Congratulations to Jessica Goodfellow, the winner of this year’s Concrete Wolf chapbook contest, which I had the pleasure of judging. Jessica’s poetry is fiercely intelligent, on the experimental side, and displays her knowledge of math. My blurb will be better than that, I promise. Read more here: http://concretewolf.com/2005%20Chapbook%20winners%20list.htm. Their chapbooks are beautiful – take a look at Alison Pelegrin’s Squeezers for proof.
The perfect post-Easter meditation…comparing the Easter bunny and Totoro…Has anyone mentioned how Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro echoes the spiritual hunger and loneliness in Psalm 73? And John 14? The heartbreaking depiction of desire for a comforting God/spirit in the face of disaster…Pretty sneaky how Miyazaki wraps it all up in a round, bouncing, fuzzy-cat-owl creature. This is a theme I can’t get out of my head, especially as I’m still obsessed with Hayao Kawai’s “The Japanese Psyche: Major Motifs in the Fairy Tales of Japan,” which compares the Shinto and Taoist impulses and Japanese archetypes to Western mythological archetypes. This guy is a brilliant religion scholar who wrote a whole book devoted to interpreting fairy tale imagery. I wish I could find him and buy him a coffee! You know how you feel sometimes when you find a book that wonderful?
I think I’m finished with my Louise Gluck’s Averno review for Cincinnati Review. It’s about 2200 words, which is pretty long for a review, but it takes into account the trajectory of her work over time, how this book compares to others, etc. A weight off my mind. Now, onto fifteen other projects! Including finishing up submissions at Silk Road.
I hope those of you in the Portland, Oregon vicinity will stop by to see fellow blogger Peter Pereira (a big time poetry star, what with his winning that Copper Canyon book prize, etc.) and I read at 3 PM on Saturday at the literary Wordstock festival, in the Oregon Convention Center. We will be signing books afterwards, is my understanding. Hey, you should really hear Peter read – he’s a great reader! As for me, I promise to try not to be too boring. I think I’m going to read the funny stuff – keep it light for the crowds, right? Sometimes I get into dramatic mode but I’m not feeling that right now. Also I might read some of my new animé/Japanese fairy tale poems.
Still sickly (struggling to get over tonsillitis before this weekend…) so think good thoughts for me 🙂 Note to self: Next time, schedule book release for a healthy time. Not cold and flu season: note that flu season just peaked in Seattle in the first week of April.

Happy Easter Weekend, to those of you who celebrate it – and those who don’t, check out the wacky Easter candy anyway. I mean, shiny marshmallow chicks? Who doesn’t love that?
Sorry I have been away this week. I’ve been fighting off a cold and trying to get a backlog of work done. Thanks to all of you who have bought my new book, and you well-wishers, and those who sent me e-mail – many thanks! Remember to contact me if you want to do a book swap and if you want a review copy, to e-mail editor@steeltoebooks.com. I’ve already emptied one box of books and I’m starting on the second. Have I mentioned frosty chocolate milkshakes for everyone? Or pink-frosted cupcakes. We’ve got to celebrate the good! The news is so depressing lately I just want to shield my eyes from the various news sources. It would be so not smart to enter into a war with Iran. There’s a large number of young progressive Iranians (many of whom are pro-democracy, pro-Western, whatever – at least they are right now…) who are not our enemies. It’s just the people at the top who are the problem (sound familiar?) I just hope the folks at the top of our government remember that. If we go in with military force then how can we hope to “win the hearts and minds” of Iran’s people? And I’m not saying there aren’t problems in Iran – in, of all places, the May issue of Oprah Magazine, which is not usually where I get my international news – there’s a profile of a heroic Iranian woman lawyer trying to raise the legal age limit for marriage for girls (it used to be nine – it’s now twelve) and publicly defend the families whose little girls have been raped and murdered, only to be charged money when the rapists go to jail. True! Under the current law regime in Iran. Fairly horrible stuff. But if you nuke Iran, you’re going to be killing heroes like her indiscriminately with the jerkwads. Fact.
An interesting and intelligent debate was spawned after Publisher’s Weekly ran an article about online poetry journals and blogs and the article failed to mention a single woman. I checked my blog roll, which is almost exactly fifty percent women and fifty percent men, and I think that’s typical of the online breakdown in gender, so I don’t understand how women got completely ignored. Interesting takes on it on Kristy Bowen’s blog and Anne Boyer’s, as well as a bunch of others. On the plus side, I’m glad someone at Publisher’s Weekly talked about poetry blogging and such, since it’s been a thing since well, I don’t know, 2003? Hmm, does that mean poetry blogging is officially over since it’s been recognized by a major media outlet? Soon everything will be co-opted by Old Navy or something. Coming soon: Poems about Fleece!
(Also, a note: if your book is classified as “feminist theory” rather than “poetry” – um, what does this mean? Have I secretly been writing theory instead of poetry and just been unaware of it? So, if you’re looking for the book in a regular bookstore, it’s under “feminist studies” or something like that. Bizarrely. Well, it could just as easily have ended up in the comic-book section, I guess, so I shouldn’t complain.)
The funniest (and saddest) Jim Behrle cartoon ever: But you thought Jim was the only poet-cartoonist on the net? Check out Margaret Atwood’s cartoons at http://www.owtoad.com/comics.html. Also see her non-cartoon – the Rocky Road to Paper Heaven publishing “tips/sermon.”

