A little good press...

... about the Spoken Word Series, courtesy of The Current.

A Geekity Gold Mine

In a spare moment this week I was looking for online instructions for the Faber-Castell slide rule inherited from my father (which replaced the junior version he gave me when I was 6), and I happened across (by way of the unaffiliated MoHPC) the online repository the HP Journal - a magazine presenting the technological advances produced by the scientists and engineers at that illustrious company. Few companies have been as successful as HP has over the years at reducing to practice (which isn't quite the same thing as innovating, just as technology isn't the same thing as science - but I digress) and if you're at all interested in the technological advances of the past 40 years, you MUST go look through these great journals.

My favorite find so far: an interview with the team lead for the development of the first "electronic calculator", discussing the industrial design requirements to keep the device "pocket sized", and how it "would eventually be competitive" with the slide rule despite its $395 price tag.

That's 395 in 1973 dollars, by the way.

The same page also provides access to the Digital journal, which takes me back to being thrown out of my high school's computer lab because sophomores couldn't be trusted at the PDP-11 terminals; that privilege was reserved for seniors. Good times, good times....

Thanks to the Hewlett-Packard company for making these available.

And yes, I am this big a nerd, and I can still use my slide rule a little. Don't believe me? Multiplication: C over D, cursor on C, read on D. So there.

Anyone up for a little Reverse Polish Poetry?

I just need a minute...

Someone get FPA on the line, and see what he thinks of Tom Glavine.

This is the greatest of September swoons
Somebody wake up The Mets
Looking for pitchers? Hire some baboons -
That just might wake up The Mets
Ruthlessly rushing like men late for dinner
Acting like Marlins are saints, Mets the sinners
Somehow converting the Phils into winners
Oh just shut up 'bout my Mets.

(With apologies to Tinker, Evers, and Chance and their claim to fame, I think this verse is of roughly the same quality as Jose Reyes' final at bat this year.)

Like Willie, I will be back next year, but oh Sweet Myrtle how this one hurts.

Thank Heaven I have Gang Green to root for now. That should keep me occupied until Halloween.

Wisdom from Parker and Hood

Smile, and the World will smile back at you;
Aim with a grin and you cannot miss;
Laugh off your woes, and you won't feel blue.
(Poetry pays when it's done like this.)

Reading Not Much Fun - The lost poems of Dorothy Parker, which after a quick thumbing seems more interesting for its abbreviated biography than Parker's poems. But she had a great gift for pun, which (for me) is always worth a closer look.

Great dialog about "giving up writing" over at first draft. I'm not really enough of a writer to be taken seriously when I propose to give it up, but the writers engaged in discussion in that corner of the world have some insights you might be interested in.

Two weeks later, the phone rings....

Oy. Just when you feel like you've got time to pick up a book.

Numerous good things this weekend if you're puttering around NJ looking for poetry:

George Witte and Tina Kelley are reading at 1978 Maplewood Arts Center on Friday night.

Opposite them, unfortunately, Joel Allegretti relaunches the North Jersey Literary Series at Blend Cafe in Rutherford (note courtesy of the never-idle John J. Trause, who also support poetry at the Williams Center). Of course, you could catch George and Tina and still make Joel's late set

And just in case this isn't enough poetry for one weekend, spend Saturday at the Warren County Poetry Festival. Linda Pastan, Kurtis Lamkin.... something for everyone, guaranteed.

As for me, I need to get to the TV immediately...

A Word From My Inner Ed Sullivan

One marvelous thing about hosting the Spoken Word Series is that I get a chance to meet some extraordinary artists and to have them play for a moment in my sandbox (they bring their own sand, of course, and take it with them when they leave, but now I've completely shattered what was once a promising metaphor).

Anyway, there have been a couple times - just a couple - when the series has been a small part of a truly remarkable artistic moment, and I heard recently from visual artist Nancy Tobin of the continuing momentum of one of those moments.

