1. Trust – Liz Waldner
2. Counterfeit – Christine LeClerc
3. A Thief of Strings – Donald Revell
4. Plato’s Bad Horse – Deborah Woodard
5. The Most of It – Mary Ruefle
6. A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat – Arthur Rimbaud
7. The Totality for Kids – Joshua Clover
8. The Lack Of – Joseph Massey
9. Jane: a murder – Maggie Nelson
10. Wrong – Reginald Shepherd
11. The Red Parts – Maggie Nelson
12. Bluets – Maggie Nelson
13. Angle of Repose – Wallace Stegner
14. Fifty Poems – Liana Quill
15. Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives – Tom Shroder
16. Are We Lucky Yet? – Jane Bradley
17. The Black Swan – Thomas Mann
18. The Mere Future – Sarah Schulman
19. I is to Vorticism – Ben Mirov
20. ----------FEBRUARY----------Otherhood – Reginald Shepherd
21. Other Prohibited Items – Martha Greenwald
22. Minimum Heroic – Christopher Salerno
23. The Muse is Always Half-Dressed in New Orleans – Andrei Codrescu
24. Housekeeping – Marilynn Robinson
25. Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story – Paul Monette
26. Six Seconds in Dallas: A Microstudy of the Kennedy Assassination – Josiah Thompson
27. The Book of Frank – CA Conrad
28. Letters to Wendy’s – Joe Wenderoth
29. Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories – ed. Robert Shapard & James Thomas
30. ----------MARCH----------Personationskin – Karl Parker
31. Spar – Karen Volkman
32. Fast Lanes – Jayne Anne Phillips
33. Half Girl – Stephanie Dickinson
34. The Preservationist – David Maine
35. Savage Love – Dan Savage
36. Ka-Ching – Denise Duhamel
37. Silk Screen Techniques – J. I. Biegeleisen and M. A. Cohn
38. Family Dancing – David Leavitt
39. The Housekeeper and the Professor – Yoko Ogawa
40. OK, Goodnight – Emily Kendal Frey and Zachary Schomburg
41. I Have to go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl – Karyna McGlynn
42. World Famous Love Acts – Brian Leung
43. ----------APRIL----------The Blue of Her Body – Sara Greenslit
44. Fire on the Mountain – Anita Desai
45. When to Go Into the Water – Lawrence Sutin
46. Tell Me, Tell Me: Granite, Steel, and Other Topics – Marianne Moore
47. Selected Stories – Lu Hsun
48. Requiem for the Orchard – Oliver de la Paz
49. 10:01 – Lance Olsen
50. Hornet Homily – Patrick Culliton
51. Dearest Creature – Amy Gerstler
52. How – Emily Pettit
53. Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
54. Amorisco – Khaled Mattawa
55. Catalogue of Comedic Novelties – Lev Rubinstein
56. Team Sad - Emily Kendal Frey and Zachary Schomburg
57. ----------MAY----------My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer – Edited by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian
58. Dick of the Dead – Rachel Loden
59. The Last 4 Things – Kate Greenstreet
60. Await Your Reply – Dan Chaon
61. Texture Notes – Sawako Nakayasu
62. Veil – Rae Armantrout
63. Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and Other Early Writings – Gertrude Stein
64. Living Must Bury – Josie Sigler
65. Man in the Dark – Paul Auster
66. Star Dust – Frank Bidart
67. Something Has to Happen Next – Andrew Michael Roberts
68. ----------JUNE----------Want – Rick Barot
69. What Begins With Bird – Noy Holland
70. Elements – Deborah Poe
71. The Wild Things – Dave Eggers
72. Why We Do It: Rethinking Sex and the Selfish Gene – Niles Eldredge
73. A Belonging Field – Andrew Grace
74. Shadeland – Andrew Grace
75. The World’s Greatest Book of Useless Information – Noel Botham & The Useless Information Society
76. Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri
77. The Principles of Uncertainty – Maira Kalman
78. Dharma Girl – Chelsea Cain
79. Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
80. ----------JULY-----------Rhapsodies of A Repeat Offender - Wayne Koestenbaum
81. Shiner – Maggie Nelson
82. Wonder Bread & Ecstasy: The Life and Death of Joey Stefano – Charles Isherwood
83. Frances Johnson – Stacey Levine
84. The Morning News is Exciting! – Don Mee Choi
85. Anil’s Ghost – Michael Ondaatje
86. Advanced Elvis Course – CA Conrad
87. Outline of My Lover – Douglas Martin
88. Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone – David B. Feinberg
89. ----------AUGUST----------The Truant Lover – Juliet Patterson
90. Children of Darkness and Light – Nicholas Mosley
91. Tracer – Richard Greenfield
92. The Colossus – Sylvia Plath
