bonus draft

Here's one of the poems I read at Rachael's Cafe last night. This is from my "rockstar" series; the two characters here are the same as the ones in the draft I posted a few days ago -- the speaker is the rockstar/main character, and the other person is the guitarist. The two of them have this ridiculously hot chemistry onstage but in their offstage life they don't talk about it. This poem finds them in the van, on the road from one gig to the next...

I'll take the draft down in a day or so, as usual.


[gone]

Weekend snippets

Good news on the work front: the radical revision of my job description came through the reclassification process with a higher level. This means that as of 11/1 I get a shiny new title (Libraries Web Site Editor), a professional staff classification rather than support staff, and a small raise. I am lucky to have a job that I mostly like, working with people I like (many of whom I would enjoy spending time with even if I weren't being paid to do so -- don't laugh, it's nothing to take for granted), and also lucky to be able to go home at the end of the day and leave my job behind in order to work on creative pursuits (lately, about equal parts writing-related and music-related).

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Still have not figured out what I'm going to read at the Five Women Poets reading tomorrow night -- er, it's after midnight now, so I guess I should say "tonight." A couple of poems from Breach, for sure, but which ones? I'm more interested right now in my new series of poems (one of which was posted here for about a day earlier this week) -- heck, I drafted another one of the things today. I guess that's the problem with publishing chapbooks and books: by the time the thing comes out, your work has moved on, but people want you to read from the "new" collection. Well, I'll read a couple of the new poems anyway, if only to test out how they sound in a room with people listening.

Also, speaking of listening: just a reminder that I'll be on the radio Sunday at 11:46 am Eastern time! I'll put a link to the podcast in the sidebar of my blog when it's available, so don't break your neck getting up early to hear me. *grin*

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Well, this certainly has been a "me me me" post, hasn't it? Ugh, sorry.

National Book Awards finalists

The NBA finalists were named today. In poetry:

Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins)
Reginald Gibbons, Creatures of a Day (Louisiana State University Press)
Richard Howard, Without Saying (Turtle Point Press)
Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press)

Complete list of finalists can be found on the National Book Foundation website.

Drafty in here.

I haven't posted a draft in a while. I wrote this during my dinner break yesterday (prior to working the late shift on the reference desk). It's part of the series I'm working on -- poems about a fictional rock musician. Some are in first person, some in third person, some in second person. I've got about 15 of them so far, taking the protagonist from about age 14 (playing guitar and having rockstar daydreams) to middle age (dealing with a long career in the music world, coping with the inevitable losses one faces in middle age, etc). It's different from anything I've worked on before, and I'm having fun with it.

Anyway, I'll take this down in a day or so. And I miiiiight read it, or a revision of it, at the Five Women Poets reading Saturday night. Or I might not. So.

[gone!]

Local notes

A couple items of interest primarily to Bloomingtonians (that's the real Bloomington, here in beautiful south-central Indiana, not those impostors in Minnesota and Illinois):

*** Copies of Breach are now available at Howard's Bookstore (on the downtown courthouse square) and Boxcar Books (in its new location next door to the Runcible Spoon). I dropped them off today on consignment and both shops seemed quite pleased to have them. Howard's was going to put one in their local authors section in the front window, and Boxcar put one on a little stand facing out. Nice. Support independent bookstores, because they support us! :)

*** The annual Five Women Poets reading is coming up a week from tonight! Saturday, October 18, 7:30 pm, at Rachael's Cafe on Third Street. Free admission, but do try to get a cup of coffee or a sandwich or a cup of soup or something to support the place. I'll have chapbooks available for sale. Readers will be: Antonia Matthew, Deborah Hutchison, Anya Peterson Royce, Leah Helen May, Patricia C. Coleman, and yours truly. (Yes, there are six members of Five Women Poets. We're poets, not mathematicians.)

