Monday, January 5th, 2009
Out goes 2008, welcome 2009! But before I obliterate a year of poetry reading, it’s time to reflect on poetry. Now granted, my life in poetry has mainly been located in the poetry I taught in 2008 and the poetry located in the rubric of my reading lists for my comprehensive exams (aka comps or, as I affectionately call it in verb form, comping). Thus my tastes are not located in 2008 primarily, but span, say 108 years. Please, no ad hominem attacks, no factious comments, no bathetic praise for my idiosyncratic reading practices. I’m at fault, but feel free to divert responsibility elsewhere. Blame the weather, blame the election coup of the media, blame the garden, etc.
*cough* the list then:
Kumin, Maxine. Selected Poems: 1960-1990.
Campo, Rafael. What the Body Told.
Grahn, Judy. Work of a Common Woman: The Collected Poetry of Judy Grahn: 1964-1977.
Bradfield, Liz. Interpretive Works
Miller, Leslie Adrienne. The Resurrection Tale: Poems
Raz, Hilda. All Odd and Splendid.
Swenson, May. Nature: Poems Old and New.
Ostriker, Alicia Suskin. No Heaven.
Cihlar, Jim. Undoing.
Bosselaar, Laure-anne. The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Poems.
Honorable mentions include the rereading of works by Audre Lorde, Elizabeth Bishop, and Carl Sandburg.
The new year has begun and I’m cuddling up with Pound, Stevens, Roethke, and a few others I haven’t met yet.
Saturday, December 27th, 2008
i will admit it. i’m kinda a slut for audio books most of the year. Here’s why:
- i read and write much of the time which causes my eyes to be tired, my brain to hurt, and the cats to feel neglected
- audio books tend to publish classics (which i haven’t read all of) or books doing very well in the literary and popular world (which keeps me up to date on what other people read, i.e. those not in grad school)
- car trips
- when one can’t sleep, one can read
- making x-mas presents or cleaning
- candle lit baths
- because i like people who can do voices like Jim Dale in the harry potter novels
Here, then, is my top audio books for 2008:
1. Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, read by Sarita Choudhury
2. Fight Club and Rant:The Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk, the former read by Jim Colby, the latter read by large cast (these were both luscious. i felt like i was getting away with something, reading something so fun.)
3. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
4. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
5. When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris, read by the author
6. The Road by Cormac Mccarthy, read by Tom Stechschulte
7. The Philip Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, read by the author
8. Twilight by Stephenie Meyers, read by Ilyana Kadushin (and I’ll add here New Moon, the next book in the series, which I’ve started)
Honorable mentions includes the Philippa Gregory novels: The Constant Princess, The Boleyn Inheretance, The Virgin’s Lover, and The Queen’s Fool.
Friday, December 19th, 2008
A friend asked me what I thought about Naomi Shihab Nye’s work 19 Varieties of the Gazelle which I was teaching. I’d heard Nye read in D.C. 
“I think she’s a sweet poet,” I said. My friend looked at me, waiting, which made me think: a) sweet is not an intelligent word, b) that perhaps I knew nothing about the poet; c) that one day I would be able to converse with utter intelligence, sophistication, and verve, but today was not the day. I continued, “She read this poem in D.C. about cookie dust.” I then began to try and recount the poem which sounded a little like “this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened,” which likely increased my perception to said friend of my brilliance.
Alas.
Well, that was a semester ago and I’ve just finished reading Honeybee 
which I’m teaching in my comp class in the spring. And, it’s a sweet book, with sweet poems. (Dear future student, please stop reading now, as I’d hate if you knew all my thoughts on the book before we began our class discussion). Granted, Nye writes poems of witness and certainly here in Honeybee one will find her critique of war and the current-soon-to-be-gone administration, but for me my favorite poems are her sweet ones. Honeybee asks the reader to remember the little pollinators and to try and slow down. In “We Are the People” she writes,
I know people who, the minute they get into their
homes, tell you where they are going next.
I am one of them.
This is nothing to be proud of.
Of course, Nye reveals her bug knowledge , like “Bees take naps, too.”
My favorite two poems in Honeybee are “Before I read The Kite Runner” and “Gate A-4,” the latter being the cookie poem I once tried to describe. Read them. You’ll understand the sweetness. Here’s the first.
UPDATE: I just finished Nye’s You & Yours, which I’m also teaching in another class. In this text, I like her political, powerful, disruptive poems. Go figure.
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
Ready for a little holiday story telling? Wait for december 21st at 6pm for gerry shapiro’s Chanukah story on NPR or listen to it now (I did). Or, check out a poem from Hilda Raz’s new book on Poetry Daily.
Monday, December 15th, 2008
…and it is so very cold! Here it is December and I’m going to have to come clean: I’ve been fantasizing about the garden. How is it possible not to? For updates: I had a great crop of strawberries, zucchini (of course), pumpkin (three left, still), butternut squash (thirteen total), peppers, and several of the others did as best as they could, considering the wet early start everyone got which made for shallow roots and thus, thirsty plants the rest of the summer.
Here’s some of my fantasizes at hand: mini citrus trees, blueberries, melons. In terms of the citrus, I’ve heard they make ones for us midwesterners which I could keep like a houseplant in the winter and haul it outdoors during the summer. But where oh where does one find such a thing?
Saturday, December 6th, 2008
Writer Sima Rabinowitz has a review of Santa Fe LIterary Journal on newpages and mentions my short story:
Many of this issue’s poems and stories are equally memorable, and I was happy for the opportunity to get to know the work of writers I’d not encountered before, in particular poetry by Anne Valley-Fox Christien Gholson, and Mary McGinnis, and prose by Laura Madeline Wiseman. Wiseman’s…
You can read the whole thing here.
Friday, December 5th, 2008
On Tuesday (12.2.2008) I became an aunt again! I can’t wait to see the wee-one over the winter break. Want to see the infant in action? Check him out on his very own blog.
Friday, December 5th, 2008
Yippee! The fabulous and wonderful editor Kristy Bowen accepted my chapbook manuscript My Imaginary for dancing girl press for 2009. October’s the month for me. But check out dpg’s great lineup for the 09 year. I’m in good company. Up for September is Leah Browning, editor of Apple Valley Review (who incidentally accepted a poem of mine which appeared in AVR’s fall 2006 issue). What better news for the holidays?
Friday, November 21st, 2008
Writer Mimi Schwartz visited here Tuesday and gave a wonderful reading on her new book Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father’s German Village. She offered some interesting insights about selecting the point of view for the text, how writers come to select a topic for a piece, and to name or not name percise details in creative nonfiction (here the small town). I was honored to meet her. Wow.
I’ve also found a couple of new literary jounals I’m fond of: The Broken Plate and Roanoke Review.
Saturday, November 8th, 2008
here in my homeland, many, many wonderful writers have visited over the last few weeks. Poets and editor jim cihlar read from his collection, as did william reichard. Another poet paul guest is up to visit wednesday. Tayari Jones read from her novel The Untelling. And, Dorothy Allison spoke at the lgtbqa history month banquet and gave a public reading the next night. Amazing! And, Naomi Shihab Nye, who I saw read in DC at split this rock in March, will visit next semester. Wow.
