Poetry

My beautiful and brilliant wife, Rebecca Farivar, is getting her first book of poetry — tentatively titled Conception — published by Octopus Books in 2011. That means both of our books will be coming out next year! Hooray! Discounts will surely be in effect for the Double Farivar Pack!

Apparently, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has commissioned a 160-ft high bronze statue commemorating the “African Renaissance.” The statue, “shows a muscular man in a heroic posture, outstretched arms wrapped around his wife and child, who is balanced on one of his biceps,” reports the Associated Press. Plus, the entire group is coming out of a volcano. (Last I checked there weren’t any volcanos anywhere close to Senegal.) Senegalese media reports that the statue will be dedicated in a grandiose ceremony…

My brilliant and beautiful wife, Rebecca, has just had two poems and a review of hers recently published She appears in the latest edition of Parcel, and the Avatar Review. That last one also includes audio of her reading her work, too! She’s also just reviewed Moongarden by Anthony McCann.

Rebecca’s back (again!), with yet another potent pairing of poems, this time in Octopus. I will say that I’m a big fan of “Cold,” as it mentions one of my favorite countries, Estonia! ECHOLOCATION Most days I wear the hunched run of an animal, darting until caught in net or claw— and that’s fine. Trapped, I noise and flap, send you pressed air, let you forge toward me. Let you touch me. Let you cut through net and claw. COLD…

My bodaciously brilliant fiancée, Rebecca Guyon, is back with two newly-published poems in Strange Machine, an online poetry journal: Cull Canyon A girl drowned here one summer, and another the summer after that. This never stopped anyone from jumping in the water, murky as it was, murky, like most made things. We liked to think the bodies were never found, that if we touched the bottom we ran the risk of brushing their saturated skin. Once, instead of swimming, we…

My brilliant and beautiful fiancée, Rebecca Guyon, has just been published (twice!) in the latest issue of Press 1, an online poetry journal. Here’s my favorite of these two: Brocaded Your bready eyes would float if I threw you in this pond. The koi circling, sucking you in with tunnel mouths. Who will touch me then? The garden heaves us onto a screen – remember that little Japanese painting? The clawing wave, the mountain under grip men rowing and sliding…

Last week I went to Modesto for some reporting for NPR. Yesterday, I wrote a haiku about what I learned: Here in Modesto they used to take the train but now they steal cars.

by John Ashbery (1966) Barely tolerated, living on the margin In our technological society, we were always having to be rescued On the brink of destruction, like heroines in Orlando Furioso Before it was time to start all over again. There would be thunder in the bushes, a rustling of coils, And Angelica, in the Ingres painting, was considering The colorful but small monster near her toe, as though wondering whether forgetting The whole thing might not, in the end,…