Linking into the Weekend

My usual gut response to hot new artists is to run screaming, but I have to say: I could listen for a long time, on repeat loop, to Amy Winehouse's Back in Black, Rehab, and You Know I'm No Good. Music for people who can't wait for summer to start blazing down. Yeah, she'll make you want to drink...you needed the excuse?

Strange week. I apologize for the many emails I have not yet sent. The literary world is atwitter with news of fellowships, M(F)A program admissions, colony stints, book deals. I'm truly thrilled for Dan Albergotti, who just won BOA's Poulin prize--a genuine case of hard work and awesome poetry paying off after a long wait. But if you're not one of the many who's receiving news this week...join me! We shall develop a secret handshake.

This is one of Dan's poems, which appeared in a journal called Cave Wall and was then republished on Verse Daily:

Surprising the Gods

Suppose Eurydice had, running through the evening field,
stepped on the adder as planned, but it was the adder
that died, Eurydice's heel coming down on its upper vertebra
and snapping it at once. Imagine her stooping down,
staring in wonder as the serpent twitches in small throes.
What would the gods do with that? How would they rewrite
the story that must be told? And would they question themselves
as they recovered from their surprise, as they made her
in some other way the impossibility she became
the moment her beauty first made Orpheus sing?

*

Update - While I'm in the business of announcing things, I can finally say that Deborah Ager (publisher of 32 Poems and its attendant blog) just had her first book, Midnight Voices, accepted for publication by Word Tech's Cherry Grove imprint. Hooray!