Best New Poets 2009 has been released, and is now available from finer book sellers everywhere. Both myself and Linebreak contributor Joe Wilkins were fortunate enough to be selected for this year’s edition, which was guest edited by Kim Addonizio. Oddly enough, I interviewed Joe on this here blog just a few months ago. Small world.

Having gone through the process, I’d encourage all eligible poets to submit next year. The $3 fee is among the lowest for any poetry contest, and series editor Jeb Livingood does a great job of keeping you informed as things move along.

By the way, I’ll be reading from the book this Saturday at Left Bank Books in St. Louis along with Katy Didden, Brandon J. Courtney, Trey Moody, and James Crews. The reading starts at 4, which should leave us plenty of time for binge drinking serious literary discussions. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hi.

The local Burning Chair reading series is hosting a poetry reading in Fayetteville, AR that will feature one of Linebreak’s poets: Farrah Field, who wrote “Matilda Stays Up Late With No Questions to Ask” will be reading with Jared White at “an undisclosed location” that turns out to be at 3996 N. Frontage Road, #2.

The reading will happen Friday, June 12 starting at 6:30. While you should bring your own date, there will be free refreshments. Over at Burning Chair, they evidently understand how important free food can be to drawing a crowd of poets.

Here’s a map:

For more information, contact Matt Henriksen at frankstandfordfest@gmail.com or check out the Burning Chair blog. Hope to see you there!

Once, I despaired that zombies and poetry would ever find their proper relationship. Today, I despair no more, thanks to this YouTube channel in which famous dead poets read their work. A few favorites: Wilfred Owen reading “Strange Meeting,” Gerard Manly Hopkins reading “The Leaden Echo,” and Anne Sexton reading “The Truth the Dead Know.” Computer animation or necromancy? You decide!

Here’s my vote for the creepiest of the bunch, Dylan Thomas reading “Poem in October:”

(via Kottke)

The paradox of blogging: when we are doing the most we could write about, we have the least time to write about it. Today I spent 90 minutes in front of an undergraduate class, answering questions. To walk into a room of 35 students and see your book sitting in front of each of them is a bit staggering.

If I were a more poised person, perhaps I would have decided long ago which were my vetted, “safe” answers for interviews, and which were answers to steer from. But instead I tend to answer things on a gut-level. Which makes for quick turnaround. And answers that will possibly haunt me in my old age. Some things I learned from my own Q&A:

-The second section of my book has discernible anger. I’m secretly proud of this, actually. There should be more anger in poems. This also elicited the quotation (on the topic of heightened rhetoric) “I’ve never actually asked anyone to make the bitch of me in a relationship…”

-If you use someone’s proper name in a poem, readers notice.

-Clarity is a good thing. No need to apologize for it. It doesn’t mean your poem is a simpler poem, or a less-beautiful poem.

-My favorites from the book are other people’s favorites.

-If you like my book too much, i.e. multiple re-readings, the cover may split away from the interior pages. Ack. 

-In every audience, there is that one person who really, truly, wants to talk about sonnets and sestinas.

-If they ask if you want a chair, don’t bother. If you start out on your feet, you’ll stay on your feet.

The questions were great, though–quirky, engaged, genuine. When everyone has read a common text you can make very detailed references. To ensure everyone had read the text (no offense, but we’re talking undergrads, just getting back into a school year), the professor had actually given a quiz on my book the week before. A quiz! I suppose the key would be asking for analysis of the objective factual/mythological elements (Orpheus, those barrel-bound folks going over Niagara Falls), versus asking “So, do you think the speaker actually cheated on her boyfriend?”

When the conversation veered toward the dividing lines between private and public narrative, I told the students that any contemporary, American first-book poet who doesn’t admit to the litmus test of “Will this book make my mother cry?” is lying. I also said I hate prompts, rebel against prompts, think that prompts render the poem not-entirely-mine, and therefore useless to me, nine times out of ten. Prompts are the lifeblood of the undergrad workshop. Filter. Must. Learn. To. Filter.   

My payment for the visit was a bottle of water. It is a glamorous life I lead. I came home to see my book reviewed in the latest copy of Allergic Living. That’s right: I’m next to What Else to Eat: The Dairy-, Egg-, and Nut-Free Food Allergy Cookbook. They photoshopped my cover art onto a generic “book” template for the illustration, which means it looks like Theories of Falling came out in hardback. Not that I am complaining. There are thousands of copies of this magazines out there, on the waiting-room table of your local doctors’ offices. Who knows? I could become a Christmas gift.

After touching down to pick up mail from home, it was off an evening titled “Rise Up and Hear: Honoring Abraham Lincoln’s Legacy.” Cosponsored by the NEA and the Poetry Foundation; hosted at the Department of the Interior. Featuring readings by Dana Gioia, Robert Pinsky, Kevin Young, and (this is where it gets surreal) Joan Allen and Sam Waterston. Poems Lincoln either loved–or inspired–by Vachel Lindsay, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, and so on. 

Free wine. Sculpted, dramatic auditorium. Classy reading. But I have to say, which gave me more buck for my day in terms of poetry? Those 35 students in an Indian-Summer-hot classroom. Bottle of water in hand.

Last night’s reading for the What’s New in Poetry Series–with Dorine Preston and Terita Heath-Wlaz–was great fun. Let’s be honest: this is not always the case. Sometimes there’s feedback on the mic, or a dead crowd, or a snobbish headliner. When there are three poets, each position has its own perils. The first reader has to break the ice. The second reader feels pressured to keep it short. The final reader has to ignore yawns and quiet exits.

But last night, everything went…exactly as it should, really. Bruce Covey was a gracious and welcoming host, Dorine’s humor and energy lent momentum to everything that followed, and Terita’s work–which is just getting reintroduced to the world, after eight years of radio silence–impressed me with its determined, resonant strangeness. I liked the layout of the room: a hodgepodge of upholstered seats in concentric arcs, that provided an engaging visual field from the podium. Even the empty chairs had personality. And Sean, the guy who worked the counter at Method tea house, made it out.

After the reading we headed down to a local pizza joint for a round of beers (I had a house specialty, the ”Dirty Turtle”–Guinness layered over Terrapin Pale Ale) and some random conversation. Among the topics: NPR, half-faked knowledge at cocktail parties, California culture, how to tell if your Mac is REALLY broken, and book contests. I cannot emphasize how important these later-night conversations are to a poet on the road. I’ve done readings where commuter logsitics dictated that within ten minutes of the event ending, I was standing alone in a dark parking lot. That’s just not how it should be. Hanging out with other poets and hearing about their geographies, their struggles, their tech expertise (or lack thereof), their particular way of making a living, always broadens my sense of what my options are. It’s worth more than any honorarium.

Now I am back in Washington, with the aforementioned deadlines still looming. But at least I made a little headway on a sestina while in Atlanta. Also read Mark Strand’s essays on Edward Hopper’s paintings (illuminating, in all senses of the word), Cecily Parks’ fantastic first book (Field, Folly, Snow, part of the VQR series) and the last issue of Black Warrior Review. To write, first we must read.

On the post title: Whenever I travel on planes, I always later find crumbs in my bra. Sometimes I haven’t even had a meal that would logically *generate* crumbs. I blame the airline industry.

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.