the INLAID EAR

Welcome virtual tourists! Make yourselves at home. It is sweet to imagine you here.  Peruse back through my 18-day poetry journal experiment, back through the sneak preview pages of poetry and illustrations that comprise my forthcoming book One Way to Ask , back through the poems I created in InDesign, all the way back to the word games I hosted, and all the random stuff in between. Enjoy your stay. Feel free to comment. Even sweeter that imaging you here is imagining that someday I might meet you in person. I love when a virtual friendship enters real life. That's a deep joy I experience in knowing Ina Roy-Faderman , who brought me into this blog tour.  I have long admired Ina's poetry on Poetic Asides , the Writer's Digest poetry blog and forum hosted by Robert Lee Brewer.  Finding out that she is only an hour away by car, I knew that we would meet in person.And so we have. I was delighted to embrace Ina and read with her at my wife Lauren 's...

Work is light. Today, I submitted poems to Waterhouse Review and Rio Grande Review . It occurs to me to say why or how I landed on these among those listed at Duotrope.com. Using Duotrope is a great help, but it also is limiting to those presses that use it, which seems to be a handsome percentage, though clearly not 100%. Waterhouse had a really funny submission page. Not over the top, but just three or four little side-snides that made my chuckle. Rio Grande listed themselves on Duotrope as being interested in poems in invented forms, which is exactly what I do. I also like that they are bilingual. The acceptance ratio listed at Duotrope is 8%, so that feels like a good chance and a challenge at the same time. (You must subscribe to Duotrope to see the percentages.) Re: Rio Grande, also, the Duran Duran memory is a sweet one. Over the last week, I submitted 26 poems for consideration. If my average holds that means 1-2 poems printed from this arbitrarily batched batch. On...

Something of a breakthrough on the Richmond poem last night and this morning. This is it: I will deliver the poem with the ingredient of improvisation, as I do my Fights With Poems pieces or as I will teach my classes at Interplay and at the Writer's Forum. That is, I will memorize my talking points in order and the bright stones of language that must come into the poem and to leave the prepositions and transitions to the moment. They'll take care of themselves. The Richmond poem will flow that way, without paper. I am making it more positive — because I am genuinely grateful to live in Richmond and proud of my town — no matter what they say. I am coming to like it a lot, the poem, as it coalesces around the classic image: Rosie the Riveter's arm as she makes a muscle . Human strength and frailty. Striving. This is an unfamiliar way for me to draft work, and I like it. I am rewriting the entire poem again and again from scratch. Then I'm rehearsing it out loud, from...

Nearly nearly finalized letter to Cameron + Co. I am taking my time, making it clear. I have a good feeling about that press. Actually, I have a good feeling every time I submit work I realize. It is a certain faith that I find I can muster again and again. Yes! This is the good one! This is the match! This will find the editor at her or his desk in just the perfect mood to get what I'm saying, see the potential, fall in love with idea, want to see more, want to make it work. I feel it every time I click send. Received payment from Flapperhouse for my two poems "The fallow months" and "What's cooking." Token payment still makes me happy. And I'm glad those two poems, both favorites, found a good home. "The fallow months" I have really worked on over the months!

Submitted poems to Slice . Also took time to add submissions to DuoTrope tracking tool. I am not 100% with it because the range of my submissions is so broad. There are submissions like those for Like/Share art show, performance ideas, and the complete MS, which DuoTrope is less adept at tracking. But in general, it's a great too, and encouraging. So I'm glad I updated it. Posted a review of Alison Luterman' s new book "Desire Zoo." Read more of Rattle , a dang good poetry journal! Also drafted a more Rattle-style bio paragraph. Less about writing credentials and the "doing" of being a poet and more about what goes into poeming, living as a poet, the "being." Did more research and note-taking in preparation for my July 17 class at the Writer's Forum in Petaluma, including finding the editing issue of Writer's Digest from last year. Blogged.

Quiet weekend. Some stewing and brewing on Richmond occasional poem. Submitted poems on Monday to Liminality . Very glad to find this fledgling press as it seems a good match for the some of the more ephemeral poems later in One Way to Ask . Nearly finalized letter to Cameron + Co. I feel earnest about querying them and want it to ring from the first touch. How cool would that be - to work with a press in easy driving distance?! Practiced "Schooling" and "Plum Season" to keep them memorized...

Made some revisions to my plum poem. There was a line in it, "on my account let none be judged," which I came to realize emerged from the real-time context of my writing the poem. I was in the hot pool at Kabuki Hot Springs. This was the poem I wrote by composing while committing to memory each of three stanzas. I was annoyed by someone in the warm pool who was IMHO needlessly crowding my personal space. At last (and after already submitting the poem, I think to Poetry Magazine, aiming quite high), I realized the line wasn't serving the poem, so on my walk today through the city, I found a better option for lines 15 and 16. Still not going to publish this poem online though as I think I will find a home for it in a journal and some are sensitive about ANY prior appearance. Polished my query letter to Cameron + Company and feel it's nearly ready. Going to let it incubate though, rather than fire it off next week. In the meantime, will look for my next potential publi...

Traded cool words with my chiropractor, Richard Robertshaw. He gave me hyalophagia, the compulsion to eat glass. (That made me exclaim.) Wrote a new poem on the occasion of Mirabai's penultimate day of school poetry slam event. Her teacher, Julie Patten asked me to do the first poem. These ideas had been bouncing around for a while, and this morning they manifested. Worked more on my query to Cameron + Company Started work on a new limeronnet, hoping to post to good old Mad Kane's Humor Blog .

