Boxcar Poetry Review Issue 15

is up and running.

Bits

Track 1: Lush Life by Jericho Brown.
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Stayed at my sister's this weekend. This explains all the blog posts over the past two days.
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Leslie is blogging about her time at Sewanee.
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Cool site: Apostrophe Cast. You can hear readings/ lectures by some fine writers. Like: Sabrina Orah Mark, Danielle Pafunda, and Cecily Parks. Glad to hear Sabrina's second book will be out in 2009 from Saturnalia Press.
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New crush: Adam Gertler.
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Review: The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine
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If you are not photogenic or not like having your picture taken or do not know how to send a jpg attachment, then please do not submit.
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Interview: Kevin Goodan
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As noted in several online dictionaries, 'La Raza' means 'the people' or 'the community,' " the group says on its Web site. "Translating our name as 'the race' is not only inaccurate, it is factually incorrect

Great MFA Blog

Allison Joseph maintains a wonderful blog for students, graduates, alumni, and friends of the MFA program at Southern Illinois University. The blog is a mix of publication notifications, reading tour announcements, and community spirit.

Love it.

Err...Okay

Reb Livingston has dreams. Sometimes she dreams about poets. Did she dream about you?
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Do you dream about poets?
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Sometimes I have naughty dreams about Billy Collins, Robert Hass, Sean Singer, Carl Marcum, Carl Philips, Terrance Hayes, Brian Teare, Paul Martinez Pompa, James Hall, Ted Berrigan, Alex Lemon, e.e. cummings, Spencer Short, Forest Gander, Bruce Smith, DA Powell, Maurice Manning, Mark Strand, David Trinidad, Sherman Alexie, Dan Beachy-Quick, Ciaran Berry, Frank O'Hara, Tony Tost, and Suji Kwock Kim.

Hayden’s Ferry Review Sucks

I really don't know why I dislike Hayden’s Ferry Review. True: I once submitted and was rejected. False: this is the reason for my dislike. Why do I dislike this journal so much? I should love HFR. I'm a proud graduate of Arizona State. I even know one of the poetry editors!

HFR was one of the first journals I started reading when I first began to write poetry at ASU. Along with Crazyhorse, Poetry Northwest and Poetry. I spent hours in the library reading back issues. I always found something to love in the other journals. But I don't recall loving any poems in the HFR issues. That doesn't sound right. I'm sure they've published some amazing poems.

Hayden's Ferry Review now has a blog. Sigh.

I apologize to the folks over at HFR. This is an illogical post. And I haven't read an issue of HFR for over three years. I'm sure they're publishing good work these days. Look at the list of contributors in the latest issue. Very impressive!

Still I would never submit again.

Why do I dislike the journal? I wish I knew.

Professor Alfred Arteaga, prolific poet, dies

He became an assistant professor of English at UC Berkeley in 1990 and was tenured in the Department of Ethnic Studies in 1998. He published five collections of his poetry, interspersed with fiction. These works included: "FrØzen Accident" (2006), "Zero Act" (2006), "Red" (2000), "Love in the Time of Aftershocks" (1998) and "Cantos" (1991). He also published a book on literary theory called "Chicano Poetics: Heterotexts and Hybridities" (1997).

After his death, many of his students wrote comments about him on Barbara Jane Reyes' poetry blog.

"Cervantes and Shakespeare died on the same day. I wonder what other great soul passed last week to accompany (Professor Arteaga) to the land of fast cars, screaming guitars, and what I can only assume is a wonderland of wine, women and song," wrote Andrea Solomon, one of his former students.

Call for Submissions

Found this call over at the blog of Poet Mom:

Earth's Body: An Ecopoetry Anthology

Coeditors Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street solicit submissions for an international anthology of ecopoetry.

We are looking for a wide and varied array of submissions. Our working definition of "ecopoetry" is flexible; it includes not only what might be called nature poetry, and not only poetry that focuses on environmental issues, but also experimental poetry--poetry that explores language in its relations with the other-than-human. We welcome work by emerging as well as established poets. We welcome serious poems, playful poems, poems in open or traditional forms. Depending on limitations of space, we will consider not only short poems but also poems of several pages. The anthology will include only living poets or poets who were alive as of July 2007, and will include only poems either written in English oral ready translated into English; for poems not written in English, both the original and the translation must be submitted, and if accepted,both will be published. We will consider work that has been previously published.

The deadline for submissions is DECEMBER 15, 2008. Please send up to six poems to BOTH Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street. You may send them as email text or by snail mail. If they come as email text, make sure the spacing and lineation travel accurately. WE WILL NOT OPEN ATTACHMENTS. Please also include a short bio and a cover letter, and an SASE for our reply.

