Recommendation: If you ever have a book release party with a reading included, have someone you love read with you-someone like Carolyn Hoerdemann who is remarkable, hilarious, brilliant and many more cream of the crop adjectives beyond remarkable, hilarious, and brilliant.
Here she is reading Transfer. Happy Pride! And here is the poem:
Here I am at the book signing table with my son Ruben who took off work to attend. When Carolyn and I were done reading the poems we’d selected, we asked if anyone had requests. This is the one the audience selected. I was so grateful Ruben was there to hear it:
And here I am with the beautiful artist and photographer Kate Roth, who created and photographed the assemblage I chose for the cover of my book:
And here is the audience which included some more of my favorite people and many new faces too. If you were there, thank you! I know the weather was awful, but you braved it, and made it, and we made some great inside weather together. Laughter is a drizzle with no water and most poems have breezy edges, tiny constellations, and worddust which is related to stardust as well as lacy clouds and thermometers.
Coming up: A reading at Undercover Books on Sunday, July 12th at Undercover Books. 4:30 PM. Undercover books is such a cool spot, in part because it doubles as a private detective agency. Kelly Anchors had to miss the release party, but will be reading with me this time! Hooray.
Other Stuff :
Lacquer is a Thrilling Word has some wonderful customer reviews. Will you write one too? Or, if you don’t have a copy, will you get one? If you have one, will you get another and give it to someone as a gift or post one of your favorite poems somewhere or ask your local library or favorite bookstore to carry it? And if you do any of these things, will you let me know?
Order Book and/or Write a Review
Also:
My poem Red Glaze was accepted to Cagibi and will appear in their July issue.
My poem In Brooklyn was accepted to the South Florida Poetry Review and will come out in their August issue
The city of Racine Wisconsin put out this Anthology of tiny poems about their city bus routes. Mine appear on page 101:
Also, I had a great time at our family reunion in Kentucky over Father’s day weekend. Here is a picture of a felled tree with light behind it.
And a photo of me and my Dad.
I’ve been working with my Dad all year on his memoir. We’ve been randomizing the years of his life and recording our conversations. Here’s an excerpt from when he was a kid in Brooklyn:
“Yeager’s was a little grocery store. You didn’t serve yourself. They took everything off the shelves with a grabber. That was fun. So you’d say, I need a can of beans. And they would get the can. And they were just very nice. If you didn’t have money, they’d put down what you owed on a ledger like in the movies. We also had a stable across from our apartment. People had private horses and rode up and down the road. There was a bridle path on Ocean Parkway. And down the block was St. Rosa Lyman Church. We wouldn’t ever walk across in front of it. There was a gang we were scared of that probably never existed, but we were terrified of it. We were small Jewish kids. We could run, but we couldn’t fight. We had to be careful.”
Finally, I’ve been spending the day every so often with a darling 2 year old. The other day we saw perfectly great looking everything bagel on the street and made up a song about it. It went like this: “Bagel on the street. Bagel on the street. It’s so weird to see a bagel on the street! Why is there a bagel on the street?” It’s soooooo weird. Genre? Probably punk. We sang it for a long time and will probably sing it again. Maybe we’ll start a band.
