softblow

Lily Ladewig and I have 4 collaborative poems from our "Natural Wonder" series up this month at Softblow. Also up this month are poems by Fiona Wright, Ian C. Smith, and Justin Runge.

In other news, tomorrow is the last day of class.



I will bring my students donuts and we will play Heads Up Seven Up. Then, it's officially time to start worrying about still not having a summer job. Oh dear.

Jellyfish 2.0

Friends, friends!

The newest issue of Jellyfish Magazine is out, and it's a stunner (thanks to editor/designer extraordinaire, Gale Thompson). Lily Ladewig and I have two collaborative poems from our "Natural Wonder" series in there, along with poems by Caroline Cabrera, Luke Bloomfield, Seth Landman, Zachary Schomburg, Zach Savich, Hilary Plum, Miranda Dennis, Chad Abushanab, Philip Muller, Jade Ramsey, Jessica Dylan Miele, Kristen A. Evans, Samantha Nataro, P. Edward Cunningham, Andy Stallings, Kyle Crawford and Francesca Chabrier.

henry's heart, my heart, etc.

- John Berryman, Dream Song 29


Spring makes it much easier to get back into the life-loving business. Today is a nice start: sun, shorts, cleaning, watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-air at the gym, writing a poem about product testing. In an hour, driving to Philadelphia for the weekend. Goodbye winter crankiness. Heart lifted! Let's celebrate.

going to [south] carolina in my mind

... and in a car tomorrow morning. Oh, Spring Break. There will be Sun! Warmth! Chik-fil-A! Then, Florida. Publix! The Atlantic! More Sun! Sandals! I'm confident that I will return a whole, happy person. These sunglasses do all the smiling.

abstraction, imagination, tight pants

From Frank O'Hara's "Personism: A Manifesto":

But how then can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them. Improves them for what? For death? Why hurry them along? Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don’t give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don’t need to, if they don’t need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies. As for measure and other technical apparatus, that’s just common sense: if you’re going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There’s nothing metaphysical about it. Unless, of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you’re experiencing is "yearning."

From "The Man with the Blue Guitar" by Wallace Stevens:

I

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

II

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero's head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.

If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.

From Spring and All by Williams Carlos Williams:

To whom then am I addressed? To the imagination.

In fact to return upon my theme for the time nearly all writing, up to the present, if not all art, has been especially designed to keep up the barrier between sense and the vaporous fringe which distracts the attention from its agonized approaches to the moment. It has been always a search for "the beautiful illusion." Very well. I am not in search of "the beautiful illusion."

And if when I pompously announce that I am addressed--To the imagination--you believe that I thus divorce myself from life and so defeat my own end, I reply: To refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone live there is but a single force--the imagination. This is its book. I myself invite you to read and to see.

In the imagination, we are from henceforth (so long as you read) locked in a fraternal embrace, the classic caress of author and reader. We are one. Whenever I say "I" I mean also "you." And so, together, as one, we shall begin.

tonight!

The Gather Round Children Variety Show
(hosted by Gabe Durham)

A Lively Evening of Music and Lit For Kids 18 and Up

Saturday, November 7 – 8:00 pm

MEF Community Room – 60 Masonic St, Northampton, MA – Same building as the Woodstar Cafe

Featuring:

Hot oboe: Anne C. Holmes

Hot fiction: Adam Cogbill

Hot guitar n singin: Sarah Malone and Jono Tosch

Hot threats: Mike Young

Hot poems: Boomer Pinches and Lesley Yalen

Behind-the-scenes making it happen: Elizabeth Durham and Ben Kopel

what's new

What's exciting: The new issue of Front Porch is out! I have poems in it, along with some other juicy folks.

eats

It's getting cold, and this is the precise time of year when my sentimental Midwestern brain kicks into Casserole Mode. I recently e-mailed my mom for a few recipes, to which she replied, "I'm a little embarrassed about these recipes now because I realize how much prepackaged food they contain. It's amazing how well you all turned out." I wouldn't have had it any other way, Mom.

Here is what I want to eat for the next five months:


Broccoli, Rice & Cheese Casserole


Chicken & Rice Casserole


Tuna Noodle Casserole


Green Bean Casserole

Also, I discovered this cookbook during my casserole image searches. I won't buy it, but come on:

buckle up, we're wayward bound

I am excited about these things:

1. My new house & lovely housemates (front & back porches! back yard! climbing tree! natural light! etc.!)

2. Riding my bike to school (and other places when my legs are ready)

3. Fall weather, especially the parts concerning maple trees & getting to wear tights again

4. Teaching with a new strategy: relaxation, relaxation, not boring my students or myself (this is key)

5. Writing writing writing

6. Learning how to make food for myself other than turkey sandwiches

7. Another one of my poems, "Olympiad," is up at Juked.

8. I am seeing a film tomorrow that will make my heart go all aflutter, and yours too, because we're all going to see it together. It is the world premiere of WHEN YOU THINK OF IT, a film by online poetry journal notnostrums. The film features "renowned and emerging poets reading new work in a wide range of unexpected places" and "re-imagines the ways poetry reaches us and presents a dazzling array of contemporary poetry." We will watch it together at 7 PM at Amherst Cinema.

If You Think Of It (Trailer) from notnostrums on Vimeo.

check it

Good things around and a-comin'. I just had pudding for dessert. I have the next 1.5 days off. Camp is over this weekend. Summer weather has finally settled in. And right now, I have a poem up at Juked.