It ain't dead, it's just different.

 

After 6 1/2 years and 1510 posts, The Lovely Arc has grown a bit tired in this space. Instead, adjust yr knobs, and follow it over here at tumblr. It'll pretty much be the same thing (mostly photos, but now they can be tagged and organized). C'mon, let's go. It'll be ok.

If you're interested in a sneak peek of a forthcoming book of poems, Fjords, you should check out these new issues of Lumina, Tin House, and Filter.

Thank you, Ryan Donaldson, for your article about the Bad Blood Reading Series in the last Portland Monthly.

Bad Blood #6 is on its way, next Saturday, June 4. Graham Foust, Emily Kendal Frey, and John Niekrasz. Work/Sound. 820 SE Alder. 7pm mingle time. Come out from your awesome hiding spot.

Picked up my summer fiction reading list at Powell's today:

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

Some new books are coming your way, July 1. Everything is going to be ok.

Dear Portland, next Thursday: Joshua Beckman, Anthony McCann, and Jamalieh Haley at Bad Blood 5. It's kind of a big deal.

I'm telling a true story about my misfitness on the Back Fence PDX stage at the Mission Theater on Thursday, May 26. I'll be one of five story tellers for the evening. You can make reservations now, if you're into it.

A preview of the first issue of a new poetry journal, iO, has a poem of mine called "Tiny Castles" stuck in it.

Dear poets, you have through the weekend to submit your full-length poetry manuscripts to the Octopus Books' April open reading period. You can submit electronically, by email attachment. We make the manuscripts anonymous, and by a committee of 8, we will select two or so for publication. And between you and me, the numbers are historically low this year, so get on it.

All dressed up, but no award to accept. I even wore my lucky skeleton gloves to the event. Alas! Congratulations to David Biespiel for winning the Stafford/Hall Award for poetry at the Oregon Book Awards last night for his book, The Book of Men and Women. Read about the event here.

I'm leading a workshop at the Nebraska Summer Writer's Conference on June 11th and 12th. It is going to be hot. Meet me in the fountain in front of the student union building, and then meet me at Yia's Yia's after.

 

Today is the last day of voting for the Oregon Readers' Choice Award. The polls close at 5pm. Maybe you'd want to go here and cast your vote for one of the books on the list (special note: Scary, No Scary is on this list). 

Bad Blood #4, starring poets Joe Wenderoth and Tony Tost, and music from Danielle Sullivan & Kyle Morton, will go down at Crema, afterhours, 28th and SE Ankeny, this Friday at 8pm. Like always, bring a 5-er for the happy jar, and feel free to enjoy a few beers, some BB#4 ephemera, and killer poetry and killer music.

I've been asked to contribute a poem to Hannah, an anthology of collaborations between painters and poets. Here is a current pre-press line-up of the match-ups. I've selected this painting by Gary Webb. I think I am going to write about a death at a picnic.

Portland's own Typhoon is having a record release party for A New Kind of House, released last month on Tender Loving Empire. My poem, "Taking Out the Garbage," a poem I wrote for the band's lead singer and songwriter, Kyle Morton, is included in the album's liner notes.

John Cotner wrote a piece about the chapbook fair last month for Bookslut. He failed to mention how Nat Otting kept punching himself in the eye.

The postminimalist composer, Eve Beglarian, will perform "Testy Pony," a piece that she has arranged to my poem of the same name, as part of her performance, One Mississippi...River as Muse, at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland on Friday, April 8. Watch this video to learn more about Friday night's program.