Last year I spent less time focused on getting stuff published, which was good for my sanity. That whole scrambling race is pretty tiring. I sent less individual pieces out and, once Conspiracies got picked up by Jaded Ibis Press in June, I quit sending the newer ms out as well. I spent more time revising it. I also spent some time making a few new poems for Conspiracies and reworking the stuff that I had initially cut to make it the palatable-sized <80-page ms (JI is happy to have it longer if it works that way). I traveled a lot. Focused inward on where I am in life and what I want. Which was good. Good to have some balance when the world out there doesn't always cooperate.
I am a little worried about getting everything done each week for the next three months. That is, getting everything done without getting an ulcer, having a breakdown, or becoming completely intolerable to the people around me. I woke this morning with a hot ball of stress riding high in my chest. I am working through the long to-do list I made at 3am.
I spent too much money last year, something I don't think will rectify this year. I read a lot, though sadly the quick clip slowed in Fall; I don't expect I'll read this much in 2012. Several were books I reread (The Book of Frank, Crush, Mule - which are three of my favorite books ever, btw). New to me favorites were probably: Reasons to Live - Amy Hempel, The Chronology of Water – Lidia Yuknavitch, Bone Pagoda - Susan Tichy, The Madeleine Poems - Paul Legault, and A Natural History of the Senses - Diane Ackerman, which just had so much trivia for my brain to absorb.
1. Where We Think It Should Go – Claire Becker
2. Doctor Copernicus – John Banville
3. The Book of Frank – CA Conrad
4. The Irrationalist – Suzanne Buffam
5. Bobcat Country – Brandi Homan
6. The Book of Questions – Pablo Neruda
7. The History of Violets - Marosa di Giorgio
8. Octopus – Tom C. Hunley
9. The Planets – Dava Sobel
10. Accident – Nicholas Mosley
11. A Natural History of the Senses – Diane Ackerman
12. Crash Dome – Alex Phillips
13. The Country of Loneliness – Dawn Paul
14. Dayglo – James Meetze
15. Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrl Revolution – Sara Marcus
16. The Terror of Living – Urban Waite
17. Tocqueville – Khaled Mattawa
18. The Island of the Colorblind – Oliver Sacks
19. Black-Eyed Heifer – Shelly Taylor
20. Stalin in Aruba – Shelley Pahuk
21. Breaking the Map – Kim-An Lieberman
22. The Last Waltz in Santiago: And Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance – Ariel Dorfman
23. What Kind – Martha Zweig
24. Sasquatch Stories – Mike Topp
25. Coming Through Slaughter – Michael Ondaatje
26. Gallowglass – Susan Tichy
27. Models of the Universe: An Anthology of the Prose Poem – ed. Stuart Friebert & David Young
28. Nox – Anne Carson
29. A Moveable Feast – Earnest Hemingway
30. Hunter Mnemonics – Deborah Woodard
31. Easter Rabbit – Joseph Young
32. The Worse-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel – Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht
