WhimsyLand

The cover of Poets &Writers is adorned with a picture of Valzhyna Mort (leaning on an accordion?) staring back at you with blue eyes, turquoise earrings, and an elfin grin.  If I handed the magazine to my mother, I'm sure she would say "cute as a button".  And yes, I called my mother today and even sent her a bunch of tulips last week.  Ms. Mort is a poet from Belarus, which coincidentally is also where Dima's parents are from.  Copper Canyon Press has published Ms. Mort's Factory of Tears, which includes the originals in Belarusian along with translations by Franz Wright (now there's an interesting combination).   I like looking at the Belarusian originals of the poems, which look like what I get when I accidentally pound out an email on Dima's machine (for which he occasionally turns on the Cyrillic option).  Wright's translation of "Cry Me a River" starts off:  "her body trapped in a voice / as if it were a cage / and roses thrown on the stage / like pieces of red meat".  Page One notes that Mark Yakich's The Importance of Peeling Potatoes, his second poetry book, has been published by Penguin.  It's not an all-Slavic issue, however.  Other items:  Small Press Points asks whether "poetry-only" presses are a dying breed, pointing out that BOA lost its standing as an IPOP (independent poetry-publishing publication) by releasing a story collection, as did Four Way Books, Wave Books.  Anhinga Press will be publishing a book of essays and Copper Canyon Press has published (Poetry editor) Christian Wiman's prose work.  Literary MagNet mentions Ninth Letter, Oxford American and Literary Review.  Rebecca Wolff's Fence enterprise is ten years old, and I laughed at her response to the question about the "booby issue".  Stephen Morison writes about the Chinese literary scene (very interesting).  There are a number of articles on fiction, fictioneers, and agents − which I don't tend to read.  I actually find the whole agent thing kind of comical.  It's not that poets don't have agents, of course.  Visit the Steven Barclay Agency and you can sign up for speaking gigs with Billy Collins, Louise Glück, Robert Hass, Seamus Heaney, Jane Hirshfield, W. S. Merwin, Naomi Shibab Nye, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Robert Pinsky, or Adrienne Rich.  SBA doesn't represent their poetry, of course.  They still have to lick stamps and send in their submissions and submit their manuscripts for consideration without benefit of agent, right?  I'm only kidding, of course.  The combined solicitation letters from litmags to these folks would probably fill a boxcar.  On the other hand, a mediocre Tom Wolfe book may only sell half a million copies in its first year, which is probably the total sales of all books over their lifetimes of all the poets just named.  I really liked Katrina Vandenberg's article on how to arrange the poems in your manuscript.  I just don't believe it.  More on that later.  Her advice is an 11-step program, which takes its inspiration from popular sources (Elvis Costello, Jr. Walker and the All Stars, Tom Waits).  My problem with this whole arrangement-of-poems-in-your-manuscript thing is that I don't know how to do it (OK, at least I'm being honest about my failings) and that I don't read any poetry book anything like front-to-back.  I also don't read magazines that way.  Or technical manuals.  I admit that I do read murder mysteries that way, but it's an exception.  But, I digress.  Amy Rosenberg discusses Melissa Delbridge's debut collection of personal essays about the South in Family Bible (OK, it's fiction but it was interesting).  Everything else was ads and the usual.  You have a nice Sunday.