poetry odds & ends

*   We're reaching the final couple days in dgp's open submission period and already there is so much goodness in my inbox, but there is always room for more (particulary for strange little books).  I've already made it into June and accepted a few things for early next year, but I plan to dig in as soon as I am back in the city to flesh out the rest of the year.  I'm hoping to have all responses out by the end of the month.

*  A piece from girl show was featured over at Verse Daily earlier in the week--actually the title poem and the first piece I wrote for the collection, so it seems especially fitting. It was the piece that set the tone and the intention, and while it took a bit for the book in it's entirety to reach it's fruition, it's sort of the core of it.

*In other book news, just last week I sent a finalized version of major characters in minor films off to Sundress to work their magic on..the book is due out in December, which I realize will be here before we know it.  This books release feels a bit different than the others, mostly because perhaps it's a little more autobiographical, a little uncomfortably close to home (which is odd since it's my fifth full-length, and you would think by now that I'd already have written that sort of book, but really, I haven't.) the fever almanac maybe comes closest, but still, that was more about creating stories, which is what I have done with every book since.  I've eagerly put all my books in everyone I knows hands without batting an eyelash, but MCMF makes me feel a bit more vulnerable and a little more reluctant to have people I know in real life knowing that much about me.  But then "Everyone has a secret life, even you James Franco.." so really I should just get over it.

*In other, still miasmic and less formed book news, salvage is almost ready to go out into submission to couple places.  There is a lot more me in this book in places, but also a fair bit of storytelling depending on which section you happen to wander into, but there are mermaids and towns at the bottoms of lakes and surreal rural landscapes and strange illnesses. This is perhaps my most "midwestern" book, moreso than even the fever almanac, or maybe more that this book goes deeper into the things that surface in that first book, draws them out and digs around in them. The other nearly formed mss...good girls guide to the end of the world is whole other beastie of a different persuasion, but I'm hoping to have it done by the end of the year.