Shameless Self-Promotion

GANYMEDE #5 ISSUE RELEASED
Our biggest ever--a whopping 344 pages!
Gay men¹s lit/art print quarterly published quarterly in New York
as a paperback book.

Table of contents and readable sample pages:
http://www.ganymedenyc.com/
Purchase (print or download) at
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1308479

--EDMUND WHITE on writing gay
--OSCAR WILDE's delicious 1889 dialogue on art, ³The Decay of Lying²
--GLENWAY WESCOTT's rare 1928 story of a little boy going to a ball in drag
--BERGDORF BOYS by Scott Hess: first of four parts serializing a complete
novel, both witty and dark, about gay party boys in New York
--TEN gay poets and EIGHT gay visual artists from around the world
--SUSAN GLASPELL's 1917 story ³A Jury of Her Peers,² now a key text in
feminist lit
--INDIE EYE returns with tips on obscure movies to rent, including the first
gay Bollywood flick!
--The Paris of Our Dreams: the 19th-century transformation of Paris
coincided with the birth of photography, and the rise of archival
photographers who snapped parts of the city either rising or falling. Our
portfolio shows these precious images.

PLUS POETRY by R.J. Gibson, Brian Brown, Matthew Hittinger, Michael Montlack, Ron Curlee, P. Viktor, David Bergman, Sean Patrick Conlon, Robert K. Müller, John Stahle


"Ganymede is gaining momentum and is definitely a journal to watch."
--CHROMA, Britain's top gay lit/art journal

SUBMIT!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS (ONLY 3 DAYS LEFT TO ENTER): The 2009 Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize. Final judge: Carl Phillips. Deadline: 8/1/09. Prizes include $300, $50, and $25 gift certificates to Powell's Books and publication of winning poems in Knockout. Guidelines: http://www.knockoutlit.org/rsprize.htm

On the Road (almost)

If all goes well, I'll be hitting the road for Asheville at about 8 am. Cannot wait! I want to shake off all the dust from the work remodel, wear shorts and unsensible shoes, and get over-stimulated.

Last semester was an experience unlike anything for me. Sure, I'd done some times in a residency program, did the TA thing, and hated almost every minute of it. But this! I could work within my own schedule, read poets and books I'd never heard of or thought about and had a great time. There were a few weeks there where I was pulling 40+ hour weeks and trying to do 25 hours of reading and writing for my next packet just seemed like it was too much--but I did it.

Now that I know what to expect from both the residency period and the semester after, I'm excited to see what happens. My poems have gotten just a little stranger this spring, they surprise me with what they want to do and how they want to do it. My biggest challenge now is not finding time to write, or things to write about, but to just simply get the eff out of my own way.

Bad Bad Blogger

I keep thinking to myself--maybe this week I'll post something. Then I get sucked into work, or new poems, or Facebook and nothing happens. I'm not even really gardening this year--mainly weeding and maintaining what I've got growing already.

BUT--I do have some news. My chapbook won the Robin Becker Contest in the category for poets without a chapbook already. You can read more here. The release date is February 15, 2009. I am careening back and forth between numb and excited. It's been a crazy day and a half since I got word.

Podcasts

The prosody podcasts that Irene and I recorded in November are up now. I've not had a chance to hear them yet--but I was in the booth while Irene did hers. It's terrific. Mine--god knows. I don't remember a whit of it. You can find them here. Just scroll down the page to the bottom. There's also an episode she did with David Trinidad.

Where I'll Be @ AWP

Thursday Feb 12

Noon-1:15

International Ballroom South
2nd Floor

R143. Gay Regionalism through the Eyes of Appalachia. (Jackson Tucker, Dorothy Allison, Julia Watts, Jeff Mann, Aaron Smith) Many of America's most celebrated writers are regional writers. For the majority of gay writers, which also includes gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender writers, the urban landscape is the common setting for their work, but what does it mean to be gay and Appalachian? Does being both a gay writer and a regional writer hinder or empower the gay writer? Does it give us the ability to specialize in something specific to our experience, or prevent us from reaching a prospective audience?

