Some Odd Afternoon

Doesn't every day feel like some odd afternoon? This is the title of my book forthcoming from BlazeVOX press. I took the name from a line in an Emily Dickinson poem, #80, which first I used as the title of a poem. "Some Odd Afternoon" will appear in the winter issue of Dos Passos Review. I discovered Dickinson's poem after reading somewhere how she was taken with armchair voyages and by the idea of Italy as an imaginative place--So am I! Many of her poems reflect these voyages, but I will copy her #80 here.

Our lives are Swiss--
So still--so Cool
Till some odd afternoon
The Alps neglect their Curtains
And we look farther on!

Italy stands the other side!
While like a guard between--
The solemn Alps--
The siren Alps
Forever intervene!

Armchair travel, the ability to look farther on beyond the curtains of an ordinary day, or over an entire mountain range that stands between here and desire. Poetry provides just such a journey for the lucky traveler, a door to another world.

Just Back

I just got back from reading at the San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival last night. What a treat. First California reading for Juanita-as-a-book, and cool to be back in the town where I first attended college as a bright-eyed 17 yr old. Yes, crop science was my major and I was going to get back to the land and set my soul free. Somehow. Too bad I wasn't interested in science. But I took beekeeping, soil science, and row crops, learned some interesting vocabulary including apical meristem and friable. I learned when to shoot the nitrogen and the various shoes used for planting and weeding. Beta vulgaris is the latin name for sugar beet. In the 70's they had no use for organics.

So I earned C's, got A's in Spanish and Music Theory and Harmony and Life Drawing. Duh. I think I did okay in beekeeping.

The drive down 101 was amazing. If you have the chance to take it this week, do. The landscape is an unfolding miracle, ablaze with the vineyards turning colors now that the grapes are in.

It was such a pleasure to be included in the festival. Many thanks to Kevin Patrick Sullivan, most excellent and animated poetry series host. I was impressed by the SLO poetry community, its audience and its readers. Good times. Also thanks to George and Alyn Burns whose gracious hospitality and friendship made the trip.

It's about 5:30pm now, the sky already dark, fall winding down.

Out of the Box-Seattle!

On October 1, I joined fellow Bennington grad poets Marjorie Manwaring and Nicole Hardy in a reading at Hugo House entitled, "So a Magician, a Blonde, and a Donkey Walk Into a Bar..." We rocked the house, it was the first time to read Juanita from actual covers, and a good time was had by all.

#Two-woooot! Juanita!

At last. Kore Press.

Wooooot!

DMQ Review Summer 2009 Release

The DMQ Review is pleased to announce the release of the Summer 2009 issue featuring the poetry of Nin Andrews, Albert Baker, Greg Billingham, Michelle Bonczek, Andrea England, Betsy Johnson-Miller, Meghan L. Martin, Kate McCann, Connie Post, Michael Spring, and Samn Stockwell with artwork by Susannah Habecker.

In collaboration with Peter Davis, editor of Poet’s Bookshelf: Contemporary Poets On Books That Shaped Their Art, Volumes I & II, the DMQ Review is also pleased to feature the essay and new work of Sandra M. Gilbert, our Summer 2009 Featured Poet.

John Amen’s poem, “I Am Not Ready to Nail This Door Shut,” first appeared in the DMQ Review’s August 2001 issue and comprises our “From the Archives” feature.

Check it out, www.dmqreview.com

Where's Juanita?!?

The Art of This and That

Here's the dilemma. July is the month I set aside for creative work. I know, I'm supposed to be writing every day, and I do, but it's not always so creative. But July, mid-summer, poised between the end of the school year and the beginning of the next, laden with only one holiday that has no family expectations associated with it, most of the weddings and graduations over, friends in general are planning and executing vacations--July should be a great chunk of potentially focused time.

Should be. Invariably however I have a little side list going comprised of related projects--submissions, workshop proposals, unanswered emails, cleaning up the office--that I feel I must get through first. "I'll do this first and get it out of the way," is my rationale, "and then I'll be able to focus on that." I'll knock out a few hovering responsibilities, "this and this," always so pressing, and clear the way for unencumbered creative floooooow, the that.

What I've discovered is the only things that get done are the "thises." This is what's at hand. That is forever at a distance. I will always check off this item and this item from my list; as long as something remains that, it never gains the imperative required to become this thing I am doing. It remains that thing which I want to do after I get done with this.

This is not hyperbolic high-jinks. This is all there is. This is all I have. I will never have that. So the trick is, the dilemma, the necessity is I must do this now, this writing, this thinking, this composing. Then I'll get to that other stuff.