Plucked From Ogygia

I'm the one with less of a sense of rhythm

2011-11-17T06:21:00.000-08:00

Yes, I have been more of less absent from blogging for a month, sure. If you're curious what I've been up to, watch the video below:

I'm the one with less of a sense of rhythm at the beginning of the video.

I've been spending more time at the Grand Midway of late, writing more, reconnecting with my hotel family. It feels really really good to be in that creative, loving space.

I've also been working on responding to all the (many many) submissions to Hyacinth Girl Press for this past reading period. I've been completely overwhelmed with how amazingly talented the poets who have submitted all seem to be. Every single manuscript was quite good in its own way and it's been a huge, huge pleasure getting the opportunity to read so much really well-written poetry. What's been difficult has been the decision-making. Year 2 is not going to be a sophomore slump. That's all I'm saying.

Susan Slaviero's chapbook, A Wicked Apple comes out from Hyacinth Girl Press next (as soon as the proofs are all in and then approved!), and right now there's a preview of the cover art up on our main page. The art is by one of my favorite poets and Pittsburgh ladies ever, Renée Alberts.

I haven't had as much opportunity to read anything that is not a submission lately as I would like, but I've only got maybe 3 manuscripts to go in the inbox! I'm taking recommendations for chapbooks to read/review this winter (though I have a good stack of 5 or 6 that I owe reviews on right now)

The sense of place that comes from the people who dwell there

2011-10-12T05:09:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a busy month of absence, truth be told. I released Book Four by Niina Pollari through Hyacinth Girl Press (and it is beautiful and amazing and you should order a copy and read it now now now), and I am truly pleased with how it turned out. I read and reread the poems and I still cannot get over how much I love them.

Letters From Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel seems to be gathering some love - I'm working on a super secret awesome project for it with a dear poet friend and have gotten a lot of very touching comments about it from other poets and, perhaps more importantly (okay, yes, more importantly - no offense poets. You guys rock), from the friends who helped to inspire the collection itself. Barefoot and Listening did not get nearly as many kind notes, facebook messages, and emails - not because I think it was a weak collection by any means, but perhaps because I have so much emotionally invested in the Letters From Room 27 poems that it spills over to the reader? I'm not sure. The collection also tells a sort of a story (sort of. I mean, I am a poet...). I am deeply humbled by every small note. If you want a copy, they are available at the Blood Pudding Press etsy shop or from me (you know, if we run into each other or you see me at a reading, which is a form of running into each other I suppose) or at Caliban in Oakland.

I was at the hotel this past weekend for what may very well be the last of the filming I'm involved in for Blair Murphy's latest film endeavour, Zombie Dream. I've had what might be described as "more fun than might be legal in some states" being a part of the project. I love watching Blair's mad genius at work. This is definitely not going to be your standard zombie film. At all. As soon as even the smallest smidgen of it is released to the public, you bet your ass it's going to be all over every single social media outlet I'm signed up for.

While we're on this theme of "art that happens at the Grand Midway" I'm going to do a micro review of a chapbook that, in a lot of ways, is quite different from the others I've reviewed here.

Kerouac Fest August 2011 Photopoems by Jason Kirin, according to the copy I have, was printed in a quantity of 20 copies by Jason himself less than two weeks (as I recall) after Kerouac Fest. First, the object itself. Jason binds all of his chapbooks with dental floss, which I think is kind of great (and minty fresh). The cover is dark grey card stock, and the interior is made up of photocopies of typewriter-typed poems with the photographs to accompany them having been taped to the pages themselves before copying. This chapbook owns its DIY-ness and is stronger for it - the object is rugged and lovely and gives a sense of immediacy to the whole collection.
Now onto the poems and photos themselves. Jason wrote the entire chapbook during the three days of Kerouac Fest he attended. I am totally jealous, as I wrote a single, solitary poem. I love projects that capture the immediacy of a space and an event, and, in general, poetry does not tend to do that as often beyond one poem at a time. This collection of poems, however, with its constant frantic meditation, gives that sort of snapshot. By merit of sitting himself down and writing these poems and taking these photographs while fully immersed in all of the insanity and uproar and performance and creation of Kerouac Fest, Jason has achieved something not usually found spanning an entire chapbook, and as someone who experienced the same event, I found it deeply enjoyable to relive it through Jason's eyes.
Each piece of writing is accompanied by at least one photo, most of them portraits of some kind, and sometimes the pieces of writing are an entire page of unbroken typewritten lines, and other times they are five or six words beneath, next to, or above a photo. The writings also alternate between structured poems, quotes, half-quotes, and stream of consciousness, which adds to the feeling of frantic meditation and immediacy. The poems themselves are not necessarily grounded in a sense of place in the traditional way (no lengthy descriptions of hallways or rooms), but in the sense of place that comes from the people who dwell there. As Jason writes, "I am small/enough to be in/my own veins." - the person is the place, and in that is part of the power of these poems. The photographs ground the poems in the human spaces they inhabit and in the Grand Midway Hotel, taking them from a collection that might only be truly loved as it should be by the people who are the creatures the pages soak in, to a collection of poems (or, arguably, a long, feverish, poetic dream) that reaches beyond the impulse of personal 4am reflection. The poems and the photographs know that they need each other - hence the title of "Photopoems".
I'm not sure if Jason still has copies of this chapbook - if you know him (or are a friend/follower on Facebook or Google + - he dwells in both, though much moreso in Google +), you can harass him about it. Otherwise, come by my place and I'll let you page through my copy and talk your ear off about the hotel.

Okay, so that ended up being a lot less micro than I thought it would be. Ha.

I want to write something about Occupy Wallstreet, but I don't think that I am nearly as eloquent about such things as others. So I will link to this blog post instead that my husband found and posted on Facebook. Something to think about next time someone says that the protesters have no focus/need a list of exactly what they want.

Let's all aspire to be awesome and have fun.

2011-09-06T05:26:00.000-07:00

I visited Juliet Cook in Ohio this weekend, went out for delicious Chinese food and sushi, went to a lovely farmer's market (there was goat milk fudge! Oh, the decadence!), played with her dog Sockeye, and, oh yes, picked up the copies of my chapbook, Letters From Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel.

I know that since they are my chapbooks you will probably take this with a grain of salt, but oh my goodness they are incredibly lovely! Juliet has gone above and beyond with the design and construction of them, and everything about them is just beauty. Our dear friend Kevin Ross has contributed photos that get tucked inside each copy, and that, plus the artsy extras that Juliet is including make me wish that more presses were like Blood Pudding Press for the sake of poets and writers everywhere.

The first 18 or so copies are already making their way out into the world, and I can't wait to do my first reading post-chapbook release. On September 24th I will be reading at Bite Bistro (565 Lincoln Ave) in Pittsburgh for the poetry organization Girls With Glasses. Deena, the organizer, is a lovely person and great poet and I can't wait - it's also a beer tasting for a new local brewery and there will be music. If you are in the area, you should definitely come by because I can promise awesomeness.

I am sure everyone is sick of hearing about it, but I'm going to weigh in on the BlazeVOX controversy. If you've been under a rock all weekend and my blog is for some absurd reason the first you are hearing of it, it recently came to light that the publisher BlazeVOX sometimes (often?) asks authors to contribute $250.00 toward the publication of their book, but has not until post-controversy, made this information public, and in fact, seemed to be trying to make it not public.

I don't think the practice of asking the writer to contribute monetarily or otherwise to their book's publication is a problem as long as that information is offered readily to anyone who might be considering submitting to that press. It is expensive to publish perfect-bound books. Hell, it's not free to publish saddle-stapled books either. In my opinion, the only problem here is the lack of transparency. But that is not really what I want to talk about. All of this has been talked to death. Many people have said everything I am thinking in that vein and much more eloquently than I could hope to.

The thing that we are all skirting around now, and that Roxane Gay touched on, perhaps most directly out of the posts I've seen, is the future of poetry and of publishing on honest-to-goodness dead trees, and more specifically, the "traditional" publishing model for poetry. It's just not working. People don't read poetry unless they are poets or the odd weird-ass literary fiction writer, or unless that poetry has a specific appeal to them that transcends its scary line breaks. At some point in a comment on her post, Roxane mentions that Gatza's comment that he only sells 25-30 copies of a new poet's book indicates that their relatives aren't even all buying the book. Honestly? I can count on one hand the number of my relatives who have purchased one of my two chapbooks, and my second chapbook is so full of sex and demons and... um... monkeys, that I am pretty sure if any of my relatives (other than my dad, who is cool) read it, our next holiday gathering would be a special one. I mean, I certainly wouldn't stop them from purchasing or reading, but my grandmother is getting old. Her heart can only take so much. With fiction, it is presumed that it is, well, fiction.

Gatza publishes experimental, avant-garde poetry. Often the kind of poetry that our relatives just wouldn't get. My parents are crazy-supportive of The TypewriterGirls, which is pretty experimental and often downright offensive to them, but not all of my family feels for me like my mom and dad do. And I still don't think it's the best idea if my mom reads this chapbook. I let her read my senior thesis in creative writing, and her response was that I was clearly having too much sex. Possibly true, but still. So if every single one of a poet's family members aren't running out and buying their book, it doesn't surprise me, and for some poets it is probably a tiny relief.

That said, another comment was made on Roxane's post saying that if a book sells only 30 copies it doesn't need to be a book, and I do disagree with that. I think that my responsibility as an editor is to get writing out there that I think is beautiful and strange and unsettling and important. Yes, Juliet can publish each of her Designer Vagina poems individually in journals (and has for most if not all of them), but collecting them together gives them more power in my opinion. To be fair I've sold about twice the number of copies of Juliet's chapbook that Gatza is quoting, (the same is true for my Star Trek: TNG collection, Make it So). Perhaps this is because I've only taken on 4 poets for the first year of Hyacinth Girl Press. Perhaps it is because my books are crazy-affordable ($5), but I also wouldn't mind at all if I sold more, and not because I want to make money (honestly, they're priced for me to basically break even), but because I genuinely want to get this poetry out into the world.

In spite of its reputation, I think poetry can be an extremely powerful medium. Honestly, I equate writing a poem to writing a prayer or a spell. For me, good poetry says that which cannot be said in any other way, and the collaborative experience of poetry, I believe, can be truly transformative. That is a large part of what Crystal and I did with the TypewriterGirls. We engaged, and beyond that, we did our best to make poetry fun for an audience that may not have ever been to a poetry reading before. And we succeeded.

I think people who claim that poetry is not a viable medium are not looking at poetry from all angles. While Crystal and I were often accused of over sexualizing our shows (which almost always include burlesque and lots of herpes jokes) and I am sure the same accusations are lobbed at groups like The Poetry Brothel, we never once held a show where, at the end, someone didn't come to us and say something to the effect of "I had never been to a poetry reading before and was convinced they all sucked, but this was amazing," and then proceed to talk, not about the mostly-nude ladies (though the Bridge City Bombshells are amazing mostly-nude ladies), but the readers we invited to perform with us. Those readers would also almost invariably tell us that they sold more books at our readings than at any other. Partly, if not mostly, because Crystal would work her butt off to sell them post-show.

I'm not saying this to toot my own horn, Crystal's, or that of the TypewriterGirls. I'm saying these things because I don't think that we have to be the exception. It should be the rule, not a surprise, that poetry readings are fun and engaging and involve the audience actively and don't suck. It should be the rule that the organizers of an event pimp the books of their readers. Hard. Particularly if they are not helping that writer financially. In return, poets need to learn to read and perform in an engaging way that does not involve their noses being in a paper the whole time, or their front never truly facing the audience. For an amazing example of a poet who writes and reads oh-so well, I give you Renee Alberts (skip to 2:30 if you don't want to watch me chase people around in a gorilla costume - there's also some typewriter background noise, sadly, due to the position of the camera). This girl will blow your face off. And I have to read next to her on the 24th. Haha.

If you are a poet who doesn't know how to read well in front of an audience, ask poets who do know. I'm not saying I am the best reader ever, or that I am even the right person to ask, but there are poets out there who are very very very good readers. Or you can just watch every Youtube video of Huang Xiang that you can find. That would help, too.

But perhaps I digress. This was to be a response to issues in publishing, but the problem is, in large part (everyone keeps saying it), that poetry is not popular. I think fun, skilled readings that challenge and engage the audience would go a really long way toward helping with that. I know it is disheartening when you do a reading for 50 people and no one buys your book. I know it is upsetting when no one seems to care, but as they say, isn't the very definition of insanity doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? In my opinion, the root of the problem is not that people are putting out bad books, is not that writers today are not as good as they used to be, but perhaps that we have begun to forget that there is more to getting you poetry out there than tweeting about it. I don't mean to be dismissive or reductive or to say that it is 100% up to the poet - this applies to editors and curators of readings, too.

We can't do anything that will be the finger snap to make poetry popular again. Though I do suggest flyting very strongly. I'm hoping to run a Flyting Series at some point. Oh god, that would be amazing... Hit me up if you would be interested in flyting (either with me or someone else) myhyacinthgirl (at) gmail.com - seriously.

I agree with the people who have said that smaller press run books (or POD) that are handmade art pieces may very well be the way of the future for non-electronic publication of poetry, and I say bring it on. If this discussion/blow up/controversy has done one positive thing for me personally, it's been to let me know that it's okay that I'm dragging my feet on finishing my full-length manuscript, and it is perhaps even a good thing that I'm really into chapbook-length collections, handmade books, and putting physical beauty into the poetry collection. I'm not someone who is worried about tenure, so that may be coloring my opinions pretty strongly, but I love what I am doing. I love editing Hyacinth Girl Press. I love Blood Pudding Press, Flying Guillotine, Dancing Girl Press, and Greying Ghost Press. I aspire to be as awesome as any of them.

Really, let's all aspire to be awesome and have fun.

Letters From Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel

2011-08-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

This evening, my new chapbook, Letters From Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel was released by the lovely Blood Pudding Press

6 years ago my poetry mentor Michael Dennison invited me and a number of his other students to an event called Kerouac Fest at the Grand Midway Hotel in the town of Windber, Pennsylvania. My son was two months old at the time, and even tinier than the average newborn as he had been born two months prematurely. Nevertheless, I decided to go and take my little one with me, and every day I am glad that I did. In the years that have followed I have grown to love the Grand Midway Hotel and the amazing, beautiful, enchanting people who live there, who pass through, and who, like me, consider the hotel to be their second home.

Letters From Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel has taken me 5 years to write, and when I started I wasn't aware that I had. The title poem was the first poem I wrote, and it was originally 7 pages long. I wrote it in one sitting with a manual Smith Corona typewriter named Stewart and a bottle of ice wine in room 27 (which is now filmmaker, novelist, host, and beautiful friend Blair Murphy's office). I still have the typewriter, though the wine was gone in about an hour. The rest of the poems were all written with typewriters (though the alcohol content was more varied), and, at least in the case of the older ones, often after one too many viewings of Gothic.

This chapbook is ultimately a long love poem to the Grand Midway. It's creepy and dark and more than a little fucked up in places, but I'm okay with that. I am eternally grateful to Juliet Cook for the huge amount of work she has put into this chapbook. Blood Pudding Press is the press I envisioned putting out Letters From Room 27, and I know that I am extremely lucky for that to have happened. Below I've added the title poem as a teaser to the rest of the chapbook.

Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel

I.
I know I’m not the only one who dreams
of watching all the boys who almost fucked me commit suicide, Claire says.
A bullet to the brain and it doesn’t matter if they finger-banged me,
laid in my bed, cock out and unmuzzled.
They had gunpowder fingers and she used to think she was water
to make them moist and useless for weeks,
but she cries for men who kiss her there in Pennsylvania’s belly,
mouths open, and think of New York.
She stays upstairs and drinks late harvest wine,
reads love letters not meant for her. She never gets letters.
She gets boxed wine, calloused feet, and panties covered in blood.
She gets spanked and smokes up in the monkey’s room
when flies pile on the windowsills in mustard gas heaps,
when she is soggy and her mouth is caving in.

II.
After each sex act she turns back into a woman,
stiff-laced and dressed like a puritan. Ripped at the knees,
she calls herself Gorgeous when she is alone at night,
face buried in the pillow, holding her breath.
She drums herself to sleep,
draws her skin taught and slaps the stretch marks.

III.
She would rather break her nails on typewriter keys
than make her legs a kickstand to hold up men
who cannot see the violin carved into the back of her skull.
They write her lines of poetry and they take off their pants.
They tell her they never have casual sex
in the same breath, and she is somehow undone.

IV.
She is the girl with her heels sliced off,
a closed fist and a four leaf clover
that blooms like her chest.
She has no secrets on her skin in a closet not her own.
She sits dumb and numb in the half-cold morning,
feels dirt in her hair, in every crease of her body.

V.
Last night she collapsed in on herself, dried to a husk and crumbling.
she woke up cold, she slept cold, and this morning
she will cross the stream from hotel to metal graveyard,
baptize herself in sulfur and mud.
She will throw herself into the husks of train cars, and eat paint chips
that slough off the ceiling. She will break a window in every car.
She will show you just how afraid she is.
I think I grew old in one of the lifetimes I lived in my head.

If you want to read more, I've already linked a couple of times but will do so once more! Blood Pudding Press and Letters From Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel are on etsy. I absolutely encourage you to support the publisher, the lady Juliet. I will be visiting her briefly this weekend, so if you order a copy in the next few days I can personalize it!

Also, I have been even more lucky, because my dear friend Kevin Ross took photos with me at the Midway about a month ago, and has graciously printed (and then cut out by hand - bless him) small, delicious photos to slip into all of the chapbooks. They add another dimension to the chapbook that I am so very, very pleased with. The prize in the Crackerjack box, as Kevin put it.

Thank you to everyone who has supported, inspired, and encouraged me, this manuscript, and the hotel. I can't name everyone because I would be here all night (and I really should sleep at some point), but special special thanks to: Blair Murphy, Juliet Cook, Kevin Ross, Michael Dennison, Skot Jones, Mihnea Vasilescu, Adam Blai, Sarah Ireland, Crystal Hoffman, Dylan Fornoff, Deanna Dolges Kane, Martha and all the other ghosts, Manuel Ibarra, Stephanie Conrad, Joey Bertolasio, Damien Youth, and Kevin Bean. If it sounds like I am a silly, gushing girl, then I am. And I'm okay with that, too.

Life and reading updates

2011-08-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

It's been a rough week in my household - I got hit pretty hard with a sinus infection last Sunday, went completely hoarse on Wednesday, and am still suffering from laryngitis today, though my other cold symptoms have lessened pretty drastically. In addition to that, my husband and I are still wrestling with the idea of moving (we have decided that if we do move we are getting a decent amount of new furniture, though, which pleases me in a domestic way. Our couch was picked up from a sidewalk and is certainly on its last legs, and our mattress definitely needs replaced.), and while neither of us is 100% happy, we are resigned. Such is life sometimes.

To cope with my laryngitis, we have been using text to speech software with some pretty hilarious results. My husband's name is Romanian (like him), and the text to speech software has a lot of trouble with it.

I hate being sick. I'm sure that there really isn't anyone out there who enjoys it, but I'm the kind of person who doesn't get sick a lot, but when I do get sick, I really get sick. I don't get the sniffles and then get over it. I am laid up in bed for 3 days, have a fever, can't talk, and then the cold lingers for a full 10 days. I've tried going to the doctor, but they just tell me to take it easy and try Zicam. Meanwhile, my son tears around the apartment with only the slightest hint of the sniffles.

But all is not illness and cardboard boxes! This upcoming week is Kerouac Fest! Hoorah! No matter what else may be going on, I am going to Kerouac Fest, dammit. It keeps me sane and balanced to be with my arts family. While we are there, Blood Pudding Press will be releasing Letters From Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel!! The poems in this chapbook haven't appeared in many journals, unlike the poems from Barefoot and Listening, so I'm double excited. Yay!

I have also managed to do some reading while in the midst of all the craziness. I read Gorgon by Peter D. Ward, a nonfiction book that chronicles the adventures of a paleontologist as he attempts to find evidence of a rapid mass extinction at the end of the Permian era, 250 million years ago. While not as much about science as the copy would suggest, I actually found the true content of the book much more interesting than I had expected. Ward weaves into the book his experience with apartheid while working in South Africa, which was truly fascinating, and makes me want to read more on apartheid. When the "heavier" science is present, it is explained in a way that I, a non-science major, could understand without feeling talked down to, and the end of the book made me hope he is planning to write more. Also, he managed to connect discussion about mass extinction on Earth to discussion about life on other planets, and I do love outer space.

