The reason for the season...

Ahhhh, spring... when a young poet's thoughts turn to fellowships and mailboxes.


I've been hearing the news this week, good and bad. From folks waiting to hear... waiting for the wrathful or benevolent hand of God to pluck them from their job at the pizza-place, their mom's spare-room, their boyfriend's bed... and transport them to the next phase of life.


Or not.


I remember so well my own call from Jorie, telling me I could move to Iowa and be happy, proud, excited. I quit the boyfriend and the pizza-place the very next day.


And it never ends. Here I am, 7 years later, waiting to hear from other places and things... books and fellowships, adjunct-positions and summer jobs.


But I love the mailbox-moment. The phone ringing when you're afraid to answer. Afraid that you'll be nudged along to the next thing.


Just remember everyone... it isn't a ladder, but rather a meandering path... a wonderful meandering bewildering path.


Enjoy it!

More of the sublime...

A few weeks back, I emailed Tomhop to ask whether it might be possible to get a deal if I bought two entire copies of his amazing sister's entire catalogue. Tom is amazing himself, and he used to be amazing alongside his amazing sister (Cindy) as GLORIA DELUXE, the single best band in America today.


I know this sounds hyperbolic, but truly... this band is the band that I heard and, never having written nonfiction or journalism of any kind, felt the need to pitch a music review, just to testify to the wonderfullness of the music!


Which, incidentally, resulted in me starting a "career" as a music reviewer, an UTNE reprint, and a wonderful correspondence with Grant at No Depression. Not to mention hours of blissful listening. That's a lot to get from a CD.


"A litle piece of faith just fell on me... and it's stretching out about as far as I can see..."


Anyways... Cindy wrote back and said she'd put something in the mail. Much to my absolute surprise, she sent me two copies of each CD for FREE!


Over the last few years, I had loaned out my copies and lost track of them. So now I'm listening to nothing else but Cindy's sweet flattened -out voice, which somethow manages irony and melancholy and sarcasm and raunch and love and faith all at once. And the saws and accordians and electric guitars and radios and things are good too.


She sounds like I'd imagine a sullied silent-film star might sound with a broken heart.


"Now how can I live without whiskey and money when I know that forever is such a long time?"

And then the sublime...

I got a package today, from Emma who is now in China, but the package was mailed just before she left. As if I don't miss her enough without reminders of how well she "gets me."


She sent me salt water taffy from Rohobeth, MD. A keychain.


But mostly she sent this odd and amazing book, THE ROAD IS WIDER THAN LONG, an image diary from the Balkans, written, photographed, and painted by Roland Penrose, a surrealist, in 1938. This Getty edition is so beautiful, and Emma and I have been planning such a trip as this... to find our family graves in Moldova.


"She cuts her finger while mixing salad.
Nobody could understand."


"How imprudent of you to have died."


"Then the journeys alone that fill the world become fertile."

Like, Totally Gross...

Today I turned in my review of Deborah Lipstadt's new book, History on Trial. It's all about this wack-job holocaust denier who sued her for libel.


Totally revolting.


Today I also took Newt and Nora (the pups) in for dewormification.


Even more revolting.


I'll spare you all the details.


In other news, I had an Australian meat pie for lunch....

Dropping a Secret...

This doesn't have to do with books or babies, so it may not seem like HUGE news, but it's HUGE to me...


And now that my students know I can tell you too.


I will officially, at the end of this school year, become a part-time Hillel "consultant" and begin the search for teaching gigs here and there. I will drop from the 60 or so hours a week to 15 or so hours a week and do my damnedest to find a little adjunct and freelance work.


My hubband is being a doll, and supporting this, letting me gamble on myself for a year, finish the novel-revisions, send out the poetry mss, write write write.


And my boss is also being a doll, helping me do this professionally, so that the students get what they need, the agency gets what it needs, and I get TIME! I'll be a contract-labor girl again, and money will be tight, but OH!


