While passing time at the gigantic Bellevue library this afternoon, I ran across the best (and most amusing) thing I’ve read in Poetry (this was the July/August issue) in some time:

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0707/comment_179843.html
This essay ostensibly and comically describes the difference between fiction writers and poets from the perspective of a somewhat flibberty-gibbetish fiction writer in love with a poet; fiction writers are “too busy writing to read” while poets are “always reading,” the fiction writer writes 13 pages while the poet leans her head against the window waiting for the poem to hit, etc.
My favorite part was the tongue in cheek part about payment, near the ending:
“But it’s been a good week for us. I sold my new novel, after a bidding war, for $11 million, and my Poet had a poem taken by a well-known literary journal, which gave payment in the form of an origami swan made out of her recycled submission. “
And the part where the poet throws books by beautiful-young-prizewinning-theorist-poets she’s reviewing across the room. Not that I would know anything about that. No sirree.

I also checked C. Dale Young’s second book out of the library, along with Natasha Tretheway’s Belloq’s Ophelia, which I had skimmed but hadn’t really read – it’s a series of poems about a prostitute in New Orleans who was photographed early last century; they’re mostly persona poems, truly well done. It’s an easy book to read in one sitting, moving and graceful.

I also sent a query in to Poets & Writers Magazine with an article idea. I figure, maybe I should try to write for magazines which have something to do with what I do all day. You know, crazy ideas like that. And an MS into BOA. Wish me luck…