5am insomnia

So it has come to this. I cut short the family visit in order to enjoy a few days of R & R before goingback to work and here I am wide awake at 5 am for some inexplicable reason, making a batch of green apple soap and reading blogs. I would normally blame the Peach Nehi sugar rush, but I actually just cracked open the 2 liter now to combat the dryness everywhere, my throat, the apartment, the ridiculous static when I add yet another sweater to combat the radiators that never run quite enough during these terrible bleak days of winter. Of course, I can alway go back to bed later, but there are so many other things I should be doing. I should be cleaning the bathroom or doing laundry. I should be making something or working on a poem. The building is unsually silent with all the Loyola students on break, so no bad music and screeching drunk girls. The dorm building across the way is completely dark and for all I know, I may be the only person awake in the universe. Only 80 or so days til spring and I'm counting every one of them.

I am currently chilling out in post holiday stupor at my parents having endured a couple of days with iffy electricity, so I figured I'd better take advantage of the internets while I can. Besides going it pioneer style on occasion, the holiday was good. Lots of family, presents, and food, and there's still another gathering this evening. I wound up a little mini-fridge for beverages in studio, a mortar & pestle for grinding herbs for soapmaking, some new towels, some luscious lotions, and a wealth of bookstore and Starbucks gift cards that will probably be used up in a week.The weather has been awful, an ice storm on Wednesday that made getting out of the city a nightmare and glassed over the trees until they split. Today, a white blanket over everything and giant, thick snowflakes. I've had my fill of winter and the direct flights to Myrtle Beach for the Rockford Airport seem ridiculously tempting, though I fear if I went, I might not come back.

I also had some unfortunate news from Ghost Road that they are, for all intensive purposes, putting on hold new publications due to a combination of factors (health problems of the editor and the economy), and will thus be canceling my contract and won't be releasing girl show after all this year, which gives me a couple of choices. I can either resubmit it elsewhere (though I'd really like to focus on submitting the new book this year) or just bring the thing out as a dancing girl title later this year. The latter is especially tempting since I would have full say over layout and design, which makes my inner control freak very happy. On the other hand, even though I thankfully have gotten past that self-publication self-doubt and definitely believe this mss is ready to be released, I'm not sure, since I am definitely a newbie at the full-length book business, how much I can get the book successfully out there enough in the way that Ghost Road and Dusie have done such a good job with the previous books. In February dgp will be releasing Robyn Art's photog/poetry collab, and I was hoping to solicit a couple more mss I have my eye on for the coming year, but it's all very much in it's infancy. Of course, perhaps the best thing is trial by fire and just to go with it.

new from dancing girl press

Land Wide to Get a Hold Lost In / Shelly Taylor




A Classic Game of Murder/ Katie Cappello




The Plath Poems / Nava Fader





Silt / Erica Wright





The Chainsaw Bears / Erin Elizabeth Smith





People Who Are in Love Will Read This Book Differently / Cindy St. John


Also, I have about 5 more 2009 titles that will be released over the next few weeks, including books by Elizabeth Barbato, Laura Madeline Wiseman, Melinda Wilson, Stephanie Goehring, Eva Schlesinger, and Renee Angle..check back soon...

finally...

a new decade

It occured to me this week, and probably for the first time, that we are on the verge of closing out a decade. I guess maybe it seems sorta anti-climactic after the whole Millennium brou-haha..or maybe it's that people don't exactly know what to call this decade (the 70's, th 80's, the 90's, the what? Two-thousands sounds sort of clunky.) All in all, it's been a pretty great decade for me. I moved back to Chicago and found a job I rather liked. Managed to write enough to finish 4 books and somehow miraculously get three of them released(or will be soon). Started an online lit mag, then a chapbook press, then an art & design studio. Finished my MFA and finally learned not to take po-biz so seriously. Somehow aquired three more cats and lost one to old age. I read probably hundreds of books, commuted over 5000 times. Ate alot of Thai food and Starbucks. Have probably assembled close to 8000 chapbooks. Learned to like my body and love my sometimes godawful hair. Learned how I like to dress, what I like in bed, where to find the best thriftstore stuff, and how to fix my computer. Also, how make jewelry, code HTML, and how make a poems not suck so much. Developed an affinity for vintage pyrex and discovered that I was wrong for years about not liking guacamole.

It's been a pretty great 10 years..

last minute gifts?

From December 12th-December 18th, we will be shipping daily and upgrading all US domestic packages FREE to Priority Mail to help ensure pre-holiday delivery. Visit dulcet...

merrily along...

It's been a bit quiet here at the blog the past couple weeks as I've been making and packing things and working on a whole batch of new dgp books. I will be doing a GIANT press update next Friday, and depending how many titles I have done, is shaping up nicely, including titles by Erica Wright, Erin Elizabeth Smith, Katie Cappello, Shelly Taylor, Cindy St. John, and Nava Fader, all ready to print, and others in various stages of completion (about 6 or so) that will hopefully be nearly finished by then. I will also be, before Christmas, announcing the full-on lineup for next year as soon as I iron-out something like a schedule, but I can tell you now, it's pretty freakin awesome. There will also (FINALLY) be the full-length poetry/photo book by Robyn Art & Robin Barcus coming in February, as well as titles by Mary Ann Samyn and Jessica Bozek coming right after the first of the year..also a really interesting quirky little project from Ariana Sophia Kartsonis and Caleb Adler. And, of course, that is merely the beginning. I've resigned myself to lots of early mornings and late nights in the coming year, but what else is new?

Last week's open studio, which was paired with a big holiday celebration in the Fine Arts Building, was a huge success, but I find myself this weekend rushing to restock all the goodies that sold. The soap has been selling like hotcakes anyway, so that's what I will be working on mostly this weekend, in addition to some more flasks, some candles setting as we speak, and a couple other little things. I also have big plans for the shop after the holidays, including a line of wedding invites, some spiral journals and planners, those pesky pillows that I'm still perfecting, and new line of soaps that are more "manly" and less "girly" in all sorts of scents like wild sage, black currant, and sandalwood.

