For the moment

Still working on my thoughts about the St. Paul and Chicago Springsteen concerts. I know, too much buildup, the post will never measure up! Ah well. To tide you over, here's a little drafty draft from today. This is from my "Chasing Angels" series and it's in the voice of the longtime, loyal fan who's just spent a little time following the band she loves from town to town. Gee... where would I have gotten THAT idea, hmmm? ;)


[gone]

diode

I'm working on a proper post about my two-night stand in the E Street Nation... and actually right now I am listening to an, er, audience-sourced recording of the Chicago show, reliving one of my favorite nights of my life. These concerts mean so much more to me than just the music. Still working on finding the words.

Meanwhile, if you want some words, you can go check out the new issue of diode! I am very pleased to have three poems in it. Haven't had the time yet to read the rest of the issue closely, but it looks like some hot stuff overall. It's a consistently interesting journal. Hope y'all enjoy it...

spring vacation in the E Street Nation

I will definitely make a better post in the near future. But for now, I leave you with this picture that someone sitting in a section behind the stage snapped at the Chicago Springsteen show. (You probably have to click on the picture to see the whole thing. And yes, it's taken from behind the stage; Bruce and Steve were interacting with the drummer so that's why they have their backs turned to most of the audience.)

Look in the very front row, towards the left... short woman wearing a tie-dye t-shirt that's kinda blue at the top... c'est moi.

I'm not kidding. At the Chicago show, I was in the very, very, very front. To say that I was deliriously happy would be an understatement.

(The shirt I was wearing, incidentally, was my Little Steven's Underground Garage shirt. And Little Steven did indeed notice and appreciate that fact. He smiled at me a bunch of times and at the end he came over and put a guitar pick into my happy little hands. Niiiiiiice.) (Yes, he was also Silvio on the Sopranos, for those who follow tv more closely than they follow music. But he belonged to the E Street Band first, darnit!)

Anyway, it was a bit of a whirlwind trip, and I'm long overdue for sleep, so I will post more tomorrow or so. And I'm sure I owe some emails, Twitter/Facebook stuff, etc. and I haven't read any blogs in days. I'll catch up eventually, right?

Good intentions

I know, I've been a very poor blogger lately. I'd say it was just that I don't seem to have much of anything very interesting to say, but when has that ever stopped me (or anyone on the internet for that matter)?

I'm going to try to be better. Really. (Hi Eduardo.)

At the moment, I have a monster to-do list staring me in the face; I'm headed out of town on Friday and it's crazy how much I have to do before then. And a good part of this evening was a lost cause thanks to a combination of sheer slothfulness and a headache (my sinuses apparently do not approve of the weather tonight).

My crazy-productive writing spurt seems to have tapered off, which might be a good thing actually. After I finish running around the Midwest for a few days, I hope to take some time and sit down with a bunch of the poems I've drafted over the past few months and pound on them a bit and revise the things. And I want to see how close I am to having a draft of the full "Chasing Angels" manuscript. The other day I sat down and asked my three main characters (the singer, the guitarist, and the devoted fan) a question -- yes, I'm doing that fictiony thing of writing up character studies, just for my own benefit, to understand them better. I may end up mining these sketches for poem bits, or I may not, but I think I'm going to do more of them. The question I asked them this time was: What scares you? The funny thing is, I know good and well what scares all three of them, and as I wrote their answers, none of them were completely honest. Typical. ;) Next question I want to ask them is: What would you risk for someone or something that you love? Something tells me they won't give me the whole truth about that one, either.

The other writing project on my plate is, of course, the first book manuscript -- the one I banged together on my retreat in June of last year and have been sending around to various presses and contests. Twenty-nine presses and contests so far, to be exact. I've decided that it goes out to one more, just to make it an even thirty, in the next month or so -- and then I may pull back a bit on this one. If nobody names it as at least a finalist, out of thirty attempts, I think that's a sign that I should do a pretty extensive revision. I skimmed through it (and tweaked it here & there, of course) as I was getting it ready to go out to the last little handful of places, and funny enough, I still pretty much like it and believe in the thing. But I may well be able to make it better. Maybe I can manage to go away somewhere for a long weekend this summer and dive back into it then.

