bolivia pics

bit after bit

up next: pics of bolivia!
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i'm starbucking. why can't i get paid to do this? tell me!!
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i went to best buy yesterday to check out the ipad. man, i'm in love. i'm getting one next month.
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a lot of lines and images are coming to me. but i can't shape these lines/images into poems. i'm not worried. i know poems are brewing inside of me. when they are ready, they will let me know.
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data plans. sigh.
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review of weather by dave lucas

...Weather, for all of its pyrotechnics, is a tender book, artfully charting the landscapes these poems inhabit. Set primarily in Cleveland, Ohio and the waterways around it, Lucas balances a formalist’s restraint with the naturalist’s barely-contained fervor for discovery.

Montevideo, Uruguay

Starred Review: Black Blossoms: Rigoberto González

from Publishers Weekly:

The poems in Gonzalez’s third collection are rooted in the female body. Death and decay also thread through the collection, manifesting in lush and sensuous imagery. In the title poem, Gonzalez addresses barren women in dark, graphic language that borders on the grotesque: “when the sun sets next it will// blossom with the blackest mushrooms and the moths/ will lay their eggs on your leathery smiles.” Gonzalez’s poems depict the body as a space that carries burden and loss, the site of a fleeting life: “this is the part where the woman enters./ This is the part where she leaves. Her life/ so quick it could have been missed had she left no evidence of the blackbird to construct/ its nest.” Each of us is insignificant and replaceable, Gonzalez seems to say: “borrowed body, in the time you must vacate,// let another take your space./ Don’t worry about whom or when since the girl/ who comes after is already here.” The last section (of four) is told through the voices of the female characters surrounding a mortician. Lust and marriage, birth and death, weave together in their observations and confessions. The mortician’s wife observes, “sound is death because it’s/ irretrievable and every time I speak I die a little more.” (Oct.)

bits

i'm back home!
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will post pics on monday.
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i had a great time with my travel mates: angie cruz, jennifer clement, christopher merrill and kelly bedeian.
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so thankful.

two pics by Kelly Bedeian

i stumbled across this shop in montevideo, uruguay. go, arizona, go!! man, i look like a freaking tourist. ha.

here we are in la paz, bolivia. we are waiting for a meeting to begin. we are posing like one of the people in the mural behind us. we are silly.

la paz bits

greetings from la paz, bolivia!!
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man, i can't get the hang of these keyboards. ha.
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montevideo was great. the people and the students were amazing. the city was beautfiul. gorgeous architecture. the weather perfect. the men hunky.
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i had a great steak here. it was HUGE!! don't worry, i took a picture. will post later.
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the steak was great but my favorite thing was this cheese and sausage appetizer. yummy.
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we left montevideo yesterday. we flew to santiago, chile then to lima, peru. then finally to la paz.
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i am loving this trip.

last minute bits

i should be asleep!
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i leave later this morning for my trip: uruguay, bolivia.
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not taking my cell phone or my ipod.
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"The hotel does not offer check cashing services."
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upcoming reading: chicago, october 19th.
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i need a new author photo! and a new face. ha.
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there's a lot of internet cafes in uruguay so i will post once or twice during the trip.
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"Find breathtaking views of the bay and the city from our 207 spacious guest rooms..."
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is this a poem,
no, this
poem is not
a poem.
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another blazevox bit

Shanna Compton: Please, everyone, stop saying "vanity press." It's a stupid term--pejorative, emotionally charged, insulting. It's a slur. (And if I may repeat myself, no author seeking publication is exempt from ego-involvement. Call that vanity if you like, but apply it everywhere.)

2 bits

Craig Santos Perez wins the PEN Center USA 2011 Literary Award for Poetry! Congrats, Craig!!
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Brett Ortler: The other day I got some good news, or so I thought. My poetry manuscript, which I’ve been shaping ever since I graduated from Eastern Washington’s MFA program in 2007, was accepted by BlazeVOX Books. Nevertheless, as I delved into the long letter, it became apparent that the publication offer was contingent on a monetary donation...

some recent search terms that led people to my blog

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2 Reviews

Scott Hightower on Fady Joudah

The language of The Earth in the Attic is engaging and straightforward. Foreign, but not distant; much like a host of Southern writers – from Thomas Wolfe and James Dickey to Yusef Komunyakaa and Betty Adcock – that have written about their home as a far away psychological country. Joudah, like all good Southern writers, writes from the perspective of “Home is an epilogue.”

Tory Adkisson on Katherine Larson

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the title, Radial Symmetry, also comes from science, where it refers to something symmetrical “around and axis”—that is, with no “left” or “right,” only a top and bottom. (A mushroom is a good example, or a human bone.) But symmetry is also an important element in art—it’s a principle of composition that, when present, creates a sense of wholeness, or completion—and again Larson capitalizes on that double meaning.

Attention Latino/a Poets!!

Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize

Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, in partnership with Red Hen Press in Pasadena, CA, is pleased to support the publication of a second or third full-length collection of poems by a Latino or Latina poet.

The winning poet will receive $1000, a contract from Red Hen Press and, upon publication of the winning book, an invitation to give a reading in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C.

The Ragdale Foundation will offer a two-week residency to the poet in the year the winning book appears. Letras Latinas will also set aside a modest fund to help defray travel costs associated with further promotion of the winning book. The Letras Latinas / Red Hen Poetry Prize is awarded every other year. There is no entry fee.

The inaugural deadline is January 15, 2012.

Guidelines here.

first book interview: justin evans

What I would like to see happen is poets entering contests at presses with which they can see themselves creating a real working relationship. I think poets should find other ways to support the small press than rationalizing their contest reading fee as support. Poets should support presses without the ulterior motive of submitting to them. We all should buy more books just to buy and read them. More presses would survive that way...