_Chicks Dig Poetry_

Trust Your Eye: On Ordering Poetry

2012-02-03T11:28:00.003-05:00

One of the pleasures of my recent stay at Virginia Center for Creative Arts was the chance to spread out the pages of my manuscript-in-progress. This is something I've been able to do with each of my poetry collections, first on the walls of my studio at the Millay Colony and then on the floor of my apartment in DC. But I live in a much smaller apartment now, so this was my first chance to look at Count the Waves in this way. In the snapshot above, the far left is the end of the first section, curving upwards in a confident curl (that one feels most complete); then a cluster of colored push-pins marks the initiation of the second section, shaped like the symbol for long division; the third section, in the lower right, is pretty amoebalike at this stage.

I've helped many friends and students order their collections over the past five years, and one thing I always say is Trust your eye. What I mean is that reading is not just an intellectual experience, but a physical one. Some poems are more tiring to read than others--even if their richness is worth the effort. Though it is often smart to group poems according to voice or motif, make sure there is some variety of form on the page to keep the reader's energy level up. It's the same common sense as alternating moves in a work-out. You need to look at poems en masse, as shapes. Is the quatrain growing monotonous? Scan to make sure you haven't ended on the same word or syntactic trick three times in a row, even if it is a justified ending each time in & of itself.

A few nights I purposefully slept in the bed VCCA provided in my studio so I could wake, bleary-eyed and slightly disoriented, to look at pages on the wall without awareness of individual texts. In this way I noticed my dominant line lengths and stanza structures, and saw places where I could resist those modes in meaningful ways. I found sequences that felt too "light" or too "heavy." I realized I couldn't have two "valentine" sestinas side by side, no matter how well they matched thematically.

Later in the day and after a few cups of coffee, I continued to work in a way unique to this bulletin-board display style. I could flip up the latest draft to look at the previous days' drafts layered beneath it. When I pulled a poem out of sequence the empty rectangle that remained pushed me to interrogate what was needed to fill the hole--what question I had not yet asked of myself or of the collection. Sometimes I would pin up a page blank except for a title, then scribble & riff until something caught hold. (One night I had a visitor whose gaze became distracted; I soon realize he'd spied a blue-ink scrawl of "astral spunk.")

By the time I left VCCA, I had written six new poems in three weeks. But just as importantly I committed to a whole new sequence in the third section, to balance a sequence in the first. I realized my closing poem was not really my closing poem, if only because it is ekphrasis and I don't want to share my ending with Whistler's drawings. I pulled a poem that had been discarded back in to open the second section, realizing that what I had worried to be its weakness--direct language, short lines--is the perfect parry before the winding, punny poem that will follow it. I love it when a poem you had a private affection for suddenly reclaims a home; it's like finding a $20 bill squinched into an old coat pocket.

A book isn't a project. A book isn't a pet. A book a lover, and you have to get to know it on all levels--mind, body, and soul. I'm glad to find out we're ready to live together.

This post is featured over at the SheWrites blog, where I served as a guest editor this week. Check out the wonderful posts contributed by my fellow writers:

Laura Susanne Yochelson - "Enjoying the Process"
Bernadette Geyer - "What? It's Possible to Keep Writing After a Kid?"
Jeannine Hall Gailey - "How I Became a Poet, Or, Why I Write About Superheroines"
Eugenia Kim - "Romance of the Writing Life and Where the Writing Happens"
Lisa Fay Coutley - "Sentimentality Be Damned: On Gratitude"

VCCA (Off I Go)

2012-02-01T07:25:00.001-05:00

Oh, sun! Damn you. You might as well rise.

At my last VCCA dinner, I looked over and saw a table of entirely new folks, unfamiliar faces all having the same conversation I had three weeks ago--Where are you from? What are you working on?--and I thought, It's time to go. The totally superfluous helping of cauliflower drenched in Sriracha sauce while everyone else got dessert? Pairing another glass of zinfandel with a mug of full-strength coffee? Also signs that it's time to go. One of the things I've learned about myself is that I'm really good at being away from home for about three weeks. But if I'm gone for four weeks or more, something gets broken.

Then we had a Fellows reading that illuminated two women I've been sharing tables with for days. One poet I now want to talk to about formal poetry, Anna Akhmatova, South Carolina. One nonfictioneer I want to talk to about biography, Africa, self-doubt. These will not be conversations I get to have. We sat in the living room after their reading, laughing and talking, but I wanted more. I wanted a colder day so we could use the fireplace one last time. I can't be going already!

It is easy to be glib about friendships you make at art colonies. A photographer and I were joking about it on our walk back to the main house. "I wish he were younger..." he said of a third resident, "...but I already know why it wouldn't work." Another artist I overheard say "Let me get your email, so we can do that thing where we never get around to actually writing each other." You go from 0 to 60 MPH in terms of confession, intimacy, irritation. For so many of us, at home our work is both the thing we love best about ourselves and the thing most isolating. Here, the latter half of that drops away. The problem with getting to know people at their best is that their worst, when discovered, comes as a much harsher shock. And I of all people know that.

Still I delight. I open the studio door at 4 AM to find hearts chalked in lieu of a doormat, and I delight. This is not a place to bother keeping your guard up.

I got the writing done. Poems, prose, even something that paid. That gives me comfort as I ponder packing bags (did I really need this many skirts and sweaters?) and pulling push-pins out of the wall. Count the Waves is coming together. I refined sestinas, rescued a poem from banishment, embraced my animalia, committed to a new sequence, gave a reading that left me feeling hopeful. This third poetry manuscript is harder than the last but maybe it is richer, too, pleasures hidden a little under the surface. I just have to provide enough glimmer to tempt a reader to do the digging.

See you on the flipside, friends.

VCCA (What Works, What Doesn't)

2012-01-30T07:34:00.001-05:00

A variation of this appears at SheWrites, a professional Facebook for women writers with a mentoring tone. I am one of a dozen taking turns as the guest blog-editor while SW co-founder Kamy Wicoff takes well earned time off to work on her own book. So watch for guest posts I've lined up from Laura Susanne Yochelson, Bernadette Geyer, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Eugenia Kim, and Lisa Fay Coutley.

As I've mentioned, this is my third time at Virginia Center for Creative Arts. There is a reason I keep coming back. The landscape fits me, and I get a lot of work done. Over time I've learned to pack the little items that make me more comfortable: postcards to warm up the studio's bare walls, a favorite pillow, an electric blanket, a sturdy printer, a few glasses from home that have a heft and size I like.

In some ways I cling to "real life" more than others--I muddy my impractical heels in the gravel and soft lawns, I don't apologize for spending a few hours on email each day, I make trips to Charlottesville or Richmond to see friends and give readings. I do so because I've learned the hard way that I don't like having Real Life hit me like a ton of bricks on Day One post-colony. I'm secure in my sense of community. I'm pulling my weight. If we connect and share a dozen late-night talks in the studios, awesome. If we don't connect and I'm the muted breakfast wraith in snakeskin pajamas, sipping her coffee silently, that's okay too.

Many Fellows are "colony hoppers," and we trade stories of where we've been. Occasionally you'll hear folks admit that the experience is not what they'd hoped, that they didn't get work done, that they wouldn't go back. And though hindsight is always 20/20, if you're considering applying to an art colony for the first time, it is important to realize that not all residencies are the same. If you're looking for a chance to workshop drafts, go to one of the places with a Master Artist in residence--Vermont Studio Center, or Atlantic Center for the Arts--and if you're not at one of those places, be prepared for the fact that asking a fellow Resident to read pages could be a fraught thing. If you're using up precious vacation days from work and will feel let down if there isn't an exotic view and a sense of adventure, pick a place with plenty of hiking options, such as Ucross in Wyoming, or an international residency held in a castle or resort town.

The Millay Colony was my best experience in terms of eating, because only the dinners were communal and the cook was dealing with just six people, so she was happy and game to accommodate my allergies 100%. This has been my favorite chef and my best allergy experience yet at VCCA. But I face the same struggle I always do--giving myself permission to skip breakfast and lunch if they don't match my work schedule (knowing that if I skip a meal, the kitchen facilities available to then fix my own food is minimal), and knowing that skipping dinner without a day's previous notice is seriously frowned upon. It can be agonizing to tear myself away from the page at 6:05 PM some nights, yet you gotta do it.

If you come to VCCA, you will be astonished by the care that has been put into developing the grounds for maximum places to hide away. An unexpected bench, a fishpond, so many sculptures that pop into view only as you dusk around a certain hedgerow. That said, bring a certain dormitory hardiness. Sound insulation is notoriously poor in the main house, carrying even the softest giggles in the Wavertree Library to the upper bank of bedrooms. The thermostat in one room controls an entire hall. You'll be at the mercy of a bathroom-mate, one with the power to leave his or her room with you (accidentally) locked out from shower access on occasion. I'm not reporting these things to complain; none of these factors have ever bothered me. But I've seen them be dealbreakers for others, and a bad fit for a Fellow is hard on everyone.

Don't be afraid to be honest about your needs. If you need hi-speed internet to research your biography or upload sound files for an installation, that's perfectly legitimate. If you value new amenities, pick a fresh upstart like Ucross's sister residency, Jentel; don't go to Yaddo. Sure, that's some rich history and some famous residents, but that's also some old lace and moldy woodwork. If you can't appreciate it, no one wants to hear you moaning for five weeks straight. If you want a sense of family, choose a colony where everyone shares a one-month cycle. Otherwise you may find constant hellos and goodbyes emotionally draining. And if going to Vermont Studio Center on a two-week residency, and you tend toward insecurity in new groups, make sure it's not the second two weeks of the month. You'll arrive to find one-monthers grieving the loss of the first round of two-weekers. Nothing personal, but it can make anyone feel like a runner-up.

The point of all this detail is that you can't assume every colony will work as a haven--and that what causes it to be a "good" or "bad" experience for you, as an artist, will probably be rooted in something far quirkier than the prestige level.

What I've realized I value most, especially in this time of constant travel, is being grounded. I don't need a castle. I need to get the work done, which for me requires nesting and routine. Part of what I love best about VCCA is exactly what others find most distracting; the sheer size of it, the flex and flow of Fellows on all different schedule (some come for as little as a weekend). I'm content to give a knowing nod to the other January regulars, create a handful of practical connections--here our proximity to my hometowns of DC and Virginia come in handy--plus one or two extraordinary friendships to take with me forward into the world. The rest I let go.

Well, okay. I also value one awesome dance party. We got that covered this time around, thankfully on the night that the light sleeper was visiting family off grounds.

I'll keep applying to other colonies. It's good to mix it up. I dream of a lunchbox with my name on it at MacDowell, I envy those who have been to Bellagio, I'm newly intrigued by stories of Caldera. But as I walked back from from the field where I'd sat all Sunday afternoon--wind whipping my hair, sun bright in my eyes, sipping from a tumbler of scotch to guard against the chill--and read the first 200 pages of Kevin Wilson's The Family Fang, I thought: Oh, VCCA. I already dream of returning to you.

VCCA (Tidal)

2012-01-28T16:59:00.002-05:00

My favorite artist left Virginia Center for Creative Arts today; the one who arrived right after I did, the one who quickly proved himself a fellow scotch drinker. On his way out, he stopped to feed the horses with an apple he'd taken from his first day's lunch buffet but had remained, untouched, on his studio windowsill. The owner of the horses that roam VCCA's grounds, a young Sweet Briar graduate named Virginia, was kind enough to come to my joint poetry reading with another Fellow. We were chatting afterwards and Virginia confessed that this horse's name on the paperwork is Pure Black Poison. She calls him Fella instead.

A minute after the artist drove off, I looked again out my studio window and the latest arrival--a fiction writer from Boston--was introducing himself to the horses. Someone goes, someone comes. In four days I'll be the one going. There's a look people get in their eyes in the homestretch, a reticence at the dinner table. It can be misread as rudeness or at the least social exhaustion: I've made all the friends I need to make in my stay here. Really, we're just preparing ourselves for the jolt of returning home. A sign waits at the exit to Route 29 that warns: You are now entering The Real World.

VCCA (In Threes)

2012-01-24T10:25:00.002-05:00

With a week to go, so far in my time at Virginia Center for Creative Arts I have...

-Put revisions on three essays to bed: one to appear in the Washington Post Magazine come February, one already up on Psychology Today's blog "The Fallible Mind," and one that I submitted to Ploughshares the day of their January 15 deadline.

-Drafted three poems, and revised a sestina.

-Worked on three rounds of interview questions, including a live sit-down for a profile in Virginia Living and a Q & A up now at YRTEOP.com ("'poetry' turned around").

-Finished three books by friends--Amy Stolls (The Ninth Wife), Kevin Wilson (Tunneling to the Center of the Earth), and Danielle Evans (Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self). I recommend all of them, with my favorite stories being Wilson's "Grand Stand-In" and Evans' "Robert E. Lee is Dead." The Ninth Wife is a perfect curl-up-in-front-of-the-fireplace read, a reminder that love is a good & sweet thing even when complicated.

-Wrote a prologue for...well, let's talk about that one at a later date.

-Read aloud through the three collections I have by Sylvia Plath: The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Ariel. No one had an ear like Plath, no one, and your bones don't fully register the rhythm of "Mushrooms" and "Lady Lazarus" until you perform them. Anyone who saw me through my studio's windows--lights blazing at midnight, pacing in high heels as I read, bouncing as well to Erykah Badu--probably thought I was a madwoman. If you can't be a madwoman at an art colony, where can you be?

I report not to brag, but to assure anyone that has ever wondered that Yes, you really do get things done here. The wheels turn faster. No denying the fun: the dance party that spanned from 10 PM Blondie to 2 AM M.I.A.; the hilltop hike to hear wind whisper across a wheat field; the big bottles of red wine (at the moment I'm favoring a $9 Mondavi cabernet) you share with eight residents, then the midnight scotch you share with one. But what makes the fun fun is that it is a reward for doing the work.

A sadness of being here this long is that I've had to say a round of goodbyes to people I really came to know. Once you've been serenaded by Jamie Cat Callan on her concertina, she has your heart forever. But we'll see each other again.

Tonight I'll read after dinner with Stephen Tapscott, poet and translator, awesome dancer (ass-slap-worthy, I tell you), expert builder of fires, and late-afternoon lunch buddy. At a colony you are in a constant cycle of introducing yourself and talking about your work without actually sharing your work. Time to pull back the curtain.

On Thursday I'll venture out to Charlotesville, to speak at WriterHouse on "How to Get Your Memoir Out in the World." I'll give a 10-minute reading from Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, followed by a moderated conversation with Sandy Hausman, the Charlottesville bureau chief and editor for Virginia Public Radio. We'll have a frank discussion about developing a proposal and shepherding a book through the gauntlet of agents, editors, and publicists, drawing on my own experiences with DKTBG. WriterHouse is behind the Preston Avenue Bodo's Bagels; the event starts at 7 PM and is free and open to the public. Join us if you can~

VCCA (Rhythms)

2012-01-17T23:30:00.008-05:00

Wake at 7 AM because of footsteps overhead. Refuse to wake. Wake at 8:32 AM, realize that unless I'm of bed by 8:40 AM, I will miss breakfast. Haul out of bed and into slippers. Slap contacts in.

If there is fresh oatmeal, go for it it; otherwise the usual breakfast of almonds and a banana, orange juice (ducking back to the fellow's fridge for a pour of my personal stash); either way, two cups of coffee. If they happen to take the coffee back at 8:57 AM without fixing a fresh pot, there will always be someone who dashes in with an empty thermos. There will be a mournful sigh as they settle for leftover decaf.

Snuggle back under the electric blanket I remembered to bring from last time (thank goodness). Do a round of Facebook, Twitter, email, so the world knows I have not vanished entirely. Work out, and pray no passerby complains about overhearing my Cee Lo Green from under the door. Wander to the studios at 1:30 PM for an intentionally late lunch, because I can't handle the hum & scrum of the conversation.

Each day I aim to do one practical thing (a query, a manuscript critique, an interview) and one creative thing. I flirt around with the practical, break for tea at 3 PM--a way to bring heat into my studio. The practical thing gets done before the 6 PM dinner hour.

Dinner: Meet the new fellow arrival, ponder the allergy dangers of the latest house salad dressing (roasted red pepper vinaigrette? yes...cilantro & lime? hmm), navigate the politics of sharing one small bottle of wine among a table of six.

We talk what we did today, what we'll do tomorrow. Weather. We talk the taxonomy of pears. We talk about crazy grand-aunts we didn't know about until we researched the memoir. We talk New York. We talk Iowa. We echo distant blips of news from the outside world. We talk what we're talking a break from, what we're running toward.

Find another night owl and walk back to the studios. Pour a scotch. Get to real work. Last night, I wrote a poem for an ongoing sequence and--as I push-pinned it to the wall--it formalized a space for another as-yet-unwritten poem. Rhythm sustains rhythm. Working hands you the work you need to do. Is it exotic? No. It's home.

