THE ALCHEMIST'S KITCHEN

One Day Class at Hugo House with Elizabeth Austen - or Easy in the Islands

2012-01-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

Creativity Center for Poets, Prose Writers, and Literary Lovers

My friend Elizabeth Austen will be teaching a one day poetry writing workshop February 4th from 1:00 -5:00 pm. You can register at Hugo House by calling (206) 322-7030. It's super easy to do.
Or on line at Richard Hugo House. Every writer I know takes classes and/or teaches here. It's a place you want to check out and a teacher who will not disappoint. She's a master.

Poems from Poems: Call and Response

“Good poems are the best teachers. Perhaps they are the only teachers,” writes Mary Oliver in A Poetry Handbook. This workshop explores ways to let others’ poems not only teach you, but lead to new poems of your own. We’ll experiment with po-jacking, sonic translations, echo translations and other ways to use one poem as a jumping off point for another. Come prepared to write and stretch your craft – participants will leave the workshop with fresh drafts of new poems.

And if Lopez Island is more to your liking (or your location) Elizabeth will be teaching this class for free at the Lopez Public Library on February 26th from 2:00-4:00 pm.

Grant Proposals - Some Random Thoughts - Hopefully Helpful

2012-01-24T21:37:00.000-08:00

I spent my three snow days applying for the same two grants that most other poets I know are applying for --- Artists Trust (for Washington State writers) and the NEA - for poets from across our fair land. A good part of being a writer is being optimistic enough to put oneself out there --- knowing that you can't win if you don't try. Here are some things I learned that made it easier to try!

1. Ask for help when you need it. After several frustrating hours, an entire afternoon, I wrote and then called the people at the NEA. Here is what I learned: government computers don't play well with Mac computers. In fact, Google Chrome and downloads from government documents actually don't work. Why this isn't stated anywhere is a mystery -- one that took up hours of my life I can't get back. On the other hand, if I hadn't called, I would have just given up and not applied at all.

2. Take your time. Take a break. Look again. I needed to read over my writing sample several times in order to feel good about it. From my experience on the other side of the table, when I have been part of a committee of judges instead of an applicant, I've learned that a cohesive application helps weary readers remember the work. This means a delicate balance between a manuscript packet that has cohesion but is not redundant. I had about half the poems set from the start, it was the middle poems that I kept changing.

3. Don't go it alone. I was working on my two applications at the same time as my good friend Kelli Russell Agodon. I was able to let her know that FireFox was the only way for Mac users to download the NEA application and she was able to help me create a header in the way the NEA required. More than those extremely helpful hints, we were able to urge each other on. Knowing that someone else was struggling through the same quagmire of bureaucracy as I was made for a less lonely time. A friend who is in the same boat as your are is invaluable. And whichever one of us wins takes the other one out for dinner. We are hoping for at least two dinners, one for each of our wins.

4. Find a way to stay positive. I would fluctuate wildly between thinking that I was insane to spend precious snow days grant writing instead of writing poetry, but then I would move to the notion that I was taking myself seriously as a writer and being open to the universe of support. Somebody has to win an NEA; somebody needs to win the Artist Trust Fellowship. Why not me and all my good friends too? If nothing else, I did important revisions on poems that I had thought were done until now.

5. You will be glad you did. It feels wonderful to have finished two proposals. And the truth is, they weren't that hard to do, they just took time. Organizations are switching to new on-line programs. When I wrote Miguel at Artist Trust with a question concerning the synopsis of my project, he was thankful that I was (unknowingly) pointing out a discrepancy in the instructions. For the record. you can send in 13 pages -- 12 pages of poems and one page with an overview of the work.

If you decide to put your hat in the ring for one of these awards, best of luck! May we all win!

In Praise of Snow Days - in Seattle!

2012-01-18T23:38:00.000-08:00

My new neighbor

Trethewey Named Sate Poet Laureate - And Sexism

2012-01-18T09:54:00.000-08:00

Wow! I love how one day I can be blogging about a favorite poet and the next day she becomes Poet Laureate of her state. This is especially sweet because of her own history with the state of Mississippi. Because Tretheway's mother was black and her father, white, they were not allowed to marry in Mississippi in the 1960's. By virtue of these laws, Tretheway herself was illegal. It's hard to get one's head around this.

Trethewey named state poet laureate - Local - SunHerald.com

This article mentions that Tretheway received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts. Since she mentions (not by name) the institution where she received her degree in the video I posted previously, I was fascinated. My undergraduate degree is also from UMass --- and I also struggled profoundly with the male professors I had there. In fact, because two of those male professors felt they needed to single me out to tell me that I would not be a writer, I stopped writing for ten years.

In today's very small poetry world it's not polite to mention the sexism that goes on in creative writing programs --- and perhaps it's better now? I don't know. My MFA experience at the University of Oregon was not undercut by any sexist treatment -- but as an undergraduate I suffered a great deal without being able to give sexism it's rightful name.

What I meant to say -- here is one of my all time favorite books of poetry from an amazing poet.

From one photograph (the one featured here) Tretheway imagines the life of a prostitute in New Orleans. The poems come in the form of letters that "Ophelia" writes to her girlfriend back home. Eventually the frame falls away and the poems are more of an interior dreamscape. Because Bellocq became famous due to the photographs he took of the women at rest -- smoking, daydreaming, washing clothes - there is much here on the nature of photography as well. It's so difficult to write concerning work that one loves. Best to just offer a poem.

Blue Book – June 1911

I wear my best gown for the picture—

White silk with seed pearls and ostrich feathers –

My hair in a loose chignon. Behind me,

Bellocq’s black scrim just covers the laundry –

Tea towels bleached and frayed, drying on the line.

I look away from his lens to appear

Demure, to attract those guests not wanting

The lewd sites of Emma Johnson’s circus.

Countess writes my description for the book –

“Violet,” a fair skinned beauty, recites

poetry and soliloques; nightly

she performs her tableau vivant, becomes

a living statue, an object of art –

and I fade again into someone I’m not.

Natasha Tretheway on George Orwell, Race, and "Why I Write"

2012-01-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

Natasha Tretheway is one of my absolutely favorite poets. Her book, Bellocq's Ophelia is one I return to again and again. Poetry's ability to teach us what we have not known. "Across time and space poetry shows us how we are alike. It asks that we be more compassionate, more observant. The soul sings for justice and the song is poetry." This was her talk at Emory University -- listen and keep listening; you won't regret it.

A Prose Review --- The Civilized World: A Novel in Stories

2012-01-16T01:06:00.000-08:00

The Civilized World: A Novel in Stories

Susi Wyss

Henry Holt $15

228 pages

What a pleasure to read of strong, smart, and sensitive African women. This work of fiction is no fiction at all in the sense that these characters reflect the women I met and in some cases, became friends with during my four years in Africa. Wyss draws us into these characters with artful simplicity. How could she have passed these salon mirrors so many times a day without looking, without really seeing herself, the protagonist wonders. How can we as lovers of literature, know so little of contemporary African life?

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day +17 Minutes

2012-01-16T00:25:00.000-08:00

Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcom X

"A nation that spends more money each year on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

A Surprise Review - Who Knew? Thank you Web del Sol and Margaret MK Hess

2012-01-14T22:02:00.000-08:00

It's now been 20 months since The Alchemist's Kitchen arrived in the world. I wonder if anyone has read it recently or if the door has closed on this particular kitchen. Sometimes it's easy to feel invisible. And although being invisible is a super power that six year old boys crave, it's not great news for a book.

And so the fact that Web Del Sol Review of Books has just reviewed The Alchemist's Kitchen seems very good news indeed. And not just a run of the mill review, but one where the reviewer, Margaret MK Hess (whom I do not know) really liked the work.

"She takes the whole world and makes it a small and valued place," Hass writes. And Hass also connects "Tulip Sutra" to the tulips in the hospital room of a dying woman -- and to the body. This seems the best a poet can hope for from a reviewer, Hass has showed me new ways to understand my own work.

"Death to Traffic" -Travel Trumps Ethnocentricity - Rick Steves

2012-01-12T17:49:00.000-08:00

I've just learned how to embed youtubes in this blog, so here we go! TEDx is a trove of ideas --- all talks that last 20 minutes or less. Rick Steves runs tours and writes guidebooks. His style is a bit abrasive but what he has to say is worthwhile. "Fear is for people who don't get out much." or perhaps "Death to traffic."

Ashland Creek Press PSA - I Love This!

2012-01-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

I love this youtube video. I have two typewriters and would like to have a portable. Ashland Creek Press are the same people that brought us the youtube video concerning authors watching their Amazon numbers.

In addition to creating smart and funny videos, Ashland Creek Press publishes books!

More connected to this video though, the press has started printing artful notecards that feature their beloved machines. You can order them here. Or just admire their beautiful shapes and keys below.

Reviewers Wanted for Fire On Her Tongue

2012-01-05T02:54:00.000-08:00

The first ever e-book anthology of women's poetry. It's cool and it's historical.

Someday future poets and critics will point to Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy as the first women to create an e-book anthology of women's poetry. A book without glue or paper - without a trace of a carbon footprint. Instead of pioneers of the prairie they are pioneers of the page. Both are excellent poets and highly respected for their work -- but in this endeavor they've concentrated on other women's work.

There are over 400 pages of poetry by Jane Hirshfield, Nin Andrews, Patricia Fargnoli, Natasha Saje, Aimee Nezhumatatil, January O'Neil, Patricia Smith, Annie Finch, Alicia Ostricher, and many many others. And because paper price was not a consideration, you can read many poems by the same poet -- not just one or two.

I just heard tonight from a lovely man in North Carolina who bought his copy and then downloaded a copy for the bookshop screens where he works. My sense is that this book is going to really gain momentum as readers see that it is possible to read poetry on an e-reader (Fire On Her Tongue is available for ipad, kindle, and nook.)