Last year, due to that magical combination of serendipity and familial obligation (just kidding!), we were able to host a collaboration between Nancy and the great Jerome Rothenberg as part of the Visible Word, an annual event at which we select visual artists and solicit new ekphrastic (sp?) poetry in response to their art. That collaboration is now available in a beautiful edition through SPD, and their joint work is also part of an exciting anthology called "Viz Inter-arts Event A Trans-genre Anthology".

By the way, not only are these terrific pieces of verbal and visual art for to have on my shelf. Also, for me, these books will be reminders of having had the chance to meet and work with Nancy and Jerome, who were just phenomenally friendly and accommodating throughout the process. I don't mean to imply that my offer of a stage and some wall space was essential to their creations. But I respect the legacy of the Really Big Shoeman enough to know how special it is to be there at those great moments in the arts. Even if all you do is recite the names and step to the left.

Mister Congeniality

Another pleasant and encouraging rejection this week, with a request to try the journal again. I appreciate these notes. I do believe that even form rejections come in flavors - the "What were you thinking?" variety through the "This guy gets it, but just missed" kind, and my most recent rejections were of the latter sort. I have a goal of having two submissions pending at all times, and this last flush brings me back down to one, so it's time to fire the engine back up. I do have to packages to prepare for editors who have requested specific poems they've heard me read - but I'm not letting myself consider those submissions, since even the nicest editors (and these two are just tops in the nice department) don't ask for what they don't want. Back to the portfolio.

Interestingly, both these recent rejected packages contained poems that had once before received the "You're so close..." rejection once previously, and now I'm thinking that my whole body of work tends to fit this description. Maybe it's time to take a serious look at the last couple years' production with this thought in mind. I wonder.

Watch the Watch

Spent a lot of time in traffic with my cousins yesterday and - as tends to happen with this bunch - a joke-telling fest was called for. Usually, I find myself sitting back and laughing - I'm a fair storyteller, but don't have a memory or knack for jokes. As things got going, an old joke leaped out of my mental file cabinet and into the room. Happened again a short while later. And when we had a quiet time a few minutes following I realized the connection between the jokes was that my father had told me them both. And a minute after that I looked down at my wrist, at the tuxedo watch I took from my father's jewelry box after he passed away. First time I had worn the watch (at least in a couple years), first time I remembered any jokes during joke time (at least in a couple years).

No, I don't know what that means.

Confidential to Yonkers: My father says "Face it: This one, you hit right".

Bits II (The Back From Vacation Version)

Just getting back from a week on the gulf coast of Florida, swimming, eating, (two words which interestingly can be easily combined into "sweating") and visiting some great local attractions (among which I do not include the surprisingly many street corners featuring early stumpers for Ron Paul). Didn't keep tabs on the blogroll while away, which seems to have been consistent with the plans of most of my listed-at-right writers.

Some things to regain my momentum for the coming months:

• I posted my first review at Goodreads this morning. Just 340 more and I'll have caught up to Jeannine's three-month total (she'll be up to 527 by then).
• On that note, I'm finally getting around to reading some of the books I picked up at the NJ Journals Festival in May. Vacation is good for that, as opposed to work and kids, which had dominated the summer to that point.
• Due to schedule confusions, we had to postpone the annual ekphrasis event of the Spoken Word Series; Robert Milby is our replacement artist for October. Hopefully in the Spring.
• Another thing vacation is good for is writing. I don't know if it's the time, the pressure, or just sufficient marination, but an idea for a poem sequence that I've been kicking around nearly forever burst forth in the form of 6 drafts in 6 days. That's an explosion of output for me, and its momentum dragged forth 2 drafts on unrelated subjects. I'm thinking of building the sequence into a submision for Missouri Review - I really like that journal and their website (editorial entries/essays, especially) is outsanding, but the submissions guidelines have always intimidated me ("TMR publishes poetry features only--6 to 14 pages of poems by each of 3 to 5 poets per issue. Please keep in mind the length of features when submitting poems. Typically, successful submissions include 8-20 pages of unpublished poetry (note: please do not send complete manuscripts--published or unpublished--for consideration)".
• This week and for months before, I've been carrying around my father's copy of Fermat's Enigma. It was the last book I bought for him before he died, and I know how much he enjoyed it. I've wanted to read this book since long before I sent him a copy, but I can't seem to get through the first page. I guess vacation can't cure everything.

