Have you ever eaten strawberry-rhubarb salsa? Goddamn it, I have. Goddamn it...I'm going to go eat some more.

There exists, amongst my people, a tradition known as the summer mix. It's mostly competitive, only, no one else plays. It's mostly naughty, or, at least what you'd want to be hearing while doing naughty things. Dancing, drinking and kissing girls. Real naughty. My summer mix looks like this:
Most of the songs are naughty too, though, only one officially.

I'm digging on you. You're digging on me. We're digging on we...I can't stop how I feel.

This is what I know: I'm reading in Minneapolis on July 1st. Then, I'm reading in Cedar Falls on July 31st. I'd like to read more. Maybe sell some books. Could I read for you? I would be an honest boy...promise.

Jojo eats lightning bugs. Once, she sprang herself from our retaining wall and caught one mid-air. In other words, we have lightning bugs.

I'm reading Lorine Niedecker's Collected right now. I'm not entirely sold; New Goose was not great, but my Midwestern affections and general politeness really hopes it gets better, and believes it will if I just sit quietly and don't fuss. Also, this is exactly how I write poems.

I've got lots of stuff I want to do this summer. Will it get done? Stay tuned...

Unsolicited Michigander Reviews Used Without Permission!

"Your book is lovely!" -Aaron, Kansas City

"...I thoroughly enjoyed it." -Allison, Chicago

"What is this?" -Scott, Iowa City

"michigander is amazing." -Sasha, New York

"This is really beautiful." -Anne, Coralville

"Yessssssss" -Erika, Iowa City

"You wrote this? Really? You?" -My Grandma, North English

You too can have opinions about things...your journey starts here.

I feel like, maybe, I take the same pictures all the time.

Do you have dogs? I do. Most of the time we're pretty cool, but right now, I wish they were someplace else...

Last Sunday I helped my sister-in-law move. I've been walking like 70's John Wayne ever since. You know, like I killed a guy and threw out my back disposing of the body.

In the last few weeks I've read Joe Hall's "Pigafetta...," Macgregor Card's "Duties...," and Lyn Hejinian's "Saga." It was an odd amount of travelogue poetry.

I've also been reading Dean Young's "Embryoyo," mostly because it's a beautiful book, but also because Jim Galvin mentioned him practically every time my poems came up for workshop.

"Bee-Stung Aviary" is reviewed in the latest issue of "The Home Video Review Books." Check it here.

Aaron McNally got his copy of "Michigander." Did you? It's something real nice.

I don't leave the house much. Which is why most (read: all) of these pictures are from around the yard. That could be sad, but look at all the awesome shit I get to see right here! I don't know that this is true, but I am fairly certain that I'm scared to leave the house with the camera, which I am always scared of breaking.

Mid-post happening! The postman just dropped off my author copies for "Michigander!" I have 4 colors of covers, 30 total copies and one super gift for my wife...her name is in there as much as mine is! Would you like one of these? Would I be willing to give you one? There's only one way to find out...

Last week of classes. First year in the can. Met with a local high school student today who wants to be a writer (sigh), but I did get to talk about my self for a real long time, which is always pretty fun. The workshop prom is tonight...yeah, that's right. And I have a few books that I keep forgetting to mail off (I'm a real good business owner).

Macgregor Card is reading with Brandon Downing next Wednesday, 7pm @ Prairie Lights. Ummm, maybe you should go. Card's last book, "Duties of an English Foreign Secretary," is pretty fantastic...you could, um, borrow my copy if you like. Let me know, k?

It rained today. Hard. The dogs hid underneath the bed. I laid on top of it wishing I was smaller.

We all are somewhat Michigander.

This is Lake Michigan. It's big. Usually loud. And occasionally full of seagulls.

This is Michigander. It's big. Usually loud. And occasionally full of seagulls.

It is with much pride and great thanks to Greying Ghost Press, that I announce the release of my first chapbook, Michigander. These look great. Really. I never, ever, could have imagined this poem looking this cool.

From GG: "Michigander is a treasure map buried in the backseat of a Lake Michigan Buick. Each line, each word sluices across the page a clue to the next. No trickery for gamesmanship. A phenomenal new voice from the throat of a straight-shooting riser. Quit hitting the snooze and wake up to this already."

From me: This poem is a pleading to Chicago. This poem is a wallowing in unemployment. But most of all this poem is a riverboy wondering where his banks have gone. I wrote this poem in the Fall of 2007 between filling out job applications, and after embarrassingly bad job interviews (actual question fielded from interviewer, "Do you even know what you're doing here?"). It's that kind of poem...