So if you know anyone at magazines that pay (lord knows I have plenty of work that doesn't) or you have a lead on a part-time teaching gig of some kind in Atlanta... by all that is holy, email me! I'll need the work.


In other news... there are crocus and daffydilly blooms outside my window. Spring has sprung, it would seem. Yow-ZAH!

More on TWO SURFACES....

One of these days I'll write an essay about this, but for now:


After further discussion about the two surfaces, it seems worth naming them officially.


It has been brought to my attention that evaluative terms, terms that seek to define the "what" of each aesthetic layer, might not be the best choice.


See, not everyone will read each poem like I do, and not everyone has the same process of reading. But even if one's process and predilictions differ from mine, the two surfaces provide a valuable way of discussing the experience of reading.... and the two surfaces provide a valuable way of avoiding the "all head" or "all heart" poem.


Most importantly, I hope that the two surfaces might push readers and writers to look for the worthwhile, the "other surface" in a poem that doesn't initially interest them...


But to call the surfaces the "sensual" and the "intellectual" isn't quite right, and it is a little evaluative. So instead I'm naming the first surface the NOW and the second surface the LATER.


Providing us with a delectable treat that doesn't judge. If I think of better names I'll re-name, but for now....


Don't forget to brush your tooth.

I wish I had a camera...

Or at least, that the battery in my camera worked, so that I might show you pictures of the little guy, who is so TINY! He has no name yet. We are considering Goliath.


In other news, Tony has a new blog over at POETRY DAILY-er and it's gonna be the shiznit.


In still other news, NICK turned out to be my old friend Charlie. That's a weird one, when a blog-friend writing under a nom-de-keyboard turns out to be an old friend living in the same town where you live.


In still other news, LAURA and I accidentally bought tickets to AWP on the same morning flight. Can you say "bloody mary, please?"


And the really big news, which I haven't posted about here, because it's too "real" is that my sister, who is also my best friend, moved to China this week. Indefinitely.


Because she is brave and adventurous and excited by the things that happen in the world.


She went by herself, to teach English for a pittance, because China is an incredible place, and undergoing massive change, and it seemed the place to be, to write, to see change occur.


But I miss her very much, and I worry, and I hope she'll start a blog and call me soon, and write me some kickass things for Killing the Buddha, and have fun!


Hey EMMA!!!!! I love you.

How much will you lose?

Check out the CALCULATOR and find out how much you stand to lose under the Bush privatization plan....

My first CREATIVE LOAF!!!

Baked fresh for you...


That's right, I'm now a local journalist...


Check out my lil interview with Miss Neko Case!


Yow-ZA!

A tiny puppy-thing...

It lives in my house, at least for today, squeals and grunts, looks like a piglet. It smells funny and sleeps in my hair, in the crook of my neck. It has no name and I found it one street over, in a backyard/ Today I'll go back for the sister.


In other news... I will soon stop "editing" for Killing the Buddha and begin EDITING! for Killing the Buddha. So if religion (of any sort or definition) interests you, send me some submissions. We're doing a little redesign and relaunch we think, putting ourselves on a more reasonable and regular schedule. Send me your essays, but only the brilliant ones.


I have a new poem. An experiment with a version of the swivel line. Idon't like it, the poem. As with fforms so often, it feels phony. I DO like the first four lines, but can't seem to start over. So I'm posting the four lines in hopes that I'll see them differently up here:


On Occasion I Have Been Known


On Occasion I have been known.
To drink is to consume the drink.
In the basements, behind the doors.
That creak is the creak I mean.

Defending the "mainstream"...

Do you listen to pop music of any variety? Any rap or country or folk or indie? Do you hold the lyrics accountable for the same level of "interest"? Do you read narrative fiction? Why do those genres have a place in "simple communication" that differs from poetry...


Which again, is not to say poetry can't do both, but I'm arguing for the viability of the mainstream aesthetic here.


