WORKIN' ON THAT RESURRECTION!

Workin' it workin' it! Yes, I'm working on putting out the next issue of Galatea Resurrections -- bear with me and you lovely reviewers probably still have at least through this Wednesday to send me any more reviews. Life just takes longer to accomplish anything when your first priority is being a Mom, and that should be the way it is! Here's Michael during Giants/Dodgers game, in preparation for possibly trying baseball this spring!



No wonder my poems-in-progress are focused on algebra and sports. Tho, such only continues my long-held pattern of writing about things I don't know...

REAL THANKS

with a bow must be given to Allen Bramhall whose shopping meditations ("I usually wear men’s clothes but there are times that I wear men’s apparel.") have the same effect on me as Meryl Streep acting as Julia Child -- it just makes me

squeeeeeeeal

with bliss bliss bliss!

I've been feeling that Thanksgiving occurred in an eye's half-blink this year. Allen's Mall reportage -- more than the turkey we attempted this year in the pizza oven -- finally made me feel this particular holiday. Really: after Allen's post, no need to go out there and do Black Friday?!

"A LIFE BEYOND STONE"

The Del Sol Review #16 is fresh! Happy to be part of this issue with a poem that also explains (partly) the underpinning to moi Chatelaine thing: "Pygmalion's Embrace". (Yes, my first name is misspelled; supposed to be corrected any time soon.) The poem was selected from Footnotes to Algebra.

And this week, the Big, Burly Men continued to work on the "[convergence of] poetry, nature, art and wine ... for a life beyond stone.” Galatea's mountain now contains an olive grove, as well as fresh cherry and orange trees. Go nature!

CALLING OUT FOR SONGS!

Jemma Green, a creative writing student currently living in Cornwall, is the first to take up our invitation for songs extending the Original Girl’s global chorus. But as curator John Bloomberg-Rissman notes, the invitation is OPEN TO ALL!

Y tambien, mas interesante informacion AQUI.

FRESH MARSH HAWK REVIEW!

Today, Michael wore his ALL-STAR t-shirt to school. Sigh...

Anyway, Marsh Hawk Review is fresh with lovely poems!. This issue is guest-edited by Daniel Morris (the Review features a revolving editorship of Marsh Hawk Press' collective members). Featured are:

Chris Alexander
Steve Fellner
Norman Finkelstein
Barry Goldensohn
Lorrie Goldensohn
Francisco Guevara
Jamey Hecht
Paolo Javier
Daniel Morris
Karin Randolph
Michael Rerick
Daniel R. Schwarz
Eileen R. Tabios
Rosalynde Vas Dias
Harriet Zinnes
An Interview with Jaap Van Der Bent

My contribution "Aurora" is a poem from Footnotes to Algebra...

ALL STAR DAY!

Here are this year's St. Helena ALL-STARS! (Yes, Michael's the sho..., uh, the kid in the blue shorts):



And here are all the players that made up his ALL-STAR Napa Valley game:



One of the best things I appreciate about these tween boys is when they show their thoughtfulness, as in Michael's goalie-friend deliberately bending his knees, perhaps so as not to emphasize Michael's slight stature....



Before the game had started, all the kids got ALL-STAR t-shirts. After the game, we went home, Michael took a shower, then put back that fabulous but now quite stinky shirt to wear again for the rest of the day! Mama Moi held her tongue and her nose!

As for who won the ALL-STAR game, now C'mon Peeps -- the score doesn't matter as long as you tried your best, right? (That's right -- you wusses betting on the score-results just got obviated by Moi for being in the wrong game.) I am happy to confirm, though, that Michael played his heart out...!

ALL-STAR = ALL-HEART!

ROMAN HOLIDAY--MOI "101st" BOOK

Well, before my "102nd Book", there's gotta be of course the 101st!:



If that front cover drawing seems familiar, it's because of THIS. Anyway, mine is one of three inaugural releases from a new chapbook publisher, Naissance -- which of course means "a birth, an origin, or a growth". I love helping to inaugurate small presses; I remember when Menage a Trois... was the first print-book published by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's xPress(ed). Well, we all know where the brilliant poet-composer-artist Jukka since has gone on to become the ideal poet's publisher with not just xPress(ed) but also Blue Lion Books,eIghT-pAGE pREss, ankkuri (in Finnish), xStream, minimum daily requirements, epidermis, contour et al. Jukka helped me learn to understand how my choice for publishers also must reflect poetics, not just publishing's commercial facets.