Greetings from Mt. San Angelo

2012-01-11T16:48:00.000-05:00

Hiya. So I'm on my second full day at Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and while I'll be laying low on the internet in order to work for the rest of the month, I did want to check in. It's wonderful to be back; it feels like home.

Outside snapshots will have to wait for a sunnier day, but step inside my studio. I'm in W6, which has been home to many other writers I admire--Richard McCann, Melissa Stein, Leslie Pietrzyk, Eduardo C. Corral, and Meg Kearney (before we go, we sign our names and dates of residency on a paddle by the door). The VCCA staff calls this the "sunken living room" studio--it has a unusual faux foyer--and because I face the main road, I get to see everyone come and go.

Because the furnishings tend to be a bit ratty and the decor spartan, it's a priority to make it feel like home. This time around my inspiration table holds books of art by Anselm Kiefer, Kara Walker, and Hiroshi Sugimoto; a big beautiful portfolio of photographs called Mississippi: State of Blues; and the graphic novel Cuba: My Revolution, by Inverna Lockpez and my friend Dean Haspiel. The erasure on the windowsill was handmade for me by the poet Hailey Leithauser. I bought that cut-glass decanter at a rusted-out yard sale in Johnstown when I went to my very first art colony, Vermont Studio Center. There is a hunk of coral beside it I picked up when staying in Miami with the LegalArt crew. And the wall is festooned with Penguin book cover postcards (the novelist Dylan Landis gave me a whole box of them for my birthday) and an amazing concert poster designed and screened by DC artist Anthony Dihle.

And yes, if you look close you can spy horses through my window. They spend all day nuzzling each other. Except when they're kicking at each other.

A critical advantage of coming to an art colony within driving distance is that I can pack all kinds of stuff--including a printer. Having a printer comes in handy...

...when you're push-pinning your entire poetry manuscript (or what exists of it so far) to the wall. It's the best way to explore different sequences, recognize patterns--not just thematic ones but style of last line, shapes on the page--and understand the book as a whole. Plus I like the way the pages flutter when a breeze comes into the room.

Today's late lunch was turkey & mushroom fricasse (leftovers from last night's dinner) ladled over chopped greens. I'm lucky: the chef right now is an integrative nutritionist who cooks with olive oil 99% of the time. People ask what accommodations I request at colonies, and the answer is "the bare minimum." The key for me is clear, reliable information on how something is prepared. If I can eat it, I do; if not, I get a cup of tea and eat back in my room from the supplies I brought. No grumping. No demands. In a crowd of people I'm just getting to know, I don't want every meal to kick off with an explanation of my allergies. I'm here to talk poems. And write a few as well.

On Travel

2012-01-05T01:49:00.006-05:00

In case you're wondering: yep, that's me. A photo my sister snapped while on the crest of the sunrise on a very high mountain in Hawaii. I'd foolishly predicted the temperature for my family based on sea level and Oh oh oh, we were freezing at 5 AM.

I've been in the grip of a spate of fellowship applications as of late--to New Hampshire, to Stonington, to Tokyo and Riga--which raises the question of "Um, why?" I am not fleeing a 9-to-5 job, or motherhood. I seem to have stumbled into this vagabond life.

That was never what I intended for this decade. I thought I'd do what most folks (and certainly, my high school girlfriends) do: get married, invest in significant pieces of furniture and fine place settings, have a kid or two. But things happened, and I had to upturn the apple cart and run hollering into a different kind of life.

2012 is going to be a lot like 2011. 2011 put 30,000 miles on my car, so I say that with a certain amount of trepidation. But I am learning how to take it all in: when to push, when to stop, when to crash for 18 minutes in the McDonald's parking lot. When to pay for the fancy sushi and when to skimp on canned sardines in the hotel room.

During November's Miami trip, I marched a friend through a fancy-ass hotel lobby at midnight (en route to a sublimely ridiculous South Beach poolside lounge) and he said "You seem very comfortable in this world." Nah. I have no natural affinity for skinny jeans and Laboutins, anymore than I'd make a natural Brooklyner. It's not about being comfortable in the world; it's about being mildly uneasy, but proceeding regardless. Always. You arrive. You orient. You risk embarrassment. You plunge.

Growing up, my father's Army commands always took him away from us. Sometimes it was far--Panama, Bosnia, Kuwait--but more often it was within driving distance. When I mention I was a military kid people always assume I was a peripatetic "brat," but the truth is we stayed in proximity to the Pentagon via homes in Virginia, while my dad journeyed on his own. He went to Fort Bragg in North Carolina; to the Civil Affairs command in Pensacola; to Fort Snelling in Minnesota. He went. We stayed. I thought surely that in becoming a poet, I was following a career path very unlike his. So it's funny that I find myself following the same merciless paths of I-95, I-81, I-40.

I travel because I'm strong enough to travel, which is part of proving to myself that I can step into this time of life alone. I travel because I'm crafty and I guess where to find the free microwave access. I travel because though I don't speak many languages, I'm polite and a quick study. I travel because I can stop and appreciate a view. I travel because I'm thirsty (not just for scotch, though that helps). I travel because I'm unsure of myself on some fronts. I travel because I'm damn cocky on other fronts.

When I next check in, it will be from Virginia Center for Creative Arts. A writer's job is to venture. Doesn't have to be measured in geography--I respect inner delving. But for me, for now, I gotta move. 2012: See where I land. Follow along, if you've got time.

Some End-of-Year Poetry Picks

2011-12-29T11:55:00.002-05:00

...so, I won't claim these are "best of" anything; my travels were too peripatetic to read as much as I hoped, and what I read was equal parts poetry, fiction, and memoir. But these three 2011 collections made me stop, drop whatever else I was doing, and read from A to Z--in part to enjoy, in part to (selfishly) (strategically) (enviously) consider their poetics in light of my own projects.

TALKING ABOUT MOVIES WITH JESUS
David Kirby
(Louisiana State University Press)

Kirby is a born storyteller adept with dialogue, arc, and recurring cast; these ebullient, rangy poems channel the energy of rock and roll, the wry humor of middle adulthood, and the curiosities of an inveterate traveler.

Favorite lines: "...I have put a single raisin of doubt on the government's snowy / white cake of confidence."

*

APPLIES TO ORANGES
Maureen Thorson
(Ugly Duckling Presse)

This physically beautiful, intimate collection of Thorson's untitled lyrics cycles through a vocabulary of icons--oranges, stars, a Zenith TV's blue light--to hint at a story of loss and dislocation, both emotional and geographic.

Favorite lines: "...my love / follows you a little more slowly each day, / like a dog that wants to lie down, making signs with its tired eyes."

*

AMERICAN BUSBOY
Matthew Guenette
(The University of Akron Press)

The most fun collection I read in 2011, Guenette focuses the frustration of America's working class via the lens of THE CLAM SHACK!, a veritable Dantean hell of dictatorial managers, forlorn waitresses, and yesterday's butter.

Favorite lines: "...the restaurant / never asked you to / imagine imaginary / things like the brittle / bones of onion rings."

*

Last night I met up with a a couple of brilliant NBCC folks for beers at the Black Squirrel. The Black Squirrel's basement is a DC dive right in the heart of Adams Morgan (great on a Wednesday, hell on a Saturday). The music was a little ridiculous, the duck rolls a little weird, the dessert menu MIA. But it's a quiet joint where you can chat, the brick walls are bright with graffiti that's not too hipstery, and I love that you can get 4 oz pours for $2-3, everything from IPAs to Porters, Bells to Stone. Anyway. I am not a NBCC member, and I admitted to these folks my reticence to step into the field of criticism. But I do dip a toe in, here and there, and there are theories of poetry I want to articulate when I have a few more books of my own under my belt.

In the meantime, I'm a pushover for whatever Susan Settlemyre Williams at Blackbird asks me to do. So here I am in the latest issue reviewing Traci Brimhall's Rookery.
An excerpt:

On a formal level, Brimhall often uses an indented line in her stanzas. This device has been used to various ends over the last two centuries of American free verse, from William Carlos Williams’s triadic stanza (meant to cue pause and breath) and Marianne Moore’s syllabics (meant to signify parallel counts of beat), to the excesses of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Frank O’Hara, in which jumping from left-alignment toward the right-hand margin captured acrobatic shifts in attention or literal roaming through space. Contemporary poets such as Henri Cole and David Kirby have associated the indented line with a meditative mode that takes advantage of the traditional line break, plus the additional white space, to counterbalance a loping line of five to six stresses.

In many ways, Brimhall is an inheritor of all these influences. But I would add that her indented stanzas have a waterfall quality, as if the speaker is cascading toward a conclusion driven more by instinct or fate than intellect. The verbs that inhabit these indented poems tend to be passive—describing what is known, what is suffered, what is desired, with few fundamental changes in course—and in “Falling,” a tribute to the 146 garment workers killed in the fire at the Triangle Waist Company factory, the form visually and viscerally evokes their helpless plummet.

Onward to 2012. Three weeks at Virginia Center for Creative Arts beckon in January. I can't imagine a better way to start off the year than hiding away and poem-ing.

Live from the Botanic Gardens in DC

2011-12-23T11:01:00.004-05:00

I don't have a lot of winter traditions. I don't go caroling, or ice skating; mostly I trudge around cursing the cold. (I'm allergic to wool, damn it! It's no fun trying to dress up in scarves and sweaters when you have to be dodging wool at every turn.)

But one thing I do love is my annual trek down to the United States Botanic Gardens to see their display of model trains, which are let loose in an incredible multi-level landscape (bridges, tunnels, a waterfall) made from plant elements that fills an entire gallery room. I go on a Thursday, when they stay open until 8 PM and there is music. I watch the kids run around, then stop in their tracks and gape in awe. I poke my head into the orchid parlor, inhale that warm and sweet-scented air for a minute, and imagine I'm somewhere tropical and lush instead of slushy and gray.

Walking through the Railway Garden is free. It's very DC. And each year, no matter where I am in life, it fills me with joy.

The trains range from the recognizable Thomas the Tank Engine characters that make kids crow with joy to classic vintage silver bullets that are usually run on the above-head tracks, perhaps to keep them away from curious hands.

2011's structures--it changes every year--are themed "Who Lives Here?" From "Fairy Flats" to "Critter Condos" to a peacock palace. An opossum house hangs upside down by a tail, while "Giraffe Garage" has a lonnngggg staircase up to the second floor. The cleverness and attention to detail of these buildings never fails to surprise me. And the designers are not afraid to be slightly weird. This year's Monkey Mansion made me think of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom--I kept expecting it to reach out and gobble up the bumblebee train.

In the central atrium of the Garden, the Russian folk band "Samovar" kept the crowd cheering through traditional songs. One guy was rocking out on a balalaika. Just last week I was writing a poem that included a random line about "common household balalaikas." This felt like a good omen, to see one live & in action within the week.

You may notice what appears to be a scale version of the Washington Monument looming in back of the band. It is. They render many of DC's great structures--Capitol, Supreme Court--again in all-plant materials. You have not lived until you've seen the great dome of the Jefferson Memorial's rotunda reincarnated as the belly of a big gourd.

You can't go to the Botanic Gardens and not take in the plants as well. So my father, sister and I got lost in the greenery for a while. Christina had a very fancy camera (as you can tell from these photos, I did not have a very fancy camera) and took a lot of close-ups. People sometimes forget that in the world of exotic plants, texture can be as much of a surprise as color. Here Christina is posing with a monkey-tail tree whose branches (fronds?) felt like lanyards braided from the thick plastic floss they'd give us as kids at camp.

My dad and I in Hawai'i. Or at least the Hawai'i room. Later in the evening, it was raining hard and he made an elaborate show of using the one umbrella to protect my leather jacket. "You have on a leather jacket too," I pointed out. "Yes," he said, "but this one has been through three wars." Couldn't argue with that.

You know how goldfish, if they are not limited by the size of their bowl, continue to grow bigger and bigger and bigger? Poinsettias are the goldfish of the holiday plant world. They can easily reach six feet tall and keep growing. You have to admire their ambition.

If you want to drop by the Botanic Gardens, it is not too late. They'll continue to have their extended hours on Tuesday, December 27 (Hot Club of DC, gypsy jazz and swing) and Thursday, December 29 (40 Thieves, Irish rock music). Tell 'em I sent ya. And for a grand finale, as promised, a little live action filmed by yours truly:

Happy holidays, folks!

Delivery o' Gratitude

2011-12-21T12:11:00.000-05:00

Writers love the mail. Not email; old school, wait-by-the mailbox mail. For many of us still focused on print and/or freelance the mail brings our news, our wages, the physical evidence of our labors. So we keep an eye on the latest stamp series, shiver at the thought of suspending Saturday delivery, and curse when a new neighborhood turns out to have a late or lazy mailman (I once had one so bad he'd just skip days).

Here is a quartet of ways the last week's mail has reminded me of all I can be grateful for in this writing life.

Out of nowhere, a noted European poet named Ron Winkler contacted me to ask if he could translate some of my poems into German. I said yes, and he jumped through all the hoops--securing permission from W. W. Norton and New Issues, working with Hochroth Press to release a chapbook, and going on to circulate individual poems to editors. So Lo and Behold, I get this gorgeous big glossy magazine in the mail...

WESPENNEST

In it, four poems:"Unit of Measure," "Theories of Falling," "The Field," and a somewhat obscure poem of mine, "She Falls Asleep in Strange Places," that never made it into a book.

Seeing your work in another language (one you do not speak) is surreal and wonderful.

Also, they capitalized "Capybara" every gosh darn time, which made me laugh.

Then came the arrival of The Oxford American's annual music issue, this year dedicated to...Mississippi. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I keep a little piece of my heart there at all times. When the editors asked me if I'd take part by writing about one of the tracks for their sampler CD, I was beyond thrilled. (To give you a sense of the company I got to keep, David Kirby wrote about Bo Diddley; Yuzef Komunyakaa wrote about Howlin' Wolf). If you don't know about the OA, which calls itself "The Southern Magazine of Good Writing,"you should check it out. I've been reading it for a decade, long before I ever fathomed that one day my name could be on the cover. I picked up my first copy at the Olsson's that used to be south of Dupont Circle.

I write about Mattie Delaney, a haunting 1920s/30s Delta songwriter and guitarist about whom we know very little--she recorded just two songs. The OA crew did such a gorgeous job laying this piece out (look at that art) I could cry. These music issues aren't magazines that feel dated after a month; they are rich, nuanced, highly collectible portraits of American music themed one state at a time. Anthology + CD for $10.95? It's a steal. It's not too late to go back and get ones from previous years as gifts--I can testify that the Arkansas one is a favorite, filled with excellent driving music. Excellent driving music was key to surviving 2011, in which I put 30,000 miles on my car.

Freelancers have to be hustle forward as they look back. So I'm working toward sending out poems and essays. I just had a poem picked up by POETRY. (!) (!!!) In 2012 I have a travel piece coming out in the Washington Post Magazine. Postage-paid Point of Gratitude #3: there are still editors out there who send you pencil-marked hard copy. David Rowell is my editor. Years ago, just out of the MFA at American University, I submitted and he replied with a phone call and suggestions for edits--even though he was not taking it, but wanting to encourage a young writer. Just a really classy guy, and it means so much to work with him now. (Ahem. This photo is sideways to discourage you from trying to read it.)

All of these things to celebrate mean nothing without people I care about to celebrate them with. This week, every day has brought a card from a friend who is also a fellow writer. Every day. I've arrayed them in the decorative bramble-thing that sits by my fireplace; it's no sparkling and tinsled Christmas tree (for that I'll be going to my parents' house), but each time I look at it I smile. Thank you, guys. And thank you, United States Postal Service.

Just the Right Book

2011-12-15T12:02:00.001-05:00

Today I was asked by the good folks at JUST THE RIGHT BOOK, which is a neat personalized book-of-the-month subscription service, to contribute to a series they are doing throughout December, in which they ask authors to tell a story of the best book they received for Christmas, Hanukkah, or any of the winter holidays. Other contributors include James Patterson, Gina Barreca, Nicholas Sparks. Here's how my piece opens~

The best book I ever received for Christmas is a first edition of W. S. Merwin's THE FOLDING CLIFFS, "a narrative of 19th-century Hawaii"--in other words, one of the great epic poems written in our time. In elegant, urgent verses Merwin tells the story of a family determined to stay together as they flee government capture during a quarantine effort on Kauai. Woven in amidst the action is an appreciation of the native culture, mythology, and landscape of this gorgeous island. The book is dedicated to Olivia Breitha (1916-2006); Breitha was known as an outspoken advocate of those discriminated against for leprosy, and her firsthand experience resonated with later generations affected by the AIDS epidemic.

It would be enough to appreciate this gift in terms of its literary merit...but the real reason I share it with you is because of the spirit in which it was given. It was the first Christmas that I had chosen to spend away from home to be with a love, and I was on the eve of making a trip to Kauai myself--without him. He was a huge Merwin fan. The day after Christmas, after all the "official" gifts had been opened, I was packing to make the 15-hour drive back to see my family for a day and catch a plane to Hawaii. That was when took his own copy of this book, signed it to me, and told me I must read it. I carried this spontaneous gesture to Kauai's beaches....