And for the sake of full disclosure I should mention that I'm one of the poets represented here as well. If you buy one e-book of poetry this year, it should be this one.

Finding a New Poet: Katy Lederer

2012-01-04T10:51:00.000-08:00

Perhaps I am the last poet on the block not to have heard of Katy Lederer. Or perhaps I heard her story of famed poker player to hedge fund executive and decided this wasn't the poet for me. Based on the two poems below (and these are the only Lederer poems I know) I was wrong. Her syntax, tone, and wonderful word patterns are reminiscent of Oleana Kalytiack Davis. I don't know that I can point to exactly where these two poets intersect, but in my muddled poetry brain they do.

Both women's biographies point to them as "fearless" and while I don't believe anyone is fearless - there is a brutality of truth that I admire in their work. In order to write strong poems I believe one needs to live in a certain way - either by choice or circumstance. However as I get older, I am no longer traveling to war torn countries or changing my address every 18 months --- and that's okay. But it's the bravery of these voices that I believe result in such new ways of writing.

I've been working on an essay I'm writing for a new anthology The Poet and the World to be published jointly by the Poetry Foundation and McSweeneys . Fourteen years ago I spent 18 months on a Fulbright in Cape Town, South Africa.

I've been returning to images of poets I met and the odd life I had as a sanctioned outsider. One of my friends summed up life as a Fulbrighter as "Peace Corps with status" and he was right. What he didn't mention was how lonely that status could be. And that's what these poems remind me of.

Love
by Katy Lederer

After Duras

"We go back to our house. We are lovers.
We cannot stop loving each other."

I come to confiscate your love.
What will you do?

Small shrubs grow in the blackened yard.
Sun, which is yellow, shines in through the windows, now barred.

You were watching me eat.
Put your tongue in my mouth then retract it.

We were waiting for our recompense.
But everyone knows love is bankrupt.

On the billboard in front of us: breasts.
The empty middles of the mannequins that peered out through the glass.

Reprehensibly, I mouthed the words: I love you.

That Everything's Inevitable
by Katy Lederer

That everything's inevitable. That fate is whatever has already happened. The brain, which is as elemental, as sane, as the rest of the processing universe is. In this world, I am the surest thing. Scrunched-up arms, folded legs, lovely destitute eyes. Please insert your spare coins. I am filling them up. Please insert your spare vision, your vigor, your vim. But yet, I am a vatic one. As vatic as the Vatican. In the temper and the tantrum, in the well-kept arboretum I am waiting, like an animal, For poetry.

New Year's Resolution Number 1 - Poets On the Coast Writing Retreat

2012-01-01T21:37:00.000-08:00

Please consider joining us for Poets on the Coast

Last year at this time Kelli Russell Agodon and I were just beginning an exploration as concrete dreamers. If we offered women a chance at a new kind of retreat experience, would there be interested takers? What we found out: Yes, yes, and yes. Our first POETS ON THE COAST: A WRITING RETREAT FOR WOMEN took place last September and now we are ready for our second event from September 7th - 9th at the Sylvia Beach Hotel on the Oregon Coast.

What do we do differently? Each poet receives a one-on-one meeting with either Kelli or myself. We conduct the overall retreat with a focus on your needs and then structure the classes based on what you want. Last year we created a magical experience for each participant. This year we expect to do this and more.

Start the year with a gift to yourself. If you register now you will receive our lowest price of $273 for registration as well as a one year subscription to the northwest literary journal Crab Creek Review.

We focus on poets who are new to poetry and poets who are well published. The classes are structured for poets of all levels. Please feel free to read over the FAQ for Poets on the Coast or leave me a message here. I hope you can join us.

Waving Good-bye to 2011 - And Looking Forward to 2012

2011-12-30T10:46:00.000-08:00

A warm good-bye to 2011

In Life It's Not Where You Go, It's Who You Travel With (Thanks, Mitch)

2011-12-29T05:00:00.000-08:00

In Life, It's Not Where You Go, It's Who You Travel With

Some of my favorite things: poems, book arts, and mystery

2011-12-28T11:00:00.000-08:00

The Prague Municipal Library

What is it about towers of books? Or really, any art objects made from books? A few months ago I posted about the gorgeous book sculptures that were showing up in Edinburgh libraries and other municipal buildings. There seems a magic to them that goes beyond repurposing pages and bindings. As if the new book object makes manifest the imagination in a new way. You can see more of the Edinburgh sculptures here.

"This is for you" The Banksy of the book world has left these lyrical sculptures all over Edinburgh

The Prague Municipal Library is now home to a spiraling tower of hundreds of carefully stacked books assembled by Slovakian born artist Matej Kren. Dubbed Idiom, the staggering installation reaches up to the ceiling, and Kren installed a mirror inside the funnel to create the illusion of a magical, unending spire of books.

Another story that made me glad I'm alive today is the npr piece about the harried parent who has decided to read a poem a day. In the kitchen by the toaster, in the car, even in the port-a-john this parent has found peace by spending a minute each day being transported by poetry. What would the world look like if we all did this? Maybe even for one day?

A Poem A Day: Portable, Peaceful And Perfect

by ALAN HEATHCOCK

EnlargeiStockphoto.com

December 26, 2011

Alan Heathcock is the author of Volt.

I hadn't slept well, had to get my three kids to three different schools in three different cities, had deadlines piled on deadlines. I leaned my head against my bookcases and there, at eye-level, was a book of poetry by Mary Oliver.

I randomly opened to the poem "Egrets." Like magic, I was pushing through catbrier to the edge of a pond, where I watched "a spindle of bleached reeds" become egrets and "unruffled, sure, by the laws of their faith not logic, they opened their wings softly and stepped over every dark thing."

I closed the book, transformed, bolstered from the inside out.

May you enjoy these images and ideas --- and hopefully they will spark ideas in me or in you that are practical, transformative, and magical as well. Happy December 28th

Read more: Matej Kren's 'Idiom' Is a Spellbinding Tower Made From Hundreds of Books |

Happy Everything to Everyone!

2011-12-25T10:16:00.000-08:00

Is it a film? A flock of birds? An animated painting?

2011-12-23T21:44:00.000-08:00

My favorite piece in the current exhibit, "Luminous"
Tonight I found a youtube video of this amazing art installation which is part film, part sculpture, part magic. It seems right to post it here tonight in this season where so many people yearn for something luminous. I watched this piece over and over with a kind of wonder I hadn't felt since a child needing to see it just one more time... This video gives a real sense of the piece. May it bring you a few moments of wonder tonight.

"Suh's installation, titled Gate, was commissioned exclusively for this exhibition and transforms one of the artist's existing fabric pieces into a screen for projection as well as a space of transition.

"Like the moment of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism, passing through a gate takes only a split second, and then it's over," Suh explains. "But so many things happen in such a short period of time. With this work, I wanted to extend that moment of passage, to delay it, if only for an instant, to provide the viewer that moment of insight."

"Our notion of emptiness is quite different in the East," Suh explains. "The void is not empty or bleak but charged with meaning."

Thank you California Journal of Poetics - The Alchemist's Kitchen Reviewed

2011-12-21T17:54:00.000-08:00

Giving Thanks to the California Journal of Poetics Tonight!

It's been a long day of putting words on paper and then scratching them out again. Sometimes, and this is true more and more the last few years, it feels impossible to write poems that I am really proud of. Maybe it's that I live in a constant state of self doubt and the more years on the planet, the more time those doubts have to coalesce.

Don't get me wrong, I also believe that any good writer needs self doubt in order to improve - sometimes I just wish that the voice that taunts "so you think that's a poem?" might take a bit of a holiday.

Let me also thank Carrie MONIZ who I have never met for her thoughtful and spot on reading of my work. Reviewing poetry is an act of generosity and I am thankful for my book falling into such kind hands. And if you are still looking for a holiday gift for yourself or a poetry loving friend, you can order The Alchemist's Kitchen from my website where I will add in Cures Include Travel if you purchase The Alchemist's Kitchen before December 31.

Here is the beginning of the review. To read the entire peace click here

The beauty and musicality of the English language cannot be overlooked in Susan Rich’s third book, The Alchemist’s Kitchen(a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year). She invents new forms and reinvents the tried and true, exploring every device and tool with a keen ear and deft tongue.

Rich has an incredible ability to articulate the essence of a moment or emotion in few words—especially through the use of striking similes and metaphors. In the poem, “The Never Born Comes of Age,” the slow pace of time is described as “hours / hunched like dogs no one could move.” This image alone, in the context of the poem (a mother mourning her pregnancy which ambiguously ends in “loss streaming across cow dung and thistle”), is enough to make the reader grow heavy with the speaker’s emotional burden—the heartache felt by an “almost mother.”

Mahmoud Darwish
photo from the Palestine Monitor

In “Re-Imagining My Life with Lions,” which meditates on the epigraph by Mahmoud Darwish—“There is no death, only a change of worlds”—the speaker reveals that he or she “want[s] to live another life—a poplar tree in a row / of blue pine along a cobbled road,” though it isn’t for lack of beauty in this world. The lines, “Each day unfurls, fragrant / as a botanist’s notes from the road,” are so saturated with the enduring passion one has for the world—the lingering scent, the cataloguing and acute observations—that only one sensitive to life’s ephemeral nature could articulate such a comparison. The speaker’s desire to live another life does not evoke thoughts of pity or disparity. Rather, it continues to evoke To continue reading click here

There's a Certain Slant of Light

2011-12-21T09:09:00.000-08:00

December 21, 2011

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

Emily Dickinson

Happy Festival of Light! Happy Hanukah!