I am going to try, once again to get my Christmas tree up tomorrow..I've talked myself out of it twice now, but hopefully this time I will actually get it up. I think I am down to only the gifts I still have to make. The hardest of course were all the wee ones that seem to have started sprouting in the family, all of which need to be bought for, as well as the usual gifts for the immediate family, and the name exchange ones for both sides (both pretty easy ones). For the little ones, all under 2 years old, I got these puffy little fabric books (yeah, it's a little early for reading, but it's never to soon to start them off on a book addiction). For the oldest, who's 4 and unusually precocious apparently, I was thinking a totebag or pouch filled with all sorts of notebooks, pencils, and art supplies. When I was around 6, my aunt gave me something similar and while I barely remember all the Barbies and the gadgets I amassed at Christmas gatherings, I distinctly remember how I enamoured I was of the pens in different ink colors. Not much has changed. I was looking for cute kawaii stationery stuff on etsy and realizd I had about $40 worth in my cart and figured the 4 year old won't really care whether it came from Japan or the dollar store (where it probably comes from China). But, hell, I wanted the Japanese stuff for ME..(the scented highlighters wand decorative tape were especially covet-worthy.)

december1 by wickedpen featuring Rupert Sanderson shoes

That little sale below made for a very successful Black Friday/ Cyber Monday in the shop, so to keep the holiday momentum going, I've decided to offer free shipping worldwide on all jewelry and accessories all through December. Things are starting to get a little nuts as they always do, so I will most certainly be pulling some earlier mornings in the studio to get done everything I need to get done.

The weekend was the usual mess of family and too much food, and I was definitely feeling the cabin-fever restlessness that might mean cutting my Christmas visit a little shorter than I'd initially planned. I was so happy to sleep in my own bed last night. Plus I always feel like I'm just postponing the inevitable amount of work that I'm not getting done while I'm away, so it's hardly relaxing, not to mention actually getting ready to go out of town, the tying up of ends, the packing, the last minute prep is way too exhausting and I usually wind up spending the time away recovering from that which could have been avoided had I just stayed home in the first place.

dgp angst

I am beginning to wonder if it's more grueling to whittle down to 20 chaps from a current 32 contenders (and that's after 2 rounds of cuts) or to just publish the damn things, which actually seems like less work, or at least less mental work/anguish, than deciding among them which to keep, which to reject. Argh... I am hoping to decide by this afternoon. On one hand, I've been feeling the burn of being too overloaded. Things have been going very well as far as sales and income, so while budget concerns aren't really a determining factor, time is definitely an issue, even if I had some help. I am such a control freak, I doubt I could handle help anyway. I am thinking maybe I could plan for the next year and a half of books, which would work with the 32 I have, and then not accept submissions until the summer of 2011 for the following year. But then I also don't like giving poets such a long lead time until their books are out. Argh...


In the meantime, I am finishing up a couple of galleys to send to poets and just waiting til 5 o'clock when I can head out of town for some Turkey Day festivities, which will no doubt involve excessive stuffing consumption and Black Friday shopping exploits. I plan to buy everything on etsy this year, but I like to window shop and look for decorations. The goal was to get my tree up last weekend, but it just didn't happen, which means it will have to wait til the first weekend in December. I am actually a little excited by all the holiday glitz and twinkle lights for once. Christmas usually blindsides me, but this year I am ready.

new additions

green tea & ginger teacup candle $22 | dusty lavender hand dyed vintage slip $35| lavender hand dyed silk scarf $28 | mimosa goats milk soap $6.50


dulcet

things (both random and profound)

*I have a new poem in the inaugural issue a nifty little UK based journal Blue Eyed Boy Bait. Since I don't have the time to submit much new work out into the world these days, my new publication frisson was badly in need of a jolt. Maybe I will work harder on trying to fix this..

*In dgp news, Critical Mass, the blog for the National Book Critics Circle, gives a nice little nod to Flood Year and dgp...Karen Weyant also has some complementary things to say here.

*I will be announcing final decisions on next years publication slate in this next week, as well as releasing a couple of new titles as I finish them. I have just about every book for this year laid out and ready to go to the authors if they already haven't, so amazingly am feeling pretty much caught up if a little tardy. I have been working like a madwoman to get book stock built back up after the sale craziness and have been in the studio every morning over the last two weeks making books. My arm hurts a little from the trimmer and I have a couple of rather wicked papercuts but we are in good shape, especially since I inherited a hardly used swingline booklet stapler from the library when they were moving departments around that doesn't require me to jimmy the staples every time I use it..


* Next weekend I am participating in a poetry panel during the Open Books grand opening. It's two days of festivities and a bookstore with a great cause behind it. See more details here.

*I'm hitting that point in the year where the lack of daylight starts to make me a little melancholy. I feel like I notice it more on the weekends when I sleep later and then have only 5 or so hours of light in which to accomplish anything. At night, I keep thnking it's later than it is. At least during the week, I am up earlier and notice it less. There aren't any windows within my vantage point at the library, so it's not much different than a couple months ago, the plunge into nightfall so early. This is the time of year when I feel most like I could just give everything up and move toward the sun, how easily I could abandon Chicago and everything here, the life I've built, and run off to Aruba or somesuch. A few years ago, I even went so far as to search for jobs somewhere in the south, but was tethered here by the MFA program at the time. Even I know spring will come around again and I will be in love with Chicago all over again, but the winters just seem to get harder.

*I spent the weekend mostly on random crafty things, wrapping a ridiculous number of bars of soap, making a few more of the japanese teacup candles, tea towels, and some pillows that were actually a bust (well temporarily until I can get something else to do them correctly.) Last night, watched the original version of Quarantine, Rec, which was pretty much shot for shot the same, except in Spanish, but the end was a bit clearer and hell more scary. I also caught up on Fringe, but despite drooling like a schoolgirl over Joshua Jackson, have yet to warm to the characters enough to really like it, even though the premise and plotlines are interesting enough. I have also been reading a book called Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott that dovetails nicely with that, all weird science and ghostly repetitions. I find myself devouring alot of fiction these days, novel after novel, mostly because of my problem with the sideways seating buses that allow less bouts of staring out the window and daydreaming. It also allows less time for obsessing, so maybe it's a good thing.

oh my, I am in love

Kono Barei, 1883
more

I've been looking over the past couple of days and old antiquarian botanical designs in hopes of using them for the labels of a new line of soaps, one of which will be a sweet green tea, a wine/floral flavored beaujolais, and a citrusy mimosa. I was working on the latter last night and my apartment smelled so delicious I hated to leave it this morning.

in progress

I am heading ever closer to my deadline for completely restocking the shop, which initially was mid-month, but now is looking more like Thanksgiving. I have some new candle projects, new slips in fallish colors, new postcards (pictures above) but also some other things still in the works, including pillows, some lovely hand-dyed silk scarves, new lip balm flavors and more. I will unveil more this week..keep an eye on the twitter feed to your lower right for updates...

people, places, things (November Edition)

to see: Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage

to read: Marguerite Duras' entire oeuvre

to eat: cinnamon toast

to wear: this sweater dress

to watch:Fringe, Season 1

to listen: Fine Frenzy's Bomb in A Birdcage.

new postcard sneak peak

I've been working the last week or so on some new designs, both collage and some vignette photographs, as well as some new packaging for the cards...I've also been restocking notecards for the holiday season..We always seem to be running out of the dragonfly and the egg ones. My other weekend plans include a batch of flasks for a custom order, some bird ornaments, and some other little crafty surprises...

a review of The Sad Epistles

During my first reading of Emma Bolden’s The Sad Epistles, I was slightly worried that Bolden’s poems weren’t working hard enough, that the honest-to-god ache she relays, akin to the ache we often hear/feel in pop songs, wouldn’t be enough to carry me through the chapbook again and again. However, with subsequent readings, I fell more deeply in love with the poems and their earnestness, humor, and terror.