Part I.
My book, Becoming the Villainess, is finally out! Time to sing the book song, book book book…
You can purchase a signed copy from me here
or you can get it from Steel Toe Books here
or from Amazon
or from B&N
or you can order it from Open Books, the poetry-only bookstore in Seattle…
Buy it! Tell your friends to buy it! Then buy it some more! 🙂

Part II.
Okay, dragged myself to another reading (despite the fact that I’ve been fighting off some kind of killer virus that requires me to sleep 14 hours a day) – this time Mary Ruefle, Tyehimba Jess (author of Leadbelly) and Peter Gizzi. Tyehimba was a great performer, and his persona poems about the musician and songwriter Leadbelly, especially those in the voice of his guitar, very accomplished. Mary was direct and unembellished in her reading style, and read new work, as yet unpublished, that was both wittier and packed more emotion that any of her previous work I’ve read. Ruefle quote: “Writing is a type of listening…when I was younger I thought it was about what I had to say, now I know it is about listening. “
In other news, I finished the hideous and greatly feared essay of the so-called “essay semester.” So now I can concentrate on “real” work…
For Miyazaki fans – Cartoon Network is showing “My Neighbor Totoro” this Thursday in prime time – 7:30 PM West Coast time. Park yourselves and any impressionable young children in front of the tv, and prepare to see a children’s movie done the way all children’s movies should be – with heart, imagination, whimsy, and spiritual depth.

Updated…
Jeffrey’s poem can be found here and my fellow Steel Toe Books author Martha Silano has a poem up on Verse Daily here.
Thanks to all for your kind words and wishes on the Verse Daily thing. Especially Paul for sending me a heads-up e-mail about it. And Kelli who posted the announcement on the Wompo list. I think Jeffery Bahr may be up tomorrow!
I promised quotes from the Tony Hoagland reading and Q&A session from the SAL series, which made me label him as a New Sincerist. I didn’t take quite as many notes as I’d hoped, so I apologize for the brevity.
My favorite quote of the evening:
“If you’re not using your imagination, someone else will.”
Tony is an interesting writer in the discursive/narrative vein, somewhat like a meaner spirited Billy Collins. I generally like some of his work (especially his critique of consumer culture in poems like “America”) but some poems I’m not sure exactly how to take – especially his poems about race and women. He seems like he wears a veneer of irony over his admissions of racism and – if not misogyny, at least a deep fear of women. It seems like honesty wanting to be admired for honesty’s sake. With humor. Sometimes unhumorous attempts at humor. What do you all think?
Anyway, here is the quote, which won’t be surprising for those of you who read his essay in Poetry about his discomfort with the unpopularity of narrative in the current poetry culture:
“There’s a strong experimental impulse right now in the poetry world, in which the conversation of aesthetics has eclipsed all other interesting conversations. And the conversation has become very insular, sincerity and direct statement are seen as misguided, naive.”
He also described himself as halfway in between Sharon Olds and Frank O’Hara – between the confessional and the sociological.
So, old New Sincerist? Or just a practitioner of the old sincerity? Or is he sincere at all? I admit to questioning the sincerity of his impulse towards sincerity when I read his work…
I’m going to see one of my female poetry heroes, Mary Ruefle, read on Monday, so I’ll post notes on that as well.

