I have been preoccupied for a bit publishing 2 books. The first was the long awaited Monday Night Poetry Anthology called Coevolution -funded in part by a grant from the DeFrancisco Arts & Cultural Grants administered by the Cultural Resources Council. (It can be purchased for $10 at Monday Night Poetry or at Follett's Orange Bookstore in the Marshall Square Mall.) We received our 200 poems from a whole bunch of poets living near and far. Here's me Name Dropping: Rick Lupert, Mary McLaughlin Slechta, Jane Cassady, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Paloma A. Capanna, Therése Halscheid, Daniel J. McGinn, Omanii Abdullah-Grace, Martin Walls, Gregg Yeti--and that ain't even the half of it. (All the folks I didn't link to are very Google-able.) I was and am totally blown away. Special thanks to Rachel Schlesselman for all her editing help.
The second is a collection of poems by Jane Cassady called An Awkward Kind of Faith . (It can also be purchased at Monday Night Poetry or Follett's Orange Bookstore in the Marshall Square Mall for $5.) This is my review:
"From the completely (un)biased editor of Turtle Ink Press: Sometimes the reward for having done the homework is the knowledge that water’s moving under snow, sometimes that instant evaporation is a possibility, sometimes knowledge sits somewhere between. Jane juxtaposes these bits of knowledge, wrestles with their implications, wrings them out, dips her pen into the drippin’s and writes into the morning. She proves that there are no still life's, no still lives: cities make us hot and sticky; history reminds we all have damn spots; the quest is worth passing on the bucket. Pay attention, Jane says, pay attention. Indeed, we should."
I certainly lead a beautiful life.