WhimsyLand

I had thought that it had been just a couple of days since the last blog entry, but it's been longer.  That's what happens coming back from holiday ... by the time you're caught up, you're behind on something else. 

I noted some comments from friends, including Joshua Clover whom, truth be told, I'm slightly in awe of.  I would have loved to meet up with all the Bay Area poetic denizens, but I'm notoriously spur-of-the-moment.  Also, I always place Joshua mentally in either NYC or Paris for some reason.

That's the Dean Young broadside, BTW. 

I really like this month's Poetry.  That will probably get me kicked out of some club that I was unaware I was a member of, but what're you gonna do?   Joel Brower's A Report to an Academy was charming ("and that she's awake now, sweet with sleep sweat, / patting her belly's taut carapace and yes / hungry as an ape but first a kiss mister") and so was Claudia Emerson's honest and unadorned Great Depression Story ("... A lone / house broke the sharp horizon, the train dreaming // beneath him, so he climbed down, walked out, / the grass parting at his knees. ...").  More tomorrow on that, but by the by, there's also a nice section of pen-and-ink drawings of various poetic luminaries (Ashbery, Auden, Crane, ...).

The most recent 32 Poems got tossed over the transom, and I'm glad it did.  32 Poems asks for short poems that get in, do what they're supposed to do, and get out.  That's my style, too, which is why I like the work they select.  As a special treat, this month there is work by my buddies Frank (of Frank's Title Service) Matagrano and Kelli Agodon.  Nobody splits an infinitive like Frank, and Allowing the Body to Finally Speak proves my point ("I am partial to the idea / of making love as a means / of stalling death, of allowing / the body to finally speak").   Kelli does a nice job with anagrams in You Ask Why I Write About Death and Poetry ("There's entirety in eternity / and in the pearly gates — the pages relate.")  Lots of other good stuff.  Also, the recent jubilat.  I'm running out of time, as usual, but will be back tomorrow.  Promise, OK?