Self-Portrait with Crayon

H_NGM_N has my review of Allison Benis White's Self-Portrait with Crayon up at their site.

The editors there do excellent work. I'm still exploring the issue...they publish PDF chapbooks. PDF chapbooks, man. Also, how cool is their From section, which publishes whole groups of poems or excerpts from a series or longer work.

And Matt Hart, a poet I always enjoy, has a poem about flamingos, people who love love and of whom he loves, and "the terrible pink sky."

Poem Draft

Another one from the series. This one will come down soon, too.

Once upon a time

planes, trains and automobiles held us
within their dream
of partial annihilation. Ellipses
of ourselves. One heart. And then two. We
were always sped along in one
of them. Her warm hand knotted in mine.
Or my hands in my lap at thirty-
thousand feet, or hers in hers on the train
to and from the airport. And she and I were
sped through Nospace
with badly drawn pictures of each other
bumping along in our heads entubed
in aluminum
…And, suddenly, I would see her
there, exactly where clocks and hearts
beat out Nowhen sealed inside both
the world’s grandest and blandest city.
My face contiguous with hers in her
eyes. Our embrace rocks us, impossibly
together and apart,
like a wave locked within a particle.
A hand waving hello as we say goodbye.

A stack of poetry books

I just finished A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight by Hadara Bar-Nadav.

Soon, I will turn to one of these:

A Model Year by Gina Myers

Fort Red Border by Kiki Petrosino.

O City by Wayne Miller

Destruction Myth by Mathias Svalina

poem draft

Here's a draft of a poem for the series I'm working on...the series is called Notes for a Memoir...

Gone...

Edip Cansever

What a great poem. Can't wait to read more by him.

pole vaulting skills

HTML Giant has this fantastic entry on moves in contemporary poetry. They're so right on. These are the trends. Sadly, I blindly follow more than half of them while writing. It's probably best to break some of these habits once conscious of them.

Headlines

I finished reviewing Allison Benis White's Self Portrait with Crayon. It will be in H_NGM_N's next issue.

Wrote a decent poem with drop lines the other day.

Audrey will begin crawling any day now. At five and a half months, she smiles at strangers and grabs everything. She would eat pizza, drink wine and coffee, and talk on cell phones if she could.

Danna and I found the BEST baby-carrying contraption. It's called an ERGO (see picture).

My farflung, online writer's group will meet up this summer in late July. I'm pretty excited to meet everyone in person. My vote for location is Baltimore. We'll see.

My pal Phil Estes has a poem up at Frigg.

After six months of drinking dark roast coffees exclusively, I'm giving light roasts a chance.