2011-12-20T14:13:00.000-08:00

The Coming of Light
by Mark Strand

Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

I Am Not A Brave Woman: As Travelers, We Spin Ourselves Around the Globe

2011-12-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

Lavinia Spalding does a superb job as editor for 2011 and is gearing up for 2012!

I am thrilled and humbled to have my interview up at Lavinia Spalding's site where she is interviewing several contributors to The Best Women's Travel Writing 2011. Here is a bit of what I confessed about my life as a traveller...

And for the woman traveller in your life, this is THE book for her. Readings around the country and new interviews posted regularly are generating a great deal of interest in the anthology...

Through travel, have you overcome any fears or obstacles?

At heart, I think of myself as a shy worrier. However, when I mention this description to friends, they laugh at me. I’ve conducted human rights work in the West Bank and been an electoral supervisor in Bosnia. I’ve heard bullets whiz past my ears and spent an evening drinking tea with nomadic men on the edge of the Sahara. In South Africa, I lived alone in the country that statistically is known as the murder and rape capital of the world. It’s a mystery to me how these experiences started to accrue. And yet, they have and I’ve become braver for them.

As travelers, we spin ourselves around the globe with only a credit card and a passport for protection. And more often than not, the experiences that come to us are positive ones. In all of my decades of travel, I can think of only one time when things were actually dangerous (and it wasn’t in a war zone). So yes, travel has allowed me to privilege curiosity over fear, adventure over worry. I can’t imagine who I would be without my years of traveling to and living in different countries. So although I still worry about having to ask a stranger for directions and I still obsess about keeping my travel documents safe; I now know the joy of travel so far outweighs the problems.

What advice can you give to women who want to start traveling?

Do it. Don’t let the voice inside your head dictate or limit your life experiences. Whenever I go somewhere I make sure that there are places or people where I can land. Plan to do more than sightsee. As a writer, these places are often writing retreats or visiting writer friends, but that’s only one way to go. If there is a painting you’ve always wanted to see, you could create a trip around visiting that painting-- or perhaps there is a famous restaurant in Spain you’ve always wanted to try. We live our lives only once. One. That’s not a very big number. I’d hate to miss anything because of my own self-imposed fears.

I am not a brave woman, but I have had travel experiences that have taught me to be braver. The challenges I’ve overcome as a traveler have translated into the skills I need to live my everyday life.

To continue reading click here.

Poets on the Coast: A Gift for the Poet in Your Life

2011-12-15T09:41:00.000-08:00

Here's a personal, creative, and waterview gift idea. Treat someone you love to a writing retreat of a lifetime. We are offering a special pre-registration Poets on the Coast gift certificate for the first time this year.

A view from the Sylvia Beach Hotel

If you sign up now before midnight December 31st for a holiday registration for Poets on the Coast (September 7-9, 2012) you will receive a personalized 8 1/2 x 11 certificate entitling the gift recipient (which could be you) to a special registration including a one on one session with a workshop leader, writing workshops, yoga, and more. Only $273 for a three day event.

In this crazy world we live in what better gift to give than three days of poetry and peace? This retreat is designed for women poets of all levels. To find out more click here. Feel free to leave questions here in the comment box or poetsonthecoast(at)yahoo.com

And from last year's participants:

"I am overwhelmed with gratitude and energy derived from these last 48 hours. The shared writing culture, thought thoughtful and organized prep, the generosity you've shown with your time, wisdom, humor, and encouragement -- Wow! Thank you. I leave this afternoon with head and heart filled with new material and determination. Thank you again for your inspiration."

Kay

"How can I thank you....let me count the ways!"
What a wonderful weekend. I've come home feeling so enriched by people (you two, in particular) and by the poetry and discussions and sharing. I'm raring to go to put my "action plan" into gear. You have created something truly remarkable and wonderful.

Sylvia

Spaces are limited and we already have some poets from last year joining us again. Please click here to register with this special limited gift offer. Registration includes a one year subscription to the Crab Creek Review.

More questions? Click here for Frequently Asked Questions!

Remember, sign- up before December 31st for this holiday gift special.

What Can I Say?

2011-12-13T23:52:00.001-08:00

There is a distinct parallel between writing papers and grading them.

That May Be the Measure of Our Lives

2011-12-12T19:14:00.000-08:00

Toni Morrison

"We die. That may be the meaning of live. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives."

~Toni Morrison

The Bluest Skies You've Ever Seen in Seattle ...

2011-12-12T18:19:00.000-08:00

That was the song from "Here Come the Brides" a weird and cheesy television show from the 1970's and my first concept of this city far out west. In reality the "brides" coming west to keep the loggers company were often prostitutes ... but that's a different story. All of this is merely preamble to these Seattle skies. Happy Monday!

Gifts for the Poet in Your Life - And Donations to a Poetry Press

2011-12-11T10:25:00.000-08:00

Please check out the signed first editions and full series collections at White Pine Press. Dennis Maloney is selling off his collection of signed books, broadsides, and first editions from a variety of poets including Pablo Neruda, Grace Paley, Mary Oliver, Sandra Cisneros, Ernesto Cardinal, Fedrico Garcia Lorca, Linda Gregg, Charles Simic, and many more. The prices are extremely reasonable.

This year I am doing my best to buy holiday gifts locally and to support causes that I believe in. As a poet who has benefited from over a decade with the same intelligent, ethical, and big hearted publisher, I strongly recommend doing your holiday shopping with White Pine Press.

Certainly it doesn't hurt to take a look right here.

See "Luminous" at the Seattle Art Museum

2011-12-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

Photo by Kelli Russel Agodon (poet and photographer)

We sat and watched this film (although film might not be the correct word) all the way through three times. It's hard to explain all the different images that fade in and out, that walk across the screen, that are drawn on the thin white gauze as if on a canvas. The deer in the left foreground walks, leaps, disappears, and reappears all in different movements. Night turns to dawn and Chinese cryptograms appear on the backs of butterflies, crows fly and ---- well you really need to see this for yourself. I didn't read anything about the artist or the form. I confess I wanted unadulterated magic.

Do Tell! Call for Submissions for New Project!

2011-12-06T15:17:00.000-08:00

Gay Life in Prague

Wonderful poets Peter Pereira and Jourdan Keith join forces for a special edition of Floating Bridge Review to focus on the theme of "Do Tell" that touches on gay life. Note: anyone who writes on this subject is welcome to contribute!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Floating Bridge Press seeks poetry submissions for our upcoming publication Floating Bridge Review #5 on the theme of “Do Tell” — works that touch on gay life (including lesbian, bi, trans, two-spirit, questioning, and any other non-straight orientations). We are seeking work that is inspired, surprising, humorous, intriguing, and/or just plain excellent writing. There are no restrictions on form or subject matter. Prose poems and flash fiction will also be considered. Poets of all persuasions are welcome and encouraged to submit.

Entries are by e-mail only: Send up to 5 poems as a single Microsoft Word document or single PDF file by February 15, 2012 to floatingbridgepress@yahoo.com. Please put FBR5 SUBMISSION in the Subject line of your e-mail.

Terrance Hayes reads at SAL this Thursday and Teaches on Friday

2011-12-04T23:40:00.000-08:00

Terrance Hayes visits Seattle this week

Terrance Hayes is constantly pushing toward new possibilities for private inquiry and new structures against which to ballast his buoyant and boundless sense of language. These poems marry swank and swagger to what I like to think of as a 21st Century gravitas. —Tracy K. Smith

God is an American

I still love words. When we make love in the morning,
your skin damp from a shower, the day calms.
Shadenfreude may be the best way to name the covering
of adulthood, the powdered sugar on a black shirt. I am

alone now on the top floor pulled by obsession, the ink
on my fingers. And sometimes it is a difficult name.
Sometimes it is like the world before America, the kin-
ship of fools and hunters, the children, the dazed dream

of mothers with no style. A word can be the boot print
in a square of fresh cement and the glaze of morning.
Your response to my kiss is I have a cavity. I am in
love with incompletion. I am clinging to your moorings.

Yes, I have a pretty good idea what beauty is. It survives
alright. It aches like an open book. It makes it difficult to live.

Are You Interested in Brazil? In Hip-Hop? In Helping Two Young Women Filmmakers and Dancers?

2011-12-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

One last call today for my favorite project of the moment "Believe the Beat" produced by Jocelyn Edelstein whom I had the pleasure to meet through the anthology Best Women's Travel Writing.

Jocelyn graduated from Western Washington University and was honored with a grant to go traveling somewhere in the world to pursue her dreams. Edelstein majored in Dance and so decided to head to Brazil. There she met young and creative hip-hop dancers whom were forming troupes and trying to dance themselves into a better life.

This documentary film showing off the dancers, of Brazil, and even of Croatia where one dancer ends up, needs to be made. Why not make a donation today in the name of hip-hop dancer you know? My donation was my chance to be part of the dance and the film worlds -- and I get invited to the after party when the movie premieres. You know that will be one wild dance party!

PS If you want to donate (you can even donate a $1) you need to do so by Sunday! The time is now.

The Gardenia - Thanks to Billie and Cornelius Eady

2011-12-01T08:41:00.000-08:00

The Gardenia
by Cornelius Eady

The trouble is, you can never take
That flower from Billie's hair.
She is always walking too fast
and try as we might,

there's no talking her into slowing.
Don't go down into that basement,
we'd like to scream. What will it take
to bargain her blues,

To retire that term when it comes
to her? But the grain and the cigarettes,
the narcs and the fancy-dressed boys,
the sediment in her throat.

That's the soil those petals spring from,
Like a fist, if a fist could sing.

Hurray for Occupoety - "American History"

2011-11-30T08:34:00.000-08:00

Gees Bend Quilt - House

Today I'm officially an Occupoet. The sight Occupoetry is run by folks at UC Davis and I'm really happy to have "American History" up today.