So, one more publisher or contest. I'm open to recommendations! :)

Spring fever

First off, run over and congratulate Diane K. Martin, who has some terrific and long-awaited great news!

I've been busy, and not blogging. Poetry stuff, music stuff, wishing there were more hours in every day stuff.

Got a grant application submitted which, if I get it, will send me to AWP next year. Fingers crossed. And if nothing else, putting the application together was a worthwhile experience -- a chance to step back and look at the trajectory of my work and what I've been doing with it. I hadn't updated my artistic resume in a while and it was nice to realize that I really did have some things to add to it. Speaking of which, I promised my manuscript I would send it out to two more places (maybe three) this month and then if it doesn't get picked as at least a finalist, we're talking major revision. Er, "this month" means I don't have a lot of time left, doesn't it? Guess I know what I'm doing tomorrow evening.

Getting so much happiness & energy from music lately. I've decided that in addition to the Bruce Springsteen show in Chicago next month, I'm also going to see him in St. Paul the night before. I will be in St. Paul for less than 24 hours, which seems a little crazy, but I felt my face bust into a giant grin when I got my ticket in today's mail, when I opened up the envelope and carefully extracted that precious little piece of paper. And that told me I made the right choice when I decided to go. If I could be even half as present with my work as Springsteen is with his, half as committed, I'd get a whole lot more work done. I almost think of him as one of my writing teachers. Weird, huh?

This past Friday night I went to Indianapolis to see some of my other musical heroes, the Indigo Girls. I hadn't seen them in a few years, and that's a few years too long. It was a general-admission, standing-room show in a room the size of a large high school gym, and I was incredibly fortunate & ended up standing front and center. I mean, I was so close that I was even able to get some (semi-surreptitious) halfway decent pictures with my cruddy little no-megapixel cellphone camera. I went by myself, but unexpectedly met up with someone I knew a bit from online, and had a great time hanging with her and the friends she'd come with. And, you know, I really need to remember how much music feeds my spirit. Especially when I go to a show where I'm standing, putting my arms in the air, singing along -- not hunched over in a seat protecting my heart. There's a communal experience that happens at some shows -- Springsteen, Indigos -- almost a tribal thing. There's nothing else like it, and it feeds me deeply.

Finally, I squoze out two lines of a villanelle the other day. If I actually finish it and make a proper villanelle, you can be assured that hell has frozen over, which probably means all the swine flu viruses will be frozen to death. In which case I had better get cracking.

Small pond

This week two different people, neither of whom I knew, recognized me because of poetry stuff. One had seen me at the annual Five Women Poets readings (she knows someone else in the group and comes to our readings often). The other was a cashier in a shop who took my debit card, recognized my name, and remembered hearing me on the radio.

Does that ever stop feeling weird?

In other news, it's full-on spring and everything is busting into blossom. I love this time of year. Bloomington has a ridiculous number of flowering trees and we're just at that stage where the earliest ones are starting to lose their bloom, petals drifting through the air like clouds of snow. The redbuds are intense in their pink/magenta/fuchsia/undefinable color, bright as a neon sign. DC may have its cherry trees but we have our Bradford pears, flowering plums, redbuds, dogwoods, magnolias, tulip trees, forsythia, and a bunch of other stuff I don't know the names of. It's really fairly spectacular.

A few days ago (actually, on the plane back from Denver, right after we skidded down onto the Indianapolis tarmac) I finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. It got a lot of hype when it came out a few years ago, and I resisted reading it for that reason, but people, the hype is justified. This is one of those books that fucks you up while you're reading it (and that's a good thing). It pulls you into a world and a language that makes your heart hurt but that you never want to leave. I'd give a lot to be able to write like that.