Bits

I've been wholly preoccupied with work and my fantasy baseball team (trade deadline 19 August!), but here are a few things to add to your background noise:

• Looks like the new 5AM just arrived at VerseDaily. Kelli Agodon had a terrific poem from 5AM featured there yesterday, and today's selection is also from that journal. Well done, Kelli.
• Ray Bradbury has a new book coming out in a couple weeks: It's shorter work (two novellas), which I think is the form that suits him best - I have all his short stories on my shelf, and I'll be adding this one in short order.
• Have I talked here the new season of the Spoken Word Series yet? Gabrel Welsch? Kate Greenstreet? Timothy Liu? David Tucker? Local artists Catherine Magia and Scott Summers and Walking English? I've always been proud of our presentations (and of still being alive as a series going into our 7th year), but this year we've set a new standard for diversity of voices without sacrificing talent bit. This hear I'm joined by cohost Siobhan Barry-Bratcher in delivering the verbal arts to Hoboken.
• I've got two of my poems picked out for the Deb Ager Stanztember Challenge (I'll keep suggesting names until you tell me to stop!). In good faith, I will admit I have their openings lines in memory already from frequent quoting, but I won't store anything else until Labor Day - to be compliant with what I imagine the rules to be.

Well, that does it for freebrain time for this week. Be seein' ya.

The Gift of No

Just received a great rejection from kaleidowhirl. Editor Cynthia Reynolds referred to one the poems I'd submitted and commented "{name deleted} is very close to what I am seeking for kaleidowhirl; I welcome your submissions during future reading periods."

This was a stretch submission for me, and I don't mind the rejection at all when it comes with feedback like this. It came in 4 weeks and contained guidance and encouragement. What more can you ask for? An uncommented acceptance would actually be less satisfying. Well, maybe...

If you haven't been there, give kaleidowhirl a read, including the abcdarium of wordplay and other resources and links there.

Thank you, Cynthia. I look forward to your next issue, and I'll be trying you again.

I will assume that by now you are familiar with the Funky Winkerbean storyline about the recurrence of Lisa's breast cancer. Lisa has had quite the life in this strip, from her teenage pregnancy and the giving up of that child to adoption to her reunion and union with Les to her first bout with the illness that (it has been announced) will claim her this autumn. And if you have a newspaper of any size that still has a decent Comics section, you probably have had at least one article like this one from my local paper.

There are a couple issues to tease out here, and I think they have direct relevance to poetry, and poetry manuscripts in particular.

First, the gut response that "this isn't a subject for the comics". I think this is an emotional reaction that expresses a personal use of the comics: as pure escape. It's certainly fair not to want your flight of fancy tinged with tragedy. However, it is equally unfair to hold an entire art form accountable for one's own purposes. Yes, there are comic strips that are pure whimsy. There are also poets that tend toward pure whimsy (Ogden Nash comes to mind). But I'm surprised that people who object to the presence of the unfunny in the comics consider themselves "traditionalists", ignoring the difficulties presented in "serious" strips like Mary Worth, The Phantom, and Prince Valiant (a personal favorite).

Which leads us to point two: you should enjoy the comics you enjoy, and I will enjoy the comics I enjoy. Neither of us should feel the need to tell our newspapers to take the other's comics away. How is it a reasonable response to tell a publisher not to serve someone else? There is an intelligent position here, one already practiced by many papers six days week with Doonesbury: Put the subject comic in appropriate context. Doonesbury runs on the editorial page in most papers in this area.