I also read The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, and am probably the last person to have done so. I very much enjoyed it, and will probably move on to read Unaccustomed Earth, in spite of it generally receiving less glowing reviews. It was a great collection of stories dealing with what it means to belong to a country and a cultural identity as well as the loss of cultural identity. Loss seemed to play a big theme in the collection - how we deal with loss, how we interpret loss through a cultural lens, and how others respond to a loss not their own. It was extremely readable, and I felt like I knew her characters instantly. I wasn't particularly a fan of The Namesake as a story (though I will admit that I only saw the film), and wouldn't say that I loved every one of the stories in The Interpreter of Maladies, but the combination of them was gorgeous.

I'm still plodding my way through A Briefer History of Time (I never took physics in high school - give me a break!) and am about half way through The Toughest Indian in the World (though I am tempted to shift over to Indian Killer for reasons that I will discuss in whatever I write about whichever book I finish first). I am also slowly making my way through Saint Monica, though less in the plodding way with Briefer History, and more in the this-is-so-delicious-I-can't-swallow-it-all-in-one-gulp way.

2011-08-10T05:14:00.000-07:00

I was hoping to get reviews going again here in August, but August has turned into a very very busy month, in some ways happy, in others ways... less so.

My husband and son and I may have to move out of the apartment and neighborhood that we all love in order to get my son into a school that we are all comfortable sending him to. Ben is a great kid and last year we had a very poor match with his school. He is smart and inquisitive and interested in learning (many of the books I read him are books about outer space and paleontology) and I fear that another year at a school that does not work well with him will lead to a stifling of that love of learning and a belief that school cannot possibly be a good place. So we may move. We will see.

In happier news, Kerouac Fest is right around the corner and I will get to be reunited with my undergraduate creative writing professor. He lives in Lebanon now, so I hardly ever get to see him and I can't wait. It is fitting that we will see each other right as my new chapbook, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel will be coming out then, too - he is the reason I am no longer a terrible poet (oh lord, I was terrible - I'm rereading some of my high school era poetry for Scary Bush, and oh god...) and he's the one who first brought me to the Grand Midway.

Juliet Cook is doing an amazing job with Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel - when this manuscript was still in its fetal state I told myself that as soon as it was done if Blood Pudding Press was taking submissions I would send it there. Juliet is, in so many ways, the right publisher for this manuscript. I think she gets it more than any other editor possibly could have. Juliet recently did an interview with Women's Quarterly Conversation that is well, well worth reading. It is here.

Back to reviews soon, I promise - I've been reading a lot of really great books and chapbooks and I can't wait to talk about them!

Negativity and the Arts

2011-08-03T04:39:00.000-07:00

I briefly debated whether I should write this entry or not - I have decided that it is important to me that I do, and that I will do my best to leave out information that could lead to the persons involved being easily googled. If you are a super internet detective you might figure it out, but only if you have super powers, and if that's the case, what are you doing using them for this?? Go fight crime or put a stop to frakking or something.

Last night I was at a coffee shop somewhere in Pittsburgh (which will remain nameless), sitting at my table, reading my book on prehistoric creatures, when a stocky man entered the coffee shop and sat down at the table across the way from me with a petite, pretty young woman. It quickly became clear that the two of them were there to have a meeting about an arts event that they were working on together. Now, before you think I was listening in on their conversation from the get go, let us be clear - this man was loud. At no point was it difficult for me to hear anything he said.

At first, I was completely disinterested, and actually a bit annoyed because my book on prehistoric creatures was interesting, dammit, and his loudness was making it difficult for me to concentrate, but then my ears started picking up things he was saying that made me sit up and listen rather than try to ignore him. I didn't start writing down what he said until later, so I will have to paraphrase/summarize. Essentially, he was saying that the Pittsburgh arts scene sucks, and there aren't very many good artists in the city.

Now, I'm in the Pittsburgh arts scene and I know a lot of very talented people in the Pittsburgh arts scene, but this guy just seemed - I don't know - sort of like a joke. He was loud (as I said), dramatic, and annoyed in that super-entertaining sort of way, so rather than get disgusted and leave or move, I made a quick facebook post: "The loud guy in this coffee shop is making sweeping generalizations about the Pittsburgh arts scene and it is kind of entertaining due to his drama levels. I think if I could take him at all seriously I would be somewhat offended on behalf of, well, the Pittsburgh arts scene." A couple of my friends commented, and he kept on being loud, so off we went - we both had an audience.

He mentioned that he is "totally over" animals in art (and pine cones for some reason ???), which I just thought was silly (plants are okay though, fyi, as long as they are not the evil pine cone), but then he made this comment: "I am totally over animals in art...Like all the stuff in that show at [NAME OF A REALLY GREAT GALLERY]? I mean, that place is all right and everything, but it's all just so played out". I know the gallery he speaks of. I have been there many times. The person who runs it works their butt off and has done great things with said gallery. Don't say these things in public. No. Bad.

He continued: "artists in this city do not know what it is like to be a real artist...they can mope around and be depressed and still survive...if you're in New York City or Dublin...or anywhere else you can't do that" (ellipses indicate where there was a word or two that I missed - I was trying to type as he spoke - apologies for that). This statement is A) utter bullshit B) so much an awful generalization that I can't even begin to deconstruct it C) my first concrete clue that he thinks of himself and being separate from and better than the people with whom he shares a city of residence.

So, of course, using a couple other conversation clues (a gallery show he said he curated) I began to try to google him. Obviously.

He also mentioned earlier in the conversation that unlike "everyone else" in Pittsburgh he is morally superior and does not place his own work in gallery shows. I've given this dude's website (spoiler! I eventually found him!) enough hits for one day, so I'm not going to try to confirm this statement.

He then went on to talk about how the cost of living is so low in Pittsburgh that artists here are all spoiled and don't know what it means to suffer. But apparently none of us are allowed to complain, ever, so facebook friends and I have determined that, for this dude to be happy, all artists in Pittsburgh need to sit on the corner holding this cardboard sign:

Real artist. Starving, but not bitching about it. Don't give me money. This is just a PSA

Then they talked a bit about the event that they were actually having a meeting for, and it became briefly less interesting. Just when I thought that the show was over, though, he decided to take a completely innocuous bit of conversation (discussion about the deadline for turning in juried work) and use it to, yet again, bash all artists in Pittsburgh, and, of course, toot his own little horn. Before I could start typing, he began talking about how all artists in Pittsburgh (yes, he was saying "everyone in this city" - I am not making this part up or being hyperbolic in any way) do their work hastily at the last minute. Oh, but he doesn't. "Some people call me an over-achiever," he claimed. The girl smiled and nodded the whole time, making affirmative noises.

It was at this point (the over-achiever line) that I lost it and began laughing hysterically in the middle of the coffee shop. The guy next to me clearly thought I had a brain-related problem.

They then went back to talking about the event, and as I listened, because now I was invested in his stupidity, dammit, I realized that some of the ideas he has probably don't suck. The problem is that he was talking like such a self-centered, egotistical pain that I don't think I can appreciate any of his ideas or vision.

Then they started talking about gathering work from artists and he said this little gem: "[The organizers] are being protective over me calling people...I don't know why...Everyone loves me...They're all like "It's so cool that you're from [city that would potentially be too identifying]!"... I guess everyone is just intimidated by me." I did not know that real people talked like this in a serious way.

And then he went on a few minutes later "I'm a little burnt out on Pittsburgh...doing all these events takes a little bit of my soul...no one appreciates all my work...I mean, I have a fabulous life here...I get to work in film and everyone loves me." No dude. No they don't, not if this is how you act. They really, really don't. But the girl agreed, saying "Oh yeah - I totally understand. I mean, I lived in New York and in L.A." Because LA is the hub of all that is genuine art in this world.

This set of quotes is what really gets me, I think. This mentality that they're better artists, more dedicated, and more talented merely by virtue of having lived in cities like New York and LA. I see this a lot, this desire to trumpet being from New York in particular. Now, I have a good number of artist and poet friends who are from New York who do not do this. They are lovely, amazing people and this is not directed at them. This is not something I see in all New York artists, just the obnoxious ones, and those obnoxious ones are in the minority. There's this idea they have of "I am from New York and therefor know more about art/writing/life/the world/ monkeys than you do, and my art must be better and you are a peasant from - ugh - Pittsburgh. If you were dedicated to your craft you would move to New York like me."

There is nothing wrong with being proud of where you are from. There is something wrong with acting like you are better than someone else because of where you are from.

At this point, the coffee shop was closing and I had to leave. I wanted to say something to this guy. I think I should have. If this is what he is willing to say in a very public place, then what does he say in private? How does he treat people who have probably helped him and shown his work and befriended him? I wish that I had said something. I did figure out his name (it turns out we have friends in common on Facebook - a decent number of them) with a bit of help from a friend, but I was then forced to sign a verbal non-disclosure agreement and promise I would not share his name. I am honestly conflicted about this. I feel like the kind of talk and behaviour he exhibited (and per my friend, this is not the first time he has done this) needs to be punished socially. Also, while my friend is "good friends" with him, I have to wonder - when someone says "everyone sucks... except me and you" what is the likelihood that they are saying that to everyone and being nasty behind your back? I think it's pretty high.

I am not immune to negativity - when I was an undergrad I said some not-so-kind things about slam and spoken word poetry in a decently public setting. I am really fucking sorry I said those things, not because of the social backlash (though there was a bit of that), but because it was stupid and childish of me. The social backlash, however, was part of what helped me to recognize my childishness for what it was. People like this man are a cancer. The attitude he has is a cancer. The fine arts and literature are not money makers (even in Pittsburgh - surprise!) and it is very difficult to be an artist and be true to your art and, well, eat. It honestly bothers me that this man is getting away with this. I feel like I have failed somehow in not saying anything, because that is what people like him count on - nobody saying anything.

What to do? I hate to sound like an after school special, but we need to root out negativity in our community. Our city is small. We cannot escape each other and we should not be able to say mindless, unkind things with impunity. So please, think about what you are saying. Don't let someone you are in a conversation with get away with being endlessly mean. Appreciate the good in the arts scene of whatever city you are in, because I guarantee you that the good is there. Oh, and if you must have a nasty, self-congratulatory conversation in a trendy coffee shop keep your fucking voice down because there might be a creepy-ass poet sitting close enough to hear you who will write down the offensive things you say and post them on the internet.

Local Pittsburgh Jewelry Artists

2011-07-24T17:35:00.001-07:00

I am a little bit of a jewelry addict, but not gold/diamond/super-expensive/my-husband-had-to-spend-3-months-of-his-salary-on-a-ring jewelry. Rather, I have, over the past year, been making my own jewelry (my etsy shop, with jewelry and Hyacinth Girl Press/Prime Directive Press chapbooks can be found here, though I have not updated or added any jewelry in quite some time), and have committed to buying jewelry not from the mall or from sellers overseas, but from the crazy-talented artists who live in the same city as I do.

I tend to get a lot of compliments on the jewelry I wear, and I always try to pimp the artist who made whatever I'm wearing, so now I'm going to do that before you even ask. Below are some of my favorite jewelry artists from the Pittsburgh area.

1. Macabre Noir - I love, love, love the mechanical heart pendants she makes. The one I have has eyes! She sculpts and paints each one individually, by hand and puts a lot of time into all of her work. The dolls she makes are also hand-sculpted and hand-painted. No two items are ever alike and they all have a beautifully delicious darkness to them. In addition to being an amazing visual artist, Macabre Noir is also a performer and puts together the Atrocity event in Pittsburgh each year with her partner in crime, Doctor Morose.

2. Melissa Ciccocioppo - Now to the brightly-colored, cute end of the spectrum. Melissa is actually my next door neighbor, which is about as local as you can get. She makes absolutely adorable clay animal pendants and lovely feather hair clips. She made me a platypus. I do love platypi. Everything she makes, too, is hand-sculpted, and therefor one of a kind.

3. Jessica Rutherford - I actually met Jessica at a yard sale where she was selling some of her older work. Jessica is a glass-maker and jewelry designer. She makes much of her glass work from recycled glass (primarily panes of glass from old windows which, surprise, are not recycled in the city of Pittsburgh). There is a beautiful simplicity to the jewelry piece I bought from her. I wish I could find a photo of a pendant like the one of hers that I have, but alas.

4. Nicole Stemple - I went to college with Nicole, and happened to see her at a craft fair a couple of years ago selling her jewelry. Apparently I was her very first customer ever at a fair - yay! Nicole is now the woman behind the etsy shop Pretty Debonair and she makes the most amazing jewelry out of vintage beads and brooches, and has just started making jewelry from fishing lures, too (none are up at her shop yet, but she has them at the fairs she goes to in the Pittsburgh area and they are fantastic). I have a necklace she made using a tiny sword brooch. It makes me feel like a musketeer.

Thirteen Designer Vaginas is here! Make it So is coming!

2011-07-13T09:01:00.001-07:00

It's been an exciting couple of weeks!! Thirteen Designer Vaginas by Juliet Cook is officially for sale over at Hyacinth Girl Press, and Make it So comes out in just 3 days!

Cover art for Thirteen Designer Vaginas by yours truly
Cover art for Make it So by Wayne Wise

Expect a review of two from me in the next week or so!

Video from reading with Low Ghost Press and Six Gallery Press 7/8/11

2011-07-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

I did a reading last Friday! Here is one of the poems I read. I had never read this particular poem in public before. Kevin Ross made and posted the video. He is awesome.

Thirteen Designer Vaginas - Coming Soon!!

2011-06-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

In just 2 days Juliet Cook's chapbook Thirteen Designer Vaginas will be released by Hyacinth Girl Press! A few review copies will be available to bloggers and editors. If you would be interested in reading/reviewing Thirteen Designer Vaginas drop me an email at hyacinthgirlpress (at) gmail.com!

Juliet Cook’s poetry has appeared within Action Yes, Caketrain, Columbia Poetry Review, Diagram, Diode, and many more print and online entities. She is the editor/publisher of Blood Pudding Press (print) and Thirteen Myna Birds (online). Juliet’s first full-length poetry book, ‘Horrific Confection’ was published by BlazeVOX. She also has oodles of published poetry chapbooks, most recently including POST-STROKE (Blood Pudding Press for Dusie Kollektiv 5), FONDANT PIG ANGST (Slash Pine Press) and Tongue Likea Stinger (Wheelhouse). To find out more about all of the above and other yummy details, please feel free to visit www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

I was quiet and still

2011-06-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a strange few weeks around here. I went camping for a week with my husband and a number of our friends at the beginning of June, which was amazing. I was quiet and still in the forest and I saw so many amazing things, including two huge golden eagles up close. Then it was Ben's last week of kindergarten (thank god), and since then, it's been a week and a half of me living alone - Ben is at a camp in Cleveland with his grandparents and Mihnea is off on his own retreat. And me? I'm catching up with friends, readying Thirteen Designer Vaginas and Make it So for print, and, of course, being entertained by the furry convention's 6th visit to my home town of Pittsburgh.

There is something about the furries that utterly delights me. Perhaps it is 90% the fursuiters. There's a silliness they exhibit that I love, a commitment to remaining in character that I appreciate, an unabashed geekiness, and, while utterly strange and often derided by even the dorkiest elements of the geek community, on the whole they don't take themselve terribly seriously. Personally, I can't imagine being a furry/member of the furry fandom, but when they come to town I always crash their dance party one night. You haven't lived until you've seen multiple people in full fursuits dancing like crazy. Also, I'll take any excuse I can get to dress up in a ridiculous costume.

This week promises to be a whirlwind of activity, too. I have a grant I'm applying for that's due in just a few days, and on Thursday Juliet Cook's chapbook, Thirteen Designer Vaginas comes out from Hyacinth Girl Press. It is amazing, amazing, amazing, just like Juliet. I am so very excited to share this with you.

Mrs. Busy

2011-05-25T05:28:00.000-07:00

I've been crazy-busy over the past month (I think I say that every month...) trying to get Juliet Cook's chapbook ready to print from Hyacinth Girl Press (yes! It's coming!), preparing for a big event in my life in early June, finding a new school for my son, looking for a new apartment, and, of course, putting aside a little bit of time for partying at my favorite haunted hotel, The Grand Midway.

I've also started a new blog, Health Tips from the 1870's. It's based on an antique book I picked up a month or so ago, and it's pretty hilarious. The book, that is. I try to make the blog entertaining, but I really can't compete with C.W. Gleason, MD.

I also recently received word that I am to be an artist in residence at the Petrified Forest National Park this fall. I'll be heading to Arizona for two weeks to write, write, write. I'm crazy-excited as I've only been to the desert once before and this will be my very first residency. I can't wait to hike and write and write and hike!

So I'm still around, and I hope to pick reviews back up in a serious way in about a month. If I have your book, I have not forgotten about you. I am but a woman, a poet, a wife, a mother, a girl who likes to cut a serious rug while surrounded by people dressed up like vampires.

I have never called into the void

2011-05-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

I don't give them credit often enough - my parents are really spectacular people. As parents and disciplinarians they balance each other perfectly and have overcome a lot of hardship in their lives to be the loving, kind, supportive people that they are. Some of what they have had to overcome is very private and not for me to spew on the internet, but in my father's case there are two things I can share - he was adopted by the people who I knew as my grandparents, and he was drafted into the Vietnam War at the age of 18.

Adoption can be a beautiful thing, and in my father's case he was adopted by a family who also did a lot of foster parenting and tried to make the lives of children better. My Muni and Pop-Pop were very strict, severe people - my Pop-Pop was a carpenter and built the house my father grew up in and definitely believed in hard work. They were a strict Lutheran couple. Honestly, by the time I was old enough to have clear memories of them, they had softened a lot. My father loved them both fiercely, while at the same time feeling an odd mix of emotions about his biological mother - a woman he does not remember.

At 18 he was drafted into the Vietnam War and became an army ranger. During his time in Vietnam he came to lead a team of army rangers, a small unit that would enter into enemy territory and take out one particular target, and earned two bronze stars for his service. He also broke both of his knees and watched a lot of people he cared about die. When he returned from Vietnam he was subjected to the criticism of a country that was ready to leave Vietnam. Like most veterans of that war, he was not treated well. Since his time in Vietnam my father has done volunteer work with homeless and mentally ill veterans. He has confronted and overcome the scars that were left from service he did not volunteer for.

My father is a very strong man. In spite of these, and other obstacles in his life he is the kindest, most understanding and supportive father I could have asked for. I am definitely a daddy's girl, possibly obnoxiously so. He thinks he is super-conservative, but I would say that my father's desire is to see people be safe and loved in the world, without prejudice. He probably wouldn't put it that way, but I have known him for 27 years. He is full of love. My father and my mother enthusiastically support all my endeavors, including, yes, The TypewriterGirls. I love getting the question "what do your parents think of what you do?" because I can always answer, "They don't always get it, but they always support me and they come to every show." I am continually amazed at my father and mother's ability to be such good people and good parents in spite of everything in their lives.

They've shown me that you can work through difficult times as a couple - at one point both of them had been laid off from their jobs at the same time. It was definitely not the least stressful time of our lives, but they worked together and got through it and honestly, my brother and I were effected very little, I'm guessing because my mother is probably the most money-wise person I know.

When I was ill with a fairly severe case of Sydenahm's Chorea at the same time that my Pop-Pop was dying, my parents pulled together and made sure that I was taken care of by one of them every day. All day every day my father took care of me, took me out for car rides, and listened to what I had to say about my illness ("say" being a figurative term as I could not speak). In the evenings my mother took care of both me and of my little brother, and read Jane Eyre to me. My father and I visited my Pop-Pop in the nursing home weekly. He had Alzheimer's. We were both trapped in our bodies. It might sound kind of fucked up, but I was never closer to him than I was then. I was one of the last people he forgot.

I go to my mother for parenting advice a lot. She's honestly one of the smartest people I know. My dad says she is the smartest person we know. She's someone who is always able to look at things in her life from all sides. She calls me on my bullshit, and I don't always appreciate it at the time, but it's useful and I usually appreciate it later. She managed to be a working mother and at the same time be totally involved for both myself and my brother. She is the first person who read poetry to me. She cooked for our family every night when I was growing up. She insisted we eat together as a family. She read and read and read to me. Now I read to Ben every night.

