Blogs about Poetry

Since I like reading blogs by poets, I decided I should start my own. If gathering a readership for poetry is difficult enough, then gathering one for a blog about poetry must be fruitless. Alas. At AWP this year, I noted about a dozen poetry collections that had "American" as an adjective in its title, and so I'm no longer titling my manuscript American Shrapnel. But since it won't be my book title, then the least it can be is the title of my blog.

Speaking of the manuscript, I met with my advisor yesterday (Ron Wallace--do you know him? Contender for Sweetest Man Alive award) and I'm at a place with the manuscript where I feel I can start sending it out to a few contests and reading periods later this month. This makes me a little apprehensive, but mostly liberated. I'm sure I'll look at it in six months and ask myself how I ever could be so vain as to think it was ready.

I've been working on some new poems about my childhood speech impediment and dyslexia as well as a series about coal mine disasters. They certainly don't go together (at least not yet) and it might not lead anywhere, but it's nice to be writing about whatever strikes my fancy and not fretting about if it fits my  "project."

Speaking of poems, a few have start to pop up in magazines. For a few months, it seemed all I did was rack up a handful of acceptances that never materialized,  those poems fading away into limbo. But now they're starting to coming out, seemingly all at once. Two of these are online at Drunken Boat and Guernica.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Even though I don't identify as Catholic anymore (though I wear its guilt like a king's robe), I still love the idea of lent and all its moodiness. I've been toying with the idea of going to Mass tomorrow for fun. Do you believe that? I don't either.