boxcar station blog

from Neil Aitken

Do you have any insights, advice, success stories, or epic failures with regards to your life as a first book poet? We're looking for some article writers to help us out. Visit our new Tumblr blog for more information.

slow lightning bits

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tomorrow i have to send a finalized manuscript to yale university press. finalized. finalized
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yikes! no more serious tweaking. no more fretting. it's over. finally.
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my facebook friends now this already but the title of my first book is: Slow Lightning.
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next: the copyediting process.
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i hired someone to design my website. i was going to do it myself. ha. did i really just type that sentence??? imagine that: me designing a website. goodness. anyway, i know this person is going to do a great job.
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no turning back now.

CantoMundo in The Austin Chronicle!

When Deborah Paredez was a graduate student, she lived in Chicago's north side, directly across the street from a fire station and a large billboard advertising liquor. "The sights and sounds of emergency were all around," she recalled during a recent interview at the University of Texas Club in Austin. Because she is a writer, she often found herself wondering, instead of a liquor ad, "How would my life be different if there was a poem on that billboard?"

First Drafts: Gary Soto's 'Talking to Myself' and 'Sunday Without Clouds'

from The Atlantic

No poet who grew up in a home without books writes alone. I'm companion to a semi-literate muse, feathered gossip who will sit in a tawdry dress on my shoulder. Sometimes she will whisper lines into my ear, lovely conjectures and occasionally laughable ditties. I will then share my poem first with my wife, who wears not a tawdry dress but stylish clothes and, hey, are those Jimmy Choos on her feet? She'll look at my creation—this week it's a poem debating whether my hearing is really gone—and she'll frown sourly as she reaches for a red pencil from the canister on my desk. When she finishes with this first draft, my poem will be lashed with suggestions. It'll be bleeding but a heartbeat will be present.

arizona bits

i'm back home! i really missed arizona.
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congrats to Kelli Russell Agodon!!
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i'm starbucking.
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Rigoberto Gonzalez on NPR.
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slushpile!
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man, i never say anything brilliant or insightful. i want to be ron silliman! really, i do. where's my us-versus-them mentality??
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jemez springs day trip pics

interview: Cornelius Eady

The fact that Cave Canem is around has certainly helped, but it’s too much to expect, I think, that one small organization will turn everything around. The problem is systemic and generations old. Cave Canem is a response to an on-going problem in American Poetry, not a solution. It emboldens some of us to challenge the assumptions some hold of the African American poetic. Challenge involves resistance, and no one gives up privilege without a fight. I’d like to think Cave Canem shows what’s possible, what’s worth working towards, even if at times it can seem a long way off.

west branch wired

Rigoberto González helps out with the latest installment of West Branch Wired.

Read his editor's note here.

bits

tomorrow i'm going to soak in the mineral waters of jemez springs. i've never been to one of these places. i'm going to wear my smurf shorts!
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thanks to the poetry editors of the journal for taking two poems from my forthcoming book.
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gosh, i have book coming out. wow.
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i leave albuquerque this thursday. i'm ready to go back home. i miss arizona.
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nice hat, david. no, i really mean it. i'm not being snarky! really, david, nice hat...
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have you ever filled out an author's questionnaire? i got one from yale university press and it's freaking me out. some many questions. correction: some many detailed questions.
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chickens!

ABQ Pics 3

the british are coming..to read our poems!

The Independent reviews Radial Symmetry

Poem by poem, Radial Symmetry exhibits an extraordinary wakefulness, an immersion in nuance that enriches experience. The title refers to an organism with similar parts regularly arranged around a central axis; it applies to bottom-dwellers and creatures such as mussels and coral. Radial symmetry, as a title, alludes to neither scientific language nor poetic form in the collection, but the poet's appreciation of detail...

Craig Santos Perez talks with J. Michael Martinez

I know I’m not making an oppositional stance toward those lyric forms used by my elders. I know I love, dearly, certain lyrics we call “narrative,” “confessional,” etc. I employ those lyric forms in heredities. What I am against is anyone saying in any absolute way how or what I need to address in order to be a “Chicano” poet (or, simply, a poet).

mini-interview: c. dale young

When I first put together the first draft of the manuscript for Torn, I ran it through one of those word cloud gadgets. I was stunned to find that one of the most common words in the manuscript was the word "God."

