Everything Looks Bigger in Pencil

3-MINUTE SKETCH by JASON SEILER, Illustrator

Jason Seiler is an illustrator who'll make your knees go weak, his work is that great. One time I said to him "I bet you can't draw me under 3 minutes" and darned if two thing: 1) he didn't prove me wrong and, 2) my schnoz is more giant than I think it is.

Booker & Trilby

Going into the deep memories file for the cadre of poems I'm looking to stare into the eye of, next. Might have to cue up some Iron Butterfly. Might have to purchase supplemental health insurance. Might have to pull out the mauve phone book with all those phone numbers in it. Phone numbers so old all the area codes are sectioned off now. Might be time to finally get that dog. Two dogs.

Thank You, Cynthia Hogue

Advance praise from Cynthia Hogue, 

for my next book of poetry, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in Feb/2018~

Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow’s new collection, Horn Section All Day Every Day, dazzles like a Brass band, wild and bold as a trumpet, delicately plaintive as a lone French horn. Although there are stunning poems about animals throughout, which shift the tone of the volume, at its heart is the story of Super Dan, an extraterrestrial superhero who comes to Earth to study and stays to marry the witty, earthy woman he falls in love with. “love me and be my kiss,” Super Dan sighs to his wife. This book, a veritable “trove of ardor,” is filled with the emotional force and beauty of that love. -- Cynthia Hogue

My Poetic Court of Appeals

For quite a few months I've had this lovely secret to share. Today's the day. 
Immeasurable gratitude for their advance praise on my forthcoming poetry book, Horn Section All Day Every Day~I hereby deliver with all
appropriate pomp and circumstance, and with a bountiful horse-drawn carriage filled to capacity with the most aromatic, colorful, overflowing floral appreciation and affection to 
Cynthia Hogue, David Kirby, and Lynn Melnick. 

I remain stunned by your touching, insightful, and marvelous statements over my second collection. Each of you saw what I did not, or chose not~this is indeed a collection of poems about unconventional relationships: the mysteries, the weirdnesses, the irrefutables, and the wonders. I protest it no longer. How could I--with the three of you in whose counsel I rely because that much wisdom I have been known to retain. Lo, the three of you! I do believe that over the next few months up until publication from Salmon Poetry in February/March, I may find myself unable to resist posting, on separate occasions, each of your chiming declarations here on this blog. Yes, yes, to hope to whet appetite, but also, because you are right, all three of you, from your varied backgrounds and generations, calling the same lady up top on her verse. 

Cynthia Hogue   

David Kirby

Lynn Melnick

Greetings from the Parched Suburbs of Phoenix

It's been that kind of summer. When I was a kid, I took cloudy, rainy, days for granted. Goes to show you. I wonder who came up with that phrase. << See how the hallucinatory statements just slip out? Come on out here and try 118° for days in a row. Car tires are blowing out on the freeways from the asphalt heat. This has got to stop.

The West was tamed by air-conditioning.
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I'm loving teaching my poetry classes at Phoenix Center for the Arts. My students are marvelous. It is like a present to see them "get" how to move their poems up and out and further. No wonder educators get hooked. It's the students.
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Blurbs! I've been sitting on them for months now. They are really beautiful, and I am deeply grateful to the three individuals who have read my new poetry collection and written these statements about my book. I am very fortunate. That unveiling comes in August, as I choose to reveal things of enormous importance to me on days of great significance to me, so, just a tad bit longer....Not teasing, just prepping.
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And now I have no less than four editors of four literary journals having personally requested poems, so let's get to it.

Unveiling the Magnificent Book Cover Artwork for My Second Full-Length Poetry Collection

Today is more special than I can try to write.

40 years ago today, on a Friday, my father, Isadore Henry Schwartzberg, died. Everyone who knew him knew he was born to have been an artist, an illustrator, a drawing guy. He had the gift, he really did. People know when people truly have the gift. My dad had it.

After I write this post, and present the magnificent cover created especially for my poetry collection by my brother-friend, the kindest man and preeminent artist, Tom Bachtell, I will be lighting a Yahrzeit candle and saying a special prayer in memory of the death of my beloved father. My dad would be so utterly speechless and happy to see this gorgeous cover that Tom has gifted me. I am blessed ten million times over, I know.