Finally, sending out good thoughts to the terrific poet, blogger, and all-around good guy Brent Goodman. In case you hadn't heard, he had a heart attack a few days ago and is hanging out in the cardiac ward for a little while. And what's really amazing is he's still writing and posting a poem every day. Now that's heart.

Scott Russell Sanders chat

A quick note: Our local newspaper is doing an online chat with the wonderful writer Scott Russell Sanders tomorrow, April 15, at 11:00 am Eastern time. You will be able to access it without a subscription, and you can submit questions in advance if you want. Go here for the scoop:

http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/livediscussion/discuss.php

Chasing angels in Colorado

Back from a quick trip out west. I hope to blog more about the Springsteen show later; as his shows often do, this one not only rocked my face off but also brought me to new understandings about a few things. I take away equal parts exhilaration and thoughtfulness from his shows. It's pretty amazing. Anyway, we didn't get a great spot on the floor, so I was on my tiptoes craning my neck most of the night and still couldn't see all of the stage (and depending on which way the guys in front of me happened to shift, sometimes I couldn't see any of the stage; I'm 5 foot 1, for the record, so it doesn't take much of a tall person to block my view) -- and even so, I preferred it to sitting in seats; the sound was better, and the crowd around me was way more excited and energetic. There was a young woman behind me who, by the encores, was so radiantly happy that the smile on her face could have powered a small city. The difference between standing on the floor in general admission versus being in seats is the difference between watching the musicians perform versus participating in the performance. Being in GA, you really do feel like you're more a part of things, more connected with the performers and the music. It's a great thing.

It was a high-energy show, with a fantastic crowd; people were on their feet cheering, fist-pumping, arm-waving, singing along from the floor all the way up to the rafters (and there were plenty of folks up in the rafters; it was a sold-out show and even the nosebleed seats in Denver's Pepsi Center were full). It amazes me, every time I see him, how Bruce puts everything he's got into every show; even after thirty-five years, he still sings "Born to Run" like he means every word with all his heart.

As I type this I'm listening to an audience recording of the very first Springsteen show I attended (9/9/1978, Notre Dame, Indiana) and while the energy was very different then in ways I'd like to spend some time putting words to, the shows he does now are every bit as joyous and every bit as enjoyable. I remember that '78 show as well as I remember anything from that far back. I was seventeen: what did I know? Well... I knew more when I left that show than I did when I walked into the arena, that much is for sure.

While I was out there I also had the chance to meet the newest member of my extended family -- my sister's stepson's son, who is three weeks old and as my sister says, he is stinkin' cute.

Tomorrow: back to regular old reality again. I hope to get back on track with writing and stuff by next weekend.

Thanks to all who sent nice comments on my recent Field acceptance, by the way -- or thought nice things and didn't get around to posting them. I first submitted to them in 1989, so it certainly feels like one of those "persistence pays" situations. The contract showed up in my mail while I was gone, so I can now tell you that "The Fuel" will be in the Fall 2009 issue.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the amazonfail fiasco currently playing itself out. Others have summarized it much better than I'd be able to, so read these two posts and follow the links therein if you want to know more:
Emily Lloyd (Poesy Galore)
Timothy Green
Both of these bloggers give some good information, but come at it from somewhat different angles and give different examples. There is tons more out there about it -- in blogs, on Facebook, on Twitter. I'll leave you with a link to a petition which I have signed and certainly endorse; I don't know if online petitions are ever taken all that seriously, but it's a quick way to do something.

No sleep till Denver, baby

Things that are fun:

It's always fun to get a poem accepted (even more fun when they take several poems - thanks, diode!) but there's nothing quite like the feeling of finally getting an email that starts out "We'd like to take..." from a journal you've been submitting to for almost twenty years. I say this not because I'm bragging about publication (in the grand scheme of things, getting a poem into a journal is just not that huge a deal) but because many of y'all will understand, I think. Persistence really does pay off sometimes; also, it really is true that you get more poems accepted when you actually make the effort of sending poems out. So yeah, Field is taking a poem, and I'm ever so slightly over the moon about it.