Buy his book here.

thinking about applying to a colony? here's some great advice and information

from Gwarlingo’s Guide to Residency Programs

Submitting applications to residency programs takes time and money, so before you apply, it is helpful to do some research, as well as some self evaluation about what type of program would be the best fit for you.

Hottie of the Week: Rob Delaney

recent search terms that brought people to my blog

carl phillips yale series
bread loaf 2009 drinking eduardo poetry scholars (????)
the iowa writers' workshop sucks
cantomundo 2011
is ben lerner gay (he's not gay but he's fabulous)
good poems written by bad poets (???)
best way to organize a poetry collections
stuck in a boxcar how to survive
bear poetry and terms
interviews with bad poets (ha!)
cyndi lauper poem (this one makes me so happy)
hot poets

grateful

thank you, my little poems.

once again you are taking care of me.

you are feeding me. you are sheltering me. you are taking me out to the movies.

gracias.

Tsuba Colony: Mixed Media on Canvas: Philip Taaffe: 1995

click on pic to enlarge it

more stunning work here

here's a conversation between philip taaffe and robert creeley

Interview with Shara Lessley/ Shara Lessley poem

...I like to think of the line as a kind of choreography that both extends and counters its sonic movement. At times, the line underscores music: it seems to dance with it, to provide the kind of support as would an ideal partner. A phrase's volume is increased via enjambment....
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Two-Headed Nightingale
(also the title of her first book coming out with New Issues Press in 2012)

Craig Santos Perez

...i stared at my bookshelf and all those book spines, dreaming that i might someday be stacked between Sharon Olds and D.A. Powell. and a funny thing happened: I started noticing the names of the publishers as opposed to the names of the writers...

the Iowa Writers' Workshop turns 75

"I would say that in some ways our program hasn't changed," says Lan Samantha Chang, the author who has directed the program since 2006. "It's true that we've gone from way back when, when people would stand up and read their stories out loud to an auditorium to share their work, to mimeographs to photocopies, but basically the emphasis on writing remains the same here. The focus on writing, apart from the industry and apart from whatever kinds of media are used to carry away the product of what we do here, remains."

bits

i saw three movies this weekend. xmen: first class, the hangover 2 and kung fu panda 2, which i saw in 3-D.
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i can already hear some of my friends saying: what! you are watching movies?? you should be working on your poems! to them i say: blah blah blah.
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i'm looking for cover art. you got any?
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john olivares espinoza, call me.
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hello.

from My Body, My Words by Virginia Grise

"The daughter of a working-class white father from Goshen, Indiana, my mother a Chinese-Mexican immigrant, I grew up outside of rigid definitions of identity and inside an inherently complicated negotiation of culture, race, class, gender and sexuality. My immediate family was multi-ethnic and multi-lingual. Border crossing, fierce bilingualism, and the search/longing for home/place are tropes that inform the very aesthetics of my work and the collaborations I choose."

The Dream Speaks: 20 Chairs from the Qing Dynasty: Ai Weiwei: 2009

Ai Weiwei

ABQ Pics 2

i have found my author photo!

open reading period: Four Way Books

2011 Four Way Books
June Open Reading Period

Submissions accepted June 1-30.

Four Way Books editors make selections.

Open to all poets and fiction writers.
Book-length poetry collections, story collections and novellas.

We do not publish novels, translations, or non fiction.

Complete guidelines here.

boxcar poetry review

have you checked out the latest installment of boxcar poetry review?

the poems!

the reviews!

and

Jory M. Mickelson interviews Elizabeth J. Colen

Laurie Ann Guerrero interviews J. Michael Martinez

Hottie of the Week: Paul Legault

Visit his blog! I really like his first book and I'm looking forward to reading his second.

bits

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listening to arthur russell. love his work, his voice. one of the poems in my forthcoming book is dedicated to him.
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found out yesterday that i do have some say about cover art, which is great. and i also have some say about the fonts and the trim size. yeah!
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beloit poetry journal poet's forum: gay poetry, politics, poetics
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i'm in my office right now. come visit me, i'm lonely.
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shane mccrae: ...if a writer has created audience expectations, it can be dangerous for that writer to produce work that occupies a space too far outside those expectations.
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