from Ursprache

Each line tallied perfectly into the sum of the last line.

Block: The letters lie buried in an avalanche of whiteness. You can hear only muffled cries, but can’t make out any words.

Poets in New York City read to each other all the time.

Each line filled one with the anticipation of being on a road approaching the skyline of a city never visited before.

Alone in the room, reading in a floor lamp’s cone of light, my hut.

The poet walks alone out onto the springboard of the first line.

I see little difference between poets and the inventors of self-propelled flying machines.

A word is a well of a thousand pictures.

optical illusion

these almonds hurt my eyes.

do they hurt your eyes?

i want almond toffee now.

3 Interviews from Emprise Review

Rick Barot: Going to the Workshop was like being in a nerd convention for writers for two years. Those two years validated the seriousness, but also showed me how ridiculous it could be. The students at Iowa—not to mention the faculty—could be such assholes to each other. And I knew that by extension I was that way, too.

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Victoria Chang: I think subject matter is relevant in poetry, but should ultimately be irrelevent, if that makes sense.

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Adrienne Su: I’ve begun to imagine the book itself as a large form, perhaps comparable to a long poem in which the individual poems are operating as lines or stanzas.

Congrats, Manuel!

I'm so happy tonight.

I'm so proud tonight.

Manuel Muñoz won a Whiting Award tonight.

Sí se puede!

Sí se puede!

Sí se puede!

Whiting Winners 2008

Each of these writers will get $50, 000:

Mischa Berlinski, fiction
Rick Hilles, poetry
Donovan Hohn, nonfiction
Douglas Kearney, poetry
Laleh Khadivi, fiction
Manuel Muñoz, fiction
Dael Orlandersmith, plays
Benjamin Percy, fiction
Julie Sheehan, poetry
Lysley Tenorio, fiction

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

Jack Gilbert

Arizona: 46-44

Merrill's brand new poll, taken from sampling over the weekend and Monday, in it's entirety, is to be released tonight at 7:00 pm local Arizona time and has McCain up by two little itty bitty points: McCain 46% Obama 44% and Obama still seen as closing with a full week left...

Don't let polls make you complacent. Get out there and vote. Tell all your buds and family to vote.

Vote.
Vote.
Vote.

Oil Spill: 60,000 Quilting Pins on Prepared Board: Lisa Kellner: 2006

More work HERE.

Sunday Bits

I logged onto my bank account today and was surprised to find an extra 100 bucks. Thanks, Mom!
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Man fight! S and K should take off their clothes and wrestle in a tub of JELL-O.
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Ron Mohring: Sleepers.
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I don't like it when people say my poems are beautiful. Beautiful is easy. Any fool can write a beautiful poem.
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Congrats, Seth!
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Banana Bunkers?? You got to be kidding!!

From the HSN website: Looking for an easier way to pack a banana on the go? The MoMA Design Store Set of 2 Banana Bunkers is the perfect solution. Conforming to the shape of a banana, this uniquely styled holder helps keep the fruit free from bruises and cuts while in transit in your lunch box or bag. This practical set is simply terrific for hiking, day trips, athletic events, school, at the beach and anywhere else you want to bring a tasty snack.


Tasty snack. Ha.
Conforming to the shape of a banana. Double ha.

Review: Ardor by Karen An-hwei Lee

For those seeking a pure or distinct narrative arc, Ardor, at first glance, seems to be a complicated reading enterprise. In an invented but dense structure that interweaves “dreams,” “prayers,” and “letters,” Karen An-hwei Lee has crafted an experimental aesthetic: an utterance. One that focuses on the limits of language. One that stretches the visual boundaries of images — real or surreal — testing the sonic depths of each of her chosen words.

Weekend Hottie: Chris Cillizza

Chris Cillizza

Mini-Interview: REBECCA LOUDON

My ideal reader is a person who has suffered, who feels apart, who has known trauma, and who is capable of honestly engaging with the lot they've been handed. Everyone has suffered, but some people are willing to embrace the forest that surrounds us, some are not. Many readers prefer the tranquil, the pastoral, the serene. These are not usually my readers.