To make it even more fun, David Young was here in Bloomington for a reading today, so I had the pleasure of introducing myself and thanking him in person. And his reading was good, too. He read a few poems from his recent book of translations, and then a bunch of poems from Black Lab, which I just read a few days ago and quite enjoyed.

Then I dashed home, fed the cats, put on my boots, and dashed back out to Rachael's Cafe where I was one of two openers for the Reservoir Dogwoods. I didn't know many people in the audience, and it's always fun to read for new people. And I enjoyed the Dogwoods; they are all four very good readers/performers (in the "spoken word artist" tradition) so they were fun to watch. They also did several ensemble pieces that actually worked quite nicely. That kind of thing can be tough to pull off, but the four poets had voices and stage presences that worked well together, and it made me think it'd be fun to try and do something similar with some of my poet friends sometime. Maybe.

Things that are not so much fun: In about six hours I have to get in the car and head for the airport, and my house is a disaster. And why no, I haven't packed yet. So it's time for me to put down the Internet and back slooooowly away.

Upcoming

For anyone in or near Bloomington IN, I'll be opening for (doesn't that make me sound like an up and coming rockstar?) the Reservoir Dogwoods this coming Wednesday, 7 pm at Rachael's Cafe. The Reservoir Dogwoods are a little band of Hoosier poets currently touring Indiana: Jason Ammerman, Matthew Jackson, Joseph Kerschbaum, and Tony Brewer. While these guys tend more towards the "spoken word artist" side of things and I'm definitely a poet who stands there and reads, it should still be a lot of fun.

I'm probably crazy for doing it since I have to leave town at butt o'clock in the morning on Thursday to catch my flight to Denver, and will be in full-on "OMG I have so much to get done" mode, but far be it for me to turn down a reading invitation!

In the considerably-less-amusing department: torrential rain, leaky roof, snow in the forecast tomorrow. Ah, springtime.

Because the Night

Not the best video or audio quality in the known universe, but here's a song I have loved for over thirty years, and it is still SCORCHING... check out this video of Springsteen & the E Street Band ripping into "Because the Night" in Glendale, AZ last night. Beautiful.

Weekly, weakly

Just don't seem to have as much to say here lately. Which of course leaves wide open the question of whether I actually had that much to say here in the first place... hmm.

Couple of good things to read:

1. Review of Rita Dove's new book, from which she read when I heard her recently. I am very much looking forward to this one. Heck, any book of poems that has Beethoven as a character has got to be interesting, right?

2. This interview with Bruce Springsteen gives some great insight into his creative process: both his songwriting, and the construction & development of his concerts. He puts together his setlists very deliberately and thoughtfully, and it shows. (And I'll be seeing him in Denver on Friday night! Yessssss....) They've got a Springsteen exhibit up now in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and it includes a whole bunch of his songwriting notebooks - just regular old spiral notebooks filled with scribbled words. I have to go see this sometime; a road trip to Cleveland is definitely in the works sometime in the next six months or so. I'm much more interested in these notebooks than in probably anything else they have there - though I'm sure I will swoon over the guitars - but I am so curious about his writing process. If I ever had the chance to sit down and talk with him, that's what I'd want to talk about more than anything.

Although my end of the conversation would probably consist of "ba-duh ba-duh ba-duh." I don't usually get that starstruck, but somehow I suspect that for Springsteen I would make an exception. Sigh.

* * * * *

I'm not doing NaPoWriMo, because I just feel like I have too much on my plate this month, and because I'm already churning out more drafts than I can find time to properly revise lately. (Not that I'm complaining, mind!) But in the spirit of posting drafts in a ridiculously early stage, here's a little amuse-bouche I've been cobbling together over the last day or so. Note that if you're not familiar with Facebook and Twitter, this will probably sound like so much gibberish to you. Heck, it may sound like gibberish anyway, but that's okay. I'll take this down, as per usual, in a day or so.