The book is dedicated to my wife, Anne, but here and now I'd like to thank Jon Barrett, for telling two (3?) years ago that this could be something and then for reminding me last fall that I'd once written something that could have been something. AND, thanks to Elizabeth Robinson for taking a peek at a re-worked version a few weeks later and rubbing her shammy cloth of genius across the smudges. And finally to Carl, who accepted the poem as a pamphlet and took it upon himself to see it as a chapbook. Thank you.

I'm gushing, I know. It's geeky, I know. But I don't have 5 books out. I have one. And you can buy it here.

I feel like the world is a new place since last we discussed it. Like I'm wearing new socks, or maybe it's just that my hair looks really good today. Have you thought of this? Tomorrow, when it rains, I will be comfortably inside. That is a promise I've made to myself before, I know, but if I can't mean it this time...

I'm reading online that my mini-chapbook, "Michigander," should be done soon. Like within a few days soon. This is exciting to a guy like me.

What are your feelings on cats and ascots?

Do you have Diet Mountain Dew in your fountain? I'm so there.

Tomorrow at 7 you should head to Prairie Lights and watch Amanda Nadelberg read. You just should.

I someday hope to x-ray my entire family. Do you suppose that possible?

My kitchen flooded last week and then some friends came over and then we grilled meat. I think that pretty much catches us up.

To Point your camera down and see the clouds!

Heading to Denver tomorrow morning. Hoping to get some quality time in with an old friend before the AWP madness sets in. We're going to eat food, drink drinks and watch baseball...just like old times.

Last week, during one of DB-Q's better non sequiturs, he said that AWP was "like Whitman's barbaric yawp, only, there is no why..."

Just below this post I've pre-posted my course description for next Fall. My favorite thing about it is that it says 'stuff' so many times you begin to wonder if 'stuff' is even a word. My second favorite thing about it is that the only sentence that doesn't seem a little off is, "This class will be real hard." My class will be hard...did you see the reading list?

I finished up 20+ Baus chaps today while watching the Cardinals play baseball. In short, the experience was quite fulfilling. If you'd like a Baus book in Denver, just ask Eric whereabouts I was the last place he saw me. I move pretty slow...who knows, I may just still be there. Also, on the chance that any of the 2 people who may read this have a table at the book fair and wouldn't mind a little pink and tan book cluttering up their space, I'd let you keep the money for 1 of every 2 sold...you know, for your trouble.

Has anyone else noticed that there is officially too much stuff to do at AWP? Seriously, there's like 3 off site reading every night...at the same time...all over the city. What's a young man to do?

Regardless, I'm not missing this one:
Possess Nothing: a small press event

Plus Gallery, 2501 Larimer Street (near the conference)

Saturday, April 10th, 7:00-10:00 p.m.

“Watch yourself unfold and close-out the AWP week with five presses that walk the path of dispossession. Fourteen readers; 100 minutes; singular enlightenment. Action Books, Apostrophe Books, Black Ocean, Slope Editions and Tarpaulin Sky Press present: Jessica Baran, Crystal Curry, Julie Doxsee, Sandy Florian, Lara Glenum, Johannes Goransson, Joe Hall, Lucy Ives, Paul Foster Johnson, Gordon Massman, Zachary Schomburg, Abraham Smith, Shelly Taylor, Amy Wright.”

Yeah.

Course Description Fall 2010

8C:001 Creative Writing Studio Workshop

Sec. 0014 W 12:30-2:20 221 NH

This course is about making stuff. It’s about making stuff from not-stuff. Really, it’s about the work we do to make our not-stuff, stuff. And this course is definitely about finding the best kind of not-stuff/stuff work for you (poetry stuff, fiction stuff, non-fiction stuff). We will read stuff, good stuff, and wonder aloud on how it gained its stuffiness. We will wonder how this stuff could have been other stuff. We will conjure up our own not-stuff and wonder aloud on its stuffiness potential. We will work on all this stuff. Making not-stuff into stuff is hard. Making not-stuff into good stuff is real hard. This class will be real hard. But, you will make good stuff.

