SEEDING ENCOURAGEMENT

A few months ago Dan Waber asked me to participate in a project revolving around Encouragement. The manifestations were these bits of paper that one can hand out to others; said teeny papers contained encouraging messages -- here's one I wrote for the project:

That you will receive lies
does not mean you are not loved.

And here's a photo for these Bits of Encouragement.



I like the form conceived by Dan, an aficionado of minimalist poetry -- the tiny paper slips are like seeds. And seeds can grow to be quite ... BIG, pointing natch to the potential of encouragement!

I LOVE MARSH HAWK PRESS

for many reasons but one reason is that it actually gives Author Advances (!) for poetry books! Crazy, yah? This is, after all, poetry and an indie press ... and not cash from, say, contest fees!

Anyway, thanks to New York State Literary Publishers Capacity Fund for a grant that will help finance said Author Advance for moi Spring 2012 book. I promise it is WELL SPENT!

THE SALTED HEART

Happy to be working on the production of my next book, a collaboration with j/j hastain entitled

        the relational elations            of ORPHANED ALGEBRA

forthcoming this Spring from Marsh Hawk Press. It's got, among other things, an interesting cover image per below -- this is j/j hastain's photograph taken of some of j/j's shrine objects. As j/j puts it, "The organ was a real turkey heart that I kept with me in a hand made 'coffin' in my jeans pocket for a year while it deteriorated. I kept it in salt to keep it from smelling." I don't know about you but, to act like a teen as I'm parenting one, That is soooooo coooool!



j/j adds, "The reason I chose to work with a turkey heart was because in researching it I knew it was an animal heart that when deteriorated would approximate what a human heart looks like in deterioration. The heart came from a ritual removal of it in my own home." Again, such a cooool poetics underpinning! Em-bodied poetics!

And here are some advanced words for this deteriorating heart...:

Eileen R. Tabios’s ORPHANED ALGEBRA performs numerations of loss, want, abandonment, the conditions of the invisible. Riffing on middle school math story problems, Tabios works a mathematics of disorder, the unordering of poverty, these “stories” a corrective to the “ascetic’s illusion of ecstasy, a measurement made possible by its condition precedent: a suffering so unmitigated it hollows the non-survivors from children to earthworms.” j/j hastain’s “visceral echoes” of Tabios, “gestures” both textual and visual, sound “an activism of hollowing out,” whose hollows form a new space of assiduity. In “stance”—instance—hastain “grapple[s] with ethics of place and space. Was a country the host body of a child found homeless in it?” Who and where are we, and what role has language in any of this? Against abuse, against hunger, against erasure, Tabios and hastain challenge silence’s dissonant ignorance. The poets sharpen language and intention, “Creating a permanent, rather than temporary implantable. An anti-obviate hutch or hearth.” A challenge, a new “home,” a pleasure, this collection puts us in the midst.
— Marthe Reed


Categories are not abstractions, they are bodies. Family is one such embodied category, gender another. What happens to bodies when they don't fit the categories assigned them, when they lack families, when they criss-cross gender or genre lines? How can one calculate such changes, compose equations to explain these trans-categorical shifts? Our very pronouns are at stake, as are nations, blood-ties, definitions to words like “dad” and “belonging.” As j/j hastain writes, “There is a new lineage that we are trying to make more apparent.” Eileen R. Tabios and hastain are trans-parents to a fresh embodiment of words and bodies, and to what they mean when they come together as books and persons. Their writing counts the change(s) in unexpected vocabularies.
—Susan M. Schultz

My 19th print poetry book--have come a long way from those toddler days of folding a page in four, slashing crayola on the pages, and calling the result a "book"! A long way, but 'twas all ... ordained.

MORE POETS ON THE GREAT RECESSION

Here's Ed Go at Occupy Wall Street:



Which is to say, some interesting stuff being posted on at POETS ON THE GREAT RECESSION. Check 'em out!

As ever, I welcome more poets' thoughts on the Great Recession...


'

BLOOD DAZZLED!

