Living on the Earth

Day 153 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and a bunch of new people are reading my recent chapbook, Living on the Earth (Finishing Line Press, 2010, New Women's Voices, No. 74), because I had a release reading for it today in my general hometown area.

At the exact same time as the World Cup soccer finals.

OR a few more people would have been there, who love poetry AND soccer.

Also simultaneous with the Sugar Creek Arts Festival, a fabulous gathering of artists and craftspeople. And county fair foods people (corndogs, funnel cakes, kettle corn, of which I ate none. ) I did, however, purchase a melted beer bottle (Rolling Rock), with blue beads on it, from Total Meltdown.

I am very grateful, and pleased. Some people who came announced themselves afterwards as poetry reading "virgins." Wow! And, while I did explain much of my attire...

1) Batiked silk shirt, bought at a previous Sugar Creek Arts Festival

2) Earrings made from recycled rolled paper, from the Beads of Hope project, Africa, purchased at Printers Row Book Fair, Chicago

3) Shoes worn for Clean House, at Heartland Theatre, the reading venue...

...I did not tell them I was wearing polka dot underwear. I am telling you that, faithful readers.

Some old faithfuls came, including my mom, who rocks. And a guy from church, with fabulous blue eyes, a guy I keep trying to set up with single women.... (It's OK, he doesn't read my blog...he doesn't own a TV, either.) The virgins. My dad, who gave up the first part of the World Cup to hear me.

Julie, of A Follow Spot, the sweetie.

Some of my students. And fellow area poets. Amazingly, it was a fabulous turnout, filling the center section of the theatre!

Thank you, all.

Lunar Men and Women

Day 107 of the “What are you reading, and why?” project. Linda, a professor of astronomy, is reading The Lunar Men, by Jenny Uglow (what a perfect name!), about the scientists and engineers of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, England in the late eighteenth century.

“They met on the Monday after the Full Moon so as to have light to travel home by,” says Linda, “and discussed science, inventions, and politics. Many of them also wrote poetry and literature.” A lovable bunch of "lunaticks," these fellows were, as the subtitle says, Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. Indeed, one was James Watt of the famous steam engine, and one was Joseph Priestley, who figured out what oxygen was! One was Josiah Wedgwood, of Wedgwood china, and one was Erasmus Darwin, who gave us...Charles Darwin, his grandson, and evolutionary awareness. And one was a toymaker, Matthew Boulton. What a powerful bunch of inventive brains!

Wow! And tonight is the full moon, giving plenty of light to travel home by (if it doesn’t storm) or poetic inspiration. I am very touched that many people have been writing, calling, and emailing to say they are reading my new poetry chapbook, Living on the Earth, just out from Finishing Line Press and also available at Babbitt’s Books, which has a little almost full moon on the cover. (See, I told you I would tell you more here in the blog when it came out. Sigh, once again, all about me! But, never fear, I’ll be linking you to plenty of Un-Me.)

The working title for this book was Living on the Moon, and was building itself around what would have been the title poem, first published in Fifth Wednesday. (Thanks to editor Vern Miller for that, and guest poetry editor Nina Corwin of the inaugural issue!) Here is the poem, partly inspired by a news story on National Public Radio and partly by a feeling of alienation, as business and politics “as usual” carried on in our country and my personal life was squeezing the air out of me.

Living on the Moon

When they finally come, they’ll find me
here already. I won’t have disturbed
the flag on its pole,

only a photograph, anyway,
only a memory now.

I’ve received the radio transmission
on Neil Armstrong’s sound glitch, his intended grammar.
They will all want to say the right thing

but there’s not enough oxygen.

I’ve watched the ice caps melt. I know why
they are coming.
They’ll discover on their own how cliché devolves

into truth: you really can’t go home again.
But I can show them how to live here step by step,
small by giant.

I’ve learned how to breathe
with my helmet off.

I’ve learned how to climb out of all the craters.

Then we had another election, people started to go “green,” the local food movement took off, I quit my job and left everything but my husband, and I began to feel more like Living on the Earth. But that’s another title poem, for another day. (Thank you, dears, for reading my book!)

Meanwhile, the cold Martian winter has, as scientists expected, caused the Phoenix to bite the mythically red Martian dust. A mythical Phoenix may rise from the flames, but a NASA Phoenix cannot rise from the carbon dioxide ice on Mars. Is somebody reading The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury?!

