Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The peddling boy says: Let's close our eyes.

A couple weeks ago I was granted the Mary Jean Irion Award from the Chautauqua Literary Arts community. Basically, it's the equivalent of winning a prize in heaven, where everybody is thoughtful and willing and interested, poets and those who don't consider themselves poets. It's not a big award but it was a very sweet encouragement.

Back on the ranch...

- Submissions are closed for Gigantic Sequins issue 3.1. This is going to be a great issue, featuring poets I'm very excited about, so far including (but not limited to) Amanda Auchter, Laura Goode, and Kimberly Gray... you can check out their websites for a little peek at the type of work we're interested in.

- Submissions are open for Gulf Coast, where I help edit poetry in Houston.

- This past Friday was the first of the Gulf Coast readings at Brazo's Bookstore. Analicia Sotelo, J.S. Lowe, and David Tomas Martinez read - good stuff. I'll be reading next month, on 7 Oct, with Eric Howerton & Celeste Prince (fic).

- Books read or begun in the past two weeks for school: The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles; The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Blue Boat, by Darrel Bourque; and Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy. It's going to be a very strange semester, chickadees. All about slaughter, boundaries, stripped humanity.

- For my class on Imperial Gothic literature, I watched a long documentary on Queen Victoria's England (which you can find cut into 15 minute sections on Youtube) which was horrifying and worth seeing, especially if you know very little about world history, which I do. Now I know a little more. Incredibly frightening, what people are capable of.

- To end cheerily, I'm teaching a high school poetry class. The kids are great. If anyone reading this is interested in the 70 page poetry packet I put together for them, drop me a comment and I'll email it to you.

- The neighbor's dog just made a sound like a tropical bird. The weather has mercifully dropped from the hundreds. Still no rain. Almond milk is grand.

The end.

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