1:30-2:45

Waldorf
3rd Floor

R170. New England Review 30th Anniversary Reading. (Keith Lee Morris, Shannon Cain, Brock Clarke, Natasha Trethewey, Carl Phillips, Jennifer Grotz) New England Review's anniversary reading highlights the diversity of talent that has characterized this quarterly for thirty years. Literary magazines are often fleeting enterprises, but New England Review has been publishing new and established writers since 1978. Three poets and three fiction writers who have appeared recently in our pages will read from their work. Come hear some of the voices that have distinguished and sustained this publication through the past three decades.

3:00-415

Continental A
Lobby Level

R176. Poetic Responses to AIDS. (Charles Flowers, Ruben Quesada, Eloise Klein Healy, Rafael Campo, Jack Wiler, Michael Broder) Poetic responses to the AIDS experience began to appear in the mid-1980s. Through the 1990s and today, the dialogue between poetry and AIDS has changed its focus. How has the advent of medication and the treatment of AIDS changed perspectives in the 21st century? What contribution does poetry make in recognizing this disease? This panel will discuss how poetic responses to AIDS are evolving and its impact over the past twenty years.

7:00-9:30 pm OFF-SITE

Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writers Reception
Location: Gerber-Hart Library and Archives, 1127 W. Granville (adjacent to the red Line "Granville" stop).
Cost: Free, including drinks and hors d'oeuvres
Websites: www.gerberhart.org & www.lambdaliterary.org
Reception and readings by Lambda Emerging Writers Retreat Fellows Kathie Bergquist, Ching-In Chen, Charles Rice-Gonzales, RJ Gibson, Ely Shipley, Griselda Suarez, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran, Cole Krawitz, Anne Laughlin and Ruben Quesada. There will be a free copy of the book, A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago, given to the first 100 guests.

Friday Feb. 13

10:30-11:45 am

Williford A
3rd Floor

F130. Who's Yer Daddy? Gay Poets and the Inherited Present. (Jim Elledge, Mark Bibbins, Peter Covino, David Groff, Brian Teare) All gay poets have heterosexual parents, but the identity of their literary forebears isn't as straightforward. Panelists discuss their major influences, chiefly twentieth-century poets but also concepts, schools, and texts—gay and non-gay alike. Part homage, part exposé, this panel tackles complex questions, such as the ability of gay poets to cultivate an aesthetic without knowing about previous gay poets? And is the gay inheritance simply sensual, and if so, is the straight legacy only its opposite?

1:30-2:45 pm

International Ballroom South
2nd Floor

F157. Graywolf Press Anniversary Reading. (Jeffrey Shotts, Jeffery Renard Allen, Eula Biss, Robert Boswell, Katie Ford, D.A. Powell) As a celebration of thirty-five years of publishing from Graywolf Press, this reading event features the recent works of five dazzling writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Introduced by Graywolf director Fiona McCrae and senior editor Jeff Shotts.

3:00-4:15 pm

International Ballroom North
2nd Floor

F175. The Academy of American Poets Presents Mary Jo Bang & Frank Bidart. (Tree Swenson, Mary Jo Bang, Frank Bidart) Readings by Mary Jo Bang and Frank Bidart. Introductions by Tree Swenson.

4:30-5:45 pm

Boulevard Room A,B,C
2nd Floor

F188. A Tribute to a Stranger: Thomas James. (Mark Doty, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Tracy K. Smith, Mark Wunderlich) Thomas James's Letters to a Stranger—published shortly before his suicide and long out of print—has become one of the underground classics of contemporary poetry. This reading by four poets, influenced by this dark and moving master, celebrates the reissuing of Letters to a Stranger in a new edition published by Graywolf Press.

7:00pm OFF-SITE

Diode & Anti- Poetry Reading and Reception
Location: Curtiss Hall, 10th floor of the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605
Website: http://diodepoetry.com
Cost: Free
Readers: Bob Hicok, Mary Biddinger, Jake Adam York, Paul Guest, Noah Falck, Joshua Ware, Steven Schroeder, G.C. Waldrep, Patrick Lawler, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Brent Goodman, Adam Clay, Matt Guenette and Ada Limon.

