall, Bucknell University, Lewisburg PA 17837). (If you want me to look at poems, say so in your cover letter & mark your envelope "solicited.")

[/end whoring for my mag]

Morning shrieking

Our entangled drowsing was pierced this a.m. by a familiar panicked shriiiieeeeeeeek! that demonstrated once more why Randy would be an excellent fireman but I (all fantasies aside) would not. He sprang up and was downstairs--following the sound--before I had even found my glasses (which had fallen under the bed). I stumbled toward the hall and gravity had its way with my bladder--no avoiding a stop at the bathroom--so I was mid-stream when R hollered up for some clothes.

It's hard to stop some things once the've started. I figured as long as he wasn't yelling for bandages, he had things under control. I hurried up and went back to grab last night's shorts and t-shirt from the floor.

He was at the foot of the stairs, holding a freaked-out chipmunk wrapped in something--a kitchen towel?--and he comically stepped into the shorts and then declared them too baggy (who you calling fat?) so I undid the drawstring and yanked it tighter. Little Chippy's beady eyes--you can't really see the "whites" of their eyes, I thought, so what makes them look so panicked, the glinting light?--took in nothing, I guess, except two GIGANTIC predators, as its one free forearm scratched feebly against Randy's grasp.

Allie was, of course, beside herself, ashiver with the constant trilling meow that looks like some kind of seizure. I picked her up and R took the chipmunk out the back door, through the laundry room, to release it. "One of your people bit me once," I heard him say quietly. Then it was over.

I love that gentle man.

Mark your calendar

Mark your calendar for October 11: I'll be reading with Stadler Fellow Betsy Wheeler in the River Poets series in Bloomsburg, PA. Totally looking forward to this!

Location: Phillips Emporium & Coffee House, 10 East Main Street (rte 11) in Bloomsburg (570.387.8027)
Time: 7:30 pm.

Common Wealth release!

I'll be heading over to Penn State on Wednesday, October 5 for the launch party of Common Wealth, the new Pennsylvania poets anthology edited by Marjorie Maddox and Jerry Wemple. There'll be a reading, reception and book signing at the Pattee Library (Mann Assembly Room and Foster Room); it all starts at 7:30 pm. Come to the reading! Say hello!

Fine Press Seminar for Emerging Writers

I'm passing along this e-mail from the Fine Arts Work Center; please share this opportunity:

The Center for Book Arts invites applications for our Letterpress Printing & Fine Press Publishing Seminar For Emerging Writers. The next section of this seminar is scheduled for Fall 2005. The seminar is tuition free for participants. Participants will hear lectures from various professionals in the field - printers, fine press publishers, book artists, and dealers, to get a practical overview of letterpress printing and fine press publishing. They will learn the basics of letterpress printing, both traditional typesetting and options with new technology, by collaboratively printing a small edition of chapbooks or other projects.

Each seminar will be offered to a maximum of eight students. Writers from culturally diverse backgrounds are especially encouraged to apply. Finalists may be interviewed or asked to provide supplemental information to their applications.

Applications will not be accepted from students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate degree programs during the program year (September 2005 - May2006).Application postmark has been extended to October 1, 2005.Email snicholls@centerforbookarts.org for more information, or download the guidelines at http://www.centerforbookarts.org/newsite/opportunities/.

Sarah Nicholls, Program Manager; Center for Book Arts;
28 W. 27th Street; NY, NY 10001;
212-481-0295; FAX 212-481-9853

Gilligan

Gilligan (Bob Denver) has died. He was seventy years old. How can this be? Gilligan was older than my parents? Someone should write a poem about Gilligan. Or, better, about Bob Denver and how he never escaped that island, never achieved enough velocity in his career to escape that program. I remember seeing him once on "Love Boat"--good grief, did I ever watch "Love Boat"? Or maybe it was "Fantasy Island"--"de plane, de plane!"

The late poet Walter Pavlich wrote a whole series of poems about Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Michael Heffernan has an early book of poems titled The Cry of Oliver Hardy, and now I want to find that book and see what it's about. Amanda Blake (Miss Kitty on "Gunsmoke") died several years ago of AIDS. Fess Parker (played Daniel Boone in the TV series) was, many years ago, a car salesman; I don't know what happened to him after that. When I was a boy I wanted a coonskin cap, just like Daniel Boone on TV. (I know now that I probably just wanted Fess Parker to come take me away.)