Why must sincere personal content immediately be categorized as hackneyed, or sentimental. "Standing in a cornfield thinking of my dead grandmother... I began to masturbate, wanted a cheeseburger, decided to join the Marines." Not that this is a poem, but the fact of expected narrative format does not always mean lack of interest.


Oppen has that prose section in "Of Being Numerous" where the dude rides a bike into a tree. Is that sentimental? Is that not of interest, simply by right of being persoanal and narrative?


My fear is that typifying a "mainstream" or an "avant-gard" or whatev... means that people who have already joined one camp won't EVER be able to truly read below the first surface of another.


They will see the man in the cornfield with the dead grandmother and not read beyond the fact that he is standing, in simple prose, and that his grandmother is dead...


I'll give you that most "mainstream" is more likely to take language for granted... becasue there are easier conventions...

I'm challenged"...

In the good way.


What do I mean by "accessible" poetry?


Good question!


Let me see if I can find a way to explain it... nobody ever seems to know what I mean.


Populist/slam poets, who want people to "just get it" think I'm a snob... and the studiious folks writing to be "studied" think I'm an apologist for the morons, or a moron myself.


I think it's interesting/funny that the Marxist poets are so often the least populist. I get the theory, but I think using Marxist rhetoric to defend work that most people find inaccesible...is bunk.


For me a poem has two surfaces. We can call them the physical and the cranial, or the sensual and the academic, or whatev. I've never tried to write about this before, so i don't have names. I enjoy poetry that works on both.


The top "accesible" surface is a Hallmark card without the second surface, though these poems are good for prison inmates to send to the girlfriend on the outside. Poems that skip the first surface and go straight for the head are good for writing papers about in a PhD program, but they feel false. I need that first surface to connect to. I need to care a little to be willing to "work".


I won't call it comfort because the experience can be many "feelings".


Writers who work on both levels are everywhere on the "aesthetic map". Oppen, Dickinson, Stevens, Berryman, Stein, Hejinian, Williams, and yes, my beloved James Wright. Some work better on one level, some better on another, and the "first" connection isn't always narrative, but there's something. Some reason you recite it to yourself in the car, read it aloud to a friend when you get drunk. I love Eastern European poetry for this reason. It has an initial "weight." It makes me groan.


Certainly I don't think everyone reads poems the same way, but I think that writers working on both levels should have some potential appeal for everyone.


Writers who write for just the first surface don't interest me, though (like a bad pop song) they DO get stuck in my head when I end up at a reading. And poets that focus on the second level are interesting to discuss in a class, and I can get fired up in that class, but when I leave the class I don't "care." Except as it affects my own head/writing. The poem doesn't matter to me "in the world."


Is this making any sense?


So for me, accesibility is very populist, but it doesn't mean dumbing down. It just means there's a veneer, a music or a story or a shape that might appeal to a rider on a "Poetry in Motion" bus. To give "the world" a fucking chance to care. But that veneer doesn't mean the second surface isn't there.

Dear Adam Chardin...

Or Adam C. Hardin...


Please stop sending me private emails through Foetry.com. I am no longer reading posts at Foetry. I wasn't interested in what you had to say before, and I am certainly not interested now. I have never looked at the thread you refer to, and I think you're a moron.


You can eat my ass with a spoon.

Crony & The Nepotist's Review...

When we were in Grad School, Antoone Wilson had an idea for a magazine called "CRONY " where the only way to submit poems or stories was if you knew an editor. Literaly, it would be a network of friends and the people who knew people who knew people...


We all used to joke about it and plan for it. There was a crit magazine too, The Nepotist's Review." This was a response to the nepotism we thought was upsetting. Because it goes on. We know it goes on. Even IOWA people dislike that it goes on.


Foetry wants to divide the world into an "us" or "them" dialogue. Unfortunately, the "us" of Foetry includes some of the stupidest cruelest people I've ever come across. So although I would have been in "us" if they did it right... I guess now I'm a "them" despite whatever I may actually believe. Too bad.


