Trick or Treat

I'm going to dress up like this guy and knock on Mary Oliver's door.

Submitting Bits

Err..is this thing on?
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Check out the cover of Corn Shake's second book.
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I'm preparing to send out my collection for the first time this week. Yes, you read that right. For the first time.
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I love what Christina Davis says about publishing her first book in the latest issue of P&W: I was the real impediment to getting published. For years I kept not sending a manuscript out, thinking it had to be the End All Be All. One day, while sifting through several books I loved, I realized I only continually returned to a fraction of the poems in any given collection. It was profoundly liberating to feel that perhaps all I needed were four or five good poems. With that revelation, I sent the collection to Alice James.
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Dave Lucas strikes again.
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Rigoberto Gonzalez will be blogging for the Poetry Foundation starting November 6th.
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I sending out to... Wait, I can't tell you that.

ASME's Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years

Isn't she beautiful?

View the rest of the covers here.

Books I Just Ordered

Two titles from Action Books: Telescope by Sandy Florian and you are a little bit happier than i am by Tao Lin.

And

Gathering Up the Scattered Leaves by Justin Evans.

from The Echo Maker

Cranes keep landing as night falls. Ribbons of them roll down, slack against the sky. They float in from all compass points, in kettles of a dozen, dropping with the dusk. Scores of Grus canadensis settle on the thawing river. They gather on the island flats, grazing, beating their wings, trumpeting: the advance wave of a mass evacuation. More birds land by the minute, the air red with calls.

3 Bits

"Ennui," a previously unpublished poem by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sylvia Plath, will appear November 1, 2006 in Blackbird.

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Meridian's 2007 Editors' Prize Contest

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A list of presses with open reading periods.

Rigoberto Gonzalez Reading: Tempe, Az: October 19

7:00 p.m.

Changing Hands
6428 S. McClintock Dr.
Tempe, AZ 85283

Rigoberto will be reading from Butterfly Boy.

James Laughlin Award 2006

Tracy K. Smith

Bits

Johannes has moved. Sneaky devil.
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You think you know stuff. But you really don't.
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Poems: Barbara Jane Reyes
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I have a crush on Nick. Is that wrong?
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Many of Luna's poems deal with the confrontation with religious belief, with search for belief and meaning, in tension with a skeptical mind and the hardness of the world. Through all of Luna's poems runs an urging to bring differing wills and desires to a meeting and joining, or at least a mutual tolerance.
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Rigoberto Gonzalez will be reading at Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, Arizona this Thursday at 7PM.
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Poems: Oni Buchanan
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I have to get my hands on Six Feet Under dvds. Each episode I watch makes me lust for more.
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Song of the week: "Maneater" by Nelly Furtado.
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Aaron, has a question for you.
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Lube. Isn't that a great word?
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Mr. Brenda Hillman: Poems

I found this via C. Dale's blog. Five poets pick their favorite Robert Hass poems. Brenda Hillman picks a Robert Hass poem I've never read--the poem is from his new book coming out next year. Yeah!

Kazim Ali Interview

One of my favorite interviews in the series so far.

Joseph Beuys: The Pack:1969

Joseph Beuys

POETRY BUS TOUR: OCTOBER 15

Rolling onto the College of Santa Fe campus on

SUNDAY, Oct. 15, 7pm, in the Forum

Readers: some our finest emerging poets, including
Dana Levin, Joshua Beckman, Matthew Zapruder, Gabe
Gomez, and many more!

With music by RUSALKI: Balkan Vocal Ensemble,
featuring CSF’s own Nicolle Jensen, Catie and Lizzy
Friel and Kes Scudday.

Francisco Aragon Readings/ Washington DC

October 15, 2006: Sunday Kind of Love Reading series at the venue
Busboys and Poets: Francisco Aragon and Lisa Gonzales. 4 PM

October 16, 2006: Washington chapter
of the National Writers Union: Franciso Aragon will be giving
a talk called "One Reader At a Time: Small Press
and Self-Publishing." 6:30 PM

More info here.

