Here's a painting by my friend, the Duluth painter Jack Walsh. I feel exactly like this image today. I don't know how or why, but I think it's good and bad to feel this way. That's why I like it so much.
I'm not even going to ask Jack what the title of it is. I think we should make one up. Any ideas?
Allison Titus and Joshua Poteat hold down the Black Ocean table.
This machine broke a few hearts and fulfilled a few dreams. Mostly the dream was gumballs, but a couple folks got a free Black Ocean book. Nobody really died.
Facing camera left to right: Janaka Stucky, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, DJ Dolack In mirror left to right: Allison Titus, Heather Overby, me, Joshua Poteat
Rauan Klassnik and Janaka Stucky are thrilled about Holy Land. Me, too.
On our way to the Steal This Reading reading
Susan McCarty at the "Steal This Reading" afterparty.
on our way to the Starcherone reading at KGB bar
I saw Charles Simic and James Tate and John Ashbery and Russell Edson all sitting at the same table, and then I got to participate in a standing ovation for Russell Edson. It was, to say the least, one of my top three favorite standing ovations of all time.
I went to panels. I heard Li-Young Lee and the Copper Canyon poets readings on site and the Steal this Reading poets and the Starcherone authors at a couple Brooklyn sites. I saw scads of old friends and some folks I'm more recently fond of.
Paula Cisewski is, among other things, the author of the books listed below and a co-founder of JoyFace Poetry & Arts Collective. She is serving as the 2013 host of the Banfill-Locke Reading Series.