A DESCENT POETICS: AS PUBLISHER, I AM PROUD

and feeling quite moved by these accounts of Tom Beckett's recent reading -- his first in 7 years! -- at the Demolicious Series in Boston. Tom says I would have been happy to see all the UNPROTECTED TEXTS being clutched by peeps in the audience. Read about this lovely event over at Geof Huth's and Allen Bramhall's. There really is something very moving about how they recount having met and listened to the Tall Guy.

Oh, and also proud that poems from Luis H. Francia's Museum of Absences are generating four-figure fees to appear in worldwide publications (books, CD-Rom et al) put out as school textbooks by Harcourt Brace.

I'll take it all for Poetry: from Love to Money.

*****

P.S. I always appreciate Geof Huth's enthusiasm for his poetry experiences. Reading through his blog now, which I haven't checked out (to my dismay) for a while. And I am fascinated now by Geof's series of "Letters to a Young, Imaginary Visual Poet." The most recent entry -- he's at 36 letters! -- seems to apply to others besides visual poets. I was taken by this excerpt describing what he would do if he was on a plane that suddenly started experiencing trouble:

(I’ll tell you what I’ve decided must be my response if I ever find myself in a plane, such as this 737, plummeting to the earth: Feel the fall. If death is unavoidable, enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Feel the rush of gravity. Feel the plane plunging through insubstantial air. Watch the earth hurtling up towards the plane. Live the experience. We are here on this planet for only a short time, and all we have to do is experience it, so I’ve decided that this is my choice: to experience the horror as spectacle and excitement.)

See, this hearkens for me a recurring dream themed around the question I used to ask myself as a young un': What would be the ideal way to die?

I often thought said ideal way would be to do a parachute drop -- and the parachute fails to open and you thus know you're going to die. But in the meantime, you would experience what it would be like to fly (even though, I suppose, you're actually dropping more than you are flying).

What is it about the fall, no, the plunge? Descent Poetics.