Anyway, here's Naissance's official announcement -- hope it encourages you to check it out, meanwhile supporting as well a brand new press...which looked at 21st century technology and came up with a supportable way to distribute arguably one of the most difficult products to disseminate: ye olde poetry chapbook!

*****

NAISSANCE CHAPBOOKS ANNOUNCEMENT

Naissance Chapbooks (Kingston, PA) is pleased to announce the release of

ROMAN HOLIDAY
By Eileen R. Tabios

In ROMAN HOLIDAY, Eileen R. Tabios brings us a numbered sequence of prose poem Synopses that strike the mind’s eye like an oil-filled kaleidoscope. Patterns merge and emerge in shifting repetitions that succeed in what all poetry attempts: to cover more ground than they should have been able. An excerpt:

from Synopsis #7

It transcends the feminine gesture. [Consolation defined as the bat never reappeared]. She totters on ice despite thick ankles. [By his face, one can tell he’s about to deliver the boot.] He has a gaze like a mirror. [There is nothing like an infant tugging on a daddy’s white whiskers.] “Sulpicia, a Roman woman writer, wrote elegies in Latin that had been attributed to Tibullus.” [Whatever. True love is never chaste.]

ROMAN HOLIDAY is Tabios' 17th print poetry collection. It features a front cover reproduction of a drawing by her 13-year-old son Michael, as well as a back cover reproduction of a photograph of the author's family during a "Roman Holiday". The chap's witty design facilitates the author's long-held ludic approach to mixing real-life references with poetic personas.

ROMAN HOLIDAY can be ordered through the Naissance Chapbooks site at http://chapbookpublisher.com/shop.html for $10 (includes standard shipping within the continental USA). Other new releases are No L by Jennifer Hill and Two Poems by Michael Aro.

For more information: chapbookpublisher@gmail.com

CARNE-HEAD, PART II

This evening had the second and last practice before Michael's ALL-STAR SOCCER GAME this Saturday. In the car ride towards the field, I reminded Michael that the coach who'd moved him from his favored left-field defensive position simply didn't know him. And that Michael should use the practice to show his capabilities to the coach and everyone.

We arrived. Practice ensued.

Let me put it this way: there was a moment towards the end of scrimmage when every coach and parent on the side-line simultaneously Whoooo-aaaahed and agreed my son is a fabulous player.

Take that, Carne-Head.


This Saturday, Michael will play in the position he desires...and earned. THAT. IS. MOI. BOY.

INSUFFERABLE

Just finished Novella Carpenter's FARM CITY: THE EDUCATION OF AN URBAN FARMER. She talks about becoming a farmer in Oakland, and there's this one passage where, as a newly-converted, she enthuses about the farmin' thang...then says in the same breath something like Gads we were insufferable.

I look at my prior post, look at its last paragraph, and similarly conclude, Gads I can be insufferable!

But Yo I usually know it, you know, when Moi is being insufferable. Does ... ?

GIRL SINGING...AGAIN AND AGAIN!

Am quite tickled indeed to learn that 1000 Views of Girl Singing is already in use in a university, this inaugural one being University College Falmouth in England where poet-artist-publisher-teacher Rupert Loydell is lecturing on Creative Writing.

Mr. Loydell apparently has his students looking at the online version -- WHICH IS A UNIQUE OFFERING in poetry; do check it out! -- and creating their own versions.

Yeah. Poetry lives -- it's not something that lies static against the page or is passively received. Poetry breathes and engenders, among other things, new acts of creation. Poetry lives dynamically!

MANNY PACQUIAO: MY SON'S POETICS

One gets the sense that boxing has yet to show Pacquiao anything as challenging as what he has lived through in the streets as a kid of General Santos,..
--Patrick Rosal

Today was the first practice for the ALL-STAR Soccer Team. It looks like the league's various teams chose their top five players to create an ALL-STAR team that will play some other area's ALL-STAR team this coming Saturday.

Today's scrimmage focused on melding these players for the first time. The two ALL-STAR coaches had to assess the kids, especially those new to them because they'd not coached them before, like Michael. A few other coaches stopped by, though, to check out the action....which is to say, this is a story of how I really had to control myself today from going after a big, burly man -- one of the coaches who clearly is not himself an ALL-STAR caliber -- and wallop him with my trusty umbrella-suddenly-turned kali stick. Let's call him Joe the Plumb..., okay, let's just call him Burly Joe.