Here are the first few lines --

American History

Someday soon I'll be saying at school

there were chalkboards, at school
we read books made of paper,

we drank milk from small cartons. We drew.
At school we liked children unlike us

studied evolution, enjoyed recess, plenty of food.

At school we made globes of papier-mache,
built solar systems democratized in sugar cubes.

click here to finish reading "American History" at the Occupoetry site ..

Happy Birthday William Blake! Visual artist, poet, thinker...

2011-11-28T10:22:00.000-08:00

"Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow."
William Blake

And for just a little more information ...

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language".^[1] His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced".^[2] Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham^[3] he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God",^[4] or "Human existence itself".^[5]

Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic",^[6] for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England - indeed, to all forms of organised religion - Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions,^[7] as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg.^[8]

Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify.

Poems of Thanks and Praise for You - Escape into Life

2011-11-23T10:43:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Kathleen Kirk for inviting me to be part of Escape into Life's Thanksgiving Edition. Four beautiful poems with beautiful art work are included. Click here to read poems by Robert Lee Brewer, Maureen Doallas, Richard Jones, and me.

The art work here is from a previous issue of Escape into Life by Weibes Rauchen.

May you spend this holiday with people you love --- or at least people you like a whole lot.

Poetry and Cartography: The Center for Geospatial Poetry; Another First for Washington State

2011-11-21T18:50:00.000-08:00

I love it when my different obsessions converge. Not only is there a website where poetry and maps shack up together, but they are doing it for free. If you click here and then go to "A Sense of Place" and wait for the page to load, you will have the first of its kind - a Google poetry map of Washington State -- or any state that I'm aware of. Hover the cursor over the region of Washington State you want to read poems about and be rewarded with poems by Elizabeth Austen, Ann Teplick, Oliver de la Paz, Dan Peters, and Peter Pereira to name but a few great state poets.

My friend Katharine Whitcomb (superb poet) and her friend, Bob Hickey (real cartographer) have collaborated to create a map of Washington State on google maps and they've also curated a wonderful anthology of poems on place. If you search the sample poems on the left hand side of the map you will find poems about White Swan, WA (Allen Braden), Richland, WA (Kathleen Flenniken) and Seattle's Museum of Flight (Susan Rich).

Creative projects that emerge from unusual collaborations make me incredibly happy. The world of poetry becomes rooted in the particular coordinates of place and in turn, cartography becomes a thing of art. Katharine Whitcomb is a genius of collaboration having worked this summer with an artist in San Diego to create miniature poems for new museum "scents." (More on this soon).

In the meantime I would love to hear about other artistic collaborations between poets and others. I'm on the lookout for something brand new. Thank you Kathy and Bob for making this project available.http://www.katharinewhitcomb.com/geospatial.html

Turkey anyone? No not the bird!

2011-11-20T20:04:00.000-08:00

This is my idea of beauty

I wish I could justify taking Spring Quarter off and visiting Turkey to write in cafes, visit

the Blue Mosque, and walk through market streets. However, unless I win the lottery or marry a

millionaire before May, it might not be in the cards for me. At least not this year. My

friend Sheila Bender is co-leading a writing group to Istanbul and she still has a few

spots left. The trip is ideal for prose writers and poets alike because Sheila is both a

published poet and prose writer. Read below and then click on more information.

And really, why not go to Turkey this May? You know you want to!


	Writing Istanbul Writers' Conference May 11-15, 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey with Sheila Bender, Yeşim Cimcoz and Susan Bono Optional 3-Day Trip Extension to Ephesus May 16-19 Susan Bono, editor of Tiny Lights, and Sheila Bender, publisher of Writing It Real, are joining Yesim Cimcoz of the Writing Istanbul Project in guiding poets and writers of personal experience in writing and touring the amazing city of Istanbul. We have an optional add-on trip following the workshop for those who want to see more of Turkey. Spouses, friends and partners are welcome to join us in activities surrounding our writing groups work. For Writing Istanbul, we have a fabulous residence in the old city to stay in, cafes to meet in, tours and in-city transportation arranged as well as help booking your room and airport pick up and drop off. The three-day add-on trip will be a wonderful customized tour easy to book. During our time in Istanbul, we'll be touring, writing, and meeting together, in groups led by our three instructors and aided by Turkish members of the Writing Istanbul project. We'll meet all together, too, for workshops, sharing writing, and learning about personal writing in Turkey. Some of our special activities include a whirling dervishes performance, a visit to a hamam (a Turkish bath), and a celebration dinner cruise down theBosphorus. Yesim, Susan and Sheila are very excited and hope you join us! For more information, click here!


Kadikoy Market on the Asian Side


	Rug Bazaar


	Inside the Blue Mosque

Tonight's the Night: 7 pm at the Redmond Schoolhouse; Please Come

2011-11-18T11:36:00.000-08:00

The wonderful Harold Taw and the lovely Annette Spaulding-Convy are reading tonight with me at 7pm in Redmond, WA. Why don't you come too? I"ve heard this venue has fantastic audiences! The event is hosted by RASP - Redmond Association of Spoken Word. Click here for more information.

"I am now officially speechless" from Nikky Finney, Award Winner

2011-11-17T08:24:00.000-08:00

“'A fine of $100 and six months of prison will be imposed for teaching a slave to read and write,' Finney began her speech, reading from the 1739 slave codes of South Carolina. She talked about how blacks were forbidden to be literate in her home state and across America for a part of history.

'I am now officially speechless,' Finney said, ending her speech with a pun to her literacy.

Professor wins National Book Award for Poetry : The Kentucky Kernel

2011-11-16T23:53:00.000-08:00

Huge Congratulations to Nikky Finney!

Professor wins National Book Award for Poetry : The Kentucky Kernel:

Are Poet Laureates a Threat to Public Safety?

2011-11-15T23:50:00.000-08:00

This picture was posted at the Poetry Foundation today. Go to Poetry Foundation to read the full story and find links. And yes, that's former Poet Laureate Robert Hass who while trying to defend his students, gets assaulted by the Oakland police.

Why Not Open Your Own Bookstore: Anne Patchett Starts a Trend

2011-11-15T23:34:00.000-08:00

Josh Anderson for The New York Times

The novelist Ann Patchett, right, and Karen Hayes are business
partners and co-owners of Parnassus Books in Nashville.

NASHVILLE — After a beloved local bookstore closed here last December
and another store was lost to the Borders bankruptcy, this city once known
as the Athens of the South, rich in cultural tradition and home to Vanderbilt
University, became nearly barren of bookstores.

A collective panic set in among Nashville’s reading faithful. But they
have found a savior in Ann Patchett, the best-selling novelist who
grew up here. On Wednesday, Ms. Patchett, the acclaimed author
of “Bel Canto” and “Truth and Beauty,” will open Parnassus Books,
an independent bookstore that is the product of six months
of breakneck planning and a healthy infusion of cash from its owner.

“I have no interest in retail; I have no interest in opening a
bookstore,” Ms. Patchett said, serenely sipping tea during a
recent interview at her spacious pink brick house here. “But I
also have no interest in living in a city without a bookstore.”

Continue reading this New York Times article right here.

Being Flynn: Congratulations, Nick! Coming to a theater near you...

2011-11-14T20:31:00.000-08:00

Wow. I didn't know that it would be so exhilarating to see a poet's life in a Hollywood film. Nick Flynn worked in Boston at the Pine Street Inn -- a shelter for homeless men -- at the same time as a friend of mine did. His first book of poems, "Some Ether," about his mother came out the same year as "The Cartographer's Tongue", my first book of poems. I suppose the Boston connection and the poet connection interested me enough to follow his career. And here's his life -- or a version of it -- on the silver screen. There's no release date for the film yet, but with Robert DeNiro and Julianne Moore co-starring, it seems likely that the film will be out before the end of the year and positioned as an Oscar contender. Congratulations, Nick Flynn. As painful as much of this story is, you've been heard. Thanks to January O'Neil for letting me know this sneak preview was up and ready to share.

This just in: release date is now slated for May 2012!

Sending Poems into the World this Holiday Season and License Plates

2011-11-14T08:27:00.000-08:00

Don't put all your eggs in one basket

Late last night instead of doing the things I needed to be doing (grading, lessons, sleeping) I sent a few poems out into the world. I believe that sending poems at the start of the reading season serves poets best. In an ideal world I send my poems out in September and October. Unfortunately, this is exactly when the college demands the most from me.

Instead I've found that making a pledge to myself to send four packets of poems out a month works well for me. Four is a number I can handle. I usually try to do this at the beginning of the month and to send out all four envelopes (or emails) at once. Last night I managed three. Two on-line submissions (one an on-line journal and one not) and an envelope to send clear across the country.

I think I must be growing old. I've been sending poems into the world for 18 years. Certainly, I've done my part to keep the postal service solvent. My "system" is fairly simple. Aim high and send widely. In addition to sending only to journals I want to be seen in, I play the license plate game. Remember?

My parents would keep me quiet on cross-country trips by handing me those AAA cards to keep track of all the license plates we saw from different states. I still remember the thrill of my first Alaska plate in beautiful blue lettering. It's been a long process to try and publish a poem in every state. Imagine, Rhode Island for example. Only two journals in that little state. By the way. Roger, is a lovely journal that I am proud to be published in. There's other states where I am still waiting, the Dakotas, for two. I seem to average about 2 new states a year -- but that has slowed down. Last month I had an acceptance from Virginia, next I will try for New Mexico. I feel in control having a system that doesn't depend on Poetry (Illinois) for satisfaction.

How do you handle the maze of journals and anthologies? What is your strategy for sending work into the world? I'd love to know.