Both of my parents are highly creative, whether my father would admit he is or not. My mother is a fiction writer and my father builds models and miniatures. They both work for a bank, but my father is a history buff who sometimes gives tours at battle sites and gives talks about the Civil War, and my mother leads writing groups at two libraries. They are more than their jobs and more than their children, and that means a lot to me as their child.

Whenever I need them one, the other, or both of my parents are there for me. I have never called into the void. My father is always ready to leap to my defense, to back me up, and he can be really, really scary when he wants to be. He knows how to command respect. He knows how to defend his family. I upset them, they annoy me, I get stressed when I have to go visit sometimes, but my parents have always loved me. They have always done their best to be the best parents they can possibly be.

I love them. I am very, very grateful.

I was looking out the window. It was spring.

2011-05-12T06:14:00.000-07:00

I watched Lord, Save Us from Your Followers this week with my husband (earlier in the week it was Modify, which Mihnea and I had to avert our eyes for portions of, No Impact Man, which has pushed me toward eating more local food, and Audience of One which was alternately hilarious and frightening in very different ways from Modify - I've been sick, so it's been a week of documentaries) and I have to say, I am a bit disappointed.

The basic premise is that an evangelical guy wonders why everyone can't just get along, is frustrated with the tendency to distill our beliefs into bumper sticker slogans, and decides to travel the US talking to people about how the "gospel of love" has divided us so thoroughly. Great idea, right?

He does the "man on the street" gig in a white jumpsuit covered in various bumper stickers (everything from a Jesus fish to a FSM to a bumper sticker that urges fellow drivers to vote pro choice), talking to average people about which bumper sticker is their favorite and why, what their general belief system is, and what they think of that Jesus dude. He also interviews various political, academic, and social leaders who consider themselves Christian, most of them evangelical, and this is where he begins to lose me.

One of the interviewees for this documentary is Rick Santorum. Yes, that Rick Santorum. The one with the Google Problem. Now, I don't have a problem with someone interviewing Rick Santorum, but what I do have a problem with is not giving us an introduction to Santorum's hateful politics and then proceeding to allow him to crow on about how Christians need to show love and work together with non-Christians. I mean, really? There was no other Christian politician who could have been interviewed who hasn't, say, compared loving sexual intercourse between two men to a man having sex with a dog? And if you must interview such an awful human being, at least have the courtesy to then give us the flip side of Santorum. To use a cliche, actions speak louder than words, and actions plus many many words that contradict what he said in this documentary completely invalidate everything Rick Santorum says in Lord, Save Us from Your Followers. I live in Pennsylvania. I worked actively to get this man the hell out of office. Watching him say with a straight face that Christians need to be more loving (pointing the finger at someone other than himself) was absurd.

My second issue follows close on the heels of Rick Santorum, and is named Rick Warren (Rick is a cursed name, apparently), a man who the documentary holds up as an amazing Christian. Yes, the Rick Warren who spent millions of dollars to help have gay marriage made illegal in California. The Rick Warren who gave rise to the term "saddlebacking" care of Dan Savage. Rick Warren, who may not have taken a paycheck from his church in the past few years, but who spent that money, instead of sending it to, say, AIDS orphans in Africa (an example of the amazing work being done by Christians in the this documentary is care given to AIDS orphans) by spending those millions of dollars to ruin the lives of people who just want to be free to love one another (hmmmm - why does that phrase sound familiar?) and have the same rights and status as heterosexuals in society. Wow. What an awesome guy, am I right???

After mentioning more than once what a great person Rick Warren is, the film then leads directly into a gay pride festival where our host goes to apologize to gay people for the sins of the church in a confessional-style booth. If this bit had not been more or less introduced by an ode to Rick Warren, I would have liked it a lot more. The people he confessed to seemed touched, and it was nice to watch the initial awkwardness between an evangelical Christian and members of the LGBTQ community give way to something more positive and healing. However, had I been one of the people interviewed and had then watched the documentary, I would be livid. When placed next to an unapologetic interview with Santorum and praise to Warren, the confession seems almost like a cruel joke. "I'll apologize to you, but only after I talk about what great people two of the men who have worked the hardest to make your lives hell are".

The documentary goes to pains to show how it's the average Christians who are working to make the world a better place rather than the mouthpieces, and I don't disagree that there are Christian groups out there who do work very hard to help the sick and distressed. Nor do I disagree that it is more often the average person who does the greatest work. The organizations highlighted in Lord, Save Us from Your Followers were presented in a very inspirational way, and the average individual people were much more inspiring and kind than the talking head segments.

I guess my confusion here is twofold - if the average Christian is, as this documentary argues, kind and compassionate and generous and loving, then why do they have such shitty leaders as Warren and Santorum? Why not decry these men? Why not have someone kind, someone giving, someone as full of love for the downtrodden and sick as the average person appears in this film, as their leader and figurehead (I mean, other than Jesus who doesn't totally count because he can't vote or hold public office)? It simply makes no sense that what is described as the loud, obnoxious, and hateful 10% gets to make all the decisions. Christians, if this is true, why not step up and get rid of these douche bags? Why not denounce them as publicly as you can?

My second "confusion" (or, should we say, doubt) is this - two of the interviewees in this documentary, the only two with whom I was at all familiar, are actually hateful men, not the lovingkindness-filled dudes they were made out to be. How do I know this is not the case for everyone interviewed in this documentary? I mean, we're 0 for 2 right now, and there was absolutely no honesty in how these men were presented. Again, was it that hard to find a Christian leader who is not a dick? I certainly hope not.

I was ranting and raving and getting pissed off at this documentary ("Why did he interview Santorum?" "Where's the interview with Dan Savage, hunh?" "Why not show what amazing work atheists and non-Christians do?"), and my husband gently pointed out to me that this documentary, in spite of its name, was at its heart a Christian documentary, and was meant to show the positive side of Christians in the US. There are no interviews with Dan Savage or non-Christian relief organizations because that's not the point. The point is that there are people trying to do good (and succeeding!), trying to bring people together, and trying to show care under the banner of Christianity in the United States,. It also urges Christians to continue that work and to be open to involving non-Christians in their work. I would add another call that I felt was unintentionally sent out by Lord, Save Us from Your Followers - if you are a Christian and you disagree with what the people who supposedly speak for you are saying, speak up. Get those people out of positions of power, and do it now.

This "review" may come off as slightly vitriolic, and I don't mean it to. However, I consider myself to be a member of the "B" part of LGBTQ, and I realized that at a very young age (4th grade, to be precise). At the time, I was going to a Lutheran church with my parents and I didn't have the word "bisexual", nor did I believe that my feelings were bad or wrong (I also believed that reincarnation just made sense, so I'm sure you can see where this is heading). Then, when I was in middle school, I became conscious of individuals who didn't simply not believe in Jesus, but who actively believed something different, and was absolutely horrified at the idea that these people, who were good, kind, and loving human beings, would go to hell if the beliefs I had been raised with were correct. That was the moment I stopped believing in the religion I was raised with. I recall that moment. I was in the car with my parents on our way to Giant Eagle. I was looking out the window. It was spring.

Of course, I eventually came out to my parents and was told by one of them that I was going through a phase (I'm sure they now believe this to have been the truth), though the other was perfect - absolutely accepting, and I am thankful every day that I had one parent who was able to make that leap. I stopped going to church as soon as I was 18. I struggled and I struggled and I struggled with spirituality for years, and I finally feel like I am getting to a place where spirituality is a wonderful, fulfilling, dare I say fun, aspect of my life that makes me a better person.

I am not a Christian. I do not think I ever will be a Christian. I am not sure I ever was a Christian. The church I used to go to is now a place where homosexuality was described by a church leader, in public, as "disgusting". It is a place where people are more worried about whether I had sex with a woman than whether I am a kind person. And for the record, I have had sex with multiple women. My only regret is that I probably wasn't very good for about half of them. I am trying to be a good person. These two things have very little to do with one another.

I think I might be ranting too much. I think this is a good place to stop.

Poems for Rick Santorum!

2011-05-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

I have to plug Poems for Santorum - a project being put together by my friend Ashly Nagrant. As their mission states:

"on April 15th it was reported that Santorum had changed his campaign slogan, “Fighting to Make America America Again” because of the resemblance to the title of the Langston Hughes poem “Let America Be America Again.”

Hughes, of course, was a gay, black, leftist pro-union poet.

Santorum hasn’t even merely changed his slogan, he is fully denying that “Fighting to Make America America Again” was ever intended as his slogan, despite appearing on websites and campaign literature handed out the day of the event in question.

Well, I say the only answer to that is to give Rick Santorum MORE poetry. So I am asking poets out there to submit poems for Santorum. Poems he can relate to, poems about being a horrible, hateful human being."

They plan to post poetry tomorrow, on Santorum's birthday, so yes, there is still time to send them a fine Rick Santorum poem. I highly recommend it.

Publications and Absence

2011-04-25T06:03:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've last posted. Goodness! I suppose this is because I've been reading longer books of not poetry lately. I finished up The Children of Henry VIII by Alison Weir (if you're super interested in what I thought of it you can read my very brief "I'm not a scholar of Tudor history" review here) and now I'm reading A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Yes, I do need the even-more-for-dummies version. Alice in Quantumland has been recommended to me as a follow-up, but we'll see how I do with Briefer History. It may turn out that I have no mind at all for physics. I have never taken a physics course in my life. Tons of biology, a bit of chemistry, no physics.

I've also been hard at work on Juliet Cook's chapbook, Thirteen Designer Vaginas, which I am publishing through Hyacinth Girl Press in less than a month (!!) and on Make it So, both of which are coming along beautifully, if I do say so myself.

Review over at Karen the Small Press Librarian

2011-03-28T05:44:00.001-07:00

The lovely and talented Karen Lillis asked me a while ago if I would review Stefanie Wielkopolan's book Border Theory for her blog, Karen the Small Press Librarian. I have come to love review writing, and gladly accepted.

The review is up and you can read it right here!

I think for the first time I get to acknowledge that this book was gifted to me by the publisher. Fancy!

If you are a publisher or poet and would like to send me a book or chapbook for possible review, you can contact me either in the comments or at margaretmarybashaar (at) gmail.com

4 chapbooks to check out

2011-03-24T07:01:00.000-07:00

Today there is no review (I have written one, but it will be posted on Karen Lillis' blog very soon), but I wanted to highlight 4 chapbooks I've read recently that I believe more people should check out.

- Soft Foam by Juliet Cook - I've talked about this chapbook before, but I really do adore it. It's one of those chapbooks that I can read and re-read. Beautiful, sad, and introspective, with Juliet's signature odd/creepy-ness.

- A Pint for the Ghost by Helen Mort - I never got around to reviewing this chapbook (bad Margaret), but I loved loved loved it. Spooky and gritty.

- Sugar Means Yes by Julia Cohen and Mathias Svalina - deeply beautiful and haunting. Another one I loved and never got around to the review of. I should probably review this one and A Pint for the Ghost, because I did love them so.

- No Water by Renée Alberts - technically this is a full-length collection if you're page-counting, but it goes here anyway. Renée's poetry has a gentleness and a sharpness to it at the same time that I really love, and her readings/performances are always top-notch.

All of these chapbooks are out from small presses, and all of these poets are definitely deserving of your attention. Back with a review (well, a link to one) very soon!

Home!

2011-03-03T07:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, technically I have spent my weekdays in Pittsburgh (for the most part) these past 5 weeks, but I have travelled for 5 weekends in a row. Goddamn, I am glad to be home. Granted, home is now a huge mess, but I can finally clean that huge home mess. So, from Windber to Dayton to NYC back to Windber back to NYC again, and finally, home.

However, this left me with precious little energy and even less time, so it is only now that I am writing a new review. Dang. Not that there aren't a million books and chapbooks that I've read waiting to be reviewed. I'm such a slack-ass.

The Liturgy of Streets by Kristofer Collins (Six Gallery Press, 2008) - I have gotten to know Kris very very slowly. At this point, honestly, I'm not sure I could tell you when I first met Kris. That's how gradual my getting to know Kris has been. I remember I saw him read at the Brillobox (the hipster bar at the time in Pittsburgh) in 2006. That might have been my first Kris Collins encounter. It also might not have been. I mention this because, while The Liturgy of Streets was published in 2008, many of the poems were written in 2006, and while Kris and I didn't talk to each other at that reading in 2006, the poems in The Liturgy of Streets definitely pull me back to my life that year.

If I had to venture a guess, I would say that well over half (2/3, even) of the poems in this book are dedicated to an individual, are actually titled some version of "A Poem for ____", or address a particular person by name. Essentially, The Liturgy of Streets is a book of love poems. At first glance, and read each alone, these love poems are to individuals. Read as a whole, though, the book is one long love poem to the city of Pittsburgh, the people being part of what makes up that city, and Kris'/the speaker's experience of the city. Each of the people addressed in the book have a connection to Pittsburgh, whether they live(d) there, or have somehow shaped the speaker's life in Pittsburgh. When the speaker talks of love (spoken of to both men and women equally), I feel as though it is not merely the individual loved, but the part of the city they represent. A review on Amazon of one of Kris' other books complains that his poems run into each other. They do, but I don't think that this should be looked on as a bad thing. Each poem does not read as an entirely new beginning, but rather a step down the street from the last.

I mentioned that these poems pulled me back to my life in 2006. 2006 was not an easy year for me. I broke up with my fiance, had my heart broken no fewer than 3 times, drank a lot, and wrote a lot. There was a great deal of pain in my life that year, but a lot of beauty as well. I felt connected to the people and places around me and I was absolutely convinced that the late night half drunk adventures, feeling the city on my bare feet, and reaching for those connections, even when they dug into me, was all the most absolutely necessary thing. I think Kris and I had very similar 2006s. We probably would have made great drinking buddies.

Marathon

2011-02-21T06:12:00.000-08:00

The past 4 weekends have been nothing but running around and travelling, and this upcoming week is going to be the most grueling yet, but also the last weekend of crazy, I've-got-obligations travel for, I think, at least a month. Possibly a month and a half. I have double date dinner plans for the weekend after next with a friend who lives in Johnstown, but that's loose and I'm not required to perform at any point or stay up for 24 hours in a row.

The last weekend in January I was filming a zombie movie that is directed by my dear friend Blair Murphy, owner, artist, and magician of the Grand Midway Hotel - one of those is more a metaphor than fact. I've known Blair for only 5 1/2 years, but he is very very dear to me and he and his girlfriend Deanna are really just a perfect match and it's lovely to see. He's been through a lot in the 5 years I've known him and things seem to be heading into a really good space. This zombie movie has been incredible fun and I'm going to be quite sad when it's all over.

The weekend following I went to Dayton with my husband to spend time with a bunch of friends of his. I had never before met the couple we were staying with. They are lovely men - extremely kind and funny and I'm just sorry I hadn't met them sooner. They have nothing but nice things to say about Mihnea and he has nothing but nice things to say about them. We went to see a play that two of Mihnea's other friends were involved in, and had lunch with two more of his friends.

The weekend after that I was on Staten Island for the first of two TypewriterGirls performances in New York City this month. The turn-out was amazing and I was so very happy to get to see friends I hadn't seen in a long time (Huang Xiang performed with us and was, of course, an audience favorite, and I went out to lunch and to brunch with one of my best friends from high school, Sarah Reck, who works as a web publicist in NYC for a major publishing house because she is just that awesome and hard working. We are so very different, and yet so very very the same).

This past weekend, more zombie filming. I got chased up the stairs by a big ol' hoard of zombies. It really got my blood pumping. I was a little worried about me when my zombiefied friend Chad got ahold of my ankle a couple of times. He's scrappy. Film making is amazing fun when Blair's in charge.

I like to link to presses and people who I feel are doing amazing things here. I've honestly no earthly idea if anyone is reading this blog, but if you are, check out these amazing amazing things going on in the literary world:

Roxane Gay and her associate publisher xTx have a fabulous new press called Tiny Hardcore Press. That's pretty much the most awesome press name you've heard in a while. Their first release, xTx's Normally Special is sold out of it's first run, but a second printing is on the way! In the mean time, there's an e-book version. They are taking submissions from those who wish to be hardcore with them. Roxane also writes one of the best blogs out there. It's about her life and her publishing and sometimes men and sometimes movies and I always get a little extra happy when I see she has updated.

Juliet Cook's Post Stroke chapbook is now available from the Blood Pudding Press shop. It's her collection from the latest Dusie and I have already ordered mine. For those who don't know, Juliet suffered a stroke a bit over a year ago. Her recovery has been astonishing, and these poems map that recovery as only Juliet could map such a thing. I absolutely cannot wait to read it. I will also be publishing Juliet's chapbook, Thirteen Designer Vaginas through Hyacinth Girl Press in the next couple of months. Hooray!

Speaking of Hyacinth Girl Press, I'm taking submissions until the end of next month! The deadline is the same for Make it So. After this weekend, I am officially declaring the call for submissions a success. Make it So submitters, you rock my futuristic socks.

Taiga's Alive!

2011-02-19T08:27:00.001-08:00

After a not-so-short hiatus, Taiga is up and running again!

I loved the first issue of Taiga, love Brooklyn's own poetry, and was super-excited when she received a Ruth Lilly Fellowship last year (so very well-deserved).

Issue A is now out. If you want one you should order now - she is only making 100 of these, and some of that 100 go to the contributors. Issue T sold out long ago. I am very very happy to see this project come back to life.

Reviews and kindness

2011-02-17T06:35:00.001-08:00

I exercised on my elliptical machine last night. It was abbreviated (30 minutes instead of the usual 45-55) because around the 23 minute mark I was hit by the need to write and sort of forced myself to keep exercising for the following 7 minutes.

I don't think it helped that the chapbook I was reading through most of those 7 minutes was, I felt, a real stinker.

Prior to reading the stinker chapbook, and when I was initially hit with the need to write, I was reading Kristen Orser's Folded into Your Midwestern Thunderstorm from Greying Ghost Press (I would link, but their website seems to be having problems), which I greatly enjoyed. I don't think I'll be able to write a full review for it right now - I feel like there was something I missed in it when I read the collection through the first time. I love the wordplay that Orser uses and her language is always engaging. She also works with line breaks and page placement in a way that I really appreciate and that I myself am not nearly as skillful with. I got a very strong sense of atmosphere from the collection, but not a strong idea of movement or what was going on. I don't think it has anything to do with Orser's writing, though - I was a bit distracted and tired. I really enjoyed the experience of the poems, though, if that makes any sense, and I can't wait to give the chapbook a reread.

Orser's chapbook really got my poetic mind moving, her deft language put me into the space and rhythm where I feel like I want to write, and I was all excited to read another chapbook and then get off the elliptical machine and run straight to the typewriter. However, the next chapbook I started I just did not like at all.

I won't say what the title of this book was or who the poet was, because in all honesty I didn't finish it. I read a few poems, realized that I had the exact same problem with all of them, and quit. Nothing that I enjoyed about Orser's work was present in this book - there was no sense of rhythm, the language felt sort of lame, and the line breaks and stanza breaks (what few there were of the latter) were honestly boring and added nothing to the poems. I used to finish books like this, but now I just don't. I don't have time for reading things I dislike and feel are not skillful. I am more than happy to go outside my comfort zone (John Grochalski's book, for example, is not my typical fare, but I read the book, felt there was skill and purpose behind it, and enjoyed it), but bad writing goes beyond going outside of one's comfort zone.

I could write reviews of these books that I genuinely think are not good, but 75% of what I read these days is put out by small or micro presses. Their books don't get reviewed at as high of a rate as the work put out by the larger presses, and I would absolutely hate to have my review be one of the only ones out there and for it to be bad. How heartbreaking would it be for that poet?

I'm usually not someone who wants to spare everyone's feelings at all costs, but I'm not mean. I have done mean things, thoughtless things, but I am not mean. I feel that to eviscerate a chapbook put out by a micro press or small press is not only sort of mean to the poet, but is also doing that press, which also put a lot of time, love, and money - perhaps most of their extremely limited resources - into this chapbook, a huge disservice. I know that we can't all be nice all the time and we have to be honest and promote the good stuff and blah blah blah, but that is what I try to do - I try to bring attention to the good stuff. If someone asks me about the chapbook I did not finish last night in conversation I won't lie to them about it (I will also mention that I only read 5-6 of the poems). If I am asked for a recommendation, I will not recommend this book. I'm just not going to rip it apart on my blog.