*** Finally, I'll be on WFIU's weekly poetry show, The Poets Weave, twice in upcoming weeks: Sunday, October 19 and Sunday, November 9 (11:46 am Eastern Time). It's a five-minute show, and if you aren't local you can listen live online or you can download the podcast later. I am mostly reading from Breach, but the October 19 show also includes my elegy for Danny Federici, E Street Band keyboardist/accordionist, who died this past April. I hope some of y'all will listen in.

cloud

I made a word cloud out of Breach over at http://wordle.net/. How cool is this? Note to self: cut way the heck back on similes next time around... good grief. Also, I am such a NON-morning person (seriously, you don't want to be around me until I've had some coffee) that I'm very surprised "morning" came out so much bigger than "night." :)

How it works is that the words that appear more frequently are bigger. If you go over to the Wordle site you can upload your own text -- and yes, it'll take an entire manuscript in there -- and create your own word cloud. You can change the fonts, colors, etc. and then do a screen capture to save it. Or if you have Windows Vista, there's a built-in "snipping tool" that works pretty well for stuff like this.

[Edited to add: Wordle also has a gallery of clouds people have created and chosen to save publicly. This one for Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run album is pretty cool!]

(Click on it to see it larger.)

quick quick

In today's mail:

1. A free sample Kashi cookie, with the return address "Cookie Fulfillment Center." Dude. I want to work at the Cookie Fulfillment Center. In fact, I want to LIVE in the Cookie Fulfillment Center.

2. Rebecca Loudon's shiny new book, Cadaver Dogs. Even better than a free cookie.

Also today, my poem is featured over on Rattle's website. (Thanks for the heads-up, Karen! I saw it this morning, but didn't have a chance to blog till now.)

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I'll be missing the debate tonight as I will be getting all mavericky at a poetry-group meeting. Someone be sure & tell me if they say anything important, ok? [Edit: Doh!! I wrote down the wrong date on my calendar and poetry group isn't until next week. Now I need to find a new excuse to skip the debate, right? Oh, I'll probably watch... sigh... ]

Rambling, Reviews, Radio

I know, I know. I've been a bit under the weather, and a bit busy, and a bit distracted. Sometimes I think I'm trying to live about three different lives all at once. I am a Gemini, so you'd think I'd be used to that... *grin*

Insert standard "hey, I'm behind on email again" disclaimer here... I need to just take the laptop to the library or a coffeehouse or something and catch up without all the distractions that surround me at home! (you know -- cats, guitars, falling asleep on the couch...)

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Breach continues to make its way out into the world. FYI, copies are still available from Finishing Line Press. I'm holding on to most of my author copies so I'll have something to sell at a couple of upcoming readings, but I'd be willing to sell or barter a few of those as well, if you'd rather get one from me than order from the press.

My mom forwarded me an email from a friend of hers to whom she sent a copy, saying she really enjoyed Beaches. I was amused. :)

A couple of reviews (reviewlets?) from bloggers with somewhat different takes on it:

I read Anne Haines' Breach. I enjoyed a number of the poems, including "Let X Equal..." and "Arrival". I very much appreciated the number of nonce forms that Haines used; the unexpected repetition (read: music) was wonderful.

I'm not sure what to make of the fact that I felt it was too easy to see her real life in many of the poems. I know that's a detractor, for me, that I feel I can't inhabit in the poem, that there's no wiggle room for understanding. I wish I knew what to do with that. I wonder how I would have responded, had I not read her blog. (Had I not read her blog, I would not have read her book, so...)

Also, I was a little confused about the theme of the book. There was plenty of ocean imagery and many "breach" references and that tied a lot together but there were a number of poems with other topics that I couldn't fit in.

(from Mary Alexandra Agner)

A fair critique; a lot of my poems are "that kind of poetry" -- you know, the ones that look autobiographical even if they aren't so much (and I will say that some of the poems in the chapbook are more fictional than others). I recognize that that isn't everybody's cup of tea, for sure. As I've said before, I think I flunked irony and postmodernism. ;) And while I can point to a couple of recurring themes and the ways in which I think pretty much all the poems tie together, it's certainly not what you'd call a tightly-themed chapbook. (I'm working on one of those now, actually, and am enjoying a very different experience of the writing/composing process.) Thanks, Mary, for a thoughtful reading!

There's so much poetry out there that attempts the lyrical contemplation-of-life verse. And yes, while life does deserve contemplation, most of this type of poetry is not very good. (I'm also thinking of times when my students attempt lyrical verse -- they, too, stumble). So, it's more than just a relief when one finds a poet who is successful with lyrical poetry -- it's a great cause of celebration.