Kathleen Flenniken's PLUME - Sneak Preview

2011-11-09T23:39:00.000-08:00

I am thrilled that Kathleen Flenniken's second book, PLUME, will be out from the University of Washington Press in Spring 2012 --- only a few short months away. PLUME is a book of "innocence and experience" at the Hanford Nuclear Plant. It is also one of the best books of poetry I have read in that the line of the personal and political blur to unite as one. The book begins with an epilogue by President Obama on the 2008 campaign trail admitting that he had no idea what Hanford was but he assured the person who asked the question that he'd be up to speed on the issue before his plane took off. This is followed by the opening poem in which President Kennedy visits Hanford in the early 1960's.
Yet at the heart of this book is a young woman trying to make sense out of her own personal history and the death of her best friend's father. All this makes PLUME sound weighed down in narrative; it is not.

Listen to this short video (made on an Iphone and then edited later) and enjoy one of my favorite poems in the collection, "Cayote." OK. I have many favorites. Look for Plume this spring in a bookstore near you.

Happy Birthday, Anne Sexton

2011-11-09T17:32:00.000-08:00

Anne Sexton

"I have been her kind" is the line that first comes to mind. Happy Birthday, Anne!

Poet Wanted: The Washington State Poet Laureate Returns!

2011-11-08T23:33:00.000-08:00

2012-14 Washington State Poet Laureate: A call for applications

The Washington State Arts Commission and Humanities Washington seek applications for the 2012-14 Washington State Poet Laureate.

In April 2007, the Washington State Legislature passed a bill that recognized the value of poetry to the culture and heritage of the state by establishing the Washington State Poet Laureate. The legislation is the result of a collaboration between the Washington State Arts Commission, Humanities Washington, the Washington Poets Association, poets and poetry lovers from across the state and key legislators. Soon after signing the bill into law, Governor Gregoire named Samuel Green to serve as Washington’s first Poet Laureate, from 2007 to 2009. Washington joins several other states in appointing an official state poet laureate position. Poetry is recognized at the national level as well: The Librarian of Congress annually appoints the U.S. Poet Laureate.

Role of the Poet Laureate:
The Washington State Poet Laureate serves to build awareness and appreciation of poetry — including the state’s legacy of poetry — through public readings, workshops, lectures and presentations in communities, schools, colleges/universities and other public settings in geographically diverse areas of the state. The selected Poet Laureate will develop a two-year plan of activities, in consultation with the Washington State Arts Commission and Humanities Washington. For an overview of the activities performed by Poet Laureate Samuel Green (2007-09), see below.

For more information, click here.

Story Corps: My Three Minutes of NPR Fame and the Fulani

2011-11-07T16:30:00.000-08:00

Fulani Nomads of Niger

What a wonderful surprise for a Monday morning! Last March I was invited to the University of Wisconsin - Madison for the celebration of Peace Corps Africa: Honoring 50 Years. I joined with Peace Corps poets Derek Burleson, Sandy Meek, and Anne Neelon to read our poems and be part of the Peace Corps gala celebration in downtown Madison.

One of the high points for me was reconnecting with James Delehanty whom I had lost touch with in the intervening twenty-five years since we both left Niger. Jim was a Fulbrighter who had previously been in Peace Corps Niger and now as a graduate student was returning to Zinder and its environs. Jim invited me to be part of the Story Corps project. As it turned out, we met for the first time in twenty-five years just outside the recording room, moments before our air time. This week five stories from our time in Wisconsin were chosen to air on Wisconsin Public Radio. You can click on the link below to hear all five. What an odd and magical world where my life with Fulani nomads twenty-five years ago can now be broadcast around the world via internet. Perhaps Dari, Yabide, or Sa-ha might even hear this...

Here is an easier link to use. Click here!

Enlarge

Susan Rich of Seattle and James Delehanty of Madison. They are friends who served in Niger about 25 years ago.


	Play MP3 File		Play Windows Media File		Download MP3 File

Happy 50th Birthday to The Phantom Tollbooth - Feifer and Juster

2011-11-06T15:36:00.000-08:00

I read The Phantom Tollbooth at least six times when I was a child. I preferred Dictionopolis to Digitopolis, loved Tock and too closely identified with Milo. Years later, when I ran a bookstore in Amherst, Massachusetts, a man walked in bought a book, and handed me a check with the name Norton Juster. Somewhere along the line he'd become a Math professor at Hampshire College. He didn't seem to much care for me or for the fact that I'd loved beyond rhyme and reason his book. And yet, the visit caused me to read the story again. Is this where my love of travel came from? Is this where I learned word play and a passion for imaginative worlds? I'm ready to read it again. Happy Birthday!

Best line in the video here: "It was the 1950's we wanted to overthrow the world." In a way, they did.

Milo and Tock

It's Almost Here! Free Reading at Seattle Public Library, Saturday!

2011-11-04T12:37:00.000-07:00

Come ride the cool elevator this Saturday at SPL

Please consider coming out and enjoying an afternoon of stellar readings from Jack Straw 2011 from 2:00-3:30 pm at the downtown Seattle Public Library. A total of ten prose writers and poets will read for six minutes each. It's like speed dating for the literary types (some of the writers are even single!) and the staff of Jack Straw will also be on hand. If you are applying to be a Jack Straw Writer in 2012, this is the event for you. Seattle writers Nassim Assefi, Anne McDuffie, Deborah Jarvis, Robert Larimande, Don Fells, Ann Teplic, Harold Taw, and Maritess Zurbano are just some of the writers that will be on hand. Elliott Bay Books will be on hand selling the Jack Straw Anthology as well as books by featured readers. Come join us for 90 minutes of literary love!

A Home Without Books is ...

2011-11-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

A home without books is a body without soul.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

I love this photograph! I want to climb in the bath right now with a book, but instead more student midterms await me.

Bonnie and Clyde: Another Look

2011-11-01T23:37:00.000-07:00

Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker

I've been screening the film Bonnie and Clyde for my Film Studies class. Directed by Arthur Penn, the film was released in 1967 and is one of the rare examples of a film panned by TIME magazine and then six months later, the magazine published a long and glowing review. In 1967, Roger Ebert wrote that Bonnie and Clyde was the film that would come to epitomize the 1960's. He was right.

Today the idea of bank robbers who rob banks but believe in love of family and in treating the 99% with respect has some cache. Although the violence is exceptionally well done, violence is still a hard sell for me. Sometimes stretching oneself is a good thing. I hope my students will agree.

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as Bonnie and Clyde

Meet Jack Straw Writer: Maritess Zurbano

2011-10-31T08:51:00.000-07:00

Please join Maritess Zurbano as well as other Jack Straw Writers: Nassim Aseffi, Anne McDuffie, Ann Teplick, Robert Lamirande, Harold Taw, Nora Wendl, and others 2:00 pm, this Saturday, November 5th in the auditorium at Seattle Public Library. This is the final event for Jack Straw Writers 2011. Kathleen Flenniken will also be on hand. Please join us.

That’s Magic

Aug 8th, 2011 by jennie

In her writing, Maritess Zurbano depicts the little known world of a female magician. Her work brings to light racial and gender issues surrounding the art and captures the intrigue of performance. Original subject matter and dramatic delivery make for a captivating read.

Zurbano has been a practicing magician for 19 years, has competed internationally and performed around the world. Her memoir-based play, “Rites of Enchantment,” has won entry into the New York International Fringe Festival and the NYC Ars Nova Theater Festival. Her short stories have been published in The Chicago Reader as well as the literary magazine Snowbound. She is a contributor to Magic Magazine and has been profiled by Newsday, Lifetime Television, The BBC News, Epoch Times, and The Village Voice providing commentary on magic and the occult. Her literary awards include a 2010 Washington State Artist Trust Grant and a 2011 Jack Straw Fellowship.

SoundPages was produced by Jack Straw Productions as part of the Jack Straw Writers Program. All of the writers heard in this series are published in the Jack Straw Writers Anthology, and featured online at http://www.jackstraw.org/.

Music performed by the Owcharuk Sextet and recorded as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.

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My favorite Occupy Wall Street poster so far! A sign for a poet.

2011-10-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

Boston, You're My Town: January O'Neil reports from Occupoets

2011-10-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

OccuPoets Boston

Read below to hear how poets January O'Neil, Martha Collins and others are doing their share to support the peaceful protesters in my hometown of Boston.

Yesterday, I was part of a weeklong effort by OccuPoets Boston to support the Occupy Boston movement. Organized by Peter Desmond, the weeklong series of afternoon poetry readings were held in support of the hundreds of people camping out, talking to passersby on the street, serving food, organizing events, talking to media, etc.

About 15 poets read to a crowd of 40-50 people, including Fred Marchant, Martha Collins, Molly Lynn Watt, and me. I was incredibly nervous—I never know how my work will be received. But the audience was warm and appreciative of the support from the Boston-area writers community. Four of the five poems I read are from the new manuscript, all of which have to do with the downturn in the economy.

This Occupy effort is centralized at Dewey Plaza at South Station in downtown Boston. What was once a park is now a tent city. Except for the musicians in the background and the city noise, it was relatively calm there. And clean. A little smelly but very organized and orderly. There's even a library on site, that now has a copy of Underlifeon its shelves. I definitely got the sense that these 99 percenters are 100 percent committed to change by any (peaceful) means necessary. Click here to continue reading and see more images of the afternoon.

Meet Jack Straw Writer: Ann Teplick - Poet, Playwright, YA Writer

2011-10-28T21:38:00.000-07:00

I first met Ann Teplick in a "Speaking Pictures" workshop at the Northwest Museum of Art as part of the Skagit River Poetry Festival. She struck me at the time as passionate, smart, and playful. And she still does.

Later, I published her poem "This is How I Want to be Kissed" in the "Beyond Ekphrasis: Poems of the Musical, Mathematical, and the Visual" portfolio of Crab Creek Review, 2010, volume 2. Ann is a poet I will be watching as I expect to hear much more from (and about) her very soon. Listen to her podcast below.You will be glad you did.