The following is from my comment box. Foetry sent me a note and I replied. Now that I've left the site for good.


foetry said...
Not sure if we're welcome here, but wish we could really talk. We just don't understand how you can defend your blogger friends who set up wins in contests, or at the least, recognized the work of friends -- and they are friends and/or students -- does the money involved not get to you? Think of the Georgia contest -- which was getting 700 entries at $20 each -- $14,000. Is it fair that Jorie picked her husband or that Brenda Hillman picked Laura Mullen? It's just not, and we think you believe that too, but now that your own friends are implicated, you aren't willing to stand for what's right and fair.


Take a stand, Laurel. You're better than them.
6:02 PM


Laurel said...
I will take a stand and I will deal with things in my own way, using tools and allies I believe in. The choice isn't "Foetry" or "Corruption."


What happened at Foetry last week made it clear to me that Foetry isn't my friend. And the anonymity, the unwillingness you have to be accountable for the damage you might potentially do to innocents, that scares me horribly.


I'm not disagreeing that there's corruption and it should be dealt with... but your methods and your anonymity call your purpose into question. I'll find my own way, thanks.


And no, it isn't because of my friends. I've always had friend who benefitted from the ugly stuff and I'm very honest with them, which is part of why Iowa was hard for me...


It's just that I think Foetry sounds irrational and desperate... to the point of being incredibly offensive. Mallie is one of the ugliest people I've ever met. He speaks for the site and you never reprimand him. So as far as I'm concerned, he IS the site.


I won't come back to the site. Ever

AWP 2007...

Have you heard? ATLANTA IN 07!!!


Book your room now at the Laurel Snyder guest house. Each reservation comes complete with a chance to walk my dog and watch me get tanked and stumble home.


Plus I make GREAT bison chili for dinner and phenomenal coffee each morning.


Plus we have an XBOX.


Plus we have a recording studio and about a jillion guitars, a drum kit and lots of other instruments, for drunken poetry jam sessions.


Plus DSL.


Only three rooms remaining!

I am hereby banned from FOETRY...

Though twas ME who banned ME. Because it's finished as far as I'm concerned.


There are a few people there who seem smart and interested in making the world better. Mostly, it's a bully-circle-jerk-slugfest, and I want no part of it. No more of my IP address. No sirree.


And I don't care at all who's behind it. I really don't.


Because while I'm pleased as punch that former teachers, blog-friends, my MOM, might like my work and want to publish me in their little mags...


I KNOW that I don't send my book to places where I have an "in" not because I'm afraid, but because that's the way to be. My momma raised me right.


Beyond contests? Sure, why not! If a former teacher I like and respect calls me tomorrow and says, "Oprah asked me to send her a few good writers to showcase in her "Oprah poems" series. Are you in?"


I'd do it in a heartbeat! Because I'm really not concerned with the Bullshit of it all. I don't care where I publish, or how I get there, as long as I'm not fucking someone else out of a turn. And if you I need a good dentist, I'll take a referral for that too. Finding a good dentist is HARD!


See, there are rules inside me.


I don't send to contests where I know a judge. I don't introduce bad writers to my own agent. I don't accept crap for the magazines where I work. Ask anyone! I used to read for the Iowa Review and anyone who knew me then and asked to send me poems got the same answer, "Send em to the office!" Because the last thing I want is to read my friends' work. But if I start my own magazine I'll sure as hell solicit from the brilliant people I happen to know. Right now I'm shopping a nonfiction book with my brother and sister in it. If you think that's not okay... you're a moron.


An old family friend happens to be the Exec. Editor of the NYTimes . Guess what? I've never hit him up for a job... And when I was writing music reviews I never once covered my friend Pieta, or anyone connected to her... but I did write a human interest piece about an actress I knew.

There are difference, subtle differences, and grey lines people. The world is almost always grey, which is a good reason to stay okay with yourself, inside yourself.


Because lying and cheating are poisonous. They poison your accomplishments. They make you insecure and sick inside.