Yes, I am speaking directly of Anne Haines', fellow blogging comrade, and poet, new chapbook, Breach (recently published by Finishing Line Press). Anne tackles all the big "matters" of life without being condescending. Whether she pictures a narrator looking for whales the day before September 11, 2001, or she writes about love stories in foggy Provincetown, Anne succeeds to capture the mystery of life, without melodrama, without sentiment. My favorite poem is the honest, "Dx," a work that explores the world of a medical diagnosis: "You say that you live as if/you're dying, just in case/No, you die/as if you're living."

(from Karen J. Weyant)

Karen is the second person who's pointed to "Dx" as a favorite, which surprises me; it's a poem that didn't really stand out for me personally, but felt like it fit into the "dancing with boundaries" theme I was generally aiming for, so I included it. I think the thing I like about publication is the opportunity to step outside of your own feelings about your poems and try to look at them from other points of view, like a singer listening to her own recorded voice. Even if you don't get feedback or reviews, just looking at your own poems in a journal or a chapbook can make them feel like someone else's, in a weird way, and it's easier to be objective about them. Or a little bit objective anyway. Anyway -- thanks, Karen!

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And thank you, Tina Fey. You've single-handedly made this election season bearable.

The debate sketch on tonight's SNL was absolutely dead-on. Brilliant. Besides of course Tina Fey's killer impersonation of Palin, they managed to portray Biden's response to the "same-sex benefits" question in such a way that, while, quoting his actual response almost verbatim, exposed the hypocrisy in the whole "we believe in equality but we don't support gay marriage nonono" position very nicely. You betcha!

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“…to understand what happens at the edges – the most important thing there is in drawing – is everything. … When space is divided, the action is at the edge.” – artist Michael Mazur (interviewed in Provincetown Arts, 2008)

I think if I'd had that quote a year ago, it might have become the epigraph for Breach.

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On Monday I'll be recording a few poems for the radio. I'll let y'all know what the airdates will be once I find out for sure.

Sightings in the wild

I've been getting reports from around the country of people receiving their copies of Breach. Woo hoo! You know what that means ... if people are receiving it, people actually ordered it -- most of whom are not my mother. Wacky! Getting little "hey, my copy arrived" notes from people feels kind of like getting letters home from the kid you sent off to school.

Because a couple of people have asked: if you ordered a copy and would like to have it signed, drop me a note and I'll give you my address -- send it to me and I'll sign it and send it right back. Or meet me at AWP in February. :)

Bear gives Breach a cat scan:

Notes from home

Back from a quick week in Provincetown with my family (celebrating a significant birthday for my mom and her twin sister). A little odd being there with family and not spending much time writing, but good to be there and to be able to introduce my family to my favorite little place on the planet. We rented a four-bedroom house just a couple of blocks from the Fine Arts Work Center -- and if anyone reading this is ever looking for a Provincetown rental in a quiet residential neighborhood for a group of 4-8, drop me a note and I'll give you the contact info, because this place was great: spacious, quiet, but just a short walk to Commercial Street. My favorite part was the rooftop deck, which offered a lovely view of the Pilgrim Monument and on which I sat under the full moon and wrote a bit. (Note: just because it's written by the light of a fat full Provincetown moon doesn't mean it's any good. But it was nice to scribble a little all the same.)

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Chapbook note: there's been a bit of a further delay, for which I apologize (my fault). It should ship at the end of this week.

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I'm not a baseball fan particularly, but tonight for the sake of history I am watching the last game in Yankee Stadium. Guitarist/songwriter Nils Lofgren and his wife Amy have written a song in honor of the stadium's demise, which you can download on Nils' website, along with his rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. Grab it here -- Nils has some other stuff available for download that's worth the effort, too. The guy is a killer guitarist and I've heard he is a sweetheart as well (I always like knowing that about the musicians I enjoy, when it's true).

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While I was gone, the remnants of Hurricane Ike blasted through, and the power at my house was out from Sunday afternoon through sometime Wednesday afternoon. I have a few limbs down in my yard, and lost a bunch of food from the refrigerator, but all things considered the damage was minimal -- especially compared to what folks in Texas had to deal with. Still, I am the only person I know who actually avoided hurricane-related unpleasantness by leaving the Midwest and going to the coast. Go figure, huh?