By the Bedside

Sep 12th, 2011 by jennie

In her Jack Straw residency, Ann Teplick shares her grief, wrestling the difficulties and pain of losing parents. Her poetry imparts sorrow, beauty, love, and loss. Each word is chosen with courage, leaving the reader absorbed in the fragility of human life.

Teplick is a Seattle poet, playwright, and prose writer, with an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College. For eighteen years she’s written with youth in schools, juvenile detention centers, psychiatric hospitals and literary non-profits. Her work has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Drash, Chrysanthemum, Hunger Mountain, and others. Her plays have been showcased in Washington, Oregon, and Nova Scotia. In 2010 she received funding from Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs and 4Culture for a collection of poetry The Beauty of a Beet, Poems from the Bedside. In 2011 she will be a writer at Hedgebrook.

Music performed by the Bird Tribe Orchestra and recorded as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.

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In Praise of Poet Tree: Secret Sculptor on the Loose in Edinburgh

2011-10-28T20:43:00.000-07:00

It looked like this was a one-off, a beautiful and delicate piece of art created by a fan of the Poetry Library. Until, in late June, the National Library of Scotland found themselves the recipient of a similar piece.

Those of you who don't keep up with Edinburgh's literary world through Twitter may have missed the recent spate of mysterious paper sculptures appearing around the city.

Guardian article, 3rd March 2011.

One day in March, staff at the Scottish Poetry Library came across a wonderful creation, left anonymously on a table in the library. Carved from paper, mounted on a book and with a tag addressed to @byleaveswelive - the library's Twitter account - reading:

It started with your name @byleaveswelive and became a tree.… ... We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books… a book is so much more than pages full of words.… This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. a gesture (poetic maybe?)

To continue reading this article and seeing the rest of these lyrical and dreamlike sculptures, click here

Happy Birthday Sylvia Plath -- She Would Have Been 79...

2011-10-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ― Sylvia Plath

The Joy of Not Being Sold Anything - A Poem Prompt For Sure

2011-10-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

Seen in Norway this fine morning

This Just In...

2011-10-26T05:01:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Whiting Awards Announced! Here's our Seattle poet Don Mee Choi who was also a finalist for the Washington State Book Award in Poetry.

DON MEE CHOI

2011
Poetry

The Morning News is Exciting (Action Books, 2010) is poet Don Mee Choi’s first book, which our selectors found “a wildly surprising work describing the collapse of empire—bracing and invigorating. Its anger glows.” She also translates contemporary Korean women poets; her most recent is All the Garbage of the World, Unite! by Kim Hyesoon (Action Books, 2011). She is a recipient of a Daesan Translation Grant, Korea Literature Translation Institute Translation Grant, an American Literary Translators Association Travel Fellowship, and has served as poet-in-residence at the Henry Art Gallery. She holds a BFA and an MFA from the California Institute for the Arts and a PhD in Modern Korean Literature and Translation from Union Institute and University. An instructor in adult basic education at Renton Technical College, she lives in Seattle.

Meet Harold Taw: Essayist, Novelist, Screen Writer, and Karaoke Singer

2011-10-25T21:07:00.000-07:00

I love this podcast series produced by Jack Straw Productions. How cool is that to have your own personal podcast? And if you get your application into Jack Straw by the end of this month -- you could be part of Jack Straw Writers 2012.

I first met Harold Taw at C and P Coffee in West Seattle. Remember that guy who talks on his cell phone while you're trying to write? I hear this guy who is there with his dog -- smack in the middle of the place. There's no way I can't eavesdrop. And a good thing, too. I hear Harold talking with someone about the GAP grant he just won and the novel that he's working on.

Flash forward five years and Harold is now the author of the wild and pleasurable novel Adventures of the Karaoke King from Amazon Encore. He is also a Jack Straw Fellow and my dear friend. Do listen.

A Cultural Journey

Oct 5th, 2011 by jennie

In his work, Harold Taw explores voice and perspective. Readers travel through cultural and emotional territory with complex characters, moving through stories with remarkable storytellers.

Taw’s debut novel, Adventures of the Karaoke King (AmazonEncore 2011), is a karaoke grail quest about transplanted people from around the globe who keep falling just short of their dreams. His second novel, Saturday’s Child, follows an adolescent girl’s journey from the Southeast Asian countryside to the city during politically tumultuous times. Harold’s screenplay Dog Park has been recognized in international film festivals and competitions, his personal essay on why he feeds monkeys was broadcast on NPR’s This I Believe, and he is currently collaborating on a musical. Harold is a 2011 fellow in the Jack Straw Writers Program.

Music performed by Victor Noriega and recorded as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.

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Meet Architect and Poet Nora Wendl - Jack Straw Writer 2011

2011-10-23T19:41:00.000-07:00

The Farnsworth House in Fall

Nora Wendl's poems on the life of Dr. Edith Farnsworth are in a word: evocative. The Farnsworth House is a house of glass in Plaino, Illinois. Nora Wendl is a poet and architect in Portland, Oregon. Listen to her poems made of steel and glass. A beautiful series from the reading at Jack Straw.

Architecture of Poetry

Aug 22nd, 2011 by jennie

Through her study of a Mies van der Rohe glass house in Illinois, architect and poet Nora Wendl illuminates the life of Dr. Edith Farnsworth. Yearly visits to the home and extensive research inform Wendl’s portrayal of the house and the character of Farnsworth. With an architectural lens, Wendl brings life and sentiment to marble floors and glass walls.

Wendl is a writer and professor of architecture whose work (built and written) is influenced by the processes, products, history and discourse of the (silent) built and made things around us—particularly architecture. A native of Nebraska, she studied at Iowa State University and was 2005 Pearl Hogrefe Fellow in Creative Writing. She lives in Portland, Oregon and teaches at Portland State University Department of Architecture.

Music performed by the St. Helens String Quartet and recorded as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.

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Meet poet and memoir writer Anne McDuffie

2011-10-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

I want to introduce Anne McDuffie, one of the 2011 Jack Straw Writers from The Jack Straw Writers Program . Anne is a writer you are sure to hear more from. Her sense of image, sound, and language continues to surprise me. In Spanish or English, in poetry or prose, McDuffie is an original. Listen to a podcast of her interview and reading below.

I was honored to curate this past year. Anne's creative non-fiction piece sounds to my ears as poetry --- no different. The application for 2012 Jack Straw Writers program is open now until October 31st. You don't have to be a Seattle writer to apply, but you do have to visit 3-4 times during the year. Why not?

The Color of Fog

Oct 17th, 2011 by jennie

Anne McDuffie creates a sensory portrait of fog in a set of essays from an earlier chapter in her life. Her descriptions are immersive, and saturated by deep hues. The reader learns of her time in Madrid as a student and joins her for a long walk through the fog.

McDuffie writes essays, poetry and book reviews. Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, Crab Creek Review, A River and Sound Review, Rattle, Poetry International, American Book Review, and the anthology Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction (Norton, 2005). She received her MFA in 2007 from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.

Music performed by the Black Cat Orchestra and recorded as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.

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Nobody Tells This to People Who Are Beginners

2011-10-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

Ira Glass is the host of "This American Life" on American Public Radio

Never Too Old for Stickers! Thank you Washington State Book Awards

2011-10-17T04:15:00.000-07:00

I'm guessing that one is never too old for gold stars and that's why most of the top book prizes give stickers. Although this is not my first book prize, it is my first sticker and I was (am) wildly excited by this. The Washington Book Awards winners, finalists, and friends all came out to Richard Hugo House last Wednesday night for a celebration. Thanks to Francis McCue and a handful of people working behind the scenes, approximately 200 folks gathered in the cabaret to see old friends and meet new ones. When The Alchemist's Kitchen was published, I knew I wanted a sticker for it's cover. After all, the cover is a tad dark and a splash of gold lightens the composition.

Special congratulations to Washington State Book Award Poetry winner, Francis McCue for her incredible book, The Bled. If you want to enter your book for 2012, click here for the info. And special congratulations to Oliver de la Paz, Kelli Russell Agodon and all the other finalists. The list of finalists for all categories is listed on the Seattle Public Library website and right here.

Where in the World are January and Susan?

2011-10-16T10:42:00.001-07:00

January, Jeff, me, Elizabeth, and Kathleen at Kabul

The past four days have been a whirlwind of readings, eatings and sightseeing.

Picnic lunch of ceviche and cioppino

Lucky for me January O'Neil is a fabulous photographer as well as an award winning poet.
Here are some of the places we have been over the last few days. January's Seattle postings tell it all. I will just add in a few of my favorite photos of Jan's and one more of my own.

The gold man takes a lunch break

After twelve years living in this lyrical city, I feel I can claim it as my home. And so seeing the gold man, picnicing outside Pike Place Market, reading at Elliott Bay Book Company, and eating our way through High 5 PIE and Poppy, Easy Street and Kabul -- feels like I've been able to show January a window onto a full life. It was a true pleasure to hear Jan read, write together, and share poems. Here's to poetry friends that first meet in the blogosphere and then transfer out to the physical world as well. Such magic when the keyboards and coffee shops align. Thank you Jan for a wonderful time. Come back to Seattle soon.

Friday's sunset from my house. A hopeful omen.

January Gil O'Neil Joins Seattle's Poetry Scene October 12 and 13th

2011-10-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

I love how poets migrate from city to city. I love meeting the poets behind the poems after first encountering them in journals or books. This is how I met January O'Neil. Now January will be visiting Seattle and reading 5:00 pm, Wednesday, October 12th at Elliott Bay Book Company. This is January's first visit to Seattle. After January reads, we will move over to Hugo House for a reception to honor the Washington State Book Award Winners and Finalists. The reception is from 6:00 - 8:00 pm and you are invited to both the reading and the reception.