I don't need Foetry, because the lines are drawn clearly for me, inside me.


I would've supported Foetry, but they're so cold and mean and careless and cruel, I never will again... as I won't be friends with anyone who calls someone I like (or most anyone) a cunt or a twat. Foetry plays very dirty.


Mostly I feel bad for them, because they just seem like really unhappy resentful people. I hope SOMEBODY loves them, but it won't be me. Nobody should be so pathetic.

What can you make from a poem???

Well, over at BORN, they make all kinds of things...


And I have just been told that they are now making something from me! I'm on pins and needles to find out just what... how exciting! I love BORN, am slightly awed by BORN.


In other news, my car is a disaster but the house is foster-free for a week. So Hubby, Kittenhead, Dave and I are all back in our normal places. Just us, the little family.


I think I will practice my guitar today.

Poem written as an antidote to thinking...

About stupid Foetry...


Only Natural


The little girl pulling the puppy’s tail
Should stop her pulling. No amount
Of force exerted will turn the puppy
Inside out, or into a skylite snowball,
Which is what she really really wants.
Even if she doesn’t know the words yet.


When I slap her, her mother looks at me.
Good mother. Bad me. The little girl
Was being a naughty, but I was worse.
The mother was being a mother. Good
Mothers sneer at people who touch kids.
I slap people who tug on tiny puppies.


I just like puppies, and slapping people.
I just can’t help myself sometimes.
I mean— this time I probably could’ve,
but so often I can’t, so what’s the use in
sometimes— when the rest of the time,
I’m killing things, or trying or wanting.


Also, please scroll down to the next post and let me know the best reading series you know about!

Please help me collect some info...

Hey all you poet-types. I'm starting a new reading series, ADULT ENTERTAINMENT!


Now I need your help, to create a blogroll of amazing reading series around this great nation.


If you oblige me by placing a link to your fave series in the comment box, we'll compile the ULTIMATE poet-book-tour together. I'll link all the wonderful bookstores, bars and coffeeshops on the ADULT ENTERTAINMENT site, and everyone will be off and running on a whirlwind tour, sure to bring fame and fortune to you and me.


So please take a sec to enter your best-ever reading spot/venue/experience in my comments. Kay?

Technical Virginity???

Is this for real? I think not... but with slightly less graphic language, it totally could be...


It's funny to me, listening to straight kids talk about anal sex like they discovered some kind of magic secret no one else knows.


In other news...


TA DA!!!!!! I hereby declare a new poetry-only reading series in East Atlanta, "ADULT ENTERTAINMENT". With any luck, we'll have Oni Buchanan here in April for our first event... "ADULT ENTERTAINMENT: WHAT ANIMALS!" And coming in October, Shanna Comptons All-star-tour visits us for "ADULT ENTERTAINMENT: GIRLIE ACTION". If we're lucky.


Coming to the ATL between April and October? Call me!


All details TBA. Now that I've posted this, I'm off to secure a venue...

TKOP (THAT Kind of Poetry)...

Janet has a good post over at Humanophone today... and I want to comment on it. She says...


I guess I'm still not used to poets who don't read outside their comfort zones, but I found that last statement offensive, in effect calling TKOP fraudulent, trying to put one over on the innocent reader. Too, several (excellent) poets had already posted notes saying that TKOP "is MKOP," and the message seemed pointed in their direction. I sent the author of the post a note pointing this out.


And as someone who likes fence-sitting, I'm where you expect to find me... right on the fence.


I ABSOLUTELY agree with Janet! What's more, I respect her for being part of an online community that doesn't always share her aesthetic. Too often people "stick to their own" and the community turns into a circle jerk. Janet is willing to be open and honest and helpful, but also participatory. Kudos to her!


But at the same time, I think it's important for the "difficult" community, the folks who love (and I'm sometimes in that crowd) TKOP to realize that their own language, the tone of their dialogue, makes other people feel disrespected. The PUSH for harder work, the desire to break new ground... these impulses tend to make folks who want to write more narrative poems, simpler poems, feel as thought the TKOP crowd has no interest in them, or their existence.


