Exceed Anything

Local news bulletin:

The National Weather Service is calling for a historic snowstorm to move through on Tuesday and Wednesday. “Snowfall amounts at Seatac could exceed anything seen since November 1985, a top five record 24-hour snowfall amount,” writes the NWS on this forecast discussion. How much? Anything from 6 to 14 inches in the immediate Seattle area.

Get out the mittens and the wool socks. Make sure the dog gets walked. Read a poem, write a poem, go sledding make snowballs and be safe.

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Sometimes an actor performs a character, but sometimes an actor just performs. With writing, I don’t think it’s performing a character, really, if the character you’re performing is yourself. I don’t see that as playing a role. It’s just appearing in public.

-brief interview with Joan Didion

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Fishouse started entirely by accident. It started as a way for me to memorize poems on my commute to work. I asked my friend Camille Dungy if she’d record for me. Honestly, at this point, I forget exactly how we came to it, but we decided it’d be cool to get a couple of recorders and send them around to other poets to do the same thing. Then we thought, well, other people will want to hear these recordings, too, so let’s post them on a website. That was 2004, and it was still a little unusual to have online recordings of poets, especially poets early in their careers.

-interview with From the Fishouse's Matt O'Donnell over at 32 Poems

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Topics include: Haiti, Ayiti, the pronunciation of “Ayiti,” Omaha, immigration, Phillips Exeter Academy, television, tiger moms, soap operas, sugar cereals, Victor Newman, 90210, architecture, Yale, dropping out, cracking up, road trips, chat rooms, love affairs, older men, Montpelier, Michigan Tech, technical writing, Eastern Illinois, Indianapolis, respect, advanced degrees, titles, online literature, Sean Penn, sugar daddies, insomnia, and philanthropy.

-an interview/podcast with Roxane Gay

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Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.

-The Rumpus

If I lived in San Francisco, I would go to this.


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Can we talk about how there's no radio station in the world like KEXP?

Also: this song is great.