3 Bits

Check out Jericho Brown's cool new website.
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G.C. Waldrep interviews Dana Levin: During that time I did a stint as a Visiting Writer at a small liberal arts college. I used to sneak into the laundry room of the nearby graduate dorms because it cost $1.50 less a load than the laundromat in town and read the then current avant poetry while the clothes went round and round. And I’d think, passionately, “I want to write like this, I cannot write like this!” feeling really torn: I was so excited by the vivid lingual textures such work often displayed, by the looseness of visual form, by its engagement with the complications of self: it came as a tonic after 40 years of poems indebted to Confessional and Deep Image impulses. And yet I “could not” write like that because...
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Too much information: She even likes to pull up my shirt and bite on my belly. Ha!

Reading Pics

Shara McCallum introducing the readers.

The readings take place in an old church. This pic was taken after the reading. People did come to the reading.

Me reading. Thanks for taking the pic, Ron.

Mia Leonin reading.

Some fancy wallpaper.

Erinn Batykefer.

Me. Porochista Khakpour

A little bit of retail therapy

Tuesday evening I read with Mia Leonin. I'm a bit nervous. So I went out and bought a few things that I don't need. Here's my haul.

*An orange-scented soy candle. One hundred hours of burning. Yeah.
*Two tangerine lemongrass candles.
*A glass bead box. Isn't it gorgeous? It's my favorite buy. Click on pic to see a close-up of the box.
*An assortment of fancy teas with flavors like Vienna Cinnamon, Belgian Mint, Coco Truffle, Orchard Vanilla, and White Ambrosia.
*A Virgen de Guadalupe necklace.
*A green tea cologne. Man, this smells so good. A very clean scent with hints of honey and wood.

Mr. Spic Goes to Washington: Ilan Stavans: Review

The current political climate has exposed how this country's conversations about race and leadership remain exclusively black and white. The situation demands that a voice chime in to remind people that a third group needs to be reckoned with: brown.

Salon/ Reading at Karla and Peter's House

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of reading at Karla and Peter's house. Robert Strong was the other reader. I had a blast. We read to a few of Karla's peers from the English department and some of her students. A very attentive and kind audience. Here are some pics.

A close-up of a bird painting.

Karla dicing and slicing!

One of Peter's amazing prints. This print is blurry. Don't blame my camera! Peter transforms hundreds of photos into a single image. You can blame the other blurry pics on my camera.

The audience.

Close-up of a wood birdcage.

Iowa 2001 in the House!

Tea cup. Hands.

Robert Strong

Godzilla tearing through poetry.

DEAR AMERICA, DON'T BE MY VALENTINE issue of OCHO magazine

from Miguel Murpy:

I was asked early this year to edit an issue of OCHO magazine, due out February 2009. Dear gay Friends and Strangers, dear Fags, Dikes, Trannies, Transvestites, He-she's, She-males, Tomboys and Mamas-boys, Lesbos, Fudge-packers, Muff-divers, Bears, Twinks and Closet Freaks, Butch and Lipstick, Hairdresser or Harley-rider, Republican, Democrat, Independent, Green--Dear family, dear people of color and other,

The purpose of this issue is to highlight and bring together a strong sampling of diverse work by queer authors in the contemporary American poetry scene.

Please submit your work as a single word doc attachment, pasting your cover letter and bio in the message itself, to: dontbemyvalentine@hotmail.com

Past issues can be viewed HERE

Two First Book Interviews

Christopher Bakken:

There’s no reason poetry cannot be intoxicating and compelling as a physical experience. Intellectual tricks and pedestrian word games are hardly the thing I look for when I turn to poetry for nourishment, and I suspect a lot of the judges reading for those contests feel the same way, especially after they’ve plowed through a couple of hundred messy first book manuscripts that sound like they were written by a literary theory addict on a cheap beer binge.

Paul Guest:

The first time I saw my first book was in Baltimore, during a blizzard. Record snow fell, dulling the outside sound. It was at AWP, the conference, and I walked up to the New Issues table. There it was, displayed. They gave me a copy. Years later my mother would accidentally run over it in the driveway.