[gone]

Snow in springtime

Updated my blog template (the things we do when we're procrastinating on other things *cough* taxes *cough*), though I didn't make any really drastic changes -- but I did finally move over to Blogger's widget system. I added a few things over in the right-hand sidebar. I may have accidentally dropped a few blog links when I did it, as I kept getting distracted by various things (email, cats, snow... yes, snow) so if your blog isn't over there and it should be, please do let me know!

I have two poems in the new issue of fiore, which is available around & about Bloomington. If you're not in the vicinity and you want a copy, you can contact the editors; or, if you prefer, drop me a note (ahaines at gmail dot com) and as long as my supply holds out I'd be happy to drop one in the mail for the cost of postage and a big envelope. Couple bucks, maybe.

Here's one of my two:


My Clothes

Some days I can’t even wear my clothes
without getting them muddy, or bloody,
or losing my jewelry,
or tripping over my own shoes like a fool.

Days like that, I wish I could
be unclothed without being naked,
sleek as a minke whale, protected
as a swift fish.

I would fly from morning into night
and introduce myself to angels,
relying on their forbearance
and the skeleton key of my own name.

Then I notice the stain
on my collar, ink on my sleeve,
the undarned sock where my toe pokes out
and I stumble back to earth

where every rise
and set, each transit of the stars,
hurtles past outside the confines
of my stunningly limited grace.

--Anne Haines
first published in fiore, issue 2, March/April 2009

* * * * *

The other night, shortly before midnight, I heard a great horned owl outside my window -- so close and so loud that I heard it even with the TV on and all the windows closed. So clear that the younger cat perked up his ears and made his eyes all big and sat reeeeeeeeal still for a minute. It hoo-huh hoo-hoooooo'd about every thirty seconds for close to half an hour before a noisy car went by and either scared it away or made it decide to hush up. I'm right smack in town, half a block from a fairly busy four-lane road; it's not unheard-of for me to hear owls around here, but this was by far the closest and the loudest. I went out into the back yard and though I didn't manage to see it, I did pin down the exact tree it was sitting in.

If I notice any missing bunnies, now I know who took 'em.

It was quite remarkable, though. I don't know what it was going on about, but it was calling very persistently for a while. Pretty cool.

Rita Dove and other stuff

Rita Dove's reading tonight was very good. She read from her forthcoming book, Sonata Mulattica, which I am now seriously looking forward to -- it's good stuff, yes, but also it is sort of a biography-in-verse about this mixed-race violinist, George Bridgetower, who hung out with (Rebecca Loudon take note) Beethoven, until they had a falling-out and Beethoven took the sonata he'd written for Bridgetower and renamed it after someone else.

Narrative/lyric hybrid: check! Biographical story: check! Musicians having stupid interpersonal drama: check! I think I may learn a few things about how to deal with my own current project from this book.

While her actual reading was very good, I was beyond annoyed with the undergrads sitting around playing on their cellphones (very annoying with those brightly-lit screens, especially the big touch-screen ones) and drinking frappuccinos and whispering and, swear to god, napping. I would rather read for an audience of ten people who are actually paying attention than for an auditorium in which half the people are not listening to a word I say. Grrrrr.

Also, when you spend fifteen minutes introducing the person who is going to introduce the poet, you might be venturing into overkill zone. Just sayin'.

[Added: Here's a recap of her reading from the student newspaper.]

* * * * *

So, the E Street Nation is all abuzz with the news that, when drummer Max Weinberg has to leave the tour for a while in the late spring to fulfill his bandleader duties on the Conan O'Brien show, Max's son Jay will be sitting in. My first reaction to this news was "what?! Has Bruce Springsteen completely lost his mind?!" Jay Weinberg is 19 years old and plays in a metal band. No way in hell, I thought, that a 19 year old metalhead -- no matter who his daddy is -- should have the very heartbeat of the E Street Band in his 19 year old hands.

