mimsy and outgrabe

Yup, still here. I know you were worried. The Creative Writing Festival went well. There were some problems: the usual SCCC facilities/bureaucracy nonsense but nothing insurmountable. Allison Seay's reading was so lovely. I really love To See the Queen , and her preface to the poems and her subsequent delivery of them was intimate and clear and kind of raw, in the best way. Kelly Daniels is awesome -- A. and I had him over for dinner the night before the festival and they traded stories about breweries and craft beer and he was assaulted by my dogs and my children and not only survived, but seemed to enjoy himself. Colum McCann, too, rock star author that he is, was charming -- extremely down to earth, endearing everyone with his sense of humor and his self-deprecation. It was a good day after all. I've been doing some writing, but none of it here (obviously) and little of it on my creative work, like poetry, like the verse play. One of my duties at the college is to wri...

April is the worst month. It should be so spectacular and fun with National Poetry Month and all, and I'm a frenetic ball of stress. Every. damn. year. But here's a lovely poem from Gregory Orr, who I *heart*. He's a gorgeous man, a wonderful poet. Carry on! As you were!

These: A poem by Ryan Black in AGNI Online. Another poem, by Anya Silver, in my inbox thanks to Poem-A-Day through Poets.org. Still laying out the student magazine, barely keeping up with class prep and committee work, totally and thoroughly NOT keeping up with grading, and writing scraps here and there. I did, however, come up with an idea yesterday for having our Eastern Campus journalism students contribute to and edit the East End Elements (student magazine) blog, which is good because I REALLY NEED ANOTHER PROJECT RIGHT ABOUT NOW. Also, my house is a shameful depository of laundry and dog hair. Everyone's fed and at least 60% clean, though. That's something, right?

One of my poems was chosen for the April edition of Stirring: A Literary Collection , guest edited by Margaret Bashaar, the editor of Hyacinth Girl Press. Shamefully, maybe, I didn't know anything about this magazine until M.B. invited me to submit a few poems to the issue she was guest editing -- and I like the journal a lot. (Not just because they chose one of my poems! Although, you know, it helps.)  I like its approach -- it's monthly, but it doesn't publish a ton of work at once. There's just enough here to read, to ruminate on, to appreciate or dismiss -- but either way, the work printed here doesn't get lost in a sea of other pieces. While I like many of the printed, perfect-bound journals out there, many of them are on my "to read" tables (that's right, I wrote tables, the plural!). I just can't manage to move through each issue quickly. But a magazine like Stirring: A Literary Collection is easily digested in a sitting -- and can le...

Back in August, a self-described "reader of poetry" (and poet himself, although he didn't let me know that at first!) named Paul David Adkins contacted me through Facebook and said that he'd reviewed my chapbook for Luna Luna Magazine. I was totally flattered and very excited and checked the magazine quite frequently to see when the review would run . . . and, well, it didn't for quite a few months. I didn't totally forget about it, but I'd resigned myself to the thought that perhaps the editors of Luna Luna didn't find the review compelling enough (because of the subject matter, my little book) or that they didn't have room for it, etc. I came up with lots of reasons inside my crazy head. And then yesterday, quite out of the blue, I found this posted to my Facebook wall. It's a really thoughtful, generous review of my chapbook. I'm touched and flattered and happy to have my poems written about so well, and at such length. So,...

The REALLY good news? I managed to teach the first two parts of Anna Karenina to my Intro to the Novel class yesterday without having thoroughly re-read the material. And I don't think I screwed up my students! In Kermit the Frog fashion, can I get a big "YAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY . . ." Hello? Anyone? ANYWAY. William Kelley Woolfitt generously published my verbose answers to his interview questions yesterday on his wonderful project, Speaking of Marvels . You can find my specific interview here , but I would recommend scrolling through the site and reading the interviews from all of the other chapbook authors. It's interesting to see inside other people's writing processes. Also, I like that he provides a sample of each poet (or fiction writer's) work at the end of each interview. ALSO, that he interviews authors of fiction chapbooks, and non-fiction chapbooks, which are a little more rare than poetry chaps.  So it was pleasant and exciting to see...

The reading went really well -- a lovely, sizable audience (the IOTA Poetry Series has been going on for well over a decade, and has a dedicated following), and a good opportunity to read poems outside of the context A. and I established with our "Poets on Childlessness and Parenthood" tour. Instead, we could just read poems. I read about 10 minutes from the chapbook and then 10 minutes of poems from the rest of the Fabulous Beast ms, and A. read a lovely selection from his book, Little Songs and Lyrics to Genji .  Here we are in action: (HA!) Isn't this backdrop kind of amazing? Photograph of me and this guy's bald head courtesy of my baby sister, Lil' K. Also, I had a snifter of Bourbon Barrel Stout. Drinking beer out of a snifter is pretentious and really shouldn't be condoned, but sometimes it has to be done. It was worth the risk of looking like an asshole. It was delicious. Beer and poems aside, I'm amazed that I managed to g...