I am writing this in the Method Tea House, located in Atlanta; I’ll be reading at Emory later tonight as part of Bruce Covey’s What’s New in Poetry Series. I am trying to ignore the fact that the guy behind the counter is reading my book. 

This place has only been open a month, and it has that incredible young-business-owner vibe. Everything is sleek and polished, cool but mellow. They steep everything on the spot, by hand. No blenders, no high-fructose syrups. They fold shapes into the cappuccino foam. They are proud that each of their three international coffees came from a particular farmer in a particular field. They don’t mind that I’m sitting here for hours, writing away, nursing a pot to tea refilled four times over. “That will be three-hundred-and-twenty-one pennies,” the guy said, ringing up my order. And when I bashfully admitted that the poster on the community bulletin board was advertising…me (I haven’t gotten over the gee-whiz of that), he asked for my take on James Dickey and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

I should probably be in on the MARTA train right now, making my way downtown to the High Museum or Art, or the Aquarium. In the theoretical, these two-day trips for readings are a chance to play tourist; I’ve got no one’s whims to cater to but my own. But instead I find myself wanting to find a local coffee or teashop, hole up, and use the time for writing. Maybe this is how one really gets to know a city, one indie business at a time. Absorbing the accent, the style of dress, the little differences in how someone says “thank you” or “excuse me.” The legendary friendliness of Atlantans is no fiction. On the train from the airport, a woman spotted my suitcase and asked if I needed the phone numbers for local taxis. Twice I’ve waited in a line only to have the person in front of me spontaneously say “you go ahead.”

I won’t lie to you. I feel lucky today. I’m in a pretty southern city, getting paid to read poems tonight, sleeping in a hotel on someone else’s dime. I visited an undergrad workshop yesterday and spoke with some degree of (pseudo)authority about how a first book of poetry can make its way into the world. My editor just wrote to say that Allergic Living (that’s right, as seen on your doctor’s waiting room table) has a little review in their new issue, and a university has just written to ask if I will come visit this winter.

But good lord, the juggling. A childhood friend wrote to ask about having dinner, and I looked at my calendar only to realize that I’m totally tied up for the next month. Fourteen days of travel, three classroom visits, three readings. Like every other poet I am eyeing fall contest deadlines–the thing about the second book is, it is even harder to publish than the first–and I need to write two more pages of material to meet the page minimum for a September 30 deadline. I’m overdue on assigning book reviews at my day job as a magazine editor. I’m overdue on sending a column in to the Washington Post. I’m overdue on being a civil, sane human being to the people I love. So I feel lucky but also, overwhelmed. 

Everyone needs a method to their madness. The guys at this shop take a simple, sloshy source of caffeine–something people burn, gulp, take for granted–and make it an art. So I am following their lead. Instead of hitting the “must-sees” of this city I am stopping to unfold my filter, heat my water to just the right temperature, and steep in the quiet of uninterrupted worktime. Wish me luck.