10-15-09
Never Forget

You should go and pick up a copy of Copper Nickel #12 and read my poem "Things I Don't Like Talking About" to find out what it is I don't like to talk about. Seriously, Copper Nickel puts out a really nice looking mag chock full o' nice work. Go check it out.

So, many years ago I was standing at the window of my kitchen in my old apartment spying on the people across the courtyard from me because I was bored. Then I wrote a poem called "The Courtyard" about it. And then Swink published it. What a great story.

So, many years ago a girl named Tessa drove me around a Vermont farm on a tractor. Then I wrote a poem about it called "Poor Tessa, The Tractor Girl." And then H_NGM_N came out today with a fantastic new issue and included it in it. What luck that I love H_NGM_N and they love me.

The Northville Review was nice enough to publish my poem "Rolling", which is always nice. It's one of the oldest ones I have so it's nice to finally see it in (electronic) print. Thanks to Erin over there.

I don't usually tell stories about my poems, but this one's kind of funny. The poem itself is true - it really happened, although it's much funnier when I tell the actual story. You really need to see how my brother flailed his arms. Anyway, I used to use it as an example of how a poem doesn't have to rhyme when I was teaching in Paterson and the kids loved it. I had never sent it out anywhere, but the kids would tell me how much they wanted to see it in print so they could feel like they knew me before I was "famous." So I hope one of my old students runs across "Rolling" and I hope they've finished theor homework.

I think that when they start singing "Tiny Dancer" in Almost Famous is one of the greatest things ever recorded on film. I like the part in Natural Born Killers when the Cowboy Junkies song "If You Were the Woman and I Was The Man" is playing in the background. I think they were on a bridge. That's right up there as well. I also really like when "For What It's Worth" plays during a shot of a helicopter flying low over rice paddy fields in any movie about the Vietnam War. It doesn't qualify as a Vietnam movie if it lacks that scene.

I thought I was having a brain aneurysm or a stroke the other day. Perhaps it was neither.

My e-chap, Useful Shrapnel (Scantily Clad Press), will be available on June 21, 2009. More info to come.