Well, the band played a couple of "rehearsal shows" in Asbury Park this week, and Jay sat in for a few songs. And while I obviously wasn't there to witness this for myself, and haven't had a chance to download & listen to the bootlegs yet, credible sources report that the kid was more than up to the task. Apparently he's an amazing drummer, and absolutely thrilled to be there keeping the beat for a bunch of 60 year old guys -- go figure. And it is just possible that his presence and passion and enthusiasm can give the "old-timers" in the band an extra little kick in the pants -- not that they really need it as a rule, I've never seen musicians as totally into it and joyously passionate about performing as they were when I saw them in August, but how cool to have someone along for part of the ride whose attitude is still "oh my god I can't believe I get to do this!"

So now I find myself hoping that, when the real tour begins next week, they have Jay sitting in for a few songs at every show before he takes over from his dad, which will happen when they get over to Europe. Because I really wanna see this crazy kid for myself.

I mean, it's just cool to have someone in the band who's NOT yet eligible to join the Hair Club for Men. :) :)

* * * * *

Sent a whole sheaf of "Chasing Angels" poems off to a journal that asks for whole sheaves of poems. Whether or not they take them, it was really interesting to go through them picking out a handful that could carry enough of the story to stand by themselves, and to see how the arc of the narrative is developing. Whatever happens with this project, I am learning a lot from it. So that's good.

Crisis of craft

For those within driving distance of Bloomington, Rita Dove will be reading here on Wednesday. I plan to be there.

Feeling transitional. Maybe it's just the change of seasons... spring is coming on full tilt.

Speaking of changes, I'm on Twitter now. If you're there too, feel free to follow me! I don't know how much use I'll actually make of it; if I had a phone (and a plan) that allowed for texting and/or web access, I'd probably find it much more useful. As it stands, I'm not sure where Twitter will fit into the blog/Facebook/whatever matrix, but I figured I'd give it a try.

Here's the transcript of an interesting talk by Steve Van Zandt at SXSW. He talks about the "crisis of craft" in rock&roll -- how musicians aren't spending time developing their craft anymore, playing cover songs, playing in bars, "learn[ing] greatness from greatness." It's an interesting perspective, and rings at least somewhat true from my perspective. I think anyone who's ever taught beginning poets will find some of what he says pretty familiar: the impatience to express oneself, the temptation to put one's voice out there before one has developed strong enough craft to support any kind of artistic vision. Food for thought, anyway, and Steve certainly has the experience to support his perspective, after forty-some years in the music business working as a band member, band leader, producer, label owner, deejay, and goodness knows what else.

And yes, I'm still working on that series of poems about the fictional rockstar. It's sort of annoying at the moment, really, because every time I sit down to read poems I start itching to write, and I can't get through so much as twenty pages of poetry without getting interrupted by the Muse. I almost wish I'd get a little bit blocked, so that in addition to getting a decent amount of reading done, I could spend time revising (goodness knows these new poems need it) -- not to mention the big revision that needs to be done on my first book manuscript. I know, I know, be careful what you wish for....

Short attention sp

Yeah, I haven't been blogging much lately. Haven't even been reading blogs on a daily basis as I normally do, either. I haven't abandoned poetry, though -- I've been submitting like a madwoman! Well, that is, if your definition of "madwoman" includes sending out a packet every day or two for a few days. Okay, so it's not all that much, but I'm getting stuff out there on a more regular basis for once, including sending work to a couple of journals I've been meaning to send to for a while.

Oddly enough, when you send more stuff out, you are more likely to get stuff accepted. (Who knew? Hey, I'm a poet, not a statistician!) The kind folks over at Coal Hill Review are taking a poem for their fall issue, which makes me happy.

In somewhat more personal news, my sister became a grandmother late last night, which makes me a (gasp) great-aunt. That's just weird. But also a happy thing. Welcome to the world, baby Apollo!

Anne likes this

Facebook is starting to infect me, I think. I want to click a 'Like' button on everything that strikes me in a good way. Someone says something smart at work and I want to tag it with "Anne likes this!" I see crocuses poking up out of the ground and I want to bang on something with my thumb to say: "Anne likes this!"

And you wonder how people get lazy about self-expression. Phbt.

