SL Bit

Check out this Junot Díaz interview in the Sunday Book Review section of the New York Times. He graciously mentions Slow Lightning when asked to name the last book that made him cry:

That’s easy: the winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, Eduardo Corral’s collection, “Slow Lightning.” When I finished that book I bawled. Wise and immense, but peep for yourself: “Once a man offered me his heart and I said no. Not because I didn’t love him. Not because he was a beast or white — I couldn’t love him. Do you understand? In bed while we slept, our bodies inches apart, the dark between our flesh a wick. It was burning down. And he couldn’t feel it.”

*mind blown* *so thankful*

Reading schedule fall 2012

Next week I will be reading with Dan Rosenberg in Rock Island, IL., Iowa City, IA., and Madison, WI. Dan's first book just came out. I can't wait to share the stage with him. In Madison we're reading with Traci Brimhall and Cynthia Marie Hoffman. Yeah!!

Here is my reading schedule for the fall. I want to thank all the people and all the schools who've invited me to read.

September 4, 2012
Reading with Dan Rosenberg
Augustana College
Rock Island, IL

September 5, 2012
Reading with Dan Rosenberg at Prairie Lights Bookstore
Iowa City, IA

September 6, 2012
University of Wisconsin–Platteville
Plattevile, WI

September 7, 2012
Monsters of Poetry Reading Series
Reading with Dan Rosenberg, Traci Brimhall, and Cynthia Marie Hoffman
Madison, Wisconsin

September 13
With Larry Kaplun and Michael Dickman
Unnameable Books
Brooklyn

September 17, 2012
Reading with Carl Phillips at the Folger Shakespeare Library
Washington DC

September 20, 2012
Kickoff reading for The Best American Poetry 2012
The New School
New York City

September 21, 2012
Brooklyn Poets Reading Series
Reading with Ariana Reines and Timothy Donnelly
Studio 10
Brooklyn, NY

September 25, 2012
Reading with Justin Torres at the Writers At Newark Reading Series
Rutgers-Newark University
Newark, NJ

　
September 27, 2012
Community Bookstore
With Matthew Thorburn and Idra Novey
Brooklyn

September 30, 2012
TBA
NYC

October 2, 2012
Trinity College
Hartford, CT

October 11-14, 2012
Festival Poet
Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival

October 17, 2012
Cornelia Street Caffe
With Randall Mann, Christopher Hennessy, Stephen Motika
NYC

October 22-25, 2012
Poet-in-Residence, Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series
Butler University
Indianapolis, Indiana

November 4, 2012
Carmine Street Metrics Reading Series
NYC

November 7, 2012
American University
Abramson Family Founders Room
Washington DC

November 15, 2012
Frequency North Reading Series
With Melissa Febos
The College of Saint Rose
Albany, NY

November 18, 2012
The Brookline Poetry Series
Brookline Public Library Main Branch
Brookline, MA

　
November 29, 2012
Western Kentucky University

December 7, 2012
The Paris-American Reading Series
With Malachi Black and Camille Rankine and Mark Strand
Poets House
NYC

　

Poems I love

Riverlight

 

My father and I lie down together.

He is dead.
 

We look up at the stars, the steady sound

Of the wind turning the night like a ceiling fan.

This is our home.
 

I remember the work in him

Like bitterness in persimmons before a frost.

And I imagine the way he had fear,

The ground turning dark in a rain.

Now he gets up.

And I dream he looks down in my eyes

And watches me die.

 

Frank Stanford

 

More poems here.

 

 

Interview: Cynthia Cruz

"I always tell my students to take notes on their lives: to literally write down, indiscriminately, everything in their world: the Chekhov on the old wood nightstand near the bed, the chipped tea cup, the pile of French Vogue magazines stacked on the floor. These objects reveal far more than we can say about our selves—and more honestly. This is the stuff of our poems. Not necessarily lists or list poems, but, rather, incorporating, in some way, the objects which hold meaning into our work."