And exclusive to the blog, here is a snapshot of the book with a second inscription--from Merwin himself. Read the full essay here to get that half of the story. For regular blog readers, you might recognize an intersection with this May entry, "Swoon.")

Introducing: Modern Alice @ TRIP CITY

2011-12-13T01:22:00.000-05:00

A funny thing happened in Miami at the Book Fair. In addition to all the hijinks reported in an earlier post, I found myself thinking what has been missing from my professional life. (Damn poets! Never satisfied.)

401K contributions, paid vacation, free office supplies? Sure. But not just that. While I love thinking in terms of assembling collections and pitching freelance, I'm like every writer--I came to this craft in stolen moments, drafting with the freedom of never expecting an audience. I've missed writing in some unlikely genre, untamed in theme, utterly un-monetizable. Writing as indulgence.

I also thrived on the camaraderie of the Book Fair, and thought about the need to rebuild my community. Everyone needs a home base. Though I have great friendships with writers in DC and Oxford, a recent spate of marriages and moves--not to mention my own tour schedule--set me a little adrift. If I were a journalist, I'd know which watering halls to haunt; if I taught in an MFA program, I'd share tired nods & chat by the coffeemaker. Hard to know where to steer without that kind of compass.

Enter TRIP CITY: an old-school art circle in a new-school format. This Brooklyn-curated online journal offers a treasure trove of free, exclusive content ranging from comix to prose to interviews to podcasts to video. I've become particularly addicted to Seth Kushner's pop-as-personal essays (such as the great "Patrick Stewart and My Father") and the luminous, oddly gentle visual style of Nick Abadzis (as in "Perfect Imperfect"). The site launched in November of this year and has already garnered buzz in the comic world, the Los Angeles Times, and beyond.

When I met several TC contributors through Literary Death Match (Dean Haspiel, Jeff Newelt, Jennifer Hayden), I recognized the glow of people who have a deep respect for one another's work--and also truly, deep down, like each other. It helps that a lot of them share a physical space via the HANG DAI studios in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill neighborhood (next to famed indie store BookCourt). So when Dean asked if I might be interested in contributing a monthly feature, I thought, Hell yeah.

But what to write for them? Ever since I first began tried my hand at the Washington Post Magazine's "XX Files," I have loved the musculature of the 700-900 word essay. What if I used that same length to explore...(deep breath)...fictions? And that's how MODERN ALICE was born. It's a space devoted to capturing both the realities and fantasies of the 21st Century Alice–a woman who is independent, curious, and ready to step through the looking glass.

So check out today's debut: HOT FOR SANTA. Yes, you read that title correctly. I hope it's fun to read; it sure was fun to write.

While you're at it, check out TRIP CITY's Podcast #4, which features me alongside author/filmmaker Miranda July (!), sound artist Krista Dragomer, & Williamsburg music project Edison Woods. I had a great time being interviewed by Dean Haspiel, author/artist of the Billy Dogma series (e.g. "The Last Romantic Antihero") and Emmy-winning contributor to Bored to Death. You can stream the podcast or download it to iTunes.

Catching Breath

2011-12-10T12:56:00.000-05:00

What's happened since we last spoke?
Food Allergy Ball at the Waldorf Astoria. Meetings with my editorial teams at Crown and W. W. Norton. A few hours spent wandering the Museum of Modern Art. A night watching Hugh Jackman sing his way through some Broadway tunes. (I accidentally walked in besides Donald Trump and Melania...I kinda wanted to reach out and touch his hair, but resisted.) A photo shoot at HANG DAI studio--more on that soon--then a delightful BookCourt reading by Joe Infurnari/Glenn Eichler (Mush! Sled Dogs with Issues), Nick Abadzis (Laika), and Dean Haspiel ("Billy Dogma: The Last Romantic Antihero").

I caught a 7 AM train from New York City back to DC. A slow taxi home from Union Station meant I barely had time to bring bags up to my apartment--and only seconds to register that my refrigerator has begun making suspicious noises--before hopping into my car and driving an hour to Mt Hebron High School in Ellicott City, where I had a 12:30 classroom visit (part of a series as the Poet-in-Residence for the Howard County Poetry & Literature Society). The "visit" turned out to be a full-out reading in the library for over 50 kids. I dashed in as the bell was ringing to start the period, and an uncharacteristic coughing spell racked its fingernails across the opening delivery of "Another Failed Poem about the Greeks." But I pushed through, and afterwards a girl who had sat in the front row introduced herself as a budding writer. She'd spent the night before looking up my work and YouTube clips; she had me sign her program; we took a photo. And in that moment I knew the hustle had been worth it.

Now I'm back in my noisy apartment (maybe the fridge's fan belt is the problem?), innards of my suitcase still spread on the floor, adjusting to the thought of being home for an entire month. Good music helps. At the moment, I'm listening to CEREMONIALS by Florence + The Machine; before that, it was the Beastie Boys.

Next up is the Brother Ali album US, which I bought after listening to it at Mother Fool's Coffeehouse in Madison, Wisconsin, the afternoon before my memoir reading. Hard to believe that is already one week (and two cities) back, but it was a wonderful day spent reading, wandering Williamson Street's co-op and art galleries, and getting to meet Christi Craig, a fellow blogger and mother to an allergic child.

Head over to Christi's WRITING UP AN APPETITE blog for my guest-post on the travails of eating on the road--and a chance to win a giveaway copy of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl.

I'm grateful to be back in my DC community, and I won't be able to risk the siren call of hearing Matthea Harvey read from Of Lamb at 826DC this Tuesday, or seeing Much Ado About Nothing with my friend at the Shakespeare Theater later this week, or visiting my beloved holiday train display at the Botanical Gardens. But overall, this is going to be a working month. I have edits to turnaround for a major Washington Post piece, a new series I'll be launching with the good folks at TRIP CITY, notes toward several short craft essays and personal essays that I've been dying to turn into a reality, and a sestina simmering in the back of my mind. 2011's ridiculous amount of travel has been fun, but there's no way around it: if you want to make a living as a full-time writer, you need to write and write some more. Time to see if I can make that happen.

A Monstrous Sigh of Relief

2011-12-02T15:06:00.005-05:00

I just turned in a freelance piece that's been hanging over me for months. Months! The completion of this means more than I can bear to admit. Even if they don't run it, it won't be because I didn't *write* it. So here, now, on a Friday afternoon in Wisconsin, I share my all-time favorite happy dance song: "Shout" by the Isley Brothers.

Now?

I'm going to go for a walk down State Street and some celebratory sushi.

And tonight?

Tonight I'll be at this shindig.

It's gonna be incendiary.

Pack your pitchforks, ye villagers of Madison.

See you there.

Miami Moments (2011 Book Fair Int'l)

2011-11-25T13:55:00.007-05:00

Home. After a 17-hour drive from Florida to DC, which was broken up via an overnight with a friend's mother, a chips & salsa-fest at South of the Border during which I workshopped a friend's latest poetry manuscript, and listening to the memoirs of Roger Ebert as an audiobook read by George Herrmann (Grandpa Gilmore) that includes all you never needed to know about Ebert's sexual awakening. After the 1 AM Wednesday morning arrival when I hauled my suitcase out of the car, fell asleep for four hours, woke to take my shoes off, slept another five hours. After the shopping/cooking spree to prepare for Thanksgiving at my grandmother's house. Now I'm enjoying my post-turkey coma in my satin robe. Home.

Miami Book Fair International was all I could have dreamed of--and that's coming from a girl who has done every conceivable variety of reading, fest, and conference in these past few years. The atmosphere was energized without being frantic. The caliber of presenters was SO high. (I met Susan Orlean! And Chuck Palahniuk! And we actually talked like real people!) I signed books. I did a couple interviews. Here are some glimpses, some memories. They are not comprehensive. But they're all mine.

I stayed at "Spa Ortega," my friends' house in Coral Gables. They are a family artists and the whole place has an overgrown beauty. I sat on this balcony outside my bedroom each day to eat a quiet lunch before plunging into the Fair maelstrom.

My first event was Friday's Literary Death Match at Bardot. Here I am as host Todd Zuniga introduces me to my opponent: Jennifer Hayden, author/illustrator of Underwire. Jennifer rocks--great sense of humor--and Todd is a fellow relentless traveler with invaluable energy.

(Photo credit Neil de la Flor)

There are wonderful play-by-plays of the action up at the LDM website, the Knight Arts blog, and New Times Miami, so I won't belabor the point beyond saying three things...

One: I was giddy to share a stage with T.M. Shine. I have been a fan since reading his essays in the Washington Post Magazine, where we were brought in by the editor (the legendary Tom Shroder or, as Gene Weingarten calls him, Tom the Butcher).

Two: The judges were excellent. Their job isn't an easy; it's delicate to come up with instant critiques--across the categories of "literary merit," "performance," and "intangibles"--that entertain the crowd, hold a smidgen of truth, and don't sacrifice the author. You can only see the tip of Justin Torres's (very expressive) fingers in this shot. The other judges are Jeff Newelt (left), and Dean Haspiel (right, dreaming of puppies).

Three: If I'd made it to the Spelling Bee round, I'd have kicked Mat Johnson's ass. He gave the most electrifying reading of the night. But the man can't spell for beans.

(Photo credit x 4 Todd Zuniga)

On Saturday four blocks of NE Second Avenue filled with families out to enjoy the readings, the sunshine, numerous open-air events for kids, the sheer spectacle. I kept pinching myself, thinking, "This is taking place in November? Really?"

I was bummed that my own signing kept me from the Rock Bottom Remainders, so I made up for it by catching Chuck Palahniuk. What you see here did, in fact, feel more like a 9:30 Club show than a reading. A woman in a deviled-egg costume threw inflatable brains at the audience. CP read a story that first appeared in Playboy. And then a second story, the infamous "Guts," that caused not one but -two- people to pass out in the audience. (Not staged; I was sitting by them.)

Later that night, I got to talk with CP at the Author's Party. He admitted he dreads being on display for hours in front of an audience, and I realized the histrionics--from the inflatables to candy bars to dancing eggs--is a buffer for a man who is genuinely overwhelmed by crowds, but at this point in his career cannot avoid them. He is sweet and frighteningly talented. The party at Cafeina was fun once you abandoned the front room for the outdoor patio. I was thrilled to reunite with Tom Franklin, Beth Ann Fennelly, and Tayari Jones, and to talk more with Todd and Jennifer. We were in Wynwood, so like all the venues in that neighborhood there was art on display. At one point we feared a bucket o' gilded Kentucky Fried Chicken had gone missing via some drunk writer, but it turns out the owner just had the good sense to hide it.

Some of us went around the corner to a late-night opening, complete with band and communal graffiti flats. And dancing! Dancing was a highlight. The DJ, Otto Von Schirach, is the fiance of Monica Lopez de Victoria, one-half of the TM Sisters, and a mini LegalArt reunion with Monica, Tasha, Jiae and Juan ensued. And later on...this. This is what happens when you run around with the comics & graphic artist crew.

(Photo credit Jeff Newelt, which was his smart way of staying out of the picture)

Best craft services table ever. Look at those melons! Not to mention the red velvet cake.

Sunday I was honored to share "The Poet's Voice" stage with Denise Duhamel (introducing), Michael Hettich (who I'd met when I read at Books & Books last year), Pablo Medina (I'm awed by his Neruda scholarship) and the incomparable Beth Ann, my Oxford guardian/host/goddess/inspiration/fellow Nortoneer/favorite.

(Photo credit Neil de la Flor)

So glad I stuck around to catch Ravi Shankar, a Connecticut friend who I only get to see when we cross paths at conferences & such. One poem, "Oyster," he revealed is dedicated to me in his new book! I'd seen an earlier version in a chapbook and loved it.

The one reading I was 100% determined to make this weekend was Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton sharing from their collaborative book, Sinéad O'Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds. (So glad to finally meet and hear Emma Trelles, too.) Though I know from having bumped into them shortly beforehand that their prep time was minimal, you'd have never known it from the reading: funny, smart, unexpectedly poignant.

Comic book break! I slipped away from "The Poet's Voice" to see some of my new LDM friends in a panel on Harvey Pekar's work and legacy. The rockstar panel consisted of Dean, Joyce Brabner (Pekar's widow), Joseph Remnant, and Jeff. A lot of substantive things discussed, including future publications and the Pekar Project, and some fun trivia too: the origin of American Splendor, Leonardo DiCaprio's onetime hope to play Robert Crumb and a (thankfully) failed attempt to recruit Pekar to write the script for Howard the Duck.

(Photo credit Neil de la Flor)

I rejoined the poets and we escaped downtown, heading to Soyka for dinner. I had ceviche while others had Matzoh ball soup. That's Miami for you. I sat next to Maureen; we've tried to cross paths in Florida before, always failing, so this was our first chance in years to actually catch up. She was the first teacher I workshopped with after finishing my MFA when I went to the 2005 Indiana Writer's Conference on the Vesle Fenstermaker Scholarship. Time has flown! She said she was proud of me.

Later a few of the hardiest souls drove to Key Biscayne, where we pulled off to look black at the glittering downtown we'd called home for three days. We passed around the flask of scotch. How I have missed this city, its people, my sense of self when held within its arms. In this moment, standing on the shore, I knew: I will be back again and again.

Miami, We Meet Again

2011-11-15T11:46:00.007-05:00

Hey! This week's story up at REDUX ("Work Worth a Second Run") is "Driving in Snow" by Joseph M. Schuster. You can read it here.

Hey! (Part 2) We are now in the Seminfinals round at the Goodreads Choice Awards, so those who voted can vote all over again. Please, please support Don't Kill the Birthday Girl in the "Food and Cooking" category. Write-in votes from the first round determined that my competition now includes not only Gwyneth Paltrow and El Bulli but Paula Dean and Alton Brown. I don't know that I or anyone can take down the Fabulous Paula Deen, Butter Queen...but it would be really amazing if a girl who has never used butter in her life got to share the Finalist round with her. Voting it super-easy and fast; and after November 2o they'll tally votes to determine the Top 5 in each of the 18 categories. There have been over 320,000 votes cast! If you're interested in the slate of SheWriters, I've posted a round-up here. I'm rooting for Tayari Jones's Silver Sparrow in the "Fiction" category.

This week I am really excited to return to Miami, where I spent five weeks in the early part of the year as the inaugural writer-in-residence for LegalArt. I didn't fully appreciate the gift of that opportunity at the time: to step into an unfamiliar city (in a raw downtown neighborhood) and plunge into a community of eight visual artists, complete with avant garde sculpture installations in the sinks and 2 AM ping-pong matches in the shared kitchen. It was completely random and awesome but, of course, I was too damn worn out from my travels to enjoy that. I was missing home, missing a boy in Mississippi, and on deadline for a long reported piece. It had been a while since I'd enjoyed the night-owl rhythms of my 20s and I struggled to get work done.

Here's a photo that the funny, acerbic, wonderful Miami poet Neil de la Flor took of me one night, when we went out so I could take notes on the Wynwood Art Walk...

I'd made the mistake of turning a gift into a job, thinking that was the Responsible thing to do. But since then, I've realized my time there broadened my understanding of being a working artist in the world. Though sometimes moody (and at one point suffering a beyond-bad allergy attack), I did get to know the real town and the people who make it special. There were great nights. I hope I get to catch a few songs at Luna Star Cafe, treat myself to the beet & heirloom tomato salad at Michael's Genuine and the chickpea panisse at Michy, see what new letterpress posters are up at Sweat Records. I hope I get to walk along the jetty and boardwalk at the south tip of the beach.

I'm honored to have THREE events in conjunction with Miami Book Fair International. I'll be in the audience, too; on Saturday I hope to catch Gabrielle Hamilton (Blood, Bones and Butter), Karen Russell (Swamplandia!)--I missed her when we were both at the Decatur Book Festival--and I want to hear the Rock Bottom Remainders play (Dave Barry, Scott Turow...a whole lotta writers making a whole lotta noise). On Sunday I'll dash from my reading to hear Oxford friend Tom Franklin (Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter), and then there's an amazing afternoon panel on memoir featuring Bill Clegg, Jill Bialosky, and Kelle Groom. This is one of the biggest literary festivals in the country, and I urge you to come by: a gift to yourself pre-Thanksgiving hassle.

Where I'll be reading, November 18-20~

LITERARY DEATH MATCH

Friday, November 18 - 8 PM - $10 at door

Bardot (3456 North Miami Avenue)

"All-star judges--Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), artist Dean Haspiel (the mastermind behind the Bored to Death intro), and novelist Justin Torres (We the Animals)--will pass judgment on a fierce foursome of diverse combatants, including Mat Johnson (Pym), T.M. Shine (Nothing Happens Until It Happens to You), comics mastermind Jennifer Hayden (the brain behind Underwire), and poet/non-fictionist Sandra Beasley (I Was the Jukebox)."