Yeah!

I just voted via early ballot.

The Sun (click to enlarge)

More amazing pics here

Bits

For some reason I thought this week was fall break at Bucknell. It's not.
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Good poetry blog: Robert Peake.
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I have a small batch of poems ready to go out but I just can't make myself send them out. I wonder why? I like seeing my poems in journals. Most importantly: I like sharing that space with other writers. But I just don't have that submission fire anymore. I don't know why. I should have that fire. I want to keep my work out there. I want to share my work.
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The chicken I roasted yesterday was great. Tasty. Simple to make. And now I got a lot of chicken leftovers for sandwiches.
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What a cute cat! And her name is Face. I miss having a cat around. Correction: I missing have a nice cat around. Some of the cats I had as a child were wonderful pets. The two cats my parents now have are not wonderful pets. One won't let anyone touch her. The other is like five minutes away from death.
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I can't wait for 7AM to roll around. I'm going out for some coffee.
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I just realized my right foot is bare. The left foot has a sock on. Ha. How did that happen? No wonder my right foot is cold.
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Linda Pastan captures the sound of mortality in “The Deathwatch Beetle,” echoing Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
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New crush: Christian Anderson.
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Yikes!

I'm roasting a chicken right now. This is the first time I've ever roasted a chicken. I hope I don't burn down the place.

Frost Place Poet-in-Residence

In July and August, The Frost Place hosts a poet-in-residence who lives and writes in Frost's farmhouse, offering three public readings during the summer. The Trustees of The Frost Place have awarded the 2008 Resident Poet fellowship Rigoberto González of New York City.

Nominate a Blog Post!!

Creative Nonfiction is seeking narrative blog posts to reprint in The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3, edited by Lee Gutkind, forthcoming in August 2009 from W. W. Norton.

We’re looking for: Vibrant new voices with interesting, true stories to tell. Narrative, narrative, narrative. Posts that can stand alone, 2000 words max, from 2008. Something from your own blog, from a friend’s blog, from a stranger’s blog.

The small print: We will contact individual bloggers before publication; we pay a flat $50 fee for one-time reprint rights. Deadline: October 31, 2008.

Good News

C. Dale Young's third book, TORN, will be published by Four Way Books in 2012. Congrats, C. Dale!

Beautiful

"Resting on my outstretched hand, he was thin, nearly weightless, his skin pinkish-gray and translucent. He seemed to me less like a small baby than a scale model of a stripling child. I cradled his head between the ends of my middle and ring fingers, his features peaceful, perfect, blank. His feet reaching nearly to my wrist, his toes were like mine and my father’s, the second toe longer than the big toe."

from My First Son, a Pure Memory

2 Bits

Am I crazy? I keep walking into my bathroom to look at my new shower curtain.
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Cyndi Lauper and her hero fight for gay rights

from Mark Doty's blog

Spotted from a taxi window this morning on Third Avenue: the Lyric Diner. It's at about 22nd Street, which means you could walk directly west and arrive at the Eros Diner, on Seventh Avenue.

You could shuttle, in an hour, between Lyric and Eros...

Three Candles Press Open Book Award

Three candles press is pleased to announce the second Three Candles Press Open Book Award for the best book of poems by a poet in any stage of his or her career. The contest will be judged by Deborah Keenan, whose most recent book is Willow Room, Green Door (New and Selected Poems), winner of the Minnesota Book Award.

Complete Guidelines HERE

Luis Omar Salinas

Last Tango In Fresno

Midnoon and I’m between
a pastrami and a dream.
In love with bad love
I put out my cigarette
and count my blessings.
Bad kharma and no lover.
I want to seduce
the nearest woman
and run off to the
nearest motel.
But the nearest woman
is thinking of vegetables
and buying a gift
for her lover.
So I waltz down
the avenue
feeling great
and important
and bump into
a lesbian friend
who is out of
work and needs a job.
I give her five bucks
and feel
that in the next life
I’ll get it all back.