-Alan May

read more here

13 things I am loving

fall leaves
grey scarves
thick novels
violet pastille soap
cashmere turtlenecks
anything involving almonds
black opaque tights
the 2nd Season of Supernatural
baked potato soup from Corner Bakery
old graveyards
japanese tea sets
lockets
glassine envelopes

Exquisite: A Series of Corpses

Exquisite: A Series of Corpses
October 30, 2009 7:00pm - 11:00pm
NNWAC/St. Paul's Cultural Center, 2215 W. North Avenue, Chicago

Exquisite: A Series of Corpses
Interactive Text/Visual Art Series Launches on Halloween Eve
CIMM Fest to also Exhibit Films, Music
All on Fri., Oct. 30, 7 - 11 p.m.

Consider it Chicago's largest Halloween party for visual artists, poets, and writers.

Plastique Press and the Near Northwest Arts Council present a new interactive poetry/visual art series - Exquisite: A Series of Corpses. Poets and writers will join artists on stage with a live model, drawing materials, and typewriters. Poets and writers are asked to create new works, hand or typewritten, based on the model, the art, the event, the people. Artists are asked to draw about the same, including the written works. The result will be a sort of immediate broadside. Sound and video artists are also invited to come and create new works based on the event.

This event follows in the history of exquisite corpse parlor games. Exquisite corpse is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled by a group of people. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed. Exquisite takes place at the Near Northwest Arts Council at St. Paul's Cultural Center where the exhibition Binary: A Pairing of Opposite States is currently on view. This event is an extension of the Wetware Render Machine drawing performance that happened there on Fri., Oct. 9 to great fanfare and with beautiful results.

Plastique Press will then publish an enhanced eBook of the works produced that night, with each poet, writer, and artist being credited as an author. Sound, text, visual art, and video will become part of the final book.

Works produced during Exquisite will be hung in the exhibition space through Nov. 7, 2009.
The eBook will be released in early 2010.

CIMMFest will also present a series of short films during the event. There will be music as well.

EVENT INFO:
Exquisite: A Series of Corpses
Oct. 30, 7 - 11 p.m., FREE, costumes welcome
NNWAC/St. Paul's Cultural Center, 2215 W. North Avenue, Chicago
Event takes place upstairs. CIMMFest will present short films downstairs.

Audience participation welcome; scheduled participants include:

Karen Becker, Ray Bianchi (Cracked Slab Books), Waltraud Haas Bianchi, Kristy Bowen (Dancing Girl Press), Melanie Brown, Mia Capodilupo, Joshua Cotter, Skye Enyeart-Rust, Philip Jenks, Dana Major Kanovitz, Jacob Knabb (ACM), Francesco Levato (Poetry Center of Chicago, Plastique), Lauren Levato, Darrell Roberts, Adam Rust, Fred Sasaki (Poetry Magazine), Larry Sawyer (Milk Mag, Myopic), Momoko Usami, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas, Barbara Wakefield, Jackie White and others not mentioned here, including audience members. Artists models: Dalawn Simpson and another TBA.

About Plastique Press - www.plastiquepress.com

About CIMM Fest - www.cimmfest.org

About NNWAC - www.nnwac.org

For more information contact:
Lauren Levato, Plastique Press, 773/640-4522 or ladybeetle@laurenlevato.com
Laura Weathered, NNWAC, 773/278-7677

sunday reveal

new in the shop...

I've yet again made it to the end of the week and only accomplished about half of the to do list that I made Sunday night, but perhaps I am just being way too dreadfully ambitious when I make the list. I did finally finish up the last two chaps of the latest batch and have been printing and assembling over the past few days, but then there is also the next ones to lay out and a good chunk of new manuscripts left to wade through and make final cuts. Out of the initial batch, I was able to cut them by a third down to a manageable number to read more closely in the second round, but that's still a sizeable number of manuscripts for only so many slots. I am determined yet again to make sure that for every book that I we publish by someone whose work I'm familiar with (via aquaintance, having followed their work or published them before, having solicited a mss, etc..) I want to publish an equal number of folks I've never heard hide nor hair of.

Once again, I am astounded by the things people send us..so much of it, even the things I've had to reject, is at the very least publishable, even if not to my personal taste. I have to admit, I initially worried a little. After the P&W article a couple of years ago, I feared that with a bit higher a profile we might attract the slushiest of the slush pile, but submissions have remained strong, and so many poets have found us by word of mouth. We get more than I ever dreamed we would, and who would have known it from the rather inauspicious first round of subs--I think there were around 20 maybe..

At the same time I'm torn... part of me says keep forging onward and keep publishing as many books as I want, taking whatever mss I just have to have, and the other impulse which wants to kick me in the head and ask me what the hell I was thinking taking on so many books and falling always behind.. There has to be a balance in there, between this year's insane schedule and cutting back too much.

I am also busily packing and filling chapbook orders from the Fall sale, which will continue through the end of this month...we got slammed with orders in the most delightful way, and I'm running about two or so weeks behind, but am progessing slowly, so they should be on their way soon. The stock has dwindled to the point where I have to make everything on demand, so it's taking me a little longer to get thm out than usual..I also have a new subscriber batch of new books set to go out next week as soon as I print the shipping labels.


This weekend it's more manuscripts and the Rock the Vote event tomorrow night. Then Sunday, perhaps some True Blood viewing courtsy of Netflix (I am undecided about the show just yet but am only a couple episodes in) and maybe some jewelry making. I also have alot of listing to do for an etsy shop I am helping one of my co-workers with in terms of the administrative/design side of things. He makes some rather beautiful and interesting earrings of the more earthy, sculptural variety. You can check out his shop here: minerology.etsy.com

saturday night

I will be reading with a few other poets in between the music sets at this event, which looks to be excellent fun and great cause.




