They Really Need to Turn that Conference into a Week-Long Thing

~AWP 2015 at Minneapolis!~

I posted most of these photos on facewatch, but they're all over the place on my wall. Much tidier here. Thought you'd like to see a pictorial of some AWP 2015 moments. It was a splendid conference. 

I love being a poet. I love writing poetry and reading poetry and I love poets. And if that sounds elementary, so be it. 

With the Staff of Fourteen Hills Literary Journal

Claudia Rankine, three-quarter view

Claudia Rankine, straight on

With Daniel Lawless

With Eduardo C. Corral and Brent Goodman

With Jericho Brown

Displaying Salmon Poetry titles with Salmon Poetry Managing Editor, Jessie Lendennie

With Carolyne Lee Wright and Kelly Davio, at the Tahoma Literary Review Table

Marie Howe, twofold 

With Oliver de la Paz and Lee Ann Roripaugh

The Pink Tuxedos, l to r: Sophie Cabot Black, Rita Dove, Carol Muske-Dukes, Marilyn Nelson

With Fred Viebahn and Rita Dove

With M Scott Douglass, at the Main Street Rag Booth

At the Salmon Poetry Booth, l to r: Yun Wang, Lori Desrosiers, Stephen Powers,
John Morgan, Cynthia, Jessie Lendennie
When directed to express how we feel during the first hours of the first day
of the AWP Conference

And then to express how we feel on the last hours of the last day

Stephen Powers, Cynthia, John Fitzgerald, Helene Cardona and Jessie Lendennie

~See you next year in LA!~

Off to See Just About 11,000 of My Closest Friends

Minneapolis AWP, 2015

As I look forward to boarding the plane for Minneapolis AWP and greeting old poet friends and meeting new ones, and roaming book aisles for select jewels to bring home, and panels and readings to attend, I'm happy to say that with this AWP conference I for once have my schedule down to a perfectly timed note. If it goes askew, it will only be because I've allowed it to do so. I'm sure I too will have photos and anecdotes from the conference of thousands of poets and writers to share. Certainly, there will be one or two stories that can't be disclosed, because in the retelling or the bright light of day, the facts themselves just somehow will seem, shall we say, less or possibly more than luminous. In fact, I'm also looking forward to returning home. An entire summer, albeit a desert one full of bright heat, waits patiently before me and I feel great promise in it. This is a summer to finish my next poetry collection which is so very close to being completed. This is the summer I read all the wonderful books I've collected these past months from glorious poets and writers and the books I will be picking up at the conference. This is the summer for household decisions, and the plotting for machinations required for roads accustomed to less usage. This is a baggage-less form of travel.

To Every Season

January whizzed past. All I remember is when I looked down, in my flowery basket of hardy roses was a lovely assortment of poetic invitations of one type or another. This is special to me because it's beginning to happen more frequently...

...that I am now being solicited by editors from a few sparkling, wonderful journals (and e-zines!) for new poetry, instead of grinding out that well-worn, hopeful, meek, cold submission among hundreds of other manila-enveloped eager ones arriving at some dim-lit magazine doorstep. Nothing like a tad bit o' drama...

...there's also the out-of-the-blue, phenomenal, never-expected, am-I-reading-this-right? news of a race my poetry is running right this very minute, which of course I can not say a single word about, or perhaps the spell might be broken, so please just wish me the tightest, strongest good fortune, and as I hold my figurative breath -- and more to come about that in the future...

...in April, in honor of National Poetry Month, I have been invited to be the featured poet for the City of Tempe, a city well-known for housing Arizona State University. Also in my basket, and through ASU and its department in Project Humanities, captained by the simply remarkable and inimitable Dr. Neal Lester, I will be creating poetry in response to the exquisite landscape paintings created by artist Beth Ames Swartz...

...she is presenting a power point show next week at the historic Ellis-Shackelford House, where Project Humanities holds its offices. I will be meeting her for the first time to go over our collaboration~I'm so excited about this! And indeed a collaboration it will be! Projects Humanities is planning for us to hold at least four separate events involving Ms. Swartz's artwork and my joined poetry at locations including the Phoenix Historical Society and Phoenix Art Museum. Whew! All of this begins its momentum pretty much as soon as I exit the plane from having spent the better part of a week at the AWP conference in early April. Bring on Spring, and Beyond, is all I can say!

