balanced on the edge

Many thanks to  poet Michelle McGrane, author of peony moon, for compiling an exhaustive list of poetry picks for 2009. Michelle posted nine days of readers’ top-three poetry collections of 2009. You can find my picks here.
Although the three books listed were top on my list the day I sent Michelle my selections, I could [...]

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Poet and editor Sam Rasnake has published Karen Head’s poetry project at his online poetry and art journal, Blue Fifth Review. Read the exquisite corpse poem, “Monumental,” which she directed from her perch atop the Fourth Plinth on Trafalgar Square in London. She also includes process notes about how she views art and collaboration.
I [...]

Many thanks to Helen Losse and Phoebe Kate Foster, editors of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, for including two of my poems in their fall line-up of poetry. It’s gratifying to see the poems begin a life outside the confines of my computer’s files. If you have a chance, read the Southern Legitimacy [...]

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Today is day six (for me) of the Poetry Postcard Project. I wrote in response to a poem by Lucia Perillo titled ‘The Crows Start Demanding Royalties,’ from her collection Luck is Luck. The poem was sent to me by my Poetry Swap partner, a pen-pal activity Dustin Brookshire has created. Thanks to [...]

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I based a poem on a detail from this painting by El Greco, titled ‘La Sagrada Familia.’ The postcard shows only Mary’s face.
Detail of La Sagrada Familia
after El Greco
What you see is my face
below a psychedelic nimbus,
hair held in place under a lace mantilla,
eyes downcast, skin like cream,
lips and robes stained
the color of ripe [...]

Below is a flier announcing riverbabble 15. I have a short fiction piece included. It’s a few days after the solstice, but the evening light is still with us, a nice time to read. Here’s a direct link to my piece, ‘Dusk.’
Celebrate the summer solstice
and start your summer reading with

riverbabble15
Bloomsday issue
is now [...]

As part of the MFA program I’m starting, I need to read and ‘explicate’ many poems. Although I have three years to complete the readings, I’m beginning now because I’m a nerdy book worm, un ratón de biblioteca, as they say in Spanish.
To make the project more interesting, I thought I’d share some of my [...]

Fiona Robyn has posted a short poem I wrote for her blog, A Handful of Stones. Each day Fiona posts a different ’small stone,’ an observation of the world or a fleeting thought or feeling. As Fiona says, “a small stone is a polished moment of paying proper attention.” The one from me she [...]

Karen Head just sent word that her new book, Sassing, has just been released by Wordtech Press. This is Karen Head’s second collection this year, coming after My Paris Year (All Nations Press, 2009). She very generously shared three poems from My Paris Year in the first issue of ouroboros review.
One aspect of Karen Head’s [...]

On Saturday evening my husband and I went to a Vietnamese restaurant in Midtown, drank a few beers and ate crispy tofu (that was me, he had calamari), and then went on to a reading of Song of Myself by Walt Whitman. I’m so grateful my husband came along with me, because he rarely attends [...]