While you're busy making plans
Teju Cole tweeted seven flash fictions about drone strikes. The second one begins, "Call me Ishmael." This is an off-shoot of his small fates twitter project. Richard Blanco is our first Hispanic,...
View ArticleSuppressing instant gratification urges, or How I learned to wait on line for...
A friend who works at the last remaining big box chain bookstore in our region tells me she spends most of her day doing work which brings in not one red cent for that company. The chain has focused...
View Articleyawp, awp!
Here we go again, sliding into the book vortex known as the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, or AWP. This year's cluster-duck quacks to life in 3 weeks up in Boston, where the wompus will...
View Articleboston baked
Last night a friend emailed her experience of AWP, a note which read like a manic manifesto of the upcoming writer. This might say less about my friend than it does about the nature of AWP as it erupts...
View Articletwice baked
Sketches of AWP 2013Strangest encounter in Boston: a gentleman stops by the booth and commences speaking at about a thousand RPM while waving a book he's written, making claims of various famous...
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glimpses from Boston
The wompus traveling valise, loaded with copies of our first musical publication Book of Hooks, by Cornelius Eady. (Photo courtesy Leah Umansky).
View ArticleLiterary slut
I drove home from the airport this morning before dawn in white-out snow, a pickup, the red-eye from LA. All the past week has been like this, noticing sign after sign of spring, even as the winter...
View Article"My life is over" (or Redemption's Open Door) with a pre-script (is that a...
As usual, Hyperallergic is ahead of the curve. Check out their review of Chasin's new novel, Brief, which is construed as an iPad app.Continuing in the new technologies vein, Slate has an interesting...
View ArticleInbox: Po Month, Cloud Spying, Contract Dispute, Farewell Achebe, Rick Moody
An email from Knopf beginning: Poetry Month is almost here. Ugh. Yes, I hate poetry month, both because it implies the rest of the year is NOT poetry time and because it erupts with a relentless stream...
View ArticleIndefensible Marriage Act
That title on a NY Times opinion piece simply signed The Editorial Board made me happy yesterday morning.Cornelius Eady's Book of Hooks AWP perfomance is reviewed in Hinged: Journal of Converging...
View ArticleAround the wompus, Secondary markets
Susana Case has a new book out, Elvis Presley's Hips & Mick Jagger's Lips. We were lucky to hear some previews when she read at Cornelius Eady's AWP off-site event.Ann Cefola is one of 85 poets...
View ArticleStone Cold Jane at the Roller Derby, The Writer's Audience, Hostility to...
We love bookdress. The sheer creativity, the humor, the meta of it just makes us smile.Speaking of generous writing, Cornelius Eady is performing cuts from Book of Hooks and a bunch of other music and...
View ArticleBoston, Going postal, Neruda's remains, Victor Jara, Your patented DNA
Cleveland rapid transit and one downtown section of highway are closed down today due to discovery of a suspicious item in a Rapid station. Our hearts are with friends and colleagues in beloved sister...
View ArticleWhiskey & water, Police at the door, Pam Uschuk, Digital resale, Redemption...
Whisky is for drinking, water is for fighting.In Montana there's a dispute over water rights on a reservation now populated by three whites for every Indian. Do you ever start out to talk about...
View ArticleRoll Over Ezra, Mousetraps at Fukushima Daichi, Defying the law
On Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog, check out Cornelius Eady on word-drunk music, roots in the blues, and the arc of his band Rough Magic. Five songs from Book of Hooks are up on ReverbNation in...
View ArticleShiitakes, asteroids, the skinless/tough-skinned writing life
Too early this morning at the farmer's market, shiitakes and asparagus, balsamic and salsa and spelt scones. It's not California (we just got back from LA) but there's stuff growing up the road, stuff...
View ArticleComing attractions, Solstice, Patriot acts, Lost missives, Faux books, G-8,...
In the pipeline: Postcards; Twinsets; Ebonics poems; Our first chapbook essay collection.Yoga, coffee, pack, load new books to the wompus bookstore, that's my day. Tomorrow we finish up a production...
View ArticleSPLC and keeping the faith, Weapons of mass distraction, falling between the...
Following Zimmerman's acquittal in the killing of Trayvon Martin last night, I felt a sense of deja vu, a deep and exhausted dissapointment. Today in my inbox comes the response of Richard Cohen,...
View ArticleFarewell to Kathleene
As difficult as this post is to compose, I have been avoiding the task. But for those of you familiar with her work and her presence, it imust be told: we have lost Kathleene West. Below is her...
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Mud, laryngitis, poetry, song
Poets House has extended its annual showcase through August 17. You can see, fondle, sit and peruse this past year's publications from the wompus along with a slew of other wonderful books by small...
View Articlesummer reading
Jeanette Winterson is always interesting, always risking something with her prose. I'd finished Ann Patchett's State of Wonder in two days, a near miracle for me these days, and I wanted more, but...
View ArticleIce Wall; Poetry Pamphlets; Giveaways
Picture this: An ice wall is the latest proposal to stem leakage of highly radioactive water from the TEPCO nuclear plant at Fukushima Daichi, a scant 150 miles from Tokyo, where a nuclear emergency...
View Articlefull moon high tide
Sometimes somebody tells you something so sad it takes away your voice. Maybe for a minute you stop breathing. You want to answer. You know it's important to answer. But the words have all gone...
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rust and beans
It's gray and raining here, the leaves have begun to turn. I'm reading xkcd and Too Much Coffee Man. In a minute I'm going back to production work on the workshop anthology we're releasing tomorrow,...
View Articledesirable procrastinations
Alice Munro wins the Nobel. "A Small Sotry about the Sky" by Alberto Rios, in Poetry Pairing. Leah Umansky's LIT: On Dealing With Rejection In Writing, in Luna Luna.When hip deep in alligators it is...
View Articleslavery, sex trafficking, libraries, hope
Watch this space for our newly revamped wompus website, coming soon. Today: Matthew Inman, Craig Steven Wilder, Jodie Gummow, Just Detention International, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Neil Gaiman (with...
View Article#motorcyclevagina, Monday comics, new Murakami, Children's books Halloween...
What does #motorcyclevagina have to do with the ACLU (And where is John Stewart when we need him)?Nin Andrews does a weekly Monday comic for Best American Poetry. Read the new Murakami story, Samsa In...
View ArticleTiny stuff & why writers should take the bus
Do you space once, or twice after a period? My advice to writers: just be consistent. Or try this alternative.Need a little visual stimulation at this darkening time of year? Try Nikon's microscopy...
View ArticlePoets rock out, Pain Quotient, Slavery as economic engine
Advice for Writers blog: "every poet has fantasized about starting a rock band."Jane Downs' novella The Sleeping Wall is up on lulu. David Watson is brilliant and hilarious in the Bomb piece, Pain...
View ArticleMadiba
Kadir Nelson’s painting, “Madiba,” is the cover of the New Yorker. The Huff Post collection of front pages from around the world honoring Mandela made me cry.“The fact that people who are fighting for...
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