Tom Bachtell drawing for The New Yorker

Above is a photo of Tom's hands at work. They are so intuitive, strong, concentrating, wise. 27 years over at The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town", among other sections of the magazine, will do that to a drawing guy. I love that he wears a collared, button-down shirt when he draws. His website is right here, if you'd like to view his portfolio, and of course, you could pick up a copy of The New Yorker magazine anywhere, anytime since 2000, and find his signature artwork within. He's a pretty darn good drawing guy.

Dear Tom, with all my loving heart I am grateful.

Cover Art Illustration: TOM BACHTELL

I am beaming with joy to say, this art illustration will grace my next book of poems, Horn Section All Day Every Day, forthcoming in March, 2018.


It's time for me to go and say a prayer.

If You Buy These Journals You Will Become Stunning

National Poetry Month has been very good to my poetry. Two fabulous literary journals have just released brand-new issues, and I am fortunate to have new poetry in them. My poems in these journals will be included in my next poetry collection, come February, 2018. 

Enormous joy, and gratitude to the editors of South Dakota Review and Santa Clara Review.

South Dakota Review

Santa Clara Review

Live Encounters, Fully Global

The online world literary journal Live Encounters, shepherded by the masterful Mark Ulyseas, kindly re-posted three of my poems forthcoming in Horn Section All Day Every Day, to be published by Salmon Poetry, February 2018. With poems shoulder-to-shoulder beside Dorianne Laux, Helen Cardona, Charlotte Innes, and these other masterful poets, is a great treat. I thought I'd snag the first of the three poems posted from LE to whet your engagement:

"Horn Section..." coming out in 2018

Here's the fine roster from the January 2017 issue. All the poets' poems can be accessed after clicking my link, above:

A tremendous camp to be part of 

Welcome, 2017

Much gratitude to the editors and publishers who have selected my poetry for publication forthcoming in 2017 in superb literary journals and anthologies, and in other publications. Every publication will receive plenty of pre-notice here at my blog. Follow this blog for the plethora of joy and publication coverage! As for my second poetry collection, I am beyond wholly grateful that Horn Section All Day Every Day will have its contract agreed upon and mutually signatured, and ensconced at its deserved home for publication and release -- Publication date: January 31, 2018. Publisher: Salmon Poetry Ltd.
Very thankful~Onward!

On This Gray Eve

Add 30 years, light laugh lines, and a great necklace

My hairstylist sent me packing after something like 14+ years together. I was in such shock all I could do was shut my eyes really hard while she finished cutting my hair. Seems haircuts at 60 bucks an hour don't "cut" it like they used to. She can make more money from coloring and highlighting somebody else's head during my scissor time. I want to be civil. I want to understand. I understand this--with my four degrees and twenty+ years on her, I don't believe I ever made 60 dollars an hour off my labor. I worked in law 22 years and I've made more hourly money from selling one Silver Age Spiderman comic book. To say things feel a bit lopsided at the end of this tumultuous year is not understating the sensation of being about as in-control as a bird on a wire.

I will be faculty teaching poetry in the creative writing program come January, '17, at Phoenix Center for the Arts. Poetry workshops and craft classes. First time ever I'll make money from teaching poetry, which I have been doing, in a general manner, for decades now. Even so, the Center is practically donating the class to students. And still I'm grateful. I love poetry. It's what I've been doing since I was 11 years old. I look back and I wonder why I always zigged where maybe I should have zagged. Why not have stayed on after my Master's Degree, and taught English Comp 101 like the hundreds of rest? Why not have done the university shuffle? Why not have written the one, long, insufferable paper, and received a Ph.D., or gone back for another year or two for an MFA? How much of a difference? Does that keep you from graying? Or do the rest of you all slap color on your skulls and call it a day? 

Yesterday, galley proofs came from a forthcoming anthology, an exquisite anthology, The Plume Anthology of Poetry 5, which will be released in February, 2017. The "Contributor's Biographies" section (starting at p. 337) is already twenty-five pages, and half of us haven't delivered our bios yet. I printed up that biography section and sat in silence in my study, turning the pages, reading the bios that were there, and drinking in every one of those names. All of those amazing, accomplished, well-known, lovingly-cherished poets. It's like a "Who's Who" of The Poets' Elite. I feel like the kid with the crazy-cut bangs who slipped in under the circus tent and got a front-row extravaganza of the three-ring. The editor and the publisher have put my poem on pages 108, 109, and 110. I call that nothing but fortune.

Me without even a haircutter to call my own.