Poems in "Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology"

Virtually anyone who knows me is aware that my non-literary enthusiasms include dogs. In fact, it would be fair to say that many of my favorite people go about on four feet. I have also grown increasingly interested in dog and other animal welfare issues.

Sometimes, though, enthusiasms cross paths, and I have ended up writing poems about dogs. Some of those poems have succeeded.

I am thus greatly pleased to note that two of those poems, "Aubade" and "Policy", will appear in Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology, forthcoming in November from Ireland-based and internationally known press Salmon Poetry.

I first met Jessie Lendennie, Salmon's publisher and the editor of this anthology, in early 2004. I was wandering through the Book Fair at the Chicago AWP Conference and stopped at the Salmon table, where we ended up talking about, well, dogs.

To mix animal metaphors for a moment, I am a very small fish in this anthology's pond. Far better-known writers in Dogs Singing include but are not limited to Kelly Cherry, Stephen Dobyns, Jane Hirshfield, Maxine Kumin, Les Murray, Alicia Ostriker, Richard Peabody and C.K. Williams.

The poets included are not being compensated for their work. Instead, proceeds will be donated to canine welfare organizations in Ireland.

With the holidays not all that far away, Dogs Singing would make a wonderful present for the dog and/or poetry lover in your life, and maybe for yourself.

AWP 2012 in Chicago, or, Why Do We Do This?

This blog has been silent for a while, and generally for very positive reasons that I will mention in later posts, but that is not the matter at hand.

More to the point, tomorrow I will be joining several thousand writerly types in one of the great annual rituals like the migration of Monarch butterflies or the spawning of horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay.

In other words, I will be attending this year's conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) in Chicago, where I have lived and near where I grew up.

With airfare and hotel paid for, and no-cage boarding arranged for Roo the Rescue Dog, the only question remaining is Why am I doing this? With plenty of company I can ask Why Do We This?

It's not for the money. No one I know will be turning a profit. A few in academia may break even if their departments fund them, but such funds are increasingly hard to come by.

Yet money is far from the only currency exchanged. Like other fine arts and some performing arts, writing depends on other economies. One is the prestige economy of publications and professional activity that may eventually turn to tenure and grants, though for relatively few. Even in these cases the amounts of money involved would seem bafflingly small to a financier circa 2006. Presenting papers and giving readings, though, can yield a slice of that small pie. Sometimes overlapping with the prestige economy is the gift economy of networking, favors exchanged and trading in books, journals and swag of usually modest dimensions; this serves as the framework for no small amount of conviviality.

Even without a quid pro quo, more than a few genuinely enjoy advancing the professional and creative development of others and/or buying a broke graduate student a drink. The term for these feelings in economics is "warm glow altruism effects".

While I took no action toward the proposals noted in this space last year, I will come in with a plan, as discussed in detail by several other bloggers. The centerpiece of mine will be the event shown in the flyer above, an offsite meet-and-greet (and signing) by poets affiliated with WordTech Communications, the publisher of my 2005 collection Settling for Beauty and my August 2012 collection Labor Day at Venice Beach. With any luck I will also have the opportunity to visit the fine people of Accents Publishing and American Book Review (and that leaves 25 more letters to cover). I also hope to stop in with Salmon Poetry, publisher of the anthology Dogs Singing, the proceeds of which go to two dog rescue organizations.

Another distinct pleasure will be attending a few readings and panels to get off my feet for a little bit and, more importantly, to remind myself that we are there for the art.

This could be fun. Please feel free to introduce yourself if you see me, assuming my badge has the right side showing.

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Anthologies and Me

If you've received money during the winter holiday of your choice, or if you've saved money by frugality and comparison-shopping, you may now feel the need to treat yourself with a new book or two.

Far be it from me to dissuade you from this impulse.

In fact, I have a few ideas that include my work among that of many other people, some far better known.

First up is The Expeditioner's Guide: Intrepid Tales of Awesomeness from the Open Road. This project by the editors of online travel magazine The Expeditioner includes, in addition to my poems "Andante" and "Travelogue," work on destinations including Copenhagen, Delhi, Kenya, Kosovo, Rome and Rwanda, among others.

Second is a project I should have mentioned about this time last year. Still, a thing of beauty is a joy forever, so I can recommend Chicago photographer Adeline Sides' book The Silver Series, an album of classically composed nudes accompanied by poems from a variety of Chicago-based and farther-flung authors.

Third, I would be remiss if I didn't again mention Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology, edited by Jessie Lendenni and published by Salmon Poetry of Ireland. Proceeds will be donated to dog rescue and welfare organizations in Ireland and Thailand.

Finally, I would suggest two anthologies that came into being well before I started this blog in 2008. The first is Northern Music: Poems about and Inspired by Glenn Gould, which I edited and which includes one poem of my own, as well as work by Philip Dacey and Leslie Monsour. The second is In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare. My two poems in the book are a retelling of the Seven Ages of Man and a sonnet that combines elements of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 and the script of Goodfellas. Seriously. Also appearing among the collection's ninety poets are R.S. Gwynn, Diane Lockward and Leon Stokesbury.

Further updates on anthologies and more will be coming to this space soon.

Off to the Fair, or AWP and Me

To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, and do so badly, because I would not come to AWP, AWP kindly came to me.

AWP, generally pronounced by its letters rather than as rhyming with Walt Whitman's "barbaric yawp", is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. The initials also serve as shorthand for the annual conference, which begins today in Washington, DC, where I live.

Avoiding travel in a snowstorm of historic proportions is a stroke of good luck, and there are others. Without the burdens of representing an academic institution or speaking on a panel, I can take in readings and other events, as well as check out the Bookfair without any great pressure.

Of course, I will have a few goals and one scheduled event. Tomorrow, February 3, I will be joining edtor Jessie Lendennie and other contributing poets in a signing of Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology at the Salmon Press table.

Other projects will involve freestyle hawking of my wares. Newest among them is my sonnet "Botanical Garden," which is the February selection of Broadsided. I will be handing out copies myself, and others are encouraged to print out and post the poem, illustrated by Ira Joel Haber.

Also debuting at AWP is Issue 9 of Los Angeles Review, which includes my unusually long free verse poem "Labor Day at Venice Beach"--inspired, as they say, by actual events.

I am also in the pleasantly odd position of promoting a book I don't yet have in hand. My essay collection Dowsing and Science, described on page 49 of the Spring/Summer Catalog of the Texas A&M University Press consortium, will be published on March 1. It will be a challenge to make people remember the title of a book they haven't seen. Still, the collection contains essays of varying lengths, tones, and subjects, including a few personal essays as well as a preponderance of intellectual and cultural criticism, and that variety makes Dowsing and Science a compact and reasonably priced choice for classroom use as well as personal reading. (Yes, I am selling my book here.) It is presently available for pre-order from the publisher and online sellers in the United States and nine other countries.

Finally, I will be reminding people that they can still obtain my collection Settling for Beauty, which recently received a favorable review from poet and fiction writer Eric Hendrixson.

In the midst of all this I will have the opportunity to see friends and pass out my card, which includes the URL for this blog. Comfortable shoes will be crucial.

And now it's off to the fair or, in the word of British novelist David Lodge, "Whee!"