THREE MEMOIRISTS

Saturday, November 19 - 5 PM - Free

Room 3410 (Building 3, 4th Floor)

at Miami Dade College (300 NE Second Ave.)

"Sandra Beasley on tales from an allergic life, Peter Selgin on his life as an artist, Mireya Mayor on her journey from NFL cheerleader to National Geographic explorer."

THE POET'S VOICE

Sunday, November 20 - 12:30 PM - Free

Centre Gallery (Building 1, 3rd Fl, Rm 1365)

at Miami Dade College

"Readings by Michael Hettich, Beth Ann Fennelly, Sandra Beasley and Pablo Medina."

See you there. Yes, I'll have my flask.

If You Don't Ask

2011-11-11T09:47:00.004-05:00

The more I tour, the better I get at speaking up. No capricious demands; no all-red M&Ms in the green room or bottles of Fiji water. Sometimes it's a matter of asking for quiet moment to plan my book talk, or dinner at the Sandra-friendly restaurant instead of the pizza party. Sometimes it is a matter of wrestling over copyedits with editors--No, you can't cut that for fit--which I've also been doing from the road, for a freelance piece that will be out later this year. You haven't know frustration until you've tried to proof a PDF layout using an iPhone.

Sometimes it's a matter of saying Hey, I wrote that. Yesterday, walking down a sidewalk in Bronxville the morning after a Sarah Lawrence visit, I saw the local bookstore--Womrath Bookshop. I decided to stop in.

Would they have Don't Kill the Birthday Girl? Yep, there it was (next to Molly Birnbaum's Season to Taste, one of my favorite and most frequent shelf-neighbors).

A year ago this would have been the part where I smiled and walked out quietly. But now I say Hey, I wrote that. Would you like me to sign it?

And that's how you get to leap above Saul Bellow.

I'm typing this from Fuel, a Great Barrington coffeeshop, after reading at The Bookstore in Lenox last night. A year ago I'd have paid for a hotel room, cursing myself for again losing money on the road. This time I said to the bookstore owner Hey, can you help me? So he let me crash on his couch in Housatonic (and also, borrow his daughter's slippers--the floors of the Berkshires are freezing). We stayed up drinking whiskey, talking books.

I almost moved to Great Barrington once. Feels like a lifetime ago; my first big job search after grad school. I had a chance to become an editorial assistant at Orion: a glossy, creative, beautifully designed nature magazine that even runs poetry. I choked. I backed out. I'd never been to the Berkshires, I'd never even been to New York on my own, and I was scared. It would be a few more years before I'd come up here for the first time--to the Millay Colony--and discover the quirky, vibrant multi-town community that would have embraced me if I'd made the leap. Sometimes, on drives like this one, I feel a little twinge of regret for the adventure not taken.

I wasn't ready. I didn't recognize my needs, nor did I know how to ask the world to honor them. So often we focus on cultivating voice on the page. We draft. We edit. We proof. Yet you haven't really found your voice until you use it to speak up for yourself.

Someone told me the other day, You're so good at the self-promotion stuff. It wasn't clear to either one of us whether that was meant as a compliment. The thing is, you have to be ready to be your own best advocate. There's a world of people ready to be excited for you & your work. There's a world of people ready to lend a hand or a couch. But you have to ask.

A Food-loving Night in Philly (& Goodreads!)

2011-11-04T15:43:00.002-04:00

I signed on for some extensive touring in the latter half of October. But it didn't fully hit me until I drove back from Mississippi on Halloween Day, fell asleep fully clothed beside a still-packed suitcase, and woke up Tuesday morning needing to with only an hour to unpack, repack, and get to the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition by 9 AM.

(FYI, their College Park facility isn't listed in the public directory if you happen to be stuck in Beltway traffic and trying to call. "It better exist," I told the 411 operator.)

What followed was a dozen meetings with scientists, regulatory experts, and high-ranking CFSAN officials, as well as an opportunity to read from Don't Kill the Birthday Girl as part of a talk simulcast to two other FDA facilities. We talked about peanut proteins, FALCPA labeling, the difficulty of determining allergen contamination thresholds, the need for more food challenge data. My favorite moment was when one director started to talk about the challenges his office faced, paused and said "Well, I don't need to tell you--[gesturing at my memoir]--you've got it all in there."

I came away understanding of the scope of their powers; what they do, what they could do better, what they can't be held responsible for. Those folks are working so hard. I hope my visit put a face on the people they serve and protect.

What's this got to do with a food-loving night in Philly? Well, I drove directly from the FDA to Union Station, and boarded a train north. On Wednesday I would speak at the Union League for an annual medical conference sponsored by Philadelphia's Children's Hospital. I was excited to see the city--a new one to me. My host, Dr. Joel Fiedler (who contacted me out of the blue after reading the book) picked me up at the station--greeting me with a glittery-wrapped gift.

"I read your blog and saw you mention this," he said.

We went to a restaurant called POD that features tables for two set into the walls and red vinyl couches that evoke The Jetsons. Dr. Fiedler is the best of the best allergists--experienced, reasonable, with a sense of humor and compassion. We talked over a meal that included silken Japanese eggplant with niku chicken miso and rich chicken with "Tokyo scallion," both cooked over the 1000-degree robata grill.

"That should kill any offending allergen proteins," Joel joked.

I remembered my pathetic penny-pinched dinner in the Copley Square Hotel after the Boston Book Festival: sardines out of a tin over rice crackers left over from my Hockessin Book Shelf reading in Delaware. None of that, I decided. This was my final stop before coming home to invariably crash in DC after 22 days on the road. I was going to enjoy. This seemed to be a town friendly to writers, after all. How often do you pass public street art that serves to paint the concrete around it in light-language?

Over a later scotch at the Union League's bar, a tablemate recommended a gastropub called Dandelion housed in a townhouse down Sansom. (This was one of those random, magical conversations that happens when two strangers order the same pour of single malt...we also talked chess.) After the next day of conversations with research doctors, pediatricians, and nurses, I called my mother from beside the Liberty Bell to tell her I was going out for a great meal before coming home to an empty fridge.

"Just be sure it is safe," she said. She was nervous. The gods of irony had surely noted a morning spent talking about anaphylaxis. My book includes an account a bad biphasic reaction on Amtrak while coming back from a "great meal" in New York City. I promised her I'd be careful.

Hmmm. The best way to be both indulgent and safe is sometimes to cherry-pick courses from multiple places. I had my reading: the Arkansas music edition of the Oxford American. I had my route: slowly working back from Independence Hall toward where my luggage waited at the Union League. I had my timeline: 3 hours to kill.

Walking past Washington Square I spotted Talula's Garden. Local, organic, and quirky. Don't let this stock shot fool you; though it has only been open since April, the bar was packed. I went for cocktails--The Butcher (vodka, horseradish, tomato, and a dash of brown ale that added balance) and The Loner (rye, muddled apple and cranberry, and bitters). The Loner is usually made with Black Walnut bitters, but I explained to the bartender that I was worried about other nut extracts amidst the "natural flavors" (see, Mom? being cautious). He was happy to take up the challenge. Two potential bitter options, several exploratory licks--his, not mine--of his fingers and three dashes later, my Loner had a pleasing orange edge.

Then I made my way along Jeweler's Row until Fat Salmon's neon blue wave decor lured me in. I ordered the Unabara roll (eel, tamago, avocado). It's usually pretty hard for me to find complex rolls; invariably there is random egg, shrimp, or cucumber amidst the hodgepodge. But this was perfectly designed as-is. The eel was sweet, skin crisped. Heaven. I ordered salmon sashimi. I was tempted to keep ordering. But my three hours was rapidly dwindling, and Dandelion waited.

Picking up my bags took a bit longer than expected, and when I walked into the pub it was, again, packed. I said to the hostess "I'm from out of town, I've heard you all have a great scotch cocktail--but I have a train to catch." What followed was a welcome that had an almost comic urgency. I was going to get the best 25 minutes of service in town, damn it. Within five minutes I was in a corner seat by a fireplace on the second floor. Within eight minutes I had the "Scotch Honeysuckle": a surprisingly delicate blend of Dewar's, dry vermouth, honey, lemon, and rosewater. Within ten minutes I had a half-dozen beautiful oysters served with a red wine mignonette.

Some nights are naturally welcoming to the belly and soul. You click with a new city. Spying my family name emblazoned randomly on a building, I knew this was one of those nights.

This is the same week that I found out my memoir is an official nominee for the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards. The category? "Food & Cooking," which means I am up against paeans to veganism, a year in the life of El Bulli, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Compare the beautiful cover art of fresh tomato bruschetta to...my skull-topped cupcake. I'm a dark horse to say the least.

But if Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life does climb in the polls, what a great reinforcement that would be of what I've been saying all along: having food allergies doesn't mean you hate food. It shouldn't even mean you fear food. More than most you appreciate food in all of its spectrums, from nuances of taste to history to its power as social currency. I know I do. I travel with a need to eat, not in spite of it. Meals are part of how I explore the world.

You can go to the Goodreads website to check out the other nominees & cast votes. Every vote counts! They'll narrow it to 10 finalists in each category on November 21.

Chatting & Touring for DKTBG

2011-10-28T07:53:00.008-04:00

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of participating in an online chat hosted at THE MOTHERHOOD on the topic of navigating food allergies around the holidays, particularly Halloween. My co-hosts included Lori Sandler, founder of Divvies Bakery (whose awesome ghost-chocolate is pictured here), Barbara Rosenstein from the Food Allergy Initiative, and Huffington Post writer/"Peanuts in Eden" blogger Susan Weissman. On the archive page you can view a transcript of the complete talk, but the folks at the site also put together a helpful summary that articulates seven primary tips:

-Take the Focus Off of Food

i.e. emphasize costumes, house decorations, and games.

-Practice Allergy-Friendly Treating

i.e. host parties or create treat routes entirely free of certain allergens.

-Empower Your Kids

i.e. let kids be the ones to pick out of the basket, versus handing them candy.

-Think of New Uses for Candy

i.e. focus on candy variety in terms of a scavenger hunt or Bingo card, instead of as food; or use as currency to trade in for safe prizes or even money, Tooth-Fairy style.

-Safety First

i.e. guard against cross-contamination and unexpected sources of exposure, such as via masks and haunted houses.

-Be Available at Your Children’s Halloween Parties

i.e. give the visual assurance that the party host is in on the food-allergy plan, from seeing them speak with parents to using color-coded serving ware.

-Take Care of Kids’ Emotional Needs

i.e. pay attention to making kids feel not only secure, but included.

The conversation brought back memories of Halloweens past that I'd almost forgotten. My mother always let me put elaborate effort into my costumes, perhaps realizing that was the part of the holiday I could enjoy best. I remember one year my poster-board butterfly costume had a five-foot wingspan--and the tails unwisely extended below my waist, making for a rather comical effort to sit down at the cafeteria table when I got to school. I would ask my parents their favorite candies (Almond Joys, Mounds), so as to have something to hunt for in what were otherwise meaningless bowls full of chocolate treats. I was ecstatic at the sight of a Jolly Rancher or a mini-roll of Lifesavers.

Helping run Haunted Houses, I'd tense up at the pumpkin "guts" or peeled grape "eyeballs" or squishy spaghetti bowls where people were asked to blindly plunge their hands. Even though none of those were allergens for me, it made me aware that food was on the loose. Cottage cheese "brains" didn't seem out of the realm of possibility.

As venues go, I love The Motherhood. Everyone shares such a positive attitude--it is all about constructive volunteering of ideas--and the technical mode of chiming in couldn't have been easier or more user-friendly. I'll definitely return in the future.

I logged in from a hotel room outside Birmingham, where the night before I had served as the inaugural guest of the Visiting Writer Series at Indian Springs School. So within 24 hours I connected with two very different audiences--the moms and the kids. It meant a lot to me to see teenagers buy Don't Kill the Birthday Girl not because they have allergies themselves, but because they were intrigued by the voice. Maybe it'll be the science that they remember, or maybe it'll be my goofy stories. Either way, maybe reading the book will foster a bit of compassion, too, even if they don't realize it...a serving of green vegetables hidden under the mashed potatoes.

These past few weeks have worn me out. Yesterday I woke up in Jackson; today in Greenwood; tomorrow, Oxford. Day 18 of life in a suitcase. Still, the conversations make it worthwhile. I never knew there were so many different kinds of readers in the world until I began touring for this book.

Sidetrips

2011-10-18T11:03:00.001-04:00

My crazy drive from the Kripalu Yoga Center to Boston on Friday was a little crazier than I let on--or rather, crazy by choice. When I had arrived in the Berkshires on Wednesday, I'd experienced an incredible rush of nostalgia for my days at the Millay Colony in upstate New York--the September 2006 residency where I wrote many of the poems that would appear in Theories of Falling. Though I remembered daytripping to Great Barrington during my stay in Austerlitz, I hadn't put 2 + 2 together that Lenox, Lee, and all the other little Massachusetts towns are just minutes down the road.

I miss those days of blind energy. I wasn't on book tour, back then; I didn't have a book to tour with. I was just a girl getting lost in the mountains by day, writing poems by night, not sure where it was all going. So I decided to drive out to see MASS MoCA, one trip I'd never made in my Millay days (though some of the other artists had gone and loved it). And I promised myself that if I saw anywhere I wanted to stop along the way, I would.

Random lake surrounded by fire-crowned trees? Yep.

Random roadside truck full of fall produce? Yep.

I talked with this guy for a bit; he happily elaborated on which gourds were for decoration, which for eating. I thought back to the pumpkins I've had over the years, from fat generic guys we'd pick out as a family--I'd hunt for perfect symmetry--to an albino "ghost" pumpkin I carved on the floor of my Brown College dorm (which smelled of pumpkin guts for the rest of the fall), to the mini guys my mother gave me when I had my first DC apartment and no doorstep to set a pumpkin out upon. One bright orange kind I would have gotten had he not told me it was actually a squash. He'd heard people who kept that particular variety on display for three, four weeks, then went ahead and cooked them. That sounded weird to him.

The one thing he doesn't do, he told me, is travel.

While the pumpkin farmer may not travel, his pumpkin got to ride with me all the way over to Boston, then back to DC. I'll be on the road on October 31 proper this year: making my back from Mississippi in time for a visit to the FDA on November 1, then hopping on a train to speak at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia on November 2. So when I saw my sister last night (she got us front & center tickets to hear David Sedaris read! he was funny! she is awesome!) I entrusted this guy to her care and safekeeping.

When I got to MASS MoCa I discovered it was a quirky complex of 19th-century mill buildings. It opened in 1986 after having operated for 40 years as the home of the Sprague Electric Company, which did everything from design some of the early at-home music players to contribute technology to building the atom bomb in World War II. They've has done a nice job juxtaposing the original materials--exposed brick and iron--with surreal contemporary pieces such as this black-blob structure by Federico Diaz that crawls along the exterior. This is "Geometric Death Frequency-141."

I suspect the changing exhibitions are chosen in part for their ability to occupy the museum's vast spaces. This installation by German artist Katharina Grosse, "One Floor Up More Highly," fills a room the length of a football stadium. Since the piece comes down at the end of the month, I was lucky to catch it--it has been widely celebrated, and holds the distinction of having been pictured on the cover of both ArtForum and Sculpture Magazine. The porcelain surface glow of the carved styrofoam was great--as if icebergs, or a scene from the set of Superman. I thought the mixing in of cloth swathes among the rubble was intriguing. I'd be lying if I said I had an emotional response to the work. Still, I appreciated the spectacle.

In contrast, I loved a series by Nari Ward exhibited as "Sub Mirage Lignum." "Sub," as in both "underneath" and "in substitution for"; "mirage," as in false or fleeting images produced by desire, refraction, a trick of the light; "lignum," which MASS MoCA pointed out is a shorthand for Lignum Vitae, "a tree whose bloom is the national flower of Jamaica." To put it another way: Ward is an alchemist of discarded objects.

Approached from the mouth, "Nu Collossus"--which takes its form from a traditional woven fishtrap--is a gaping maw, swallowing up bits of weathered furniture and farm equipment. It feels like a mid-turn tornado, laid upon its side. But from the other end you can appreciate the grace and even delicacy of the shape; in this way I found myself thinking of Martin Puryear, one of my favorite sculptors to work with wood.

The other piece I connected with was in the "Memery" exhibit on "Imitation, Memory, and Internet Culture," which was housed in a space often given to up-and-coming artists. Penelope Umbrico, a Brooklyn artist, first assembled a matrix of photographs she calls "Suns From Flickr (2006-2007)." The piece quickly spawned a secondary phenomenon: people taking snapshots with the wall of irresistible sunsets, then posting those images on the web. So here you have it: "People with Suns From Flickr."

And, since the inspiring piece (I was going to write "original piece" but that isn't quite right) was on the adjacent wall, here is my contribution.

It wasn't until I was leaving that I registered that the blaze of orange leaves I'd taken for granted on my way in were not growing up from the ground but rather, suspended from the air. This is called "Tree Logic" by Natalie Jeremijenko.