Ann Fisher-Wirth
English Department
Bondurant C-135
University of Mississippi
University, MS 38677
afwirth@olemiss.edu

Laura-Gray Street
English Department
2500 Rivermont
Randolph College
Lynchburg, VA 24503
lstreet@randolphcollege.edu

VAIO Bits

Gave my desktop computer to the kids. Bought myself a Sony VAIO. It was affordable and had a big screen. I wasn't looking for anything fancy. Just something I could use everyday. I really like the look of it. And I love the feel of the keyboard.
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I've written three new poems this summer. Three poems for the second collection. I just have to publish the first mss now!
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My VAIO came with alot of crapware. Must delete.
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Hooray for Jacob and C. Dale!
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Waiting to hear about Sewanee, Matthew.
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A couple of folks have emailed asking how I got into the Vendler anthology. A bribe? Begging? No! Another poet recommended my work. I sent Helen's people some poems. Helen took one. That's it.
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Currently reading: Karen An-hwei Lee's Ardor.
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Mini-interview: R. Zamora Linmark.
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And the winner is...

Nerd Power Bits

Goodbye, contact lenses! Hello, glasses! I'm now wearing frames very similar to these. I haven't worn glasses since high school. Nerd power!
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Starting to plan my move to Bucknell University. I will be flying down there in the middle of August. I don't have to worry about housing since the residency comes with a fully furnished two bedroom apartment.
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Once again: thank you thank you thank you to my poems for housing and feeding me.
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Mini-interview: Sean Hill. Love that photograph, Sean!
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My frames are still a bit too large. They keep sliding down my nose. Will have to go back for another fitting.
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Don't you hate it when bloggers brag about acceptances? I will have a poem in the third edition of this anthology.
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from Slope 25

What should the line do? Capture the real, voice the liminal, articulate ghostly perceptions, convey the passage of time. As the essence of verse it should captivate the reader, and through rhythm, syntax, texture, suppleness, elasticity, enjambment, and end stop it can measure feeling and invite our attention. We call this immediacy, and when immediacy combines with passion of the highest order, we call it the inevitable, as in the opening of Keats" “Ode on a Grecian Urn": “Thou still unravished bride of quietness..."

I Think I'm Getting a Cold Bits

SMALL PRESS SPOTLIGHT: PAULA BOHINCE
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Runny nose. Red eyes. Sneezing. Oh oh. I'm getting sick.
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John Olivares Espinoza has a new web site, and a blog.
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I just bought.
The latest issue of Poets and Writers.
The latest issue of American Poetry Review. Dana Levin needs a haircut.
Ted Berrigan's Collected Poems
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I've seen a lot of crappy films recently: The Strangers, Get Smart, The Happening, and The Love Guru..
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Now this is a hot author photo. I'm turned on.
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Dear Mexican: Whenever I have an immigration debate with my Chicano hermanos who support open borders and get angry at any type of immigration control, they don’t seem to understand the basic laws of economics, such as the fact that migrant workers who pick fruit, work in construction and do other blue-collar jobs can never demand wage increases as long as a steady flow of their friends keeps coming up from the homeland. Will somebody please remind them that Cesar Chavez was against illegal immigration because it ruined his union’s chances of controlling the labor market, unionizing and demanding better pay?
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Adam Levine. Wow. I haven't been this turned on since Mizz Rebecca Loudon.
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The cover of the promotional copy of “My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge,” Paul Guest’s second collection of poems, asks “What do John Ashbery, Louise Glück, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, Mary Karr, Campbell McGrath, and Mark Strand have in common?” The answer, inside: “They all admire Paul Guest’s new book of poems.” As far as seduction rituals go, this blurb is the poetry equivalent of inviting you to a sleepover at the Playboy mansion.
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Father's Day Bits

This Can’t Be by Bruce Smith.
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University of Iowa campus among those areas hit hard by flooding
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Spent the weekend at my sister's house.
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Letter to Brooks: Spring Garden by Major Jackson.
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Sheryl Luna reviews Braille for the Heart. One of lines from the chapbook has become an epigraph to a new poem I'm working on.
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The Acentos Review: June 2008
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Childhood Ideogram by Larry Levis
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Just finished working on an ekphrastic poem. All the words/ phrasing in the poem are taken from one of my favorite poems by the late Luis Omar Salinas.
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Love the new photograph, Seth.
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Some Extensions on the Sovereignty of Science by Alberto Rios.
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A Mini-Essay by Corn Shake

A bluejay gossips at my window. I nod my head yes, yes. Is that so

VQR Poetry Series Review

What's amazing about Hardscrabble is not just the unstoppable playfulness, but the fact that his tsunami of wordplay lends itself to architectural form beyond the word and its immediate neighborhood.

Bits

My favorite new TV show: Groomer Has It.
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Good looking group.
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I'm going to submit. Are you?
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I won't have regular Internet access this summer. Blogging will happen when it happens.
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