Blogging another update to my Recently Relished W(h)ine List below. In the Publications section, note that if you see an asterisk before the title, that means a review copy is available for Galatea Resurrects)! More info on that HERE.


PUBLICATIONS
* BLOOD DAZZLER, poems by Patricia Smith (Magnificent. With this book, I am made a fan of Patricia Smith—finally, I get all the accolades I keep hearing about her…and I am happy to get it!)

REBIRTH OF WONDER: POEMS OF THE COMMON LIFE by David M. Johnson (first book of poetry read in 2012)

HYPERGLOSSIA, poems by Stacy Szymaszek

SELECTED POEMS by Harvey Shapiro

A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE GREAT RECESSION, journalism by Arthur Delaney (the first book I read on my new Kindle. And it shows the dark side of e-publishing. This book generated from Delaney's prior columns on The Huffington Post, and it shows. There was little attempt to make the collection more weighty for purpose of book publishing. In my non-humble opinion, there should be some additional value-added to the project being converted into a book. For example, ahem, to see how e-posts (e.g. blog posts) could be converted to what should be a higher content threshold of a book, do feel free to check out my own effort HERE.)

THE ORCHARD, memoir by Adele Crockett Robertson

ANNEVILLE: A MEMOIR OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION by Thomas G. Robinson

LETTERS OF A WOMAN HOMESTEADER by Elinore Pruitt Stewart

THE GREATEST GENERATION CREATED BY THE GREAT DEPRESSION, memoir by Cap'n Dee

ADOPTING AN ABANDONED FARM, memoir by Kate Sanborn (a book I read cause it was a Kindle freebie. And, there ya go with Kindle freebies – many are free because they’re usually useless pap. I deleted this one from my Kindle after reading it hoping to no avail it’d get better)

GROWING A FARMER: HOW I LEARNED TO LIVE OFF THE LAND, memoir by Kurt Timmermeister

THE NOT SO BIG HOUSE, lifestyle by Sarah Susanka with Kira Obolensky

HOPE FOR HEALING: A PARENT’S GUIDE TO TRAUMA AND ATTACHMENT, “by” the Association for Treatment and Training in the Attachment of Children

JOURNEY IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION, novel by John Lifflander

NO PLACE ELSE, novel by Floyd Wesley Brosman

SWEET IMPRESSIONS, novel by Nora Roberts

A LAWMAN’S CHRISTMAS, novel by Linda Lael Miller


WINES
2006 Saxum James Berry Vineyards
2009 Robert Foley charbono NV
2002 Integrity shiraz
1997 Philip Togni

New Year’s Eve wines:
2003 Bert Simon Serrig Herrenburg Riesling Auslese
1970 Ch. Palmer
1991 Graham’s port

CRANKIN'!

You know: I like how my poetry career is going. By which I mean, I just sit on a mountain and blather at the e-world and continue my turbulent (but perfumed, please!) descent to poetic obscurity by eventually being known as that cheerful crank who writes poems no one can, uh, pin down let alone remember ... I like that, really, because I believe in poetry's evaporation, I mean, evanescence.

Well, that's also to say I'ma kinda sitting here bedazzled by something that just happened ... this unexpected offer, this true honor really ... can't share details yet ... but I think it'll also result in something like a 600-book order for one of my books (a book of my own choosing, but which I haven't chosen yet). I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around it (heck: for some of my books, it takes years to sell 6 books! Then there's this 600 - plus?!). So I'ma just gonna head over to the wine cellar because, whether towards obscurity or not, as a friend's gifted refrigerator magnet proclaims, while



Jest sayin'...






!

BY THE WAY

Remember all that hoo-haa I caused about getting a record 108 new poetry reviews for the current issue of Galatea Resurrects? Well, cleaning up moi messy e-desk, I realized I forgot to include two reviews. So I actually had received

110 NEW POETRY REVIEWS!!!!

Ooops. Well, I'll be sure to include those two reviews in the next issue. But jest so you know, Moi is even better than she blathers she is....!

Yadda ...