Poor Gilligan. Poor castaway. Was there life after the island?

Weekend reading

I very much enjoyed reading Eduardo Corral's The Border Triptych this weekend. Really fine poems! As much as I enjoy the convenience of reading online--and I do--this is one collection that I would love to hold in my hands as well.

Also reading Stacey Waite's new chapbook, Choke, which won this year's Frank O'Hara Award. I'm really hoping that Stacey and I can do a couple of readings together. I've never been to Pittsburgh. It could happen.

Off to teach in a few. We're gearing up toward writing our short-short stories. I have no idea where mine's going, but I have another week to pull it into shape. (Doing the assignments alongside my students is SO fun.)

On another note, my dad went home from the hospital this weekend. Thanks for the kind words, all.

End of August

We stayed up late, toggling between CNN and the Weather Channel (which I could watch every day just to see Carl Parker, how yummy he was back in Houston and how much yummier now) (but I digress), feeling increasingly, sinkingly awful about Katrina and her bead on New Orleans. . . I think Randy got up during the night to check the news. I slept poorly: dreamed of embarrasing classroom scenarios (you know the sort, kind of like forgetting-your-high-school-locker-combination dreams, only these are teaching dreams, in which a 19-year-old student asks a question about Ezra Pound and you suddenly can't recall a single effing thing that Pound wrote, or you're talking about a short story they've all been assigned to read and suddenly you realize that was your 1:00 class not your 3:00, or, or. . .) and the weather, none of which I clearly remember, my god what an endless sentence I've painted myself into, let's kill it HERE.

Woke with anxiety, which never really abated, even though it looked as if K was going to scrape N.O. instead of a full-on blast, but then there's the flooding to worry about, and Randy has family just north of Lake Ponchartrain (which I'm sure I've misspelled) and still (this evening) no one has gotten through to them.

But classes went well, spent today in the library for Blackboard orientation so they can turn in all their work online (I'm the worst paper-hoarder), and in my 3:00 I had time to do some other stuff afterward and to read a poem (today I chose Chris Forhan's "Bits & Pieces," from Forgive Us Our Happiness).

Caught up a bit at the end of the day with my friend Deirdre, who is back from Vermont (where I would love to go once more) with a fistful of new poems, hooray, and we're going to try to schedule an hour somewhere to trade poems and give time to our writing. (Back in Houston, the fortune cookie paper I saved, the scary one, said: Work expands to fill the time available.)

Phone call from my sis this evening, just after I walked home from campus: my dad's in the hospital. To be honest, I'm afraid to say anything about anything, lest the fates be tempted to respond with an "oh, yeah? Watch THIS." Just a gut-punch of a day. It took a couple of hours for the fear to catch up to me; my first response in situations like this is to turn cold and objective, a what-needs-to-be-done-next mode which is really pointless when you're 500 miles away.

I generally have no problem with being (somehow) 45, but I can't fucking believe how my parents are aging.

These chilling rehearsals.

Foundlings

I need to get to bed . . . have to be up early to meet my Foundlings (students enrolled in my foundation seminar). There are still a few days before classes begin (W) and I haven't completely nailed down my syllabi (still waffling over the final project to assign my intro class), though both are pretty close.

When Jeff Hardin visited campus last fall, I was inspired by several of our conversations about teaching. One idea I resolved to "steal": he reads a poem at the beginning of every class. How great is that?! For weeks I've been sticking post-its in my books, marking poems I want to read to my students. No discussion, no analysis, just give me two minutes of your attention. Just listen to this.

Sent my blurb off to Amanda Auchter today (for her forthcoming chapbook, Light Under Skin) (buy it!). This is only the third time I've been asked to blurb a collection; the first time I was sooo busy and (bad Ron) didn't get back to the guy (sorry). I haven't seen the ms. for #2 yet. Amanda's poems are good. I'm glad she asked me.

Also mailed my signed contract today to Phil Memmer at Two Rivers Review. My chap is going to be published in one volume with two other manuscripts, by Michael McPhee and Lynne Knight. This is a great idea. More on that soon.

Last note before signing out: yesterday I ran across an announcement for Juliet Patterson's first book, The Truant Lover. This is such a good manuscript, and I'm thrilled to hear that it's going to be published. Check it out at Nightboat Books. And congrats, Juliet--you deserve it.