I've invented the limeronnet , a combination of limerick and sonnet. It's got limerick meter, humor and sass in a 14-line remix. What will happen next? Posted "The limeronnet" at IMUNURI . Began drafting the next submission query for One Way to Ask. This will go to Cameron + Company because they make nice books with art and they are nearby in Petaluma. I like that they are a family business with deep roots in the Bay Area and in art. For this query, I'm going to use prose rather than go again with the cover letter in the queron form. 

Vegas weekend. Saw the sky get light. Visited the ghost casino Klondike Sunset twice.  Jotted some notes from the most drunken state I experience. Began the first lines of a Vegas poem, a traditional observance for me.  This year, a queron.  The rest stays in Vegas.  Get it? Got it? Done!

Followed up via email with laureate selection chairperson. I hope I get it. Other than than, taking some days off poetry to go to Vegas. Of course, that will surely generate the traditional Vegas poem that always comes out of these trips.

Started reading Alison Luterman's new manuscript. It's amazing as always. Her poetry seems easier to enter than mine. It embraces like a warm kitchen. Maybe my poetry, in general, is more like a gallery in a modern art museum: you have to go in with your own curiosity, and it's up to you to engage your attention and depth of vision. Hmm. Big news is I interviewed for the position of Richmond Poet Laureate. I think I have a good shot at it based on my energy and ideas and on my reading. The committee said they were impressed with all the candidates so far, and I was certainly glad to meet another candidate for it: Lincoln Bergman, a politically active, KPFA, organizer gentleman with rhythmic, rhyming materials about history and current events. He read a good poem draft about Maya Angelou, who passed away today. Talk of making the post a multi-person post, which would be nice. I'm thinking a youth laureate would be a good idea separate from the adult laureate. The off...

Submitted the poem from yesterday to Poetry . Ballsy, but why not? I'm pleased with it; though I also get frustrated and flustered with the gray area about what publication means to different venues. Poetry seems to feel that a poem appearing anywhere anyhow online or in print means they can't use it. So I deleted it from yesterday's post and changed the privacy settings on the post I put on Facebook to "only friends." It was the comments of friends on FB that made me feel that the poem was worth a try with Poetry Magazine . Anyway, fingers crossed... Conversed via Facebook with Laurie Kolp about her new book Upon the Blue Couch by Winter Goose Press , Sacramento. Read the first section of the book on the way in to work, so was fired up to talk with her about it. The press looks like it could be a good choice for me--nearby, open to submissions, approachable, and sounds like they are easy to work with. Made some small edits to "Plum Season," from...

If I could poem like this every day, oh my. I went to Kabuki Hot Springs and did three loops of sauna, steam, plunge and soak. During each loop, I wrote a stanza of a queron in my memory. I wrote the final couplet on the way back home. Not only a quietly meditated and meditative poem, but instantly memorized, too. [poem omitted for publishing requirements] A good soak, a good poem, and I'm satisfied. Also posted a new prompt over at my and Marna's blog, IMUNURI . Marna wrote the prompt. I just posted it.

Brought malted milk balls to writing jam, arriving home from the grocery trip just in time, though a few minutes late picking up Natasha Dennerstein from BART. Judith Scherr and Alan Phillips arrive for writing jam. We free write. We write bref double. We write Natasha's (Jungian) free association strings, then use that material to craft short poems or proses. I get some material to compost and quite enjoy myself. Natasha, Judith and Alan get good material out of the session. I enter my bref double in the bref double poetic forms challenge at Poetic Asides . Because why not? I will take Natasha's comments from jam to heart and choose to believe the poem has the right balance of subtle and overt. Except who but my Bay Area compatriots will understand the reference to the bakery Ariz Mendi? (luckily "the bakery" fits both the rhyme and syllable needs). "Long weekend to myself" I'm framing my apology for not checking every checkbox on the list ...

Scheduled writing jam for tomorrow. So, tomorrow I will have more to mention :) Danced hard. Played the game Dominion with its creator, Donald X. and Destry, using Donald's prototype deck with as-yet unreleased cards. Thought about a couple of poems, and wrote a couple of lines.

Thought I'd try an experiment. For my own edification and curiosity, now that I've posted mostly every poem in One Way to Ask . The experiment: to post everyday or nearly so what I've done that day re: poetry. Today: Found a paying poetry market to submit to: 32Poems Magazine Valparaiso University 1320 Chapel Drive South Valparaiso, IN 46383  It costs $3 to submit work online, but free to do it by post. I started my submission packet with 4 poems from One Way To Ask - made a few fine tunes alone the way to the four poems I'm sending. Plus went through the poems I wrote in the Poem a Day challenge to pick out some of the better ones to start wrapping into submission packets. Typed up the poem "∆" I drafted last night in the sauna for Like/Share II, a show in Oakland Ann Trinca invited me to participate in. Writing poems inspired by photos... Started a draft for another image for that project. Email Alison Luterman with some ideas f...

By Carole Ambauen Like many graphic designers, Carole's work is often digital and often unsigned. It's really lovely to have a piece of her work here that's hand drawn and credited. More about her, her process and this poem, below. I believe when I relent   I topple to rise up then I tower to fall. I’ve an upstart yen and an urge to surrender. At whose bidding do I cross and re-cross the hall? "I push backwards…I go forwards." —Larry Eigner. "Nothing is true that isn't paradoxical." Kathy Altman says it. I hear waves in my gyre. We are standing bubbles of wind, water and sand. Since the floor is dancing, it’s the perfect partner. Head on the ground, feet researching the air firsthand, what's down pushes up my fire, bruises my apple. "In a field / I am the absence / of field....