Appalachian Prison Book Project

The Appalachian Prison Book Project, a program that aims to rehabilitate inmates by giving them free books to read, has lost their funding and is looking for book donations. The West Virginia University Department of English is accepting donation on the program’s behalf.

The most sought after books from the program are dictionaries, auto repair manuals, psychology textbooks and fiction. And for security purposes, all donations must be paperback.

Please give to this good cause.


Thanks to Kerrie Kemperman for bringing it to my attention.

Salem Literary Festival: Poetry Crush

Here's a pic, stolen from January O'Neil's blog, Poet Mom (thanks!). I'm the hairy guy at the back, along with the much-less-hairy January, Colleen, Walnut and Jennifer, beginning from the rear.

I had a great time with this, even including the 45 steps to the third floor of the Phillips House in Salem MA, where the event was held. In the heat we all talked about our favorite poets, even admitting to some schoolboy/schoolgirl like crushes like mine for Frank Stanford.

I'm an awfully fickle reader and lover of poetry as a rule. I simply dump shit I don't enjoy reading and wait for my next pass of donations to get rid of it. But somehow my fickleness has never evidenced itself with Frank Stanford. I read and read and I never get tired. If you haven't read him, I feel badly for you.


Circle of Lorca
BY FRANK STANFORD

When you take the lost road
You come to the snow
And when you find the snow
You get down on your hands and knees
Like a sick dog
That’s been eating the grasses of graveyards
For twenty centuries.

When you take the lost road
You find woman
Who has no fear of light
Who can kill two cocks at once
Light which has no fear of cocks
And cocks who can’t call in the snow.

You find lovers who’ve been listening
For the same roosters to sing
For twenty centuries
Roosters that have swallowed stones
Out of each other’s tracks
But have never met
Anywhere on the road.

When you take the lost road
You find the bright feathers of morning
Laid out in proportion to snow and light
And when the snow gets lost on the road
Then the hot wind might blow from the south  
And there is sadness in bed for twenty centuries
And everyone is chewing the grass on the graves again.

When you get lost
You come to the moon in the field
The light all lovers soil
The sheet no one leaves clean
The light cocks are afraid to cross
The same moon woman danced under
For twenty centuries
With blood on her face.

When you get lost on the road
You run into the dead
Who have broken down stones
In their throats for twenty centuries
I saw two little crazy boys crying
Because it was morning
And when morning comes it comes
In the morning and never at night.

I saw two security police taking out a man’s balls
And I saw two little crazy boys
Crying by the road who wouldn’t go away
But two has never been a number
Because it’s only legal to pass one at a time
It’s only a drum you can carry but you can’t beat
It’s the evidence they need to make you disappear.

Poem Draft

*poof*

Another Blazevox Post

If you're a small press, you've likely heard of this tempest in a teapot already and formed an opinion. In case you haven't, Sandra Beasley makes a great deal of sense here.

If the epicenter of your annual sales model is the AWP conference, you gotta shake it up. That's right, even if you plan to have really cool swag (shot glasses!) at your table, and an offsite reading at the grubbiest hipster bar in town. We have got to stop thinking that credibility in our own community is enough (emphasis mine).

You need to bust your ass, whether you can or not, getting out there personally among the potential readers. It's not enough to be great poetry, you have to make your poems known by reading them at events and publishing them where non-writing friends and other people can see them (online, if you ask me). It doesn't take a salesperson to sell them, it takes simply your presence along with a desire to discuss what you already love.

Prosody and Other Fun Things

If you've ever struggled with meter, this place can help you out.

http://prosody.lib.virginia.edu/

I'm still here, just distanced for the moment from poetry. I'm writing two new stories for someone who solicited me, and banging away on my old novel trying to make it better for public presentation. What are you all up to?

John Wieners - Hyannisport, MA - 2.21.02 - Last Public Reading

Found at Silliman's blog, but worth reposting.

Clare Pollard, Poet

Clare Pollard is a English poet, and new to me. I read her book Changeling, from Bloodaxe Books in England recently, and was struck immediately by some refashioning of myth that so many people do badly, but not her, thank God, as well as some stark confessional poetry that hit me even more. It's Sextonish, yes, but with a contemporary and more cynical feel. Well worth the time to track it down, this book. Go forth and do what you must: consume.

Adventures in Capitalism

Nothing is real and I want it to stop.

I cut my wrists, but the blood looks like make up.

I slump in toilets snorting cocaine

but it doesn't seem true, just a grimy dream.

I wanted to feel, so had a tattoo done.

I chose a sea-blue anchor near the bone,

then saw it in a tabloid and felt a fake.

Crashed a car dad bought me. Nothing broke.

I went to see Othello swallow a lie

and cried at the end, but it was only a play.

Read some Rimbaud, bought a black polo-neck

and a bottle of absinthe, but felt like a prick.

I whisper 'I love you' and 'Tie me down,'

but all that moan and fisting is just porn.

Signed an online petition but it made no difference.

I bought a house, but it's like playing house.

I own How to be a Domestic Goddess,

but I've never cooked from it, if I'm honest,

and the brownies and aprons are only props

and my wardrobe's a Fancy Dress box,

and I yell at everyone who cares. I hurt them

because I need something to fucking happen.