93. Quarantine – Brian Henry
94. Divisadero – Michael Ondaatje
95. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
96. Crush – Richard Siken
97. ----------SEPTEMBER----------Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
98. With Deer – Aase Berg
99. Haunted House – Marissa Crawford
100. Zephyr – Susan Browne
101. Complaint in the Garden – Randall Mann
102. The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art – Eileen Myles
103. Just Kids – Patti Smith
104. Zorba’s Daughter – Elisabeth Murawski
105. Scavenge – R.J. Gibson
106. Cosmos – Witold Gombrowicz
107. Pornographia – Witold Gombrowicz
108. ----------OCTOBER----------The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
109. Thirst for Love – Yukio Mishima
110. Taste of Cherry – Kara Candito
111. Clamor – Ann Lauterbach
112. In Canaan – Shane McCrae
113. Tinkers – Paul Harding
114. Cocktails – D.A. Powell
115. ----------NOVEMBER----------Tender Buttons – Gertrude Stein
116. Ways of Dying – Zakes Mda
117. Exquisite Pain – Sophie Calle
118. If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting – Anna Journey
119. The Tenth Parallel – Eliza Griswold
120. Plainwater – Anne Carson
121. Faulkner’s Rosary – Sarah Vap
122. Passing World Pictures – Valerie Coulton
123. Hotel Imperium – Rachel Loden
124. ----------DECEMBER----------Great Topics of the World – Albert Goldbarth
125. What Other Choice – Jeremy Halinen
126. Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings – Gore Vidal
127. Shore Ordered Ocean – Dora Malech
128. Say So – Dora Malech
129. Color Plates – Adam Golaski
130. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster – Mike Davis
131. Room – Emma Donoghue
I wonder if at some point I'll hone the magpie reading method into something more focused and determined. Generally I try to read through what I've got stacked around my office, also reading what comes recommended from friends, and whatever catches my eye in trips to the library. Maybe I'd have a better sense of the history of things if I became more purposeful. I think this at the end of every year when I look at the list. But really, part of the adventure is the wildness. If reading can be considered wild.
And, as always I choose the ten that were game-changers in some way for me. As in, when I think back over 2010, the year would not have been as meaningful without them. (And as always I won't include friends' books in the top ten, though those are always at the top of my list of favorites. I will get to know you more through what you write than anything you say.)
The top 10:
Bluets – Maggie Nelson
The Book of Frank – CA Conrad
Spar – Karen Volkman
Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
The Last 4 Things – Kate Greenstreet
Children of Darkness and Light – Nicholas Mosley
Just Kids – Patti Smith
Hotel Imperium – Rachel Loden
Say So – Dora Malech
Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster – Mike Davis
6 from othertimes; 4 from 2010
6 women; 4 men
6 poetry; 4 prose (2 fiction; 2 nonfiction)
Maybe it would be worth telling what each did for me. But that's for another post. Maybe. Happy New Year, y'all. Get reading.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Monday, December 27, 2010
All that there is.
Sometimes when headlights are too bright I stare at the white outer line. Sometimes in fog I stare at the white outer line. I think as a child about coloring and about the car a crayon I am keeping inside the line white car crayon white coloring inside the white line is also a disappearing.
*
Once while staring at the white line while in fog the car moving slowly but as fast as it could it was four am and I had to get home and the car was red then and the girl was in high school and the music was loud. Once while staring at the white line in fog I was moving too fast and forgot the road rise to the train tracks and the car lifted up a little and what was in the trunk made a horrible noise and then the light from the train and the white fog became blind white and the white line became electric and the music was drowned out by the train horn and the train was moving startlingly fast. But I was looking at the outside line and the train was coming from the other direction and the fog was so thick that it hid this. Only one of the ways that I could have died but I didn't.
