Some Gratitude

Many thanks to Chris Tonelli and Open Letters for this very thoughtful review of Zach Schomburg's and my books!

A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You

On a non-Ebay related Internet foray, my mom (hi mom!) came across this review of Upon Arrival by Erin Lynn Marsh and sent it to me. Erin calls the book "pleasingly anomalous", which thrills me, for I imagine the crew of the Enterprise analyzing it with their long range sensors.

I have been receiving literary RICHES recently, and I'd like to share my good fortune with you.

First off, my latest issue of swerve landed in my mailbox. If you don't subscribe to this beautiful, handcrafted literary magazine, you are missing out. Issue 16 features Kate Hall, Chris Hosea, Juliet Patterson, and Lynn Xu.

Then I received my set of Octopus 8 chapbooks.

Then I was able to have the inimitable Ms. Terri Ford autograph my copy of Hams Beneath the Firmament.

And I have a replacement copy of Stephen Burt's Popular Music PLUS a copy of the awesome Shot Clocks, poems and an essay for the WNBA.

All's I want for anymore is some advice from the narwhal, which problem should be remedied any second now!

With all this amazing work for inspiration, I will be wildly disappointed with myself if I can't crank a poem out today. Life has been large lately, and my regular writing schedule has had to take backseat, but today is mine MINE MIIIIIINE!

Please wish me luck.

p.s. If you recall my embarrassing obsession of a couple weeks back, I should tell you that I have settled down somewhat. However, I did place a widget at the bottom of this blog so I can display my lack of authority with a bit of a cocky swagger.

2 to 7 Dark Confessions

I signed this little blog here up at Technorati about a week ago, and now I am completely obsessed about it. Why obsessed? Because, according to them, I have "no authority yet."

While it's true, in many fundamental ways, that I have no authority yet, I am not usually bothered by the lack. However, Technorati has, like, a system of rules in place to determine how they dole out "authority". And according to their rules, I should have an authority of, oh gosh, maybe 2 or 7 or something, and I WANT MY 2-7 POINTS OF AUTHORITY REAL BAD.

(Why, yes, it is difficult for me not to fix those adverb errors.)

Sad, isn't it? Why such want of authority? Many telling reasons to be sure, but primarily, I am a somewhat methodical person, and when I decide to do something, I need to feel it is taken care of before I can move on, all happy and carefree, to the next little task on my checklist. At this point in my life, I'm just going to admit it: that's how I do.

So I check for my authority every. single. day. Sometimes even with the multichecks. I am stalking myself on Technorati until they give me my dagnab 2-7!!! It's super unhealthy.

But you know what's fun? Surprises.

This nice Chris Tonelli put a picture of Upon Arrival right next to Matthew Rohrer's new beauty and called the two books refreshing! That's swell, and I thank him. Plus I appreciate his choice of blog template.

And this nice Julia Cohen wrote some generous things, too. Julia, I will try not to disappoint you with book 2!

And finally, Erin Lynn wrote something nice about the book some time ago, which I had trouble finding when she told me, for I was spelling her blog's name wrong! Plus, I feel associated with her cat, which I like.

Oh, my. So now you know. Please don't judge me too harshly. Or act like you've never even Googled yourself. You probably haven't. You win.

But I am paying for this bad distraction. All day, this song has been taking up a LOT of my brain space:



...and I figure it's some kind of karma workout. Except (or, rather, in addition) I thought it was sung by Loverboy, and so I spent a good deal of time this evening watching snippets of Loverboy videos.

Nope. Aldo Nova

Four, Poetry

1. I was on the radio yesterday. I didn't mention it before, for I feared I might sound like a big knob. While it's true that I accidentally talked about theremins and cocktail waitressing more than I had intended, you can still stream the interview (the 4/12/2007 show) from here. I'm about a half hour in, after an interview with a really interesting Irani memoirist. My primary purpose was to promote this crew who will be gracing us with a reading next Friday!
My secondary purpose was to mention that the Thursday night before the Imaginary Press Reading, I'll be in LaCrosse, and if you happpen to be around the area it would be swell if you could make it.
Those Write On Radio folks are great. You can stream the show every Thursday from 11am-12pm (central time) if you want!

2. Here is a nice article about Twin Cities poetry at mnartists.org.

3. My pal Kate Harding and her friend Jillian Dunham have launched a literary blog called the Bibliophilistines. While I've been linked to them on my sidebar for some time, I am so tickled by what she posted today concerning my and my pal Paige Ackerson-Kiely's books that I want to thank her properly. Kate, thank you. Perhaps soon we can meet midway between our towns for fireworks, antiques, and cheese.

4. I just found THIS.

The Cafe Review

Just got my fall issue of The Cafe Review for which I would like to send out a big thanks to the editors for taking one of my new states poems and to Karen Douglass for a kind and positive review of Upon Arrival.

As soon as I can stop rereading the Andrei Codrescu poem "Visitors," I look forward to getting knocked out by even more work in the mag.

Thanks to John Deming and Coldfront

Here's a review of Upon Arrival.

I don't know how to judge these things (what with the subjectivity factor and all), but I think this is mostly pretty fair and at times downright nice.