When I said in my last post that there’s been no poetry I don’t mean it completely literally, of course. I mean I haven’t been reading much; and not writing, this week. However, I am in the recent happy position of being officially “forthcoming” in three places (and that’s not counting your review, Tim, I’m on it), so you can definitely say I’ve been shaking it all about:
- Seam, the spring issue: a small but, I’m glad to have validated, evocative poem, transatlantic, with a grass snake in it
- Poetry Salzburg Review, the summer issue: two poems I am actually very proud of; I’m thrilled they’ve taken them
- Salt’s new online Horizon Review, out in the first week of March: a poem which will probably see me struck off the Serious register forever (or, more likely, simply marooned). I tried to flesh it out by sending her something even worse, with Brad Pitt in it, but fortunately she saved me from myself and said no.
And I’ve sent more poems off, to (I’m glad to say) very fine periodicals indeed. But better ones. No offstrikes.
Of reading, there will be things to describe. Once I have a date for the possible appearance of my Hecht piece I’ll get even more verbose about that. Here is a random stanza of Hecht, read earlier today when I opened the book for one second: the beginning of his poem A Lot of Night Music:
………….Even a Pyrrhonist
Who knows only that he can never know
………….(But adores a paradox)
Would admit it’s getting dark. Pale as a wrist-
………….Watch numeral glow,
Fireflies build a sky among the phlox,
Oh LORD. Well, WordPress is refusing to accept my coding for making those dots white, so the indenting won’t work. Goddamnit. Thanks, WordPress. Make the formatting an issue why don’t you.
But don’t you think that even that is enough to be going on with for a bit? These people who read 52 new collections a week. (Sorry Roddy, you know I’m also a bit envious.) Sometimes one stanza like that will keep me all day. (I know: “Sometimes I just forget to eat…”)
Oh, and series two of Mad Men finally starts in the UK tonight. None of the stuff in the papers seems to address the points, though. I think I started out to write more about that last year and then – er – didn’t. Well, I probably will now. And there are other rants and things queueing up delightfully in my brain.
Also: Today I ordered my very own copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition! I’m so excited…
Baroque in Hackney 