*
A word is a gesture. A sentence a breast stroke. When I talk when I write I am swimming. It may be in circles but it's movement. The water is warm or it's cold or it's salty or chlorinated (it's often chlorinated) but it is water and I know how to swim. In the pool alone or with a crowd of people I know how to swim in circles around myself but I know how to swim. You might not recognize the motion as swimming. It looks a lot like drowning from above.
*
L and I once thought we would form a band called The Floaters. In restaurant speak for those who do everything. But also because we could live in water a long time without moving our limbs.
*
I can still float on my head, bobbing up with the inhale, deeper down with the exhale. But I no longer play any instruments.
*
I respond in kind, so as not to be overwhelming. They say that humans use five percent of their brains, that humans use ten percent of their brains. I have always felt that I might use more. The flying alongside feeling, some strange tether to other parts of the universe. Whether that means universe or alternate consciousness I can't know. Sometimes I read a book and I want to send that book to someone who might better understand me or we or something else because of it. Sometimes I send a book. Mostly I don't send anything because people don't read. They don't have time in their busy lives. It is possible in knowing me that I only say five percent of what I want to say to you. It is possible that I say ten percent. When the give and take rises, the percentage rises, when it goes down it goes down. Sometimes the percentage may rise as high as twenty, which is maybe how much of a brain is used it contacting the cosmos. But it never goes higher. And you will never read that book. So I keep it on my shelf and I think about sending it and I think about what you would understand if I did and if you read it.
*
My philosophy: that the world doesn't exist except through the lens of the page.You only think you're seeing anything if you don't read it first.
*
I am overwhelmed. I think the pace I have set for myself is too much. I think I need to slow. If I think I need to slow and I look around at you people hustling I feel tired and I feel anxious and I want to lie down. And then I lie down for just a minute and I get up again. I hustle. But my hustle will never be what yours is. When I look around at you people just living your lives I think what are you doing? and I think get moving! And then I remember that living is what we're supposed to do not locked up in rooms. I am locked up in rooms. This room. Which is the same as every other room I've ever lived in been in waited in. I am waiting. And the pace at the pace I wear through the hardwood floor within three or four or five days max. The room built up floor relaid once a week. The floor out from under me every time I move. I move. With the floor gone I am in the cold dark dirt under the house. I wear through that a little racetrack in mud. Always without shoes.
*
That, over there. That isn't really there. This is all that there is.
*
*
Once while staring at the white line while in fog the car moving slowly but as fast as it could it was four am and I had to get home and the car was red then and the girl was in high school and the music was loud. Once while staring at the white line in fog I was moving too fast and forgot the road rise to the train tracks and the car lifted up a little and what was in the trunk made a horrible noise and then the light from the train and the white fog became blind white and the white line became electric and the music was drowned out by the train horn and the train was moving startlingly fast. But I was looking at the outside line and the train was coming from the other direction and the fog was so thick that it hid this. Only one of the ways that I could have died but I didn't.
*
A word is a gesture. A sentence a breast stroke. When I talk when I write I am swimming. It may be in circles but it's movement. The water is warm or it's cold or it's salty or chlorinated (it's often chlorinated) but it is water and I know how to swim. In the pool alone or with a crowd of people I know how to swim in circles around myself but I know how to swim. You might not recognize the motion as swimming. It looks a lot like drowning from above.
*
L and I once thought we would form a band called The Floaters. In restaurant speak for those who do everything. But also because we could live in water a long time without moving our limbs.
*
I can still float on my head, bobbing up with the inhale, deeper down with the exhale. But I no longer play any instruments.
*
I respond in kind, so as not to be overwhelming. They say that humans use five percent of their brains, that humans use ten percent of their brains. I have always felt that I might use more. The flying alongside feeling, some strange tether to other parts of the universe. Whether that means universe or alternate consciousness I can't know. Sometimes I read a book and I want to send that book to someone who might better understand me or we or something else because of it. Sometimes I send a book. Mostly I don't send anything because people don't read. They don't have time in their busy lives. It is possible in knowing me that I only say five percent of what I want to say to you. It is possible that I say ten percent. When the give and take rises, the percentage rises, when it goes down it goes down. Sometimes the percentage may rise as high as twenty, which is maybe how much of a brain is used it contacting the cosmos. But it never goes higher. And you will never read that book. So I keep it on my shelf and I think about sending it and I think about what you would understand if I did and if you read it.
*
My philosophy: that the world doesn't exist except through the lens of the page.You only think you're seeing anything if you don't read it first.