Scratchings

Went out to the back yard (we have no front yard, so why do I call it the back yard?) with Randy to watch for meteors at two-ish this morning. Saw one. He'd seen four or five earlier, all at once. My eyes are tired this late, and the new bifocals limit my distance vision. Enjoyed the chirring of so many crickets, though, and the cool breeze. Two weeks till classes begin, and I want to melt in the hammock and watch clouds float by.

I love my new office, it's so quiet, and have resisted filling it with books (since I'm only there for a semester). Something large flew past the window the other evening (just past six, I was packing up to walk home) and though I didn't get a good look at it, I am hoping it was an owl. The window (second floor) looks out into huge old oaks with dark hollows in their limb scars. After four years with basement offices, it's like writing in the trees.

What I'm reading this week

Debora Greger's God.

Burfday

Went well, very low key, what a contrast to the Leo Party we used to throw for ourselves back in Houston, which now I can't imagine managing at all. Randy took me out to eat and to buy some new "school clothes," and he's right, my khakis are getting threadbare.

Surprise card from Kayteau--thanks, girl!--which makes me realize we never made it back down to DC for a visit. Fall is stacking up to be pretty busy; I'm still adding content to my courses and deciding which stories to teach. Not much scheduled yet for spring, though I remain optimistic that something will work out this time around. Of course I want to go to AWP in spring, because it's in Austin, and we haven't been back to Texas since we moved what, five years ago? (Not that we miss Texas, Texas is too messed up to really love, though parts leave one nostalgic, particularly Austin.)

Making my now-that-my-life is-statistically-half-over-what-do-I-want-from-the-rest-of-it? list. Okay, haven't put anything on the list yet; just the heading was enough to ponder for a while. (In the middle of my life, I find myself lost in a dark mood.)

My pal Deirdre is in Vermont for the month, which is great, and I hope she's writing lots of new poems. I was inspired by Jeff Hardin to think about reading a poem at the beginning of every class meeting, and in the course of rounding up some poems (on the chance that my students will want to read some of them) I've been sending a "daily poem" to Deirdre.

Heads up to Stacey Waite, wherever you are: we need to talk, hon. Please e-mail me.

Nels: I am thinking about the nebulous proposal I made. This would be so much better if we were talking about it over coffee. But I'll get back to you this week.

I believe I've meandered enough from my subject line for today.

Tracking down chaps

Tried to order my friend Jeff Hardin's chapbook, Deep in the Shallows, to teach in my intro CW course this fall. They're sold out. I'm glad I have a copy, and that we got one for the Stadler Center's library. GreenTower Press did a fine job on this book (it's even hand-sewn) and I wish they could find the moolah to run a second printing.

Ended up ordering Jeff's second chap, The Slow Hill Out, though Pudding Press (which cranks out a helluva lot of chapbooks--too many, IMHO) says it will take "several weeks" to get them.

And another chap, Sophie Wadsworth's Letters from Siberia, is proving difficult to order in quantity (I only need fifteen copies): Comstock Review Press offers limited payment options, so I don't know yet if I'm gonna get this one.

Other presses make ordering a breeze: Kent State even provides me with desk copies when I ask for them. But really small presses, too, seem to manage their book orders well: Ander Monson's New Michigan Press (I'm teaching Michael Sowder's A Calendar of Crows again; it's a great "starter book" for my intro class), for example. And last year I ordered Betsy Sholl's wonderful Coastal Bop from Oyster River Press and had no problems; I'm using it again this year.

Hey, folks: take a good look at how the other guys are doing this. Poets want our books to sell with as little hassle as possible.

Potter!

I was whining last night that everyone, everywhere, is prolly already on page 500 of the new Harry Potter book. Randy sighed, opened a cupboard and handed me mine--two weeks early, happy birthday, you nitwit.

Got to page 105 before falling asleep. Don't tell me!

Is it ego-surfing if someone else does it for you?

My friend Deirdre congratulated me the other day on my chapbook news. I was puzzled: hadn't really told but two or three folks. "I read it on your blog, dear." Oh: cool beans! People read this thing!

Which leads me to the topic of ego-surfing: I hardly do it. I hardly have to, b/c Randy is usually way ahead of me: "Hey, do you know so-and-so? She did a review of your book." "Hey, did you know Scott Hightower has you on his recommended list on Amazon?"

Sweet Randy. He's my people. He's an army of one.