I got back on the road and discovered Route 2, which I needed to connect to Boston, was closed. I'd have to go back the way I came. It started to rain. It started to rain harder. It had gotten late enough in the day that the mountain roads began to be crowded with school buses, which then stopped every 100 feet. That's the thing about sidetrips: you can turn the handle on the jack-in-the-box but you never know just how high he's gonna leap when the lid comes off. You just have to go with it. And I did.

Kicking Off the Boston Book Festival

2011-10-15T09:39:00.004-04:00

Last night I made a drive from the Berkshires to Boston in the pouring rain, arriving just in time to grab a seat at "The Art of The Wire: A Discussion with the Cast and Creators." The panel featured fellow DC writer George Pelecanos, Donnie Andrews (the real "Omar"), Fran Boyd (Andrews's wife and the inspiration for The Corner, which in some ways was the prequel to The Wire), Tray Chaney (who played "Poot"), Robert Chew ("Prop Joe"), and Jamie Hector ("Marlo Stanfield").

That's them, seated left to right--I surreptitiously snapped a shot of the stage from Row D. Sorry about the quality but I was nervous the director of the festival, who happened to be sitting in the seat behind me, would tell me to put my damn phone away.

As someone who watched and loved all five seasons of The Wire, it was great to hear their insights. Three highlights:

-George Pelecanos's brave admission (in response to an audience question) that The Wire, though it did have women writers on staff, "could have done better" by its women characters in terms of complicating and/or illuminating their motivations.

-The "real Omar," in response to the suggestion that the show reinforced stereotypes, said "How can you stereotype reality? ... Back in the day, I'd be walking down the sidewalk with someone--just two of us--and a white woman coming up the other way would clutch her pocketbook to her chest. I don't snatch pocketbooks! I might put a gun in your face, but I won't snatch your pocketbook."

-Finding out Robert Chew, who had previously worked for years as a theater teacher, had been assigned to coach the kid actors featured in Season 4 (the one that focused on the schools). I love the mental image of Prop Joe running lines. Several people on stage said Season 4 was their favorite.

I feel really, really lucky to be here. Today, I get to read from I Was the Jukebox and speak with Stephen Burt and Jessica Bozek on persona poetry at 10:30 AM; then I join Ben Ryder Howe, Carlos Eire, and Maisie Houghton for a panel on the art of memoir at 4:15 PM. You can find the full schedule here.

Updates & Coming Up

2011-10-06T11:38:00.000-04:00

Delaware-ans! Join us at the Lamborn Library on Wednesday, October 12 for an event supporting the local & independent Hockessin Book Shelf. I'll be sharing excerpts from Don't Kill the Birthday Girl, and we'll enjoy wine and food free of the Big 8 allergens (not to mention really tasty...I've seen the menu). If you have friends in the area affected by allergy--or fans of literary memoir--please spread the word. They are asking folks to secure tickets by Friday, October 7. You'll find more info on Hockessin Book Shelf's Facebook page.

This will be the first event in a whirlwind week of book-tour for me. From Delaware it is on to Kripalu Yoga Center in the Berkshires (Thursday, Oct. 13); from there it is on to two panels (!) at the Boston Book Festival (Saturday, Oct. 15); from there it is on to Fairfield Public Library in Connecticut (Sunday, Oct. 16). Each venue should bring its own unique audience, and I suspect I'll be switching up my DKTBG selections to suit.

While I'm beating the drum of self-promotion, I'll mention that I did a guest post over at the Lofty Ambitions site, which runs pieces on theme with "Aviation, Science, and Writing as a Couple." I don't have much to say on the latter (unless writing as both a poet and a memoirist counts as a "couple"), but I was thrilled to have the opportunity to share some backstory on my grandfather--who was a doctor assigned to NASA's Project Mercury flights--and how his influence shaped my approach to writing about medical matters in the memoir. A brief snippet:

My grandfather and his colleagues were charged with patients who, by definition, were adventurers of the greatest extreme. As doctors, they tracked the pulses. They counted the heartbeats. They took the temperatures. They had to constantly push the astronauts toward self-inspection. How do you feel? Can you continue?
You can read the whole post here.

...Before we shimmy into October, I want to reach back for September highlight: while in Decatur for their book festival, I got to sit down with Jake Adam York and be intereviewed for the Southern Spaces "Poets in Place" series, which resulted in a quartet of short videos on everything from how my Virginia heritage surfaces in my poetry, to how food allergies intersect with culinary tradition, to the experience of making long and frequent drives from DC to Mississippi. I can't begin to say how honored I was to become a part of this interdisciplinary journal's site, which is an amazing resource for students looking at contemporary Southern literature. Other poets in the series include Dan Albergotti, Natasha Trethewey, Jericho Brown, and Claudia Emerson.

These have been quiet days, which means these have been creative days. Sure, I've written things here and there in the past year--particularly on solicitation & on deadline--but this is the first month in ages that I have felt the organic hum of drafting, revising, sending out, making notes, drafting some more. I was trying to explain it to someone the other evening and I said "I thought it was enough to make time to write. But actually, I needed to make time to waste time. And then to write in the time after that." There will surely be some stumbles and rejections in the coming days, and false starts, and nights spent worrying over money, but I also have the fundamental security of knowing: whatever the next book will be, there will be a next book.

Back on the horse.

Writer's Market & Poet's Market 2012

2011-10-03T12:11:00.002-04:00

I had the honor of being featured in both this year's 2012 Writer's Market and the 2012 Poet's Market (25th annual edition!), thanks to the good graces of editor Robert Lee Brewer and Writer's Digest.

For WD I had a conversation with Robert on how I'd made the leap from poetry to memoir, the struggle to write and deal with my food allergies while on book tour ("a diet of French fries and limp house salads"), and what I value about keeping a blog. As the introduction notes, I was in Mississippi at the time. My host there was not thrilled that I was sinking hours into typing up answers to interview questions--that was time he thought I should be spending on poems--and I wondered if it was worth it. When I saw these books, I knew: absolutely. Not only in terms of the career recognition, which is thrilling, but because I get to contribute to a line of books that helped me out when I was getting started.

I have strong memories of being a high school senior and hunting through the shelves of Fairfax County's Tysons Pimmit Regional Library. The year was 1997; the edition was pumpkin-orange. Later, in college, I asked for my own copy at Christmas so I could properly dog-ear and underline (2001; it had a broad black band on the cover that made "POET" jump out). That Poet's Market was where I found the submissions listing for Rosebud, the first journal publication of mine that ever felt "official" & national. The issue in question had a bare-breasted woman wearing a bunny mask on the cover; I can still remember my mother's quizzical expression. But they'd published Stephen King! And Ray Bradbury! I was walking among gods.

Nowadays, the internet makes it easy to take for granted the availability of this kind of logistical data. But the truth is that the Writer's Market and Poet's Market databases still offer the best searchable, accurate, and specialized-by-genre information out there.

For this year's Poet's Market, I contributed a craft essay to dovetail with Collin Kelley's "Truth and Consequences in Poetry"; mine is "A Different Take on Truth & Poetry," and champions the acceptance of fiction into our voices. In the opening I define different approaches to using truth in poetry: the gardener-poets (for whom truth is the soil), the chef-poets (for whom truth is an ingredient), and folks like me..."I love to lie. And even when I'm telling the truth, I'd rather you assumed I was lying." When I saw I made the cover, my heart skipped a beat--especially being in a line-up with Sage Cohen and Taylor Mali. The second best surprise: my mother's hugely enthusiastic response to my essay. Maybe she liked that I used the metaphor of art, her realm: "Sometimes I wish poets were more like painters, who are reminded of the artificiality of their materials every time they prime a canvas or mix a palette. To paint in blood-red is not the same as to render in blood, no matter how nuanced your balance of sulfur and mercury." Maybe she liked that the essay adds to her arsenal of proofs that all my poems aren't really about our family.

The infusion of interviews and essays into this most recent generation of Markets has really upped their value. This year's Poet's Market includes not only the headlining pieces from Taylor Mali ("10 Tips for the Perfect Reading") and Sage Cohen ("Why Poets Need Platforms: And How to Create One"), but also Q&As with Erika Meitner and Aaron Belz, as well as a compelling guide to offering private workshops as an alternative career path and reaching more readers through Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Writer's Market gets down to the brass tacks of publishing, including how to adopt the mindset of an entrepreneur, negotiating a contract, and figuring out how much to charge. One of the things that appeals to me about turning here for guidance is that we can be honest about how much we make, how much we want to make, and how much gets siphoned away by things like postage and printer ink. There's none of the artificial inflation that can happen when a bunch of freelancers belly up to the bar for shop talk. Sometimes people request to be my friend on Facebook purely to ask "How can I get a book published?" I don't mind helping, but I just wish they'd turn to these resources first. I think they'd find everything they need.

Putting out these kinds of annual guides is a draining job, and so we all owe a huge thanks to Robert (who I had the pleasure of bumping into at this year's Decatur Book Festival--here we are) and his staff of tireless editors and proofers at Writer's Digest Books. Thank you for taking some of the mystery out of the publishing process. Thank you for treating information on how, where, and to whom to submit our work not as the means to gatekeep or exclude but rather as practical matters, answers that should be made democratically available to all. Our poems find better homes, our essays get faster response times, and our stories get told. Thank you for nourishing the dreams of thousands of writers--including this particular Chick Who Digs Poetry.

Weekend Food Edition

2011-10-01T16:03:00.006-04:00

It is official: the autumn eating season is here. I told myself I was ordering the Chicken Noodle Soup at Teaism just to fend off the sniffles, but when I couldn't resist a bowl of miso broth & kale at the Modern Times Coffeehouse a few days later...I knew.

This is actually a welcome time, because my favorite all-purpose dinner recipe feels perfectly apropos. All credit goes to Real Simple (including the pictures). Here's the secret...
-->Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
-->Use 2-3 lbs bone-in chicken (breasts, thighs, drumsticks, wings).
-->Pair with apples & leeks OR potatoes, fennel & bell peppers (quarter the fruits and slice the vegetables as appropriate).
-->Toss with 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper, and sprigs of rosemary or thyme.
-->Spread in a single layer on a large rimmed baking pan.
-->Roast for about 40 minutes, or whenever the chicken is done.

Just that easy. The chicken's fat will soak into the sides, making for an unbelievable richness to the flavor. Serve with wild rice or a crusty whole grain bread.

Browsing through the RS's October issue, this was the recipe I picked out to try next: Spaghetti Squash with Almonds. Here's the rundown...
-->Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
-->Halve a 3 lb spaghetti squash and seed it. Rub the exposed squash side with a tablespoon of olive oil and turn cut-side down to a baking pan.
-->Mix together 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice, 1 tablespoon honey, 1/2 tsp cumin, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp pepper.
-->When the squash is done roasting (40-50 minutes), tease out the "spaghetti" strands from the hull with a fork. In a bowl, toss the squash with the lime mixture. Top with 1/4 cup of sliced almonds and 4 sliced scallions.

I've always loved to cook squash. When my mother went into the hospital to give birth to my sister, my 10-year old self took on household duties with four consecutive dinners of squash and bacon--the two things I knew how to make in the microwave. (Bless my dad, who complimented every meal.) Now my tastes tend toward the butternut variety simply quartered, brushed with olive oil & maple syrup, and roasted with cherries or cranberries. I'm intrigued to try something lighter, with crunch and cumin's spice.

One thing that gives me a twinge about this see-saw between book tour and living alone in DC is that I hardly ever get to cook for my favorite folks. But it is October, and with October comes a return trip to Mississippi. The heart lifts. The stomach growls.

Playing with Old Poem Drafts

2011-09-30T13:05:00.002-04:00

*poof*

How Charleston Won My Heart

2011-09-24T13:58:00.007-04:00

On this overcast morning (DC's eighth straight, oof) as I wait for my sister to take her GRE's so we can run away to Baltimore, I finally have a chance to tell you about my trip to Charleston to address the Poetry Society of South Carolina.

But before I can talk about going to Charleston in September, I have to tell you about going to Charleston in April. It came about through pure Facebook-style serendipity: a reader, Katrina Murphy, reached out to say how much she'd loved I Was the Jukebox. Ever in search of new routes to Mississippi, I offered to set up a Carolinas-Georgia trek and come to Charleston, if she was game to set up a reading. She did that and then some--working with W. W. Norton to get stock, arranging a newspaper feature, and booking the majestic setting of the Circular Congregational Church, built in 1681.

In a moment of bravado, my parents drove down to make a weekend getaway out of it. The three of us prowled the old graveyard before the reading, headstone by headstone. We stepped into the church and I gasped. It was gorgeous. As I later admitted, there were a handful of poems--"Drunk," "In the Deep"--I dropped from my set list on the spot, fearful of blasphemy.

So I read "Love Poem for Wednesday," Katrina's favorite, and took some other requests. The crowd was lively (though I did manage to rattle some passers-by who sat down thinking they were on the first stop on a ghost tour).

That's Katrina sitting beside me as I sign books. She's talking to Susan, who brought us back to her house for a dinner of roast chicken and asparagus. I can't remember another time someone home-hosted and didn't blink at all my food allergies. A small group of us stayed up late into the night, talking life and poetry over gin & tonics. Heaven. This is why poets tour: these moments of stumbling into a community you could call home.

But the next morning was all panic. I woke at 6 AM to prepare my Schedule C expense records. I was trying to make the 10-hour drive to Oxford with a stop in Birmingham to see friends expecting to meet right at 7 PM. Tornadoes were being reported in the states I'd have to drive through. I couldn't get Susan's front door to lock behind me. All the places my father wanted to show me--the courthouse, the French Quarter--no time. I left loving the people of Charleston. The town? Barely glimpsed it.

So when Richard Garcia invited me back as a guest of the Poetry Society of South Carolina, it felt like a second chance. Though once again it was a long drive, this time my father offered to do it with me.

Part of the drive down was talking: his work in Hawai'i, my book touring, what next. Part of the drive was spent on the conversation of music: him sharing the new Tom Principato, me sharing the new Paul Simon. And part, of course, was spent on a gratuitous rest stop at South of the Border. Because that's how we roll. Also, they have the biggest real fake-looking shark I have ever seen.

The College of Charleston gave us adjoined rooms at an incredibly reasonable rate, and we snuck in a pre-reading snack at the college deli down the street. We headed to the historic Charleston Library Society.

My first thought, as we walked in: Wow, another amazing space. My second thought: That's a LOT of chairs waiting to be filled. Eeek. I didn't know what to expect on a Friday night. Would it be the same faces from a few months earlier, minus those who would choose a date or a concert over hearing me again?

There was nothing I could do but tuck myself into a chair and make sure I knew what I was reading. I wanted to share a couple of poems from the third collection (or what I hope is a third collection; right now it's just a sheaf of loose paper). One, "Inventory," I found myself editing on the fly. Would it go over? Would this be a sestina-friendly crowd? And magically, as I sat in my chair worrying, people started to pour in. A lot of people.

Turns out the Poetry Society of South Carolina really knows how to kick off a fall reading series. Rarely have I been so lucky in my audience: warm, responsive (they laughed at funny poems! they made that little "mmh" sound at the sad ones!) and yes, they most definitely knew how a sestina worked.

Rosalyn Cowart was local reader who opened, having returned home to Charleston after receiving her MFA at Florida State University. She had fabulous chicken poems; I'm quite sure we'll be hearing more from her.

I opened with "The Emperor's Valentine," happy to take my cue from Rosalyn's animalia theme. First published in the Black Warrior Review as part of my chapbook Bitch and Brew: Sestinas, it opens:

I admit, the monkeys were overkill.

They refused to leave their jeweled hats alone.

They hurled the grapes at each other like small,

hard promises of sex to come. With wild

animals there is always a small, hard

promise of sex to come. Even turtles,

shells scraping as they circle their turtle

tank. For us, sharing a glass house would kill

the spark. But they’re exhibitionists. Hard

to make blush, turtles. Never bathed alone,

using the same dish to drink...

Afterwards, the best part: carousing! Jim Lundy, former PSSC president, celebrated his birthday. Jim is great--we shared a dinner conversation back in April. I'm looking forward to joining him in February 2012 for his Monday Night Poetry & Music.

I was thrilled to see Katrina again, and she had worked with Brit (pictured holding the cake above) to set a Sandra-friendly table for the reception: almonds, grapes, vegetables and hummus, right down to crackers with no egg or milk. Though I hadn't read any "Allergy Girl" poems, one woman bought Don't Kill the Birthday Girl for her allergic grandson. We joked about the resoundingly pink cover.

A personal highlight was meeting Marj Wentworth, Poet Laureate of South Carolina. We have Oxford, Mississippi friends in common--poets Dave Shirley and Ann Fisher-Wirth--and over dinner we talked shop. She's so versatile: her next book, co-authored with Juan E. Méndez, is Taking a Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights.