Now, we can blame this on ignorance, on the fact that the schools don't teach most of us to read Modern poetry, the divide between high and low art.... but as a fence sitter, I have an interesting perspective.


Like this...


(THIS PORTION OF THIS POST IS BEING DELETED, AS IT MAKES UNFOUNDED COMMENTS I NOW REGRET AND RESCIND)

Billy Collins is gonna die, guys. Then what?


If the TKOP crowd would show more interest in participating, and the "mainstream" would be more open to work they don't understand... we'd all be better off. I'm not saying we shouldn't have "camps" but we should do better diplomatic work. It's just dumb, this infighting.


And Mayhew chimes in, over at Bemsha Swing:


Since it's sort of a snobbism in reverse, it doesn't even seem like snobbism. After all, the victims of this prejudice ARE the snobs, those people who think they are better than us because they can understand what's going on.


... I agree with him too, but one real solution lies in being less snobbish. We need to recognize and validate the place of all kinds of art, without seeming patronizing. Even words like, "exprrimental" and "mainstream" have real connotations. What artist wants to be "mainstream"? Somebody else made up the labels but the fault lies with the folks who apply them. Just because we don't LOVE something or see it as "the project" doesn't mean it isn't valuable.


So I think this is a good lesson for today. And thank you Janet, for being in a community where you sometimes get outnumbered, but for realizing what you get from it.


The lesson? To participate. To dialogue. To be honest but respectful. To be open to new ideas, but also willing to defend your own.


If you engage someone you disagree with, and learn nothing.... it's your own damn fault. Your aren't doing the "difficult" work.

Art in Chicago...

If you live in Chicago, please go see my lovely friend Jamie's lovely paintings.


She's amazing! See?

On Foetry...

I had not visited Foetry since the genesis, but yesterday I got sucked in again, via Laura Carter's blog. Here is my (Today) post... and likely my last (on Foetry... I ain't pulling no Schiavo/Tost/McCullough) post.


Dear Foetry,


I think you really do risk your credibility.


I was so excited when you began. I DO believe in your mission, and was willing to participate. But I think you need to be open about who you are. Which is why I use my name here (though I couldn't remember my password and so created a second account).


And as someone who often posts about such things, and gets in trouble often over these matters, I feel comfortable discussing this. I GOT TO KNOW BRENDA specifically because I criticized her on my blog, and she emailed me, and we had a DIALOGUE about her poems and reading style, and it was good for everyone, and we both learned something.


Jorie is someone I had personal interaction with, and could speak about personally, offering my name as collateral. I only ever recounted personal memories, things I KNEW to be true. And if Jorie wants to talk about the things I've said, I'll meet her face to face.


Rumors with no source are another matter. It is not fair to bash someone without being willing to risk your own reputation if they turn out to be unture. It IS cowardly. I stopped visiting Foetry because it turned into this, and only came back because I read Laura C's blog, and was curious. I won't be back anytime soon, unless you guys claim your victories, and your mistakes, openly.


Poetry is a small world. A community. If we cannot publish work we admire, because we once happened to meet the person at a a party, or we know their work from magazines we like, this is silly.


A student or close friend of a judge...winning a contest? That's wrong!


But if I were a judge, and found an amazing book by someone whose name I vaguely knew from a amgazine, or who had attended a panel I gave at AWP? Hell yeah!


A good book should be judged by its own merits. As long as the judge can be objective about those merits, its fine by me.


I am not on any inner circle, and the contacts I have were made mostly online, and not at Iowa. My AWP dossier includes mostly online folks, people who've mentored me without knowing me. Not Jorie or Jim or Mark.


But if someone knows me because I write, because through my blog they met my work and liked it... because on their own they sought my poems out? I earned that!


I don't sleep with teachers or fawn. I just write.