The Ellis-Shackelford House

Changing speed to a honor a common man of words~

Some weeks ago the great poet Philip Levine passed away. He and his work meant many things to my family for a variety of reasons. I wrote an homage to him on Facebook, and there was such a response to it that many people told me I should post it in its entirety here, on my blog, where there may be audience who can read it who might never have been able to otherwise. And my feeling is, hold on, you guys are on to something, because this is including Mr. Levine, for that matter, because I know he wasn't on facewatch, as I call it, so I know he wouldn't have seen it through that venue, and I'm thinking if I post it here, and I'm also hoping he might have some kind of  really strong internet connection where he's at, he just might be able to run across my loving words. I wish he does. Rest in Peace, Mr. Levine. You ran your race especially well~~

PAGING: Mr. Philip Levine -- Good Sir, before you get busy with the unpacking of your essentials, and finding out that the drawers have small ink marks inside them, and you'll want to put in your request for more towels right now, because you don't even want to look at the line that's forming behind you, so don't turn around, keep going in that same direction, there's only the one direction to go, but before you get busy with all that I just quickly want to stuff this note in your pocket--

There's a man back here for whom poetry was thrust, and when I say "thrust" I mean literally thrust (with a wooshing noise) upon him. He is a man of numbers. He was born into numbers and only comfortable there for the longest time. The alphabet was not a place of deep-seated interest for him. But when a book of your poems was placed in front of him, he read it like he ate ice cream. He read the whole book, and would carry it from room to room with him. He said, "I like this man's poems. They're honest. No tricks." 

And that's a very big deal, having an essential foreigner embrace an essentially foreign way, and trust it thoroughly. Your words did that to a man.

I daresay your words have altered countless others, and those to come. You did a fine job here.

Painting, "A Suggested Permanence" (2014) by Jonathan Kevin Rice, with thanks to Mr. Rice for the use of his work for this post specifically.

"A Suggested Permanence" (2014) by Jonathan Kevin Rice

/////////

Mr. Philip Levine

You're My Interest

Revivification. Recharged. Onward, 2015~

That adage. How's it go again? Better late than....

Posting a link to a book review for my first collection, The Day Judge Spencer Learned the Power of Metaphor, which came out in April, 2012. Currently working on my second full collection. When I will ever get the hang of self-promotion, I'm not 100% sure I'll ever know, but I do want to offer bountiful thanks to Fjords Review and its editor, John Gosslee, for including the book review on its website and in its print journal, and to Winnie Khaw for her superlative and considered reading of this collection.

Here's the opening paragraph:

From the opening poem the reader proceeds to unpack the morbidly entertaining contents of the “long, leathery, mottled man-luggage” (“Autopsy: Upon the Tamis Table”), a frightfully delicious description of a dead body about to autopsied by experts. Thankfully, Edlow’s actual work is lively and bright, evincing innovative humor and a keen imagination that blithely interrogates the essence of human behavior in reaction to everyday situations. Positive energy flows throughout the work on subjects ranging from a “naked attorney in the ladies’ room” to “ants.” The titles read like a whimsical shopping list for an imp on a holiday rampage, “When Academia Took Me to Lunch Then Fed Me the Bull,” “The Persimmon Can See You,” and many other entertaining headliners.

Click to read the entire review here.

Will the legendary CASA LIBRE ever recover?

If you're going to be in or around Tucson next Wednesday, the 19th of November, CASA LIBRE is the place to be. As Anita said to Maria in West Side Story, "Come on in. We won't bite you...'till we know you better":

Deborah Brandon 

Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow

 Melanie Madden

Edge 70: a Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers

Wednesday, November 19, 2014 7:30 p.m.

Casa Libre en la Solana – N. 4th Ave. between 8th-9th Streets TUCSON, ARIZONA ~ Suggested Donation: $5

Come to Edge: A Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers. Edge is a series of local and national writers community, visibility and voice for emerging and younger writers. Broadsheets of the authors' work will accompany each reading. Books and journals will be available for purchase and signing by the authors.

Refreshments will be available after the reading.

deborah brandon is a multidisciplinary queer artist with an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. deborah brandon’s work appears in[PANK], Bombay Gin, Mom Egg Review, Denver Quarterly, Moonshot, Hotel Amerika, Cadillac Cicatrix,Puerto del Sol and Evergreen Chronicles;andis forthcoming in the anthology Writing the Walls Down, to be published by TransGenre press. deborah brandon has collaborated with other artists including text-based work with writer Roxanne Carter and a CD of improvisational experimental music with Reuben Vinal.

Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow’s debut poetry collection is The Day Judge Spencer Learned the Power of Metaphor (Salmon Poetry, 2012). She is the 2012 Red Hen Press Poetry Award Winner, for her poem “Super Dan Comics Question Box Series # 18.” The poem appears in The Los Angeles Review, No.14, 2013. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared widely in numerous journals, including The American Poetry Review, ACM, Cimarron Review, Gulf Coast, American Literary Review, Barrow Street, Folio, Smartish Pace, The Tusculum Review and Galatea Resurrects. A recipient of the Willow Review Prize for Poetry, a Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, and an award from the Chester H. Jones Foundation, her poems have also been featured in the anthologies Not A Muse (Haven Books), Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology (Salmon Poetry) and The Emily Dickinson Awards Anthology (Universities West Press). Photo Credit: David Troness

Melanie Madden grew up in Barstow, California, and currently lives in Tucson. She is an essayist and poet who also performs with FST! Female

StoryTellers, teaches English at the University of Arizona, and is an editorial assistant at Kore Press. Her work has appeared in The Essay Daily, Timber Journal, The Feminist Wire,and the Mojave River Review.

Never Taking It For Granted

Thank you Poets & Writers Magazine for posting the announcement of my winning the 2014 Tusculum Review Prize for Poetry, judged by Jericho Brown, in your Recent Winners section. The winning poem, "The Timekeeper," is about drummers, drumming and how genuinely unfathomable the act of drumming is.

Hurrah!

You CAN find one lone, whole and perfect sand dollar, and bring it on home

Pacific Ocean, Northern Oregon Coast

12 Things I SUPREMELY LIKE about the Pacific Ocean:

1. It's so big, it says "Go feck yourselves" to all the continents.

2. It appears to enjoy moving.

3. It smells like messy plants.

4. There is no signage AT ALL posted in it, anywhere, like "Slow Down for Children," or "Carol's Massage," or "Vote for Glenden."

5. Oh my lord, we complain so much about nothing.

6. It, and 3 1/2 glorious hours made someone stop talking to me. Which was a very appreciated and friendly quiet.

7. It doesn't care one whit about MacArthur Grants.

8. It makes a non-stop noise that is irritating and comforting simultaneously.

9. If you see a slick, cute sea lion head bobbing 100 feet out in an ocean wave, that is a real sea lion. That is not a TV sea lion.

10. His dead buddy's carcass that washed up on the sand is not a TV carcass either. 

11. If you meet a surfer named Brian from Philadelphia, he'll talk to the both of you for twenty minutes, and be really nice about it, just standing there talking and measuring the waves with his eyes. While you poke your fingers into the wax on his surfboard, he won't chastise you and his eyes will stay almost Caribbean blue-colored.

12. You ask someone special what two things they like best about the Pacific Ocean, and they reply: "It's not a bully" and "You're consequential."

Making of a Classic Chapbook Cover

Immeasurable thanks to illustrator Mike Edholm, whose radiant artistry completed my aesthetic vision, and without whom my poetry chapbook, Old School Superhero Loves a Good Wristwatch, surely would have been left uncapped and wanting.

The identity of this individual must remain anonymous for the sake of himself and his loved ones. Let it be enough that he was quite kind to sit for the posture. [Yes, said in jest.]

Huzzah to Dancing Girl Press for handling all those gigantic images that went into publisher Kristy Bowen's DGP dropbox. This poet could not be more proud or more jubilant. So immensely fortunate.

Quick, Blatant Self-Promotion Post

I'm so thrilled to share that my poem series, "Super Dan Comics Question Box Series" has now been created into a beautiful chapbook, Old School Superhero Loves a Good Wristwatch. It will be joining the amazing catalog of chapbooks published by Dancing Girl Press. Hit here for a direct link to my chapbook's information and purchase page at the press's website. And a few photos taken by publisher Kristy Bowen, as the chapbook is coming off the presses:

The cover illustration and design is custom-made for me by Michael Edholm. Check out his website here. His work is phenomenal. Soon I'll be posting on this blog a complete pictorial process of how he drew the cover. It's pretty darn cool.

I am very excited about this. The Old School Superhero, he flies!