dulcetly...notes on a bookish life

Post-travel meltdown must account for the 13 hours of sleep I needed last night after a hellish week. Weird, odd dreams about traveling to Arizona, or was it Nevada, and accidently killing off semi-famous male poets. Also demonic possession, Oprah, and buying an umbrella. I stumbled from bed after one and have been doing nothing since but straightening up and washing some dishes. Ignoring the Chaucer paper, the response to the ekphrastic readings I have to write for early this week. It is finally a bit warmer here, though I wouldn't call it warm by any means. I opened the window to let some fresh air earlier and had to close it rather quickly.

Did try to find a home for my new books, which were sort of strewn everywhere, and wound up having to move my old journals elsewhere to make room on the shelves, which of course led to reading some of them, more time wastage that could be better spent. Next, I'm afraid it's going to have to be all those internet-made-useless reference books that have to go. Shelving space, at least in the study/dining room, is getting to be an issue.

I suggested to Lauren that perhaps a good venue for the Cornell Project might be the Dusie Chap Kollektiv, since it would sort of create an automatic readership, at least moreso than if we just released it via dgp. Also, it has cool visual elements and a spirit of collaboration, plus a bit of customization (none will be completely alike). We were only planning on doing a smallish run, but thanks to the AWP proceeds, close to $200 (of course, this is separate from the hundreds I spent on travel, hotel, book purchases, restaurants, which came out of my vacation fund), we can afford the additional supplies to make it bigger and still afford postage to send them out. Also, it consolidates the number of projects I need to be working on simultaneously, which helps immensely. I still have more poems and artwork to do for it, but things should be settling down after spring break next week. ..hopefully....

On Thursday, we went on a feild trip to Intuit, an outsider art gallery, a sort of art I always have mixed feelings about. On one hand, it's good that the artists have exhibit space and support, but I sometimes feel that it's just a way for rich people and gallery owners to make money off the mentally ill, the homeless, the criminals because of their circumstance. The novelty of it. Case in point, one of the exhibits was a prisoner in California who does these rather interesting citrus peel sculptures and colored pencil drawings. We also got to see the pieces that weren't on exhibit--ones that were much more beautiful and interesting than what was--basically alot of celebrity portraits (ie what would sell and be appealing to the wealthy sort who can spend that much on art.) It all sort of makes me very happy there's little to no money in poetry and therefore less bullshit...I did manage to buy some creepy Darger notecards in the gift shop I may write about..

Speaking of commerce, here is the lovely spread in Atlanta. As always most pics of me either have me squinting or blinking, so ignore me and look at the beautiful books. More at LiketheDevil and the Switchback blog.