I'm not saying this as if to imply "everyone look at me! I'm so awesome!" because A) I'm not and B) I'm not sure that what I am doing is 100% the right thing. As much as I want to be kind and only say nice things, I really have a bit of distaste for the kid gloves that I see everyone having to wear all the time. Yes, we are artists and we are sensitive and what one person likes another person might not, but isn't criticism one of the vehicles through which we ultimately improve? But then this makes me think of visionary art and the "workshop poem" and argh! I don't know. I am so very conflicted - I keep going back and forth in my own head.

I am also saying these things to make it clear that while I write a lot of very positive reviews (I think) I do not have universal love for all poetry. Quite the contrary - I am extremely hard to please. If I don't review your chapbook, though, it's not necessarily because I deeply disliked it and think it is a blight on contemporary poetry and all copies should be burned. I often just don't get around to reviewing everything in a timely fashion. I have 3 reviews I need to write that I can think of just off the top of my head, and I adored two of the books and really really enjoyed the third. I'm crazy-busy, and now I have a press, too. That was smart of me.

Speaking of which! I just picked out the second chapbook I will be publishing! Announcement soon! I think I'll be publishing more like 3-4 chapbooks this year!

Events and Announcements

2011-02-08T10:57:00.000-08:00

No new reviews yet. I'll be on the Megabus on Thursday, though, so between bouts of memorization some review writing may occur. Megabus is never conducive to poetry writing for me (my first choice for spending my writing time), but I can get a lot of reading done and memorization goes well there.

This Saturday I'll be in NYC on Staten Island for the Second Saturday Staten Island Art Walk. The TypewriterGirls will be cabaret-ing at the lovely ETG cafe (one of my two favorite places to be where food and drink are sold on Staten Island, the other being Against Da' Grill - not that I have tons of experience on Staten Island, but the people who own/work at both places are just lovely) at about 8pm and there will be amazing poets, hilarity, and surrealist games. If you are in the NYC area you have no excuse not to be there because the ferry is free, dammit, and it runs 24/7/365.

I'm coming into town on Thursday evening and staying at a hostel. I'll also get to see my friend Sarah while I'm in town, and it's been ages since we've hung out, so I'm really excited for that, too.

In other news the AWP came and went and I didn't go but I'm already excited for next year. There seems to be an exceptionally high concentration of awesome people in Chicago and for some reason I really enjoy the city, so I'm thinking to spend 9 days there rather than just come in for the conference.

There have been some life hiccups over the past week, but I am feeling generally very positive and loving toward the world. I need to document when I feel like this more often. I've written 2 poems so far this year, which is a very tiny number for many poets, but it is a good number for me. I have discovered that one of the most beautiful feelings in the world is the happiness at seeing someone who you care about deeply in love. It is definitely even better if their love is adorable. My friend is being super-adorable right now, and I think he knows it, but it's really the most heartwarming thing ever.

I'm still taking submissions over at Hyacinth Girl Press! I also selected the first chapbook to be published - Thirteen Designer Vaginas by Juliet Cook! I'm in love with Juliet's poetry and am so so so very happy to get to publish this book. I already have design ideas and will probably spend some time on the way home on Megabus sketching vaginas. I am loving a couple of the other manuscripts that have been sent to me, too. There will probably be another announcement soon.

Hyacinth Girl Press and other updates

2011-01-26T05:55:00.000-08:00

I've decided to start up a poetry chapbook micro press - Hyacinth Girl Press. I'll be printing 1-2 hand-bound chapbooks in the next year. The press plans to focus on bringing science and spirituality together, enjoys mythology, mysticism, and the avant garde, and hopes to look at all the aforementioned things through a feminist lens.

Submissions are open until March 31st.

Also! I'm still taking submissions for Make It So, which I'll be printing as a sort of preview of the kind of chapbooks I'll be making with Hyacinth Girl Press. There is some awesome-tastic ST:TNG poetry coming in, let me tell you, but I still need to read your poem about Captain Picard, Klingons, and/or Data's pet cat.

In other news, I'm currently working on a review of Sugar Means Yes and reading through the entirety of Loba. God, I love reading. I'm so glad that it seems like I've been able to pass on my love of story and word to my son - we read together every night and he loves to tell stories. He is also obsessed with outer space and can name all the planets in order, so he's well-rounded, too.

My favorite barista, Jen, is moving to central China to teach English. Go favorite barista! I will miss her insane levels of energy in the morning. Co-worker Phil and I are trying to think of something to get her. So far we're stuck at Target gift card.

Small notes of update

2011-01-18T13:09:00.000-08:00

- I wrote my first poem of 2011 and sent out my first submission of 2011. I am quite pleased with the poem. I read it to my husband, and he loved it, too, but noted that if/when I publish it, it will make public something about myself that I'm a little iffy making a public thing. I think the trick, for this particular poem , will be the right venue of publication. I'm sorry I am not more specific. That is the nature of such issues.

- AWP is coming up and for the first time in what feels like a lot longer than it actually is I will not be attending. The reasons are multiple. Not enough money. Not enough motivation. Not enough reason. I'll miss it, to be sure, especially when everyone is tweeting/facebooking about how simultaneously awful and awesome the official dance parties are, but some of the friends who I go in order to see aren't going to be there, and DC is expensive, and I have a child in school, and blah blah blah. I was not upset about it, then I was really upset, then I was sort of upset, and now I'm not upset again. I've not been as active in the "literary world" in the past 365 days as I was during the 365 days before. The reasons are multiple. I am happier now.

- I love writing reviews for this blog. I think I might be getting better at it? You know who writes really amazing reviews and I am humbled by? Phoebe North. I was all proud of my skills, then I read her latest review. Har.

- I considered installing a hit counter on my blog, but then decided that I already make up enough reasons to be depressed without creating more for the sheer masochism of it.

- It is about the time of year when Winter issues of literary journals start pouring out. New Goblin Fruit is up (with amazing art/design in addition to lovely poetry, as always). PANK's latest print issue is heading out to contributors and their January online issue is up as well. Artifice just reminded me I need to renew my subscription. I have realized that, in spite of being all online-y I am not hip to the hippest online lit mags. I will rememdy this in the following year, but that is not a resolution, dammit.

- When will the weather be nice in Pennsylvania again? I'm not 100% certain I can wait 5 months to go camping and hike and take walks in my neighborhood and not be freezing my ass off every morning when I get in my car. Listen to me whine. Whine whine whine.

- If anyone knows where I can locate a good recipe for gluten free chocolate chip cookies, I will be very happy and will immediately throw away the monstrosities that I made last night. Good lord. Bob's Red Mill usually does all right, but not in this case. Maybe I'll start reviewing gluten-free baking mixes. I sure use enough of them, and seem to select them completely at random.

Review - The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar

2011-01-14T05:59:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since I have written a long review, and longer still since I have posted one on this blog. Amal El-Mohtar's The Honey Month has been waiting patiently for its turn to be reviewed, and at long last I have written.

The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar (Papaveria Press, 2010, 73 pp.) - Amal El-Mohtar has been making a name for herself in the science fiction/fantasy writing community over the past year or so, winning the 2009 Rhysling Award in the short poem category for her poem Song for an Ancient City, continuing to co-edit the journal Goblin Fruit (of which I am a rather large fan), publishing her poetry and fiction in multiple journals and anthologies (including two appearances over at Podcastle), and publishing her first full-length collection, The Honey Month.

The first thing you notice when you pick up The Honey Month is the gorgeous design and artwork. Amal is now connected in my head with the artist Oliver Hunter, who not only creates original artwork and design for most of the issues of Goblin Fruit, but has created cover art and beautiful interior color and b&w illustrations for The Honey Month as well (I want Oliver to illustrate my book!). Taking a peek at Papaveria's website I see that they specialize in small handmade editions of books, so it does not at all surprise me that the design for Amal's book (which is not handmade, I suspect in order to make it easier to have a much larger print run) has been done with exceptional care.

The concept behind The Honey Month is an intriguing one. I follow Amal's blog, and actually read the project in its first incarnation. A friend of hers had gifted her with a set of 28 different honeys and Amal decided to taste one honey each day for the entire month of February and write a response of some sort to each honey. Some responses were poems, others short fiction, and other a melding of the two. She posted the responses on her blog, much to the delight of those of us reading, and after the project's completion, ended up with a publication deal from Papaveria. I love the idea of writing "projects", though I'm not particularly good at timely follow-through (the chapbook I most recently finished took me 4 years to complete) and am extremely impressed by Amal's work on this lovely project of synesthesia.

Each piece is titled with the day, and the name of the honey sampled on that day (ex. Day 9 - Zambian Honey). Amal then describes the color of the honey ("Sunshine in Ottawa, and a little paler still"), the smell ("More than a flower, something else, something earthy and nutty and malty at once. Hints of green and smoke, substance") and the taste ("A burnt wood taste, hints of anise; this is a honey that tastes very brown and black, dark with slants of light in it"). In some cases, the descriptions were my favorite part of the day's piece. Amal's personality and voice come through remarkably well in these short lines.

The creative works that follow the honey descriptions range from 6-line poems to 4-page stories, and most of them carry the fantastical element found in much of Amal's work. I particularly enjoyed the very-short fiction that accompanied Day 25's Raw Manuka Honey - essentially a story of the regret of a woman who has given up freedom in exchange for stability (of course, with a magical twist), the playfulness of the story for Day 7's Thistle Honey, and the simple bittersweetness of the poem of Day 20's Blackberry Honey (2). Not all 28 offerings were as strong as these - there were a couple that I felt would have benefited from a bit of expansion - but then, I do not expect to love every piece when I read a book, and do have an admitted bias against rhyming poetry (which pops up once or twice in The Honey Month). However, each piece did (quite successfully) give me a greater sense of having shared in Amal's experience of the honey.

It was also particularly nice to see a collection that brought poetry and fiction by the same author together - too often the two are kept away from one another, and it was pleasing to have the chance to read Amal's poetry alongside her fiction. As a poet I am usually much more partial to poetry than fiction, but will say that I found myself as drawn in by the fiction in The Honey Month as I was by the poetry, by the evocative and lush language found in both.

Unfortunately, I did stumble across one or two typos while reading, but they were but a mild distraction and will perhaps be corrected in a second printing. Papaveria Press notes that with a future edition of The Honey Month they will be including a sample of one of the same honeys written of in the book. As I have no idea where one would obtain the honeys written of by Amal, I can't wait to see this idea developed.

On the whole, The Honey Month is a conceptually beautiful, well-written, well-designed book put out by a press that clearly puts great care into the artistry of their books, and written by an author I would love to see get attention not only from the speculative writing community, but from the literary community as well.

Micro Reviews - Diane DiPrima and Juliet Cook

2011-01-13T06:36:00.000-08:00

I'm still playing catch-up with review writing and not doing a terribly good job with it, honestly. I read a lot, then I got really sick, and now, because being sick for 3+ weeks means I didn't exercise in 3+ weeks I'm in that emotional funk that, for me, goes with it being winter and not exercising. It's an amazing cycle that gets me watching multiple episodes of The Office in one sitting rather than doing what I ought to do which is get off my butt and exercise.

However! Yesterday I briefly got off my butt and exercised for about 40 minutes (and could tell that it had definitely been almost a month since my last spin on the elliptical machine because at 40 minutes I was sweating way more than usual) and I read Planchette by Juliet Cook (pretty sure this is the last chapbook of hers I own and still had to read) and Loba, Part 1 by Diane di Prima (it's a first edition and I found it at Caliban Books a while ago. Very exciting. It does not exist on Goodreads.)

I'm not really sure how to deal with the awful funk I get into when I don't exercise regularly. It's amazing how that exercise, though, is more effective than therapy or medication ever were - you know, presuming I keep up with it. As someone who sits at a desk for 8+ hours a day, I don't really get much in the way of exercise unless I purposefully pursue it, and while when I'm on a roll with the exercise it is extremely easy to motivate myself to stay in the habit, but when illness hits me, after I recover I'm usually a bit down, and with that and lack of exercise comes a lack of energy and a vicious cycle that I really end up clawing my way out out.

Okay. Enough complaining.

Loba, Part 1 by Diane di Prima (Capra Press, 1973) - Diane di Prima is one of the most well-known women of the Beat movement and more people should really be reading her/knowing about her. Her poetry is beautiful - Crystal and I have performed her "More or Less Love Poems" at Kerouac Fest and for The TypewriterGirls Save the Libraries, always with an enthusiastic audience response. I've been meaning to read Loba for a while now and honestly, am a bit embarassed to admit that this is my first dive into the series. This was a great chapbook to start off 2011 with. Lately, I've been drawn more and more into shamanism, mysticism, and earth spiritualities and these things are hard to find in poetry that I also feel is well-written. These elements are certainly present in Loba, Part 1 as di Prima follows the Loba, an otherworldly she-wolf, through the book. Perhaps my favorite piece, though, was the one that opened the chapbook, a poem to the speaker's "lost moon sisters" - all the women who have lost their way, their sense of self, who the speak has not met, who the speaker mourns for. Definitely a poem that I will force my husband to listen to me read aloud. I am very very excited to read the complete Loba which is sitting on my shelf, waiting for me at home.

Planchette by Juliet Cook (Blood Pudding Press, 2008) - anyone who has read previous mini reviews by me knows that I love Juliet's poetry, and of course Planchette was no exception. Perhaps my reviews of Juliet's work should simply read "It was Juliet Cook. What do you think?". But no, I will be more descriptive than that. In this collection, I was particularly impressed with how well each poem fit together with the others. The entire collection was pale and haunted. There were hauntings of the body, hauntings of food, hauntings of dolls, hauntings of furniture, hauntings of spiders, and yes, hauntings of homes. I enjoyed how poems would reference one another, yet not be dependent upon one another in order to be understood and appreciated. I felt as though I was being lead through a tour of quiet madness by someone who, themself, was quite mad. As is always a strength in Juliet's writing, there is beauty in the grotesque of Planchette, and, I feel, a strong feminist undertone to her writing about women made pale with blood made thin and fingertips snipped off (though Juliet herself has told me she's been called everything from a radical feminist to an anti-feminist by those who have read her poetry). You can purchase a copy of Planchette at the Blood Pudding Press etsy store, as linked above, and I highly recommend it.

I am working on what I think is the title poem for my full-length collection. As of right now, that collection is one of poems on women of spiritual power, but we shall see how it evolves.

the thing with feathers

2011-01-04T06:54:00.001-08:00

No new reviews yet - I was sick for a little while last week (making it 3 straight weeks of illness altogether) and then a few friends came into town from Chicago and I spent the past 3 days with them and some amazing people from Pittsburgh and actually ignored the internet entirely for about 36 hours. It was beautiful.

New Years was so very interesting and lovely. I got phone calls from people who never call me. I cried twice. I braided someone's hair. I learned a song. I felt love.

I know the whole year won't be like this. I know difficult things will happen. I know I will not always be crying because I am grateful and I am being hugged by someone who has changed my life in ways I don't even understand yet. I also know that I have a husband who loves me, a child who I love, and more things to be grateful for than I could list here.

I dislike New Year's resolutions (does anyone really like them?) - I inevitably forget about them/fail at them. I do like hope, though, so here are my hopes for 2011.

- I hope that I can have radical spiritual experiences. I don't write about my spirituality much here - it's sort of a private, non-internet aspect of my life. However, I can say that in the past 4 years my spiritual journey has lead me back to a place that is closest to how I understood spirituality as a very young child, and this makes me more at peace than I think I've ever been.

- I hope that I can read more poetry.

- I hope that I can write more poetry.

- I hope that I can grow as a parent, as a partner, and as a woman.

- I hope that I can gain deeper understanding of myself and where I am most needed.

Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul,/And sings the tune--without the words,/And never stops at all - Emily Dickinson

Books and Chapbooks I read in 2010

2010-12-28T13:14:00.000-08:00

Everybody's doing it!

I read a lot more books and chapbooks this year than I did last year. A lot more. Because I was editor of a literary journal last year, though, the volume of writing that I read probably went down a little bit. I'm okay with that.

Anywho - the list in no particular order and probably not completely complete!

1. Cyborgia by Susan Slaviero - one of my most recent reads and one that I am in the process of reviewing. Review preview - Buy This Book Now.
2. Soft Foam by Juliet Cook - In my top 5 reads for the year.
3. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut - My favorite book in high school. It is still awesome.
4. A Pint for the Ghost by Helen Mort - Another one that I need to finish my review of. Another amazing chapbook. I'd also put this one in my top 5.
5. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood - It may come as a surprise that before 2010 I had only read Margaret Atwood's poetry. I enjoyed this book a lot and will probably read the prequel very soon.
6. Pink Leotard and Shock Collar by Juliet Cook - I loved this chapbook, too. I love pretty much all of Juliet's poetry.
7. Glass City by John Grochalski - one of my most recent reads and a change up from my usual reading. I like change sometimes.
8. Instructions from the Narwhal by Allison Titus - Another top 5 read. You are all so unlucky to not be able to go buy a copy of this chapbook as it is sold out. So very unlucky.
9. Angel Face Trailer by Juliet Cook - Juliet Cook, love love love, etc.
10. Virginia is for Lovers by Karen Lillis - great story telling in poem series form.
11. The Spare Room by Dana Guthrie Martin - A top 5-er. Dana's poetry is amazing and you should be reading it right now instead of reading my self-congratulatory list.
12. Demon Lovers and Other Difficulties by Nicole Kornher-Stace - lovely chapbook. I do enjoy good fantasy poetry and hope the Goblin Fruit girls put another one out.
13. Exit Wounds by Kevin Finn - I got back in touch with Kevin this year and read his chapbook! Yay!
14. An Introduction to the Archetypes by Susan Slaviero - Susan is another one of those poets whose books you can just assume I am going to love.
15. All the Little Red Girls by Angela Veronica Wong - my copy has tragically gone missing. Lovely, often brief, poems.
16. Fabulous Essential by Niina Pollari - I also got to (briefly) meet Niina this year!
17. At Night, the Dead by Lisa Ciccarello - haunting and extremely well-written poems.
18. Maria Sabina: Selections by Maria Sabina - Amazing amazing amazing. Go buy this book now now now. Top 5.
19. Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25 edited by Naomi Shihab Nye - I'm in it but it still counts because I read it cover to cover.
20. How to Take Yourself Apart How to Make Yourself Anew by Aaron Burch - I think I may have scared him at the AWP with my enthusiasm for all things that he does in the literary world.
21. Manatee/Humanity by Anne Waldman - I got to meet Anne Waldman at the AWP, too! I don't think I scared her...
22 & 23. 2 volumes of the Selected Works of Margaret Atwood - I do love a good Margaret Atwood poem.
24. Natural Language edited by Renee Alberts - a collection of poetry by all the poets who have read at the Carnegie Library. I'm also in this one. Renee is pretty damn awesome.
25. The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar - I read this one on the way home from NYC a few weeks ago and really need to get on my review!

I also read about a metric ton of literary journals including but not limited to;

PANK
Versal (some day they will love me as I love them)
Goblin Fruit
Pear Noir!
GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator
Pedestal Magazine
Bateau
Puerto Del Sol
Fairy Tale Review
Artifice

and many, many more.

I hope I will read even more in 2011, though I am pleased to learn that, with just what I can remember off the top of my head, I read about 2 books a month. I'm already excited to read Sally Rosen Kindred's book No Eden and all the other amazing poetry I hope I will discover.

Micro Review - Glass City by John Grochalski

2010-12-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

I picked this book up at about 5:20pm last Thursday and had it read by 8:00pm. How's that for speedy?

Glass City by John Grochalski (Low Ghost Press, 2010) poet, former editor of The New Yinzer, dude behind the counter at Caliban Book Shop, my favorite poetry reading host to shout obscenities at, and fellow Pittsburgher Kristofer Collins recently started up a new press venture called Low Ghost, and John Grochalski's Glass City is the second book to be published by the fledgling press. The first was Kris' own The Book of Names and I'm a bit cross with him for not being more all over the web with that information, but Kris is not as big a fan of the internet as I am, so there's that. Glass City is on the long end of what I'll read during my exercise stints coming in at 70 5x6.25 inch pages - very similar to a City Lights book. John is not a fan of the long line, so I was able to read it all aloud in a little over 40 minutes.

