Thanks to everyone who came out last night to the Ruthless Grip reading, and thanks also to Mel Nichols and Brian Fitzpatrick for inviting me to read alongside Seth Perlow. Seth has a very cool little chapbook out from the Particle Series; I really enjoyed getting to hear from it.
So, I'm reading in NYC tomorrow! 6:30 p.m. at Zinc Bar, 82nd West 3rd Street. If you are in NYC, come on out! You can make a smooth transition from the heady delirium of the weekend to the staid responsibility of Monday with a light detour through The Land of Poetry, where things are both odd and sensible at once.
Last night's reading was pretty much the longest I've ever given: about 20 minutes. I sort of got into a trance. I definitely was no longer at Baked & Wired, but in the Orange Zone.(Du-du-DU-du, Du-du-DU-du). I felt like I was acting, channeling the narrator onstage. Intense! Tomorrow's reading won't be so long, but I really feel like I'm starting to read the poems with a voice and confidence that is newly deep. Deeply new? For me, at least.
Over the past few days I've ordered about 1000 perfume samples. Okay, maybe more like fifteen. Not sure why, exactly. Perhaps I am suffering from scent deprivation at the end of winter and before any of the spring smells really get going? Or perhaps it is just too easy to get intrigued by the descriptions of the notes. Banana. Seaweed. Horse. Horse? Yes, horse. These will all arrive in a flurry next week, and I'm sure I won't have the least idea what to do with them. Ideally, I'd like to blog about them, a la last summer's Tournament of Perfume. We shall see.
Speaking of bloggy things, I still intend to post mini-reviews of my AWP Haul, but have been slowed by (a)a giant work project that is sucking away my free time and powers of concentration and (b) a closely correlated lack of willingness to read anything that has a veiled, difficult, or just complicated subtext. It's been nothing but Terry Pratchett novels for me for a couple of weeks now.
And I would be remiss if I did not put in a plug here for NaPoWriMo. The new website seems to be working all right, and it's pretty. PRETTY. Yay.