33. Recipes for Endangered Species – Traci O’Connor
34. Blue for the Plough – Dara Weir
35. The Bodyfeel Lexicon – Jessica Bozek
36. The Myth of the Simple Machines – Laurel Snyder
37. Green Cammie – Crysta Casey
38. Mad to Live – Randall Brown
39. The Nightyard – Stephanie Anderson
40. The Energy of Slaves – Leonard Cohen
41. Pee on Water – Rachel B. Glaser
42. The Tiny Wife – Andrew Kaufman
43. Chelsea Girls – Eileen Myles
44. Hinge & Sign – Heather McHugh
45. A History of the Human Family – Sasha Steensen
46. Man’s Companions – Joanna Rucco
47. Sing, Mongrel – Claire Hero
48. The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits – Kim Gek Lin Short
49. One More Theory About Happiness – Paul Guest
50. The Spell of the Sensuous – David Abram
51. Cut Away – Catherine Kirkwood
52. Chicken, Shadow, Moon & More – Mark Strand
53. Autobiography of Red – Anne Carson
54. The Field Guide to Flash Fiction – ed. Tara Masih
55. Alive and Dead in Indiana – Michael Martone
56. The Long-Legged Fly – James Sallis
57. The Father of the Predicaments – Heather McHugh
58. People are Tiny in Paintings of China – Cynthia Arrieu-King
59. Invitation to a Beheading – Vladimir Nabokov
60. The Art Lover – Carol Maso
61. The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence – Victor Marchetti & John D. Marks
62. Halfsteps + Cloudfang – Daniela Olszewska
63. Strange as This Weather Has Been – Ann Pancake
64. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives – David Eagleman
65. Soot- Jeff Walt
66. The Inquisition Yours – Jen Currin
67. The Tears of Eros – Georges Bataille
68. Advanced ELVIS Course – CAConrad
69. Theory of Religion – Georges Bataille
70. Vertical Hold – Jeff Simpson
71. The Dragonfly: A Selection of Poems 1953-1981 – Amelia Rosselli
72. How the Broken Lead the Blind – Matt Bell
73. Reality Hunger: A Manifesto – David Shields
74. At the Point – Joseph Massey
75. Rust Or Go Missing – Lily Brown
76. Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
77. Dunstan Thompson: On the Life and Work of a Lost American Master – Kevin Prufer & D.A. Powell, eds.
78. Goat Song – Brad Kessler
79. Deviant Propulsion – CAConrad
80. 2666 – Roberto Bolano
81. Saint Monica – Mary Biddinger
82. Refinery – Claudia Keelan
83. The Jiri Chronicles & Other Fictions – Debra Di Blasi
84. Dear Ra – Johannes Goransson
85. When You Are Engulfed in Flames – David Sedaris
86. The Chronology of Water – Lidia Yuknavitch
87. Everlasting Quail – Sam Witt
88. Discipline – Dawn Lundy Martin
89. Speech Acts – Laura McCullough
90. Mascara – Ariel Dorfman
91. The Nights Also – Anna Swanson
92. No one belongs here more than you – Miranda July
93. Ask the Pilot: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel – Patrick Smith
94. Glean – Joshua Kryah
95. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World – Haruki Murakami
96. Lord Brain – Bruce Beasley
97. Dien Cai Dau – Yusef Komunyakaa
98. The Good-Neighbor Policy - Charles Ardai
99. Coal Miner’s Daughter – Loretta Lynn (with George Vecsey)
100. Humiliation – Wayne Koestenbaum
101. This is What Happened in Our Other Life – Achy Obejas
102. Bossypants – Tina Fey
103. Reality Sandwiches – Allen Ginsberg
104. Daughter – Janice Lee
105. Notes from the Red Zone – Christine Pacosz
106. Citizen – Andrew Feld
107. Feel This Book – Janeane Garofalo and Ben Stiller
108. Birdland: The Story of a World Famous Bird Sanctuary – Len Hill and Emma Wood
109. The Descent – Sophie Cabot Black
110. April Galleon – John Ashbery
111. The Price of Light – Pimone Triplett
112. Betty Superman – Tiff Holland
113. Bone Pagoda – Susan Tichy
114. Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality – Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha
115. Music and Suicide– Jeff Clark
116. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction – Michel Foucault
117. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue – Samuel Delaney
118. Shoulder Season – Ange Mlinko
119. Epistemology of the Closet – Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
120. The Queer Art of Failure – Judith Halberstam
121. The Cloud Corporation – Timothy Donnelly
122. The Madeleine Poems – Paul Legault
123. Predatory – Glenn Shaheen
124. Freedom with Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the US State – Chandan Reddy
125. Crush – Richard Siken
126. Earth Day Suite – Joseph Harrington
127. The Rest of Love – Carl Phillips
128. The Displaced of Capital – Anne Winters
129. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination – Avery Gordon
130. Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex – Stanley A. Stanley & Nat Smith (eds.)
131. Cruel Optimism – Lauren Berlant
132. A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood – Allen Braden
133. The Evolution of the Flightless Bird - Richard Kenney
134. Tell me the Truth About Love – W.H. Auden
135. Mule – Shane McCrae
136. The Grief Performance – Emily Kendal Frey
137. A Little White Shadow – Mary Ruefle
138. Awe – Dorothea Lasky
139. Lake Antiquity – Brandon Downing