I would say that this book is a collection of poems about bardo, the liminal states we all find ourselves in at some point in life. In the particular case of Grochalski's narrator, he is in the in-between place of no longer feeling as though he is within his "youth", yet at the same time not wanting to take the step into what those around him seem to view as "adulthood" - children, office jobs, fancy gadgets, and a decided lack of Kerouac-esque road trips. In response, the narrator builds for himself his own waiting space - one of dingy-seeming bars, multiple bottles of wine, cheap beer, and urban wasteland where he reminisces about his life in Pittsburgh (There were a lot of Pittsburgh-location Easter eggs in this book. I got to say "I know exactly where that is!" more than a handful of times) while living in New York City, but without the desire to return to that former life and not being sure what might be the next step forward.

I have to say that from the place I'm in, personally, I sometimes found it difficult to relate to the narrator's fears. Consciously I understand them and had them myself at one point, but I kept wanting to tell the character "It's okay - I have a kid and I work in a cubicle and I'm more productive and awesome and bohemian than I ever was before I did either of those things - don't worry!"

My favorite poem in the collection, by far, was conversations with henry miller, a piece about a man the narrator sees on the subway and then proceeds to have an imaginary friendship with, complete with anecdotes such as - "rick's girlfriend would be named saffron/it would be annoying at first/but she'd be so down to earth my wife and i/would get over it". I really appreciated the realness of the relationship he builds up in his head with this person he never even speaks to, and the acknowledgement at the end of having absolutely no idea what it is to make a friend any more. These moments of self-knowledge are what shine throughout Glass City.

Thematically and tonally this was definitely a step outside of what I usually read and in many ways was a complete switch from the previous day's reading of Afterpastures by Claire Hero. That's part of what I love about chapbooks/short books and trying to set aside two or three 40-minute periods of time each week for exercising and reading - it has begun to allow me to step outside of the type of work that I am usually drawn to - this is, I believe, the 14th review I've written this year (they keep getting longer and longer. At this rate I'll have to drop the "micro" from the title soon.), and so at least the 14th short book I've read in that time. I've had to seek out chapbooks to read while exercising, and I really like where that's taken me as a reader.

So go check out Glass City and Low Ghost Press!

Micro Review - Afterpastures by Claire Hero

2010-12-02T06:06:00.000-08:00

Afterpastures by Claire Hero (Caketrain, 2008) Caketrain is one of my favorite journals out there - Amanda and Joseph put together beautiful books full of lovely/weird/experimental writing, and I've never come away from an issue of Caketrain feeling let down. They also hold a chapbook contest each year, alternating between fiction and poetry, and in 2008 they published Claire Hero's Afterpastures. I read the chapbook once before when I first picked it up over a year and a half ago, and I recall feeling utterly lost on the first read-through. Not disliking the experience of being lost, per say, but being lost nonetheless. With this in mind, I selected this chapbook along with a few others to take a go at last night on my elliptical machine, reassuring myself that if I was too lost I could always just put the book down.

The first thing that struck me is that Hero's language is absolutely beautiful. She has an economy with words that I doubt I ever will, and I loved rolling each lovely one over on my tongue. There is certainly a dream-like quality to her work, a level of unrealness that perhaps tripped me up last time. In Afterpastures there is a strange and magical shifting between landscape and human body, human and wild beast, wild beast and domesticated, domesticated and wilderness, wilderness and urban landscape, and back to the human body again, each transformation crossing over into others. These themes, this transformative process, touched me this time in new ways. I loved watching the shifts and mutations of the speaker and her world throughout this book. I will say that there were still one or two places where I felt as though there was something going on that I had been left out of the loop on, but the sheer beauty of the out-of-the-loop-ness helped me drift through those spaces without frustration.

I highly recommend this chapbook, particularly if you're willing to spend some time getting to know it - it's well worth the knowing. It is presently out of print, but Caketrain often brings back books in a second printing or through free PDF versions on their website. I definitely would love to read more of Claire Hero's work (she has a full-length collection out from Noemi Press that I've linked to at her name) and am very glad I can back to Afterpastures.

Also! I am still on the lookout for more chapbooks to read and review! I've ordered a few this week, but would love suggestions for more - leave me a comment or drop me an email at myhyacinthgirl (at) gmail.com. I also have a couple full-length collections I'm working on longer reviews for, but those are longer in coming as they take longer to read and longer to write and cannot easily be finished on the elliptical machine.

Also also! Karen Lillis has added Virginia is for Lovers to her etsy shop! Yay!

Micro Reviews

2010-11-18T18:25:00.000-08:00

I've got 3 reviews today, mostly because I read a lot and slacked when it came to review writing. Three very different poetry chapbooks by three awesome lady writers.

Instructions from the Narwhal by Allison Titus (Bateau Press, 2007) I picked this chapbook up at Bateau Press’ table at the AWP this past year. I love the journal Bateau (it is one of the very few journals to which I always am sure to subscribe) and wanted to check out their chapbooks, all of which are selected through their annual Boom Chapbook Contest, which, I found out upon looking at their website for this review, is open right now. I believe it was Ashley Schaffer, the managing editor of Bateau, who directed me toward Instructions from the Narwhal, and for that I am in her debt. As you may or may not be aware I read these chapbooks aloud to myself while working out on my elliptical machine. I read through the entire chapbook in order (if I find myself unable to get through a poem or two I usually drop the chapbook and start on a new one) and I try not to go back and reread anything until I’ve read the whole chapbook once. Often I will reread poems silently later, but I try to base these reviews on the impression I get from these books from one straight through out loud read. This was extremely difficult with Instructions from the Narwhal, in part because the poems are complex and more interconnected and multi-layered than I think I’ve perhaps even realized yet, but mostly because they were just so goddamn good and I wanted to reread every single one as soon as I’d finished it.

The chapbook is broken up into two sections. The first is made up entirely of a series of poems with the overarching title of Instructions from the Narwhal, with subtitles for each piece. Now, in addition to being poems addressed to the audience from a pretty badass looking animal, this series of poems was absolutely lovely in that it seemed to mix magic and science, myth and history, man and nature, seamlessly and beautifully in its puzzle-like instructions. Narwhals live in cold northern waters, and a sense of the silence of ice and snow permeated this entire chapbook. Even the feelings of the words on my tongue seemed round and soft. Though there may have been a chilly melancholy to the poems, they were far from cold, and while the thread of each poem may have doubled back over on itself, twisted around, and run me through complicated sailor's knots, each poem seemed to be less a tangle, and more a complex and powerful spell. The second half of the chapbook shifted from the voice of the narwhal to the voices of men and women, but still with the chill of cold water and the silence of snow in them. In fact, it was not until the final poem in the chapbook that I felt sharp sound in the poems, like the snap after hypnotism. I don't know if I am doing a particularly good job of describing this, but I did feel as though I was discovering some soft mystery throughout Instructions from the Narwhal, and I can't wait to reread it and hopefully experience that sensation all over again. This chapbook is neck and neck with Soft Foam for my favorite read of 2010.

Angel Face Trailer by Juliet Cook w/translations into Italian by Letizia Merello (Blood Pudding Press, 2010) I've reviewed Juliet's work before, and if you've read those reviews it should come as no surprise that I greatly enjoyed Angel Face Trailer. The poems in Angel Face Trailer start out reading as a call for women to participate in the filming of what is to be a strangely sexual and exploitative film. With the eye for gross-beautiful imagery that I so appreciate in Cook's work, she describes women desired and devoured in this slim chapbook. In addition to some pretty awesome poetry, what's interesting and different about this chapbook is that Juliet's work has been translated into Italian by Letizia Merello. Now, being unable to read Italian I cannot comment on Merello's translations, but in spite of my only speaking and writing in English, I do firmly believe that poets should translate more work and read more poetry in translation. I also understand how difficult and time-consuming it is to translate poetry having worked on the translation of some Buddhist texts a couple of years ago. But whether you read Italian or not, Juliet Cook's Angel Face Trailer is definitely worth picking up - and, per Blood Pudding Press usual, it's a lovely art piece to boot.

Virginia is for Lovers by Karen Lillis (Words Like Kudzu, 2007) Virginia is for Lovers is not a collection of poems about a beloved so much as a chronicling of the beloved's absence. It is clear, in reading this collection, that Lillis is both a skilled poet and fiction writer. The poems are written in a narrative style and set up in such a way as to tell the story of a young woman, the man she falls in love with, his sudden departure, and, perhaps most prominently, her despondence at the void he has left in her life. One thing I noticed while reading this chapbook is that Lillis really has a way with endings. She knows precisely both when and how to end a poem, and I never felt like she rushed an end or tacked anything on unnecessarily. Lillis' main character falls passionately in love with a man who hops a train, and she spends the remainder of the collection trying to come to terms with what he has done - the why, the wherefore, and even the how. Each poem following his departure chronicles a way in which she experiences aloneness, though not necessarily loneliness. While a part of me wanted to see the collection end with the main character definitively "getting over" the man who abandons her, it is perhaps more honest what Lillis does - show how often, there is not a point where we turn a sharply defined corner but rather a slow process of the edges of things getting worn smooth.

Both Lillis' Virginia is for Lovers and Titus' Instructions from the Narwhal are sadly not available online at this time, and it doesn't seem that Titus' collection will be available again any time soon, which is truly a tragedy. Lillis, however, is in the process of putting together an Etsy shop for Words Like Kudzu, which I linked to the in the review, so Virginia is for Lovers might show up there!

In other news, after a bit of a dry spell I've had three poems accepted for publication in the past week! Hooray! Two will appear in New South, and the third in Barge Journal. I'm excited!

Whale Sound and more

2010-10-12T05:42:00.000-07:00

A poem of mine, Things of the Earth, first published in Brink Magazine (and one of my earlier publications), was read by the lovely Nic Sebastian and posted on the website Whale Sound. You can take a listen here. There's also a link to the text posted on the site.

I really love what Nic is doing - the internet is such a place that can promote poetry not only through text but also through reading and performance. To me these are both very important aspects of a poem (see much of my work with the TypewriterGirls). However, very very few journals/lit venues take advantage of this. What Nic is doing is truly awesome because it is a collection, not of poetry text with reading, but poetry reading with text (if that makes any sense. I haven't had my coffee yet this morning).

Also, Nic has awesome taste and has published/read/posted a bunch of poets I simply love:

Sandra Beasley
Mary Biddinger
Juliet Cook
Juliet Cook again!
Crystal Hoffman
Dana Guthrie Martin
Sarah J Sloat
Sarah J Sloat again!

There are a couple of other journals I enjoy that also post readings of the poetry contained therein on their websites:

Goblin Fruit - Amal El-Mohtar and Jessica P. Wick edit this fantasy poetry 'zine and I kind of love it. Amal and Jessica have the poets themselves record the reading of their poems, and it's optional, so not all of the poems have an accompanying reading, but I very much enjoy having the chance to hear a poem in the poet's own voice. Their fall 2010 issue just came out a couple of days ago and 5 out of the 9 poems published in it are accompanied by readings. As a bonus, the website gets a new design with each issue, and the designs are simply beautiful, which most of the time is thanks to resident artist Oliver Hunter. Even if you aren't a fan of fantasy poetry you should really browse through the back issues just to see how lovely a literary journal's website can actually be. And if you aren't a fan of fantasy poetry Goblin Fruit might very well change your mind.

The Dirty Napkin - This journal is more traditional literary journal in content than Goblin Fruit. In order to listen to all of the readings you need to subscribe (a year is $16), but each issue contains a few pieces that can be listened to for free. They require that all accepted work be recorded, and do so over the phone, so sometimes the quality of the recordings is not quite as high as in Goblin Fruit or Whale Sound, but you are always guarenteed readings here, and I do like much of the work that they publish. You can check out their archives and listen to all the free readings there, too. I'm not sure how one gets ahold of the readings in the archive. Another really cool thing that they do is they select one piece each issue to be featured as the cover piece and have it written on a napkin and then photographed.

So go forth and listen to some bad-ass poetry!

Make It So - because you need more proof of my geekitude

2010-10-01T09:17:00.000-07:00

A series of events, most of them in my imagination, have lead to the creation of Make It So - a collection of Star Trek: TNG-inspired poetry.

You know you are a geek, deep down. You know you've written your own Ode to Spot, your own Klngon epic poetry, your own Darmok and Jelad at Tanagra.

Get the deets below or at www.makeitsomag.blogspot.com

I've been writing poetry about Captain Picard since I was about 8 years old (no, you may not read it). Now I'm a grown-ass poet, and I still want to write poetry about Captain Picard. It turns out that a fair number of us poets do. So I'm doing what any sane person who reaches this conclusion would do - I'm going to put together a collection of what is sure to be the most amazing poetry in the Alpha Quadrant, a collection of poetry about Captain Picard, the Starship Enterprise NCC-1701-D, and their crew.

My goal is to get this fine collection of literature out by June 16, 2011, aka Captain Picard Day.

"Margaret, how may I contribute to this amazing collection?!" you are surely screaming at your computer right now. Well, let me tell you in my best Majel Barrett voice.

I will actually be editing this - I'm not taking everything that is sent my way. If you want your poetry to be considered for Make It So, please email me up to 10 poems in a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file by, oh, let's make it February 14th, 2011 for fairly obvious reasons. Send them to makeitsomag (at) gmail.com.

Now, for other things you're probably wondering about. Defying logic, Make It So will be a print collection, hand-made by yours truly. There might be an online version. It's a one-shot. Don't expect this awesomeness on a yearly basis. Also, it's Next Generation only. I don't want TOS, I don't want DS9 (though that's a thought for the future. Mental note.), I don't want Voyager (though if you sent me an amazing poem about the doctor I'd weep silently as I wrote your rejection), and I'll probably get Klingon on your ass if you send me poetry about Enterprise. It doesn't have to be set in the Star Trek world - it can mention Star Trek, use Star Trek as a metaphor, describe your dream in which Patrick Stewart featured (well, up to a point. ahem.), etc. No porn, please (unless it's really hilarious, but then I'll probably reject it anyway - but it will be a good laugh!).

Make it funny, make it serious, make me really really wish that we lived in the same city and could dish about our old fanfic together (shut up - you know you wrote some awesome self-insert fanfic in the 5th grade), but above all, make it high freaking quality poetry about Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Bonus points for Klingon epic poetry with original text and translation.

I'm a bad blogger and I'm cool with it

2010-08-21T12:34:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've had to come to terms with certain things. This past year has held a lot of growth for me as a person, and I've changed a bit. Not in ways I've expected, but in ways that have made me really damn happy.

1. I'm okay with being a quitter. - You know that stupid-ass phrase "Quitters never win and winners never quit!"? Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. Only since I have realized the power and joy that can come from quitting have I truly become not a complete horror to be around.

2. I've begun to stop caring about "success" as a writer. - I got myself way too caught up in what would make me "well known", what would get me "recognized", what journals would be "good for my career". Ugh. Talk about needing an attitude adjustment. Thank Ganesha I've adjusted that crap. I'm a poet now. Which means I write poems. Period.

3. I really suck at blogging. - I don't update enough, I write whole entries and delete them, I don't comment enough on other people's blogs. Oh well. I'm not saying I'm abandoning this blog completely, but I've completely stopped stressing about when was the last time I updated. I really enjoyed writing the short chapbook reviews, and I'll probably do some more of those soon, but I also want to write longer reviews of a couple particular books, and sometimes when I'm exercising I really want to chatter at my husband. And that's cool.

4. That husband guy I mentioned is actually kind of important. - And by that, I mean really important. And by that I mean that he's the most important person in my life, tied with my son. He deserves my love, my time, my attention, and my care. I really wasn't giving him nearly enough of that. Now I am, and it's awesome.

5. I'm a very spiritual person, and yeah I'm a little new age-y. It's cool. - Up until about the second grade I just believed that reincarnation was what happened. I didn't question it at all until my parents took me to church and they told me I was wrong. That screwed up my world view for years. Then I became friends with a number of people who thought that all spirituality was weakness/a crutch. Now I'm more or less back to where I was when I was little, and I'm much happier. I believe in reincarnation. I love Ganesha. I don't meditate in the traditional sense but I treat writing poetry as communion. I think your cat might be enlightened.

So I'm happier now, I'm less stressed now, my relationships with my husband and with my son are stronger now, and I'm a poet. This pleases me.

Elliptical Poetry, furries, etc etc etc

2010-07-02T06:02:00.000-07:00

There's been silence over here, but with good reason, I swear!! Last week I was deep in the throes of planning/rehearsing/freaking out over TypewriterGirls Gone Furry. All elliptical time was spent memorizing my lines. Pretty much all my time for about three days straight was spent memorizing my lines, really.

It was all worth it, though - in spite of some minor snags (which all shows have, really) the show went amazingly well. Pittsburghers appreciated it, furries appreciated it, Ohioans Mary Biddinger and Juliet Cook appreciated it, and my brother made a damn fine Sidney Crosby. Also, I wore a gorilla suit in 85 degree + weather and did not pass out. That was more or less an act of god. We had the largest turn-out that I believe we've ever had for a show, and at least ten people have approached me since the show to make sure we'll be reprising this performance for next year's Anthrocon.

Speaking of Anthrocon, I have to say, I do <3 me some furries. Every one that I met was nice and helpful and the ones in fursuits pretty much all let me pet their fursuit, pull their tails, and get pictures. I can't say I personally will be going furry any time soon, but I'll totally hang out downtown when they're back next year.

I'm finally feeling like I'm getting back into the creative swing of things a bit. I say that tentatively, because I haven't seriously worked on anything for so long that I was starting to question labeling myself "poet" (not really, but you know...), but some things have occurred that have pushed me back toward my writing space, which is a space that I need to be in. I love writing and am at my happiest when I am writing and creating. I wonder if my discontent over the past 6 months had more to do with not writing and less to do with any other factor in my life.

A chapbook project I've been working on off and on over the past 4 years is taking off in my mind again. I used to be worried about some of the content, but I'm not now. If you want a small preview of my new old project, check out the newest issue of Pear Noir! - it's got three poems in it from this project, and I'm pretty darned excited about them. With that said, I was on the elliptical machine for 50 minutes yesterday (in spite of Ben's best efforts to distract me) and I read some of that issue of Pear Noir!

Pear Noir! #4 (Summer 2010) - One really great thing that I must say about Pear Noir!'s fourth issue is that it has an amazing sense of cohesion. I find that to be a very difficult thing to find in a literary journal - they're usually much more scattered than, say, a single-author collection or themed anthology, but the folks over at Pear Noir! pulled it off. There's a gritty darkness to every one of the pieces I read (even one about baking a pie). There is some weird shit in here. There's a fiction piece called The Robot Vampire Lioness, and yes, it is odd, off, and borderline-ridiculous (okay, maybe it did a flying leap over the border), but I liked it nonetheless, in that "what the fuck am I reading? This is absurd!" kind of way, and isn't that the best way, in the end? Go get yourself some Pear Noir! and not just because I'm in it.

Readings, Reading, and Furries

2010-06-19T06:05:00.000-07:00

No elliptical poetry lately, not because I've been slacking on the exercise front, but because I was in New York City all last weekend for performances with the TypewriterGirls, so no elliptical machine there (though Crystal, Sneaky, and I did do yoga in Central Park and danced like maniacs two nights in a row!), and this week I used the elliptical machine but read something that I wasn't a huge fan of (a couple of times, upon finishing a poem I exclaimed "Really?! Really??!!") and, while I understand the "necessity" of writing a not-glowing review every so often, this was not a particular piece that has yet received much in the way of reviews, and I would hate to be the jackass who reviews the piece first and it's, well, not particularly nice. Also, I don't see myself as knowledgeable as I could be about this particular kind of poetry, so there's that, too. I might just be missing something.

Part of the reason I've been loving everything I've read up until now is that it's been selected entirely by me. They're chapbooks by poets or presses that I know I appreciate, small parts of it is work I've read before when it was previously published in literary journals. No one has asked me to do these reviews or sent me books for free. I bought all of them with my own money (with one or two exceptions) because I knew I would think they were awesome. So there's that.

I'm doing a reading tonight! At 7:30pm I'll be joining the super-talented Karen Lillis and Margarita Shalina (who's in all the way from New York City) at ModernFormations in Garfield. I'm very pleased that they asked me to read - Karen and Savannah (the other woman who runs the series - Seasonal Shorts) are both amazing ladies who add a lot to the poetry/reading scene here in Pittsburgh with their writing and with the multiple projects they both work on.

Also coming up next weekend is TypewriterGirls Gone Furry!! Crystal and I have busted our butts over this show and we have some spectacular performers. Anthrocon is coming to Pittsburgh, and what better way to find an excuse to hang out with the furriest than to do a show less than a block from the convention center?

