Alphabet
I want you to know that if you’re one of these people who already read or rated or reviewed YOU ARE NOT DEAD at Goodreads, I really really really appreciate you.
R is the letter of the day.
I think I am thinking a lot about letters because I’m living in Alphabet City for spring break, and so have been saying the word “alphabet” more frequently than any other time in my life.
And each time I say it I see one of these cursive handwriting charts from elementary school. This one is especially funny because it is like it thinks you also need guidance regarding hand placement:
INSIDE UNDIVIDED (18) by Dara Wier
“Theoretically the person who’s reading a book or pages in a journal or this, is invisible to the one who’s responsible for the book or pages, the words. Theoretically the meeting between reader and what’s read is anonymous, invisible, unquantifiable, (e.g.
when where why how
how long
what speed
what intention
what circumstances
where does it matter
how so
what for
reading alone, one never seems alone when one is reading”
This good good series by Dara Wier keeps me interested and asking questions and in parts, it comes to us now #18
Very happy humbled to be included in this year’s Best of the Net, thank you to InDigest for first publishing this poem “You Are Not Who They Wanted You To Be” over a year ago, a poem which later made it into The Hero Poems and now You Are Not Dead. It is a very special poem to me, and this anthology is special too filled w/ so many poets I admire like Matt Hart, Marcus Wicker, Eduardo C. Corral and many others.
This + the dim sum I had earlier, what a nice day it has been.
Wendy Xu’s first book, YOU ARE NOT DEAD, was a finalist in the Cleveland State University First Book Prize and Open Competition contests, surviving to the top out of over 900 manuscripts. Having known her as someone whose work is not only a myriad of kind gestures, but as a person who is completely altruistic inside of and beyond her poetry community, it only made sense to dig inside of YOU ARE NOT DEAD, to truly understand where this generosity comes from. Below we discover wolves, precision through negation, and how to write a Wendy Xu poem.
Today at Ghost Proposal, there is an interview with me about my first book YOU ARE NOT DEAD, out next week from Cleveland State University Poetry Center. I get to talk about wolves, God, negation, and the dead, basically all the things that I like. Maybe you would like to read it here, thank you Zach Green & GP!
Also I reveal my desktop background. This is a big deal.
AWP readings + things
Oh geez. We are all tired from AWP and it is not even AWP yet. I am going to try and get all this feeling-tired-ness out of the way so that I am not tired at AWP.
Wednesday - Saturday, during regular bookfair hours, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry & iO Books will be at table Y1, sharing space with our great friends Interrupture.
We’ll have for sale first copies of SHUT UP & BLOOM, a collab book by Ben Kopel & Matthew Suss, along with two new broadsides (for the book and for a great Laurie Saurborn Young poem from issue 6). This is not to mention some throwback copies of WHAT A TREMENDOUS TIME WE’RE HAVING! by Nick Sturm, our first chap release from last year. Also hand-stamped bookmarks, mini broadsides, and other assorted STUFF.
On Thursday night we’re hosting an off-site event @ Sweetwater Tavern, 6:30 pm w/ Interrupture & Jellyfish Magazine, at which you can hear great readings by iO authors like Matt Hart, Lily Ladewig, Nick Sturm, Nate Pritts, and many others. Visit our facebook event here.
I’m also very excited to be doing some off-and-on-site readings and things during the 4 days, and they are the following:
THURSDAY, 9:30 pm @ Sweetwater Tavern for InkNode (w/ Zach Schomburg, Emily Kendal Frey, Nick Sturm + others), event here
FRIDAY, 2:00 - 3:00 pm @ Cleveland State University Poetry Center bookfair table, BOOK SIGNING for You Are Not Dead, w/ Rebecca Hazelton, author of VOW), event here
FRIDAY, 7:30 pm @ Beacon Street Tavern for Switchback / Bloof / Coconut Books (w/ Cynthia Arrieu-King, Jennifer Tamayo, Peter Davis + others), event here.
SATURDAY, noon - 1:15 pm @ Patricia Olson Bookfair Stage, Hynes Convention Center (on-site), official book release reading for You Are Not Dead, Cleveland State University Poetry Center event w/ Rebecca Hazelton, Rebecca Gayle Howell, and William D. Waltz, event here.
See you all there, let’s have a coffee.
A collab chap I wrote w/ Nick Sturm, available at AWP for the first time from Coconut Books. Lots of poems from it are here.
ISSUE 8 of iO: A Journal of New American Poetry
Issue 8 of iO includes poems by by Zaccaria Fulton / Brian Foley / Gale Thompson / Broc Rossell / Lesley Yalen / Mike Krutel / Portia Elan / Edward Mayes / Kit Frick / Emilia Phillips
Reviews by Trista Edwards (of Caryl Pagel’s EXPERIMENTS I SHOULD LIKE TRIED AT MY OWN DEATH) and Virgina Konchan (of CM Burrough’s THE VITAL SYSTEM)
likewise folio
likewise folio is a new journal of poetry and things, it’s pretty and divides pictures into little tiles, and when you click on the tiles there are poems. I’m happy to have 3 new poems in the new issue, thank you LF!
