Some Work Here & There

My poem, "& I Dragged My Sister's Feeble Body Up The Mountain" was featured on Everyday Genius today. You can read it here.

Issue 23 of jubilat has an untitled poem of mine. It should be out any day now.

I've also done interviews with Amy Lawless, Eric Baus, & Jackie Clark which you can read here, here, & here.

Interviews with Sampson Starkweather, Farrah Field, and Christie Ann Reynolds forthcoming so keep an eye out on Coldfront Magazine.

List are for Fridays

Thanks to press-mate, friend, workshopper & New School Alum, V, for the kind words on my FGP chapbook!

Thanks to Ross for giving a shout-out to my other publisher, Peptic Robot Press!

I start Spring Break on Monday so here's a list of things I hope to do:

Go to MOMA
Finish reading the last issue of Forklift, Ohio & the first issue of Maggy. Begin reading the new issue of Jubilat & the new issue of Octopus.
Work on Sink Review review revisions.
Begin writing reviews for Coldfront.
Go see Greenburg.
Clean my room. Sort through the heap of papers & books spilling all around my floor.
Do taxes.
Look at the AWP schedule.
Read a ton of Cannibal Books chapbooks.
Write poems.
Send chapbook(s) to Hong Kong, New Zealand & Japan.
See friends.
Grade papers.
Sleep. Sleep.

So Much Reading You'll Need A New Set Of Eyes

Besides there being new issues of Fence, LIT, & Effing Magazine (which I'll blog about once I read them- I'm still reading the latest Jubilat & Lungfull) here are some online journals to tempt your intellect:

The new issue of CUE is up (first on-line version), guest-edited by Mark Horosky with work from Julia Cohen & Mathias Svalina in it, alongside work by Elizabeth Willis, Richard Siken, Matt Hart, Sarah Manguso, Tony Mancus, Dorothea Lasky, Tim Peterson, Reb Livingston, Chaz McCallahan, and Jason Labbe.

The 11th issue of pax americana is up, with such shining stars as: Paige Taggart, Christie Ann Reynolds, Nicole Santalucia, Sarah Feeley, Lauren Hunter, Jean Hartig, Amy LAwless, Matthew Yeager, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Kiely Sweatt, Patricia Smith, Aria Boutet, Rachel-Herman Gross, Taryn Andrew, Joseph Millar, Dorianne Laux, Teege Braune.

Rabbit Light Movies Episode #9
suzanne buffam | Joshua Beckman | Dorothea Lasky | Srikanth Reddy | Magdalena Zurawski |
Lauren Levin | Graham Foust | CAConrad | Aaron Kunin | brandon shimoda | Catherine Theis

Live in the Human Future

I've been in Jersey for the last 3 & half days. The bus ride back took forever, but it's nice to back & see so many people walking or biking-- as opposed to, the car culture of once-rural-now-suburban-South Jersey. I came home to the new ish of Crazyhorse (featuring a Michele Glazer poem!) and picked up Wong Kar-wai by Peter Brunette from the library, as well as, take-out from Lahore.

I left my radiator open while I was away and now the apartment is a sweat box. Ugh.

Here's some interesting info on BAP (Best American Poetry). What's really surprising is the ratio of women to men featured in the entire series. David Lehman seems to be rather "forward-thinking" so the number, or lack thereof, is plain unsettling.

2008 is almost gone. Will you miss it? I feel conflicted about the whole year. I've been lucky to have some editors publish (or accept) my poems, & belong to the Coldfront Crew, as well as, the No Tells collective, & as Ferlinghetti once wrote, "I've lain with beauty," plus I started teaching (which was the main goal of getting my MFA) & I moved to Chinatown which I love. I also witnessed the historical moment of Obama being elected as President. Yet, I remain skeptical of politics & life in general & in specific. More than anything, I'm exhausted & feel like I prolly regressed emotionally- which is disappointing. Been thinking a lot this year of individual responsibility to self & social responsibility to "others," especially the others we consider to be "close" and "dear" & well I have a lot of work to do in both regards; 'tis a heavy tiring load this thing of living. sigh &/or y-a-w-n

Anyway, yadda yadda ya... how was your year? Shits & giggles? Verse & boo-yas? Slinky songs & long arms? Smooth jumpers & fresh kicks? Do tell, do tell!

