Mint, honeydew, seafoam

Hopefully these two typewriter cozies have made it safely to Zurich by now. Twin cozies, custom-made for two 1968 Hermes 3000 typewriters with seafoam green keys. And these have a new feature: a large button hole for the machines' protruding carriage return lever.

 

Hermes 3000 photo by The Typewriter Workshop in Berlin.

Friday night bookbinding club

This why I don't throw out the scraps:

• Leftover Stonehenge paper strips & navy blue Irish waxed lined thread from my Cold Moon Press printing and binding project last summer. 

• Leftover marbled paper pieces & typewriter photograph from my Typewriter Trading Cards assemblage project. 

And now I have a beautiful little poetry portfolio!

I didn't have to buy any new materials AND I got to break in the brand-new elk bone folder that Emma made for my birthday. So fun! 

 

Submittin' time

Now that we've made it to quittin' time for NaPoWriMo, it's time again to start submitting my work around. It is always exciting to think about the possibility of my poems actually ending up in the magazines to which I submit, because I do not just fling my work out there to anyone and everyone. I choose these lit mags very carefully. There has to be something about them that resonates with me, that makes them a publication I'd be proud (and humbled) to add to my resume. So far this month, I've submitted a batch of poems to:

1. A cappella Zoo
2. Paper Darts
3. Sugar House Review (or I will do, when their reading period begins May 15)

I also decided to be crazy ambitious and submit a chapbook manuscript (my poem series Imago, from NaNoWriMo in November) for dancing girl press's open reading period. For this display of poetic-hubris, I will blame my extremely supportive NaPoWriMo-partner, Emma. 

Goodbye, National Poetry Month. Hello, Lumberyard!

The final day of National Poetry Month (and NaPoWriMo, of course) has brought with it some of the best poetry news. In February, I submitted my "Atomic Age" poems to this beautiful magazine The Lumberyard. I may have gushed a little bit about how much I liked this magazine. The words "striking" and "edgy" come to mind. Also, LETTERPRESS! 

Well, my bit of amazing poetry news is that today I received an acceptance letter from The Lumberyard for two of these three poems! My "Atomic Age" poems will be printed in Issue No. 11. I am on a poetry cloud today and I'm not sure when I'll come back down. Happy Poetry Month, one and all.


P.S.
This is lit mag acceptance number 3 for this year! I've already met my New Year poetry publishing goal for 2013 and we're only embarking on May. Let's see if I can exceed my own expectations.

LibraryThing Early Reviewers: The Resurrectionist, by E.B. Hudspeth

The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black,
by E.B. Hudspeth

Who doesn't love a good mad-scientist-creating-conglomerate-creatures story? I know I do. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is surely the great-great-grandmother to this book, but it has more recent relations. 

While reading Hudspeth's The Resurrectionist from Quirk Books, I was reminded of another good read I picked up a couple of years ago at a library book sale: Lives of the Monster Dogs, by Kirsten Bakis. In both The Resurrectionist and Monster Dogs, there is the feeling of morbid fascination combined with a profound sadness that I find hard to shake. There is always a sacrifice of innocence to reach the climax of this artificial evolution. In both of these books, it is the family pet who suffers for his owner's scientific ambitions. And to me, this feels like the worst kind of betrayal, making the results of these animal-blending projects even more horrifying. 

I gave it 4 stars.

NaPoWriMo 2013: a retrospective

NaPoWriMo is just about done now and I'm coming away from it with a minimum of four good poems. Looking back over this past month of daily poetry-writing exercises, I have come to the conclusion that during this writing-marathon, more than anything else, I have given myself more freedom to experiment with poetic form.

I wrote my first prose(-ish) poem while composing some green-tinged Dorothy-Gale-in-Tornado-Alley poems to submit for Fairy Tale Review's Emerald Issue, a celebration of the 75th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz.

Another experimental-form poem I wrote is titled "Prometheus goes on a blind date," which was partly inspired by descriptions of the shrike in the new show Hannibal. This poem is cut in half down the page. On the verso, is a description of a shrike (the bird) eating its prey. Reflected back on the recto, is a description of the Titan Prometheus on an awkward first date in a contemporary setting. The poem can be read from left to right across the page or from top to bottom, on first the left and then the right. The events on left and right are chronologically connected, yet separate. I have no idea if there is a name for this form, I only know that I have read something similar before. 

Reasons number 26 and 27

Have I mentioned how much I love my job? Only a few dozen times, right? Well here are a few pieces of concrete evidence that support my claims. The creative and literary projects which I get to help shape, through both planning and hands-on participation, leave me with such a great sense of fulfillment when I leave my office at the end of the day. 

26.
 This gorgeous hand-printed letterpress poetry chapbook with hand-tinted engravings. Read all about the project here.

27.
This collaborative letterpress broadside series that I get to co-design with my boss, Jehanne Dubrow. Read all about that one here.