writing about

So I write about every book I read. And I'm kinda slow about it. So I'm waaay backed up. I have a stack of books to write about so tall I don't dare keep 'em all in one pile. They would fall and hurt somebody. Hey, I could list all the books I've read but have yet to write about. Pile of Finished Reading. Only, that means I'd have to shlep 'em all out here to make the list. And I am not going to do that.

Matter

The new issue of Matter arrived. It has a poem by me in it.

When I read one of my own poems in a magazine it always seems different. Not quite mine. It's now partly theirs. The editor has given it a context having nothing to do with me or my life.

I read my poem for the first time in this new position, familiar old poem. And I wonder how it would strike me were it written by someone else. It has some turns of phrase that stand out. It has an appealingly long title. After awhile I will post the poem on this blog or LuvSet. I'll let Matter be the only place you can see it until then.

ur-vox

Famous poets must get a lotta free stuff. Editor Lee Ballentine has sent me ur-vox before. It's a good looking magazine. I've added it to the stack of read-nexts.

"A dry soul is best because combustible" -- Andrew Joron

Poems for the Millennium

I'm a few pages away from finishing the second volume of the Rothenberg/Joris anthology Poems for the Millennium. The anthology attempts to capture, as the publisher has it, "the revolutionary concepts at the ... heart of twentieth-century poetry."

I'm partway through another fat anthology, World Poetry. I haven't touched it in several months, devoting my time to Millennium instead. I found Millennium more rewarding, but World Poetry, as a reading experience, was getting more interesting the closer it got to the present, so I look forward to getting back to it. I think I left off on the verge of the 20th C.

I like reading anthologies. I have more piled in the library. Primary Trouble, A Controversy of Poets, The Other Side of the Century come to mind.

Happy Birthday to me

When we got home from our Hawaiian vacation I found among the drift of election mailers a package from my brother. He picked up a copy of the first number of the new Houghton Mifflin "Best" series, The Best American Comics. I guess he went to some bookstore event as he got a few contributors to sign the book. Series editor, Anne Elizabeth Moore even writes, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! You've always been so wonderful." and includes a little heart next to her initials. Aw. She's right. But how could she know?