these are lucky times for eyes!

 jess's book is ready for you!

it is so ready for you that you won't be able to sleep anymore unless you go now and secure one. you will love it.

the quarter ended. now awp. and then another quarter.

something beautiful arrived in the mail:

it's the silver dollar city times! have you been? have you been able to go on the fire in the hole? it's the best ride in america. you can watch a video about it on youtube. on the ride you almost hit a train.

i've been working on my dissertation. here is the first paragraph of the preface and the first poem. i'm defending april 6th. i don't know how that makes me feel.

A lot of what went into this manuscript has as its central concern neuroscience.  My interest in perceptions of reality and what can be obtained from a negotiation of those perceptions leads itself easily into research of the brain: What information is available to us though the technological investigation of brain and what can be determined from research regarding how consciousness is discussed physiologically. Much of the current research in the neuroscience community is occupied with the placement and location of consciousness and self. My own research within these considerations will speak to the nature of self, place and imagination and how the correspondence between these given fields of activity allow us to make decisions about what we understand as the world and ultimately how we determine it. 

the preface just feels like words.

I come back to the world thinking of places. And of someone’s body. And of wind. I come through each thing. I press it against myself until I’m no longer certain of what it is. The more time there is, the more the thing becomes a mystery to me. In a prepared room I sleep next to a table and hold my breath for as long as I can before getting up. I get up. A lot of things don’t work. I discover most of them. Everyone I think of is alive somewhere.

the poems just feel like words too.

maybe they feel like this:

what news! Karen Lepri’s FIG. I and Shelly Taylor’s Dirt City Lions are now available for $7 each!

have you read shelly taylor's black-eyed heifer? i think you better:

"to keep from decline, ask her where it hurts."

i have been looking at photographs of detroit for two hours.

i feel like going there.

and i've been reading about effigies and writing myself a future letter and drinking water. now to teach.

here is what happens to donuts in a filmmaker's lodge. other things happen too.

yesterday was rb's bday

there is a lot i have to tell you about sundance--the best being that benh's film won the grand jury prize in the us dramatic competition. this film will blow up your mind into one hundred thousand pieces. it was the last award of the night. it got incredibly tense when they were in the process of announcing it. we got back last night. i have a very stiff neck. i will tell you stories in a little while. here is a little of the nyt article:

"The standout of this year’s Sundance and among the best films to play at the festival in two decades, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” isn’t an obvious studio-dependent title. Directed by Benh Zeitlin, who wrote the screenplay with Lucy Alibar, the film is a magical realist tale, as well as a hero’s journey, set in a gloriously mythologized part of southern Louisiana nicknamed the Bathtub"

this week i have been listening to ukranian pop, having wild dreams about superheroes, and watching this--

which is the most amazing thing.

two weeks ago i bought an airplane ticket to go to ireland. after i did it, i became very emotional.

last night these astonishing poets read in a place with deer on the wall:

: julia

the new hlr is out! it has exciting work by all these beautiful people: Lily Ladewig, Carrie Bennett, Karen Lepri, Dawn Pendergast, Mark Lamoureux, Molly Brodak, Jeff Alessandrelli, Linda Russo, Becca Jensen, Deborah Poe, Sarah Mangold, Michael Flatt, Christine Gardiner, Jefferson Navicky, Matthew Johnstone, Monica Mody, Jennifer Stockdale, John Duvernoy, Jane Lewty, Maryrose Larkin, Cori A. Winrock, and Ashley Van Doorn. Cover art by Patrick Costello.

here is an example:

Lily Ladewig

Poem for the Pussy Willows

Marriage is nothing like surrender. When I reach for the shotgun it’s just my way of saying hello stranger. I pretend I’m like the meadowlark. I rip up the garden again. So many acres for so long and I can’t tell where they end or my skirt hem begins. My pockets holding onto my hands. My hands too quick. Working these little traps. You in the field at daybreak. Dressing the buck for its purple meat. Me buttoning this blouse. Up to my neck in it. Autumn came and there I was, eating the most tasteless plums, wearing aprons. My chin like an ax. Every day I get a little older. I get haunted in the pussy willows. I’ve decided to take a delicate turn to the tree line. Pussy willows. Yes. Pussy willows yes please. Come. Somebody needs rescuing.