Goose Hill

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.

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 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 75 th 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 ri...

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 collaborativ e letterpress broadside series that I g et to co-design with my boss , Jehanne Dubrow. Read all about that one here .

So far, the cruelest month has been more than kind to me. Today, five poems from my series "Imago" are LIVE at decomP magazinE for their April 2013 issue. So exciting! There is also an audio recording of me reading my poems that you can listen to, if you like. This week at work we have been registering for the West Chester University Poetry Conference . And I get to go! Not only am I going, but my job is paying the hefty tuition. What is this wonderful new world I'm living in? I have signed up for the workshop sessions on "The Lyric" with David Yezzi . I'm a little nervous, but I am also beyond grateful for this opportunity.  And, yes, I am (so far) keeping up with my NaPoWriMo daily poetry-writing regimen. And it's been fun pushing myself again. I'm experimenting with prose poems, which I love reading but hadn't yet attempted to write.  And there's still my birthday to look forward to at the end of the month. Here's hoping it...