So what’s the application to poetry and poetry manuscripts? First: The simple getting over of what’s “appropriate for poetry”. Diane Lockward recently blogged about an expectation of niceness in poetry that some people have. That needs to be gotten over – anything can be the subject of a poem. I could personally stand to see fewer about death and George Bush, but that’s my preference.

And preference is how we get to context. A manuscript – generally – has a consistency to it. A tone, if not a theme, though I tend to prefer thematically linked books (or collections with some good narrative sequences, at least). Within the manuscript, a poem that’s way off on theme or tone can disrupt the experience of the collection in a way that subtracts from its value – even if the offending poem is itself good! That’s my issue with some poets’ later collections – they mix their experiments into the pages in a way I have trouble enjoying – and it’s my sole complaint against the newspapers running the Lisa’s Cancer story. My complaint’s not with Funky Winkerbean writer Tom Batiuk, but with the editors who haven’t adjusted to his content. It’s a different collection – not part of the one it’s stuck in with now.

But then who reads the comics any more anyway (wait, there’s another similarity to poetry…..)

Jersey Writing Stuff (Non-Fiction)

Newspapers may be going the way of the mammoth, but I happen to live in a zone with a pretty good one. What's more, the columnists of my local Newark Star-Ledger are beginning to establish a credible presence in the 'sphere.

Stephen Whitty, the terrific film reviewer and columnist who has read for the Spoken Word Series, has always been very interactive with his readers, but now has a blog that accelerates those interactions into a real dialog. I'm not as much of a filmgoer as I used to be (though that's starting to change as the kids become suitable viewing partners), but I find his reviews extremely well-crafted and enjoyable even when all I know of a movie is its television hype. His profiles of film stars are great reading.

It helps to be interested in NJ politics, but even if you're not you'll appreciate the craft in Paul Mulshine's columns and now in his blog. Mulshine is a devout Parrothead (if a non-member of the following may be permitted to use the word) and defender of the sanity and responsibility of the individual in NJ, and his essays are infused with cultural, political, and personal insight.

They're not blogging -- yet -- but the columns of Kathleen Shea and Kathleen O'Brien (the Jersey one, not the Texas one or any of the others that lurk beneath the surface of Google search) are available at the NJ.com site, and if you're not as fortunate as I to live within their circulations, I really encourage you to stop by. The former Kathleen's Bad Mother Reports have a tremendous following (ardent enough to get people to a reading in Hoboken who had never attended a live reading OR been to Hoboken!), and she's great fun to work with. The latter can wander anywhere from behavioral evolution in society to next-stall celluar etiquette. Wait, that's pretty much the same thing, isn't it?

I have been tending toward non-fiction (the historical sort) in most of my non-poetry leisure reading for about a year, and I've really come to appreciate good practitioners (because there are some awful ones - particularly executing parenting and 20th century history books). These four writers are consistently good, entertaining and insightful, and I recommend them, their still-fine newspaper, and their burgeoning web presences to you.

Next up: Weighing in on the weight of the comics. Sneak preview: The only rational argument also applies to editing an anthology or your own manuscript.

Welcome, Diane!

Diane Lockward - excellent poet, organizer of one of the best poetry events in NJ, and generous supporter of the writing communities she has helped develop through her teaching - has joined the blogosphere.

She was reluctant at first, noting: "I resisted in the past, thinking blogging was perhaps a waste of time and perhaps a bit self-indulgent. Maybe it is. But I've also realized lately that a blog is a good way of joining the larger community of poets."

I think she's right on all counts. And I'm sure she will have something to add to the mix.

Coincidentally, Poetic Asides chose this week to post an excerpt from the 2008 Poet's Market interview with 5 poet-bloggers with some guidance on how poets might want to approach blogging. The good news is, their list contains at least one piece of advice to support just an any approach Diane (or any of us!) should choose.