So, my son -- again -- was the smallest guy on the team. Perhaps he's the smallest guy in the league -- I can't say I recall a shorter guy than him from the games I saw all season. So he's short...BUT, so what, right? He was on the team that won the Napa Cup and one would think -- if one was thinking -- that his size clearly must not have been detrimental because he wouldn't have been picked among the top five players sent to the ALL-STARS.

But Burly Joe obviously wasn't thinking (perhaps he can't from all that muscle? Let's call him Carne Head instead) because he arbitrarily switched Michael to play defender on a different guy. One of the coaches from Michael's regular team questioned that and Carne Head replied, "I'm just matching him up with a smaller guy..."

Oh Knucklehead, I mean Carne Head, Michael's taken the ball away from guys as big as three times his size! If you want to adjust his position because he's doing something wrong, okay. But don't arbitrarily make a decision based on his size (you must judge a book by its cover, right Meat Head?!)

What pissed me off -- what pained me the most -- was seeing the confused expression on Michael's face as he strove to understand why his position was shifted when he was handling it just fine ...

... I've been mentally fulminating over this all evening. I keep telling myself that the coach-who-also-looks-like-a-meatball just doesn't know Michael. The thing is, most of Michael's peers are soft when compared to what formed Michael's character, what he survived to end up as my son. Without going into details, what he survived is why he is not at all intimidated by bigger, burly players. Even then, a soccer game is not even a smidgen of a challenge compared to what he's clawed himself out of ...

Michael's growth spurt has started. But meanwhile, the steel in his spine is not evident from his small frame. Keep underestimating him, you Carne Head. I look forward to seeing him make bile out of your meat. Only a Pin@y or Child of a Pin@y can survive pinappaitan, di ba?

P.S. Another Soccer Mom, who'd observed Michael in action all season, actually suggested today I have Michael join his school's basketball team. Meat Head: extrapolate from that and learn.

CONGRATULATIONS

Bino Realuyo for Philippines' National Book Award for Poetry. More details HERE, where he says:

most of us touched by american imperialism. i write in english for this reason

which is why I'm such a fan of Filipino poets who do something with the English language besides inherit it.

"HOME" ON THE ARS POETICA RANGE

Newly-released AND RECOMMENDED is poem, home: An Anthology of Ars Poetica, edited by Jennifer Hill and Dan Waber. This is the print version of what become a popular, viral site, Ars Poetica that came to feature 569 poems by 251 poets. Check it out!

Meanwhile, here's my latest Relished W(h)ine List :

WINTER GARDEN (to date)
86 persimmons
46 green figs & 4 purple figs (they should be out of season now but Mom's managing to eke 'em out)
6 red peppers
2 yellow pepper
94 tomatoes (Mom keeps eking them out...)


PUBLICATIONS
AUTOPSY TURVY, poem-collaborations by father-daughter team Thomas Fink and Molly Diablo Mason (brilliant and sophisticated and elegant and witty and just all-out charming! Read in manuscript form as this will be forthcoming from Meritage Press in early 2010)

MANUSCRIPTS FOR DAD'S POETRY PRIZE (read all submitted manuscripts including the following winner and finalists):
ARCHIPELAGO DUST by Karen Llagas
LOVED LETTERS: MAILED WITHOUT A SCENT OF HOME by Niki Eskobar
TRAJE DE BODA by Aileen Ibardaloza
A DARK CONTINENT COMPANION by Sean Labrador y Manzano
RIZAL IN SAN FRANCISCO AND OTHER POEMS by Don Pacis
TATTOO by Joel Vega

SEE HOW WE ALMOST FLY, poems by Alison Luterman

AIRS & VOICES, poems by Paula Bonnel

DARK CARD, poems by Rebecca Foust (deeply moving: poems of intense black diamonds with their stubborn, fierce light)

TO LIGHT OUT, poems by Karen Weiser

NEW EXERCISES, poems by Franck Andre Jamme

SLAVES TO DO THESE THINGS, poems by Amy King

MADE-UP INTERVIEWS WITH IMAGINARY ARTISTS featuring Pat Ament, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Joanne Greenberg, Peter Granbois and Cecilia Vicuna by Alex Stein

