bizness of writing (get to work!)

I'll be writing an article about Don Kardong & Bloomsday, which is due to my editor/publisher by May 9th. Don called me last night and we tentatively have an interview set up for the Wednesday after the race, which is this Sunday. I'll need to take notes at the trade show Friday night and since Don gave me his cell phone number to contact him during the busy race weekend, I'd like to track him down and take his picture--preferably on race day...even sweeter if it was post-race with the overall winners, but even better if it was a picture of Don with the top male and female finishers who are Washingtonians, or at least from the Northwest since it is for Northwest Runner magazine. But I'll still be on the course during the awards ceremony, most likely, since the elite runners finish the 12k course in awesome time. And I'm not willing to give up my entry (and not get the finisher shirt!) just for the sake of journalism!

In the meantime, poetry, poetry, memoir, poetry, non-fiction, poetry, poetry, poetry...

POETRY THESIS MANUSCRIPT DUE IN 20 DAYS!

My reading list is moving right along...in fact, I keep reading more and adding more books to the list. The most difficult part will be deciding which 15 to keep on the list.

And I recently finished Modern Ocean the first book of poems published by James Harms. I LOVED it!! Really intriguing poems, what I would defend as being narrative lyric poems, mostly about growing up and living in San Diego CA. The setting is there, but the culture and family around the speaker of these poems is what is most engaging, and which is the core of the subject. There is a balanced mixture of light and dark (as in the yin/yang//good/evil emotional forces of life and human experience). Harms is a master of subtle emotional tensions, understating the conflict to really pull the reader into his poems and construct a co-experience...as I read, I felt like I was discovering meaning alongside the speaker--a co-creator of the experience, through the poet's use of point of view and tense. Wow! I'm excited to share with Jonathan how much I really, really loved this book! I see much of what I'm attempting to do in my own work, being done in Harms' book. He nails it right on.