Thanks Verse Daily! The poem today is “Femme Fatale” from the journal The Eleventh Muse. Stay tuned to this week’s Verse Daily episodes to see if Jeffery’s poem is from the same journal – I think it may be…
I dragged myself to the Tony Hoagland reading last night and he made some comments that make me want to write an entry called “Tony Hoagland: New Sincerist?”
Back to your regularly scheduled programming…

Note: Bloggers taking over Verse Daily –
Wasn’t just a week ago Paul Guest and Matthew Thorburn were rockin’ out on Verse Daily? Well, I just got the Verse Daily newsletter, and apparently, this week, Jeffery Bahr and I are going to be making appearances. I don’t know which poems yet…stay tuned…
So, it’s a little early for my birthday (April 30th) but a nice birthday present nonetheless – thanks Verse Daily! Cake for everyone!

Speaking of taking over, props to Peter P. for being singled out on “American Life in Poetry”

PS – For those of you who have been in contact with me lately, sorry I’ve been a little stressed out/grumpy. My advice is not to start volunteering at a new university-based literary magazine during your essay semester at school while you’re also trying to write six reviews by May and do enough freelance work to support your expensive poetry habit. Anyway, I’ve been a little overwhelmed but promise to be back to my nice, normal self. Soon.

Up to my ears in theoretical essays while working on my MFA-required ever-growing essay on persona poetry in Gluck, Atwood, and Lucille Clifton, along with other more sundry assignments, but wanted to quickly echo Jordan and say how much I enjoyed The Eleventh Muse. This is no keeping-up-the-status-quo, quiet, epiphany-having-nature-walk poetry journal – idiosyncratic, sharp, edgy, weird – I liked almost every poem I’ve read so far in it. One copy is not enough! Seriously, this magazine is in my new top ten lit mag lists. Check it out.
Shoveling through submissions for Silk Road, trying to keep my head above water. Not enough time in the day!
Note: For an interesting take on Louise Gluck, look up Elizabeth Dodd’s essays on her work. The whole “personal classicim” – ie writing autobiography in persona poems while embedding it within larger archetypal/mythological narratives – description is worth the price of admission. I wish I’d had that phrase in my vocabulary earlier in my life. Plus, raise your hand if you agree that Gluck totally cops HD’s stylings and her work with mythic personas and floral personas? I said that fifteen years ago, and I still think it’s true, even if Gluck disavowed, to my face, when she visited our classroom, any knowledge of HD. Did she dissemble?

Saw Adrienne Rich read last night with Seattle Arts and Lectures. I had seen her really burn it up two years ago at the ASU Writers Conference, so I was surprised to see her so frail at this reading, a little more subdued. I heard she’s sick. But I still hope to have such a kickass reading voice when I am her age. The work she read was less political than usual too, more subtle and poetic, although she had a great line in one poem echoing the “You Go to War with the Army You Have Line,” describing patients at a war amputee hospital, “You come back from war/ with the body you have.” A lot of people said after the reading that they liked it a lot more than they expected.
I’ve been a literal nervous wreck over the book, not sleeping well at night, shoulders in crunchy knots, worrying. I am excited about the book, but the process is more stressful than I foresaw when I was dreaming about it last year. I think I will feel better when the printed books are on my doorstep. Hopefully 🙂
I still have a bunch of work piled up on my desk I haven’t gotten too yet, but here’s what I’m wondering – everyone else (okay, at least Mary and Jeff) has gotten their contributor’s copy of Eleventh Muse, where’s mine? I hope it’s in the mail today, I could use the pick me up – two weeks and the only poetry mail has been a lone rejection from Poetry Northwest. I did get a small check from my contribution to this month’s “Favorites” March/April issue of Northwest Palate (it has my pictures of Skagit Valley’s tulip festival and Bainbridge Island’s boat dock, as well as little descriptions of both locales.)
Have been struggling with two versions of a poem – one is free verse, the other is semi-rhyme-y. I’m going to post them so vote on which one you like better. Then I’ll take them down because I don’t like poems hanging out on the blog – vote now, just like American Idol, and you can make one of them disappear!