Again, I respect what you're doing, but I think you should consider your mission and not your own neck. Nothing terrible will happen if you use your name and piss some people off.


Trust me, it's okay to be disliked.


xoLaurel Snyder http://jewishyirishy.com

Oh blessed, blessed day...

It's like a snow day, today, because I didn't know it was coming, couldn't plan for it. Maybe Mr. Fridgie (my Volvo wagon) knew I needed such a day and intentionally began skipping cylinders. In any case, here I am, well rested. I already wrote my freelance assignment for the day, for The Story, a little neighborhood rag, about the East Atlanta Community Association meeting. And I've had my coffee. That's all I've done, at noon. All I've done. How nice.


Best quote of the meeting last night, which was interesting, and has gears turning in my head, from a 33-year resident of the neighborhood, to the yuppies on the council, nice though they may be...


"Everyone always comes to these meetings and talks about wine shops., but what about the rest of the neighborhood... in MY neighborhood we don't worry about wine shops. We worry about Crack Houses."


Illuminating, no?


Plans for the rest of the day include sweeping a little, reading a novel, writing a poem, making a (turkey) BLT and a broccoli salad, then eating it.

Highlights of the week...

1. Sitting in the amazing winter sun in a T Shirt in front of Joe's with Jilly's incredible friend Jessica. Making a new friend named Jessica. Progressive Jew. Writer. Native Atlantan. Kindred spirit for sure.


2. Fostering "G" for the week. Watching Dave and G tussle and kiss. Sleeping in a dogpile.


3. Making red beans with oregano and red wine, with sweet Italian (turkey) sausage and a big green salad. Adding a little salt. A little pepper. A little more garlic. Yum.


4. Hearing from Joyce Maynard that Half/life is something she would "really like to do."


5. Inventing my invention, but NOT finding out how long a fucking patent takes.


6. Chris coming home.


7. Drinking hot chocolate WITH cream in bed, while watching the censored Sex & the City.


8. Calling in to work for tomorrow becasue the mechanic said I was, under NO circumstances, to drive my car until he worked on it. Blessed unexpected day off.


9. Talking to the Creative Loafing dude, finding out they liked my story, weren't changing it at all, and would love to have me do a personal essay (MY FAVE) on "living with a musician."


10. Drew's party, which involved a singalong with accordian, clarinet, zills, and drums. Also grilled peppers and chicken. Also wine. Also a fountain of fire, a volcano, a fire sculpture made of propane, wax, and a wooden stump. It was a beautiful night.


A GOOD WEEK!

Not normal...

As you no doubt no, from the Kareem saga, etc... I am a dog lover, and tend to collect animals with some regularity. I work for a fabulous rescue group her ein ATL called Doghouse Rescue, and I foster constantly. Awhile back I found a Dobie/Shephard mix called Kareem 2, AKA Stinky.


When I found Stinky, I posted to various regional "Lost Pet" sites. A month passed. Long story short, Stinky now lives a few houses down with a Rotty and 2 Poodle-ish dogs.


Then today, I got an emailf rom someone who claimed to have lost Stinky, based on my description. I wrote to them and it became clear it wasn't "Paolo's" dog. But Paolo expressed an interest in adopting Stinky.


I explained that Stinky had found a home, but that I'd keep my eyes peeled for a Dobie. Paolo was appreciative, told me he lived in Miami and was sendingme a pic of his "other dog", next to an almost naked model. Beside a pool. Glamor shot. But not quite pornographic.


I tried to load the pic but it won't appear.


Please explain?

One statement, one question...

Statement:


I have another HALF/LIFE contributor... an "I can't believe they agreed" contributor. This book is getting better and better.


Question:


Does anyone know anything about patents? I have a small idea, a tiny invention. And I want to get a patent but don't know how...

HOLY SHITE!!!

Charles Wright is insane and Josh Beckman is a lucky sumbitch.


A FOR-PROFIT??? Poetry press. Can it really be done?


Read the story here, and thanks to Jilly for the link!


