Bullwinkle is a....

Sorry! Wrong cartoon.

"Sally Ashton is a hoot." That's the best 4 letter word I've ever been called! Check out the Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review online review of my latest book, Some Odd Afternoon, for the rest of the story.

If you're a subscriber to the print version, the full text of the interview also appears in the Spring/Summer 2010 issue.

Fourth of Juanita

Juanita is July. Of course she is. Heat and unrideable breeze. The burn begins when you swing your legs out of bed, walk barefoot across wooden floor to the open window. A smell of fresh tar and creosote. Flags fail to flap. She is a memory to fondle, a token in my pocket, a ring on a chain around my neck. Or did I only imagine? Do I? Apt. Each firework always bigger than the last, louder, choreographed to music and passion’s swell. Incendiary spray of purple, green, the surprise of golden meteors pause, drop like molten wax, cool to cinder you flick from your arm. You wait for the next explosion. The mind’s eye widens in recollection: a night to remember, one like no other. Such spectacles can’t be trusted. However they are all I have. Like a donkey I follow in the tracks worn before me. What has been traveled, what will be traveled again and again. July the exception. Fireflies, firework grand finale, every constellation undiminished wavers some promise overhead.

from Her Name Is Juanita, Kore Press, 2009

DMQ Review Spring Release!

Check it out!
Cover art by Charles Farrell.

Post at Best American Poetry: AWP rehash

I went to the animal fair-

All About Books

Fast and furious. And fabulous! Getting 2 books into production and between covers in the past 6 months has been a remarkable experience. Not exactly the ride I expected, but a real shot of the business side of writing. It's a bit like taking on a home remodeling project. At a certain point you just want someone else to decide which kinds of light fixtures to use. At other times you could weep over misaligned door trim. But now what I want to say is, I'm simply amazed.

If you're looking to catch me reading from them in the near future, readings are listed over there in the side bar. Yeah, over there.

Thoughts so far.

I went away to write and think and "catch up." I thought I would be writing here, on my blog. I thought I would get back to the Vespa serial, which I would like very much to do. I thought I'd figure out my next "project." I thought I would stay until Thursday. I thought I would get lonely.

None of these things happened. Okay, I thought a LOT and I did get somewhat "catched up." I have my syllabub about 99% done. Instead of writing here, however, I read other people's blogs and whacky facebook entries. I did read the Vespa serial front to back and then put it in a stack on the table and spilled red wine all over it when I found a fly in my glass, I mean, it was apparently in my glass but I found it on my tongue and then I spilled the wine everywhere including on the Vespa serial print-out. It wasn't a sign, but I never did get back to it. It has dried nicely, crinkly and rather wine-cellar scented. Maybe that's a sign.

I did have a good time though. I did write. It felt somewhat like a logjam breaking up or maybe the way it feels when it finally rains. Or maybe the way the stink bugs felt when I released them back to the wild. I had many encounters with the insect world, especially if spiders are included in that world. Chief among insects was the stink bug. ew. Also featured: a drowsy wasp and the floating fly. But now the rain begins again. The weather report says it 100% will until about 2am when I plan to be asleep and not notice the lessening. I'll wake up, pack the car and return home. I imagine I'll be driving in the rain. I'll be listening to Harry Potter on CD and I will be home unbelievably fast doing so. Can't wait. And at last I blogged.

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.