Required texts (available at Prairie Lights Books):

Zachary Schomburg, Scary, No Scary, 978-0-9777709-9-1

Kate Greenstreet, The Last 4 Things, 978-1-934103-09-8

12 x 12: Conversations in 21st-Century Poetry and Poetics: 978-1587297915

Michael Chabon: Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son: 978-0061490194

Best American Non-Required Reading: 978-0547241609

James Tate: Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee: 978-1933517353

I had to run down to Kalona today to buy my father-in-law a birthday present. While this was taking place, something else quite miraculous was taking place as well. Riverside, the official future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk. Space...

Taking these picture reminded me of other pictures I've been meaning to take. So I did. Plus I got an ice cream cone. I see that lady everyday on my bus. I real sorry for her. To think, living long enough until your home becomes the parking lot of a Heartland Inn...

I've been marathon reading lately. Ben Lerner's new book is A-mazing. Dorthea Lasky's new book was so great I couldn't keep myself from giving it away to a dear friend. I also finally finished "Killing Kanoko," which you almost need to read over the course of a few months, otherwise you become too adapted and the poems cease to have their [intended] effect. What else...Graham Foust: done. GC Waldrep: done. Allen Grossman: done. (I'm actually cleaning out my book bag right now) MacGregor Card and James Galvin: done. I think that's it...

Tonight, after some delay, is Brandi Homan's reading at the University of Northern Iowa. Baker hall, 8 o'clock...

Are you going to awp? are you one of the unfortunate masses without an Eric Baus chapbook. My name is BJ Love and I can put an end to such sorrow...find me!

This is Orange Lincoln. I thought you might like meet him.

One of Jojo's ears popped up yesterday. We took a picture of it. Immediately after this she peed on our comforter. I have a small washer, so laundering was no easy task. The lesson I learned here; standing ears has zero correlation with not peeing on comforters.

Hey! Do you like prose poems? Then check out this new (free) anthology of poets working in that medium. I'm one, and there are others. Hopefully, it will be here.

Also, Carl had this to say about my pamphlet. I still don't have too many details, so I'm looking forward to what it will be. Whatever that is, at least it won't just be a .doc on my computer any more...that will be real nice.

School start back up tomorrow and I'm kind of excited. With no vacation plans, spring break wound up being more work than school could ever be. I did write a review for Heather Christle's book, "The Difficult Farm." Someone actually asked me to do it, so it won't show up here, unless they reject my effort, than it may...if I'm not totally embarrassed by it. AND, I knocked 4 more books of my to-read list which was both fun and functional. But, yeah, school and its routine will be pretty sweet.

I heard once that Brandi Homan (who is also featured in the anthology) was reading this Thursday and UNI, but have not heard much in a while, so I can't say for certain if it is happening, but if it is, you should be there. I'll throw up more details as I discover them.

This is what it's like to be me today -laundry. Laundry is boring. I don't take pictures of boring things. That's not true, actually.

I wrote some poems with DG last night; 4 poems in just one pitcher of beer. None of them are all good. Most of them are a little good. One is pretty much all good. We have decided it's something. Something, like how Easter is something. It's because of Easter.

Baus book sales have slowed. Stopped, really. Fight the good fight here.

Remember how I said I was going to not buy more books until I'd read all unread, bought books? Yeah...

Yeah.

This is new puppy (along with old puppy, just to ease you in). Her name is Jojo. She likes sleeping, being super cute and the R&B group Jodeci, though, if you asked her today she'd tell you Salt n' Pepa.

This has nothing to do with puppies, which was nice after the last few days, but tonight I went and watched Joshua Marie Wilkinson and GC Waldrep. It was an outrageous entertainment. I bought GC's book, "Archicembalo." One thing you may not know about GC Waldrep is that he once had an aunt that lived in the town I grew up in. Also, I did not know her.

Have you ever read Max Jacob? He's French. He hung out with Picasso. He wrote funny poems that all have secrets...I didn't tell you, but the secret is that they break your heart. Here is one of them translated by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney:

Poem of the Moon

There are on the night sky three mushrooms, which are the moon. As abruptly as sings the cuckoo from a clock, they rearrange themselves each month at midnight. There are in the garden some rare flowers which are little men at rest that wake up every morning. There is in my dark room a luminous shuttle that roves, then two … phosphorescent aerostats, they’re the reflections of a mirror. There is in my head a bee that talks.

There are also some of new translations of Raul Zurita up at the spankin' new Action Yes. It was at a Daniel Borzutzky reading that I first heard of Zurita. It was at a Daniel Borzutzky reading that I first heard Daniel Borzutzky read these translations. I was smitten during these firsts.

