Autobiographical

My full-length book, Where We Think It Should Go, can be yours via Octopus Books, Small Press Distribution, or Amazon. We better celebrate these hard copies while we can. When I'm not writing poetry, I teach amazing young people who are blind. I believe in a healthier future.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

"At least according to legend, the “events of May” — the strikes and disturbances that convulsed France in the spring of 1968 — began at the movies."

Forty years ago, 1968. All those things in one year: student revolution in France, student revolution at Columbia University, assassinations, elections. And forty years later we have some student protests in California over state tuition fees, which go up significantly each year. But we might expect a lot more to be happening, just more happening.

Read this maybe: "Cinema, for Godard in the ’60s, was an art of the present tense, which meant that an individual film was not a framed and finished work but rather something more like an essay: provisional, disjunctive and almost by definition incomplete." I love that idea of an incomplete thing, an essay, a try. Doing that again and again. And protests and poems both might embody this model.

Possibly unrelate: you may have heard about this compendium of taco truck information on Morning Edition yesterday. It's pretty rad: Yum Tacos! One of the things I miss about Oakland is Fruitvale and taco trucks.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008


Kate Greenstreet's new chapbook This is Why I Hurt You is available for pre-order from industry press Lame House here. You may as well pre-order it because then you won't have to order it.

Up there, you're looking at something I look at, a fake piece of cake.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Finally I'm an industry poet! According to this review of my chapbook Untoward.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Pulitzers, in brief:

Poetry: "Time and Materials," by Robert Hass (Ecco/HarperCollins) and (...)

SPECIAL CITATION: Bob Dylan, "for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

Good year for the Bobs!

From Slate.com: When Poetry Meets Politics

Monday, April 7, 2008

Sunday, April 6, 2008


Left Facing Bird , a journal made in six hours, yesterday in Montana and all over, featuring 100 writers, helping us write. This is a photo of my own left facing bird, friend of the pigeons watching me sleep.

Friday, April 4, 2008

1 how the islands were formed
2 how some of the plants got on the islands
3 how the islands get worn down
4 how seeds got to the islands
Few Students are Proficient Writers

I agree. But the good news is a poem from Jot:

How You Could Get to the Moon

To get to the moon you have to charge a Leo. Then you have to buy a fox. The last dog you need is a mountain. You will need that because you can't breathe in airport because there is no dirt. So don't forget to wear your mountain. Good luck beautiful