Please welcome Diane with a visit. The link is to your right.

Publishers, Is This What You Really Think of Fathers?

OK. I have come to accept that the "Poetry" section in most commercial bookstores is going to contain the works of Jewel, Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, and two local authors. But I also accept that - for the most part - contemporary poetry is a limited-appeal art form and a bit of an acquired taste. As a pledge to the fraternity of the word, I feel comfortable admitting this aloud.

But parenting? Is there really an acquired taste for being a good parent? An attentive spouse and caregiver? My local paper recently ran a microreview - a positive microreview - of something called "Dad's Own Housekeeping Book" (Link deliberately omitted). Author David Bowers is a stay-at-home Dad and in general seems to be a creator of useful books, and I hope he won't take this personally, but:

Oh, please.

I'm sure it's filled with useful advice (to be fair, I'm reacting to the review, not the book), but how many more books do we need that assume male parents haven't progressed past Ricky Ricardo? The publisher's description of the book (via BN.com) opens with "Just because you’re born with a “Y” chromosome doesn’t excuse you from cleaning the bathroom, especially in this day and age when time’s at a premium and partners have to be, well, partners." Excuse me, but which of us knuckle-dragging cavemen in the 45 and under category hasn't been living this since we first dropped to one knee?

Maybe my ire is misdirected. What I'm really aggravated about is when friends anticipating their first blessed event turn to me for resources (knowing my first approach to just about anything is to acquire baseline knowledge and the right vocabulary), and I have just the one suggestion: Armin Brott. Don't get me wrong - Brott's books are pretty good, and I learned much from each of them (except for some of the deliberate redundancies of Father for Life). But are these really the only books available that don't assume that we (fathers) are stupid, reluctant, incompetent, depressed, belligerent, or some appalling combination of these? Maybe I'm missing the forest here, but for every "Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads", I see 6 "Keeping the Baby Alive till Your Wife Gets Home: The Tough New 'how-to' for 21st Century Dads". I mean, even the (presumably) well-intentioned anthology Fatherhood displays a dismal lack of awareness by including Plath's "Daddy". I'm not looking for pollyanish, sunshine-and-saccharine treatments, just ones that don't think me an imbecile, a jerk, or a monster. Isn't there market for a book about caring, positive, literate fathering experience?

Are there good books out there I just haven't found? Or is this my call to arms? Or, more accurately, to pencils?

RIP Sekou Sundiata

I am very surprised at the degree to which reading of Sekou Sundiata'a passing struck me just now, and I'm trying to understand it. I was introduced to his work at the first Dodge festival I attended, and I had a chance last year to sit in on a couple of his smaller events. People have been referring to him as a "performance poet", and he certainly was that - in his craft discussion, he mentioned that he tended to want to produce a CD, not a book, when he was compiling his poems. But when I asked him what might be different about writing for the ear as opposed to the page (which is how I interpreted his comment), he gently pushed back on my assumption. He clearly wanted his work to be an experience in print or in person - an event no matter how it was encountered - he just seemed to think of the CD as the way he would present the work first.

He had a quiet but forceful presence at the microphone, the kind that for me that makes clear the distinction between confidence and arrogance. Arrogance says "I have had these experiences and I know things better than you and I will tell you them now. Sit down and listen." Confidence says "I have had these experiences and I'm going to talk for a while now. You might want to listen." His presence was augmented by a great set of pipes - the kind of effortless bass that baritones with aspirations of C like me can't help but envy.

I've been looking for links to audio files of some of what he presented in his Dodge appearances so I can talk more about how he adjusted his work in real time, and how the crowd began to create our own rhythms in response to his, but I can't find them. Maybe later.

In the meantime, here are a few links. If you never heard him speak, find some audio below and give a listen. You won't be disappointed. I'm going to go stick Longstoryshort in the player and close my eyes.