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Of course, the other unpleasantness that blew through while I was gone was the economy going to hell in a handbasket (not that it wasn't headed there already). I'm pretty stupid about economics, but even I can see that things are one enormous mess. Here's hoping that when Obama gets elected, he'll be able to straighten things out, though I'm afraid the first year of the new administration is going to be rocky no matter what. Yes, I said "when" he gets elected, not "if" -- I'm a hopeless optimist, and also, I saw a poll that showed him leading in Indiana of all places. If we can go blue this year, anyone can. I hope.

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While in Provincetown, I did a couple of the touristy things I'd always wanted to do but had never gotten around to: climbing the Pilgrim Monument (116 steps and 60 ramps to the top for a fantastic view), and going for a ride with Art's Dune Tours. We were going to do the sunset tour and clambake, but they cancelled the clambake part because it was too cold and windy and apparently normal people object to sitting on the beach to eat dinner with their hands turning blue and sand blowing into their melted butter. Who knew? It actually worked out great because we ended up at Napi's for dinner that night, where I had the most incredible duck with wild beach plum sauce.

On the dune tour, we got a peek at several of the dune shacks up there. I've been fascinated with these ever since I found out about them. There are a couple of them where you can actually get a short residency. Not sure I could handle it for more than a week (no internet! eek!), but I may start scheming about trying to manage a week up there in the next couple of years. I love that landscape, and the light, and the clear salty air, and the sound of the surf... it would be pretty amazing to spend some time there enjoying the solitude and doing some writing.

Photos don't do the landscape anything near justice, but here are some quick shots from the dune tour -- one of the dune shacks, and a couple of sunset at Race Point Beach. More on my Facebook.

I got this guitar, and I learned how to make it talk

Yeah... I have been a bit of an absentee lately, here and elsewhere. There's been a lot going on, including the fact that I am super busy at work (beginning of the semester, new web site design, new head of our department, etc.); at home, I'm preparing for a short vacation/family reunion (my mom is celebrating a Significant Birthday and, coincidentally, so is her twin sister -- so a little gang of us is zipping out east and renting a house in Provincetown for a few days). And in all honesty, all I want to do is play my guitar all day and all night. It's like being seventeen again! I know that when you're seventeen there are other things you're not supposed to be able to keep your hands off of... but for me it was always my guitar.

Playing music again (as the musicians among you will understand) is incredibly good for my mental health. I can actually feel the difference in my body, that my bones and muscles are happier with music in them. And there's nothing like playing music to give you the experience of being completely in the moment, completely present, which is something that's too easy to forget (at least for someone who spends a lot of time living in her head).

And some of the technique is coming back a lot faster than I expected it would after so many years of neglect. Muscle memory, I guess! I'm still not any good, but for once in my life that is OK with me. I am doing this purely for my own enjoyment, not with any thoughts of taking it public or professionalizing it or even performing in coffeehouses now and then. I'm not a particularly ambitious person, but when it comes to creative work, it's hard for me to let myself just bash away at something for fun -- and yet that's the healthiest thing in the world for me, helps me remember how to demolish some of the internal censors and editors that sometimes keep me from doing my best work in other creative areas. Like, you know, that poetry stuff I'm supposed to be all about. (Ahem.)

And, of course, I'm still on a huge Bruce Springsteen kick. After the amazing shows I saw in August, I may be on that kick for quite a while. I'm still trying to put a finger on just what it is about his music (and performances) I love so much. Part of it is the complete lack of irony, the unashamed embrace of primal emotions -- joy, grief, love, rage -- someone I know went to his show in Indianapolis last spring and commented that so many bands and audiences these days, especially younger ones, are all about being cool and detached, and it was fun to see people actually jumping around pumping their fists in the air like fools and not caring. So there's that. I'm not very good at being ironic and detached, myself -- I think I actually flunked out of PoMo 101 -- and it's reassuring to me to witness art that successfully (in my opinion anyway) navigates the big emotions, the big ideas, the sweep and uproar and glorious bombast of it all.

Yes, I just called rock & roll "art." Shut up. :)

So I feel like all of this is still settling in. I went away from poetry for a few years back there, and when it came back it was better than ever; I've been away from playing music for much longer than I was away from poetry, so we'll see what happens with that. I would like it if the music served to inform the poetry, and I think that will happen to some extent. I would also like it if the days suddenly stretched out to 48 hours apiece, because there's just too much music and poetry and reading and listening and playing and writing and ... yeah. I'll just be over here getting too far behind on everything, if anybody needs me. Rock on.