* * * * *

Yesterday I got out the big-ass stack o'poems that I've drafted so far towards my new project. I've been putting them more or less in some kind of order as I go along and carrying them around with me in a red folder. I read through the most recent half-dozen or so, made a few tiny little changes here and there, and stuck them into the big-ass stack in places that seemed right. Then I read through the whole thing -- not carefully or in depth, but skimming over all the poems, reading through for flow & continuity. And go figure: as I read through it, it started to feel more like (gasp) a manuscript, not just a big-ass stack o'poems.

Wow.

This has been an entirely different experience from my first full-length manuscript (which is floating around in various editorial offices even as we speak). That one was more the classic "first book" experience, where you have a big-ass stack o'poems that you've drafted over a few years and you sort through them trying to figure out what they have to do with one another and how they relate. Putting that manuscript together, while I was on retreat at Clifty Falls last June, was a really cool experience because I was pleasantly surprised to find out how much the poems did relate to one another, and kind of talked to one another once I put them in the same rooms together. Turns out my work has had some overarching themes all along, and I found some ways of juxtaposing poems that (in my considerably less than objective opinion) illuminated and clarified those themes.

(Given that the manuscript has been rejected a bunch of times now, although it has garnered some nice notes and so on, I think I'm about to revisit it. A little distance is good for the soul, or at least for the manuscript. But I digress.)

Anyway, this new project -- new manuscript, I should say! -- has been more deliberate from the get-go. I'd drafted maybe half a dozen poems before I realized I was working on a larger project. I thought it might be a chapbook at first, but for the past six months or so I have suspected that it wants to be a book. For quite a while I just let the voices speak to me; I'd find myself writing about something -- a tree, a highway, a certain slant of light -- and realize that I was writing from the perspective of one of my characters. At this point, I'm trying to think more strategically about the thing as a whole: filling in gaps, brightening or darkening the tone as needed.

So reading through it yesterday and feeling like it is starting to hang together -- that was enormous for me.

I'm a little in love with this project, much as it pains me to admit. Hell, I bought a black leather motorcycle jacket because of this project. (On ebay, for $10.50. I may be crazy, but I'm cheap.)

I just hope somebody hurries up and takes manuscript #1 before this one is ready to go out (which will probably be another year or so; I have at least ten or twelve more poems to write, and a LOT of revision to do). Otherwise, it will feel like one of those fairy tales where the younger daughter gets married before the elder daughter, and somebody ends up dying because of it. Or at least cursed.

* * * * *

I mention this because three people have now sent me the information and it's only a matter of time before the rest of you do, too. ;) Yes, I do know about the Bruce Springsteen anthology that Pudding House is working on! And yes, I've already sent them some work; and yes, they've taken a poem of mine. I am highly amused by the whole thing, actually. They say they are going to do their best to get some copies of it into the actual hands of the actual Bruce Springsteen, which I'm not holding my breath on (he's pretty hard to get to), but it's fun to think about. My poem is one in which I imagine a fourteen-year-old Bruce, sitting in his room playing his guitar and dreaming of getting out of there. Like pretty much anyone who's been fourteen, I know how that feels.

Time and weather

So, the whole Daylight Saving Time thing. Bleah. Tomorrow evening I have the 6-9 pm shift on the reference desk, and there will still be some light in the sky when I go home. On the other hand, for the next couple-three weeks, on the days that I work a normal 8-5 schedule the sun won't have risen yet when I go in to work. I am on the wrong damn side of the time zone for this crap, is what it is.

We're still fairly new to this springingforwardfallingback thing here in Indiana, and many of us are still cranky about it.

I mean really. I almost forgot to listen to Little Steven's Underground Garage on the radio tonight, because it comes on at 7 pm and it was still bright and sunny then and didn't seem possible that it was already time for evening things to start.

* * * * *

Today was sunny, then cloudy, then the wind kicked up and then they issued a tornado watch and then it got dark and there was a gust so hard I grabbed on to my head inside my house just to make sure it didn't blow away, and then it rained like crazy, then the clouds raced away and it was brilliant blue springtime and a yard full of robins.

