The Hermit Poet

I’m reading at the following venues in the next little while.

TONIGHT – 6PM // Tongue & Groove Reading
HOTEL CAFE,
623 1/2 N. Cahuenga Blvd, Hollywood, CA

TUESDAY, March 31 – 8PM // Visiting Poets Series
The Warehouse @ FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
Tallahassee, FL

WED April 15 // UC Riverside MFA Alumni with Books Reading
UC RIVERSIDE
Riverside, CA

Tonight I’ll be reading with John Haskell, Francesca Lia Block and Chiwan Choi — all of whom are relatively new to me (though some have friended me recently on Facebook). There’s also a musician and a band which follows after all of us (not literally “follows” us, but rather, follows after us in sequence!)

(Though much delayed (school work, travel, grading, and spring break all factor in), the new issue is finally up and hopefully worth the wait)

www.boxcarpoetry.com

Bee sting and sweetness. Cologne and old cars. Phone calls. Prison beatings. The body bruised, tasted, turned, destroyed or reformed. In this, our 19th issue, the senses dominate and overwhelm. The poems swing their doors wide open, ready to be encountered.

In addition to wonderful poetry, this issue also features the holga photography of Gary Haigh and two great dialogues: an interview with Amy Liann Tudor by Cindy Cunningham and a conversation between first book poets Ching-In Chen and Ely Shipley. Fascinating reading — well worth the look. Only one review this issue, but it’s an interesting look by Gregg Mosson at Michael Salcman’s The Clock Made of Confetti. Lots of reviews and interviews in the pipeline. Stay tuned for more in May’s issue.

Poetry
* Rachel Bunting: “The Apiary”
* Alan King: “Conundrum”
* Rachel Inez Lane: “It’s Valentine’s Day and My Russian Phone Sex Operator Roommate is Crying”
* Juliet Latham: “Directly After the Accident”
* Gary McDowell: “A Miscarriage Scare at Bronson Methodist”
* Jenny Sadre-Orafai: “Full Circle”
* David Salner: “Frank Little in the Big Sky State”
* Kevin Stoy: “Flesh on Stone”
* Rob Talbert: “what practice makes”
* Leon Weinmann: “In Doubt, Recalling Cordelia”

Photography

* Gary Haigh: two holga photographs

Interviews & Conversations
* Disrupting Forms, Multiple Selves and Migrating Bodies: A Conversation between Ely Shipley & Ching-In Chen
* An Interview with Amy Liann Tudor ~ Cindy Cunningham

Reviews

* Michael Salcman’s The Clock Made of Confetti ~ Gregg Mosson

Just received word earlier today that “array” and “pointer” – two poems from my Babbage’s Dream project – have been accepted for publication by diode and will appear in their May 2009 issue.

Also in the works:   I’ve recently finished a rather lengthy interview conducted by email with the students at the University of LaVerne as part of process/exchange of judging the contest for their journal, The Prism Review.  Lots of interesting questions and hopefully some good responses from me. It was exciting to discuss my book, my experiences with writing it, how things are progressing with my next project, and writing in general.  It’s good knowing that there exists a body of people who have read the book closely and have evidently enjoyed it quite a bit (at least, they’ve asked some great insightful questions).

I’m realizing my favorite part of the AWP conference is meeting up with poet friends, fellow bloggers, and Boxcar contributors.  The panels and readings are nice, but since I spend most of my time manning the Boxcar table at the bookfair, these have become less important to me.  This year was much the same – especially since my other editors (Eduardo and Sara) couldn’t make it to Chicago.

Some highlights (mostly general):

• discussion with my taxi cab driver about his desire to return to Dubai and run his own manufacturing or retail company (evidently he and his brother have done this a few times here in the US, but red tape, competition, and taxes here make it harder to turn a steady profit).
• reading at the Kundiman panel with Aimee Nezhukmatathil, Oliver de la Paz, Sarah Gambito, Timothy Yu, and Ching-In Chen
• seeing old Kundiman friends and hanging out for dinner and general mayhem in the evenings (trying to find a place for 19 people to hang out is hard to do in Chicago on Friday night)
• the big chow down at the Hilton buffet in our separate dining area
• meeting Brent Fisk, Brent Goodman, Margaret Baashar, and many other bloggers and Boxcar contributors for the first time
• being berated in blank verse by a man who pronounced the verdict of “prosetry” on the poems in my book (just a bit on the eccentric side)
• chatting with ice sculptors who were in town for the big ice carving festival which almost didn’t happen because the weather was too warm

Although I did my best to keep my book acquiring within reasonable bounds (didn’t want to ship anything home or get extra luggage), I did still come away with some great books.

Acquired this time (in sedimentary order from by latest stack of books):

• Dark Thirty by Santee Frazier
• Wild Flight by Christine Rhein
• The Volcano Sequence by Alicia Ostriker
• The Heart’s Traffic by Ching-In Chen
• Wrong by Reginald Shepherd
• The Pyramids of Malpighi by Steve Gehrke
• Sad Jazz by Tony Barnstone
• Ohio Violence by Alison Stine
• Mistaken for Song by Tara Bray
• Delivered by Sarah Gambito
• Shy Green Fields by Hugh Behm-Steinberg
• Letters to Guns by Brendan Constantine
• Torched Verse Ends by Steven D. Schroeder

Santee Frazier’s Dark Thirty is especially good — I read it on my flight back and was quite blown away by it.  I’ll blog more about it later, but for now I’m looking forward to reading the rest of these over the next few months.

Chicago was fun and I’m looking forward to Denver next year.   Hopefully my other Boxcar people (Eduardo and Sara) can attend in 2010.