VANITAS 4 (TRANSLATION ISSUE), literary/arts journal edited by Vincent Katz

AURA: LAST ESSAYS by Gustaf Sobin

SOMEWHERE TOWARDS THE END, memoir by Diana Athill

FROM CHINA WITH LOVE: A LONG ROAD TO MOTHERHOOD, memoir by Emily Buchanan

OUT OF MANY, ONE FAMILY: HOW TWO ADULTS CLAIMED TWELVE CHILDREN THROUGH ADOPTION, memoir by Bart and Claudia Fletcher

A DRESS FOR ANNA: THE STORY OF THE REDEMPTION OF THE LIFE OF A UKRAINIAN ORPHAN memoir by Deborah J. Amend

THE VINTAGE CAPER, novel by Peter Mayle (effervescent but not lite ... for oenophiles anyway)

WITHOUT WARNING, novel by John Birmingham

AFTER DARK, novel by Phillip Margolin

UNDONE, novel by Karin Slaughter

BURNING TIME, novel by Leslie Glass

TRACKING TIME, novel by Leslie Glass

CANDLES ON BAY STREET, novel by K.C. McKinnon

BLUE EDGE OF MIDNIGHT, novel by Jonathon King

ACTS OF NATURE, novel by Jonathon King


WINES
2005 Peju estate cabernet NV (given by poet-friend, which just goes to show you can gift me wine or poetry books as neither are coals and Moi ain't Newcastle)
2004 B Cellars Blend 24 Cabernet, merlot, syrah NV
2002 Dutch Henry Zinfandel Rutherford NV
2005 JJ Prum Graacher Himmelreich Reisling Auslese
1989 Rayas Pignan CNP
1985 Clerico Ciabot Mentin Ginestra Barolo
2000 Aldo Conterno Barbera D'Alba Conca Tre Pile
2000 Gloria de Ostatu Rioja Alavesa
1996 Dalla Valle Cabernet NV

A TOTALLY UNEXPECTED NOVEL MOVE!

Well, I never thought I'd be nominated for BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES!

That's right -- short stories. [Pause for HUGE GRIN! Scratch that: Pause for HUGE CACKLE before she slips offa her chair and lands on the floor as she's laughing so hard...]

Thank you to the editors of Cerise Press -- that be Sally Molini, Karen Rigby, Greta Aart -- for nominating SILK EGG, my mischievous prose poem-turned-novel and now turned-short story for its briefness.

SILK EGG, by the way, is the title novel for a larger manuscript entitled SILK EGG: COLLECTED NOVELS. I've been too busy to work to submit novels from this manuscript, but the first and only other novel to be published from it is NOVEL CHATELAINE. The whole thing just makes Moi purrrrrr.......

ALL-STAR SON, BUT NOT ALL-STAR COUNTRY

This weekend will present the last game of soccer season. So Michael, the faboo artist, will present his coach with the following drawing:



I will miss soccer season -- to my own surprise, and no doubt as evident to you Peeps, I've quite enjoyed being a "Soccer Mom"! Yay!

Having said that, just as I was starting to miss the season, Coach Emilio asked if I would consent to having Michael participate in this one-off ALL STAR GAME. My son is an ALL STAR!!! But of course, preened his All Star Mama! Doesn't he look the muy guapo part?!



*****

Having said all that, Michael also got an Honor Roll Certificate this week for his First Quarter Grades. I applauded him, of course, and yes of course that is wonderful news.

But, Estados Unidos -- can we all get real here?! Someone who was in fourth grade in an orphanage school in Colombia just six months ago should have no business being in a U.S.-American school's Honor Roll. Particularly, I emphasize, if that student is being tutored in math by Moi! This just gets to show yet again how the quality of public education in this country has plummeted.

I wish I could say that Michael's grades were because he's a junior Einstein. I'm his mother and, to paraphrase that Christian joke, I therefore think he's The Second Coming. But no: he's not an Einstein. He's just getting high grades because the academic thresholds are way lower than they should be in this country. And by the way, our local public school is among the best in the country. So: Estados Unidos -- get your act together. We have got to do a better job of educating our children!

Believe me -- I'd rather my son had Ds and Cs this term; he is supposed to be behind academically. That he's performing well among his peers basically means public education has dumbed down significantly in the past several decades. And, since this is a poetry blog, I will add that this factor is a way bigger factor than the "difficult vs accessible" dilemma in engendering little popular support for poetry.

