MOI THORNS EMBARK ON THEIR WORLD TOUR

Yay. THE THORN ROSARY is now beginning its world tour. Boxes of moi thorns are now winging their way -- okay, scratch that: ... are slogging their way through the Pacific Ocean to its Philippine copublisher Anvil Publishing. Hopefully, the book will hit the archipelago in a month or two! Komusta!

And moi thorns also shall rear their perfumed tips in Chile, with a selection of poems to be part of an anthology of contemporary North American poetry to be published by Das Kapital in Santiago:

La alteración del silencio: poesía norteamericana reciente, Edited by Galo Ghigliotto and William Allegrezza

Muy bien!

*****

I read for the first time from THE THORN ROSARY at last night's wonderful reading at Books & Bookshelves. I only read one poem, but it was "Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess of Mercy Kuanyin Shaoling Kung-Fu Fist," the poem after which I'd named Meritage Press' imprint, "Open Palm Press," which is publishing the Hay(na)ku for Haiti series. I read the poems from the series' first 8 booklets penned by Jean Vengua, William Allegrezza, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Lars Palm, Nicole Mauro, and Tom Beckett. 'Twas interesting to mouth-feel all the varied ways that these poets responded to Haiti...

I loved the audience--even though they laughed at my incompetent attempt to mimic the Shaoling Kung Fu Fist, they did so affectionately! How lovely to see poets I haven't seen in as much as, we all realized, eight years: Susan Gervirtz, Norma Cole, even host David Kirschenbaum....and also lovely to meet poets for the first time whose names I've long known: Jill Stengel, Patrick Dunagan....I didn't have a chance to spend much time with most of the wonderful crowd as I had to leave early (it's schoolnight and I had to get back to wine country) but I could tell they knew their poetry from their, uh, blather. Thanks all for coming!

And I loved loved loved the venue! The concept of a store of "books and bookshelves" just makes sense! And proprietor David Highsmith is a faboo poet himself! Wonderful!

And because of writing this post, I think I'm also going to have a wonderful day and I hope you do too!