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Omar had a mercurial or protean aspect about him, and he was able to toss off images as easily as tossing his hat into the chair. We were there to cheer and applaud his manifest talent, but we wanted to be sure that nothing was lost, that those lines would become the meat of new poems. I soon became Omar’s main editor and secretarial helper, and Jon Veinberg and I conspired to engage Omar in revision and organization when he showed up on our doorsteps. He knew there was work to be done, and he lived for his poetry. His work remained as arresting and inventive as it was at the beginning, developing and maturing with each book.

Love this headline

Mom lets students touch bat; rabies shots begin

Experts ponder link between creativity, mood disorders

Experts say mental illness does not necessarily cause creativity, nor does creativity necessarily contribute to mental illness, but a certain ruminating personality type may contribute to both mental health issues and art.

Accession II: Aluminium Mesh, Tubes: Eva Hesse: 1967-9

Bits

The for godot anthology gets over a hundred comments.

The Hayden Carruth tribute gets nine.
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The Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest
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Anne got a free cookie. So did I. It was a good cookie. Get one.
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Review: Trouble and Honey by Jilly Dybka
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I'm cold in here. I still can't work my thermostat.
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One of my favorite REM songs.
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I bought an ankle brace on Monday. A pink ankle brace.
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Kazim Ali reading two short poems.
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The stillness still that doesn't end.

Hottie of the Week: Pablo Montero

Mark Doty blogs!

This is my first post on this blog, so it feels as if I've just bought a new notebook. Somehow to replace the great blank of potentiality with any one thing seems too small a gesture -- whatever I write here couldn't be as nice as the big field of silence I'm stepping into. But who wants a world full of blank notebooks? So I'm putting on the page those leaves -- which I came back for, after buying some heirloom tomatoes and then going to Whole Foods and getting some necessary stuff. There was something lavish about carrying one of those reusable grocery sacks down 17th Street with a big spray of leaves coming out the top, a blaze of ardor. For seven dollars.

Rigoberto González: Men Without Bliss

I believe that the responsibility of the next generation of writers is to produce that body of work that will give young readers a healthy and complex spectrum of gay protagonists in this troubled, contemporary world

Bunny Bits

Robert Krut reads my blog. Hi, Robert!
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I'm feeling better. Ankle still a bit stiff. I need to buy an ankle brace/ sleeve tomorrow.
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Leslie Harrison: Autobiography--As a Vase.
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I've been hopping around my apartment all weekend.
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Missing in action
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I finished tinkering with a poem about my hometown this weekend. I can only write about the desert when I'm far from the desert.
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Steel Toe Books selects manuscripts through open reading periods. Our next open reading period will be October 1-31, 2008, at which time we will be specifically seeking quality manuscripts containing predominately formal poetry...
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D.A. Powell: courthouse steps.

I Hurt

I fell down the basement steps yesterday. I missed the second-to-last step and fell face forward. Don't worry, my million dollar face is okay. But I sprained my left ankle. I talked to my brother-in-law (the nurse) and I told him about the swelling, the slight bruising, the mild pain. He asked if I could walk on it. I told him I could. He said it was probably a mild sprain. He told me to ice the ankle for 15 minutes at a time, to rest, to get an ankle brace/ compression wrap.

EDIT:

As I was falling down the steps I thought: I'm falling like Juanga.

Someone just texted me: Good thing your an ankle saluter by nature! Foul. I'm not going to name this person. I don't want this person to get hate mail. Don't worry, Manuel, I won't tell the world you sent me that nasty text.

Bits

I feel like going out for some coffee but it's windy. I hate the wind. It's all touchy-feely.
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I got waitlisted at Yaddo. I hope the waitlist isn't long. I hope someone turns down a residency. Ain't I terrible? Hey, I turned down a residency from the good folks at the VCCA last year. It happens.
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It's getting cold! It will drop to 44 degrees tonight. Damn. I can't work the digital thermostat in my apartment. All those numbers and buttons confuse me. I'm going to be wrapped up in three blankets tonight. Insert your burrito joke here:

Lewisburg cemetery