A KUNDIMAN PARA TOI

Okay Peeps. Submissions to this start being taken TOMORROW! So, this Kundiman Advisory Board Member advises you:

Kundiman announces Poetry Prize

The Kundiman Poetry Prize for Asian American writers

New York— Kundiman, Inc. is pleased to announce the inauguration of the Kundiman Poetry Prize in partnership with Alice James Books.

The prize is open to emerging and established Asian American poets. The award includes $2,000, publication of the winning manuscript, and sponsorship of a reading.

Submissions are accepted from November 15, 2009 to January 15, 2010. Guidelines for submission are available HERE.

Alice James Books is a cooperative poetry press with a mission is to seek out and publish the best contemporary poetry by both established and beginning poets, with particular emphasis on involving poets in the publishing process. For more on Alice James Books, go to http://www.alicejamesbooks.org/.

Kundiman was founded in 2002 to provide opportunities for Asian American poets to perfect their skills through education and performance and to promote Asian American literature as a vital part of American letters. Its programs include a summer poetry retreat, held annually since 2004 and a reading series in New York City.

Kundiman’s partnership with Alice James Books for The Kundiman Poetry Prize is made possible through the support of Fordham University. For more information on Kundiman, go to http://www.kundiman.org.

And that be Moi kundiman love song for you!

AUTOPSY TURVY!

I must do a heads' up on what looks to be Meritage Press' next book, AUTOPSY TURVY by the first father-daughter artist/poet team that I will publish: Thomas Fink and Maya Diablo Mason. Housekeeping first--here's a book description (and let me tell you, a book that's blurbed by a Tan Lin/Denise Duhamel combo...rocks!):

A book of "utterly wishful miraculously wistful costumed poems" (Tan Lin) by father-daughter team Thomas Fink and Maya Diablo Mason, Autopsy Turvy gathers terse, springy, psychologically intense eleven-line lyrics and hay(na)ku-based pieces, a 15-poem series called "Bee" that spells out the tangles of family and finances, a surreal poetic play entitled "Invisible Surgeon," and much else. According to Denise Duhamel, Fink and Mason's "poetry. . . goes to the brink, peering off the cliff, before they pull one another back to safety."

Other "advance words" are equally enthusiastic from such poetic sages as Tom Beckett. But what really moves me to post is this Authors' Photo:



Looking at this photo, I was just so moved over the look of paternal pride on Tom's face, as he looks at his gorgeous, talented daughter. Maya is currently a high school student in Long Island, New York, she plans to pursue a career in drama, visual art, or writing. Welcome, Maya!

Backdrop also shows Maya's talents and more jewels from their collaborations. The paintings behind them feature Tom doing the background and Maya doing the foregrounded figurative work!

Love them Family Poetics...!

BELLY INTERESTING!

You're correct, friendly Peep. I did find THIS very interesting. And whets the appetite to hear more...

...though if I'm to be judged as a poet -- this be directed to anyone who cares, not just the author of the above -- I'd prefer to be judged not by my first book but my forthcoming THORN ROSARY which does encompass my first book...I'ma jes sayin'

I BUY POETRY!

My buying habits for poetry continue to reveal nothing about Moi (grin). Here's my latest Bought Poetry List:

VANITAS literary/arts journal (per subscription)

COLLECTED POEMS by C.K. Williams

MAID OF HEAVEN: THE STORY OF SAINT JOAN OF ARC by Ben D. Kennedy

LEAFLETS: POEMS 1965-1968 by Adrienne Rich

SELECTED POEMS OF OCTAVIO PAZ, bilingual edition with translations by Muriel Rukeyser

FOOTNOTES TO ALGEBRA: UNCOLLECTED POEMS 1995-2009 (well, yes, I buy my own books...)

RHAPSODY IN PLAIN YELLOW by Marilyn Chin

poem, home: An Anthology of Ars Poetica, Edited by Jennifer Hill and Dan Waber

AT THE PULSE by Laura Carter

DELIVERED by Sarah Gambito

ONE OF THE MOST GENEROUS POETRY PROJECTS

around is William Allegrezza's offer to GIVE "found object poems" -- the ones depicted on Jean's Okir are gaw-geous! I wrote about the ones Bill gave moi earlier HERE.

The underlying poetics are also interesting. If I recall correctly (and if I don't it'll still sound nifty), I think these object-poems are an extension of Bill's youthful desire to write poems all over the world. Love it -- I love ambition in poetry!