Rock the Independent Vote!
Music, Poetry, Candidates, & more!
Saturday, October 24th
8pm-12am
Weed's Tavern
1555 N Dayton St

Old Town/River North, Chicago
312-943-7815
El: Red to North/Clybourn

new from dancing girl press

Deirdre Dore’s poetry and plays have been published and/or produced in journals and on stages in the USA & Canada. Originally from New York, she now lives with her husband alongside a river in British Columbia where she catches horses, pursues an MFA in Creative Writing and works with trees.

sample poem




Jacqueline Lyons is the author of the poetry collection The Way They Say Yes Here (Hanging Loose Press, 2004). Her poetry and essays have appeared in many literary journals as well as the poetry anthology Oh One Arrow (Flim Forum Press, 2007). She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, the Peace Corps Writers Best Poetry Book Award, the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, and a Nevada Arts Council Fellowship. Her nonfiction has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and cited in Best American Essays. She is a certified instructor of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, and teaches creative writing at Washington State University.

sample poem




Sara Tracey is a poet and PhD student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her work has recently appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, Keep Going, Harpur Palate, Wicked Alice, Lily, Hobble Creek Review, and FRiGG.

sample poem











Author of How To Study Birds, a chapbook collection in its second run from Dancing Girl Press, Sarah Gardner is a poet and teacher whose work has appeared in many distinguished journals. She has received fellowships for her writing from Blue Mountain Center as well as the Vermont Studio Center. Her recognitions include an International Merit Award from The Atlanta Review and second place honors from the Juniper Creek poetry contest. She has been proudly affiliated with Houston’s Writers in the Schools, a program the brings creative writing instruction to at-risk youth. Currently she lives in Iowa and teaches for St. Ambrose University. Sarah holds an MFA from Syracuse.

sample poem




Jen Blair spends a lot of time personifying vegetation in writing and photography. She also makes books and pamphlets, and writes essays and poems about her social concerns. For a living Jen tells Returning Adult Students what classes to take in college, but she is perfectly happy to give you advice for free. Her work has appeared previously in wicked alice.


sample poem

wicked alice

Fall 2009 Issue
with work by Jennifer Manion, Naomi Buck Palagi, Kerri Ni Dochartaigh, Lisa Ciccarello, Denise Dooley, Roxanne Carter, photography by Lauren Treece, and much, much more...

grey day by wickedpen featuring Jil Sander

Occasionally I have almost surreal moments of very zen-like happiness. I guess I tend to notice them as almost like a lull between the craziness, the running here to fro, the costantly wanting and planning and organizing, the listmaking and the OCD worse case scenarioing. I was standing there during the open studio on Friday night, trying to get some work done while people were filtering in and out browsing, multi-tasking as I usually do, wrapping some of the newer collages in cello and packing up some chapbooks orders. It occured to me how nice this was. How much I enjoyed making and selling things, art and poems and books and papery goodness. all the other pretty and scrumptious things in the shop. How lucky I was to be able to do this, to have the studio, the press, to be able to publish and write poems (at least without that nasty ambition bird hanging over my head so much). To have the shop with all my very favorite things in it.

Mind you, I do all of this on a regular basis, but rarely am I really "present" in the moment, my mind is usually frantically ticking off that to do list, planning the next thing, mapping out the next move, the next obstacle. And I too inherited my mother's worrisomeness--the freaking out, the anxiety about being behind, being off schedule, getting orders out in time, sales being too slow and worrying I won't make the studio rent, sales being too good and worrying about getting them all out, I feel like for the past two years especially, it's been a crazy ride. And I wouldn't say I spend the rest of the time unhappy by any means, and in general, despite brief cranky moods, am pretty much usually a generally happy person, but moreso that my usual mood is more like an anxious contentment than any happy sort of bliss.

And of course, my zenlike moment was swiftly dissipating as I was working on a supply list of several new things I'm hatching for Christmas in the shop, as well as the new chapbooks whose covers I need to scan, a few tweaks to be made, copies to be mailed, the much tardy wicked alice issue that will be up in the next couple of days, the poems that need to be submitted, the manuscript that needs to be submitted, the dgp submissions that need to be read, hopefully all by the end of the the month Top it off with another big wholesale order (this time notecard sets) and a big batch of chapbooks for one of our poets, and you can see what a typical week is like. But it felt good to just take a breath and realize how much I really enjoy what I'm doing, depite it occasionally feeling like it's a little too much.

In other news, I spent last night at one of the Chicago Calling event at the Church of the Epiphany (mind you, the second time I've been in a church in the last week and haven't burst into flames.) It was a little too drafty and cold to stay as longer than about three hours (and I'm still in that weird season transitional wardrobe miscalculation phase) but while I was there was some cool sound and musical stuff, as well as some Korean poetry translations. Me and Julie Strand got to read some from the collaborative postcard project we are working on, and Julie made the coolest little postcard chap to give away. (I might get some of the extras from her and do a giveaway here on the blog, so stay tuned.)

On the plus side, I have now, after today, fulfilled my share of weekend days for the library, I've realized how much I desperately need those two days free of pretty much all the usual obligations to keep my sanity.

tuesday reveal

brass and acrylic rose necklaces in new colors.
available here

five things to read, do, see, buy and possibly eat in October...

1. Read: Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffeneger

2. Do: Chicago Ghost Tours

3. See: The Uninvited (on dvd now)

4. Wear: this sweater from Anthro

5. Eat: Caramel Apple Muffins

monday reveal

This tangy and tart goats milk soap is delicious, and a perfect wake-up soap for those oh-so-hard-to-get-up winter mornings. Available here, and also as part of the 3 for $10 deal.

friday night

Indeed as I suspected Thursday evening, I managed to finally come down with a cold this season, having just been bragging that I'd made it through September for once. This one is actually not too bad, and I'm swiftly on the mend, but I am holing up in the apartment this weekend. The last couple of nights I ordered chicken noodle soup from takeout places and found them sadly lacking (one not enough noodles, one way too salty), so once my groceries are delivered this afternoon, I aim to whip up a pot of my own, along with some fried apples I've been craving like mad.

Thursday night's reading at the Revolving Door series was a great time. Red Kiva is super slick and swanky, and I felt like I should have been draping myself over the piano and singing torch songs rather than reading poems. I think they are actually aiming for an interdisciplinary vibe with music and comedy and such in the coming months. It's a totally new series and their next one is in November, so watch the calendar for details. Friday night at St. Pauls was also a success, a full crowd with even some people standing and our poets ever so amazing. I also sold nearly every copy of all four books and had to send a couple of the poets home short handed on their author copies.