My new girl

I know, I haven't been around here much. I have an excuse. Her name is Sophie, and I'm head over heels in love. I can't keep my hands off her.

She's a 2002 Fender Stratocaster. Basically, this is the guitar I daydreamed about near-constantly when I was 17 years old.

If this is a manifestation of my midlife crisis ... at least it's cheaper than a sports car. *grin*

Playing guitar is something that was absolutely central to my identity in my teens and early twenties, and off & on through my early thirties. I really haven't touched it in 10-15 years or so, though. But after the great, great Springsteen concerts I witnessed last week, I found myself absolutely inspired. I put new strings on my old Ovation acoustic and it felt really good to play, and then I decided to go shopping ... and Sophie's the result.

I had an electric guitar in high school, a little Gibson Melody Maker. I sold it when I was getting ready to go to college and needed money in a bad way; that's been one of my few real regrets in life. Now, almost 30 years later, I own an electric guitar again. Full circle.

Truth is, the years when I played guitar all the time were also a time when I wrote and wrote and wrote. So I'm hoping this will help me break through some creative roadblocks in my writing life, or give me some new ideas at least, as well as giving me another creative outlet to enjoy. I have no illusions of ever getting good enough to play for other people -- unlike the writing, the music is something I'm doing purely for myself at this point.

And it feels good. It feels soooooooooooooo good.

Road Notes from the E Street Nation

I am home after a Grand Adventure. I drove 1350 miles in a rental car and saw Bruce Springsteen perform in Nashville, St. Louis, and Kansas City. All three shows were wonderful; St. Louis was probably the best concert I have ever seen by anyone, ever. (Some people who've seen 50+ Springsteen shows over 30+ years are declaring St. Louis to be at least in their top five.) He played for just under 3 hours in Nashville and over 3 hours in the other cities. And when I say "he played" I do not mean that he came out on stage and sat there while the band did stuff, or that he came out and sang for a while then declared an intermission and took a break. No. These shows were relentless. It was incredible.

I feel like this little trip has changed my life in some way, although I have yet to put my finger on just how.

I met a lot of really nice people at the shows. Many dedicated Springsteen fans refer to themselves as the "E Street Nation" and, cheesey as it may be, there is something to that. There is a real community feeling, a pool of shared imagery and shared experiences. There is, often, a sense of the need to take care of one another; there are always charity efforts going on (in KC a group of fans put together a raffle and raised $1100 for a local food bank, an effort which garnered onstage thanks from Bruce himself), and many fans take care to watch out for one another on the general-admission floor -- you get out there a couple hours before the show starts, and if you've come alone, it's pretty easy to get someone to hold your spot for you while you dash to the restroom or get a drink of water. One of the people I met emailed me to make sure I'd made it home safely.

There are a lot of things I want to write about, after this trip. It's going to take me a few days to wrap my mind around it all. It was about the music (and oh, how I need to remember that music is what saves my soul, over and over again) but it was about much more than that.

Kansas City was the last official show of the "Magic" tour. (The band is playing at HarleyFest in Milwaukee this Saturday night, but it may not be a full set, as there's an opening act and stuff. And Bruce himself said that KC was the last night of the tour.) There was a definite farewell feeling to it. A bunch of fans had made up small (just sheet of paper size) signs that simply said "Thank you!" on them, and coordinated a moment at the end of the show to hold them up; Bruce and the band were clearly very touched by this and it was such a sweet moment. (After all these years, you'd think it would come as no surprise, how we feel about this band. You'd think they would start to take it for granted. But I really don't think they do, and that's why it's so magical.)

The first encore began with "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," dedicated to Danny Federici -- the E Street Band organist/accordionist who died of melanoma this past April -- and to Terry Magovern, Bruce's personal assistant and close friend who died just over a year ago. I wept through the whole thing. It's been a long tour for this band, punctuated by too many funerals. It's not the same band it was a year ago when they kicked this thing off. It's not the same world it was a year ago. I can't imagine how exhausted they must be, physically and emotionally. And yet they gave us their absolute all, night after night after night. Just amazing.