Now, have you checked THIS ONE out? Because Toi should...!

EXTENDING DEADLINE FOR GALATEA RESURRECTS

Blame it on the kid who was down with the flu this week, thus taking up moi attention and requiring me to defer other matters. To wit, I am extending the review submission deadline for Galatea Resurrects from today to Sunday, November 15. You slackers thus have two more weekends to engage and share!

Meanwhile, here's Michael with equally ill-looking Halloween friends -- kid's the one with the skeletal chest that got all phlegmed up this week...

AHADADA DOESN'T MIND "YET ANOTHER COLLECTION" FROM MOI!

"...yet another collection..." -- makes Moi chuckle. Anyhoo:

Thanks to Ahadada for a lovely review of Footnotes to Algebra: Uncollected poems 1995-2009. Perhaps my favorite excerpt (laugh) is:

...far from being a volume of tailings, or chips and spalls swept up from the workshop floor, there are some challenging, and at the very least, interesting poems in these pages that belie the usual connotations of an “uncollected” collection.

Reviewer Jesse Glass usually gets how my mind goes and melts and re-shifts. CLICK HERE for entire review.

THE 2009-2010 FILAMORE TABIOS, SR. MEMORIAL POETRY PRIZE!

[Please Forward]

Meritage Press Announcement

Meritage Press, a multidisciplinary literary & arts press based in San Francisco & St. Helena, is pleased to announce the recipient of The 2009-2010 Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize ("Prize"): Karen Llagas, with her manuscript entitled ARCHIPELAGO DUST. Congratulations to Karen, whose book is scheduled to be published in 2010 by Meritage Press.

The Prize results from a global competition among Filipino poets; more information about the Prize is available HERE.

As regards the Prize's recipient, Karen Llagas' poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, {m}aganda magazine, Broadsided Press, Quay and Wompherence, as well as in the anthologies Field of Mirrors (PAWA, 2008) and Poems of the San Francisco Bay Area Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010). A recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize in 2007, she holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and a BA in Economics from Ateneo de Manila. She lives in San Francisco and works as a small business consultant, a Tagalog interpreter & instructor, and a poet-teacher with the California Poets in the Schools (CPITS). ARCHIPELAGO DUST will be her first poetry book.

Meritage Press also would like to congratulate the following Finalists, listed in alphabetical order of authors' last names:

Loved Letters: Mailed Without a Scent of Home by Niki Eskobar
traje de boda by Aileen Ibardaloza
A Dark Continent Companion by Sean Labrador y Manzano
RIZAL IN SAN FRANCISCO AND OTHER POEMS by Don Pacis
TATTOO by Joel Vega

Meritage Press would like to thank all the poets who participated by sharing their poetry manuscripts. We are honored to have read all of the poems, and are delighted to conclude that the high quality of participation bodes well for the future of Filipino-authored poetry.

Eileen R. Tabios, Publisher, Meritage Press
Beatriz Tabios, Poetry Judge

+++++

Click on http://www.meritagepress.com/prau.htm for information about the inaugural recipient of THE FILAMORE TABIOS, SR. MEMORIAL POETRY PRIZE: Prau by Jean Vengua.

AVANT THANKS!

Last month (wow: it's November already!), I had to decline with sincere regrets some lovely reading invitations from Sacramento, Tempe (AZ) and San Francisco. As Moi explained to one curator, I can't Superwoman my way to doing many readings when I live on a mountain with little back-up to take care of son, elderly Mom, two dogs and two cats. But I don't feel any sacrifice from having to pass on invitations for now (and I do hope you curators don't stop asking...) -- coz lookit what my son Michael did with his original Halloween drawing -- in a quite avant process, he xeroxed and then reconstituted the drawing to be



Life is good in moi obscure part of the woods.

SILK EGG & OTHERS

My second novel, SILK EGG, has just been published by Cerise Press, and you can read it without cutting down a tree OVER HERE!

Thanks to Cerise Press' editors: Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Sally Molini and Karen Rigby! It's a lovely journal, with its second issue revealing how quickly and deservedly it has grabbed the attention of some lions and candles in the literary world -- check out their Fall//Winter 2009-2010 Issue's offerings of poetry, translations, essays, fiction, photography & art, interviews and reviews.

Speaking of lovely reads, Otoliths continues to deliver Halloween and post-Halloween treats, as deftly-edited by Mark Young! Always wonderful to see several of my favorite poets!