Today is the first day with some sun after a couple of rainy nights and a rather dismal grey Saturday. Yesterday I spent wrapping soaps and making some necklaces whilst watching Possession, which I loved but amazingly I hadn't ever seen..(I think when it came out I was turned off by Gwyneth and her fake British accent) I had set aside the book on my desk at work to read a few years ago and gave up eventually on finding the time to read it, so checked it back in. I'm finally back in the habit of reading on the bus again (I don't have much choice, since they've recently switched to alot of sideways seating vehicles, which means I lose my daydreaming out the window habit.) The last couple of things I've finished have been Kathryn Davis' Versailles and Kathleen Rooney's Live Nude Girl which certainly gets some interested glances from my fellow commuters.)

thursday reveal

I've been doing various things with flasks for a couple years now in terms of different papers, images, etc. These are covered in some gorgeous japanese chiyogami florals and then sealed with an acrylic glaze...available here..

dgp notes

*I am currently finishing up about 5 books in their final stages, three of which will be revealed at St. Pauls on Friday night, and two more by non-local authors. All that's left is assembly and one cover design and I'm set to go. I 've also been struggling to keep up with the backlog of sale orders, so if you've placed an order the past couple of weeks, the last of them will be going in the mail on Friday. Tomorrow, I'll be in the studio most of the day making books, which will be rather relaxing after an seemingly unbroken string of days at the library.

*I am still at work on wicked alice and am in the process of sending out acceptances. If you've sent anything since the spring reading period ended, and haven't heard back with a rejection, you're still either in my to-read pile, or I am holding for the last round. (a good sign) Everything that has arrived this period September 1st on, is being read for the next issue after that, so bear with me if you can...I will also be making my way through the rest of the dgp inbox hopefully by mid-October, though it is slow going with close to 350 manuscripts to peruse. In this case, it is also a good sign if you haven't yet heard from me with a "no".



*I had some sad news from another dgp poet that Adrianne Marcus had passed away recently. Adrianne was the original dancing girl, our first poet, brave enough to take a chance on letting dgp publish her chance when the whole venture was just a vague idea in my head back in 2004. She was an awesome lady and a talented poet, and it's sad to see the world without her. Here is a beautiful tribute written by her daughter.

wednesday reveal

five luscious flavors (pomegranate, lemoncello, orange blossom, pineapple, and japanese pear) available here.

I whipped up a huge batch of lip balm back in the spring, but was tweaking the packaging since then and only recently got them all labeled with the new label design.

One new and pretty thing daily....

Since I am determined to light a fire under my behind and get to stocking the shop before the Christmas rush, both making new things, restocking things that have sold out, and listing some stuff that's just been sitting here waiting to be listed and/or photographed. My challenge, up until Thanksgiving, is to list at least one new thing (or batch of things) in the shop every day until I get to everything I have either made or want to make in there. So I will be adding updates to this blog, as well as twitter and the facebook fan page daily (hopefully). Today's offering are a bunch of slips that I finally got around to mending this weekend in all sorts of lovely pastels..(I'll be adding some more autunm-like and wintry colors soon, but these are left over from a spring batch.)

Now available in the shop.

this week

The Revolving Door Reading Series
presents:

Kristy Bowen and Cecilia Pinto

Thurs,
Oct. 1
7:30 PM
Red Kiva
1108 W. Randolph



KRISTY BOWEN is the author of in the bird museum (Dusie Press, 2008) and the fever almanac (Ghost Road,2006). She runs dancing girl press, devoted to publishing work by women poets. Her third collection, girl show, is due out in December 2009.

CECILIA PINTO received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Creative Writing from Knox College and School of the Art Institute. Through her association with the Poetry Center of Chicago she has been a writer-inresidence at various local grammar schools. Her poems have appeared in Esquire, Rhino, Fence, Quarter After Eight, Diagram, Saints of Hysteria, The City Visible and other journals and anthologies.


Drink specials include $5 Absolut mixed drinks and $4 draft beers.


The Revolving Door Reading Series

A new
reading series
of poetry
and culture.

---

1st Friday Series presents
dancing girl press

Sara Tracey
Rachel Jamison Webster
Sarah Gardner
Jen Blair

7:30-9:30 PM
St Paul’s Cultural Center
2215 W North Avenue
October 2nd

Now Hosted by the Waiting 4 the Bus Collective!

2+ blocks west of the Damon Blue Line stop
Street parking available

Beer, wine, soft drinks available @ cool-low prices
Free Admission
Donation Requested

autumn 1 by wickedpen featuring Donna Karan bags

I am still very much stuck on sweater dresses this fall and am waiting for the temps to cool down appropriately. The price on that messenger bag, though is a bit ridiculous...

A couple of night’s ago, I dreamed that my parents were moving back into our old house in on Pennsylvania Ave. I’m not sure why, but in the dream we were slowly moving everything back in that we had moved out in 1985, even down to the same furniture...bunk beds for me and my sister, a horrible green vinyl rocking chair, my white eyelet bedspread. I dream about that house a lot, in fact nearly as often as I dream of my grandmother’s house. They both seem to me like lost places (...places you can’t return to, or that wouldn’t be the same even if you tried.) This house, unlike my grandmother’s is at least still standing, but it seems just as lost to me. In the dream, suddenly we were back in it, and while it was exactly the same on the outside, the same mint green siding, the same front door, same iron eagle above the garage... inside it had been remodeled with wide, white rooms and modern fixtures. I was searching for something in the dream along the wood work, looking for my initial scratched there. It was a ridiculously small house, two bedrooms that we soon outgrew. In the dream though, it felt like we were reclaiming something we had lost. Maybe, because it’s truly the first place I can really remember living.

In the dreams about my grandmother's house, I am always reclaiming it, cleaning it, fixing things and making them liveable again. The house was torn down when I was in high school, but when I dream about it, it's simply been abandoned for years (my cousins lived there for awhile, but tore it down to build a new house.) I am always trying to convince myself to stay there, and usually I make interesting discoveries, like hardwood floors beneath the carpet and french doors covered in curtains (things that weren't exactly there..)

I'm not sure which issues these dreams are working out..whether its an inability to let go of the past or a borderline disturbing desire to redecorate everything..

(Now that I think about it, this reminds me of this poem from few years ago..)

On "The New Chicago School"...

