the edits are done

and "Selected Poems and Passions:  1996-2004" is slotted for release sometime next month...either August 16th (my birthday) or August 12th (the first day of the apple harvest, consistent with my poem "matrimony" from "The Sacraments" within the White Sunday poems).

it all gets so complicated.

some poems got cut by my editor, M.K., as did the use of the faux pen-and-ink drawings I have included in a few of my past books.  Her position...was disappointing, but I accept her taste and judgement.  she even made a few minor structural changes to a few pieces that needed them.

she solved the issue of the line-wraps for "aureate" in an elegant manner that I would not have accepted had it not been so well executed, so she out smarted me.  I may have to re-evaluate my generic loathing of all editors.  Dammit.

The MonArts Reading...and some news

First off, let me thank Ro Brooks of the Monongalia Arts Center and Scott Emerson of the Morgantown Poets for hosting me last Friday.  Also, to WBOY-TV Channel 12 for sending someone down to interview me.  I had fun.  Made a few bucks for the Morgantown Poets.  Saw a few familiar faces, and many new ones.

If you weren't there, or were there and not paying attention, you missed a few news items:

First off, my book "Orphan" will keep its name when it comes out next year. I had pushed for a title change, but my all-powerful and all-wise editor vetoed the change to "Orpheus' Orphans".  I will have my revenge.

Secondly, the great Larry Jaffe, founder of Poets for Human Rights, is writing the foreword to "Selected Poems and Passions:  1996-2004".  It is due out August 16th of this year.

Finally, I enjoyed getting back out on the road so much that I am now looking to finally put together my comeback tour.  More news in the next few days.

30 hours and a handful of minutes

Yes, in just a trifle over thirty hours, I come out of semi-retirement as a road poet.  That is to say, I am doing a reading.  Well, sort of a reading-slash-speaking-slash-performing sort of thing.  6:30 pm, on Friday, July 6th, 2012, at the Monongalia Arts Center in Morgantown, West Virginia, I open my mouth again.

A few years ago, this would be un-noteworthy, but considering my low profile in the last several, it is remarkable.  I haven't really laid it out since my divorce from she-who-will-not-be-named (her request that her name not be used.  A shame, too, as I had said almost universally praiseworthy things about her.).

Now I stand ready to see what's left.  A lot has happened since 2002, which is really the last year I really took it out of the garage and revved the engine.  A divorce.  Pink Jade.  Aubergine.  White Sunday (whom I have also publicly declared as my "final muse".)  Some books, a podcast, some CDs.

Creatively, an exeptional decade.  "Howling Beast", "The Sacraments", "The White Sunday Poems" and so many other stars in my firmament. 

It will be a difficult read for me.  I am more self-conscious than I once was, more self-judging.  The bitterness than Psyche had predicted would come with age didn't show up, yet.  But there is a set to my jaw that indicates some exasperation and disappointment experienced.  But not surrendered to.

I have a read book for this show.  Approximately 30 poems.  I plan to, at this time, open with "Walsingham in Padua" and end with "Radiant Tigers".  Logic and emotions say I have that backwards, but I want it that way, I want to fight the stone that I seem to be habitually pushing up that hill.

I want to thank the nice people at Morgantown Poets for supporting me in this endeavor, and any and all of you who show up to hear my words and buy my books and CDs (profits going to the aforementioned Morgantown Poets).

I'll let you know how it goes.