WhimsyLand

Many thanks to the contributors to Many Mountains Moving Volume VIII who read at the MMM Bash last night.  The tables were laden, the audience was lubricated, and the readings were brilliant.  Barbara Sorensen, assisted by issue editor Malinda Miller, performed their usual magic and spiffed up the reading parlor to a high literary gloss.  MMM volumes were on sale, with a sign that said "We have issues!".  A Druid priest blessed the event outside from the sidewalk (we were, after all, provided wonderful space by incomprehensibly generous St. John's Episcopal Church).  Small children proceeded each reader with a flurry of thrown rose petals.  Each contributor took his or her turn delighting the members of the audience, one waxing on about his extraterrestrial abduction, another reciting a poem about the virtues of his 14 prior wives.  Diane Glancy, noted literary figure and featured speaker, kept us all spell-bound with her reading of The Similitude of Oxen, a mixed-genre piece so compelling that every single MMM editor voted YES! on the first pass.  The readings continued.  We wept, we laughed, we text-messaged old friends.  As the evening came to a close, guests were pitted against one another in oratorical arm-wrestling contests to see who would take home the last of the Mother of All Meatloaf, the last tempting pieces of Malaga Street Vendor Shrimp, the remainders of the Carribean Black-Bean-and-Cilantro hummus.  Ah, what a night.  Photos here.

If you're like me, and I know I am (apologies to Kevvy), I still don't understand the relationship between The Canary − the wonderful and arresting journal of poetry edited by Edwards, Twemlow and TR − and The Canarium.  Little matter, though. Two renowned critics and poets, Jordan Davis and Dan Beachy-Quick, have provided some top-drawer review in the Slow Readings section of the site, Jordan on Michael Morse's "Void and Compensation (Assisted Living)" and Dan on Philips Jenks' "Untitled".  Check them out.

Junie is in Florida with her siblings, mother, nieces and traveling paraphernalia.  She called to tell me that somewhere it's 85 and humid and that place is Orlando.  It's quite a shock for Midwestern snowbirds, I would imagine. 

I just read the last few weeks of Robert Archambeau's blog, which is entertaining, instructive and occasionally brilliant, in measures.  I may be overreacting because I haven't gone blog-hopping in a month or more.  What would I think about Radish King, Rhubarb is Susan or Emperor of Ice-Cream Cakes?  I'd better take it slow.

Hah!  If you're old enough, you remember those Irish Spring commercials where the Irish guy took this wicked looking knife and sliced into a bar of the soap to reveal its masculine green stripes.  The Irish guy then intoned "What a manly smell" and the the Irish gal in the background chimed in "and I like it, too!".  Well, I had one hell of a manly smell this afternoon.  I received two fresh and new-smelling headlamp assemblies from a dealer in California and installed them on the Subaru-with-failing-eyesight.  It took me 45 minutes with a metric wrench, a tiny screwdriver to pop out the connectors, and a bottle of Fat Tire wobbling on the battery for encouragement.  God, what a feeling.  Fixing your own car is like wrestling a water buffalo to the ground.  Well, maybe not that macho, but I did feel like I deserved to eat red meat for dinner instead of my usual vegan pasta arrangement.  Next up:  a new bumper!

See you tomorrow.  And I mean that in the poetic sense, where tomorrow is a day in the future when all we can remember is yesterday.