Fuel

Here at the last of 2009, I've been hoping to work through some of my reading backlog and this morning hunkered down with the newest-that-I've-received issue of Poets &Writers, Nov/Dec. I had apparently picked it up a few weeks back but soon found where I'd left off, "Beyond Intention," an excerpt from Dean Young's forthcoming and compellingly titled book of essays, The Art of Recklessness. I can't commend the book to you since I've only read this smallish excerpt, but I shall recommend this line taken from the excerpt of said book:

To cultivate fire is to perpetually gather fuel, sometimes to reconceive what is fuel.

The context for Young's comment is the case he is building for embracing a creative recklessness, specifically in writing poetry, as opposed to remaining within our tried and perhaps tired methods of writing whether they entail our intentions, expectations, assumptions or aesthetic notions. In this instance a poem is the fire . . . not a thing, Young suggests, but "a conversion."

That's an exciting comparison, one that resonates with some of my own thinking about fuel, about what "makes the engine go," as poet Stanley Kunitz put it. Making the engine go is what life consists in, whether it's writing a poem, novel, song or doing whatever it is that makes a person unique, whole, alive. I think of fuel not only as feeding a creative act, but as energizing resistance to life's decline. Part of resistance, I'm sure, is the ability "to reconceive what fuel is," to look beyond one's usual sources. It's a liberating idea for creative expression and for continuing to renew the lives we lead.

And so I wish you fuel for the coming year in its unseen joys and challenges, fuel for the fire that is you, fuel for your work and loves, fuel from unexpected places. Adieu, 2009. Happy New Year, All.

Juanita News!

Kore Press Pushcart Prize nominations are in. This year at Kore we've nominated Sally Ashton, Teresa Stores, Stephanie Balzer, and Heather Cousins. The Pushcart Prize is a highly anticipated anthology published annually by Pushcart Press. The collection of essays, short stories, poems and memoirs is chosen from hundreds of small magazines and presses across the world. Keep your eyes peeled this year for appearances by our Kore authors.

Congratulations and good luck ladies!

Blogging this week...

at Best American Poetry Blog, Sunday December 6 -December 12th. See you there!

Some Odd Afternoon

Doesn't every day feel like some odd afternoon? This is the title of my book forthcoming from BlazeVOX press. I took the name from a line in an Emily Dickinson poem, #80, which I first used as the title of a poem. "Some Odd Afternoon" will appear in the winter issue of Dos Passos Review. I discovered Dickinson's poem after reading somewhere how she was taken with armchair voyages and by the idea of Italy as an imaginative place--So am I! Many of her poems reflect these voyages, but I will copy her #80 here.

Our lives are Swiss--
So still--so Cool
Till some odd afternoon
The Alps neglect their Curtains
And we look farther on!

Italy stands the other side!
While like a guard between--
The solemn Alps--
The siren Alps
Forever intervene!

Armchair travel is the ability to look farther on beyond the curtains of an ordinary day, or over an entire mountain range that stands between here and desire. Poetry provides just such a journey for the lucky traveler, a door to another world.

Just Back

I just got back from reading at the San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival last night. What a treat. First California reading for Juanita-as-a-book, and cool to be back in the town where I first attended college as a bright-eyed 17 yr old. Yes, crop science was my major and I was going to get back to the land and set my soul free. Somehow. Too bad I wasn't interested in science. But I took beekeeping, soil science, and row crops, learned some interesting vocabulary including apical meristem and friable. I learned when to shoot the nitrogen and the various cultivation shoes used for planting and weeding. Beta vulgaris is the latin name for sugar beet. In the 70's they had no use for organics.

So I earned C's, got A's in Spanish and Music Theory and Harmony and Life Drawing. Duh. I think I did okay in beekeeping.

The drive down 101 was amazing. If you have the chance to take it this week, do. The landscape is an unfolding miracle, ablaze with the vineyards turning colors now that the grapes are in.

It was such a pleasure to be included in the festival. Many thanks to Kevin Patrick Sullivan, most excellent and animated poetry series host. I was impressed by the SLO poetry community, its audience and its readers. Good times. Also thanks to George and Alyn Burns whose gracious hospitality and friendship made the trip.

It's about 5:30pm now, the sky already dark, fall winding down.

Out of the Box-Seattle!

On October 1, I joined fellow Bennington grad poets Marjorie Manwaring and Nicole Hardy in a reading at Hugo House entitled, "So a Magician, a Blonde, and a Donkey Walk Into a Bar..." We rocked the house, it was the first time to read Juanita from actual covers, and a good time was had by all.

#Two-woooot! Juanita!

At last. Kore Press.