I was thinking about this over the weekend..especially since I spent Saturday afternoon down at the Series A conference, one of the panels of which was "Poetry and Place." It does seem a rather odd list. I’m familiar with the work of about maybe 50% of it and while I can see some aesthetic affinity among a few of them, I wouldn’t exactly say there’s quite enough in common (beyond being somewhat experimental and living in the same geographic region) among them when it comes to the writing itself to call them any sort of school or even movement. I did like Johnson’s use of the word “constellation” though, which perhaps is a bit more accurate depiction of things going on in Chicago. You can form links between poets, links between certain readings series and presses, each with their own constellations of poets that revolve around them, which in turn overlap with other groupings. There are certain groupings of poets constantly overlapping, and others that barely touch each other, even among people working in the avante-gard tradition. And in the larger paradigm that is “Chicago Poetry” there are other constellations and groupings one would find, even among more traditionally oriented poets like myself. And constellations within those constellations and so on. I have to agree with the sentiment that it is very dangerous and perhaps counterproductive to label something so specifically. No doubt, poetry movements are mutable things, as soon as you try to pin it down it shifts into something else or loses its charm and people get sick of hearing about it.(look at Flarf..) I also agree it’s seems to only propagate the sort of hierarchies, and cause the sort of dissension, which in a perfect world would not exist.

And of course, anytime you make a list, you make decisions of value (unless, I guess, the list is infinite, but then is it a list at all?). Looking at the poets in the blog entry I can’t also help but feel it is predominantly too white and way too academic. There are also seem to be a large number of poets who either no longer really live here, or do so only in a sort of transient college teaching gig sort of way. But then, if I were to make a list myself, it would probably be skewed somewhat as well depending on the poets I know of, my own aesthetic preference, and any other number of factors. I suppose we either have to resign ourselves to the fact that no list will every be both complete and unbiased or just stop making such lists altogether. Again, I don’t have an answer. Just thinking outloud.

It also raises the question of how much any school or movement depends on geography and how that geography becomes an entity in an of itself, ie how "Chicago" plays a role in determing this school of poetics. How is a "New Chicago Poet" informed by the landscape around them in a way that is different from a New York poet, or an Iowa City poet? What is disctinctly "Chicago" about a certain group of writers that would make such a confluence of talent impossible elsewhere? What differentiates that school from any school or grouping of experimental poets that just happens to be randomly tossed together? Perhaps Seth Abramson may be right, that the internet age and the age of MFA programs trumps geography everytime. Looking at any of these poets, I see more circles of influence spreading outside Chicago than inside it, poets linked either by mentorship, or journals/presses outside Chicago, or former MFA prgram peers. Of course, I also think there are more insular pockets in Chicago where perhaps geography and personal relationships do play a greater role, if only among poets who are more likely to socialize together, critique each others work, publish each others poems, etc.

I will say, uncategorically however, that so much is happening in Chicago at any given minute poetry-wise it makes my head spin. That is awesome, and why I am glad to be here.

There is some more discussion both here and here..

Er....umm.....wtf?

Sometimes I feel like, after doing this for the last 15 years, I've simply written too many poems and can’t keep them all straight. (Or maybe I just keep writing the same poem over and over again trying to get it right.) Someone will mention something to me from one of my books, and while I can usually remember the line, and even what comes after it and before it, I sometimes, embarrassingly enough, have no immediate recall which exact piece it came from. My relationship with my work is often a strange one. Some poems I could recite to you verbatim (others I barely remember having written them.) At one point in 2001 when I had the sort of free time for such things , I counted up all my drafts since 1991 and had written (or had an abandoned draft of at least) over 500 mostly awful poems. I've written at least as many since then, if not more, though hopefully less awful. Usually once the poem is drafted, revised, published, and part of a manuscript, I don’t really go back to it unless it’s one of my favorites that I like to trot out at readings. Usually by the time the book comes out (typically a few years after the poems were written), there’s a certain distance between me and the work that makes me want to put the book away and not look at it again. There are days when I can read through it again and love it. Days when I want to hide it on the shelf and never look at it again. I’ve always felt like it’s very important for me to keep moving forward, the next book, the next poem. Sometimes I feel like a really bad mother, having all these children and then leaving them behind .

Anyway, this morning I was working on something that had a line in it that just seemed way too familiar to me, like maybe I had already written something way too much like it, or maybe someone else had already written it and worse, I was just unintentionally stealing it…(I have also READ too many poems and everything starts to blur together.) So as the morning progressed, I became convinced, that indeed, SOMEONE had already written a line like this and I set out to find it. I knew it wasn’t a fever almanac piece, but I checked bird museum and girl show and even the new manuscript (which is much fresher to me) thinking maybe it was in there somewhere. Then I checked all the random odd poems & bits that never wound up in a book. Nothing.

Finally. I just googled it, hoping I had either published it on the blog or in some online place, and found THIS:

http://poeticconstellations.yuku.com/topic/9285


It looks like she just lifted the text from feign and errata, with a little bit of her own words mixed in. I'm' not one to get all proprietary over words, but I don't know whether to be pissed, horrified, amused, or slightly flattered....



(oh, and incidently I was right, I'd used a similar line before, not exactly the same, but a similar metaphor, so back to the drawing board..)

odds & ends

*The weekend's wedding festivities went off fabulously and pretty much without a hitch. Everything was lovely, bride, bridemaids, decorations, ceremony, even the weather held up. While it was only a mere hour or so away, it oddly felt like one of those sexy expensive destination weddings since we got to stay in a hotel (okay, DeKalb isn't exactly sexy. Believe me, I take what I can get these days in terms of travel.) Plus, I might quite possibly have had the most definitively delicious wedding cake with perfectly not-too cloyingly sweet frosting ever. I am currently trying to figure out how to turn my floor length eggplant bridemaids dress into my Halloween costume this year. Witch? Evil Queen? Zombie Princess?

*I am still struggling to keep afloat the chapbook schedule and have a few books I'm wrapping up before the end of the month, as well as the very late wicked alice issue, which seems to keep getting pushed aside while I put out other fires. Tomorrow I'm hoping to get some time in the afternoon to get the last few poems ready and the issue up, barring any poetry, publishing or shop related emergencies..


*Saturday, I will be here most of the day and it looks like alot of great discussion. It's also a busy couple of weeks coming up and I'll be reading at a couple of places as well as taking some dgp poets to the St. Pauls first Friday's series on Oct. 2nd. More details to come..

This Saturday

Please come to the Series A Conversations mini-conference on Saturday, Sept 19 in Chicago at the Hyde Park Art Center. The HPAC is at 5020 S. Cornell in Hyde Park. It has a parking lot and free street parking and is close to both Metra and the CTA (only 15-20 minutes from downtown).

BYOB. The conference is not associated with any university or organization except for Series A (which is not really an organization at all). Feel free to come and throw your voice into the conversation and perhaps join us afterward for food and drink.