8:00PM-11:00PM
Warren Wilson MFA Gathering

Location: 213 W. Institute Place
Cost: $20 donation
Websites: www.polyphonyhs.com & www.dandarrah.com
Gathering for past/present faculty, alums, current students of Warren Wilson College's MFA Program for Writers. Brought to you by Polyphony H.S., a student-run litmag for high school writers. Music by Dan Darrah. Lightly catered.

Saturday Feb. 14

9:00-10:15 am

Continental A
Lobby Level

S104. Art to Art: Ekphrastic Poetry. (Janee J. Baugher, Cole Swensen, John Yau, Peter Cooley, Ann Hurley) Ekphrasis, defined as the verbal representation of visual representation, has played an important role in literature since Homer. Must ekphrastic poems evoke the visual art that inspired them? Is ekphrasis merely a method of overcoming resistance? As a means of escaping the self? Join this panel of writers who live with art to discuss the aesthetic, psychological, theoretical, and cultural dimensions of ekphrasis, as well as the delights and demands of writing ekphrastically.

Noon-1:15pm

Lake Michigan
8th Floor

S144. Bad Poems by Great Poets: Where They Went Awry, What We Can Learn. (Roy Jacobstein, Laura Kasischke, Margaret Rabb, Greg Rappleye, Robert Thomas) Whether our favorite poets are O'Hara or Dickinson, Stevens or Plath, Berryman, Ashbery or Wright, they wrote some poems that are almost parodies of their great poems. We inquire out of an interest in craft, not schadenfreude: how did they write poems so flat, sentimental, boring? Do the bad poems teach us how to read the good? Rather than comparing apples to oranges, we will use these poets as their own control, contrasting to see what makes one of a pair of poems, and only one of them, great.

3:00-4:15 pm

International Ballroom South
2nd Floor

S178. A Celebration of Elizabeth Bishop. (Lloyd Schwartz, Frank Bidart, Joyce Peseroff, David Trinidad, Anne Winters, Suki Kwock Kin) No one wrote more luminous poems than Elizabeth Bishop. Once described by John Ashbery as a writer's writer's writer, Bishop has, since her death, become almost universally regarded as one of the 20th-century's major masters. Six distinguished poets, three of whom were close to Bishop, celebrate her work by reading her poems, lesser-known but remarkable prose, and hilarious, heartbreaking letters from the Library of America's landmark new publication of her collected works.

OCHO #22

Is up here.

Edited by Miguel Murphy and featuring poems by: Eduardo Corral, Brent Goodman, C. Dale Young, Dustin Brookshire, Charles Jensen, Jeremy Halinen, Steve Fellner, Scott Hightower, Jee Leong Koh, me, and 19 others.

Various Sundries

Massive reading and homework day. I finished Jane Hirshfield's Ink Dark Moon, the first section of Pound's letters covering 1914-1916, and am working my way through Bidart's In the Western Night. Tomorrow I have to finish reading my Greeks. I need to work in a couple of essays, but so far I feel like I'm on top of things for this packet. This is good, because I've got a little over a week to finish my stuff up and get it sent off.

I'm still writing a lot of poems, a lot of throat clearing but once that stuff's out of the way, the follow-ups are pretty fun. I've reached a point where I don't give a real shit. I'm tossing it all out there. That seems to me the real luxury of graduate study--you read a lot and you write a lot and try everything you possibly can. I can't say that the reading so far has had much impact on what I think aesthetically--but it's opened me up to options and rethinking what my idea of poetry is and might be.

And given that my reading list is a continuum running from Archilochos and Sappho to Bob Hicok, how can I complain?

~*~

Evie has proven herself to be a tough little dog. When I took her out today, someone's three plott hounds were hanging around our yard. She went ballistic and ran all of them off. I kept see-sawing back between being scared for her and amused.

~*~

I got my galleys of OCHO #22. It's a fantastic issue. I sat last night and scrolled through it instead of doing homework. It's a real mix of established and new poets and a diverse survey of current queer poetry. More pimping once I know the issue is available.

