I have said in the past that when friends of mine get good news, it is almost as good as getting it myself. These writers are both very talented and so I am proud to announce:

–Karen J. Weyant just won the Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest with her collection, Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt. (http://thescrapperpoet.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/wearing-heels-in-the-rust-belt/) Go congratulate her!

–Rachel Dacus has just signed on with Kitsune Books (whom you may know from such books as, I don’t know, She Returns to the Floating World) to publish her third full-length poetry collection, Gods of Water and Air. I’m so pleased to have Rachel as a fellow Kitsune! And look for an upcoming short interview with her here on the subject! For now, go congratulate her at her blog: http://dacusrocket.blogspot.com/2011/08/big-news.html

And a quick shout out to Justin Evans for his kind words here (http://justinevanspoetry.blogspot.com/2011/07/out-on-limb.html) about She Returns to the Floating World, here. Have you gotten your copy yet?

And Oliver de la Paz is featured today on Poetry Daily, here.

A good week for my friends. If you have more good news, please leave some info about it in the comments! Giant hugs and cupcakes to all!

Did I mention my book is available now on Amazon? No longer just pre-order, but actually available? Yes, it is! Go buy a copy! I’m watching that “Hot 100 New Books in Poetry” list these days…

Sandy Longhorn promises that my book will inspire you to write poems! Well, sort of. Check out her kind words about She Returns to the Floating World.

Yesterday, because soon we will be living over two hours away from the mecca of Seattle arts and culture, Glenn and I snuck out at lunch time to a downtown art gallery called Roq La Rue, which specializes in art they call “pop surrealism,” which, if you think about it, doesn’t only explain the art I like, but is also a good description for the kind of poetry I write (and like.)
The art exhibit was by a Japanese artist named Yumiko Kayukawa, who does these acrylic/oil paintings that kind of look like Japanese candy ads but also illustrations of Japanese fairy tale books or eighties rock album covers. Here was my favorite from the exhibit, called “Zen Candy,” which features a girl, two wolf kits, and some floating pink rice crackers…
http://www.sweetyumiko.com/display.php?collection=20&art=3
but there was an equally cool one of a girl running with a herd of hyenas. I think this artist’s work would look great on the cover of my as-yet-unpublished Japanese-pop-folk-tale book, when it gets published, don’t you? She’s probably out of my price range, though, as her pieces run between two and three thousand dollars. If you want to go see her, her show is only open til tomorrow, November 3rd.

Rachel Dacus’ new chapbook from Small Poetry Press, “Another Circle of Delight,” on a related note, had a dark, nature/religion/science-y tinge, and the two poems I really latched onto were about bones: one, called “Green Heart” about the fossilization of dinasaur bones
(“After sixty-eight million years, the collagen
in your bones might just begin to ossify…
Now she sees that she too
might leave behind a body green at heart
in a hardening world…”
and the other, about an x-ray and a missing bone in the body, “Wish Bone:”
“The absent bone in my spine x-ray
leaves a delicate arch of emptiness,
impied bridge over epidural space.
The gone bone is a bone of wish
that my walk wouldn’t pinch and wobble,
that I wouldn’t know I am incomplete?
How much else was missing at my birth?
…Now the missing piece
just keeps pulling and pulling
and only the words snap.”
Mmm, I just love the words “ossify” and “epidural” in poetry. Don’t these little poem pieces make you want to run out and buy this chapbook?

The Move: the Saga Continues…

Keep having nightmares about the move, which often happens to me around moving time. One involved a serial killer stalking the owners of different houses in my new neighborhood, and another involved shooting a rat. In real life, yesterday the headlines of the small-town paper of the place I’m moving to ran something like “MSRA! Deadly bacteria shuts down local high school” and “Level 3 Sex Offender Moves to Town.” Eek!
I am setting up new utility accounts, boxing up books, cleaning and wiping down furniture, deciding what to pitch and what to keep. Seriously, I should write a women’s magazine feature article called “How To Move – by someone who’s moved every freakin’ six months on average over the past ten years.” Unfortunately, I have not yet learned how to make moving easy and painless. It always seems effort-y and painful. I am going to sell back some stacks of books and magazines I’ve accumulated today. On the plus side, moving does make you clean and organize, and probably has some other benefits too. I do like the town I’m moving too, and the new rent for a modest little ranch house is downright affordable, which is a clear sign from the universe I should continue being a poor poet instead of a practical technical writer, right? Of course, if the universe wants to start throwing monetary poetry prizes and poetry jobs at me, I’ll take those too…