All events take place in the 4833 studio room.

10:00-11:15 New Media Poetics--Film and Poetry (with a film screening)
Francesco Levato, Moderator
Kurt Heintz, Julia Miller, Eric Gelehrter, and Nate Slawson

11:30-12:30 Other People's Poetry
Tim Yu
Srikanth (Chicu) Reddy
Judith Goldman

12:45-1:45 Poetry and Place
Raymond Bianchi and Garin Cycholl

2:00-3:00 Poetry Publication--Founding, Editing, and Distributing a Print Journal
Chad Heltzel, Moderator
Jennie Berner, Garrett Brown, Tasha Fouts,
Jennifer Moore, Sara Tracey, and Snezana Zabic

3:15-4:45 Rapid Poetry ReadingBill Allegrezza, Moderator

Larry O'Dean, Tim Yu
Kristy Bowen, Srikanth (Chicu) Reddy
Quraysh Ali Lansana, Ray Bianchi
Kristy Odelius, Garin Cycholl
Chad Heltzel ,Dan Godston,
Simone Muench, Nick Demske, and many others.

For more information, contact Bill Allegrezza at wallegrezza@gmail.com.

B's wedding by wickedpen on Polyvore.com

I will be off in the morning to Rockford, and hence to the hinterlands of Dekalb for the big event. I'm still not certain of all my maid of honor duties since I somehow missed out on that eerie genetic knowledge most women seem to inherently have of wedding etiquette, so I am totally winging it. At this point I'll be lucky not to trip or do something embarassing at dinner. At least my bridemaid dress is oh so pretty (see above)....

now available from dancing girl press

here.

Fall Chapbook Sale

Yes kittens, it's that time of year again. The leaves are turning, the air is cooler, and it' about time for a sale.

Through the end of September, get 5 dancing girl chapbooks for a mere $20, your choice from a list of over 50 titles.

details...here

long lazy weekends

There is nothing quite nicer. Of course, the semester starts on Tuesday and already the campus is full of wide eyed freshman who every year get younger while I get older and older. Already some of the trees are yellowing, the days noticeably shorter, and the light different. I will be going back to my noctural hours (actually this is a good thing, I'm so tired the last couple of weeks I can barely focus most of the day.) I will actually be working two days this week and then I'm off for wedding festivities that will involve margaritas and bachelorette party drunken mini-golfing Thursday, the rehearsal dinner on Friday, and the actual wedding on Saturday. The programs are printed and ready to be folded this weekend, the jewelry for the bride and my mom finished, a couple other little crafty things accomplished, and everything ready to go..

I've been having odd dreams, one involving the cats, alien invasion, and the plot of Lost, but which was a novel and not a tv show..and or some reason, especially lately, my mother is always angry and dissappointed in me in my dreams, though we get along and are pretty close in real life (once I was out of my hellion teenage years that is.) Of course, there is so much about more private stuff she doesn't know. I probably just have a guilty conscience..

Interview with Talia Reed

on Poet Hound.

new things

vintage, jewelry, paper goods, and more...

foodie porn and...er...food porn

I’ve been meaning to direct you all to a bit of foodie porn as of late. The pics at Canelle et Vanille so make me wish knew how to cook and was much less of a disaster in kitchen. (I have tried, dear reader, even if I’m doing well I tend to put things into the oven and manage to burn them when distracted by a cat, a phonecall, or the internets.) and, of course, I have no idea if all beautifully photographed food actually tastes as good as it is pretty. I’m a bit envious of my friends who can just whip things up (though I suppose having something besides three day old pizza, soy sauce, and soap in their fridge might help for impromptu cuisine.) My mother is an amazing cook, as is my sister, but it was apparently not a gene I inherited, terribly sad since I am definitely a girl who loves to eat. It doesn’t even seem to be an affliction endemic to poets since Bronwen is always posting lovely food pics.


On another note, I recently stumbled upon the Aussie import Feed, which I have to admit was the only movie that resulted in me having that look on my face throughout the entire film (you know the one that looks like one just stepped in dog poo). It wasn’t that the movie was horribly made. (it was pretty low budget but well-scripted and edited artfully.) but the subject matter was itself rather disturbing-—an internet crime division detective goes off in search of a man tying obese women up in his house and force feeding them to nigh over 600 lbs and taking odds on when they will die. I don't consider myself a prude by any standards, and always lumped the “feeders” in with all those other slightly odd sexual preferences, ie. furries, and plushies, and those people really like balloon animals, I have to admit I was a little shocked and disturbed by the film to the point where I almost turned it off a couple times. Amid the torture and cannibalism, there is a bit of statement about women’s bodies and weight standards, but admittedly it gets sort of lost in the disturbingness. I have a way of finding these movies and then sort of wishing I hadn’t.

dancing girls about town

Last night was a great time at the Danny's Indie Press reading. Kristen Orser was awesome, as were all the readers, particularly Patrick Durgan's collaborative reading of Hannah Weiner's work. We're gearing up for next week when dgp gals (Kristin, Stephanie Anderson & Susan Slaviero) are on the road to the Tuesday Funk Series, and then in October, at the 1st Fridays Series (I'm still working on the line-up for this). Also watch in the next week or so for a batch of new chaps as soon as I get things in order, as well as the much tardy Summer wicked alice (er...should I say the Fall Issue.) I was actually thinking yesterday that we've been online for 8 years now and how things have evolved both design wise and in terms of aesthetics, although I imagine it pretty much reflects my own own interests as a poet and how they've evolved in a more innovative direction (as well as some of the authors we've been publishing since the beginning as well.). I've always like to think of the editor as collector of interesting things, something I've been thinking about in the daunting task of wading into the morass of the dgp submissions come Sept 1st.

The last couple of days have hinted at fall, cool, cloudy, unusually windy. It's inevitable I suppose, winter and all the bleakness. On the plus side, I talked to the folks at GRP and girl show if all goes well will be out before the end of the year. So there is that to look forward to. Meanwhile, I am filling a gigantic bookstore order, making 6 pairs of earrings for bridesmaids (actually not my for my sister's nuptials, but an etsy sale to an impending bride) and secretly plotting holiday lovelies for the shop. I'm also getting ready for a big fall update (mostly because the USB cable on my camera is done for and I haven't been able to add the last few things I've been creating over the past couple of weeks--including collages, candles, necklaces, new notecard designs, and much more..stay tuned)

(pre-) occupied

bee happy by wickedpen featuring Roberto Cavalli

with books and new papery offerings. More soon, but for now, some random fashion & style loveliness.