Some links:

• Wikipedia's (already updated) entry
• A Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross
• His TV appearances.
• An AAP article.
• His CD Longstoryshort with some audio samples.

Expanding Your Sources

I came to my current marginlly serious approach to writing by a circuitous path. While I've always played with words (my earliest "serious" effort being a novella penned in the fourth grade about a villanous plot to make Mars invisible to the Earth for nebulous and never-detailed nefarious purposes). But I was always more active as both participant and practitioner in other art forms. I've been a chorus and band performer in since first grade, played the accordion since the 4th (more bands, but as a serious solo for the first time, acted in and directed plays and conducted musicals since high school, and devoured books of all genres for as long as I can remember - including those 4 glorious summer of commuting into Manhattan, where I averaged 2 books a week (one I particularly remember was Ed Koch's Mayor - not to date myself or anything...).

My point is this: my poetry today is heavily influenced by sources other than poetry. If you surf the body of my work, you'll of course find weak echoes of Stevens, Frost and Williams, and some more contemprary influences as well. But you might also detect the influence of Loesser's lyrics, any number of prose authors of any period (Twain, Bradbury and Zelazny, to form one non-obvious group), and one I'm often surprised to find myself turning toward, Woody Allen.

If you only know Allen from his movies (or worse, from his more recent, more average movies), you are avoiding the company of brilliance. He has a new book of essays out, his first since 1980, which I'm going to pounce on this week.

...UPDATE BEGINS HERE...

Having always been enjoyed books, plays, and movies in that order, I first came upon Allen in a copy of Side Effects stolen out of my Uncle Frank's bedroom when I was 13. That copy has since been stolen from me, which makes a sort of sense. But I still have my Without Feathers, which has any number of examples of how all great writing has elements that poets can learn from.

Excellent poems are often built around phrasing which is both unexpected and perfect. As in this line, opening "The Early Essays (On Seeing a Tree in Summer)": "Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable, with the possible exception of seeing a moose sing "Embraceable You" in spats".

What I love about that line is how it starts in ordinaryness (banality, even), and wrenches you to someplace completely different and unanticipated. We can debate whether it's funny (I know, Mother, I know), but there's no debating its originality and craft.

Another example: Allen's names are designed to dive through the ear and create tangible and complete characters by the end of the sentences in which they are introduced. Names like "Sir Osgood Mulford Twelge" and "Kaiser Lupowitz" seem to come with headshots attached.

The point is that Allen is brilliant at dropping you someplace you could not have anticipated. It may not be taking the top of your head off, but remember what Mr. Allen had to say about another of Ms. Dickinson's quotes: "How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not "the thing with feathers". The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to that specialist in Zurich."

NOTE: All quotes are from Woody Allen's Without Feathers, 1975 edition. Also stolen from my Uncle Frank.

I don't know how long they've been around, but Writer's Digest has a number of pretty active blogs now. Seems the poetry one is pretty new, with posts from Nancy Breen and Robert Lee Brewer from the WD Books cast list. I discovered Poetic Asides through a comment made over at Jeannine's place and visited with some trepidation. I gave up on WD a little over a year ago, when it became clear to me that their opinion of meaningful poetry content wasn't aligning with mine (also when Nancy Kress's contributions became less frequent).

It's early, of course (though relative posting rates being what they are, Poetic Asides will have reached the word count of this humble establishment before summer's end), but I think it shows some promise. I think anyone who frequents one or more of the poet's blogs at right will find the content a little light at first (the concept of the spam prompt, for example, are quite old to established poet-bloggers), but remember these blogs aren't for the established "blogosphere", they're for WD aficionados learning what blogs are and are not, what they are capable of and who they can reach.