Aaaand Another

And Another

A Sort of Preview

Knockout 2

Knockout 2 is available for order here.

The second issue features:

Nathan Whiting	Michael J. Rosen	Erin M. Bertram
Willis Barnstone	Molli Rocket	Louis Jenkins
Rika Lesser	Joe Wilkins	William Baer
Reginald Shepherd	Blas Falconer	Nance Van Winckel
Tim Nolan	Elizabeth Bradfield	Robert Wrigley
Ruth Williams	Todd Boss	Maya Jewell Zeller
Kristine Ong Muslim	RJ Gibson	Denver Butson
Jessica Moll	Denise Duhamel	Jessica Halliday
Melissa Kwasny Stacey Waite	Kathryn Nuernberger Christopher Howell	Theodore Enslin J. P. Dancing Bear	translations of Luis Cremades Rainer Maria Rilke Elisabeth Rynell Göran Sonnevi

Knockout is donating 5% of our proceeds to The Trevor Project, which operates the only nationwide, around-the-clock crisis and suicide prevention helpline for LGBTQ youth. For more information, visit thetrevorproject.org

OOF

The reintegration back into work has not been good the last couple of days. There are problems all over the place--long-standing problems that caught us by surprise. Soooo I've been fielding phone calls, poring over reports and trying to get a fast mastery of paperwork and operations that I barely knew existed two months ago. I'm mentally exhausted. I hope to god we get this straightened out by the end of the week or I'm going to be crazy.

~*~

The work front crazy dovetails not so nicely into getting my first packet of assignments finished up and ready to be sent to my supervisor by the end of the week. I knew it was going to be tough getting a substantial amount of work done in 9 days when we usually have three weeks--but I thought I had programmed in enough time--but the work thing has blown up. I'll have it done...it's just going to be a long couple of nights.

~*~

I got an acceptance email last night for three poems. Thank god for that. I needed it this week. Not to mention that I've effectively tripled my 2008 acceptance rate already. More deets once it's all finalized.

Snapshot 1

I'm going to get around to something a little more developed about Warren Wilson (I promise)--but I have a quick like bunny turn around time for my first set of poems/revisions/assignments so I'm going to just hit a few highlights in some short posts:

*Discussing ways of dispatching chickens from this mortal coil with another poet.

*Eleanor Wilner. If you ever have the chance to see her read or lecture or anything--do it. She is fantastic.

*Having someone exclaim "HEY! You're that guy from C. Dale's blog!"

*C. Dale's reading. Really some fantastic poems.

*The post-graduation dance. It's kind of a blast seeing people who spend so much time in their heads be embodied.

Back to Bedlam

I'm going to try and get in some posts about Warren Wilson--it was an amazing time. Excepting the cold I picked up on Friday.

~*~

Back to work today and I am overwhlemed.

Our long-planned remodeling project is underway, so there's cacophony and debris everywhere. I have to work new employees into the schedule and learn how to do some accounting stuff for the hotel and restaurant while the accountant is in Costa Rica. I feel fuzzy-headed and stupid.

In Which I Through Down w/a Sandwich Technician

Hello from North Carolina. The drive wasn't bad at all. Woke this morning to a pretty decent snow and had a minor freak out. Luckily it had stopped by 11 and by the time I was on the road at noon it was starting to melt.

All was, however, not perfect. I stopped on the way to grab a sandwich and stretch my legs about halfway. As I was waiting for my order I noticed a sign on the register that said "Ask for Additional Condiments." Soooo I asked for some mustard.

"We ain't got no mustard. But we got may-o-naize. "
"But the sign says condiments."
"We got may-o-naize. You want some may-o-naize?"

For Aaron

I'm sure he missed this last night... Kathy Grffin & Anderson Cooper on CNN.

The plan(s) for 2009:

• Write more
  
• Submit more packets & poems
• Travel more
• Go back to the gym...that last 15 lbs ain't gonna melt.
  

Double 0 9--It's Almost Like Clockwork