En Why Tea

My car got stolen on Sunday night, which put everything out of whack on what was supposed to be a very organizedly busy week. I had meant to go to the pre-reading walk around High Park at Monday's Scream, but showed up late, saying, "I missed the walk because my car got stolen."

I also meant to say on Monday: Happy birthday, Dana! But, like I say, my car got stolen and I got distracted.

Anvil wrote me today to let me know my Hunkamooga column in sub-Terrain got the nod from the New York Times. This astounds me. It's right here.

My car was found on Tuesday morning. Instead of taking the bus up to Sheppard, these fuckers smashed the passenger window, stole my CD changer, jammed a screwdriver in the ignition and took my car. I really gotta get rid of that car. The police have been might nice, and so has the insurance company. Really.

This summer I've been editing a few books for Mansfield's fall list: Emergency Hallelujah, by Jason Heroux, and Flutter, by Alice Burdick. I am so goddamn excited about these books. Jason and Alice have been amazing to work with. Now I'm digging into David McFadden's Be Calm, Honey, a big collection of recent sonnets. David closed the Scream Mainstage on Monday night, after a mostly really good lineup of poets, fictioneers, glossarists, and non-fickers. He did a very brave thing: he read just one poem. A 15-parter. That takes guts, because if you embark on such a project and it's tanking, you just gotta keep going. But he didn't tank: he got a great response. I've really been enjoying watching young people get dazzled by Dave's readings over the past few months, because poets of his generation get overlooked far too often. And David is the real thing. The last set, which is just about all I caught, also featured excellent readings from Sina Queyras and Dani Couture.

In my freelance life, I also recently edited a poetry book by a young writer named Asher Ghaffar. It's called Wasps in a Golden Dream Hum a Strange Music, and Michael Holmes at ECW is putting it out this fall. As personal policy, I rarely discuss freelance jobs here on Bloggamooga, but this is another extremely exciting book: really inventive, provocative, and often beautiful. Asher was also a blast to work with.

More soon. I'm gonna go smoke a NYT cigar.

Over and out.