The next morning I taught a workshop on sestinas called "The Gyroscope of Form." I had a class full of ringers--Richard heavily encourages his private students to attend. It was a delight to look at examples from Philip Sidney, Elizabeth Bishop, Miller Williams, and Sonya Huber, tracking the evolution of tone, lineation, and flexility of endwords through the styles of different eras. We talked technical challenges. I shared examples of my strategic process. We drafted sestinas (or at least, the first stanza) using a pool of endwords that included "blue," "cellar," and "hermaphrodite." One participant, Kit, was inspired by the origami poems I'd read the night before to bring in her fancy papers and fold me a shrimp. On the spot. I wanted to say Can I keep all of you?

There are so many wonderful people I haven't even gotten to mention by name--Debbie, Denise, Stefan (who took all the great photos from the reading), Suzette, Mary, Bryan, and on and on. But I must give 1,000 thanks to my hosts, Richard--so sharp and funny--and Katherine Williams (yin to Richard's yang, a scientist with the heart of a poet). I hope all PSSC guests get to experience this. I didn't just feel welcomed; I felt honored. This is the oldest statewide poetry society in the country--they just celebrated a 90th anniversary--and it shows in the vitality and breadth of their programs.

Now, I'm not going to choreograph the rest of my visit, which was where my dad took over. I'll just give you a few glimpses, as we walked the cobblestones he cares so much about, learned about the quirks of the architecture, went to the water (which I had never seen in Charleston!), tasted a half-dones different kinds of olive oil, got a little goofy in an art gallery, and kept company with a very charismatic oyster shucker for an hour.

Later, a little Lowcountry blues (Katrina et al came on board for this part). A few vodka gimlets. An enthusiastic bachelorette party that roped my dad into singing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to the bride-to-be.

I love Charleston.

New Poem Draft

2011-09-22T23:47:00.013-04:00

...it won't be up for long, per usual. But here's what I was working on tonight.

*poof*

Friday Reads & Friday Edits

2011-09-16T17:38:00.000-04:00

I've been gathering snapshots for a full report on last weekend's Charleston trip, but that will wait until Monday. My Thursday and Friday have been spent in a gloriously unkempt state: hair greasy, emails ignored, and a diet of gin and lentils. My mid-back aches. My bed has been hit with a blizzard of paper.

I have been poeming. Revising, shuffling pages, starting to think about the conversations poems can have with each other, the fine line between repeating motifs and poaching from oneself. (A book is big enough for two pirate poems, right? Right?) Spending a half-hour moving stanzas into the third person, then moving them back again. Pulling familiar poetry collections off the shelf to read in that ravenous way that usually happens at art colonies--in part for entertainment, in part for inspiration, in part to recharge my sense of lineage. Last night, it was What Is This Thing Called Love; now, Tell Me.

"FridayReads" is a collaborative event on Twitter marked by the hashtag #FridayReads and coordinated by Bethanne Patrick (a Virginia writer who uses the handle @TheBookMaven). The concept is simple, affirming, and addictive: every Friday, report what you're reading. The first time I ever ventured onto Twitter with my spankin' new handle, I found Don't Kill the Birthday Girl listed--a Random House bookseller had a galley in hand--and that just blew my mind. My memoir! Spotted in the wild!

This post is a love note to the thrill of seeing a finished book navigate the world...and then the deeper thrill of turning to the next book. My #FridayRead? Kim Addonizio. And Sandra Beasley.

What I Think About When I Think About BlazeVOX

2011-09-08T04:06:00.008-04:00

Looking back on my last few blog posts, I see a running theme of aggregation. I was very tempted to write a post with the title of "BlazeVOX, DBF, and PSSC." That is the nature of my life right now: one thing piled on top of the other. I came into September and October knowing they would be about worktravelworktravelwork, and that is the case. The purity is satisfying. But I kinda miss having the time to go see a movie.

So. Back to the subject at hand. There was a recent wave of controversy over the publication practices of BlazeVox, an independent publisher that has put out books by many poets I respect, including Aaron Belz, Christine Hamm, and Steven D. Schroeder. For a primer, here are the posts that got people talking:

Brett Ortler, "The Half-Hearted Acceptance Letter"
HTMLGiant, "Has BlazeVOX Gone Vanity Press?"

Here are two posts that offered thoughtful concerns:

Mike Meginnis, managing editor of Puerto del Sol
Roxane Gay, HTMLGiant contributor & co-editor of PANK

Here are two posts that offered thoughtful defenses:

Reb Livingston, editor of No Tell Books
Shanna Compton, editor of Bloof Books

(In addition, I really liked Bruce Covey's notes on the comparative economic model of Coconut Books, but I'm not sure I can link to them if you're not his friend on Facebook.)

My instinct is to champion BlazeVOX, and not just because I like what they (or at least their authors) do. No one celebrates the implosion of a press and the consequences for its authors. People kept making references to the Tupelo Press controversy of a few years back, but what it really made me think about was when Zoo Press shuttered a year before. So I was very glad to hear that Geoffrey Gatza had reversed his initial decision to close BlazeVOX's doors at the end of the year, with this open letter explaining their practices (and a commitment, one hopes, to communicate better in the future).

What do I have to add to the conversation? Well, a lot of the hubbub has assumed that DIY/indie presses operate within some sort of bubble--for better or worse--and that the editors and authors moving within have motivations and financial considerations apart from the rest of the book world. Hmmm. I've experienced all levels of publishing. I've collected friends' handmade editions in runs of 50. I've served on the Board and as editor at a nonprofit collaborative press. I've published poetry with a university press. I've published poetry with a New York house. I've published nonfiction with a New York house. All within the space of six years or so, which means you can't tell me that the publishing era isn't somewhat contiguous, even with recent technologies.

Fostering the isolation of poetry from the rest of publishing is terribly misleading.

Here is what I'd like to affirm, interject, and propose:

-Affirmation: All poetry book presses receive financial collaboration from their writers. Or if not, they should.

To object to providing $250 support because it is in hard money is to get distracted from the overall point. $250 = cost of travel for two events (traveling cheap) + postage for 5 potential reviews + postage for 5 reading opportunities + a box of promotional cards. If you're not prepared to pitch in this amount three times over in the first year of publication, then ask yourself what your goals are with publishing a book with a press.

Are you looking for the validation of seeing your words in print? Then self-publish. Are you looking for the validation of being associated with a certain editorial imprint? Then respect the thousands of dollars of man-hours, comparatively, someone has sunk into building that reputation. Are you looking to sell some books and maybe even make money back? Again: be prepared to invest three times over, and then some.

This start-up financial burden, however imposed, is not something the author is forced to take on alone. Ask your community to support you. For years, Finishing Line Press has had people whose chapbooks they accept for publication pre-sell copies, explaining that their final print run would depend on pre-sales. Or go on Kickstarter; one poet supported her trip to Bread Loaf this year with a Kickstarter campaign, which will help sell her book of poetry by association (and I contributed, happily).

I have been fortunate enough to have successful books, and to be a full-time writer for this blink of a year or two. But there are no free rides. I've invested hundreds of dollars in buying my own stock so that I could handsell when on the road. Even when I got a generous advance, it was only because I agreed to a project timeline that meant I would have to quit my job. I am happier than I was five years ago. But I am poorer, too.

-Interjection: "Poets spend more money on their desire to be published than they do on poetry itself"...unless you count the poetry they buy in pursuit of being published.

The first part quotes Reb Livingston, who made a cutting & true point about the many people who will come to hear her speak (or hear her poets read), opt not to buy a single book, but then have the audacity to ask about their submissions policy. The second part of the italicized phrase is mine, an interjection. It's not pretty, but here it is~

How many of us are guilty of buying a book for the sake of interacting with the
author? Editor? Publisher? Then never getting around to actually looking at the book?

When I see a camp championing a press because of its authors....and then a subset of those authors complaining/admitting shoddy production values...I think Uh oh.

In some ways, I think buying-without-reading is just as damning a trend as not buying books at all. That's why something like VOUCHED's Guerilla Book Stores, which I witnessed in action firsthand at the Decatur Book Festival, is awesome. And yet so...disturbingly rare. This goes back to what Roxane Gay observed about the "Kingdom of Kings," a.k.a. the over-saturation of the market. Maybe we'd all be better off if we stopped buying books to network, and only bought books to read.

I apologize to publishers in advance if my sales take a nosedive after this.

-Proposal: We need better, more innovative models of promoting poetry to new audiences. (Here I am echoing Jeannine Hall Gailey).

If the epicenter of your annual sales model is the AWP conference, you gotta shake it up. That's right, even if you plan to have really cool swag (shot glasses!) at your table, and an offsite reading at the grubbiest hipster bar in town. We have got to stop thinking that credibility in our own community is enough.

Even if your nod to the outside world is just to leave one copy in a print run of 50 on a bench in your local public library...do it. One reason I loved Ugly Duckling Presse in early years, and now projects such as isreads, is that they "trick" people into receiving poetry who might otherwise have never seen it. I love oddball distribution tactics. Tucking poems into a free newspaper, or taping them up outside an aviary? Hell yeah. That is the spirit, even if the monetization doesn't immediately follow.

Think about posting to social media venues (Facebook, Twitter, blogs) based on content and themes, rather than author identity. As a woman who stumbled into a whole cult of capybara fandom after "Unit of Measure" was published, trust me: people will come to poetry if they realize the poetry addresses something they care about.

Think high schools, maybe with some talking points to make kids comfortable. Even if the work is experimental. Especially if the work is experimental. Remember how much e.e. cummings blew your mind in the 10th grade, even if you didn't totally get it?

Think of going into elderly communities. Sure, they might not prize your shot glasses. But they are educated, they knew their Modernism back in the day, and they buy books.

If this sounds like a bunch of advice-from-on-high, keep in mind: if I had relied on the audience for literary memoir to be the primary support of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl, I'd feel like a failure right now. Right. Now. Two months after the book came out. I'm speaking from deep in the trenches of working my ass off to support my writing.

In the case of this book, my best readers may be people who don't regularly make it out to bookstores or universities. My publisher and I have to hustle to reach them--through social media posts, through speeches in unconventional venues, though School Library Journal, through editors in mainstream media who just happen to have lives affected by food allergy. But once we do find those readers, they are smart, enthusiastic, and highly engaged. They are worth the work. I don't think this is that dissimilar to finding people who could love poetry...in the world beyond self-appointed poetry lovers.

#

So, yeah. I hope that's helpful. I spent about five hours on this--which, if only I were a paid "poetry consultant" for a big corporate firm, would have easily netted me $250 in billable hours. Sigh.

#

I'll have to wait and gather my thoughts & snapshots from DBF and PSSC in one place, on the flipside of this weekend's travels. Long story short: I love Decatur. Also, I'd love for you to join me this weekend in Charleston, South Carolina. Here are the details of my Friday night reading & my Saturday morning seminar on sestinas....

Join Sandra Beasley for an evening of poetry, including a reading

from I Was the Jukebox and new work

Friday, September 9 ~ 7 PM

The Charleston Library Society

164 King Street (just before Queen)

Free & open to the public

Seminar with Sandra Beasley on “The Gyroscope of Form:

Sestinas Past, Present, and Future”

Saturday, September 10 ~ 10 AM

The Charleston Library Society

164 King Street (just before Queen)

Members $10, College of Charleston students free, all others $15

Oh! For that matter, if you live in Virginia please consider dropping in at Chop Suey Books on Sunday afternoon in Richmond, VA:

Join Sandra Beasley for a reading from her memoir,

Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tale from an Allergic Life

Sunday, September 11 ~ 4 PM

Chop Suey Books

2913 West Cary Street

Free & open to the public

I will be roadtripping with my dad. I am pretty excited about that, since 1) I won't have to drive, and 2) my dad is awesome. Kevin Wilson, author of the The Family Fang, also roadtrips with his dad for book tour. So there.

Looking Forward, Looking Back

2011-09-02T09:22:00.002-04:00

I'm excited to roadtrip with my mom out to Leesburg tonight and speak about "Projecting Your Voice on the Page." You know you've hit the big leagues when you make the Loudon Times Mirror.

But I am also really looking forward to this weekend's visit to the Decatur Book Festival. Twice I have mentioned this to someone only to be immediately told "OH. I have an amazing story about Decatur Illinois." Which is great, but I'm going to the Decatur in Georgia--where I assure you, the restaurants will be hopping and the writers dancing. At least, I will be.

These are the details of my event:

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 ~ 3:45 PM ~ Sandra Beasley

Reading from Don't Kill The Birthday Girl: Tales From An Allergic Life

Decatur Conference Center Stage (Ballroom B)

I'm hoping to land in Atlanta on Saturday morning in time to have a quick lunch with Katia Hetter (a freelancer who interviewed me for this great piece she wrote for CNN.com), her daughter, and Michelle Kelly (owner of Pure Knead, one of the most allergy-friendly bakeries in the country). Then I might try to to catch the end of "The 21st Century South" panel with Jake Adam York, or else hear Karen Russell read from Swamplandia! Then I'll dash to hear the incredibly dynamic (and fellow New Issues poet) Jericho Brown read poems. And then...who knows? I will go where the day takes me. Plus, maybe have to check into my hotel at some point.

I hear they have an honest-to-goodness Author Hospitality Suite with free beer, wine, and WiFi. Somebody pinch me.

Anyway, that is all looking forward. But I also had cause to look back this week, when Ned Balbo--Baltimore resident, acclaimed poet, and husband of poet Jane Satterfield--sent me a snapshot from a recent visit to Virginia Center for Creative Arts. The photograph shows part of the bulletin board in one of the community artist kitchens out in the studio building...

Wow. That was from my first stay at VCCA, as a Cafritz Fellow for poetry. I was working on a series of formal poems about individual circus and carnival acts, inspired by a book of photographs from the turn of the century. This was not one of those poems; this would later find its way into my first collection, Theories of Falling. C. M. Mayo was my bathroom-mate. The youngest artist at the colony was an artist who had gone to my high school (a little weird, when you consider it was a high school for science and technology). We had a huge ice storm. We roasted marshmallows. The best person at building fires in the fireplace was Marianne Swierenga, who would a few years later turn out to be the managing editor at New Issues. I read with Alfred Corn. I took before-dawn walks with the "T.D." of the epigraph. I ate a lot of oatmeal and drank a lot of coffee. We found an abandoned school bus in an overgrown field. Leslie took a portrait of me blowing bubbles in the courtyard. I wrote and wrote. We played Scrabble. We knew our lives were changing by the day.

When I posted that draft on my last night at the colony, I assumed the bulletin board's contents were regularly turned over. I was used to the bulletin boards of college campuses--a blizzard of flyers in which something is always being covered or torn down. Yet there my little poem remains a half-dozen years later.

"Projecting Your Voice on the Page" in VA

2011-08-29T12:01:00.000-04:00

Many of my events coming up this fall will follow a traditional rhythm--I read from a book, I take some questions, etc. But a few of the events have a wildcard format, something for me to get excited (and slightly nervous) about. I need to put together a Powerpoint presentation on the history of allergy for an audience of doctors. I'll lead a seminar on the sestina for the Poetry Society of South Carolina that's in Charleston on Saturday, September 10. And then there's this Friday....

This Friday (September 2), I'm avoiding Labor Day traffic and getting on Route 7 to drive to Leesburg, Virginia.

Now, an aside. Route 7 holds a special place in my heart. Many associate it with the Gordian-knot nightmare of Tyson's Corner. But for me it is the winding stretch that goes from my grandmother's house in Seven Corners, out to my family's house adjacent to the Wolf Trap National Park and Filene Center, and then all the way out into the rural areas around Harper's Ferry. It was the first road I ever drove, and it took me everywhere a high schooler could need to go (except, er, my actual high school--had to use the Beltway for that).

Anyway, I'll hop into the car with my mom and drive out Route 7 to Leesburg to be part of the "First Friday" entertainments in their historic and walkable downtown. This is a really cool mix of live acoustic music, wine tasting, art gallery openings, letter press demonstrations, even a comedy hour called "Last Ham Standing." So even if you're not a writer, there will be lots to do. But if you ARE a writer, you might consider joining us for this...

"Projecting Your Voice on the Page" with Sandra Beasley

Northern Virginia Writers First Friday ~ September 2, 2011 ~ 7:30 PM

in the Leesburg Town Hall, 25 W. Market St., Leesburg, VA 20176

Voice: It is perhaps the most elusive element of strong writing. In this presentation, award-winning author and poet Sandra Beasley will discuss how to develop a voice that is immediate, compelling and precise.

Beasley is author of I Was the Jukebox, winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her debut, Theories of Falling, was selected by Marie Howe as the winner of the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize. In July of this year, Crown published her memoir, Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, which offers a cultural history of food allergies in America and was declared a great summer read by Health magazine. Sandra also is an essayist whose work has been featured in The Washington Post Magazine. She serves on the board of the Writer's Center.

Cost: $4 for members of The Writer's Center and residents of Leesburg; $6 for the general public. For more information, visit www.writer.org or call #301-654-8664.