TypewriterGirls NYC Weekend!

2010-06-11T06:54:00.001-07:00

Crystal and I have been fortunate enough (and have busted our butts enough) to perform in New York City twice now, once at the Bowery Poetry Club, and the second time at the Cornelia Street Cafe, and this weekend we will again be heading to that mecha of everything to perform at the Figment Festival on Governor's Island and at the Second Saturday Staten Island event with a lovely Dada group Day de Dada.

Because we're awesome, we'll be leaving Pittsburgh after Ben's graduation from preschool ceremony at about 5:30pm, and hope to arrive in New York City by 1am and hunt down some karaoke, because we're rockstars like that. We'll be coming home Monday evening, hopefully with tales of glory and poetry awesomeness, as well as with a case of whiskey, kindly donated by Tuthilltown Spirits for TypewriterGirls Gone Furry.

I'm excited to go on a little road trip and perform in New York again! Also to get some tasty New York sweets. I have yet to find a bakery that I truly love here in Pittsburgh. Oh, the tragedy of it.

Elliptical Poetry, Part 5 (1 of ??)

2010-06-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

So I'm trying something new - I've decided to attempt to read a full-length book of poetry while on the elliptical machine. Of course, I can't be exercising for the hours that this would take, so I'll be reading a bit at a time. I'll probably go back and forth a bit - I've been enjoying chapbooks too much to let them go for more than a couple days. We shall see how it goes. Monday (yes, it's taken me that long to post this) I was on the elliptical machine for about 50 minutes, but I would guess that only about 20 of those were devoted to reading, the rest to chatting with Mihnea and Ben.

Manatee/Humanity by Anne Waldman (Penguin Poets, 2009) I got to see Anne Waldman and Gary Snyder read at this year's AWP and it was pretty fantastic. Quite different performances from two legendary poets. Of course I got in line for the book signing, and of course I paid a slightly inflated price so I would be able to grin like an idiot and ask Anne Waldman to sign my book (which she did, quite graciously - both she and Gary Snyder were extremely kind). So it is to my shame that only now have I cracked open Manatee/Humanity and gotten past the introduction. My excuse is that, because this book is based on the Kalachakra, I was hoping to read it with Mihnea. I got through the first two sections of the first part of the book on Monday - about 12 pages. Now, what I am about to say, I say in all seriousness - it is fascinating to read this particular collection while planning a TypewriterGirls show about furries. In the section that I've read so far, Anne Waldman is looking at the lines between humanity and the animal kindgdom, as well as what makes us the same. She purposefully blurs the animal with the human and sets her reader in the position of questioning why we treat animals so differently, so horribly, after all. While I will say that, for the most part, I do not see furries as a philosophical movement, I do find that desire to become an animal most intriguing, and not necessarily a deplorable thing. I'm very interested to continue on reading this book.

Yes I did just take one step from Anne Waldman to furries. What of it?

God I hope Anne Waldman isn't reading this...

Elliptical Poetry Part 4

2010-06-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

I can feel life beginning to even out, new routines beginning to take hold in my mind, and my body responding joyously to the combination of warm (if not sunny these past two weeks) days and exercise.

On the exercise front, I danced like a maniac on Friday, and on Sunday I walked a lot with Crystal and then hopped on the elliptical machine for about 26 minutes. Saturday was lazy/drowsy/hang out with Mihnea day. And it was good.

Of course, while elliptical-ing I read one chapbook.

1. The Spare Room by Dana Guthrie Martin (Blood Pudding Press, 2009) What can I say, really? I love Dana's writing. I also think she is a beautiful being. Read her blog a bit and you will (I believe) see why. These poems were heart-wrenching (and I say that in the least ironic way possible), disturbing, confusing (and I say that in the best way possible), and lovely. Dana was one of the very first (possibly the first) poets I solicited for the first issue of Weave, and I desperately wish she lived closer to Pennsylvania and I could bring her to Pittsburgh for a TypewriterGirls show. I was particularly tickled to see my absolute favorite of the pieces we picked for Weave featured in The Spare Room. I love the way she uses pauses, breaks, and delineation in her work, visually and within the text. I read everything by Dana that I can get my eyeballs on. You should, too. Unfortunately, this particular chapbook is sold out, so it's another one where you'll have to borrow from an obliging friend.

Elliptical Poetry Part 3

2010-06-02T05:55:00.000-07:00

After a tragic weekend, during which I thought the elliptical machine was broken, lost to me forever, my husband Mihnea has used the magical powers of superglue, and we're back!

Yesterday I was on the elliptical machine for 52 minutes and I read two chapbooks!

1. Demon Lovers and Other Difficulties by Nicole Kornher-Stace (Goblin Fruit, 2009) I love Goblin Fruit - it's one of my favorite online journals, for its content, for the amazing layouts designed special for each issue, and for its offering of audio recordings of the work published in its virtual pages. When I heard they were making their first foray into the world of printed publications last year, I lined up to get my copy of Demon Lovers and Other Difficulties. I hadn't read much (any) of Nicole Kornher-Stace's work before, and I think this is because she is more part of the fantasy/sci-fi community of writers - one I often gaze at from afar, but have not delved into, perhaps, as much as I ought. These poems are about what happens off-stage in fairytales - the experiences of the women and men who marry otherworldly creatures, have children with them, and watch those children grow up. There are four poems in the collection titled "The Demon Lover's Child Grows Up" which form the main story arch of the collection, each one documenting the life of the son of a human and demon lover, which are quite well-done - Nicole has quite a voice. If you have any inclination whatsoever toward fantastical poetry, I would definitely recommend this chapbook.

2. Soft Foam by Juliet Cook (Blood Pudding Press, 2010) Before you even read this (tiny) review, I need you to go purchase this chapbook. Immediately. I'll wait. Okay. I am going to go ahead and assume you did as you were instructed, and now I'll tell you why. From the very first poem, Semi-Extraneous Consort (page 12 of the link), I knew I was going to adore this chapbook. I think, sometimes, that Juliet (or at least the persona Juliet writes in) and I have some of the same neurosis. I feel like she gets me and all the fucked up little things that go through my head. Much of this chapbook is a meditation on life and death - particularly that of of the speaker's husband's previous wife, who, it is revealed in the chapbook, has died. I, too, am my husband's second wife, and while his previous wife is not dead (and is a lovely person - I don't wish such things upon her in the least), when we first got together it felt different from him just having ex girlfriends. I feel like Juliet has an acute understanding of this and paints this relationship that her speaker has with her husband's dead first wife in such a painfully beautiful way that I couldn't put the chapbook down. I had some serious "goddamn! I want to write like this!" moments while reading Soft Foam. All the poems were, as I've now come to expect from Juliet, a treat to read aloud. I had some serious fun while elliptical-ing. Add in some creepy/lovely sea creatures, and you have my favorite chapbook I've read so far this year, hands down.

***

I haven't done any of my own writing since my last update, though I did have my son (birthday party, Kennywood trip, and kid shopping extravaganza) all weekend, so that seriously cut into all of my "me time". Things have been in a bit of an upheaval/shift mode in my life lately. I'm attempting to re-organize pretty much everything, and it's been a rather horrendous process in some ways. In other ways it's been great for me, but the in-between time is never easy, and that whole "figuring out what you really need to be doing/want out of life" thing is hard. Go figure.

I'm also trying to dress better. I got extremely lazy with my clothing over the past few months - I think it all started over the winter, though. Then I bought a new skirt and shirt and realized how fabulous I looked for once when my friend Damien was in town a couple weekends ago. It was a big wake up call in regards to how utterly blah I had let things get. So, over the past two weeks I've also been trying to dress cute, look at my closet from a new angle, and read some fashion blogs (yes, you read that correctly - but not big scary corporate ones - the little ones by people with budgets like mine) and today I would almost venture to say I look stylish. Mihnea commented upon my elevated levels of cuteness before I left the apartment this morning. Even co-worker Phil noticed that I'm not dressing like I don't have light in my closet any more. Progress!

Elliptical Poetry Part 2

2010-05-26T05:40:00.000-07:00

41 minutes on the elliptical machine last night and two chapbooks. This time we had more of a gender balance; Kevin Finn's Exit Wounds, and Susan Slaviero's Introduction to the Archetypes.

1. Exit Wounds by Kevin Finn (Amsterdam Press, 2009) I wrote poetry on bar napkins with Kevin Finn at Gooski's in Polish Hill back in the day (5 years ago). We had great fun, and I have any number of hilarious Kevin Finn stories that have followed. He's a weird guy, and, as it turns out, is a pretty darned good poet with or without dive bar napkins involved. The poems in Exit Wounds almost universally dealt with themes of decay of one kind or another - urban decay, decay of the mind, decay of nature, and so on. There's also a certain mournfulness in the voice of these poems - a sense that he's not sure that what he is telling you is the truth, but it certainly is his truth. If you are in the Pittsburgh area and get the chance, I highly recommend seeing Kevin read - I promise he'll tell at least one story that you will be telling your friends for years to come. I can vouch for this. As can my friends.

2. An Introduction to the Archetypes by Susan Slaviero (Shadowbox Press, 2008) Another beautiful chapbook that has sold out since I purchased it (bwahahaha!), but that I, shamefully, had not read in its entirety yet. I have always loved how Susan takes archetypal/mythological/fantastical women and shows us another side to them - not one that is a stranger to or devoid of the magic we imagine that they possess, but rather one that gives them the face that we know each person in this world has - one with small things in their lives and thoughts of that which is other than what they symbolize. I loved reading each of these poems aloud (even if there was a collating error toward the middle of the book and I got a bit confused for a moment), and really wish that Chicago and Pittsburgh could migrate closer to one another for a little while so I could go see Susan read. One of the poems in this collection had been published in Weave's first issue, and it made me extra-happy to get to that poem. Next up - Susan's full-length collection which currently resides in my purse/2009 AWP bag! An Introduction to the Archetypes is another chapbook to beg from a friend, if you have giving friends who are Susan Slaviero fans. And you really should.

A few quick notes concerning elliptical poetry: 1. Elliptical poetry is not a super-close reading of any of the work in these chapbooks - it's an attempt to see what I get out of these books in an out-loud read through while exercising on my elliptical machine. Poems rarely get more than one read, and with only a one-time out-loud read through, I'm sure I'm missing a lot. Don't take any of my rambling as super-serious critique. Read the books.

2. Elliptical poetry has already hit a major snag! The elliptical machine is malfunctioning - one of the pieces falls off if I hold onto the right-hand bar (I've been "fixing" this by holding on only with my left hand and holding poetry in the right. Shhhhhh!) and as my elliptical machine, per google, stopped being manufactured in 1998, a spare part is probably not forthcoming. The husband and I are already scouring craigslist for another <$100 machine.

3. This "project" (presuming something I've done 3 times may be termed that) has already begun to have one of the desired effects! I hadn't written anything in quite some time, and had hoped that reading poetry would help. In the past 6 days I've done 5 pages of freewriting on my new typewriter, Judith. Success? Time will tell.

Elliptical Poetry

2010-05-24T05:49:00.000-07:00

So, after months of complaining that, as an editor, I don't get to read a nearly high enough ratio of good poetry, and after months of complaining that my ass is expanding by the week, I've decided to kill two proverbial birds with one stone: I'm going to use my elliptical machine at least twice a week, and read poetry that I've been meaning to read forever while on the elliptical machine. I'll post what I've read here (hopefully), and maybe say a little bit about each book/chapbook/fistful of papers that I read.

Sunday's elliptical poetry consisted of three chapbooks. I was on the elliptical machine for about 45 minutes, and read each of the chapbooks aloud in the following order:

1. Pink Leotard & Shock Collar by Juliet Cook (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2009 - $3) While it's awesome that this chapbook is sold out (only 25 copies were made, and I'm pretty sure that those of us who are familiar with Juliet's poetry snatched them up pretty quickly back in July), it's also sad, because this short chap (10 poems altogether) was by far my favorite of the three to read aloud. Juliet has a great ear for sound and that really comes through in the poems in this collection - "Purple Speculum" in particular was fun read-out-loud poem. She unsettled me more than a few times, and often those were the same times I found myself nodding in agreement and understanding as I read. I can't wait to meet her and to hear her read next month when she comes into Pittsburgh for TypewriterGirls Gone Furry. I would highly recommend picking this up, but as it is no longer available, I suggest borrowing it from a friend who was lucky enough to snag a copy.

2. All the Little Red Girls by Angela Veronica Wong (Flying Guillotine Press, 2009 - $8.50) This gorgeously designed chapbook was probably the most thematically strong of the three. Wong brings together, in a beautiful/disturbing/oddly loving way the themes of pregnancy/childbirth and Red Riding Hood being devoured by and then freed from the wolf. I loved, loved, loved "The Aftermath", which closes out the chapbook. Some of the poems were a little too short for my tastes - or rather, there were too many very very short poems all in a row at certain points, and this was possibly accentuated by my attempts to read the chapbook aloud, straight through. Like Cook, Wong has a wonderful grasp on sound in her poetry and I will most definitely be seeking out more of her work.

3. Fabulous Essential by Niina Pollari (Birds of Lace, 2010 - $5.00) I've been following Niina's blog and her poetry for the past two years or so, and, as I expected I would, greatly enjoyed Fabulous Essential. One thing I really appreciated about this collection was how Pollari seemingly effortlessly included within her poetry bits of modern technology/social media in such a way that was non-intrusive and that would certainly not lead me to say that she was attempting to write a pop culture poem or a poem about technology and modernity. I think sometimes poets have difficulty with things like that; mentioning the television and email without the poem becoming about those things. A fine read to finish out my elliptical time with.

On Thursday I read aloud The Mushroom Valeda and about half of The Folkways Chant from Maria Sabina: Selections (University of California Press, 2003) by Maria Sabina, which actually took longer than reading all three of the above chapbooks combined. My husband and I have a Maria Sabina project in the works and I will write more on her later.

It's Alive!

2010-04-26T05:44:00.000-07:00

Dave Bonta over at Via Negativa read Barefoot and Listening as part of his "book a day" challenge for National Poetry Month!

Read his thoughts (which made me smile lots) right here!

Thank you, Dave!!!

National I-haven't-written-a-damn-thing-all-month Month

2010-04-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

You know, I could make a million excuses about the AWP, about how Weave is in that period of crunch time leading up to our next issue's debut, about how I've got approximately eleventy billion TypewriterGirls shows this spring/summer starting this week (you should come to some of them!), about how I'm trying to spend more time with my long-suffering husband and child, but the truth is that I'm just a lazy fuck.

I have ideas - a plethora of ideas. Ideas are not poems.

I might be heading out to the Grand Midway Hotel this weekend. That usually forces me to write. Ah, old haunted hotel in a dead coal mining town - what would I do without you?

Pretty much an entry where I geek about the awesomeness of other editors

2010-04-15T06:09:00.000-07:00

AWP was, of course, a fantastic time. I always worry about it and then it's always in the top ten favorite weeks out of the year. I realized while I was out there that I absolutely love other editors. Matt and Roxane of Pank are lovely, lovely people - they put so much work and time and energy and awesometude into Pank and it really, really shows. I endeavour to be more Roxane-and-Matt-ish.

Also, shout out of Aaron Burch of Hobart (who I may or may not have creeped out by declaring "oh my god, be my new best friend!" mid-panel). I certainly hope that he is able to make it out to Pittsburgh and read his amazing work at a TypewriterGirls show in the future. I was gunning for his presence at TypwriterGirls Gone Furry, but we shall see.

Bill and Lisa of Slack Buddha are also on my The AWP Would Have Been Significantly Less Awesome Without You list. They made the TypwriterGirls show at the Mercury a fun time. Lisa is one sexy whiskey runner. Also, good at quieting down a drunk and rowdy audience.

Also! Ohmygoodness! I got to meet Yusef Komunyakaa, who has been my favorite poet for about ten years. He was gracious and very kind and he signed my book happily and was touched when I told him that reading his poetry about the Vietnam War has made me feel closer to my father and he's going to be in Pittsburgh this year!!!! I'm really hoping that, if nothing else, they will need volunteers to help out with that reading. 'Cause I'll be first in line.

Also also! I got to meet Anne Waldman (who is lovely and sweet, too) and Gary freakin' Snyder! Gary Snyder. For reals. More book signing occurred. More rambling by me. More gracious and kind reactions from totally awesome famous poets who are probably used to fangirls like me at this point.

At some point I'll make a more substantial post wherein I talk about Deep Things regarding writing and poetry - but for now, people are awesome. Editors are awesome. I love Yusef Komunyakaa, Anne Waldman, and Gary Snyder. Yay, AWP.

On the radio!

2010-03-29T11:14:00.000-07:00

I had the great honor and pleasure of being part of an interview on The Moe Green Poetry Show with Naomi Shihab Nye and two of the other lovely poets in Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25.

I didn't ramble too embarassingly, I don't think, though I did babble a tiny bit about Facebook (ah, the youth of today!). I also talked about my ex-boyfriend's cat. And Mihnea's ex-girlfriend's cat. And the universal cat. It totally applied to poetry. For real.

Some semi-intelligent things came out of my mouth too, about the concept of the other in the anthology, and I might have called Naomi the nicest poet ever (I stand by this statement).

Also, Naomi Shihab Nye called my poetry edgy. I've wondered before if I'm an edgy poet...

2010-03-18T07:04:00.000-07:00

I'm a little sick today, but that's not going to stop me! I feel better than I did yesterday and am going to trust that a good night's sleep tonight will fix me right up.

Tomorrow my super-talented friend Crystal Hoffman and I will be heading to New York City to perform at the Dada Poetry Salon at the Cornelia Street Cafe. Crystal is my partner in crime for the TypewriterGirls, and is an amazing poet to boot. (You can read her poetry in Weave issue 01 - only 7 copies left!, FRiGG, and soon in A cappella Zoo's sure-to-be-fabulous 4th issue! I do love A cappella Zoo. If you order issue 4 by March 20th you can get a free copy of issue 1, and, lo and behold, that's the one I'm in! It's the TypewriterGirls Special!)

In less than a month the AWP will be upon us. Weave and the TypewriterGirls will both be heading to this writer party to end all writer parties. Weave will be sharing a table with Open Thread, Caketrain, Pear Noir!, and a couple other Pittsburgh literary lovelies and I will be speaking on the panel The In Sound from Way Out: From Submission to Publication along with editors from Pank, Hobart, Lumberyard, and Bateau. It's way more fun and awesomeness than should be allowed on a Thursday morning, quite frankly.

That very same day Crystal and I will have to crash in some famous poet's hotel room for a nap (we're thinking Gary Snyder), because Thursday night the TypewriterGirls are performing at the Mercury Cafe along with an eclectic array of poets, including TypewriterGirls favorite, Sandra Beasley! Yay! Come witness TypewriterGirls Do Dead Poets - we promise to be entertaining. Also to give you whiskey.

Just a very quick post to say...

2010-02-23T09:58:00.000-08:00

...the anthology's out!

Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25 edited by Naomi Shihab Nye

I'm in there along with a whole bunch of other super-talented ladies and gentlemen. I actually haven't received my contributor copy yet, but I've seen a copy and it is quite lovely. A local bookstore has already agreed to carry it. Hooray and joy!

Snow

2010-02-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

It's snowing here in Pittsburgh again. If I look to my right and crane my neck a bit I can watch it fall against the backdrop of the red brick office building across the street from my red brick office building.

I want it to snow and snow and snow and snow and never stop.

The TypewriterGirls Save the Libraries video footage!

2010-01-05T09:47:00.000-08:00

At long last there is video footage of the sketches from The TypewriterGirls Save the Libraries!

I'm especially happy with how these came out. Really, who can resist pink footie pajamas, the cell poeterrorism organization, 1970's Romanian communist party films, and bad monkey fun houses all in the name of saving the Carnegie Libraries?

The numbers on the videos themselves are a little messed up -- the order they are in below is the order which they appeared in during the show.

This show features acting and writing not only from the lovely Crystal Jean Hoffman and acting by myself, but also the writing and acting skills of the very-talented Sean Collier. Also some narration by Dave Doyle, who is an official TypewriterGirl. Also a guest appearance by the lovely Franco Dok Harris, who puts up with my and Crystal's shenanigans quite graciously.

So watch! Enjoy! I'm still working on that entry on mentorship.

Radio Silence

2009-12-22T09:38:00.000-08:00

I've been a bit non-present again, I realize.