First Book Interview: Amanda Auchter

"I about died when I opened the box. The book was gorgeous and I wanted to share it with everyone I knew as soon as possible. I had such a tremendous amount of joy and gratitude that I was a little emotional. It was, in a way, my gold medal."

bits

Anna Journey: "My father was once mistaken for a hit man."
*
Summer is over.  Really?
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There's no coffee shops in Rego Park. I only have one option: Panera.  Yes, dear readers, you read that correctly. I spend hours at the local Panera. Reading, writing, sipping bad coffee.  Oh the shame!
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Thanks, Stephen Mills!  Sorry about the snakes.
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I'm going to Berlin! Sometime in October, I hope. I was going to go to Barcelona, but I really want to be surrounded by a language I don't undertand. I want to struggle to express myself.  I want to fight with words. I want to hear new music.
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"Corral leaps back and forth between Spanish and English in his poems, employing an interesting element of coded language to his work, but I didn’t feel that this distanced me as someone who doesn’t speak Spanish. If anything, it drew me in closer."
*
How do you say "hello, handsome" in German?

CantoMundo testimonios

Juan Luis Guzmán on CantoMundo:

"There is awesome and transformative power in community. If you’re lucky, coming together with community can be a baptism of sorts, something like purification. For me, CantoMundo was more than this. CantoMundo was complete rebirth. I found myself challenged by the other fellows, discombobulated by workshop lectures and faculty notes, and torn to pieces by masterful readings and discussions. In the midst of this, I had time to reassemble myself, to discard what wasn’t working, and to weld the familiar fragments of myself to the newly discovered pieces. In the end, I boarded the plane wearing beautiful new skin..."

More here.

slow lightning bits

Rigoberto González:

"The breaking of multiple taboos -- humanizing a much-maligned population, inscribing homosexuality on the same page as class and ethnicity, and insisting on making as much room as possible for Spanish in an English-dominant text ("Agringado. Recién llegado. / Eyes the color of garrapatas. / Manos de trapo. / Cell phone strapped like a pistola / to his belt.") demonstrate a deliberate push-back to the current anti-immigrant, anti-bilingualism, and anti-gay political climate across the country, and particularly in Arizona, Corral's home state. Indeed, in times of distress, "Even music can bleed."

***


David Biespiel:

"I see the poise in Corral's poem in its spirality. The poem -- a kind of free verse villanelle/free verse pantoum -- winds through its irregular repetitions and reiterations. Its ideas evoke clinging to the aroma and melodies of memory, of need, of yearning, and are conditioned on those circuitous psychological shapes."

wish i'd written this poem

Beneath Moonlight

For years I watched
a swell of nightmares galloping
along the garden wall.

My father would come home, untying
a weary bouquet, the smell of
God working his breath.

Hinged moths paused
upon beveled glass, solitude
a hundred waiting matchboxes.

Things have injured me.

All day & now the low night,
the night says it will always be
this way: the violence of nature
enchants its laws.

I’d hold a lamp near the window,
a child who polished saddles & bridles,
wiping blood & froth away
from the work of memory.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

More work here, including some amazing photographs.

Mike Schneider reviews Paula Bohince

"It's a poetic landscape that seems to hover somewhere just above the labile surface of consciousness, where foggy memory gives birth to vivid, evocative imagery. "

Full review here.

Two new Paula Bohince poems and an interview!

life after an mfa

Tara Mae Mulroy:

"You have worked at your degree for 2 or 3 years, maintained a high level of productivity and stress, been around other writers, talked constantly about writing, taught writing, hammered out a thesis, and now you’re…done."

****
I never really went through an MFA postpartum.  How do I say this?  I didn't enjoy my time at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  I never long to relive those years.  If I could go back in time, I would tell my younger self: Don't go! But I did go. It wasn't all bad. Did I really just type that?  Yes, I did.  Here are some positives about my time in Iowa.

I adored (still do) most of my classmates.  Sabrina.  Cathy.  Matthew.  Spencer.  Joe.  Robin. Keith. Shane.  Sara.  Margaret.  Naren.

I did learn some important things about writing poetry. That's something to be thankful for.

I was given two years to read and write.

There were a few handsome men. That's all I'm saying. 

I had a lot of good times at the Foxhead, which was the bar the poets claimed.  I drank a lot of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I don't think I ever played pool, though.  What a crime. 

Iowa City is an amazing college town.  I loved living there.  The people were so kind and welcoming.  I felt safe as a brown man, as a gay man. 

I studied with two of my favorite contemporary poets: Mark Levine and James Galvin. 

My first winter! The first day it snowed I sat on my porch and watched as the snow slowly covered everything. It was a magical moment. 

Prairie Lights Books.