If you can't make Wednesday night, January is also reading at Highline Community College for Highline Listens: Writers Read Their Work at 11 am, Thursday, October 13th, in the Mt. Olympus Room of the Student Union. This event is also free and open to the public.

We hope to see you there --- or there!

Youth, Failure, and Death: Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

2011-10-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

Three stories of his life. College dropout, adopted son, and lost soul. This is a superb talk. Jobs is a storyteller and seeker. He slept on the dorm room floor of a friend, collected coke bottles for money, and ate one good meal a week at the Hari Krishna temple.

And since he didn't have to take required courses (he'd dropped out) he could drop in on a calligraphy course and fall in love with typography. If he hadn't dropped out of college and followed his heart to a calligraphy course, personal computers might not have the beautiful fonts and spacial considerations.

At 21, Jobs started at Apple Computers, at 30, he was fired and starting over. This is a beautiful, beautiful, talk on how to trust in your passions, no matter what. This is an authentic, passionate, and wise talk. Three stories. Youth, failure, and death. And it's very uplifting. Listen.

A quote to live by - Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

2011-10-06T17:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Kelli Russell Agodon for this image.

Letters to Young Writers - Loving Rilke and Beyond to Kunitz

2011-10-05T19:23:00.000-07:00

Rilke relaxing between letters

Richard Hugo House, Seattle's Writers Center has just initiated a new blog series, Letters to Young Writers, inviting authors to provide the advice they wish they had received. Seattle poet Elizabeth Austen kicks off the series with this superb piece. Why is it that we so often need to be reminded that we don't need to be perfect? Read the whole post right here.

Dear Writer,

Years ago I heard Stanley Kunitz say, “The first job of the poet is to become the person who could write the poems."

For a long time I thought this meant I had to become a better person than I am. I thought I had to become virtuous and perfect, so that the Muse would give me wise and beautiful poems.

But what I know now is that all (all!) I needed to do is to become myself, not someone else’s idea of me.

Visual artists David Bayles and Ted Orland, in their indispensable book Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, write that “…becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive.”

Or, as W.S. Merwin put it, “No one can teach you to listen for what only you can hear.”

I’ve never written a poem out of perfection. Poems come from the awareness of insufficiency, of confusion. Poems come out of wanting to see more clearly than I can right now. My flaws are openings, points of connection with the suffering and vulnerability of others.

To continue reading...

October is a Literary Month: Poetry and Prose in Seattle and Across the Bridge

2011-10-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

Doing public readings is both invigorating and terrifying. It is a chance to be part of the literary community and to feel firsthand that words matter. Here are some events that I am reading at or attending over the next two weeks. If you are in driving distance of Seattle, why not come out?

Tonight, @ 7 pm Christine Deaval at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford, reads from Woodnote.

This year Northwest Bookfest returns to the Puget Sound area. 2 pm, Sunday, Oct. 2nd "Northwest Women's Voices" with Kelli Russell Agodon, Elizabeth Austen, Jeanine Gailey and Susan Rich.

7 pm, Tuesday, October 4th Best Women's Travel Writing at Wide World of Books and Travel with editor Lavinia Spalding, and contributors Jocelyn Edelstein, Sarah Bathum and Susan Rich.

5 pm, Wednesday, October 12th January O'Neil at Elliott Bay Book Company. I'll be on hand, too.

Hope to see you here or there.

In Our Name: Troy Davis (October 9, 1968 – September 21, 2011)

2011-09-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

Troy Davis is dead. For some absurd reason I expected this not to happen. Seven out of nine eye witnesses have taken back their testimony. Citizens around the world spoke out to protest this miscarriage of justice. Peaceful protesters held signs up in city squares yesterday across the globe.

It is not my habit to post my poems. And yet, here is a poem I wrote over a decade ago that unfortunately is just as relevant today.

We are all Troy Davis

In Our Name

Inside this room we don't come to: the sizzle and spit

as of fat in a pan, a sweet-heavy smell

of flesh in flames, and two exhaust fans turning

toward a man whose hair on his left leg

and head have been shaved,

a diaper pinned in the waist of his jeans.

No prayers, no words, will he slip

in his hands; only the fingers

can legally burn into blue smithereens.

Here is the soft mauve cloth he'll wear

which will hide the human face

when the veins push out of his molting skin

like glass ridges on a jar or vase.

Let this chair mark the spot

where his heart shudders, then pops

in accordance with Florida law.

Here, stand in this room

with no view of the sea, meet the warden

the Imam, the Rabbi, the Priest.

See the doctor who shines a light in the eye

of a man when he's three minutes dead.

Here in a room, with a switch on a wall,

is one citizen paid always in cash --- assuring us

the nightmares he has may never be publicly shared.

From The Cartographer's Tongue, White Pine Press, 2000

Finally, this is not an isolated case. This week's Letter of Note provides information on death row prisoners that have been exonerated by DNA testing. "I love life too much" is worth reading, too.

From Iceland to Washington - Poetry and Travel Adventures

2011-09-17T21:46:00.000-07:00

Coming to your ipad, kindle, or nook very soon

I'm really happy to announce the first ever eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women's Poetry - Fire on Her Tongue, edited by Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding Convey. This is an anthology of over seventy contemporary women poets including Madeline DeFrees, Eloise Klein Healey, Jane Hirshfield, Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Peggy Shumaker. There is a healthy focus on West Coast poets -- a focus I hope 2SylviasPress will continue, if only to even out this country's poetic geography. Word around the net is that Fire on Her Tongue will be released very, very soon ...stay tuned!

And in other net news...

Tracy and Zavion at the Alki Beach Cafe

When I began this blog almost two years ago, I wanted to focus on stories of travel (as well as poetry and the creative life) but living in one place...well, my travel stories have been a bit sporadic. I tried to provide a sense of Ireland this summer as I traveled from Anam Cara to Galway and I will be doing a reading soon at Wide World of Books and Travel for my piece, "Blue Gates" from the Best Women's Travel Writing 2011 -- but there's so much more in the travel world...Wonderlust: Adventures with Tracy and Zavion is a brand new blog - started just this week that focuses on the adventures of Tracy Brigham and her son, Zavion. The dynamic duo begins their tour in Iceland before heading for Scandinavia and eventually making their way to Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and points beyond. Tracy is a dear friend and Zavion might just be the most photogenic (and photographed) four and a half year old on the planet. Tracy adopted Zavion four years ago in Ethiopia and if all goes well, she and Zavion will return their this winter to pick up his new brother or sister....here again is Tracy and Z's link.

Doing the Washington Book Award Finalist Dance with Kelli, Oliver, and...

2011-09-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

Kelli and I are doing the book award finalist dance

Today the Washington State Book Awards are announced and Kelli Russell Agodon and I are two of the four finalists for the prize in poetry. Somehow we've stayed quiet about it since we found out the news while at Poets on the Coast. Friday night in the middle of organizing gift baskets and collating folders, I'll admit it, I checked my email. Right there in the Emily Dickinson room, where Kelli's manuscript, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, first came together, we found out the good news. And there we were, crazy busy helping other women poets believe in themselves and dive more deeply into their own creative work. Somehow finding out about our own success in that moment seemed right.

My book, The Alchemist's Kitchen has now been out in the world for 16 months, it's no longer the new kid on the block. And this prize marks the last prize that I believe it was considered for. A finalist for two prizes -- this one and the Foreword Prize -- is nothing to sneeze at, but I will confess I wanted it to have a sticker. Maybe there is a finalist sticker for the Washington State Book Award? Maybe I should make one? Do prizes matter? Only if they come with stickers or trophies...

Congratulations to fellow nominees Oliver de la Paz for Requiem for the Orchard and Don Mee Choi for her book, The Morning News Is Exciting.

Huge congratulations to the Washington State Book Award winner, Francis McCue for her book, The Bled, by Factory Hollow Press.

What I Learned at Poets on the Coast 2011, The Sylvia Beach Hotel

2011-09-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

Sunday night! Clockwise: Angie, Linda, Tara, Risa, Kelly, Kelli, and me

I 1. I learned that voicing "What if ..." is a very powerful tool. Just over 9 months ago, Kelli Russell Agodon and I wondered what would happen if we invited women poets to join us by the ocean for a weekend. Did the world need another kind of writing retreat? We believed the answer was yes. It seems we were not alone in this belief.

2. I learned that providing a space for other women to create, learn, and share their own writing path makes me very happy. I was looking forward to supporting other women this weekend, I had no clue how much support, laughter, and love I would receive in return. This was one of the big ah-ha moments for me. You get back more than you give.

3. On the drive down from Seattle, Kelli and I suddenly wondered, "can we do this"? For so long we had planned and organized classes, schedules, gift baskets -- but none of it was real until we met our participants. What if we had dreamed beyond what we could deliver? Perhaps that sense of risk pushed us to do our very best work. Aim high and then run to catch up.

4. Poets are shy at first, but warm up quickly. The first evening we seemed a bit quiet and well, many of us had been caught on I5 and had to detour due to an enormous grass fire. However, by Sunday afternoon when we said good-bye, poets were already planning reunions with the others in their area. Perhaps a "Poets on the Coast" in Southern California one day? Three days together is enough to make some new friends. I know I did.

5. The ocean makes everything better. My dream of living by the ocean gets stronger and stronger as I age. The Sylvia Beach Hotel is old and quirky, but it's my idea of heaven, too. A hotel dedicated to writers where the sound of the surf is ever-present. Where one can do yoga on the deck to start the day -- if one is brave. The weekend reminds me of how I want to live my life: as a poet. And I need the support of others to bring me along. Thank you Poets on the Coast, 2011. I am so grateful.

