Getting It Right

Great week: book launch reading in Seattle (standing room only, sold out of books: a world gone gonzo), had some of the new poems provisionally accepted by one of my favorite journals, and found out I'll be having a book-signing at AWP (2:00-2:30 on Friday at the Greensboro Review table). Can't wait for DC...

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The 50 Most Loathsome Americans of 2010

(on the list: Paula Deen, Christine O'Donnell, and LeBron James)

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Here’s a leap. Hemingway’s story “Hills Like White Elephants” is many things: perfection of his minimalist style; an example of excellent dialogue; a snapshot of two people that reveals their entire lifetime; imagery that resonates in its depth and emotion; and of course, being a “teachable” story that often requires an explanation that the young couple is talking about an abortion. But the story’s staying power is in its tragedy: it’s a story about not being able to see the world in metaphor, a story about the crushing of a woman’s imagination.

via Terry L. Kennedy

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Kelly Cherry of Halifax County has been named poet laureate for the state of Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell has announced.

Hooray Kelly!

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I applaud Luke's generous work for managing to be both religious and domestic, without being high-handed or overly sentimental. Above all this book is an honest account of difficult love.

-Many thanks to Sandy Longhorn, for her incisive and generous review of the book. If you haven't read her work, do yourself a favor and buy this book.

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"Since I started writing poetry as a child I’ve had one object: to see clearly. There are moments of my life that I keep returning to, writing about, and never getting “right,” so I return again and again. A few years ago I wrote a chart of a hundred moments that my mind drifts back to, or that still puzzle me, and I spent the last year relistening to them, some deep listening, that was more of a meditative practice than a writing process, but much of my second book,Migratory Restlessness, (coming out in a few years from Copper Canyon Press) has arisen from this re-seeing, re-listening."

Great interview with Ed Skoog from over at the Ploughshares Blog

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And now for something completely different. You're welcome.