On Not Applying for an NEA

Been seeing lots of facebook stati and the like bemoaning the difficulty of the NEA grant application. I thought about applying, but I'm really barely qualified to send, publication-wise, and after seeing how much others are struggling with the system, I figure I'll just wait until next go round when most all these forthcoming poems will be out and usable. Anyway--good luck to those are applying: weather the storm! I want to be able to say I know an NEA grant recipient, so some of y'all better win! (Selfish motives, as always...)

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Killer first line of the moment:

"How they loved us"

from Alan Shapiro's "Last Wedding Attended By the Gods"
(Old War, Houghton Mifflin, 2008)

I'm not sure if I love this first line as much as I love this poem (which is, quite a bit). I want to re-print it in its entirety, though I'm not sure what the rules are on that. I've done it before, but always felt a bit sketchy about it. Is it okay to re-print published poems on blogs and the like? It's not against the rules or anything? Anyway--the more I read of Alan Shapiro, the more I buy in...

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There's a snapshot of a my poem drafting journal up at Di Mezzo Il Mare. Love this project, it's neat to see what people put down in long-hand, what gets crossed out. This particular poem was written while I was living in a tent this past summer in West Virginia. The poem has changed since then, and the revised version will be published soon on Di Mezzo Il Mare, which I think is neat, to have some record of the poem's evolution on the same e-zine. Anyway--send your journal snapshots, your poems, their way.


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A new-ish poem, to disappear in the not-too-distant future:

*plish*


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This video is crazy. Pharoahe Monche is crazy.