For the final encore, Bruce sang a sweet, tender version of "Save the Last Dance for Me" -- not a song that's normally found on their setlist -- that roared into a loose, rollicking rendition of "Dancing in the Dark" and then a purely celebratory "Rockin' All Over the World." And then one final bow, as Bruce thanked us for supporting the tour, supporting the "Magic" album, and supporting the music for all these years. He thanked the E Street Nation by name, and for some reason that was tremendously touching to me.

The last few shows of this tour have been just off the hook, insanely good. They were added sort of at the last minute, and people have wondered why. I have a theory, now. You know how, when you're about to leave on a long journey, you make sure you tell the people you love that you love them? Just in case something happens? Well, I think that after the losses they've suffered in the past year or so, Bruce and the band are keenly aware that there are no guarantees. I think they have every intention of touring again -- I don't think this is the end of the E Street Band. But these guys are in their fifties and sixties, and nobody lives forever, not even Bruce Springsteen. And I think that these shows have been a little love letter to the E Street Nation ... just in case.

I hope they know we love them, too.


It seems so cheesey to be saying these things, talking about "love" in the context of a rock & roll band. I sound like such an over the moon fangirl. Of course I don't know Bruce personally, or any of the band members, and probably will never even meet any of them. But there is such a sense of love in that community and in that room when they are playing. I mean, most of those guys have been working together for 35 years or more. The love among them is visible onstage and it's such a strong thing. I know, I know, it's part of the mythos they've developed, and it's part of their job to be entertainers and look like they're enjoying themselves. But you can NOT fake what they do & what they have. You can't fake that much fun and that kind of brotherhood. And it's contagious. I know that this band & this music has made me a stronger, braver, better person in the 30+ years (eek) I've been listening to them.

Well, I didn't intend for this blog post to veer so far over into a pure declaration of fandom. Oh well. Them's the breaks. I'll talk about poetry again sometime soon, I'm sure. :) I've got some writing (and maybe even some poems) percolating in my head after this little road trip. For now, I'm just struggling with the return to the "real world" after the Summer Vacation to the E Street Nation.

(For setlists and full reviews, check out the best source for all things Springsteen: backstreets.com)

(P.S. As a result of this little trip, I'm way behind on every-freaking-thing again. I owe some of you email! I will get to it over the next couple of days. I had my laptop with me, but as soon as I got out on the road, it was like nothing mattered but the shows, and even when I had time in the hotel room during the day before a show, I was just sort of pacing around waiting until it was time to go over to the arena. Sigh. Now I know, just a little bit, how touring musicians feel... )

Super quick notes

Last night's Springsteen show (2nd of the 3 I'm chasing) was nothing short of jaw-dropping. I didn't have the amazing spot I had in Nashville (right up front with one person between me and the stage), but I had a pretty nice spot fairly close where I could see just about everything; I've always hesitated to go for general-admission tickets because I'm 5 foot 1 and figured I'd just end up staring at some six-footer's back, but both nights it has worked out well. (For Kansas City, my sister & her husband are driving out and we have reserved seats. I'm going to feel like we are verrrrrry far away, sigh.)

Bruce was about as happy as I've ever seen him on stage. He always seems to love performing; yes, as an entertainer it's his job to make it look like he's having a good time even if he's not, but folks, you can't fake that much fun. Last night he was positively radiant! And some nights, you just can't drag that boy off the stage. After the usual encore set, he's been adding on a bonus second encore pretty frequently, generally just one song. Last night he played two songs in that spot, and after the band took more bows, there was yet one more! They ended with "Twist & Shout," which is the same way the very first Springsteen show I ever saw ended... back in 1978. Wow. All in all this show was about 20 minutes longer than Nashville, clocking in at a sweet 3 hours and 15 minutes. For a guy who's pushing sixty, and a bunch of band members around the same age, that is amazing. And no, they don't take an intermission. Not a lot of "stand there and talk to introduce the song" breaks either. His shows these days are relentless.

His guitar players (Little Steven Van Zandt -- yes, the guy from The Sopranos; he was in the E Street Band long before he was on TV -- and Nils Lofgren) have been absolutely on fire both in Nashville and St. Louis. They both tore the roof off the place last night. Steve's solo on "Gypsy Biker" might be the best I've ever seen him do. Just incredible.