#

I'm going to offer a mix of practical tips and observations that will apply to working in both prose and poetry. We'll look at some great examples of clear and forceful voices of authors past. If you've ever found yourself frustrated by a slow opening to your essay--all background, no hook--or a poem idea that feels so alive in your head but falls flat on the page, this seminar is for you. And we'll have fun. It's a Friday night on a holiday weekend! We're going to make this Friday-night worthy.

Absinthe!

2011-08-26T19:24:00.004-04:00

On my most recent endless drive, I stopped off to buy a bottle of wine for the couple that would home-host me that night. While up at the register, I saw a little basket of bottles of absinthe (or rather, "Absente"..."now with wormwood"). I thought "Hell, why not?"

Impulse buys under $10 are probably a bad idea when at a liquor store in Tennessee, but there you have it.

So here I am, back at home in DC and readying for Hurricane Irene with bags to unpack, books to read, peaches to eat, and absinthe to drink. Here is my Vincent-Van-Gogh-inspired still life.

The taste? 110-proof licorice. Plus two varieties of food coloring, Yellow #5 and Blue #1. Can't say I love it, much as I love fennel. I'm probably doing it a disservice by trying it straight. I've had enough Sazeracs in my day to know it can be an excellent sweet grace note to an otherwise merciless rye drink.

Hemingway had one of the great absinthe recipes: "Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly." He called it "Death in the Afternoon."

And this is what Oscar Wilde said of the drink: “After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”

Of course, absinthe is primarily known as a poets' vice: Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Marie Verlaine, two of the major Symbolists, drank it like water. Extremely corrosive water. The love story of Verlaine (young at 27, with a pregnant wife from a well-to-do family) and Rimbaud (younger still--still shy of 17) is an untamed tale that culminates in a gun going off--but not before one of the two had first been slapped in the face with a fish. If you're curious about the whys & hows I recommend the biography Rimbaud, which Graham Robb published with W. W. Norton in 2000.

Here is a video of the poet Christian Bok presenting and then translating Arthur Rimbaud's poem, "Vowels," which many believe to be a poem inspired by absinthe:

...Okay, okay. I confess: I may not be inspired to write a poem by this little bottle. I'd settle for being inspired to empty my suitcase.

Foxfire Ranch

2011-08-20T15:49:00.005-04:00

This snapshot was taken a little over a year ago, on one of my first weekends in Mississippi. My friend Jeff and I had driven out from Oxford to Foxfire Ranch, which is just south of Holly Springs. His girlfriend Nikki (on the left) was coming from Memphis and met us there.

I didn't know what to expect, but I soon realized this was one of my favorite places on earth. During the rest of the week, Foxfire is a working cattle ranch owned by Annie and Bill Hollowell. But on Sundays they let folks come and camp out in their open-air barn out back to hear bands play--usually three sets between 4 and 9 PM. People bring a picnic cooler (BYOB) or take advantage of the BBQ and collards Miss Annie herself cooks on site. Kids run around with their dogs. Little Ole Miss girls get going in their hula hoops. You come out with the sun still blazing; you leave long after it has set.

As for the music, it's where pros come out to jam, from Kenny Brown to Revered John Wilkins to all three Burnside brothers. The vibe reminds me a little of a good late-night on U Street, after people have finished their paying gigs at Blues Alley or wherever and want to do a little pick-up playing. And there is dancing. Sometimes, everybody up on their feet; sometimes just a few brave souls doing their thing.

A year later, I made a straight drive from DC to catch the Saturday night show of the annual North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic. I arrived about 4 PM, having left my apartment at 9 PM the night before, and realized there was no option other than to fill my flask, slip on some gold Mardi Gras beads, and catch a second wind. This was one of the headline acts--Garry Burnside playing with Cadillac Funk. That's Andrew in the hat and sunglasses on the right, the frontman for CF. I'd heard them play a few times, but never got to talk to them before. I stayed out as long as my tired body would let me.

I'm typing this from Andrew's kitchen at the moment. Tomorrow I'll be at Foxfire again, wearing my favorite black skirt for dancing (not so short as to be scandalous, with a bit of a flare if I'm twirling). Cadillac Funk will be up on stage, with Garry on guest guitar and Bill Perry, Jr. on keyboards. I'm hoping Jeff and Nikki can make it out to join us. They are engaged now, living together in Memphis.

A lot can happen in a year.

Away Games

2011-08-12T17:49:00.007-04:00

Since my last post was about home fires, seems only appropriate that this post be about away games. I have spent the last three days hammering out my Fall 2011-Spring 2012 book tour schedule, which I will share in every conceivable outlet (including this blog & Booktour.com) over the weekend. A few immediate highlights:

Reading at the AJC Decatur Book Festival in Decatur, GA, on Sunday, Sept. 4

Reading at Chop Suey Books in Richmond, VA, on Sunday, Sept. 11

Reading at New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville, VA, on Thursday, Sept. 29

Panel on persona poetry with Stephen Burt (swoon) and panel on memoir at the Boston Book Festival in Boston, MA, on Saturday, Oct. 15

...and that is just for starters: about 30 events in all. If you should happen to see a date that is close to your public library, book club, or PTA meeting, please let me know. I'm driving 99% of the time, which means my schedule is flexible. The more people I get to meet and share my books with, the better.

While I am being all self-promotional, I should say that it has been a really nice week for grass-roots blog reviews of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl. Thank you, Rebecca Tolley-Stokes, for calling my book "eye-opening." Thank you, Nina the Cooktivist, for letting me change the menu for your birthday party--and assuring you that you aren't alone. Thank you, Shelly Bowers, for assuring me I wasn't crazy with my Richard Scarry "Busytown" conceit in the closing chapter. Thank you, Kalen Landow, for saying "Most books I read require only a simple few sentences or maybe a few paragraphs, but sometimes a book hits so hard, so close to home, that I feel compelled to say more. Sandra Beasley’s Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl is one of those books." That made my day.

I'll be running away from home again soon (damn you, Mississippi, and your siren call) but it has been a good week. Waking up to see rainbows splashed across the wall of my apartment courtesy of my sister's solar-powered prism; an amazing cocktail at P/X (gin, tequila, basil coconut water and turmeric) with Leslie; a familiar meal of sweet potato salad and tea-cured salmon at Teaism; lounging in the pool with Hailey; the ease of a post office within walking distance; the fun of stopping off at Politics & Prose to pick up my copy of Meg Waite Clayton's The Four Ms. Bradwells (is that a stunning cover, or what?). Funny that I've reached this point where being in one place for over a week feels like a luxury.

Someone asked me the trick to being on book tour. I said that I always unpack fully between each stop, even if in one place for less than 24 hours. True. Also: travel with your own towel--whether you need it to wash your face, or just to create a cozy texture on an unfamiliar pillow. Also: no matter small the town, look up the one hippie cafe with coffee + WiFi beforehand. There is always one. Also: figure out the magical technology to fit the ones you love in your suitcase. Still working on that last part.

My patron saint of writerly traveling is Naomi Shihab Nye. A favorite of hers:

BURNING THE OLD YEAR

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

Home Fires

2011-08-05T00:07:00.001-04:00

So it has been a quiet week on the blog, but not a quiet week in real life. After a great day at Politics & Prose, I zipped down to Mississippi to wrap up my book launch with readings at Square Books in Oxford (you can see a full video here) and Lemuria in Jackson. Then I promptly returned to DC to tape an hour of live conversation on The Diane Rehm show this morning for NPR & WAMU (archival recording here)--which was such a thrill. I remember hearing an American University MFA professor, Kermit Moyer, wax poetic on her show many a morning.

Oh: my book was picked as a "Great Nonfiction Read" in the August 8 issue of PEOPLE. Doesn't get much more surreal. Amy Winehouse is on the cover, for goodness sakes.

But if you asked me what I spent the last week doing, here's what I'd say: I was tending the home fires. Because while this book launch is a thrill, the roller coaster ride to end sometime. (Uh...ignore the mixing of those two metaphors.) If you haven't put some time into developing real connections with real people, you're going to end up at the amusement park alone after closing time. And that's a lonely place.

Here's what tending the home fires looks like...

Cooking dinner for new friends and adored ones. Menu: lemon chicken with olives, parsley, and red onion, herbed couscous with stir-friend portobello mushrooms and spinach, carrots glazed in ginger ale & chile powder, and fresh fruit with peanut brittle (the only store-bought indulgence) for dessert.

Adding a day to my return drive to DC by first driving down to Jackson, Mississippi, to see my beloved former boss Mary Lynn Kotz receive an award at the Mississippi Museum of Art for her contributions to the arts (among other things, she wrote an incredible biography of Robert Rauschenberg).

Finding this package leaned against my door in DC, sent by a young woman I met at my Lemuria reading. Now, by all standard accounts that was the least successful of my launch readings--teeny-tiny crowd. But that meant I had time to connect and really talk with Rachel, a talented teenager who at first claimed she came only to get out of family cleaning chores at home. But her attentive questions made me suspect otherwise. So I bought her a copy of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl. And receiving one sincere thank-you makes the reading worth more than 50 books sold.

Opening my package to discover a copy of her school's literary journal, which she had a hand in editing. Editors of little journals, unite! I particularly love how she signed the masthead page.

...and discovering that she, like me, is fascinated by the Orpheus & Eurydice myth (I have several poems that reference it in my first collection, Theories of Falling). Editor and poet. Go, Rachel, go!

...As for today, a confession: what I should have done, after The Diane Rehm Show, was rally for a high-powered happy hour downtown with literary types. But I was exhausted. So you know what I did instead? Curled up in bed with Molly Birnbaum's book Season to Taste--a memoir about being a chef-in-training, then losing one's sense of smell in a freak accident--which I have loved for its smart writing, vivid imagery, and sensitive blend of memoir and science. I finished the book. And I took a nap. I am tending the home fires. I am tending to my heart first, my career second.

Blog Love & Coming to the Writer's Center

2011-07-22T13:40:00.007-04:00

The Writer's Center just announced the line-up of fall workshops being taught not only in the Bethesda location but in Annapolis, McLean, and the new Hill Center in Capitol Hill. Our instructors include winners of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Book Award, and the National Book Award. You can read up on these by clicking the linked course names, or see the whole fall via The Workshop & Event Guide...

Martin Espada (Barbaric Yawp)

Barbara Esstman (Advanced Novel & Memoir)
James Mathews (Building a Page Turner)
Lynn Stearns (Memoir: Story Construction)
Stanley Plumly (Poetry Master Class)
Rose Solari (A Sense of the Whole)
David Taylor (Writing Brilliantly About Science)
Kathryn Johnson (The Extreme Novelist 1 & The Extreme Novelist 2)

& TWC highlighted my class as well, The Strategic Poet, which will run on Tuesday nights in September through mid-October. I describe it in these terms:

Poetry is both an art and a craft, complete with its own toolbox. In this workshop (which will dovetail but not overlap with “The Strategic Poet: 1”) we’ll use weekly readings to help identify strategies for writing effective poems, and identify the tactics that can be used to follow those strategies in your own writing process—whether at the point of drafting, revision, or the shaping of a collection. For the first meeting, bring 15 copies of two poems: a poem that you love, and a draft of your own.

Traditionally, my workshops have a great time. I have the Writer's Center place a cap on enrollment to 12 people so we don't feel rushed in class, and I return handwritten individual feedback on each poem. One of the amazing writers in my "The Strategic Poet: 1" class even went on to win this year's DCCAH Larry Neal Award! Those who know me well know I don't teach often, but I'm really proud to connect with DC's writing community through these workshops. If you're interested, please consider signing up.

If you're in town this weekend, I hope to see you at Politics & Prose on Sunday at 3 PM to celebrate the hometown debut of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life. My wonderful fellow DC writers Leslie Pietrzyk and Paula Whyman were kind enough to mention it on their blogs; Paula called it a "don't-miss author event."

Speaking of blog love, I wanted to send out a big, sloppy, e-kiss to Kristin Berkey-Abbott: if you don't follow her blog you should, because it is one of the most frequently updated and substantive ones I am reading right now. I was so honored and delighted to find her mediation on DKTBG, which included these good wishes..."Perhaps Sandra will be our next Natalie Angier or Laurie Garrett, someone who can make science accessible for those of us who haven't had a science class in decades. She's done that for the world of allergies in this book." Wow. I got to work with Natalie Angier once or twice in my American Scholar days, and I have to say that if I could become half the nonfiction writer she is, I would be thrilled. Thanks for setting the bar so high for me, Kristin--and for believing in my voice.

And while I'm at it, I'd like to take Miss Ada Limon out for a night of cherries...and dancing.

Since folks have been so generous in supporting me, I'd love to pay the blog love forward. So please check out Laurel Snyder's efforts to book 100 school visits in 100 days (via Skype) in celebration of the release of her latest children's book, BIGGER THAN A BREADBOX. This is such a fabulous idea, and trust me--Laurel's personality is big enough that it will project through a screen just fine. BTAB is a brave look at how a child copes with divorce, while displaying Laurel's signature blend of humor and fantasy. Here's a synopsis:

A magical breadbox that delivers whatever you wish for—as long as it fits inside? It's too good to be true! Twelve-year-old Rebecca is struggling with her parents' separation, as well as a sudden move to her Gran's house in another state. For a while, the magic bread box, discovered in the attic, makes life away from home a little easier. Then suddenly it starts to make things much, much more difficult, and Rebecca is forced to decide not just where, but who she really wants to be. Laurel Snyder's most thought-provoking book yet.

If you're a parent or know of a worthy local school, please encourage them to query Laurel. You also might be interested in this ongoing giveaway via Goodreads leading up to the book's September release.

Bright Lights, Big City

2011-07-20T22:00:00.003-04:00

It has been an absolutely wonderful first week for a book. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you've already been bombarded with a daily link. I'm not going to retread all that here. Suffice it to say that I've had some glowing reviews and some thoughtful interviews, not to mention generous hometown coverage leading up to this Saturday's Politics & Prose reading (3 PM: come on out!). I am a very lucky woman.

Yesterday morning I hopped on an Amtrak Acela train for New York City, where I would give my first public reading from Don't Kill the Birthday Girl. Even though I've been fortunate to give readings in New York before, this felt different. For one thing, I was on Crown's dime: as someone accustomed to long Bolt Bus rides and crashing on a friend's couch, this was truly a whole new ball game. Arriving at the hotel where they had reserved a room for me only affirmed my excitement...

The Warwick is one of those fabulous old-school hotels, in one direction a few blocks from The Ziegfeld theater (which was staging the premiere of Crazy, Stupid, Love the same night, starring Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, and Emma Stone--I wish I'd had time to gawk), a few blocks from Radio City Music Hall the other direction, and adjacent to the iconic "LOVE" sculpture. The lobby features beautiful chandeliers and a tall wall of built-in shelving and books--always a comfort to an author. And though chicly arranged (sans slipcover, arranged by color of binding), they were in fact real books. I know because...I pulled a few down off the shelf and checked. Perhaps not my most sophisticated moment.

My jaw dropped when I saw that my hotel room had its own living room. Since I was traveling alone, it was a bit overwhelming. One by one, I sat in all the chairs. One by one, I turned all the lamps on...then off again, so as not to be wasteful. (Just to be clear: I'm not trying to gloat by showing this. I just know that -I'd- want to see, if someone else had this opportunity. A month from now? I'll be back on my friends' couches!)

A few days ago my lovely poetry-friend Maureen Thorson, who I have known since our undergrad workshops at University of Virginia, had sent me this sneak peek of the display of my book at the Upper East Side Barnes & Noble. (Aside: Maureen's Applies to Oranges collection from Ugly Duckling Presse is killer. Check it out.) When I arrived on Tuesday night, through welcome coincidence the first familiar face I saw was Jeff--Maureen's husband. Also, the book was stacked all over the place. And pictured on the Jumbotron screens overhead. Crazy.

What can I say about the reading? Reading prose is very different from reading poems, in the same way that running a series of wind sprints (poetry) is very different from running a marathon (prose). I had agonized over my selections beforehand, before settling on a trio that I hoped capture a few different aspects of my personal story: a part of the introduction, a section from childhood, a section on dating as an adult with food allergies. The question and answer session was lively, a nice mix of people who came to the topic from firsthand experience and people who were just curious. Afterwards--plenty of books, sold and signed. Here are a few glimpses...

Upside: I'm an impassioned reader. Downside: I'm destined to make funny faces when I read. This is my signature "oooopen mouth" look, frequently captured on film.

Here I'm with Barbara Rosenstein of the Food Allergy Initiative. Such a great group--focused on research and long-term solutions. And I now know (from this morning's meeting) they are also fun, lively, super-smart people. I'm excited to work with them.

This lovely lady, Lisa, came to the reading after having heard me read poetry as part of last year's Boog City Festival. She's a talented poet herself. That is one of the surreal aspects of touring for this book: integrating it into the identity I've already built as an author of poetry. This morning I dropped by the offices of W. W. Norton--the paperback of I Was the Jukebox is out August 1--and chatted with my editor, Jill (who is also an author in multiple genres) about this balancing act.

This guy said "I just like memoirs." You can see how I'm beaming. Refreshing to have an audience who attended in equal parts for the topic and for the craft.