(Poems deleted…)

Happy Shamrock Day! Took me a few days to recover from AWP (especially the un-fun 16 hour-trip home, remind me never to go to Texas or anywhere else that doesn’t have direct flights from Seattle.) My proof book copy was here the day after I got back, and it has some minor issues, which I’ve been stressing about, but I’m happy the book is on its way to being “real.” So much work to catch up on it’s not funny, the literary magazine (argh – the process is soo inefficient it makes me want to snap pencils,) my freelance work, and now homework and book reviews are starting to stack up too. And getting my list o’ reviewers together, mailing lists of bookstores and such, still on my list of things to do.
I finally got an e-mail today confirming that the NEA had received my application, which I sent in January. So that’s at least a relief. And I found out I’ll be in the print version of Wicked Alice, a journal I hold in high esteem.
I was thinking about all the applying for grants, and contests, and sending to lit journals – it’s like every time you do it, you are asking the universe, “Am I a writer?” and every act of sending out is a reaffirmation to yourself, “I believe I am a writer.” And a lot of times the world responds by punching you in the gut and stepping on your foot, but you have to elbow your way out again and again. Okay, this is too cliche for words, so I’m going to shut the hell up. Anytime you start to sound like Paul Simon lyrics you have to stop blogging. Obviously I have still not yet had a full night’s sleep since I’ve been back.
Interesting article in Slate on the Virginia Quarterly Review getting some love from the National Magazine Awards, which I think gives smaller lit mags hope for the future.
If I can keep my head above water here in the next few weeks, I’ve been writing a bunch of poems, a series of them, so I might actually be able to work on putting together a coherent second book manuscript. Not like I have publishers knocking on my door or anything, but it gives me a creative project to focus on, which makes me happy…
Cracked open Gluck’s Averno last night, and found a different, choppier, dare-I-say-more-experimental voice in it than I expected. Some parts are so sharp they cut you like a knife.

Well, today have to check out, drive to Houston, and board the late flight back to Seattle…really exhausted…yesterday spent time in the bookfair and got to see Charles read, got a review copy of a book from a reader Amber Flora who was great, met Deb Ager and little Olive (so cute!), saw Eduardo and Mary again and Victoria Chang, chatted with the Beloit Poetry Journal folks and the Poetry Flash people (who do the hard work of keeping up poetry calendars in the West coast,) and finally! got to walk up and down all the aisles, which is surprisingly daunting. I gave props to Steven Shroeder and Ivy Alvarez at their respective publishers (Bat City Review for Steve, Red Morning Press for Ivy)…took Glenn (as promised) to the Iron Works barbeque joint, which was very tasty, then took a side trip to the Wildflower Preserve, which was pretty barren, I was told, due to a year-long drought, but we still saw flowers and birds (mockingbirds, a strange no-crested cardinal, warblers and nuthatches as well as the expected grackles) and saw the meadow and native trees and cacti. We stopped on the way back at a local ice cream place, Amy’s and had grapefruit ice (because it was ninety outside and hiking about in that is also daunting) and an art gallery next door had a band and free drinks so we checked out some really amazing glass art (much more affordable than equivalent art in Seattle – I was totally wanting a stained-glass and steel butterfly sculpture.) After showering (again – did I mention Texas was hot? and not so much a dry heat) we tried to get dinner but every single restaurant was completely booked, out of everything (because of the several conventions in town) so after waiting a while we took off to go to the 8:30-10 Academy of American poets reading which had Marie Howe and Marilyn Nelson who were terrific, then dashed to get quick Mexican at a place called guero’s and then ready for Reb Livingston’s party (which we were by no means on time to, sorry!) We ran up to Denise Duhamel and Nick Carbo to tell them how great they were, stuffed pajamas in a bag to change into, and were on our way…Reb’s friends who were very gracious had a lovely house and there was even a “make out” room set up for the party complete with disco ball which totally took me back to my older brothers’ parties in the seventies. We were like two and a half hours late so the party was winding down but it was really cool to talk to everyone…you can tell my brain has turned to mush, can’t you, because nothing in this entry is remotely eloquent.. One thing we talked about at the party was how at this AWP there were policemen checking badges at the bookfair and readings, which sucked for Glenn, who didn’t have a badge, and also for people selling at the bookfair, since they got less traffic because of it…at both Chicago and Vancouver everyone could waltz right in. It seemed also perhaps the local restaurants and hotels weren’t quite up to the tasks at hand…I’m still glad I made the trip (with the help of a travel grant, thanks Washington State!) Ready to be home now…