100 Days of Bookitude!

Day 100 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project! Really, I've been doing this for 100 days! If you are the 100th day reader...hmm, I don't really have a prize, unless you want a copy of my first poetry chapbook, Selected Roles (Moon Journal Press, 2006), as I still have some of those. Cover art is a painting by my husband! (Let me know, and we'll figure out how to send you one!) Image for today is the poster from a past event, the poetry reading at the arts center, during Illinois Arts Week.

Mainly I will celebrate with some bookish news culled from the Internet and National Public Radio.

For example, NPR told me this morning that this day in 1609 brought the first publication of Shakespeare's sonnets! Yay! Oh, that reminds me that I have another thing to celebrate: a nice review of my chapbook Broken Sonnets in Fiddler Crab Review, an online magazine that celebrates the chapbook, or the very slim volume of verse.

NPR also shared the news that George Washington never returned the book Law of Nations to the library, but, lest he be thought a deadbeat, a society has donated a new copy of the book to the library, which has waived the $300,000 fine.

And, as I told you in an earlier entry, the Lost Man Booker Prize was indeed awarded yesterday. And the winner is....Troubles, by J G Farrell. Here's some info about the book from the Man Booker website:

Troubles is the first in Farrell's Empire Trilogy, which was followed by The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) and The Singapore Grip (1978). The Siege of Krishnapur won the Booker Prize in 1973 and was shortlisted for the Best of the Booker, a special award created to mark the 40th anniversary of the prize in 2008. Farrell died in 1979.

So Farrell was a big Booker winner, it appears. I could not find The Bay of Noon, by Shirley Hazzard, also nominated, at work, but I will keep an eye out for it.

Ah! And we will be celebrating at work, too! Not the 100th day of my book-blog project, but a little gathering of current and former co-workers. We were going to go to lunch together, but the boss is headed to Chicago, so, while the cat's away, the mice will play. That is, we will clean off the counter and have a picnic while we mind the store!

I doubt there will be cake, but there might be cookies. And hummus. And my famous pasta salad, with tuna and green olives!

Ah, and my other cause for celebration is that my new poetry chapbook, Living on the Earth (Finishing Line Press, New Women's Voices Series No. 74), is indeed out there in the world, and people are receiving their single pre-ordered copies. I have not yet received my big box of author copies, but you can be sure I'll let you know when I do, in another "all about me" kind of blog entry. Because, you know, it's always all about me.

Living on the Earth

A fellow blogger here, Julie Kistler, featured my forthcoming poetry chapbook, Living on the Earth (Finishing Line Press, 2010), on her new blog, Follow Spot, which will cover local arts events and more! Here is the link to that:

http://afollowspot.blogspot.com/2010/01/living-on-earth.html

The book is in that crucial advance sales period, when early sales help determine print run and keep publication on schedule. You can order here:

http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm

where my current book, Broken Sonnets, is also still available to order easily in this way! That is very nice of Finishing Line to have the 2 books side by side with both International and PayPal ordering buttons!

I am tickled to have 3 "slim volumes of verse," as they say, sort of out there in the world. (The other is Selected Roles, a chapbook of theatre and persona poems based on my years as a professional actor, and it's available at Babbitt's Books.)

http://www.babbittsbooks.com/

I was listening to Piano Jazz on WGLT last night, our local NPR affiliate, about practicing music. People who get really good at what they do are practicing all the time, playing all the time, or, in Michael Jordan's case, playing basketball in the driveway all the time. Some of us are writing all the time, various forms, various ways. I write or revise a poem almost every day for great stretches of time (with some natural interruptions or periods of rest), so this is comforting and encouraging. If I keep doing this--daily, joyful, diligent practice--maybe I will be one of those people!

I am still reading and re-reading The Barbaric Heart by Curtis White. I really like it. The narrative voice in this one is still passionate and funny but not as curmudgeonly as in The Middle Mind. He's just as much a social critic, primarily of the groups of which he is a member, thus practicing what he preaches about self-examination and self-criticism, but there's a stronger sense in this one of compassion, wide and deep.

White gives voice to an impulse I felt way, way back in college (Kenyon College!), reading political philosophy for the first time, to raze everything. Not literally blow anything up, of course, just go back to the start, the heart of it all, the place in mind that allows for clarity of vision, courage, etc. First, see clearly, and then find the path.