First, deep apologies to colleague and poet-friend, Antoinette Brim, who read from her new book Psalm of the Sunflower last night at PTC. The cold/flu of the weekend and then an 8 hour day at school wiped me out and I could not attend. I hope it was beautiful.

Second, congrats to colleague and poet-friend, Angie Macri, who has a new poem up at The Dirty Napkin, one of my favorite online journals. Give it a read.

Wow! Pulaski Tech poets rock!

Thanks to the Hayden’s Ferry Review blog for linking to this great article by Don Lee discussing the sometimes contentious relationship between writers and the editors of literary magazines.

Lee states:
I will concede that there are some real asshole editors out there—rude, negligent, incompetent, narrow-minded, stupid narcissists who wouldn’t know a good story or poem if it slapped them on the face—but they’re a minority, I believe. I think most editors are dedicated, tireless, honorable people, and they’re woefully underappreciated.

Thank an editor today!

Back in December of 08, I linked to a poem by Anna Journey in 42opus, “Red-Haired Girl Wants You to Know.” Since then, I’ve been waiting to read her first full-length collection, If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting. This weekend, while I was felled by the first cold/flu of the school year, Journey’s book arrived with free and carbon-neutral shipping from Better World Books (hint, hint). Unfortunately, I had to wait out the storm of the sickness before I could really delve into the book.

This morning, at about 75% recovered, I couldn’t wait any longer and I’m glad I didn’t. Even reading in the faint haze of the after-fever, these poems levitate off the page. I admit I have a dog-earring habit. Yes, I write in my books, underlining lines that strike a chord and adding checks and stars. However, I also dog-ear those poems that I pause to read and re-read. With most books, this is a handful of poems, with Journey’s it’s a little ridiculous, as the top right corner of the book now bulges with flipped down pages.

What I love about this work: the revelation of one woman’s making in this world, nothing hidden, nothing too personal, yet not focused on the confessional. Here we have birds, gardens, dead relatives, the devil, sexual awakenings and sexual maturity, and the dark, sometimes bitter, roots of the south.

Some lines:

from “My Great-Grandparents Return to the World as Closed Magnolia Buds”

They’re back
by the soybeans, edging the delta from the dead,

keeping their clammy petals pulled
shut, like Klan hoods. A language
they labored to forget–Swedish was Natchez silt,

loam in the throat
their children never spoke.

from “Night with Eros in the Story of Leather (1)”

… Desire begins here
in bondage, in bougainvillea and its blunt mists

of ammonia that cuff my burning
eyes like a bride. Devil, I feel your svelte double crossings

rise from the coral bell vine.

from “Dissecting the Automaton”

I’m nurse, nurturer, old // knife-girl drawing the moon like iron through the far skylight.

If this isn’t to your taste, I’ll understand, but do consider supporting poets and poetry by buying a book this month or subscribing to a journal you love!

Friend and fellow Arkansas grad, Bill Notter, has a new book out from SIU Press. Check out Holding Everything Down. Congrats, Bill! I’m putting this on my “to buy” list right now. Just waiting on a paycheck.

I must have blog’s disease today. Not getting much of my own work done, but I think this all contributes in some way to the process. So, stop what you are doing and go read these poems by Rachel Contreni Flynn over at The Collagist. Fantastic!

Just read a great post over at readwritepoem by Ren Powell that discusses an important issue for me. Why do audiences often assume the stuff of poems is autobiographical? Blood Almanac was assigned for an undergraduate class one semester at my alma mater, and I got to discuss it with the students. (Very cool.) However, many of the students were distressed to learn that I have no children, even though the book contains poems in the first person where the speaker presents her troubling children. Powell raises some good points and adds a new voice to this not-so-recent debate.

My favorite quote:
Readings that begin with, “I wrote this for my grandmother who passed away last week,” frighten me. (Obviously, I have intimacy and trust issues.)

The new issue of Hobble Creek Review is now available, including my poem “Listening for the Dead.” I received a surprise along with the email announcement about the publication of the issue. Justin Evans, the editor, has nominated this poem for a Pushcart. Many, many, thanks, Justin!

So, remember several posts ago when I talked about taking the one line I’d managed to scribble down the day before and spinning it into a poem. Over the course of the past weeks of revision, that line ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. In other words, the line I had used to so carefully build the poem ended up not fitting the final version. I still liked the line, but I put it back in my journal for another time.

Today, I was messing with some lines I’d worked up last week. I finally had the lines going in the right direction, but I needed a title to pull it all together. As I sat and stared at the screen in silence, feeling the minutes ticking by, magic-presto, that amazing spark happened and I realized the discarded line worked perfectly as a title to what was happening in the new poem.

This is a prime example of creativity happening at its best. I couldn’t force it. I simply had to be open. I had to be open to the fact that a line I loved and used as a springboard for a draft, didn’t belong there. I had to be open to letting it drift and sift through the process. I had to be open to using it as a title rather than a true line.

It’s a good lesson for me to remember: to be open, not to rush and push, but to let that unnameable thing happen.

Today on Verse Daily, a poem by fellow Arkansas MFA grad, Stacy Kidd, “13 Arkansas.” Beautiful and amazing. Please read.