The other thing I want to say is that if you're ever looking for a moderately priced hotel in downtown St. Louis, the Drury Inn at Union Station is highly recommended. The room is well-appointed, clean, and comfortable; the amenities are great (and I didn't even get to take advantage of the evening reception where you get up to 3 free alcoholic drinks!), and the staff has been very helpful and professional. Also, the breakfast buffet is huge, with pastries, sausage, scrambled eggs, french toast, make your own waffles, decent coffee, and lots of other stuff. Not the cheapest hotel I've ever stayed in, but quite reasonable, and just very nice.

Tonight: Goin' to Kansas City!

Oh, and Friday night when I got here I met up with Julie and Laine, who showed me a bit of St. Louis. Beer, a used bookstore, dinner, and gelato. Yes, that covers the bases of almost all my favorite vices right there. Thanks, guys! :)

P.S. After 3+ hours of singing along, whooping, and "Bruuuuuuuuce!"-ing, I have almost no voice. I sound like a cross between Mickey Mouse, a gravel road, and a mime. I don't know how Bruce does it without ripping up his voice every night... I guess that's called "actually knowing how to sing." *grin*

Quick rockin' notes

Sorry I've been a blog-absentee lately! Things have been fairly nuts.

I am on my "chase Bruce Springsteen around the south/midwest" road trip... last night was the show in Nashville, Sat. night is St. Louis, Sunday is Kansas City. Last night's show was possibly the best concert I have ever seen in my life (and since the previous holder of that title was Bruce's show in 1978, that is definitely saying something). The setlist rocked, the band was incredibly loose and playful, and I had only one person between me and the stage (and that person was about my height, so I wasn't looking at the back of some six foot dude all evening). I was over towards the right (audience's right) of the stage, and could see Bruce most of the time, and had a particularly good view of guitarist Steve Van Zandt -- who I am quite certain grinned right at me more than once. (Okay, I was sort of uncontrollably playing air guitar now and then and I'm sure it was quite amusing. Ahem. Stop laughing at me.)

This morning my voice is shot from singing and cheering and whooping and "Bruuuuuuce"-ing, and I have a big grin on my face that ain't going away for a while, I'm sure. I met up with a librarian friend for breakfast and she gave me a tour of the Nashville public library, which is really gorgeous! So I have indulged the rocker-chick side of me and the librarian-nerd side of me all in one trip. If I could just take in a poetry reading and pet some kittens, all my bases would be covered. *grin*

Time to shut down the laptop and head on to St. Louis, where I will be meeting up with the fabulous Julie & Laine for dinner tonight! You guys, this is the best road trip ever. I am so happy and having so much fun.

AWP hotel heads-up

Hey, everyone who's going to AWP in February -- for some reason I thought to check the Hilton website tonight and lo & behold, the only non-smoking rooms left at the lowest price level (which is still more than I make in a day, sigh...) are rooms with one double bed. If you're going, and planning to stay at the Hilton, it might be prudent to go ahead and book now, or soon.

I'm sure there will be cancellations, and rooms with a king or two doubles will probably open up. But I'm a low-risk kind of gal, so I booked my room tonight just to be safe.

There are probably cheaper places to stay nearby, but I decided it's worth at least 20 bucks a night NOT to have to go outside in a Chicago winter. :) The Hilton charges a ridiculous amount for parking, so I'm going to drive to my mom's in northern Indiana, leave the car there, and take the train into Chicago. Should work fine. I may decide to forego paying for wi-fi in my room to save a few bucks -- maybe some nice poet who's less broke than I am will let me bring my laptop into their room and sponge off theirs for a few minutes a day if I ask real nicely. ;)

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RIP Isaac Hayes.

Available for weddings, bar mitzvahs...

... exorcisms, tent revivals, rummage sales, protest marches ...

No, seriously. Now that my chapbook is due out in a month (and I have galleys in hand which makes it seem real), I am definitely seeking reading opportunities. I don't know that posting it here will necessarily garner any, but it can't hurt either! So if you are looking for a not-so-young but up-and-coming (heh) poet to do a reading, workshop, Q&A, or anything else poet-ish, drop me a note! I am happy to travel so long as my expenses get covered.

I will also gladly accept any tips about bookstores, reading series, etc. that might be interested in booking me. I've done lots of readings locally, and I think it's time for me to try expanding beyond my little neck of the woods.

For those of you who've done a lot of readings: have you put together a press kit to send out? If so, do you find that it helps?

