O Branson

O Council Bluffs

O Norfolk

Some of the books I'll be carrying around in my bag while we travel to Norfolk, NE, Council Bluffs, IA, and Branson, MO, over the next week.

Haven't purchased new music in a while (maybe I'll get some iTunes money this week--there's so much on my list), but I'll be listening to:

Annuals Be He Me
Bright Eyes Letting Off the Happiness
Dirty Projectors Rise Above
Lifetime Somewhere in the Swamps of New Jersey
Matt Sweeney and BPB Superwolf
Of Montreal Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer
Okkervil River The Stage Names
Peter and the Wolf Lightness
Peter Peter Hughes the one hundred thousand songs
Rentals Return of the Rentals
Saves the Day Ups and Downs: Early Recordings and B-Sides
Smog A River Ain't Too Much To Love
Son, Ambulance Euphemystic
Stars In Our Bedroom After the War
Superchunk (the entire catalog)(comfort music)
The Teacups This Will Come Back to Haunt You
Ted Leo Tyranny of Distance
Wanda Jackson Very Best of the Country Years
Yo La Tengo I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass

The first picture is what I look like before going to dinner and Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol with A, P, and C. The second picture is what I look like after going to dinner and Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol with A, P, and C. You can tell that in the second pic I look as though I thoroughly enjoyed my dinner and my company, but not so much the performance.

I am glad when The Suit's violence is recognized. It is a violent book, I think. The next one's violenter, I think. A review in Rougarou that my friend Tyrone Jaeger told me about.

A free couch for Emily Frey, the poet with whom I indulge in collaboration, who no longer, everybody, is on the market for a couch.

I feel like I have so much to tell you right now--particularly about what to buy and read, and about where to go. I will tell you a lot soon, but for now: you should buy Issue #1 of Black Ocean's poetry journal, Handsome. And you should go to see Man's Last Great Invention tonight in Lincoln at Knickerbockers at 9.

A and I went to D and N's Apres Ski party Saturday night. It was a good time. I went in costume: snowflakey sweater and scarf. I made up a joke that goes: what do the polish do on the slopes in the winter-time: they skiski. It wasn't a successful joke. Sorry these pictures are blurry. I had a few boxes of wine, so these pics are probably pretty accurate.

Julia showed me this--part of her student's poem in response to a poem of mine called "[Opera Singer]" Is he talking about the boobs of the fish? The fish boobs look nice? I'm buying it. Ok.

Chicago was very good to me. The people there make me happy, make me want to write more poems. But first: grading 50 student portfolios and writing a paper about Romantic tendencies in contemporary poetry. Yesterday, A and I cleaned the house pretty good, watched a What Not to Wear and a Law and Order: SVU.

Chicago Pics