Wish I Would Have Written This

"Men, I'm sad I must die.
These are beautiful shores."

An excerpt from Men, by Lisa Robertson 2006

Morgan's Book

Morgan's first book has been picked up by Free Verse Editions.

April and Silence

Spring lies abandoned.
A ditch the color of dark violet
moves alongside me
giving no images back.

The only thing that shines
are some yellow flowers.

I am carried inside
my own shadow like a violin
in its black case.

The only thing I want to say
hovers just out of reach
like the family silver
at the pawnbroker's.

Tomas Tranströmer

Titles

I'm still having trouble picking a title for my collection. Sigh.

I need some help.

What's the title of your collection or book? Why did you title it so? In a paragraph or less. Please. What work does the title do for your collection? Does your title reveal the major theme/ motif in your collection? Is your title misleading? Is your title an umbrella for all the themes/ motifs in the collection?

Tell me.

Maria Melendez Reading: Tucson

OTHER VOICES WOMEN'S READING SERIES

Friday, October 13, 2006, at 7 p.m.

Antigone Books, 411 North 4th Avenue

Featured reader: Maria Melendez

Open microphone and book-signing follow featured reader.

Maria Melendez serves as Associate Editor for Momotombo Press, and as co-coordinator for Poetas y Pintores: Artists Conversing with Verse, a traveling exhibition of contemporary Latino art and poetry. Her collection of poetry, How Long She'll Last in This World, was published in 2006 by the University of Arizona Press. She has worked as writer-in-residence at the Davis Arboretum in California, where she taught environmental poetry workshops for the public, and as assistant professor of English at Saint Mary's College in Indiana, where she taught courses in eco-feminist poetry and multi-ethnic literature. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in such magazines as Inter-national Quarterly, Orion Afield and Ecological Restoration. She currently lives in northern Utah.

Two Bits

The Kingdom Cage

Good title for a book of poems?
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And check out Kristy's gorgeous cover.

80s Bits

This performance of All Through the Night takes me back. I faintly remember watching it on tv. I always loved the wild colors of her hair. And her clothes were fab. She's a pixie.
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Somebody had a great time in the 80s: Having Some Coke with You.
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This I Believe: Erin Bertram.
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One wall is for funded students and the other wall is for unfunded students. Wow. That would suck.
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My other 80s music obsession: Songs from the Big Chair. I spent hours listening to this tape. My favorite song on the tape was "The Working Hours." Still is.
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Poems: Oliver de la Paz
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Chicano Art Magazine.
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I've only gotten two reviews so far, they were both very generous. I don't think it's had much influence on my writing. I've always written for an audience, even when that audience was just my best friend Trish and I was reading stuff to her in the laundry mat. Now I know my audience is a little bigger, but I still want to be writing like I'm going read it at the laundry mat and try to make it interesting enough to be heard over the machines.
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Poem: Laurel K. Dodge.
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I used to listen to tapes.
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Justice’s long anticipated Collected Poems (exactly fifty years after Stevens’s) missed narrowly at being a posthumous publication, which in a rebarbative sense seems appropriate for a poet as much addicted to time warps in verse as to broad-beam architectonics. Fond of indulging himself, as one of his own personae describes it, “in rich refusals,” Justice fell into and then anorexically clung to a prosody which others in his generation seemed not to be able to divest themselves of fast enough. His muse (though his devotees would flatly deny this) was even more conservative than Stevens’s.

The Koala Stance

So. These days the subway is always packed with a few peeps who are convinced a crowded NYC subway is*:

A library: where you intently read the latest Zane book and smack your lips at anyone who dares close enough to try and read what you’re reading.

A boudoir: where women apply rouge between their cleavage, pucker, and smear sky-blue eye shadow across their lids.

