Results for Best New Poets 2009 have been announced. Congrats to Sewanee pal, Adam, and to online writing group friend Sally! I had such a great experience with BNP last year, so I'm excited to see what this year's edition will hold. Write on, writers.
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Really digging the first of my Sewanee books, July 7th by Jill McCorkle. A death scene from early in the book, a convenience store is being robbed and they wrapped cellophane around the cashier's head:
"He is gasping, face down, the specks on the tile floor jumping and leaping toward his face. He doesn't have the strength to move his wrists. How many nights has he stared at these specks of color in the tiles? He would trace the specks into patterns and shapes just like Maggie always did with clouds. There's a rabbit pattern beneath the stool, a sea gull in front of the Slurpee machine. Now he sees black spots mingling with the specks, the plastic creases over his eyes. The gurgling is getting further and further away. He thinks of Maggie, spooning with Maggie in that warm bed, he thinks swinging, justa swinging, the gurgling gurgle of the Slurpee machine, gurgle, the sea gull in the tile, that damp cool sea gull, gurgle, just like little Barbara all those years ago, gurgle, swinging, gurgle, justa swinging."
-from Jill McCorkle's July 7th
(Algonquin Books, 1992)
Gorgeous stuff. I keep reading.
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Have you heard me recite Fred Chappell? How about Claudia Emerson reciting Emily Dickinson? David Roderick doing his best Robert Hayden? Check out Frank's new website!
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Killer first line of the moment:
"Window. Window"
from Wendell Berry's "The Window Poems"
(Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, Counterpoint, 1998)
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Trying to prepare myself to send out work to journals again. I haven't really sent out any poems since April/May. I'm reenergized about some of these older (and newer) poems after sitting down with them again. I want to find them homes, good homes. So I'm getting started on my list compiling, deciding what journals are realistic, might be good places, etc. Hard to believe we're only a month away from September....
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