*
I am overwhelmed. I think the pace I have set for myself is too much. I think I need to slow. If I think I need to slow and I look around at you people hustling I feel tired and I feel anxious and I want to lie down. And then I lie down for just a minute and I get up again. I hustle. But my hustle will never be what yours is. When I look around at you people just living your lives I think what are you doing? and I think get moving! And then I remember that living is what we're supposed to do not locked up in rooms. I am locked up in rooms. This room. Which is the same as every other room I've ever lived in been in waited in. I am waiting. And the pace at the pace I wear through the hardwood floor within three or four or five days max. The room built up floor relaid once a week. The floor out from under me every time I move. I move. With the floor gone I am in the cold dark dirt under the house. I wear through that a little racetrack in mud. Always without shoes.
*
That, over there. That isn't really there. This is all that there is.
*
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Egads, how has it been a month since I've posted anything?
So I have been a little busy finishing a new manuscript, which is probably a fantastic idea since I'm still circulating the other one. But one can't stop writing, right? Once I've had a few people look over the new ms and I have everything where I like it (it's almost there), I will probably stop sending out the conspiracies and switch to the new one. I can't afford even postage for both, let alone any entry fees. A word about those: I don't go out much anymore, so that's where that money comes from. And I know some people are all like, 'you pay to enter a manuscript?' But I look at it as subsidizing a press. That's the only way I can look at it. I have always done my best to send at least 10% of my income to various charities, sometimes cancer stuff, and I love Kiva for example, but usually animal-related stuff (Best Friends, the local shelter, etc). Sending out manuscripts means I shift most of this flow into presses. I consider it my tithe to charity. Of course, I am hoping for a return...
The conspiracies manuscript has now been shortlisted four times. Money for Sunsets was shortlisted twelve times before getting published (on top of sooo many outright rejections (mostly in prior incarnations) I don't want to say)--the 13th time was the charm. All four excellent presses. So I'm almost good enough?
The new ms is solid though, story-wise, which is silly, but I think what people like to read. I'm actually pretty convinced it will do well, and quickly. Maybe I'm just in love with it. But that's okay by me.
I also haven't updated the recent publication list on here, so I'm probably missing a few things. Today I got word that the new Gulf Stream is up, so you might want to check that out. The link is for my poem (one of the conspiracies, from the JFK section of the book), but be sure to check out all the other stuff too, like especially my friend Leigh Phillips's nonfiction, and also Josie Sigler's story. I really loved Josie Sigler's book, living must bury, so I'm pretty thrilled to be in here with her.
Okay, back to work. I promise to make another appearance soon. I mean, soonish. Sometime. Anyway...
The conspiracies manuscript has now been shortlisted four times. Money for Sunsets was shortlisted twelve times before getting published (on top of sooo many outright rejections (mostly in prior incarnations) I don't want to say)--the 13th time was the charm. All four excellent presses. So I'm almost good enough?
The new ms is solid though, story-wise, which is silly, but I think what people like to read. I'm actually pretty convinced it will do well, and quickly. Maybe I'm just in love with it. But that's okay by me.
I also haven't updated the recent publication list on here, so I'm probably missing a few things. Today I got word that the new Gulf Stream is up, so you might want to check that out. The link is for my poem (one of the conspiracies, from the JFK section of the book), but be sure to check out all the other stuff too, like especially my friend Leigh Phillips's nonfiction, and also Josie Sigler's story. I really loved Josie Sigler's book, living must bury, so I'm pretty thrilled to be in here with her.
Okay, back to work. I promise to make another appearance soon. I mean, soonish. Sometime. Anyway...
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Early Sunsets
Sometimes I get overwhelmed with the volume of literary journals that stack up around my room. At some point I break down and go through them, tearing out the pieces I don't want to miss. Here I am reading a story by Roxane Gay, "Down to Bone" that appeared in (and was ripped out of) Mid-American Review. I really like her work. Simple prose about complex matters. From that story: "She loved me as best she could in a family where no one knew how to play their parts properly."
