Some Recent Activities ...

The reading at City Lights was great fun, and those there seemed to be interested in the poems. It's still a bit spooky for me to look up as I'm reading and see folks following the text in their copies of the book. One of the advantages of print, I suppose. But, I wanted to say, I just, you know, made these up ... Having read the poems to audiences now several times, I've found that several of them have acquired a new word or two, or lost one, most often to make the poem flow better (to my ear) as sequentially spoken sound, once or twice to shine a glimmer more light on an implicit structure in the poem. When I read those now, I feel I ought to note the emendations and additions. "By the way, for those of you reading along, in line twelve I've added ..."

Afterwards several of us, old friends and new acquaintances, had time for conversations, and I look forward to continuing those in the weeks or months ahead.

This past Tuesday Thomas Rain Crowe and I travelled over to the metropolis of Spindale to meet with Ellen Pfirrmann, WNCW's Arts Coordinator, and record interviews and readings. I'll post more information about the broadcast schedule as I get it. There's another reading for NatureS coming up on July 7th at Osondu Booksellers in Waynesville, and Ellen said she'd probably broadcast some of our interview around the time of the reading.

Met with a couple of poets downtown last Monday (look forward to another post about what they're up to), and noticed that Malaprops now has NatureS on the shelf of local authors, or local poets, so it's there, along with "Transits of Venus", the earlier chapbook, for those of you who've been waiting for it to appear in that accessible location - and vortex of literary energy.

The garden's in, we had a little rain, so it's a great moment just to relish the expected summer. And to contemplate its tasks: hopefully I'll get straw mulch down in the next week or two so everything won't be buried in weeds by the end of July.

Like the man said, Onward!