Sorry I’ve been away from the blog – I got swept up in politics (the Iowa stuff was so exciting! And I’m just as excited about tomorrow’s NH primary) and socializing (thanks to several friends who made the trek out to see me in my far peninsular corner in the wind and the snow!) and general busywork. I’m still battling a cough and ear thing that has just persisted and persisted, and hoping that our stint of 30-ish weather, bitter cold and greyish skies will break soon for some slightly warmer, sunnier weather. It was 70 today in one of my previous hometowns, Cincinnati. And 60 in NYC…Sigh. Here in the land of rain, fog, bitter cold winds, more rain, occasional blizzards and floods and windstorms, it feels like winter will last forever.

Yes, I am going to AWP (so send those party and reading invitations my way 😉 and I registered just before the crazy thing sold out! I’m not staying at the conference hotel (which I bet will be swamped anyway.) I am looking forward to the bookfair and running into old friends and doing my Steel Toe signing stint with Mary but am nervous about giving the pedagogy paper (eek!) I am also looking forward to NYC, a city that lots of people in the midwest and northwest assume I come from because I talk so fast.

I’ve just been in a bit of a doldrums lately, haven’t been good about writing or sending stuff out, and am still having hassles with Redmond’s post office of disappearing PO box mail, but I did manage to read two worthwhile fiction books – Haruki Murakami’s After The Quake, a terrific and apocalyptic set of short stories set after Kobe’s tragic earthquake where people mysteriously find and lose their souls, and Melissa Bank’s Wonder Spot. Melissa wrote The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, which I felt ambiguous about – this book had several spots where I rolled my eyes at the author’s self-conscious cleverness, but also several where I nearly cried laughing and also felt that weird kinship where you’re lulled into thinking “this writer is just like me.” One of those pieces was when the narrator says she “likes Hemingway and Fitzgerald, but not Faulkner” and describes dealing with her claustrophobia at plays by eating lifesaver candy, because then she has the feeling that she can “escape through her mouth.” Ha! I bring candy to poetry readings and airplanes for exactly that reason.

Last of all, praise for my publisher, Steel Toe Books. God bless publishers who actually send poets royalty checks every year, especially when they’re broke after Christmas/right before AWP. I know some poets never hear back about their numbers and their promised royalties mysteriously never materialize. Tom Hunley is great about that stuff. And a big, big “Thank You!” to everyone who bought my book and taught my book this year.