I was working pretty hard on an entry on mentorship that's gotten completely off track as I've been unable to get ahold of one of the subjects of the entry. It has made me a bit glum to look at an entry which is primarily about someone who hasn't emailed me back in two months.

I'm not dead, really. Weave issue 03 is ready to ship from the printer, the TypewriterGirls are heading to the Bowery Poetry Club in January and I wrote a draft of a new poem recently.

Mihnea and I will be heading out to Cook's Forest for three days after Christmas for some relaxation time in a cabin. Though, I wonder if it still counts as a cabin since it has a whirlpool tub. Tiny hotel, maybe? I've joked that it's our honeymoon/Christmas/Valentine's Day. We opted for no TV in the cabin. There will be lots of writing. Lots of snuggling. I'm using that whirlpool.

I have a bunch of submissions floating around out there right now. For some reason I'm on the edge of my seat about them over the past couple of days. I have one submission that's been out there for four months. I used to get upset about these things. Now I'm an editor.

Reading in 2009

2009-12-10T06:58:00.000-08:00

I've seen a lot of people making lists of their favorite books of 2009 and I was trying to think of what my favorite books of 2009 might be when I realized something a little bit depressing -- I didn't really get to do all that much reading purely for pleasure in 2009.

I did make sure that I sat down and read At Night, the Dead by Lisa Ciccarello, and this weekend I plan to give The Spare Room by Dana Guthrie Martin my full attention, but maybe it would be better to just list the books I read for pleasure this year. period.

I did a lot of reading a poem here and a poem there from books, so I'll really only be listing books I actually read cover to cover. Not all of them were even published this year. I am made of book reading fail.

- The aforementioned At Night, the Dead by Lisa Ciccarello from Blood Pudding Press
- No Water by Renée Alberts from Speed and Briscoe
- The Ice Lizard by Judith Johnson (one of the best books of poetry I've ever read. Judy Johnson is fantastic.)
- Inside Bone There's Always Marrow by Rachel Mallino from Maverick Duck Press
- Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York by Frank X. Walker (one of my top 10 favorite poets of all time. I gushed at him at AWP last year. Yes, I totally fangirled.)
- Horrific Confection by Juliet Cook (get your copy to hold in your hands while you can! She's running out!)

Oh dear lord, those might be the only books that I chose to read this year and actually read cover to cover. That is extremely depressing. This is one of the problems with being an editor and review writer - I am constantly reading books and work that are not necessarily of my choosing, and there seems to be a constant influx of this. I've actually fallen woefully behind on some of my reviews due to all the other craziness of the past few months, and in addition, there are many people who have been waiting for a response from Weave for a lot longer than I would like. If you're out there reading this, we haven't forgotten you!

To be fair, if I wasn't a review writer, I would never have discovered Frank X. Walker and there would have been no AWP fangirling.

If your book is not on the above list and I purchased it this year, do not be sad. I probably read it in parts and stare at it longingly as I dash from room to room of my apartment, either chasing after my son or trying to locate something that has gone missing at just the moment I need it. Or it is currently in the possession of one of the Weave assistant editors, waiting to have a review of it written. Joel just absconded with I think three more books. For the most embarrassing life of me I cannot remember which ones. I do recall being very happy about one of them, thinking, oh but it would be lovely if he wrote a review of that one!

I did a bit of writing on Tuesday. Not much, but I've begun, at least, to get myself back in the poetic head space.

My just-before-the-new-year resolution is to read more just because I want to. I will start this weekend. I will let you know how it goes.

Barefoot and Listening

2009-12-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

My chapbook, Barefoot and Listening, has been published by Tilt Press and is now available from their website!! Hooray!

I am so very very very excited about this. This is my first chapbook publication and represents years of work on my poetry. I'm extremely happy with all of the work that Rachel Mallino and Nicole Cartwright Denison have put into their press and into this chapbook and I feel honored to be published by them.

So check it out! Pick up a copy! Nothing would make me happier.

Whirlwind

2009-12-02T13:03:00.000-08:00

It's a wonderful week and it's a crazy week at the same time.

First, the happiest of news - my husband got his green card yesterday!!! Hooray! This is the most wonderful of news and overshadows any bad news/feelings. Seriously. One of the bad things that happened on Tuesday, thought, was that my car got towed (a $45 lunch for two turned magically into a $200 lunch) and I couldn't even really get upset about it.

Other happy news - two TypewriterGirls performances this weekend! The first one is this Friday at Remedy in Lawrenceville - Karen Lillis and Laura Davis will be reading, and there will be various other TypewriterGirl shenanigans. Doors open at 9:30.

On Sunday it's TypewriterGirls Save the Libraries! Doors open at 5:30pm at the Carnegie Lecture Hall in Oakland. It's for a good cause. You should be there. Sandra Beasley and Nancy Krygowski will read, Phat Man Dee will sing, Christiane D. will perform, Dave Doyle will balance things on his face, Moquette Volante will perform, and Crystal and I will be up to our zany antics with guest appearances from Sean Collier and Franco Dok Harris. You for sure want to be at this one.

My friend Kevin is coming out to Pittsburgh this weekend to see the TypewriterGirls shows and hang out in the city. I don't get to see Kevin too often and it will be very nice to have him around!

I've actually taken off work tomorrow to get ready for the upcoming TypewriterGirls shows. This is not the first time I've taken off for a show, but it's the first time I've taken off for show rehearsal.

Very Good Things are, of course, happening elsewhere in the poetry world, too.

- The lovely Rachel Mallino has just had her next chapbook picked up by Dancing Girl Press! Hooray and congratulations, Rachel!!

- My Weave co-founder Laura Davis has a new blog. Check it out -- it's all poetry-related and stuff

- The New Yinzer Presents has a reading coming up! I'm in it with fellow Weave editor Joel Coggins, the always-amazing Renee Alberts, and much much more!

- Juliet Cook has a new chapbook coming out from Slash Pine Press called Fondant Pig Angst. I have ordered it. You should order it, too.

- Dana Guthrie Martin's chapbook The Spare Room is out right now from Juliet's press, Blood Pudding Press. It's another one that I demand you go purchase right now. Dana's work is absolutely stunning. Always.

I haven't been writing as much as I should, but I have ideas and after this weekend I'll have a little breather. And that will be good.

Also - my chapbook from Tilt Press, Barefoot and Listening, should be coming out soon!!

The TypewriterGirls at Kerouac Fest '09 - part 5/5

2009-11-10T16:32:00.000-08:00

Poetry by Gary Snyder as performed by Crystal and me

And that's the end! I hope you enjoy!

The TypewriterGirls at Kerouac Fest '09 - part 4/5

2009-11-10T16:11:00.000-08:00

The rest of improv poetry! Hear the audience continue to shout about anal beads and Crystal continue to valiantly ignore them. Now with songs about the Bad Monkey Farm.

The TypewriterGirls at Kerouac Fest '09 - part 3/5

2009-11-10T15:09:00.000-08:00

Coming up next: More improv poetry!

The TypewriterGirls at Kerouac Fest '09 - part 2/5

2009-11-10T12:47:00.001-08:00

Part 2! This time it's the last Diane DiPrima poem, comedy as written by the lovely Crystal, and some sound poetry by Hugo Ball and a Dada manifesto by everyone's favorite Tristan Tzara.

The TypewriterGirls at Kerouac Fest '09 - part 1/5

2009-11-10T11:27:00.000-08:00

Myself, Crystal, and Tracy Mortimer performing at Kerouac Fest 2009. More videos will be up soon!

In this video, we are performing Diane DiPrima's More or Less Love Poems. Future videos will have sketch comedy, some audience participation improv, and us performing some of Gary Snyder's work.

Of course, the real question here is why I can't get my husband to wear a skirt.

2009-10-26T06:21:00.000-07:00

I sent out some submissions yesterday, something I haven't done in a few months. It feels good, primarily because submitting means that I have new poems that I'm happy enough with to send out into the world.

Worked on editing yesterday, so no new poem last week. I will write one this week.

I have (yet another) project idea bumping itself around in my head. The second chapbook manuscript I'm working on is taking itself in a different direction from where I thought it would go and is taking a much longer time to put together than I thought it would, so of course the best thing for my creative energies to do is to want to switch gears. Of course. Mid-project.

Perhaps (no, for sure) I should just be happy that my brain isn't devoid of ideas. I did go through a very brief period there where I had that terrifying thought of "oh god, what if I'm just out of ideas for poems?" It's funny, really, but because I'm not the fastest writer when I go through exceptionally long periods of poetic silence I do get that nagging voice in the back of my head. It's right up there with the "you're not really a poet" voice. Very silly in the light of day.

The TypewriterGirls' October hiatus is almost over and we will be coming out of it with a bang. Crystal and I are performing at the annual Chattering Bones party in Windber, and on the 10th we'll be taking our comedy to The Alternative Comedy Show at the Brillobox. Then, at the beginning of December we'll be holding a show as a benefit for the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh. Funding's been reduced and they're going through a difficult time, and we love an excuse to have a crazy show for a good cause.

I have decided to dress in drag for Halloween. It makes me quite happy, really, and Halloween is as good an excuse as any to do it. I tried to convince my husband to also go in drag and I almost had him, but he's decided against it, tragically. I swear, we would have been adorable.

Boo, husband. Boo.*

*not really. He's awesome.

Catch up

2009-10-19T11:14:00.001-07:00

My son will be spending the whole week in Cleveland and I have committed myself to doing some major catch up while he's away. There are many things to do;

Get issue 03 of Weave finalized and sent out to the printer (!!!)
Work on my 4 drafted poems
Write up an evaluation for one of my interns (this really should be the first thing listed)
Do some housework. The husband would be so pleased.
Read! I have a book on Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist poetry that I'm really enjoying, that whole literary theory thing to plug away at, and more poetry than I can realistically shake a stick at.
Do my best not to go overboard purchasing books this week. I can only read so many at a time.
Obtain cover art for my chapbook. Very important.

There's also (conveniently) a poetry reading to go to on Wednesday, time to spend with my friends, and exercising that must be done now that I'm not constantly coughing.

It's good to know that even when I don't have a 4-year-old to worry about I can still run myself ragged.

Other Lovely Things

If you haven't done so yet, you should head over to the Tilt Press website and purchase their 2009-2010 chapbook subscription -- and not just because my chapbook will be a part of it!
GUD is having a pumpkin carving contest. Had I any skills at all I would enter this. You may have skills. You could enter. You could win books.
There's a nice review of Weave issue 02 up on New Pages.

The seemingly monthly update

2009-10-02T06:21:00.000-07:00

And again it's been a Very Long Time since I last wrote. But I will persevere! Even in the face of clearly not being the best at keeping up with a blog I will continue to -- um -- write once a month?

In my defense the past 30 days have been a whirlwind of crazy. Weave closed for submissions, I've been working on layout, trying to write a little bit (failing mostly, to be entirely honest. It's not been a productive month in the world of poetry), I decided to give myself a crash course in literary theory (we're only up to deconstruction. It's clearly not going very quickly), and I had 3 TypewriterGirls events the weekend before last (yes! three!). And of course there's my 40-hours-a-week job that's got nothing to do with poetry/publishing and my child needs some attention, you know, every now and again.

Oh yes, and I'm sick.

I decided to do this crash course in literary theory because I'm trying to get back into academic reading so that when I do apply for graduate school (whenever that may be) it won't be a huge shock to go from reading just poetry and little else to suddenly reading critical work by the bookfull. I've come up with a little "class" for myself on poetry, prophecy, and shamanism that I'm pretty excited about. Hopefully I can finish with my book on literary theory at some point and start reading the books taunting me from my shelf.

And of course all is not doom, gloom, and lack of time to breathe! Many wonderful and awesome things are happening in the world!

First, this year's chapbook subscription from Tilt Press is now available and my chapbook, Barefoot and Listening is first up! My lovely friend Heidi is working on a cover design, about which I am very excited. I'd already been thinking to ask her when I mentioned the book to a couple other friends, both of whom said "Oh! You should ask Heidi to do the cover!". This is because she is just that awesome.

My lovely, talented, fellow TypewriterGirl, and all-around best friend Crystal Jean Hoffman was nominated for her very first Pushcart Prize by Goldfish Press! She is an amazing poet and it is a well-deserved nomination.

Also - how excited am I to see this? Very very.

In other fun news the new issue of Goblin Fruit is up and the fine ladies who edit Goblin Fruit are switching journals with the editor from Mythic Delirium and for one issue will be editting one another's journals.

Also, Pank has one more day left in their chapbook competition! Hurry! There is still time!

My Big News

2009-09-04T14:16:00.000-07:00

I've been practically busting with the news that my chapbook, Barefoot and Listening, will be published by Tilt Press as part of their 2009-2010 series of chapbooks. I could not possibly be more excited. Ever since I first picked up Julie Platt's In the Kingdom of my Familiar I wanted Tilt to be the press to publish Barefoot and Listening. I'm extraordinarily excited, honored, and lucky that they chose my manuscript.

Here's the full list of poets and manuscripts as posted on Tilt's website;

Margaret Bashaar, Barefoot and Listening
Dan Rosenberg, A Thread of Hands
Krystal Languell, The Mean Particle
Susan Yount, House on Fire
Rachel Abramowitz, One's A Crown

Now I have to decide what cover art I would like -- a very exciting dilemma!

The Manuscript (again) and submissions

2009-08-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

Still working on poems for the second manuscript. However, the more I work on it, the more poems I want to write for it, so in spite of having written two poems and drafted one over the past week or so for this project, I'm still standing at 5 that need to be written. I wonder if I will ever be done. The main character has also shifted from one character to another, completely unintentionally. I'd be a little upset (I liked the original main character a lot) if it were not for the direction that this gets to take the writing itself.

I don't have any outstanding submissions right now and that is a very strange feeling. I'm the kind of writer who always has work out at one journal or another. I feel like I must be slacking or something. I'm hesitant to send out these new poems because I want to work on publishing this manuscript once I'm done with it (but who knows when that will be, really) and I'm hesitant to break from work on this manuscript to work on poems on a different theme (and what's the point of writing something just so you can send it out? That may be one of the stupider thoughts that has come to my head in a very long while - writing something not for my current project just so I can have something to send out. I've had a couple of requests for work, but seriously. Bad idea.). Still, it's a very strange feeling. It makes me antsy.

I've been making some new writing friends, which is also a very good feeling. I've been having lunches with some lovely people and I can't wait to spend more time with them. It's always wonderful to find new, fantastically creative and talented people you can connect with.

And on that fuzzy note, it's time I went back to work.

Manuscript the second

2009-07-23T14:03:00.000-07:00

So I'm working on manuscript #2 and I actually wrote two new poems for it in one day. I'm pretty excited about working on this second one now. I'd like to write maybe 2-5 more poems for it. I feel like there's a bit in the middle that needs some work. The end is lovely -- it's everything I wanted from this manuscript. The manuscript itself is a sort of a story of one character who has evolved and changed names in my poetry over time. She used to be a replacement for me but now she has a whole life of her own and this set of poems tells her story. Now that I have some distance from the poems that started the whole thing I've really been able to edit them and sculpt them into what I've wanted them to be all along.

A couple of these poems are up at Thirteen Myna Birds. However, I think only two of them remain up as of right now, so check them out before the next flight formation makes them fly away!

I never thought I'd actually be working on two manuscripts at once. Though perhaps it's just a way to avoid having to write every day -- instead of getting the writing together I organize and re-organize the manuscript, add poems, delete poems, love poems and hate them in the same 24 hour span of time, try to decide if that poem from my junior year of college is awful or awesome, you know. It's all very engaging and fun for me, especially this group of poems. The first chapbook was more laborious -- I knew what was going in the manuscript but didn't quite know where or when. This one has just been fun - tossing poems in and out, shuffling them around, writing new ones to fill in the blanks and steer my girl where she needs to inevitably go. The poems aren't playful -- they're actually much darker on the outset than my other set (check out the first poem of mine over at Thirteen Myna Birds if you wish for an example), but I love working on it nonetheless. My husband was worried that working on these poems was going to make me all dark and dreary, but instead of a dark and dreary wife he's got a poetry-obsessed wife right now. (Well, all the time, really)

SPF went very well. We at Weave met some really awesome people, sold a good number of copies, and generally had a lot of fun. Adam and the others over at Open Thread did some amazing work and I really appreciate everything they've done for the literary community in Pittsburgh with this festival. It was also lovely to hang out with some of my favorite writing people for a couple of days.

There are a lot of lovely things on the horizon.

small press festival and more

2009-07-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

First and foremost there is a wonderful literary event - a small press festival - coming up here in Pittsburgh this weekend. It promises to be one of the most awesome Pittsburgh literary events of the year -- there's to be a bookfair, panels (which I am on one of), a workshop being run by Laura and myself, and events all throughout this month. If you're in the area you should stop on by! It's only $5.00 for panels and workshops and the bookfair is free.

I've begun to slowly, hesitantly send out my chapbook to a couple of presses. I'm very nervous and the amount of email checking that has been going on here is obscene. I like my manuscript and I really feel it works well as a unit. Now I just have to hope that an editor agrees with me.

My husband is going on retreat for the month of August and I'm not looking forward to it. He's a huge help with my son, he makes me food and coffee in the morning, he takes care of me when I've had a really bad day at work, he helps me not despair over things, and he's generally just nice to have around. I'm really really really going to miss him. Is that selfish? He says this is important to him so I'm trying to have an open mind about it, but it really makes me sad to think of him being gone for 6 out of 7 days of the week. I'll survive of course, but I'll be glad when he's home for more than one day out of the week. I'll miss him.

I've been writing a bit lately. Had a very nice workshop this weekend with Crystal, Renee and Laura. I think I've started a new poem. I hope I have.

Thirteen Myna Birds

2009-07-07T07:26:00.000-07:00

5 of my poems are up (ephemerally) over at Thirteen Myna Birds! I have a particular fondness for one of them, too. I'm very glad it's found such a lovely home!

http://13myna.blogspot.com

Aging

2009-07-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

So I've noticed the first tiny fine line on my forehead. Of course I freaked out at first. Then I calmed down. Then I got indignant because I still get tiny pimples on my forehead and I mean come on that's just unfair.

I want to age gracefully. No hair dying or plucking or face lifts or botox. There's one woman I work with who is probably in her late 40's or early 50's who has aged so gracefully - she has white streaks in her hair that are lovely because she wears them so well and so boldly. She has lines on her face that she has not tried to cover or hide or strip away. She's beautiful and she is her age and she's just elegant. This is how I want to be.

Now if I can just find the strength to be it.

Small Children and Writing

2009-07-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

Over the next two weeks I will have my son with me full time. On one hand this is absolutely wonderful -- we get to work on potty training (something I question his father's devotion to), we get to do fun things together (this weekend we went to the aviary and went out for ice cream with my friend Crystal), and Ben tends to be an all-around good time. You know, except for that potty training thing that we're still having trouble with. It's always something. Before it was sleeping through the night. Now it's the potty. In fact, I am currently sitting with Ben as he sits on the potty.

Now to the down side -- I fear I will get no writing done for the next two weeks. As I've lamented in previous posts it's not like I have a terribly high writing output to begin with, and I fear that none will get done at all these next two weeks. Perhaps I should be working on poetry rather than a blog post?

I'll probably stay late after work, go to a nearby coffee shop and write until the daycare is about to close, and perhaps I'll get a little bit in after he goes to bed. I'll manage. The weekend is usually when I write (this is when his father spends time with him), but his father will be at a convention next weekend and needs me to watch him, and this weekend I got to have him for the 4th of July (and he wasn't at all scared of the fireworks, though he did repeatedly tell my husband and I that we needed to be careful not to get burned by them), so it is to be busy busy mommy time!

Do any of you with kids have any tips on balancing having a child and getting writing done? He's 4 so he's not really all that able to entertain himself most of the time. I haven't had to develop these skills because of my arrangements with Ben's father, so any advice would be appreciated.

Subscription Drive over at Weave, SPF, publishing, etc.

2009-06-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

First, if you have not yet checked it out, I would like to direct you to Weave Magazine's subscription drive. We're attempting to get 30 subscriptions in 30 days and we've fallen a couple subscriptions behind, so we'd really appreciate the purchase if you were to make one! Subscriptions are at a discounted price for the next 4 days only! $12.00 gets you two issues of Weave. $19.00 gets you issues 1-3. So go forth and purchase!

