still buzzed

So I'm still feeling quite good about the news from Hanging Loose and will have more news soon as things move forward. Of course this gets me kicking in the sense that now I want to make the Hinojosa work go faster but I can't because school is taking up so much time. Which it obviously should except this is more than usual because we've been in the fall registration period (meeting with advisees) and I'll be teaching/directing our Writing Fellows program for the fall and spring which meant meeting with all the nominees (all top flight) to work out their fall and spring cohorts and assignments (still early in that stage).

Got off the panel proposal for ALTA in Pasadena in November. The idea is one of poets who have been lost from translation. Pablo on Padilla, Stephen Kessler on Aleixandre, Don Bogen on Bobrowski, and me on Hinojosa. Should know in a month or so if it's accepted.

Not writing much lately, but thinking a lot which is a good sign (as opposed to?).

But here is a poem for anyone out there from Hinojosa.

saludos,

Mark

N2

To peck above my cold palm,
the fluttering stars come down
and the Great Bear will never be white,
because it has forgotten its mimetic passion.

The blackened women who live in my house
have placed white-washed drapes
to erase the holes of my footprints.
Alone they have appeared from my boat sails.

Meanwhile, on a balcony of early frost,
I look over the curved horizon,
I see the smoke of London arrive,
born yellow in the chimneys
and, now white with age, it calls me in great voices
and asks with a hermit’s gesture
for the path to the North Pole.

Shrugging my shoulders turned to mist,
I give it the gift of Morse Code.

(from La Rosa de los Vientos)

Tourist at a Miracle

So for a while I've been a little vague about this because nothing was certain but last week Hanging Loose Press accepted my new book of poems. Tourist at a Miracle culls poems from three different collections I've worked on" Poetry City, Celia Cruz and Invisible Man. Donna Brook, who was my editor for this did a phenomenal? superb? super human? job of seeing into the three manuscripts and finding one that I feel proud of. Tourist at a Miracle is scheduled for publication in early 2010.

I'm humbled and honored to be on the Hanging Loose list. They publish some of the best poets and writers in the game and to be included among those, well, there isn't much one can say.

Except this: that Hanging Loose (the magazine) accepted one of Jesse's poems for their High School section for HL 95 (it comes out in October). Proud dad. The poem, "Vaseline,' is really quite good. So there are two HL poets in this small family.

Abrazos a todos

Mark