All the Layouts

Last night I completed a draft for the layout of Mairéad Byrne's poetry collection, The Best of (What's Left of) Heaven (forthcoming January 2010). At 224 pages, with a variety of heading styles and poem styles, it was no easy task. It took about 12 hours and when I finished I felt great about the whole thing. I felt so good that I did the layout for Andy Devine's book, WORDS (forthcoming April 2010). That one only took 2 hours. It's 88 pages long.

If anyone wants a review PDF of either of these, let me know. This is probably a VERY limited time offer, as both of these books are still not completely proofed or edited. There is still much undecided on these books, in fact, but I thought it would be neat to let people see the process at the beginning.

Narrow House is putting out a big book of poetry called the IE Reader. This has been in the works for a long time because it's a beast of a book, with tons of poets included like CA Conrad, Charles Bernstein, Cole Swenson . . . and people who's names begin with other letters like "A" and "L" and "^#." Maybe not that last one.

And on top of that, they sent me the reader pages for myyyyyyyy boooooooooooook

myyyyyyy book
my book

(feels GREAT to say that)

my book, Adam Robison and Other Poems. All of me is really happy with this book. It's fun to be on the other side of the publishing thing. My book RULES all the other books. It is an immodest book. It's 86 pages long I think. Who wants it?

Joe Young's book is at the printer now. I thought I would have been shipping pre-orders already but the process got delayed by the fact that I decided to use a better printer. A slower printer, but a better printer.

I'm going to stop writing now.

First though I wanted to say that since all the PG books are the same size, they look really great next to each other on the shelf.

week 2

I now have poems about:

Elisabeth Elliot the evangelist
my grandmother Erma Ruth Rogers Tyner
Helene Cixous the post-structural feminist
a crazy guy I met on the street
Frederic Law Olmstead who designed Central Park
Xanana Gusmao the PM of East Timor
Joe Louis the boxer
Mario Mendoza who they named The Mendoza Line after
and Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

I love them a lot a lot. If anyone has any requests, any person they want me to write a bio-poem about, comment away. If the poem makes it into the book I will thank you and give you credit. I am most interested in writing about interesting, nice people that don't get thought about a lot or discussed at work.

Fabrits

I bathe in the morning for an hour and read. Often I fall asleep with the book in my hand, but I never drop the book in the water. I used to bathe too long and then hurry up so as not to be late to work. Now I wake up earlier so I can drink coffee for a while and revise poems. That's what I do now for the last three days. Joe Young told me about that, told me about how it's fun to sit around and drink coffee. This morning I added music to the routine.

Wake, bathe and read, drink coffee and revise, listen to music. It's like a full day that's over by 8:10. Then I ride my bike to work.

In the past I only "took cream" occasionally at dessert. Now I drink coffee with cream in the morning because otherwise I will never finish my one gallon of milk.

Ah, blogging.

Yesterday I wrote the best poem I ever wrote. It's about Elisabeth Elliot, the missionary/evangelist. A section, then:

Once she discussed Chekhov's story "Verotchka"
At length, off the cuff,
In order to warn against the dangers of holding hands.
It actually makes a lot of sense, if
You don't want to get laid.
No one wants to not get laid,
But sometimes you want to stay a virgin a while.
That's important to people and I support it.
My advice to these people would be
Don't hold hands.

Then at night in bed I watch a movie that I downloaded during the day. Last night I watched Lonesome Jim starring Casey Affleck and Liv Tyler and Seymour Cassel and I kept wanting to punch it. But I could not fall asleep.

High Score: 10,400

I finally beat level 16 on Brick Breaker. It took me a month, about, at one game per day, about. There are 34 levels. My high score is 10,400. It was very fun to see what level 17 and 18 look like.

Level 16 is a beast. It's a tall box like level 11 but with more of the orange bricks that you have to hit three times. The thing is that the box is surrounded on three sides by the grey tiles that you cannot ever break unless you shoot them with the gun, if you get the gun. Level 16 is a beastly monster and I do not like it.

I like the book I'm cooking up so far. I've got poems about Kierkegaard and Frederick Law Olmstead. I will revise more, but here is an excerpt:

He didn't go to college because he got sumac poisoning and that messed up his eyes!
He thought slavery was bad business and he wrote so when he was a journalist.
He was like a Red Cross guy in the Civil War.
He designed the park system in Milwaukee and also in Buffalo.
Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo.
That is a complete sentence!
Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo.

Eating Gobstoppers At Work

Yes, Oni Buchanan. Stunning.

Yes, Bas Jan Ader. Flabbergasting.

The proof for David Daniel's book of short stories, Six Off 66, is sitting at my house but I cannot see it, and it's blinding me.

Next week I begin work in earnest on my poetry book fer Narrow House. This is the sort of thing to blog about!