Friday, October 29, 2010
Tinkering with Time and Expiration
I finished reading Tinkers, the novel by Paul Harding that won the Pulitzer for him and for the very small, new press Bellevue Literary Press. I liked Tinkers, I mean, a lot of it. It was a good book. It feels like first book. Both with the raw narrative energy of it, and in that there are, I think, some areas that don't quite work as well as they could. My biggest issue with it was that the shifts in perspective were not recognizable enough. It tells the story of three men, three different generations, and shifts back and forth between them. And this is often only acknowledged with white space (a double space between sections), not in chapters or subchapters or anything, and a few moniker tags in the first paragraph or two. So that if you miss this, you miss it. Occasionally I would be reading with one person in my head and get many pages into it before I realized I had been imagining the wrong person. So I had to go back and start over the section with the right person in my head. A little distracting from losing oneself in a work. Or maybe I was a bad reader for this. I have been unfocused in other ways lately.
Also, though the symbolism of the title was a great detail, that's all it seemed to be: a detail. There was some feeling that much of the concept of tinkers and tinkering that ran through the book may have been edited out in the revision process. Perhaps others feel differently.
Overall a good read.
*
Parts of Tinkers that particularly spoke to me:
Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn't it? And as you split frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God's will and His grace toward you and that that is beautiful, and part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough. (72)
[At least I'm not buried in rubble.]
-
Of course, Sabbatis is ancient only to me. My father is ancient, too, because both were men who passed from life when I was young. My memories of them are atmospheres. (150)
-
Nikki was an old woman who dressed like an aging former starlet whose most dramatic, and final, role was that of the aging former starlet persevering under the tyranny of time. (160)
[I can't even express how delighted I get when a sentence wraps itself around itself like this. I mean, when it's intentional. People garble things in uninteresting ways all the time. I could read this a hundred times and be happy every time. A thousand times, probably.]
Also, though the symbolism of the title was a great detail, that's all it seemed to be: a detail. There was some feeling that much of the concept of tinkers and tinkering that ran through the book may have been edited out in the revision process. Perhaps others feel differently.
Overall a good read.
*
Parts of Tinkers that particularly spoke to me:
Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn't it? And as you split frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God's will and His grace toward you and that that is beautiful, and part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough. (72)
[At least I'm not buried in rubble.]
-
Of course, Sabbatis is ancient only to me. My father is ancient, too, because both were men who passed from life when I was young. My memories of them are atmospheres. (150)
-
Nikki was an old woman who dressed like an aging former starlet whose most dramatic, and final, role was that of the aging former starlet persevering under the tyranny of time. (160)
[I can't even express how delighted I get when a sentence wraps itself around itself like this. I mean, when it's intentional. People garble things in uninteresting ways all the time. I could read this a hundred times and be happy every time. A thousand times, probably.]
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
catching up
So a lot has been happening, dear reader(s). I need to get better about updating this blog. First off, I want you to think of the last word you read that made you really happy. I read cloister in an article today and my mouth jumped up and bit me. Say that out loud and say it doesn't make you happy. Cloister. Also nice: cluster. As in: fuck. But! it doesn't have the complication of the oi.
So. News.
First off, if you're in Seattle or the surrounding areas, or if you like planes and me and find travel for poetry worth your time... I am reading at Open Books in Wallingford (2414 N 45th St.) with Shane McCrae(!) on Friday, October 22 at 7pm. Find out more about Open Books here: http://www.openpoetrybooks.com/. Also, the event has been *starred* in The Stranger (link to that here: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Event?event=5022417), which means we're superawesome and you should come. As usual, I will be taking requests.
Second, you can find some recent reviews of Money for Sunsets, here: The Sonic Imperative in the Prose Poem: a review of Elizabeth Colen’s Money for Sunsets. And here: Book Notes on Elizabeth J. Colen's Money for Sunsets. A big thanks to Metta Sama and Jory Mickelson.
Thirdly, I've just jumped on board as Thumbnail Magazine's new poetry editor. We're accepting submissions, so get on that.
So that's it for "business." I just got back, well a few days ago, from a long trip to Portland. Well, not long really. Not long enough. I'm working on wrapping up a new manuscript. Writers, what do you do when you work too fast and have several manuscripts you're sending out in the world? I tend to maintain focus on the poetry, as it is (to me) easier to place, but I'm not sure what I will do when I have two entirely finished books of poetry, orphans for a home. My thought is to take the more cohesive (the more recent) of the two and focus on that, meanwhile brainstorming what presses would be more willing to take on the riskier/boundary-pushing one. The bastard, if you will. The bastard that obsessed me for nearly two years. On top of that, I've vaguely sending out two novels. I don't have the administrative energy to go all out on sending three books everywhere I should. Again I will say: I need a secretary. I don't know how people do this. Even as relatively easy as my schedule is (I make my own hours, rarely work forty hours in a week, don't have kids), I can't seem to get Everything done. I also read a lot. Books are my drug. The one that saps hours. The one where I pull my eyes out from the pages and it really is like waking up on someone's floor and having no idea how I got there.