I love this photo for three reasons. One: it shows the random friend-of-a-friend who gave me two of his own CDs--I love it when artists randomly cross paths. Two: it shows me signing a poster for the Barnes & Noble wall of fame. Three: it shows the yellow origami turtle given to me by poet-friend Kimmy Grey. Talk about your talismans of good luck! (She was inspired by the origami poems in IWTJ.)

Kimmy, know I carried that guy around in my purse for the rest of my New York trip.

And here we are. I've said this before, but I'll say it again: the people at Crown are awesome. Meet Julie Cepler (black jacket), Rachel Rokicki (black skirt), Sydny Miner (plaid dress), and Anna Thompson (gray skirt). They are my editorial and publicity team. They are my safety net and saviors. They are my "Oh, it's 4:55 PM? Yep, we can get that out before end of business day" people. They are the best.

Mom...thanks for helping me pick out that dress. Dad...thanks for that red coral necklace. I couldn't have asked for better birthday gifts. Let the adventures continue~

Birth of a Book

2011-07-12T23:35:00.000-04:00

I have to admit: I wasn't sure what to expect today. So much of what would pop up as "new" to the big, wide world was not new to me. I'd already held the book in my hand. I knew there was a flurry of interviews and guest posts scheduled to go up--my favorite is at eHarmony--but having written them, there was no surprises in store there. I knew good friends would gather at City Grocery, but I've had drinks with them at City Grocery dozens of times before. So I thought: well, we'll just head on down to Square Books. We'll see. And this is what I found...

The flowers my mom had delivered to me, care of the bookstore.

A stack of copies--more than I'd ever seen in one place before!

Then I turned around and realized, Oh my goodness. That was just the stack of extras. Here's the real stack, complete with a teaser for my July 26 reading.

A friend walked in, said hello, and the next thing I knew...my book was at the check-out counter! (If this photo is a bit blurry, I know it's because I looked really strange photographing a banal commercial process.)

This is me with that friend--Jere, aka the man I got to see buy my book on the day my book went on sale. He's pretty much my favorite person on God's green earth right now.

Sometimes a day of celebration doesn't have to be epic. Sometimes it's the small gestures of the people who love you. Sometimes it's taking a deep breath and knowing: So it begins.

Writer's Center DKTBG Giveaway

2011-07-10T18:39:00.002-04:00

The lovely folks at the Writer's Center are helping celebrate the release of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by giving away of a copy of the book! Registering to win could not be easier: go to their Facebook page and leave a comment in response to this query~

Tell us about an experience with food allergies in your community. Or share your thoughts on how this issue has changed in society over time.

The answers people have left show the gamut of our experiences with food allergy--from firsthand reactions to nervous waitressing. The winner will be chosen on Monday, July 11, so get a move on adding your take. Good luck!

Kyle Semmel of the First Person Plural blog was also kind enough to do a short Q&A with me, which is here. In response to Kyle's request for a "sneak peek" at what the book contains, this is what I said:

I tried to balance a substantive, interesting look at the science of food allergies (from prick tests to epitopes) with the quirky realities of managing them in the everyday. Hives from a kiss? Yep. Stunt-eater friends who sit next to you at weddings and make your dinner plate look like you had a few bites, so as to not offend the bride? Yep. Having a mother who tries to keep you safe by packing your suitcase for every trip with a loaf of "Sandra-friendly" bread and the knife to slice it with? Yep. You can bet how surprised the security guard was to pull an eight-inch serrated blade out of my suitcase on my way to Disney World with my high school choir.

As the World Turns

2011-07-09T13:09:00.004-04:00

It has been comically frustrating to have no internet service this past week. Or rather, to have had only a wan, intermittent stolen signal from someone's house nearby. My sublet's network, perkily named "BoatsandHoes," has been MIA--and since I'm not the account holder, there hasn't been a damn thing I could do about it. All my hard-earned nagging skills from dealing with Comcast in DC, wasted! That's the peril of choosing to be miles from home in the week leading up to having one's book born.

Writers love to romanticize a lack of internet, particularly when it comes to colonies. I get that. But the good people at Crown have been working their butts off on bookings and media queries--each in one in delicate balance with the others, based on who gets "first" this or "exclusive" that--and I hate holding them up. When you find yourself driving to a Pizza Hut parking lot so you can skulk in your car checking email, something has gone awry.

Anyway. Enough whining. The magical interwebs seem to be back.

On Thursday, I got a note from the Reviews editor at the Wall Street Journal asking if I might have 800 words I could contribute to their weekend edition on the topic of living with food allergies. Um...yes? The only problem was that I'd already made plans for the night; a beer with this year's Ole Miss Summer Poet in Residence, Jay Leeming, then a dinner party in Taylor, then meeting to see friends of a friend play on the Square. I've been somewhat stubborn about maintaining a work/life balance down here in Oxford.

So, after having a Reb Ale with Jay on the balcony at City Grocery--after meeting my dinner host's pet Jackson Lizard (oddly enough named "Iguana," but they call it "Cucumber")--after enjoying a meal of marinated chicken and Honey Bee Bakery French country bread and homemade tequila-watermelon-line sorbet--after a great meandering conversation about trying to grow apples in Mississippi and Billy Collins and radio interviews gone wrong and living on the Lawn--after listening to an hour of music at Parrish's--I came home.

And slept. And got up at 2:30 AM. And got to writing my piece for WSJ, with a 9 AM deadline hanging over me.

Admittedly what I'm calling "work/life balance" might, in fact, be burning the candle at both ends. But it all worked out. Here it is: "An 'Allergy Girl' Comes Out of Her Bubble."

DC-area folks might get a kick out of knowing that the opening scene takes place at Bethesda's Jaleo, on a night when I hosted two Emerging Writer Fellows for dinner before a Story/Stereo reading at The Writer's Center...

At a recent dinner with friends, I was determined to enjoy a night without any allergic reactions. I had asked for the dairy-free menu, but when the waiter brought our drink orders, I eyed my martini glass with alarm: It was garnished at the bottom with a pearl of milky liquid.

"What's in that?" I asked.

He proudly described a liqueur containing essence of pine nut. I groaned.

"You didn't ask for the nut-free menu!" he said.

I looked at him. "The nut-free menu for cocktails?"

...and for the record, they replaced that drink gratis with an amazing concoction that combined cava with edible gold leaf, which swirled hypnotically in response to the wine's bubbles. Hooray for José Andrés! I like to tease ThinkFoodGroup for their tendency toward self-grandeur, but he really has some of the most allergy-friendly restaurants in the country.

Book Countdown: One Week

2011-07-05T20:08:00.004-04:00

When I got the news about my book deal, I was at Reagan National Airport waiting to fly to Chicago for the 2009 AWP Conference. My agent reached me right before they announced boarding. The news was big--this was a deal that would move my writing from a side love to a full-time job--and after I hung up I looked around the terminal and thought, with a twinge of sadness, Nobody here knows me. Then I realized the liberation of that: Nobody here knows me! I jumped up and down. I wiggled my hips. I dipped my shoulders to a silent dance track. I grinned like a happy fool.

When I landed in Chicago and got to the conference hotel, I did the usual dashing about--check-in, conference registration, tote bag critique, hello to five hundred friends. But I stopped in the middle of the lobby and ignored the noise long enough to call my Grandma Beasley back at home. (Agh. Just writing this...I miss her.) Someone would pay me to write a book, I told her. A book about growing up with food allergies.

"Well, darlin'," she said in her accent, still Texan from younger days. "After all these years, there turns out to be a silver lining."

Independence Day

2011-07-03T14:03:00.000-04:00

A combination of things both good (daytrip to the Mississippi Delta) and bad (internet outage at my sublet) have kept me away from the blog this week. Let's think of it as the calm before the storm. Tuesday kicks off the one-week countdown to book publication on July 12, so I'll be posting daily. You can also always keep track of me on Twitter (where I talk about everything from moonshine to Oxford commas to my girl-crush on Ann Patchett) and via Facebook, if you don't already.

Oh! Those on Facebook know that Crown is giving away a copy of DKTBG through their Read It Forward program. I'd be delighted if someone who reads this blog took it home. You can find a little essay from me about the conception of the book--and sign up to win, if you do so by July 4--by visiting the Read it Forward website here. And if you happen to live in Arizona, the Arizona Food Allergy Alliance is doing a giveaway too.

This is the fourth year in a row when I've had an apartment with a great view of Washington's skyscape for fireworks--and ended up nowhere near that apartment on the Fourth of July. (One year I was in McLean, Virginia; another year, Wyoming; and now, Oxford.) I told my folks it would be a crime if they didn't head over to my apartment, enjoy the cold beer in the fridge, and sit on the balcony to watch the show.

I love fireworks no matter where I am, but there is something special--dare I say, downright patriotic--about watching them in DC. One of the best July 4ths of my life was the year my father returned home from his Army deployment for Desert Storm, which had taken him to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. He took me down to the National Mall, where we watched the technicians debut a brand-new firework: one that mimicked the shape to a yellow ribbon, the loops of the ribbon undulating and loosening as if being untied as the embers fell down the sky. I leaned my head on his should and thought, This is it. This is what awe feels like.

New Issue of Blackbird!

2011-06-24T20:49:00.004-04:00

Announcing Blackbird v10 n1 | Spring 2011

Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts published by Virginia Commonweath University, announces its new Spring 2011 issue featuring:

-A new translation and the original versions of Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer’s 1996 book Sorrow Gondola, with an introductory essay by David Wojahn, a letter to Tranströmer by Jean Valentine, audio readings of three of the poems in Swedish, and video of Franz Liszt’s “Lugubre Gondola No. 2” that inspired the poem by the same title

-Audio of Victor Lodato, winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, Kathleen Graber, Jean Valentine, Kate Greenstreet, Jake Adam York,
Mathias Svalina, and Allison Titus

--I praised Mathias Svalina's Destruction Myth and Allison Titus's Sum of Every Lost Ship in a previous issue of Blackbird; they're great evidence of the important poetry being published these days by Cleveland State University's Poetry Center--

-Poetry by Norman Dubie, Dave Smith, Jennifer Chang, Victoria Chang, Yu Shibuya,
Brittany Cavallaro, Jenny Johnson, Eve Jones, and more

--What a rockstar line-up!...watch in particular out for up & comers Brittany Cavallaro (whose poem I read for Linebreak) and Jenny Johnson (a friend from UVA days who has been studying with the fabulous Gabrielle Calvocoressi)--

-Fiction by Kelly Cherry, Steve Yarbrough, Victor Lodato, Adrian Dorris, Julie Hensley,
Darrin Doyle, Aurelie Sheehan, and Chris Leo

-Reviews of Joshua Poteat, Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Keith Montesano,
and Sandra Beasley*

-In gallery, plays by Victor Lodato and Yasmine Rana, an audio essay by Jeff Porter, a video essay by Nick Twemlow and Robyn Schiff, and the U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration’s 1951 “Duck and Cover”

*Me! This turns out to be a lovely review of I Was the Jukebox by Laura Van Prooyen, in which she says "Reading I Was the Jukebox cover to cover can hypnotize you."

Read the whole issue online by visiting http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu

Very Special Delivery

2011-06-21T10:30:00.000-04:00

So, after an 18-hour drive that took me straight from Mississippi to DC, followed by a belated Father's Day dinner with my folks (Ardeo's scallops and octopus over black lentils), followed by a knock-out Rob Roy perfectly mixed by the owner of the Black Fox in Dupont Circle (oh, I have missed my town!), I was sleeping in this morning.

A knock on the door at 9:10 AM woke me up. Who was it? Why? Would I have to put clothes on? I walked to my door and peered into the hallway. Nobody there. Whew.

Then I noticed the package someone had left behind.

My heart skipped a little. I grabbed the scissors and carefully sliced open one end.

My first thought was: Yay! Yay! Yay! (Eloquent, right? That's why they call me a poet.) My second thought was: Funny, I had never thought about my book's physical color...

...and that color turns out to be a lovely robin's-egg blue, with a goldenrod spine.

No other way to say it: Don't Kill the Birthday Girl is here. Oh, sure, you won't see it in a store near you until July 12. But in this moment, a book has been born.

Even though I've reviewed how it would look a hundred times--from text to cover art to even, yes, my own flap copy--I had never imagined this moment.

Stand up, baby. Shake your tail feathers. Let's dance.

(Don't Kill the Birthday Girl is available for pre-order now from Barnes & Noble and NOOK, Amazon.com and Kindle, iTunes/iBook, IndieBound, Borders, Powell’s, Politics & Prose, Teaching for Change, and Square Books. Or you can come to my place in DC and try to steal one of these five copies. But be warned: I'll fight you.)

Portrait of the Artist as a Sixth Grader

2011-06-16T12:59:00.000-04:00

One of the nice things about having stayed in the same area I grew up in (compounded by the power of Facebook) is that I've stayed in touch with old, old friends. Such as my friend Tricia, whose parents live across the street from my grandmother. Every time I went to see her in McLean, Virginia, I hoped I would get the chance to go to the Kuzmack's house and play with Tricia and her sister Steffie in a backyard that had a great big vegetable garden and a playhouse with hippie love beads hanging down in a curtain across its doorway.

Tricia emailed me the other week to report that her parents, in cleaning out the attic, had run across some old things from Haycock elementary school. Among the papers that had been packed away? "Literature Delight, Volume #6." Our Paris Review. Within the day she'd sent photographs. A rather snazzy-looking compilation, I must say. Check out the brilliant blue of that cover! Check out the apple-dotted i's! I remember lunchtimes in the school library with books ready to be bound--punching the paper holes, lining up the slots, pulling the lever to clamp on the black plastic binding. Breathing in the hot plastic smell of the nearby laminating machine.

And then...there were the poems.

"The Storyteller" has to be a nod to L.M. Montgomery's The Story Girl, which is about a group of cousins growing up on Prince Edward Island. "Cecily" is an odd name for me to use--whereas I had Jessicas and Adams in my classes, I can't recall a single Cecily. But one of the children in Montgomery's book is named Cecily King. In Montgomery's book, the "Story Girl" Sarah Stanley is the same age as the other children. But I remember always thinking that she seemed preternaturally old in spirit, destined to stay alone with her stories while the others went on to marrying, having children, and moving away. So in the world of my poem, I projected a future of telling stories to the children of friends who were playmates. Oh my. Twenty years ago, and I was already drawn to this notion of a woman choosing to be "the storyteller" even if it set her apart from the pleasures of a normal life.

Then there is this poem, which won the school's creative writing contest that year. (I also took third place...and I placed in the nonfiction category too, with a humor essay about having a little sister in the house. I was overzealous.)

OK, I was a somewhat melancholy kid. But I will own these poems, if only because in seeing them again after all these years I still have such fresh, sharp memories of their conception. In sixth grade, just as now, I was a girl with brown hair and brown eyes. I remember that being the first year I felt envy of the girls with exotic coloring--and the opening lines of "The New Me" gave me a chance to imagine that doppelganger, prettier Sandra. I'm not sure what it was that I thought would embittered and harden me down the road, but I do know that I was interested in the iterations of language: seeing how much I could advance the story with just tiny changes to the phrasing. And I knew I could get away with dropping down that last standalone line if, rhythmically, it completed the line before it.

Thanks, Tricia, for this trip down memory lane. I suppose posting juvenilia for the world to see could be a bad idea. But often, when I answer the question of "how long have you been writing poetry?" with "since elementary school," I see a flicker of disbelief in people's eyes. Here you have it, folks. Proof!

___Chicks Dig Poetry___

Trust Your Eye: On Ordering Poetry

VCCA (Off I Go)

VCCA (What Works, What Doesn't)

VCCA (Tidal)

VCCA (In Threes)

VCCA (Rhythms)

Greetings from Mt. San Angelo

On Travel

Some End-of-Year Poetry Picks

Live from the Botanic Gardens in DC

Delivery o' Gratitude

Just the Right Book

Introducing: Modern Alice @ TRIP CITY

Catching Breath

A Monstrous Sigh of Relief

Miami Moments (2011 Book Fair Int'l)

Miami, We Meet Again

If You Don't Ask

A Food-loving Night in Philly (& Goodreads!)

Chatting & Touring for DKTBG

Sidetrips

Kicking Off the Boston Book Festival

Updates & Coming Up

Writer's Market & Poet's Market 2012

Weekend Food Edition

Playing with Old Poem Drafts

How Charleston Won My Heart

New Poem Draft

Friday Reads & Friday Edits

What I Think About When I Think About BlazeVOX

Looking Forward, Looking Back

"Projecting Your Voice on the Page" in VA

Absinthe!

Foxfire Ranch

Away Games

Home Fires

Blog Love & Coming to the Writer's Center

Bright Lights, Big City

Birth of a Book

Writer's Center DKTBG Giveaway

As the World Turns

Book Countdown: One Week

Independence Day

New Issue of Blackbird!

Very Special Delivery

Portrait of the Artist as a Sixth Grader

_Chicks Dig Poetry_