I turn 30 today. I'm not stressing over it; the last decade has been good to me. But there will be some sushi today to celebrate, oh yes, and possibly the indulgence of listening to the new Josh Ritter album, "So Runs the World Away," as it is being streamed over at NPR. Enjoy:
My friend Austin has been playing with Josh for a few years now (in fact, they've just formalized themselves as the Royal City Band). It blows my mind that of three folks I shared a vegan breakfast once upon a time at DC's Diner, one is touring all over the world, one is now a renowned slam poet, and one has a shot of being selected for Lilith Fair (if you happen to be judging for the Lilith Fair Local Talent Search in Boston, vote for Winterbloom). Good things, happening to good people. It should always be this way.
Apropos of nothing: I am slightly alarmed to hear that they are planning a sequel to The Dark Crystal.
Over at the Best American Poetry blog, I take an observation about my writing process that was originally written for this Clarion-Ledger interview--but cut for space--and run with it, turning it into a short essay on "Metaphors of Craft."
My brain, I've come to realize, is an oyster. It captures some bit of grit (a notion, a face, a sound) and then worries at it, over and over, coating it with language, until the grit grows into a pearl. That's when a poem is waiting to meet the page.
This model helps me grasp why I start drafts after midnight: for me, writing is a process of (semi-)conscious accretion that reaches critical mass, inclined toward lyric intensity rather than narrative structure. I still dislike prompts--but then, I dislike cultured pearls too. And it's my responsibility to give this oyster a healthy bed, which means a reading diet that pumps nutrients in the water. (Goodbye, Us Weekly. Hello, Threepenny Review.)
Want to see what happiness looks like? See Politics & Prose on Sunday. Here's the view as I hide during the introduction to my reading...
...and here is the audience smiling to say hello to you all:
Afterwards, there were books to sign. A lot of books. I took far too long with each one--as always, I find myself slipping back into the mode of signing high school yearbooks--and while there are certain phrases that come easily to me, I always approach each title page from scratch. The ritual of this had me wondering: as people tout the future of the book in electronic form, what happens to the tradition of author signings?
Between book touring and frantic nonfiction writing, I have been On the Run. But for all this week I'll be posting over at the Best American Poetry blog. Please come visit me!
First up: a glimpse at the woman who made me a poet....
Red, green, blue horses, I wrote, ride up and down.
I paused, wondering how to complete my ode to carousels. Up and down, I scribbled a second time. Repetition was poetic, right? Our third-grade teacher circulated the classroom, reading over our shoulders as we hunched over our desks.
“You,” she picked. “Okay, you. You.”
With a handful of others I walked down the halls of Haycock Elementary School to the classroom where, for the rest of the year, we would have a weekly poetry class. A round table nearly filled the tiny space. We sat down to wait in our orange plastic chairs.
A woman threw the door open, swiftly maneuvering her generous hips through the narrow gap between table and wall to claim a roomier corner. Her honey-blond hair was a wave that crested and flipped up at the ends; her eyelids glimmered teal; her perfume bloomed with gardenias. She wasn’t a teacher. She was a force of nature.
“Hello!” she said. “I am Rose MacMurray. A poet. We are here to write poetry!”