I guess everyone will be getting VERSE for the holidays next year. I'll do most anything to support this kind of crass-commercialism in the arts.


GO Free-market poetry!

Pound, NoButt...

Two things.


The first is that I went to the Ezra Pound Event last night at the Word and Praxis series. I expected a brussel-sprouts hour, boring but good for me. It was not. It was WONDERFUL! The speaker explained (among other things that I don't know shit about) how the characters for abstract terms are created in Chinese , as compilations of concrete images, (for instance the character for "bright" includes the symbol for multimple "suns") and then she explained Pound's interest in poetry, in like terms. Compounds of other things. Made sense. Not sure if I can explain it, but it made good sense. Poetry as an accretion of sorts.


Except the question it left me with... was that if Pound saw poetry as a compound of the tradition, then in order to be able to really read Pound, one would have to be familiar with everything produced by the tradition... and everything that Pound knew.


Hard enough 100 years ago, harder still today. And it informs my (mis)understanding of the Modernist lack-of-interest in accessibility. I need to chew on this. More alter, after I read Corey's archives.


The other thing is that you have to check out This Site and its reaction to This News... which I found via Slapnose. As usual.


License plate oppression. What'll they think of next?!

Reviewing things...

This Neko Case review has me digging out my girlie faves... Lucinda Williams, Grey DeLisle, the McGarigles, Freakwater, Pieta Brown, Linda Ronstadt, and the BIG ONE, Gloria Deluxe AKA Cindy Hopkins.


Good music to me, especially good lady-music is equal parts twang, sincerity, melancholia, and BRAIN.

Things are breathing...

On the horizon:


New York in April for Pete's Big Salmon.


Vancouver in March, for AWP.


Chattanooga in March, for the Meacham Conference.


And even moreso, and sooner, my wonderfullest-sister-in-the-world is moving around the world, to China indefinitely. Not sure how to feel about that.


Must remember that now is NOW and be in it. So I'm off to walk the dog, and then to learn about Pound, and listen to Pounding. Come with?

As the sheep...

As the sheep becomes mutton, so the secret becomes a story...


The recipe involves both age and destruction.


To the slaughter we go...


(The mountain secrets are sweeter, feeding as they do on the mountain grasses. Then too, something about altitude)

Half a secret slips...

Okay.


It's been a crazed week for me, as my agent called and told me that we had a press interested, and wanting to see more... more of the n/f JewishyIrishy book proposal, the anthology of essays I've been calling HALF/LIFE.


Great news! If we had more to show...


But I wasn't expecting this turn of events, and so I had told my authors that there was no rush whatsoever. So this week was a scramble, as I sent my Mafia Thugs to the doors of unsuspecting half-Jewish writers everywhere, to strongarm them into quickly finishing something for me to show the press...


Now.


What happened was wonderful. And I'm blogging it not because we got a deal. We didn't. But because whether or not we get a deal, this was a major success for me. a happy-making thing.


The essays I got made me cry. From friends and strangers and siblings. Unfinished bits of prose that made me so excited, so touched, from unexpected places.


To such a degree that if nobody wants to risk publishing this book, I'll make it myself and peddle it to churches, temples, and indie bookstores.


Which is why I'm letting this secret slip out. I've already won, and I don't fear jinxing it anymore.


This will happen.

Today I'm a busy girl...

Writing my first bit for Creative Loafing!!! A story on Neko Case, who is SO incredible. Did a phone interview with her last night from a loud Italian restaurant. And the new record!!! Wow.


It's been awhile since I've done any music writing, and I'd forgotten the many perks....


Also today, I'm giving a talk at Georgia State , for the Council on Interfaith Concerns. About the "Jewish perspective" on sex.


There's nothing like telling Christian student groups that Jews think sex is the BEST!

Today I feel honored...

Eduardo has posted the poem I wrote from his titles!


&


Corey is helping me understand.


In other news, the agent is cranky with me, as I have not complied. And the secrets are mounting.