Coming to the End of Poetry Month, and my birthday…
I’m exhausted but happy coming to the end of Poetry Month! A new class of poetry students, way too many scheduled readings to attend or even try to attend, wild, unpredictable weather, falling cherry blossoms, chocolate bunnies, my birthday – I mean, let’s face it, April can be hectic but fun. Along with celebrating turning another year older successfully, I’m about to be take the plunge into home ownership again, possibly start a new job (more on that later) and it feels like I’m entering a new chapter of my life. A good chapter. I hope! Less “post-apocalyptic survivalist reality show” and more “Girl Finds Love and Success in the Big City!”
It has also started to occur to me, at this birthday go-around, that if we want good things to happen in our community, if we want people around us to get to know and love poetry, that we need to take an active hand to make that happen. To paraphrase a popular saying, we have to become the arts advocates we are looking for.
I had a wonderful time working with local musician Joy Mills at the Bushwick Book Club event at Hugo House. Hearing the song she wrote based on “Sleeping Beauty Loves the Needle” was just fantastic, and she is pretty great live, too. I’m glad they didn’t ask me to sing! I just had to read the poem, thank goodness. Had fun meeting other local poets, too. Always a pleasure being at Hugo House.
And now, onto the birthday-end-of-month-scurry-to-get-packed-and-ready-to-move-and-some-other-things-I’ll-reveal-later!
Mini-review of two new books, superstress week, poetry month
Wednesday is the big presentation day that determines whether or not I’ll get the job I’ve been stressing out over for a month or two now. Wish me luck! Contractor meeting this afternoon. And grading. Also, Wednesday night, I’ll be teaching a class with RASP with teens on anime, haiku and haibun. Then, the next day, off to Hugo House for an amazing musician/poet collaborative presentation. Then, I’ll turn 39, then celebrate a few days by signing a lot of papers that will plant us some roots – finally in the Northwest. But whew! This month is killing me! And May is going to be just as busy!
Still trying to keep up with my mini-reviews of my poetry-book-reading-a-day April project, but falling a bit behind. To remedy some of that, here are a couple of reviews of two local writers’ recent books:
Molly Tenenbaum’s The Cupboard Artist, recently out from Floating Bridge Press, presents the every day world: food, music, household objects like ugly paint colors and swing sets – in a way that reflects on human relationships, science, and the universe. Her whimsical sense of humor and music shine through in poems like “Birthday Cake:” “She’s a cartoon, she’s splashing the spoon,/ she’s a mud-flapping lab coat/ dark stream swirling marbling smoothing/ /he doesn’t like chocolate, he doesn’t -” Floating Bridge always does a loving, lovely job with their production, so the book is a really beautiful artifact as well.
Carol Levin’s Stunned by the Velocity from Pecan Grove Press is a recounting of a year, 1968, and one couple’s adventures and travels, including women kidnapped into a Greek convent, a couple’s sometimes humorous conflicts with hostesses who throw lamps and attempts to procure transportation along the way. Carol works with me at Crab Creek Review and her attention to detail, to the ironies of the troublesome realities of travel, and her unique perspectives on time and place here are sure to delight.
Lost Con Weekends, a new review, and more!
I swung by two conventions this weekend (NorWesCon and SakuraCon,) celebrated Easter, visited with several out-of-town writer friends, and attended various poetry events, as well as fulfilling obligations for my adjunct teaching job at National. Turned in final proof corrections for She Returns to the Floating World to the kind editors at Kitsune Books. Have now collapsed and plan to sleep until the next poetry event. (Dreams have been haunted by people in either Star Trek or Anime-influenced costumes carrying large fake swords.)
Have a new book review posted up at Rattle:
Jeannine’s review of Susan Rich’s third book, The Alchemist’s Kitchen
So check it out!
Also received an acceptance I’m excited about from a lit mag – don’t those acceptances seem to make all the other rejections sting a little less? I still get excited when it’s a magazine I really love or a poem I’m particularly fond of – and in this case, it was both! Let’s just say the poem has a hidden MST3K reference or two in it. Killer Shrews!!!
Did I mention it’s my birthday this weekend? My mother said I have her permission to go back in time a decade and turn 28 instead of 38.
If you ever need an article to convince young writers that they must, must, must read current literary magazines if they want to be published, look no further than this:
http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/what-editors-want-must-read-writers-submitti
My horoscope is telling me to rest and relax and get away from the crowd, but my calendar keeps saying go go go!
You guys will be so jealous of me when I tell you who I got listen to yesterday at the poetry festival – Richard Siken, blogger and winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize for Crush. He did a charming reading/talk on spirituality and the self – reading some new work as well as “Crush” poems, which I enjoyed anew. What an interesting and funny guy. He said some accused him of being a “morning after poet.” HA! Here’s my favorite poem from the book, “Poem in Which Things are Crossed Out.”
http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177722
Anyway, I know some of you must be tired of seeing me promote readings, but I promise this is the last one for April! (Oh, poetry month, both a blessing and a curse, and full of your muddy shoes!)
Hey Seattlites! Come out to the Richard Hugo House at 7 PM tomorrow to see me reading with Juliet Patterson, who hails from far away Minneapolis who reads her book, Truant Lover, from Nightboat Press, which is pretty cool. Click here to read her “first book interview” with Kate Greenstreet and one of her poems:
http://www.kickingwind.com/62906.html
