My good friend, Max Greenstreet, has made a lovely short film called My Own Eyes. It documents his 2009 road trip in support of his wife's, Kate Greenstreet, second book of poems, The Last 4 Things. It is structured around a series of 7 questions Max asks Kate about her poetry. Kate is one of my favorite contemporary poets, so it is a treat to hear her talk about her poems, but mostly, to me, this is a film about how to be insatiably curious about someone.

I'm not really ready to tell you yet, and I don't think you're quite ready to hear about it. But soon, I will tell you about something that may have something to do with the Octopus Books catalog. In the mean time, keep doing your daily stretches.

Bad Blood #1 was a smash. Already bad. Already bloody.

My apartment building set fire last night around 2 a.m. I woke up to a fire alarm and peeped down the hallway through the peephole. The hallway looked clean and clear and unassuming and false-alarm-like. Then I went to the bathroom. While in the bathroom, someone pounded (kicked?) on my door and yelled at me to get out. I peeped down the hallway again. This time it was filled with smoke. I grabbed my camera, my coat, and my pajama pants and held my breath. Outside I met all my shivery neighbors for a while. They seemed nice. We're not supposed to have cats, but some of them have cats.

The apartment of my good friends, Kate and Clifton, is featured in the new issue of The Nest. And I just wanted to point out that if you look really closely at their shelf, you may spot a copy of my Factory Hollow chapbook, I am a Small Boy, and my first book, The Man Suit. How cool are they?!

Feeling Using Wolves in Paperback

Feelings Using Wolves, the third chapbook collaboration between myself and Emily Kendal Frey, is now available for purchase as a paperback from Small Fires Press. It's fully letter pressed, hand bound, signed & numbered in an edition of 74. Copies of the limited hard cover edition are still available too.

Here is a sample poem:

THE SPACE BETWEEN BURNED OUT SUNS

a planet
that doesn't know

to slow, a belt
of dust to hurl

out of control
through

last night
you were still

a ferris wheel
between my spinning legs


I made a poem-film from this poem:


The Space Between Burned Out Suns from Zachary Schomburg on Vimeo.

I wrote this poem in my old basement apartment in Akron, OH, in 2001. And now As It Ought To Be likes it and wants to show you. Some other things happened in between.

This represents the progression of how I felt about my Monday through Thursday this week.

The Clean Part, a poetry reading series started by myself and Mathias Svalina in Lincoln, NE, in the fall of 2005, and then continued in 2008 by Anthony Hawley, is now back in the swing in the fall of 2010. Its new hosts are Trey Moody and Jeff Alessandrelli. Here is their new internet home. So if you're in the United States on the 13th, go check out their first reading with James Shea and Rob Schlegel.

Octopus Magazine #14 is alive.

16 long poems from 16 poets! Plus reviews and recovery projects! Another fine issue (if I may say so) designed by Denny Schmickle and edited by Mathias Svalina and myself.

Thank you for submitting your work to our open reading period in April. We received hundreds of amazing manuscripts this year; each was thoroughly read & carefully considered. 

We selected three that we will publish in 2011:

Dear Jenny, We Are All Find by Jenny Zhang
The Black Forest by Christopher DeWeese
Conception by Rebecca Farivar

These manuscripts were finalists:

Off to the Nervous Museum by Claire Donato

The Next Monster by Julie Doxsee

I Write to You from the Sea by Laura Eve Engel

Everything Here is Ok by Sasha Fletcher

Power Ballad by Dan Hoy

Early Linoleum by Brenda Iijima

Kingdom of Throat-stuck Luck, by George Kalamaras

The Dottery by Kirsten Kaschock 

Sign You Were Mistaken by Seth Landman

Heart of Palm by Linnea Ogden

Emergency by Caryl Pagel

Lid to the Shadow by Alexandria Peary

The Abilene Paradox by Craig Rebele

Bloom by Rob Schlegel

Parties, by S.E. Smith

Common Birds & Their Songs by Melinda Wilson

Thanks again for submitting & trusting us with your work. It was an honor to read these manuscripts. 

Yours,

Zachary Schomburg & Mathias Svalina

Editors

Octopus Books

Today it was raining in that way it rains in Portland, that way I recognize. The moldy floral scent of it. The lovely wet wool of it. I ate a big bowl of tomato soup and then followed up with a cookie and milk. This is the best possible eating situation.

O West Virginia

Today, The Academy of American Poets sent my poem, "Testy Pony," to Poem-a-Day email subscribers. And the poem will have a home on the their website for a while. The poem is part of a manuscript-in-progress currently titled Fjords. Hooray!

I volunteered at Write Around Portland's XYZ fundraising event last night. I was in charge of speed scrabble. I'm not very good at speed scrabble.