In other news, my town is sad. A week and a half ago a freshman at Western went missing. Wednesday they found him in the bay. A week ago yesterday a two-year old was killed walking across the street, holding her mother's hand. A car had stopped to let them pass and the driver in the next car, distracted, didn't stop. Ran into the car in front, running over the little girl. About a half-mile from my house, and right on the walk I take with Cally every morning. Every morning we walk past the makeshift memorial of flowers and balloons and stuffed animals and notes and candles that grows and grows and grows. Every morning I tear up. Most mornings some passer-by has paused, some car has pulled over to look, some bicyclist has stopped to stand there. This is the difference between living in a city and living here, which sometimes feels like a city. I didn't know either one of them, but I feel it. You know? I guess this is what community feels like. And maybe why I can never leave. I love those pausers. As much as I can love a stranger anyway. As much as I can love anyone. I wrote more articulately yesterday on my private "journal"/blog. Maybe I'll repost that here... Hm, maybe not.
So. News.
First off, if you're in Seattle or the surrounding areas, or if you like planes and me and find travel for poetry worth your time... I am reading at Open Books in Wallingford (2414 N 45th St.) with Shane McCrae(!) on Friday, October 22 at 7pm. Find out more about Open Books here: http://www.openpoetrybooks.com/. Also, the event has been *starred* in The Stranger (link to that here: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Event?event=5022417), which means we're superawesome and you should come. As usual, I will be taking requests.
Second, you can find some recent reviews of Money for Sunsets, here: The Sonic Imperative in the Prose Poem: a review of Elizabeth Colen’s Money for Sunsets. And here: Book Notes on Elizabeth J. Colen's Money for Sunsets. A big thanks to Metta Sama and Jory Mickelson.
Thirdly, I've just jumped on board as Thumbnail Magazine's new poetry editor. We're accepting submissions, so get on that.
So that's it for "business." I just got back, well a few days ago, from a long trip to Portland. Well, not long really. Not long enough. I'm working on wrapping up a new manuscript. Writers, what do you do when you work too fast and have several manuscripts you're sending out in the world? I tend to maintain focus on the poetry, as it is (to me) easier to place, but I'm not sure what I will do when I have two entirely finished books of poetry, orphans for a home. My thought is to take the more cohesive (the more recent) of the two and focus on that, meanwhile brainstorming what presses would be more willing to take on the riskier/boundary-pushing one. The bastard, if you will. The bastard that obsessed me for nearly two years. On top of that, I've vaguely sending out two novels. I don't have the administrative energy to go all out on sending three books everywhere I should. Again I will say: I need a secretary. I don't know how people do this. Even as relatively easy as my schedule is (I make my own hours, rarely work forty hours in a week, don't have kids), I can't seem to get Everything done. I also read a lot. Books are my drug. The one that saps hours. The one where I pull my eyes out from the pages and it really is like waking up on someone's floor and having no idea how I got there.
In other news, my town is sad. A week and a half ago a freshman at Western went missing. Wednesday they found him in the bay. A week ago yesterday a two-year old was killed walking across the street, holding her mother's hand. A car had stopped to let them pass and the driver in the next car, distracted, didn't stop. Ran into the car in front, running over the little girl. About a half-mile from my house, and right on the walk I take with Cally every morning. Every morning we walk past the makeshift memorial of flowers and balloons and stuffed animals and notes and candles that grows and grows and grows. Every morning I tear up. Most mornings some passer-by has paused, some car has pulled over to look, some bicyclist has stopped to stand there. This is the difference between living in a city and living here, which sometimes feels like a city. I didn't know either one of them, but I feel it. You know? I guess this is what community feels like. And maybe why I can never leave. I love those pausers. As much as I can love a stranger anyway. As much as I can love anyone. I wrote more articulately yesterday on my private "journal"/blog. Maybe I'll repost that here... Hm, maybe not.
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