Another Reason Why This Grown Woman Loves Men

How delighted I was this week to appear at Paradise Valley Community College as the visiting poet/lecturer in their Visiting Writer and Scholar Lecture Series.  I hadn't counted on what a wonderful experience it would be.  An audience filled with eager, attentive students was a blast!  After reading poetry for an hour, which is a long set, I then was honored to answer over a hour's worth of Q&A, and essentially share with the audience how I craft and construct my poetry.  And of course, all the musical influences:  I had to reveal The Four Tops had more of a hold on me than Keats.  A blanket endorsement. 

What can I say about Lois Roma-Deeley, Poet-in-Residence and director of the Creative Writing Program at PVCC?  She's a remarkable poet and person, and astonishing in her love of sharing poetry while "lifting all boats."  This is a woman I truly like.  If you don't already have it, do yourself a favor and get her latest, awesome volume of poetry, High Notes.  Here's a brief synopsis of the book pulled off the Amazon site:

With its many thematic riffs and harmonic phrasings, Lois Roma-Deeley's newest collection of poems invites the reader into the shadowy jazz scene of the late 1950s, where music and language fuse into a road of longing and desire. This book won the Benu Press Samuel T. Coleridge Prize. 

And oh yeah, how's that for a kick-azz cover?

SO, here's why this grown woman loves men:  I've got a brand new hokey-dokey cell phone, all the bells and whistles. Phone camera scenario:  Lois takes a picture of me signing a copy of my book in her office and the picture's fuzzy. Lois takes a picture of us weird-ed out by the new technology.  I take a picture of Lois pointing at my book, which you can hardly see because why would I remember where the picture-taker stands and that the sun's supposed to be at my back?  Just one reason I love men: A man would not have taken a shaky picture, a dark shadows picture, or a goldfish-bowl picture.  At the very least, a man would've deleted all of them.  But it's what I've got to show for the day -- we had a ball!

Gotta give us credit for trying. Cheers!