Have gotten the chance to see Zach Schomburg's poem films? They are amazing with a capital a. Get them here. Really.

It's March. I have a shit-ton of stuff on my plate. I got a new puppy. When you have a shit-ton of stuff on your plate, puppies are like gravy...it gets on everything, but you're always glad it's there. I once ate a gravy-topped omelet. It was pretty great.

Have you heard the Carolina Chocolate Drops? A heard them on the radio yesterday and when she came home we downloaded their new record (Genuine Negro Jig). I know it's almost a right of passage these days for folk bands to cover hip-hop tunes, but CCD's version of "Hit'em Up Style," is sick. Vocals-beatbox-and-violin-only sick...

I've been reading everything Oppen these days, it started as class assignments, but has since become something else...that truth is possible in Language, not necessarily in it's representations, but in that liminal space between speaker and receptor...plus, I'm pretty sure George Oppen would have been the greatest uncle ever.

Don't forget to order the brand-new and totally amazing Eric Baus chapbook, "Bee-Stung Aviary," here.

JMW is reading with GC Waldrep tomorrow night at Prairie Lights (7pm). Did you know Waldrep was Amish? I had no idea...how stoked to you suppose he was to be published in DIAGRAM...or Blackbird, for that matter.

I have 20+ books I must read before I'm allowing myself to buy any more books. Will it get done by AWP...stay tuned.

These are many copies of Eric Baus' latest chapbook, "Bee-Stung Aviary" (further adventures). Everyone of them are ready for you.

This is how you can order one. This is how you can order another one.

And this is how you can use Eric Baus' latest chapbook, "Bee-Stung Aviary," to remove an actual bee-sting:

These are all handy things to know, I think.

I read tonight. Then this happened. I don't know for sure what that means, but it looks like my little pamphlet might be next.

I'm drinking Hamm's and watching WWE. What does that say about me? Probably something weird.

Have you ever Nick Flynn? Apparently I did once...and then forgot. He was in town last week reading from a memoir and I had little interest; then I grabbed an old anthology (American Poetry: The Next Generation) and realized that 10 years ago I wrote, what I assume, is a real shitty paper about his 10 year old poems and I got real bummed that I skipped his reading.

According to Jim Galvin his IWW story works like this: he was student a in the non-fiction program and was having a shit time...then he applied to the poetry IWW program based on a few lyric prose pieces and got in. SO, he was accepted here as a poet...having really written no poetry before (but how different is that from so many others). That said, ten years ago, I was totally in love with his poems, and now, I'm totally in love with his poems.

This might be my favorite:

Emptying Town
after Provincetown

Each fall this town empties, leaving me
drained, standing on the dock, waving
bye bye, the white handerkerchief
stuck in my throat. You know the way Jesus

rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming & thorny,
the way he points to it. I'm afraid
the way I miss you

will be this obvious. I have

a friend who everyone warns me
is dangerous, he hides
bloody images of Jesus around my house

for me to find when I come home--Jesus
behind the cupboard door, Jesus tucked

into the mirror. He wants to save me

but we disagree from what. My version of Hell
is someone ripping open his
shirt & saying,

look what I did for you.

I think that's pretty rad, don't you?

I know this has become my standard excuse for not blogging, but we've been without internet...again. And once again, there was nothing I could do because it wasn't my internet. But no more! I'm officially a due-paying member of the internet society.

Anyway, I'm reading tonight (TONIGHT!) as part of the Anthology series here in Iowa City. The whole thing starts at 7pm and will be housed in the Foxhead (402 East Market). You should come, but leave the kids...it's gonna get real.

People of the City:

So Winter Keeps Happening. My Feet Are Frozen. I Have Lost My Mittens. What Are We Going To Do About The Olympics, Rather, Why Aren't We Better Ice Skaters. Who Will Help Me Find My Coat. I Have No Legs. Your Hair is Pretty But I Can't Go On. Children Need Apples The Way A Wall Needs Wallpaper. The Store Is Closed And So Far Away. So We Have To Keep Going And We Will Keep Going We Will Keep Going All The Way To Friday, When You Will Be Wooed And Undone By:

Danthology

Sandra Allen
Callie Garnett
Emmalee Hunnicutt
Lisa Leaverton
BJ Love
Andrea Rosenberg
Colby Somerville
Kayla Soyer-Stein

Friday 2/19 7 pm Foxhead

Of course, I have a shit-ton more to tell you, but no time right now...

Lots of neat things happened today. This is just a few of them.