News update for Thursday, February 23

A few things happening with Tourist at a Miracle.

Moe Green Poetry Hour, Friday February 26th, from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM EST. The call in number is 718.508.9717.

On Saturday, February 27, "Tourist" and Tourist at a Miracle will be featured on Poetry Daily. Poetry Daily is a great site and the poets they feature are quite good.

Later events happening: the big Hanging Loose book party for this year's poets will be the first week in May, more later. I'll also be reading at Perch in June. Other readings coming so watch this page. The September California tour is rounding into shape and I'll have more news on that later. Florida later (November).

Last night, a good reading at the Poetry Project with Joanna Fuhrman and John Koethe. Joanna read from Moraine and Pageant, as well as some new poems, and John Koethe mainly read from 95th Street. He closed with the long title poem, which has as a central trope a dinner with John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch that took place in 1966. It was a weave from the past into the present that was quite elegant and elegaic.

abarzos,

Mark

The Weeks Ahead

So walking into too many different stores and they're all playing Christmas songs (can I get "Christmas in Killarney" out of my head?). I know some places were playing them before but now they seem everywhere and so the whole Christmas season starts which I suppose I don't mind. I like some of the bustle of it, the barber shop on 7th Avenue that has the running train and the skaters in a wintry setting, Union Square converted into a great outdoor bazaar. Of course Chanukah comes first, so there'll be lights and trees and it will all seem, well, like holidays. It will bring back memories and for another year, even though Jesse may feel he's too old (but Katherine and I are not) we'll read Night Tree by Eve Bunting and Ted Rand which I think is one of the best Christmas books ever (I remember once many years ago that Kenneth read it to Jesse before Jesse went to sleep and he came downstairs and talked about how wonderful and surprising it was as a book. Of course, it isn't Somebody Spilled the Sky by Ruth Krauss, but that's just on another level.

It all means that the semester is also rushing to a close and I'm worried if we'll get to everything I'd hoped. Not with my writing fellows students, who seem on track, nor my Poet in New York students who seem the same, but my Intro to Poetry students. I think I always feel this way, though, and then it gets done. My mind is already drifting to next semester and teaching Spanish Surrealism and Advanced Poetry, both for the first time. It will be an interesting spring, after all, with new classes and a new book (and hopes that Celia Cruz will find a publisher.

What to do for Christmas break? Travel? Stay home and ready for the spring? "Oh must we dream our dreams and have them too?" (Elizabeth Bishop).

Abrazos