A furrow in my brain,

a line etched in my hand: 

if habit has its way,

it will confound the two.

Save yourself and flee

the narrowed net. 

Cast a new law's circuit

over you and them. 

--RMR 

What I've been reading lately and loving: Rainer Maria Rilke's Uncollected, Catherine Wagner's My New Job, Jennifer Moxley's Clampdown, Lewis Warsh's Inseperable, Garrett Kalleberg's Malilenas, John Berryman's Dream Songs, Heather Green's No Omen, Brenda Hillman's Practical Water, Andre Breton's Earthlight, Kristin Naca's Bird Eating Bird, Mark Strand's New Selected, Dorothea Lasky's Awe, CD Wright's Rising, Falling, Hovering, Luciano Erba's The Greener Meadow. 

O Shirley

"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead."

And so begins my night...

Holiday Wish List #2

I'm finding it difficult to be a good blogger when my camera is on the fritz. I have no pictures to show you. I've been seeing cool things, but you'll never see them. It's frustrating. So, that makes me think I should put a good digital camera on my christmas list. Maybe a nice little Canon Rebel (I might as well upgrade). 

While I'm at it, all these things from Holiday Wish List #2 from last year are still in play. And you should take note of that PressPressPress wish. If you've been telling people you're all about the small presses, prove it. Our new slogan: Prove it at PressPressPress. 

The 8th issue of Mantis is here, just in time to save us all. In it, I have some translations of Andrei Sen-Senkov's poems about Hitchcock films. So. 

Still swimming after all (2) these months. You can't even start to stop me. 

Note: I've dropped my camera too many times. It is now officially on the fritz. I thought you might enjoy these, the last fuzzy photos it ever snapped.

Holiday Wish List #1

I badly want these two books of poems from two of my favorite younger and living poets (but I'll probably buy them for myself when they come out, so don't worry about it). Graham Foust's A Mouth in California and Brandon Downing's Lake Antiquity. 

I've always been interested in the drafts of covers of poetry books. I've sometimes wondered what some books may have looked like if a different cover decision were made. Like the final versions of Scary, No Scary and The Man Suit, Denny Schmickle is responsible for these drafts (above) as well, though it is entirely possible I meddled way too much for these to feel quite right. 

In hopes of inspiring some of the rest of you with books to post your would-be covers, I thought I would post early drafts of SNS. Anybody else care to share? 

Heather Christle Week!

And so begins the holidays: This week HTMLGiant, the self-proclaimed “internet literature magazine blog of the future,” will be celebrating Heather Christle Week in
honor of her debut book The Difficult Farm. Every day this week, HTMLGiant will present poems and features relating to Heather Christle’s The Difficult Farm.

In conjunction with HTMLGiant’s Heather Christle week, if you order a
copy of The Difficult Farm this week from Octopus Books you will be
automatically entered into a contest to win a free letterpressed
broadside of Christle's poem "Barnstormer," from Nor By Press.

Heather also has two upcoming readings on the East Coast. You should
consider attending them:

Friday, November 6
5 PM
Agriculture Reader Salon at NYU
with Joshua Cohen, Matthew Rohrer, and Diane Williams
Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House
58 West 10th Street
New York, NY
More information

Friday, November 13
8 PM
Amherst Books
with Christopher DeWeese
8 Main Street
Amherst, MA 01002

For just an 8 dollar bill, you can hire the United States government to create a chain of service that, in just 2-3 days, will bring the beautiful new issue of Caketrain into your mailbox. I have some poems about refrigerators in there. And today I'm on Verse Daily. So.