While I was away I mostly read jubilat, issue 15. There's an interview with the philospher Richard Rorty. Not everything completely jived with me, although I'll admit I know almost nothing of his work so don't have the proper background to orientate some of his comments & as a good friend is apt to remind-- my education is "spotty at best," but if you want to talk a little Whitman then I'm all ears. Below is the question/answer, which I think is a good note to end this post on... oh that & buy the issue 'cause it's pretty good.

I wanted to ask you about Whitman. You link Whitman and Lincoln a lot. What role do you think Whitman played in the American consciousness?

One thing Whitman did was simply to write poems about Lincoln. "O Captain! My Captain!" "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"-- these poems were very widely known. When I was a kid in elementary school, we had to recite, "O Captain! My Captain!" and that was eighty years after Lincoln's death. Just helping to fix Lincoln in the popular imagination through poetry was one thing that Whitman did, but the other thing was to write things like "Democratic Vistas," which said that the spirit of Lincoln is the true spirit of the country, that the hopefulness that Lincoln showed is the hope that can change the world. That we are naturally the place where the world will come to learn what it is to live in the human future. Just this inspirational, entirely secular rhetoric was very important, because it was at a level of exultation that had been met only by religious rhetoric. Whitman put it into secular poetry.

Last Day at last at last at last

I turned in my LaGuardia grades on Wednesday and handed in all my paperwork yesterday plus picked up my desk copy for Eng 102 so I'm completely done with Long Island City. Today is my last day at College of Staten Island. A few office visits and a half an hour to collect final papers. I'll submit grades on Monday then take a nice long break from ferry rides!

The timing couldn't be better as I have a ridiculous amount of reading piling up:

Barrow Street 10th Anniversary
Jubilat issue 15
Crayon Number 5 (which is massive & I've only read the Sawako piece)
Poets & Writers Jan/Feb 09 (but I don't read this cover to cover)
The Voyeur, a short story by Nicolette Wong
from Unincorporated Territory, by Craig Santos Perez

& then this is what I picked up from the library

B, a novel, by Jonathan Baumbach
Wake- Up Calls, 66 Morning poems by Wanda Phipps
The House that Jack Built, The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer (I've been waiting over 6mths for this to come in)
The Bubble of American Supremacy, correcting the misuse of American power, by George Soros
Collected Books of Jack Spicer
Selected poems 1958-1984, by John Weiners

I've read a bunch of Spicer so I won't read the collected books from cover to cover & I've read very little of Weiners' work so I'll randomly flip through this book to see if anything grabs me. If there is a better single volume book by Weiners that I should read, please let me know. I'll read the morning poems in the morning & the novel will be my train, ferry, & before bed book.

The Enclave Wrap-up

The reading went well. I'm pretty sure it was the absolute nicest day thusly this summer so the fact that some people choose to spend it in a dark bar on Saturday afternoon is the mark of the devoted. All the readers did a nice job and it was a personal pleasure to read with CAConrad (another illadelph born OGP). I picked up and have already read his chapbook consisting of "Frank" poems. Good stuff. Odd. Wit and introspective intellect in the fuck-offish way- i.e. so perfect punk I felt new again.

Since I have such a long commute to work I've been reading the journals Lilies and Cannonball and Jubilat (which has a poem by David Sewell (also graduated from NS same year as I) and two poems by Prageeta). The new ish of BOMB has an amazing interview with the artist, Kristen Mamma Andersson- though my one fey knock would be that perhaps Christian Hawkey (yes the poet) did write a bit too much and I felt as if I read more about him than the subject of the interview... oh well

Alice Quinn Rules

No seriously she does! Last night after the PSA New Poets event myself, Bernie Kravitz, and Siobahn Ciminera were standing around drinking beer and wine at the reception and who comes easing over to our circle? None other than Alice Quinn. The four of us just simply talked the evening away. Quinn also a huge fan of the poet, Claudia Rankine. There's a wonderful interveiw with Claudia Rankine in issue 12 of Jubilat. I've also worked (NS weekend workshops) with the screen-writer Marilyn Goldin who is one of Alice's best friends so the 8 degrees became something more like 2 degrees which is about right for a city like New York.

Anyways, Alice is a sweetheart and if you see her around say hello 'cause it'll probably be one of the best conversations you'll have in quite some time. I mean she does do everything for poetry!