Good Things by Good People: Mostly New York Edition.

Brian Trimboli and Megan Moriarty’s infamous zombie collaborations limp towards brains over at BOMBlog.

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Devon Branca is too smart for his own good at The Offending Adam.

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This poem by Florencia Varela is about this poet Eric Kocher.

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In the same location you’ll also find a piece by Genghis Khan’s ghostwriter, Will Arbery.

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Sam Amadon’s The Hartford Book won The Believer Poetry Award and also the award for best book containing a poem about breathing shit that I ever heard read aloud in someone’s living room. It’s an incredible book and so deserving.

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I’m reading poems this Saturday in Denver for the Bad Shadow Affair Reading Series, with Bhanu Kapil, Juliana Leslie and Kathy Goodkin. If you live there, you’re not me. But please come.

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The good people at the Sidewalk Cafe keep on being good, so get ready for a second helping of me and Mike Devine, a.k.a. Chickensh*it, on May 30 at 8pm. New songs, same faces.

A Good Goddamn Day for Music.

I can’t stop listening to this.

Or this.

Or this.

Or, um, this.

One Quick/Pic Thing.

 

I’m reading tonight as a part of the Southern Writers Reading Series. 7:30pm at the Happy Ending Lounge. Bring someone to kiss on because you’ll get no love from me.

It’s all lies. You’ll get so much love. Plus some poems.

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Also, our lil’ gig at Sidewalk went pretty beautifully. Thanks from the bottom of my heart to all who came out. If you didn’t, here’s a taste.

Not featured: the sweet beat-box sounds of the sweet beat box. Come out next time for that unique experience.

 

Good Virginia Things.

My amazing mom Wendy Saz is building an amazing new library in Crozet, VA. Everything about the library will be brand new, from the library building itself to the street it’s on. (It’s named after the library, so you’ll always know how to find it.) It’s going to be beautiful, and I couldn’t be prouder of the lady who made me, or of this other, better thing she’s making now.

Libraries do everything for you for free. They’re kind of surreal that way. So they’re not exactly making it rain. The new Crozet Library has a wishlist of books they’d like to round out their collection and sit on their brand new shelves. Please take a moment to peruse this list and donate your favorite book so that everyone can read it. It’s such an easy way to give back.

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In more self-involved Virginia “news,” I’m happy to be among the featured alumni on the Young Writers Workshop’s sweet new website. Almost as happy as I am to be returning there this summer to carry on the mind-blowing (and derecho-proof) program we began last summer in our new digs at Sweet Briar College. If you haven’t yet watched Jonathan Ade’s fantastic mini-doc on the program, do it.

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I’ve been listening to this. A lot. It feels right.

A Music Show.

Come out if you can, New Yorkers!

And here’s a lil preview for your ears:

I’ve Got Your Next Big Thing Right Here.

This The Next Big Thing thing is a series of self-interviews that’s being passed around the interwebs, chain-letter-style. I was tagged by two folks I really admire as poets and as people, Chloe Honum and Caki Wilkinson, whose interviews and work you should immediately stop reading this to go read. My interview is below.

What is the working title of your book?

I Write to You From the Sea

Where did the idea for the book come from?

It burst Alien-style out of the belly of a letter I was writing to my dear friend Sara, in which I felt compelled to explore some weird fishing language. Actually, it was called Sara, I Write to You From the Sea for a while, but at a certain point it stopped being a letter, or a letter to Sara, or maybe it was never either of those things to begin with. Either way, I kept at it. I’m not sure any of this qualifies as an “idea.”

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry. Failure.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I have a soft spot for Kirk Douglas in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, so maybe him. Maybe just his chin. Or that seal. And there are some weird little owls in the poem that I’d love to give Pixar a crack at (a la “For the Birds”).

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

“I’m on a boat, motherf*cker [sic].”

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I’m still working at it, but from that first letter until now, it’s been floating around (do you SEA what I did there?) for about three years. It’s something I work on when I’m not working on other projects, so it’s kind of undisciplined in that way. Having a couple of projects going on at once has been good for me, I think. It’s a way for my writing and my commitment issues to coexist.

To what other books within your genre would you compare your project?

I wouldn’t necessarily compare my project, which I half-lovingly think of as the Sea Thing, to these books, but when I want to get into a head-sea-space I sit with long poems like Wallace Stevens’ The Man With the Blue Guitar, Zachary Schomburg’s “The Pond,” George Oppen’s Of Being Numerous, A.R. Ammons’ Tape for the Turn of the Year, etc., trying to listen for what exactly sustains projects like these. What keeps us engaged with a poem that goes on for pages and pages. What occasions a poem of aggressive length.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My brain was turning over a problem. I was writing a letter to Sara. My brain was turning over her problem, which I mistook for my problem. I was near to but not visiting much water. I was reading Wallace Stevens’ The Necessary Angel and thinking about imagination and reality. I’d never been on a boat.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

If you’re so inclined, you can find sections of the poem in Denver Quarterly and Pleiades. I keep a tally in my head of people who tell me they “don’t get what’s up with the owls.” I’ve written parts of this book by Lake Mendota, the Prospect Park Lake, the New York Harbor, and the fountain in front of the Roy Cullen building at the University of Houston, but never the actual ocean.

Tag, you’re it:

Sarah V. Schweig

Julia Cohen

Karyna McGlynn

These are some remarkable ladies. You’ll love them.

The New York Times Is the New Pope of Interactive Features.

And I may be learning a teeny, tiny bit of Photoshop.

For my next trick, a Pope Mobile blinged out with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (forthcoming).