On the calendar now: Poets on the Coast Sept. 7 - 9, 2012

Calling for submissions: The Best Women's Travel Writing, Volume 8

2011-09-08T23:25:00.000-07:00

It is my great pleasure to let you know about a new call for travel essays. Editor Lavinia Spalding will be editing the 2012 Best Women's Travel Writing and has put out a call for new pieces. I was thrilled to have my essay on living as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zinder, Niger, chosen by Ms. Spalding for the 2011 Best Women's Travel Writing. This coming October on Tuesday, October 4th, I will be reading with three other contributors (and Lavinia Spalding!) at Wide World of Books and Travel in the Wallingford area of Seattle. More on this event as we get closer in, but for now you might want to start writing...

I will also be reading 2:00 pm on Sunday, October 2nd, at the new Northwest Bookfest with Kelli Russell Agodon, Elizabeth Austen and Jeanine Hall Gailey -- but that's a story for another day...

Kick Start Your Writing for Fall - With Us! (only two spots left)

2011-09-01T23:59:00.000-07:00

Join us at the Sylvia Beach Hotel!

Nine months ago Kelli Russell Agodon and I imagined: what if. What if we designed a writing retreat based on community, generosity, and creativity -- what would it look like? What if we could meet everyone's needs? What if we set out to try? And now from one tantalizing idea to a full-fledged event, we are in awe of what a sense of wonder can breed. Today Kelli and I met to finalize the schedule of workshops, one on one sessions, surprises, and awesome snacks. We can't believe we will be packing up the car next Friday and heading out to the Oregon coast. It's wild what a little sense of wonder can do. Come join us in the realm of the imagination. Poets (and soon-to-be poets) are converging from across the country. Spending the weekend of September 11th in contemplation and play seems just right to me. And oh yes, we're by the ocean. For more information, please click here.

Finding a New Poet: To Accept the Day - Halfway to a House - by Rosa Alice Branco

2011-08-31T08:43:00.000-07:00

The view from Anam Cara

It is indeed a grand morning when one awakes to the discovery of a new poet. Thank you Joele Biele for introducing me to Portugese poet Rosa Alice Branco - her use of syntax startles me most (in a good way) and her building of intimacy; both make me wonder how I could have not known her work before just now. What a pleasure!

Mornings on the Ground
Rosa Alice Branco

To accept the day. What will come.
To pass through more streets than houses,
more people than streets. To pass through
skin to the other side. While I make
and unmake the day. Your heart
sleeps with me. It wraps me up at night
and the mornings are cold when I get up.
And I'm always asking where you are and why
the streets no longer are rivers. At times
a drop of water falls to the ground
as if it were a tear. At times
there isn't ground enough to soak it up.

--tr. Alexis Levitin, New European Poets, Miller & Prufer, eds

Halfway to a House

I take light from the closet drawers. The first day
of fall. And all those years at the bottom.
Before, it wasn't me. It was a house under construction.
I before myself. Now I dismantle the summer,
dresses flying, naked feet beside a dress.
Time loses itself in the change of the seasons,
but in this loss someone exists in me.
A voice laughs deep within the closet.
The sun so low, in the bottom drawer.

--tr. Alexis Levitin

Tracy K. Smith and Life on Mars

2011-08-28T13:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a lovely review of Tracy K. Smith's newest collection, Life on Mars, which includes strong poems on her father's death, childbirth, and telling moments of our times. Her second book, The Duende Poems is one of my favorite books of all times. There is also an excellent essay on the Poetry Foundation web site by her on language and translation (which I cannot find this morning but have printed out in the past). Check her out; I believe she's a poet we will be hearing much more from...and certainly about.

Poems of Childhood, Grief, and Deep Space
by Joel Brouer

I won’t blame you for not believing this: The photograph on the cover of Tracy K. Smith’s “Life on Mars” is the same one I see every day on my computer desktop. It’s a dramatic and vivid picture from the Hubble Space Telescope, with colors I imagine J. M. W. Turner would have admired, of the Cone Nebula, a pillar of dust and gas some 2,500 light-years from Earth. Scientists say it’s an incubator for baby stars. I’ve long used the image as an efficient and emphatic corrective for solipsism. I look at it when I find myself fretting about, say, book review deadlines or my spotty gym attendance. You can’t simultaneously contemplate the vastness of the universe and take such problems seriously.

Click here to continue reading New York Times review.

New Madrid Review - Summer Issue and Fall Theme on Japan

2011-08-24T20:06:00.000-07:00

My past year has been wildly busy in terms of public appearances but I have been slacking in terms of sending out new work. This makes the publication of three poems in the new new madrid even sweeter. Two of the poems concern my time fleeing a fire in Spain and I sent them to new madrid review in part because of the journal's name. However, if I had read the small print on the website I would have seen this lovely explanation:

New Madrid is the national journal of the low-residency MFA program at Murray State University. It takes its name from the New Madrid seismic zone, which falls within the central Mississippi Valley and extends through western Kentucky. Between 1811 and 1812, four earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 7.0 struck this region, changing the course of the Mississippi River, creating Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee and ringing church bells as far away as Boston.

In any case, I am happy that editor-in-chief (and great poet) Ann Neelon and crew enjoyed the work enough to take three pieces -- related to Spain or not. The journal has incredibly high production values and an international focus. My favorite poems here (and there are many to choose from) are translations (Peter Golub) from the Russian poet, Aleksey Porvin.

Submissions are currently open for the Winter 2012 issue themed on artistic commerce between Japan and the United States. Keep reading for more information...

Winter 2012

Submissions open August 15, 2011 and go through October 15.

Our Winter 2012 issue will be dedicated to the theme of artistic commerce between Japan and the United States. Though we originally intended our Japan in America/America in Japan issue as an acknowledgment of MSU’s recently instituted Japanese major—the first to be offered in the commonwealth of Kentucky—we have expanded its purpose to include commemoration of the victims of the March 2011 earthquake and consequent tsunami and nuclear emergency in Japan.

We are looking for work in all literary genres that gives evidence of the dynamic interaction between Japanese and American cultures. Possible categories of interest include: literary responses to the earthquake and its aftereffects; responses to classical Japanese poetry and poetics; responses to the work of Kenzaburo Oe, Kobo Abe, Haruki Murakami and other modern and postmodern Japanese fiction writers; work in new Japanese literary forms inspired by manga, cell phone texts, etc.; translations of Japanese literary works into English; literary travel writing by Americans visiting Japan or by Japanese visiting the United States; work about Japanese immigration to the United States, the internment of Japanese-American citizens in the United States during World War II, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or along other historical themes; new takes on traditional Japanese aesthetics and/or spiritual practices.

All submissions should be of interest to the general reader. Please do not submit scholarly articles.

Horses at Coole Park, Home of Lady Gregory, Friend to W.B. Yeats

2011-08-14T13:47:00.000-07:00

Horses at Coole River in Coole Park. This is the grounds of Lady Gregory's house where Yeats did much of his writing. How nice to have an intelligent and well-heeled patron. How nice to have a sunny day in the west of Ireland.

We also went to Yeats Tower where he lived with his wife George. The tower has been shut for the past two years which makes the beauty of the land all the stronger. We had the place to ourselves today and read poems to each other on the bridge just before the tower. A day to remember.

In Spiddal and Out of the Rain

2011-08-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

The Old Cemetery in Spiddal

Dinner in Galway with Poets and Writers

2011-08-11T15:54:00.000-07:00

Dinner salad with borage and mango

This isn't just any salad, this is a salad picked by poets this morning. My friend, poet Geraldine Mills, and her sister, Tina, have "a tunnel" which they've built and filled with greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini. With the exception of one perfect mango and a flutter of cashews, everything in this bowl was poet grown. (Special thanks to Peter Moore and Bobby Ledwith who have graciously supported this endeavor).

Good-bye to Eyeries

2011-08-09T15:55:00.000-07:00

Goodnight Eyeries, Goodnight

I hope to return to this village one day. One week just isn't enough. Tonight there were more adventures, but I'll keep that for another time. Here are photographs of the village taken yesterday by me.

At the Cheesemaker's: Visting Milleens

2011-08-08T03:44:00.000-07:00

At Milleens

This was our morning field trip, across the road, to the right of the graveyard and up the hill. Milleens is the magical, soft floral cheese that we've eaten with our supper most nights. It also appears to be the favorite cheese of the royals - as was evident during their visit to the English market in Cork this year. Everything about the geography of this place, the men (the women were out of town) who make the cheese, and the taste of the cheese itself seems out of a storybook from another era.

One of the things that interested me the most was an aside when Norman mentioned that we were also standing in a place called Milleens which included his house, his son's house, the cheese-making cottage, and a swatch of pasture land. Like Anam Cara, we were about a fifteen minute walk from the village of Eyeries, but clearly not part of the village. It struck me that this is how villages, towns, and cities are born. Somebody builds a house, then his son (in this case) builds a second house...Perhaps this is too obvious to be of interest, but I've never been inside the experience before.

I also learned that they keep the milk at "blood temperature" as they add just a minuscule amount of rennet, that when finished, the cheese is cut with an instrument called a "harp." I also learned how clearly cheese-making is a way of life filled with incredible beauty but also the real dangers of pasteurization, and how much science goes into the process.

Milleens is world famous. They make one type of cheese in two sizes. That's it. It's like a poem of cheese. Norman, the cheese maker lives in a modest house next to the cheese making cottage. The planters outside his house are cast off cheese making machinery. It does my heart good to know that art and commerce can live so harmoniously here.

The cheese, the cheese maker, and me

Check out the cheese on the bottom, right. Make that the south side.

Basket of Irish products given to the Queen at English Market, Cork

Good Sunday Morning from the Anam Cara Writers Retreat

2011-08-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Good Sunday morning from Anam Cara.

Anam Cara - Evening

2011-08-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

Let evening come