If you didn't think Indiana was very much Midwestern, think again.

There was a fair amount of tornado damage about 50 miles south of me, but we escaped entirely unscathed, this time.

Funny enough, on Friday evening I attended a National Weather Service storm-spotter training session. Just in time, eh? It was pretty interesting, and as a bonus, the language of severe weather is pretty ripe for stealing into poetry. Tornadogenesis, rear-flank downdraft, wall cloud, shelf cloud, squall line, beaver tail.

Yes, beaver tail.

* * * * *

Not going anywhere this month. In April, I'm off to Denver for a few quick days to visit my sister and catch a Springsteen show. Then in May I'll hop up to my mom's for Mother's Day and from there to Chicago for, yes, another Springsteen show. In July I'm back to Chicago for the American Library Association conference.

More hotels this year than usual for me, that's for sure.

I'm also hoping to make a trip to Cleveland sometime this year to see this exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It's, uh, research for some poems. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Where would you travel in the name of researching poems?

I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight

Yeah, that post title has nothing to do with anything except that the song is stuck in my head a little. (It's from the new U2 album.)

* * * * *

Maya Angelou spoke on campus this evening, to a sold-out (well, tickets were free, but they were all distributed) auditorium. This auditorium seats around 3200 people, and it was a mix of students, faculty, and other folks. Anyway, I know a lot of poets don't think much of Angelou's poetry, and I can understand that; she's not a challenging or technically nuanced poet, certainly. But what she does better than just about anyone is to capture an audience. Talk about stage presence... wow. And to think of her history in the civil rights movement, and her life story -- well, she's a pretty amazing person, really. But what I loved tonight was her passion about poetry, the way she talked about (and sometimes read from) Shakespeare, Poe, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Mari Evans, Countee Cullen, and others -- talking to that packed room about how poetry is important and, I think, persuading people to believe it. You gotta love that. And not only that, but she talked about librarians, and how librarians study as hard as surgeons, and how you should go to the library and ask the librarian to help you finding some information -- "but don't expect an answer right away. It's probably been a while since anyone asked and it might take her a couple of minutes to recover from the shock." (Not an exact quote, but something like that, which just about made me pee my pants laughing.)

Promoting poetry and librarians to an auditorium full of impressionable college students, and getting a roaring standing ovation anyway. Yeah, you gotta love that!

* * * * *

Things aren't looking good in California, apparently. The whole thing makes me feel a little queasy, and I don't even really have a personal horse in this race, being neither the marrying kind nor a California resident. Still, what's fair is fair, and it's just dumb for some relationships to be all official and stuff and others not to be. Just dumb, and mean.

I do believe that the world can change. Just sometimes, I wish it would hurry faster.

Not a luxury

Feeling pretty much human again. Don't get norovirus, people.

* * * * *

Time to get the book manuscript back out and start again from the inside out, I think. I still believe in it, but I'm not sure it is wearing its best suit of clothes just yet.

* * * * *

Read these poems. I'm not kidding, really. Go do it now. I'll be right here waiting.

* * * * *

Good news from the Writers' Center up in Indianapolis -- they have found ways to continue on with some of their programming despite serious budget setbacks. These are tough times for the arts, but I think there are enough of us out here who understand that the arts are essential, and I think we'll get through these next few years. It'll be tough, but if anyone can make something fabulous out of not very much, it's poets. Right?

* * * * *

Speaking of "not very much," I am so sorry that I watched American Idol this week. That's two hours of my life I will never get back. I blame certain of you bloggers for getting me hooked on this atrocity. Ahem.

* * * * *

There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand. It takes every bone and every muscle in the human body, and every ounce of breath, to make a single moment of music, to bend a slender steel string and hold that note.

* * * * *

My poem "Relax with Song of the Whales" is now up at Sea Stories! This is a very, very cool online journal which I always enjoy reading. The editors do a great job of creating something that explores a particular theme while consistently selecting interesting work. I haven't yet had a chance to explore this particular issue, but I'm looking forward to it.