April Wrap-Up

April ends with a couple of interesting developments.

First, I have finally gotten an answer to the question, "National Poetry Month is here again, so where's my cut?" That answer came on April 20, when Portland writer and lit blogger Dave Jarecki selected for that day's poem my very own "Questions on Recruitment". This answer was punctuated by learning that my book-length manuscript The Killing Tree was a finalist for the New Criterion Poetry Prize, which was awarded to Ashley Anna McHugh.

Second, I am getting more and more of a Velveteen Rabbit feeling of being real as a playwright. I have sent in my final round of major revisions on my play "Dig," which is now listed on the "Coming Soon" page of London's Old Red Lion Theatre. Actors have been cast, lighting and design decisions are underway, and rehearsals begin on May 17. I won't be able to absorb the full magnitude of events, though, until my wife Paula Van Lare and I go to London during the week of June 21 and actually see a couple of performances for ourselves. I can't expect the audience to shout "Author! Author!" following the performance, but if it happens I won't be stopping anyone.

Dogs and Poetry

Last week my wife Paula Van Lare and I had the pleasure and the privilege of volunteering for a couple of days at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah.

More specifically, we worked at Dogtown, as featured on the National Geographic program of the same name.

You may wonder what this has to do with my writing.

Fair enough.

While only a small portion of my writing has involved dogs, last week's experience made me want to share a couple of previously published dog poems. I have another tangentially canine poem coming out shortly (more on this soon), and I am trying to publish a couple of others.

For now I hope you enjoy these two.



Policy

Because Nubians are still enslaved
I walk my dogs twice a day.

Because a child conceived tonight will inherit addiction
I leave my dogs offerings
of fresh water, with ice cubes.
Because envelopes and marketplaces explode
I hug my dogs and even carry them
where no shrapnel flies.

Because a manatee is sliced
by motorboat blades
and the last wild tiger
has been born,
I keep my dogs' tags and shots
up to date.

Now that any fact can be known
in an instant,
the smallest love is news.

Things touch at a near or far remove:
jays pass raspberry seeds
over fresh fields,
armadillos, burrowed into freight,
widen their range.

Word of my program
will ride the jet stream,
and land like a petal,
or it will bounce, devoutly, off a satellite.




Aubade

Dog, and I believe that I can call you that
with a high degree of accuracy,
in a purely denotative sense, though,
unsullied by cultural associations,
please listen,
since I seldom ask that much of you
(the couch is yours no less than mine,
the pillows, past and present, more so):
You would, if you a possessed a consciousness
of cause and effect, self and other
and the mortality that swallows them,
be grateful to know nothing
beyond that which you know right now
because, for me,
it’s seven-thirty on a partly cloudy
Tuesday, forty-five degrees,
with a sixty-percent chance of rain
and the certainty
of a commute and a day’s work
in which I’ll be wagged by—appended to—
devices engineered by men
who get out even less than me.
Really, they exist,
though you might have gathered otherwise
from the long and many evenings that we share—
like tonight, when we’ll
resume this small symposium.
Until then, fellow traveler on the planet,
Don’t scratch that spot behind your ear—
It’s already bare.
A new rawhide bone is on your bed
and, as always, cane mio,
the kibble’s in the bowl.

Anarchy in the Pre-K!

The headline's a bit of an exaggeration, but some of you will enjoy the reference.

More literally, yesterday was my first school visit in support of The Best Mariachi in the World/El Mejor Mariachi del Mundo. Brooksfield School in McLean, Virginia, a Montessori school for pre-K to third grade students, hosted me for most of the morning.

We read and shared the bilingual and Spanish-language versions of the book, and students heard several tracks from a two-disc collection by Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán that my wife Paula Van Lare bought for me in time for the appearance. The upper-level students danced for a few minutes, and both groups had some fun with show and tell and Spanish vocabulary.

Pictures and further details are forthcoming and, to paraphrase the title of a recent film, there will be sombreros.

Backstage with Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan

Shortly before the concert that closed the San Antonio Mariachi Festival in December 2008, members of Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, the original Best Mariachi in the World, graciously allowed my wife Paula Van Lare and myself to get backstage for a couple of quick pictures.

I knew getting the photographs was a big deal at the time, but only later have I been able to appreciate how big of a deal it was. My thanks go out to Mariachi Vargas, their crew and Festival personnel for making the moment possible.