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One of my poetry groups met yesterday afternoon, out at the home of one of our members who lives a little ways outside of town. It was an absolutely gorgeous day (as was today), so we sat outside enjoying the fresh air and watching birds -- more than a dozen soaring vultures, a hummingbird, a dainty little gnatcatcher, a red-headed woodpecker, etc. It made me wish I had the wherewithal to move out in the country a bit myself. So nice to look out your window and see nothing but green trees & fields & wildlife, and the neighbor's horses across the fence, instead of seeing into your next door neighbor's kitchen window. I'd love to open my windows & hear birds instead of hearing ambulances roaring down the busy street that intersects mine a couple houses down from me. Maybe someday.

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Despite myself, I found myself glued to the opening ceremonies of the Olympics the other night. Wherever you stand on China's politics, you have to admit it was a spectacular spectacle. Really beautifully choreographed and performed, and the ceremony put technology to very good use. Plus, best fireworks display ever!

Chapbook update and a something

Chapbook update: Finishing Line Press is running a bit behind. For those of you who ordered a copy of Breach, you can now expect it to ship around September 12. Sorry about that!

The good news is that there were enough pre-orders to justify a larger press run. So I'll get 50 author copies, and the press run will be 500. Whee! I'll be able to get at least a couple of local bookstores to stock it, and I'll have copies to sell at readings. Oh, and I know of at least two libraries that have ordered it. That part makes me extra happy. I feel like once your words are safely on the shelf in a good library, in a way, you're going to live forever.

I know, I'm a nerd. Deal with it. :)

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Here's a drafty something for you. I'll leave it up for a day or so. This is from the series I mentioned in my previous post.


[--gone. I think it ran away to join the circus.]

Boots

Perhaps because finishing up (inasmuch as something I expect to continue tweaking for another year or two is "finished") my book manuscript has freed me from my usual constraints and expectations, I find myself working on something entirely new for me: a series of poems about a fictional persona, whose life story (from about age 14 to about age 50) I've been exploring. Some of the poems are in third person, many are in second person, and a few are in first person; some of the first-person poems are in the voice of the main character and some are in the voice of someone else, either addressing or thinking about the main character. There is an ongoing story or narrative involved, though the poems function as a series of scattered vignettes rather than anything quite as organized as a novel-in-verse; I'm interested in opening up windows on various moments of my character's life, peering in, and then moving on to the next. So far I have about a dozen poems in various stages of draft, and there will be more (though who knows how many of them will end up feeling strong enough to send them out into the world). I have no idea whether they're going to end up being arranged chronologically, though I suspect they may, more or less.

This is way more narrative than I'm used to juggling! It is an interesting challenge for me. Even though many of the individual poems function on the lyric as much as (or even more than) the narrative level, the overall trajectory relies heavily on things like character, setting, exposition, and the passage of time. As I draft the poems, some of them are coming out really prosey -- or what feels to me like "prosey" anyway. Which means they feel flat in places, overly expository. Anyone have tricks for revising drafts that start out like this? I want them to be poems, not jumpy little stories with line breaks!

These are fun to write, though. I feel like I get to play dress-up a bit. And my character has some damned cool boots. :)

Ain't no cure

The Boss & crew in New Jersey:

Springsteen performs Summertime Blues

[Review of Night 3 of Springsteen's 3-night Giants Stadium stand, here.]

Three weeks from tonight I'll be in the midst of a small road trip, chasing this guy around the midwest(-ish). I'll be getting to shows in Nashville, St. Louis, and Kansas City -- three shows in four nights. It's not that much of a road trip by some people's standards, but for someone who's never driven more than a couple of hours for a concert before, it's fairly monumental. I anticipate exhaustion and a very, very good time. (I have general admission, standing-room tickets for Nashville and STL. Springsteen's shows run three hours or so, plus standing and waiting before the show. When I say exhaustion, I mean it! It will be so worth it, though.)

I've always had romantic daydreams about jumping in the car and chasing rock stars around the country, but never have done it before. This will be small-scale as those things go, but should be a nice way to close out my summer anyhow. I've been working on a set of rock & roll-inspired poems, so with any luck, the trip will serve double duty as vacation & inspiration.

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately. Life gets in the way sometimes, you know. Should have my head above water a bit more very soon.