I'm also very excited to say that four of my poems are going to be published in an anthology edited by Naomi Shihab Nye titled Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25. I'm thrilled to get to be a part of this anthology and cannot wait to read the rest of the anthology. The book is to be published by Greenwillow Books, which is an imprint of HarperCollins. Exciting stuff.

In some local poetry news, Pittsburgh will be hosting a small press festival called SPF this upcoming July. The festival is being directed by and was conceptualized by the good people over at Open Thread. If you have a small press and are in the area you should consider getting a table before the July 1st deadline. There are a lot of presses already signed up and, of course, Weave is happily one of them.

I am so very thankful that it is Friday and I am no longer at work. It is a bit sad that I go through the entire week anticipating the weekend. Don't get me wrong - I am extraordinarily grateful for my job. I like my boss. The work isn't terrible. But auditing is certainly not something that makes me get up in the morning all excited. Ever. Maybe some day I'll be able to afford to go to graduate school and get my career redirected somewhat. Or perhaps it's just a grass-is-greener sort of thing and I should be happy with the work I am doing. I'm editing Weave with Laura, I'm running The TypewriterGirls with Crystal, I'm writing, and I'm publishing. Really, I've got nothing to complain about. I just get so despondent at work sometimes. This heavy feeling between my chest and my stomach. If only I could just get past it.

On a less depressing note, this weekend my friend Bill and I are sitting down to talk about the cover art for issue 03 of Weave. I've sent him a bit of the poetry we've accepted and he may be creating a response to the work as the cover. He also does portraits with the poet Huang Xiang that you can take a look at through the above link, and we're also talking about potentially using one of those. I'll also be heading to Windber this weekend for my friends' performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is bound to be an interesting time.

I've noticed I'm terrible at titling my blog posts. Perhaps I should just abstain entirely.

Busy busy busy

2009-06-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

I finished up two drafts of poems this weekend, which is quite a lot for me. I usually don't work on more than one poem at a time, either, so this is sort of a breakthrough in a moderately pathetic kind of way.

I know I don't write nearly as much as I should and this has been proven by the fact that I am literally out of poems that I am happy enough with to send out the door in hopes of publication. I have five poems that are in varying stages of completeness, but none that are truly submission-worthy right now. And of course there is the glut of poems that will never see the light of day.

I was looking forward to doing a round of submissions to a number of literary journals I really like that are open during the summer months, but, barring a miracle, this will clearly not happen. My writing hasn't been able to keep up with my submitting.

Submitting is so easy, so, so much easier to do on my lunch break when my mind is still half auditing. It's quicker, it gives me an instant sense of accomplishment, and it doesn't involve switching from that part of my brain that deals with numbers and the rules of hospital accounting to the part of my brain that works creatively. I also get a weird sort of high from having five to ten submissions out at a time, even when they come back as rejections. I can't quite explain it, but I definitely get some kind of rush from it.

Lately I've been feeling pressure (from myself alone) to produce more, as though I am not busy enough already between the TypewriterGirls, Weave, being a mother, working for 8 hours a day, the Pittsburgh Small Press Festival (SPF), and the writing that I do do. Clearly I need to put more pressure on myself.

There is just so much that I want to do, so much that I want to write. I don't have enough time each weekend to get it in and still relax a little bit, and I certainly don't have time during the week.

This is all very frustrating. And let's not even get in to my chapbook angst.

In other new altogether holy crap Gary Snyder is going to be at next year's AWP. I must shamefully admit that I have only recently begun reading Gary Snyder's work, and in part because I saw him in a documentary on Buddhism, but really The Call of the Wild is just as lovely a poem as my dear friend Crystal assured me it would be.

I'm in a panel proposal for the 2010 AWP, so there's a decent likelihood that I will have to be there (oh, the tragedy). Crystal and I are already looking into plane tickets. Hah.

I feel like something is about to happen.

Wow, it's June

2009-06-09T11:31:00.000-07:00

And I haven't written here since March. So much for actually being a blogger.

I've never been good with keeping up with a blog. I have these ideas that seem grand when I come up with them and then for one reason or another they don't work out.

But I will persevere! I will try to be more reliable!

The past few months have been very busy for me. I got married. Bit of a time-devourer, that. We had a very fun wedding after party and were fortunate enough to also have a Buddhist ceremony, in addition to the legal ceremony. I cried a lot.

There have also been two TypewriterGirls shows (The TypewriterGirls Try Drag and The TypewriterGirls Try Politics) since March. Both went exceptionally well by my estimation - good crowd, great readers and performers, great music, and amazing friends.

I always love putting on TypewriterGirls shows and working with Crystal. She's hilarious (unlike me) and constantly full of energy for the shows. We've been lucky in that we have found talented performers and poets like the lovely Mary Biddinger. We have also had wonderful audiences with good energy who enjoy themselves and are happy to get involved (after a few swigs of whiskey, sometimes). I feel all fuzzy after a show, and that's probably a good thing. In fact, I think I'm still on the high of Sunday's show, The TypewriterGirls Try Politics, today, and I can't wait for the next one.

Show highlights:
- Sing-along/burlesque to "16 Tons"
- Recitation of the Exquisite Corpse which lead to "all the CEOs in all the world" getting behind every detail of the Employee Free Choice Act.
- Citizen Kane... In space!
- Culminating the evening with a rousing and passionate round of Bohemian Rhapsody at the end of the dance party.

You know you want to come to a TypewriterGirls show.

The Month of Busy

2009-03-25T13:48:00.000-07:00

April is going to be the most insanely busy month that I've had in a while.

First and foremost, I'm getting married. May 16th. Very soon. I'm very excited, but also in "rush around like crazy" mode.

I have a dress, a registry, rings, a party space, an officiant, marriage license, wonderful DJ, and a guest list.

I do not have clothing for Mihnea, or catering picked out. There will be no ridiculous and non-tasty cake.

We wanted so much to keep the wedding on a budget, and I think we've done all right so far. The party is the most expensive part and my mother is paying for that. I got two dresses, each for under $40.00. The rings were a bit more expensive than anything else, but I expected that. I did not, however, expect to pay $80.00 for a marriage license. Ouch.

Also, the Weave issue 02 release event will be taking place on April 26th. I am very excited about it, but it is another event to get my proverbial ducks (poets?) in a row for. The party should be very very fun. If you're in Pittsburgh you should of course check us out. So far we have Frank DePoole, Andrew Mulvania, Damian Dressick, Michelle Stoner, and Alayna Frankenberry lined up to read. Should be a good show if that list is any indication, in my humble opinion.

Crystal's putting together some sure to be awesome sketches for the show and we may have a very special music act coming on board. It's all very exciting.

Two days before that, on April 24th, is the second Poetsburgh reading wherein Weave Magazine and Open Thread collaborate and lovely, lovely poets read. We'll be at the Zany Umbrella Circus' space this time around.

And on April 18th I'll be doing a reading in Cleveland for Burning River at Visible Voice at about 7pm.

Oof.

Busy Busy!

Post-AWP wrap up

2009-02-17T07:33:00.000-08:00

My third AWP was by far the best yet. Here are some highlights:

- I got to meet Frank X. Walker, perhaps my current favorite poet. He ranks up there, for sure. He signed my copy of When Winter Come and I got to tell him his book was the best I had read in a very long time. He also stopped by the Weave table and was very, very sweet.

- The whole Affrilachian poetry reading, in fact. Every one of those readers was fantastic. Patricia Smith read an absolutely amazing crown of sonnets. I got the chance to tell her this.

- The Weave table! I burned out a little by the end of each day, but I got to meet a few more of our contributors for the first and second issues there; Michael Ogletree, Karen Schubert, and Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán. Also, Weave sold fairly well (especially, I have been told, for our first AWP!) and we have some new subscriptions! Yay!

- Getting to escort Mary Biddinger on stage at the Anti/diode poetry reading.

- Meeting the absolutely lovely Dana Guthrie Martin (another issue 01 contributor) at the Anti/diode poetry reading.

- Talking to M. Bartley Seigel, the editor of Pank, whose third issue features two of my poems. He is also lovely. I'd gone to a panel he was on last year and recall completely agreeing with his editorial policies. Also, he gave me a free Pank tshirt! It has a typewriter on it!

- The one and only panel I was able to go to; Poet as Oracle. It was amazing. They talked about stepping out of the ego when writing poetry and poetry written during meditation (among other things, of course). The panel really spoke to me and reflected a lot of what I have been trying to do in my own poetry lately. It was wonderful.

- Starting up the dance party on Friday and Saturday night with Crystal. There were people who thought we had been paid to do so.

- Spending part of Saturday with my old friend Natalie who I literally had not seen in ten years. We worked at Girlscout camp together. It was wonderful to get to catch up with her.

- Hanging out with the lovely people of Akron; Mary Biddinger, Jay Robinson, Frank DePoole, and Eric Morris. Hopefully I will get to see all of them again very soon!

- Guerrilla poetry readings for Judy Johnson. Fantastic. Also lunch with Judy Johnson. Also being informed that the TypewriterGirls can now "officially" be affiliated with 13th Moon Press. Also planning a reading with Judy Johnson for April.

And, of course

- Spending the week with my two favorite girls; Crystal and Laura

I know a lot of superlatives were used in this post, but it's because I had such an amazing time and got to meet and spend time with so many amazing people that I can't help but gush a little bit. Pictures to come.

Hope your AWP was fantastic, too!

New Issue of Goblin Fruit...

2009-01-12T18:52:00.000-08:00

...is live and contains a lovely poem by the ever-so-talented Susan Slaviero.

Apotropaism is also an interesting one -- though my favorite part of Goblin Fruit is always listening to the readings posted with the poems. I haven't had the chance to take a listen yet, but certainly will at work tomorrow. I always find a poem that I didn't properly appreciate until I heard it.

This is one of the things that I love about journals like Goblin Fruit, The Dirty Napkin, and The Pedestal Magazine (to name a few) -- they give the poet the opportunity to send in a recording of them reading their poem, which I think is a simply lovely idea. It's one of the advantages of the internet. Not only is a poem readily accessible to the general public, but it can also be multimedia in such a way that it shows a poet's multiple talents and gets not only the poem out there, but also the poet's voice and reading. I don't think it is an idea that is properly appreciated by enough poets.

So take a look and a listen!

New Issue of Pedestal Magazine...

2008-12-22T12:07:00.000-08:00

...is up and I'm in it! You can read and listen to me here. I love that Pedestal will also post an audio file of the poet reading their work and am very surprised that not many people seem to take advantage of that opportunity. Then again, I needed my lovely boyfriend Mihnea to help me record myself and it is quite likely that not every poet has a Mihnea in their life.

Also, I am, as always, smirking in my photo. I can't seem to stop doing that.

A Lovely Poetry Day

2008-12-14T16:39:00.000-08:00

Sunday was a very lovely poetry day. First, Laura and I hosted another poetry workshop through Weave where I got to meet some really cool local poets who I perhaps would never have met otherwise -- there was a great variety of styles and subjects. I love workshopping and it was wonderful to get to hang out and read some pretty awesome poems.

Also on the Weave front, Laura and I have begun working with one of our fiction readers and I am simply blown away by him. He is very serious and very skilled and clearly highly motivated. I can't wait to get the chance to work with him more.

When I got home from the workshop I had an acceptance from Hawk & Whippoorwill sitting in my inbox. I'd submitted about 5 months ago and it was very exciting to hear back from them. I write a lot of poems about woman in nature and am very glad they decided to pick one of them up. It was a lovely way to start off my evening!

No sooner had I sent out a couple of withdrawals for the poem Hawk and Whippoorwill picked up, than The Pedestal Magazine sent me an email accepting "Barefoot and Listening", the title poem to a chapbook I'm putting together.

I'd been feeling a little down about the submissions I've sent out lately - I've been trying to push myself and have gotten a lot of rejections of late. It's been a little demoralizing. To be honest, these acceptances have really lifted my spirits a lot and have shown me that pushing myself is what I need to do.

In other news, Juliet Cook over at Blood Pudding is putting together another multi-writer project. There are only about 7 slots left and I'd like to snag one of those, but I've been struggling with putting together my submission for her. I know I do have poems that would fit with her aesthetic, but the problem is finding and editing all of them.

Also! The Winter Issue of Arsenic Lobster is up! Hoorah!

2008-11-30T09:45:00.000-08:00

The digital chapbook issue of the always lovely blossombones has gone up! It is definitely worth checking out.

Issue 01 of Weave - On sale now!

2008-11-28T19:15:00.001-08:00

The first issue of Weave Magazine is on sale now! Click on the link or head over to http://www.weavemagazine.net to get your copy today!

On (not) being prolific

2008-11-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

Barring that embarrassing time in high school when I wrote a poem a day, no matter how horrendous the poem, I have never been a prolific poet. It was a good run when I wrote 6 poems in three months. In fact, it was the most I think I have ever written and been happy with in that kind of a time period.

I could blame my job, my family, my editorial duties, but even when none of those things existed it was very difficult for me to pump out the 12-15 poems I had to write each semester for my creative writing courses, and often what I did write I was not entirely happy with. There were times I was downright embarrassed to bring a poem to class, but I had to in order to hit my quota. I understand the need for a quota, of course, but none of the poems I wrote at the last minute because I had to have seen the light of day since. In fact, most of them never even made it near my senior portfolio.

I've tried different techniques to up my output over the past year or so (it was just unhealthy when my number of poems published in a year exceeded my number of poems written) - more freewriting, changing location of writing, using prompts (boy did that one fail on an epic scale), but the only one that has (sort of) worked has been writing at red lights. I have a tiny notebook and I write in it at red lights on my commute to and from work. For some reason that time in the car is the perfect time for my brain to work on poetry. I couldn't tell you why, but all the poems I have written since August have been written in part while getting honked at when the light has just changed.

This way of writing does mean that I only get a line or two down at a time, but I'm writing more than I ever have before. It's fun to figure out which lines fit together, to structure poems from the pieces. Maybe eventually the day will come when I write a poem a week, but for now I'm just happy to have my red light poems.

And because it fits, stolen from the lovely Mary over at The Word Cage:

1. When was the last time you wrote a poem? - November 15th

2. What was its title? - After the Cold Snap

3. What was one image from the poem (if applicable)? - tying knots in curtain tassels

4. Do you currently have a poem percolating in your brain? - yes!

5. If you answered "yes" to number four, what is one image from that poem? - a butterfly pinned to wax

1 point for each response. Partial credit available. No penalty for attempting. This is an open book test.

Poetry Cheesecake

2008-10-24T09:08:00.001-07:00

My dear friend and co-editor of Weave, Laura Davis, talked about a very interesting topic over on her blog, Laura Without Labels a few weeks ago at this point - women as both smart and sexy, and is it possible to effectively present yourself as both at the same time.

Laura wrote about this topic primarily as a member of the skeptical community, but her post got me to thinking about how, from my experience, I am perceived as a woman off the page in poetry.

As you may or may not be aware, I run and host a poetry cabaret with my darling friend Crystal called The TypewriterGirls, and I must say that we have had some pretty darn lovely ladies and gents at our shows. Crystal and I always find some kind of costume to wear for our shows, often ones that could arguably be described as "sexy".

Anyway, whereas Crystal and I often look oddly sexy at TypewriterGirls shows, we stopped short of doing a show about sex where we wouldn't mention herpes or necrophilia, but rather would try to actually be sexy. We (or maybe it was just I) even had an idea for a flier that would have involved strategically placed typewriters.

In the end, as I said, we opted not to do a show about sexiness, in part, I think, because Crystal writes very lewd, weird, semi-offensive comedy, and it probably wouldn't have worked out anyway, but mostly because we didn't want to reduce the TypewriterGirls to poetry girl cheesecake. I don't know if this is at all a common occurrence in the poetry world, this idea of pretty poet girl as primarily pretty girl and secondarily poet (I do recall the great Fence debacle of '05), but especially where readings are concerned I see where it could be problematic.

To be fair, we do, I think, get a somewhat larger audience in part because we're cute girls who (sometimes) dress cute, and in that way it works to our advantage. However, I know that Crystal and I both desire to be seen as poets first, cute girls second, and while most men don't have short skirts to take advantage of on stage, they do have an establishment that they still seem to have a majority stake in.

Men also seem (whether this is accurate or not) to either be more confident than women about their writing or have a greater desire to publish. Laura and I probably receive twice as many submissions from men and as from women for Weave. I have been told by a male editor that for every ten submissions from a man, he receives one from a woman. To that I say - DANG.

I know a lot of amazing female writers, but it's true that many of them just don't send their work out, and I'm not certain why that is because honestly, it's a problem I've never had. I've been submitting my work regularly since my senior year of college.

I would, of course, be interested to hear others weigh in on this -- is this disparity because men are encouraged to publish more than women? Is it because there are just more men writing than women (I seriously doubt this)? Is it because women do see publishing as male dominated? Or is it because Laura and I are just so cute that men want to be near us via their poetry?

Lifting Belly High

2008-09-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

Over the past three days I had the great fortune of attending the literary conference Lifting Belly High: A Conference on Women's Poetry Since 1900. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. There was a point last night when Crystal and I were hugging each other and crying, we were so moved by this event and the amazing women we met there.

One of the panels I attended was a panel on Rachel Blau DuPlessis a poet and scholar who has done amazing critical work on feminist writing and is in the process of writing a long-form poem (and by long form I mean that it currently is 3 books long) called Drafts. One of the speakers at the panel talked specifically about DuPlessis' use of footnotes in Drafts, and this discussion has only further excited me in my reading of this body of work. Drafts is far from the easiest poem I have ever read, but is clearly layered in ways that I am enjoying discovering.

I also got to meet Dr. DuPlessis while at the conference. I hope I didn't gush too embarrassingly.

The panel Fairytales and Epics was also fascinating. I am very interested in how women writers utilize myth, folklore, epic, fairytale, and religion in our poetry -- some of my favorite poet friends do this in their writing, and I always love seeing the way that they look at the myth - as Dr. DuPlessis said, "criticism becomes the heart of the myth." It says a lot about us as people and as women, how we reinvent the mythology we have received.

I got the chance to talk to two of the panelists after the panel; Julie Weeks, a scholar from Notre Dame who studies fairytale, primarily in British women's poetry and who had some really good ideas regarding my research which I am itching to take a look at, and Claudia Emerson, one of my poet heroes. Julie came out for tea with Crystal and me and we talked about Romania. It was lovely.

There was a roundtable of Feminist Presses that I also attended. It ended up being one of the most encouraging parts of the conference for me (though there were many of those!) because every single one of the panelists talked about how community building is important to them and they consider it part of their duty as a feminist press. This is one of the principals Laura and I founded Weave on, which, by virtue of our commitment to having at least 50% of our contributor list be female and the mere fact the Laura and I are female, I consider to be feminist.

One of the biggest highlights of the conference for me was getting to meet Judith Johnson, an amazing poet and performer, and also the editor and founder of 13th Moon. I can't think of any other way to say this -- I love Judith Johnson. She's warm and intelligent and fiery and truly works to empower women through her writing and publishing efforts. I hope I get to spend time with her again.

The only downside to the conference was the almost complete homogeneity of the participants. I would say 80-85% of us were white women, and then there was an even split on the other 15% of men and women of color. There has been a lot of talk already of how this can be changed. It was really nice to see this shortcoming acknowledged and to actually talk about ways to remedy it. Hopefully we will act on these ideas.

I could go on and on, and may in an additional entry, but I wanted to get all of this written out while it was still fresh in my mind. I've been so excited and so nervous over the past few days that I have had difficulty eating, and now I'm heading out to Windber with Phat Man Dee for Blair and Renee's baby shower!!

Busy busy.

On not being "that" editor.

2008-09-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

When I first started trying to publish my own poetry one of the things I heard a lot was "sometimes you just catch the editor on a bad day and that's why you get rejected," and this idea never sat well with me. On one hand, I understand time constraints and that an editor really has no obligation to me as a submitter, but I will admit that it bugged me.

As a couple of you might know, one of my far-too-many-these-days projects is editing Weave Magazine. I can assure you that I do my absolute best to not be "that editor". If I don't like your poem(s), I will, for sure, at least wait until after I've had my morning coffee to give them a reread and potentially send out your rejection.

Of course, this might change if we start getting 300 submissions a week or somesuch thing, but right now the reread after a cup of coffee or a solid week away from the initially disliked submission is important to me -- important enough that I promise you if you submit to Weave I will read your submission. Then I will read it again. Then I will reject it.

Or accept it. That happens too.