Save the Remingtons...

Today was was a rather blissful day away from the library, the highlights of which were sleeping as late as I desired then fiddling with jewelry most of the afternoon (including a version of the ubiquitous asymetrical flower necklace everywhere on etsy these days, but I couldn't resist, trendy or not, some of them are really pretty.)I also re-stocked the lemon verbena soap and made some new typewriter key rings. In random internet oddness, yesterday I was accused, out of nowhere, by another vintage seller via e-mail of destroying typewriters to make my jewelry, which he/she implied, like all typewriter jewelry, were trendy peices of crap. While I agree it's dumb to rip apart a working typewriter, there are a million that are basically very large paperweights, just waiting to be dissassembled. I get my keys on ebay usually in some ferocious bidding wars. I replied to his/her rather snippy message very nicely that I have never knowingly violated a typewriter, that I actually have a small collection of 50's models myself that I'm very protective of, and that he/she should remove the Tori Amos box set from his/her shop since it is neither handmade nor vintage. Thank you.

I am seriously coveting that pink one, if I weren't saving up for this for the studio, that would be mine.

weekend

Much of this weekend was devoted to working on a few revisions of poems, a couple new pieces, and doing a little research for a new text/art project I've been hatching. There was also a bit of collage-work (I'm working on some new soap packaging hopefully), as well as some framed pieces, and some votive candle holders. I haven't ever actually made candles, which I will be attempting next week, but I suspect it is similar to soap except with..well, wax and a wick.

Meanwhile, we have had a spat of warm, overcooked temperatures, but today was cooler and stormy. Friday, I had an enjoyable afternoon off, a long lunch with R, a few hours folding books, then an open studio, which moved a few things out in terms of inventory. (I always waffle on whether or not to participate, but am usually glad when I do) I am on the verge of launching into super production mode in order to stock up for the impending holidays (yes, the retail calendar is a bitch like that, summers not even over and they expect us to be thinking about Christmas?))

This is a short week, since I am taking a couple more days off from the library and making a long summer weekend before the insanity of the semester starts in a couple weeks..

things I read and saw and did and ate on my vacation..

Did: drove up to a lake we used to take the boat out a lot when I was kid. Visited the Swiss Colony outlet store in Monroe WI, bought a huge brick of swiss and subpar, undecorated petit fours. Went to thrift stores, threw a bridal shower, had a camp fire, made smore's, watched a thunderstorm. Stayed up til dawn, took afternoon naps, ate potato salad, wrote three new poems.

Read: Sandra Beasley’s Theories of Falling (New Issues), Carol Guess’ Tinderbox Lawn (Rose Metal Press), latest issues of Fence and Denver Quarterly, In the Birds Breath, Marcia Roberts (Effing), a rather trashy Wicked Game,(found in the spare room at home under the bed, don't remember author.)Bride magazines.

Saw: cows lining up orderly to cross a bridge in a field, a miniature train attraction, lots of horses, Zak and Miri Make a Porno ,a ridiculous number of reality shows centered around cake making.

thoughts on some thoughts on women's poetry

The Kings are Boring: Some Thoughts on Women's Poetry

I've been mulling over this essay this morning, but can't help but feel like perhaps the author just isn't reading the right books, and is missing out on something rather important by not reading her contemporaries. I agree everyone should read as much across genres/genders/generations as much as one can, but her view of female poetry seems severly limited. That bloodlessness she found could easily be remedied by taking a look around and finding more interesting, daring, and innovative women poets.

While I don't really write reviews, and by nature, think taste in poetry is an altogether subjective thing, I guess I do understand, at least in outside real life, that particularly female pressure be "nice." The idea that maybe tearing down the work of other female poets is somehow a chink in the wall of what we've sought to build. That we are somehow subverting sisterhood by tearing each other part even in the name of critical standards. But then again, that's hardly a reason not to express our opinions on what works or does not work, whether or not the author and I have the same chromosomes.

This however, sort of irks me:

If Glück is right, then to write as a woman is to exile oneself to poetry purgatory.


I've never seen feminine experience as some sort of "other" one writes toward, given that 50% of women poets are writing...well.. as women. How can we write as anything else? And why is the female experience looked at as something necessarily subversive rather than just a frame of reference that happens to vary from the traditionally male. And how can we possibly assume that something written by a woman with a female frame of reference is necessarily only be written for women? How does, as Gluck says, writing as a women poet exile one to purgatory anymore than writing from some other frame of identity--race, nationality, class, dayjob??

Certainly, I don't want to be a poet only women read, and I don't want to read poetry only about the experience of "being a woman" -- whatever that means beyond a bunch of clichés about the Madonna/whore dichotomy, the male gaze, or childbirth."

I have to admit this represents a frustratingly narrow view of the subject line of women's poetry. I can also say that maybe only one of the books dancing girl press has published in the last year has actually dealt with any of these topics and yet I would say 60% are dealing with female experiences, or are "shudder* feminist by their nature. Even the other 40% are, whatever their subject, by simply being written by women, are as well. I continually find it interesting that at least 65 percent of the people who purchase dancing girl titles are men, and we typically have more male subscribers than female any given year.

I doubt any of our authors set out to write feminist, or women-oriented texts, but even so, in the interest of being an example of women's letters, they turn out that way. I think it's impossible to erase, or get rid of that frame of reference nor do I think it's quite so neccessarily desirable to attempt it, even for Virginia Woolf (who couldn't quite wipe away those female handprints as much as she tried.. .)


More on this:
at Bloody Ice Cream

dishes, dresses, mirrors

I have made some serious scores in the thrifting department this week --some beautiful mustard toned floral dishes, a couple of pretty 70's dresses, a big faux gilt mirror, some mirrored vanity trays for display, and, if I decide to go back and get it, possibly an amazing 50's salmon colored loveseat for the studio (only $70). Otherwise, there has been dining out al fresco, big vases of gladiolas, lounging profusely, sleeping late, planning fall soap varieties (green apple and a sweet almond), and reading trashy books I wouldn't be caught dead with in public. I've also been slightly reordering the KD manuscript in light of a couple recent additions. Still not sure if it's contest bound or if I will hold on to it a little longer.

There is of course, high drama and quarreling in the wedding preparations which I am trying to stay neutral on, mostly involving lavender ribbons which will or will not be adorning the candy buffet, the money that the groom thought the bride had covered, who will pay for what and wheretofore. All of which firms up my determination that should I ever decide to get hitched, I'm Vegas bound in the middle of the night with no one the wiser.

idle

pure romance by wickedpen featuring J Crew