Which leads me to a question. Many of us began the discovery our voices through relentless imitation. Some of those imitations must have, at times, found a way to an audience (publication, workshop, friend-of-a-friend), and that audience may not have recognized the imitation. For example, a good hunk of my early work aspires to be After Apple-picking or Birches. But a good hunk of my "immediate audience", having a knowledge of Frost that ended at the edge of the woods, therefore learned of the original through my works. Is that bad? Does it mean my work is less meaningful? Less useful? Sure, to one "schooled in the art" my work brought nothing new, but for some people, my work was the key to deeper knowledge of Frost. And to me, those same poems were the apprentice work that helped me hone my sense of rhythm, of sound, of line, etc. that have become something of my own voice.

So: Imitation of the past greats: good or bad? Useful? If so, to whom? Does it deserve positive, negative, or no attention from those who discover it? Enthusiastically joining the blog party without deep, knowledge of what earlier-arriving guests brought with them: good or bad? Useful? If so, to whom? Does it deserve positive, negative, or no attention from those who discover it?

My answer: Poetic Asides may bring new readers the long way around to the places Ron Silliman et al have been working in for years. It will definitely add a new voice, even while it searches through what came before looking for a place to settle in.

(Quick aside, poets only): first submission in almost 2 years went out yesterday. Got any luck you feel like sharing?

(Another quick aside, SF fans only): If you haven't already, go read the July Asimov's - Nancy Kress's novella is terrific.

(Final quick aside: computer nerds only): Any idea why Blogger is resisting accepting a title for this post?

Independence!

Independence from a tyrannical June, that is. A difficult month for a number of reasons which, for tradition's sake, I will not detail here. So. Draw a little picket fence (which is what we used do to between frames of a really bad line of bowling to indicate a fresh start - when we kept score with pencils, that is. Remember those terrific overhead scoring "systems" where you wrote with a nice soft pencil on an acetate and projected it overhead? But I digress...) and let's start this blog new.

Spent Independence Day at the Grover Cleveland Birthplace for their annual 4th of July Ice Cream Social. They really do a nice job - aside from the freezer for the ice cream and the guy on playing Mala Femmena on the synthesizer, they provide you the experience of a party they way it would have been when Cleveland was a boy. My kids rolled hoops, played marbles, enjoyed the game o graces, and dressed up in time-appropriate garb. A delightful afternoon overall.

During my hiatus (which clearly began long before I declared it here), it's occurred to me that I may be a sort of Ed Sullivan as regards the poetry world. After 20 years on and off and 6 years of serious pursuit, I'm confident to say that - even if my career someday shows me to be a B+ practitioner of the art myself - I have a good ear and sense of the craft, have realized some terrific luck recruiting some really fine poets to read in my series in Hoboken, have had some success "discovering" artists in some way. Case in point: the pairing of poet John J. Trause with painter Michael Filan in our Visible Word event. When the fruit of your ideas is good enough to get picked up by objective third parties, you gain a little confidence. And I am just as pleased to see my idea flourish in recognition for other artists as I am to have my own words recognized; in my mind this is one of the things that distinguishes managers and mentors. If you will: Confidence in the skills, independence from the ego.

Speaking of which, I won't have time this year for the annual watching of William Daniels' wonderful portrayal of John Adams in 1776. Good thing I have it memorized.

This Here Little Unintentional Hiatus

Well, just in case anyone is still dropping in here from time to time, let the notion that I'll be posting meaningfully any time soon be gone from your head. June is shaping up to make May look like the slothful Sunday at the heart of a long weekend.

The corner deli ("Your source for Cosmic Liverwurst since 2003") will reopen on July 4th, which hopefully will signify my independence from some current time-consuming activities in addition to portending a sleepless evening for my kids and the delicious overnight smell of sulfur.

Among the things you have waiting for you upon our return:

• Tidbits from the Celebration of NJ Journals
• Upcoming publication news
• Details on an exciting Spoken Word Series 07-08
• Complaints about Bobby Abreu's batting average

Please partake of the menu selection to your right in the interim, make sure you stop by the home planet if that's not how you got here, and I'll see you soon.