A snack hall: Never fails. There is always someone eating from a paper/plastic bag (with their fingers). A reoccurring favorite is a Fairway Rotisserie Chicken, seasoned “Latin Style. “

A daycare: This one’s easy. Imagine 10 rowdy kids playing musical chairs, while elder-lys with bouffants and canes look on.

A travel lodge: people straight out snoring and talking in their sleep.

But my favorite subway phenomenon is a pose I’d like to coin today: The Koala Stance. Basically the koala stance is when someone wraps their arms, and might even cross their legs around the middle subway pole, not allowing anyone else to hold the pole for safety. I’m not biased or anything but it’s mostly women that I see doing this. I have an unproven theory that these people, while in the womb, held their umbilical cord between their legs. Who knows.

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*Due to x I’ve only named a few scenarios I've seen on subway. I've left out about five thousand more.

Aaron Smith Interview

My interview with Aaron Smith is now live. Aaron is a great interview subject: witty and articulate.

Here are two of my favorite snippets from the interview:

"My favorite drag name is Helluva Bottom Carter."

"I didn’t study with Creeley. I met him at Vermont Studio Center in May 1998. I had just finished graduate school and had gotten a residency there. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was write, but I managed to write two poems that made it into the book (“Cher Uncensored” and “Valedictory”). Creeley was there for four days and several of us really connected with him."

Amaud Jamaul Johnson

The Lost Sea

Red Summer

Using All the Music Out There

Interview with Rita Dove

Terrance Hayes Interview and Poem

"Surprise, I like to think, is the engine that drives me to keep writing. If the writer isn't surprised, chances are the reader won't be surprised either . . . Stephen Dobyns says something like that somewhere. But no, it doesn't always come naturally. Sometimes it's a matter of excavation. As in life, in poetry a discovery or two is usually buried beneath the first thoughts and assumptions."

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At Pegasus

LOL

Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had
also never met.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not
eating for a while.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as
if she were a garbae truck backing up.

Bits

Sigh. I'm becoming that kind of blogger.
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Kristy's blog is one of my favorites. Why isn't it on my blogroll?
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I watched the first episode of Six Feet Under on Bravo this weekend. I've never seen this show before. I'm already addicted.
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Congrats, Teresa!
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Still thinking about the Poetry Bus.
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Sometimes when I flip through my manuscript I want to kick it in the balls. Sometimes I want to get on my knees and unzip its...
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I have the hots for this man. Hey, at least he's a Dem.

So Nip/Tuck!

Threesome

Interview with Brenda Cardenas

ECC: You're known as a poet with a commanding stage presence. Did you refine your performance skills in poetry slams? Or are you naturally extroverted? When you're drafting a poem do you keep in mind performance?

BC:I think I am naturally extroverteda, not necessarily a character trait that I’m proud of. I have never been on a slam team; in fact, I was only part of one reading that was officially called a “slam.” It was many years ago at the Green Mill in Chicago. Marc Smith was holding a sonnet slam that night. I didn’t know this when I decided to go to the Green Mill that night, but I just happened to have a sonnet with me, so I decided to read it. Before I knew what was happening, I had won that slam and about $20. But I never slammed again. I have, of course, practiced my performance skills over the years by doing many different kinds of poetry readings in a variety of settings, as well as during the years that I worked with Sonido Ink (quieto), which was a fairly raucous Chicano/a garage rock band. Yet no matter how many performances I do, I still get nervous every time!

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Click on the "interviews" link to read interview. Tip of the hat to Francisco Aragon for asking me to do the interview.

The Half-Finished Heaven

Cowardice breaks off on its path.
Anguish breaks off on its path.
The vulture breaks off in its flight.

The eager light runs into the open,
even the ghosts take a drink.

And our paintings see the air,
red beasts of the ice-age studios.

Everything starts to look around.
We go out in the sun by hundreds.

Every person is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.

The endless field under us.

Water glitters between the trees.

The lake is a window into the earth.

Tomas Transtromer

LOCUSPOINT is Here

Seattle, St. Louis, Boston