I review Undercastle by Feliz Lucia Molina

Go read my review of Undercastle in The Rumpus, and then go scoop it up!

A little taste: "Undercastle stamps its passport with poems titled “Paris, Las Vegas”, “Ibiza”, “Saudi Arabian Dream Machine”, “Italy Italy”, “Buenos Aires” and “Blockbuster Operator in Manila,” and name-checks many other cities; in time, its territory ranges from the ‘90s to the present. People, words, habits and products who share this time-territory are young, but not as young as we once were; we may not know more, but it seems true to say that we know differently."

Post script

My copies of Overheard While Hiding From the Sun came today, thanks to a mail carrier who generously came back around, interrupting her route (in the snow!), when she realized I was home to sign the slip.

That was an above-and-beyond move, but it prompts me to also declare my appreciation of mail carriers doing what they usually do. MAIL CARRIER APPRECIATION FOR LIFE, and I'm not just saying that because the great James McShane did that work our second winter in Providence. (The two descriptors he used most often were "tiring" and "cold.") This is a public thank you to everyone who has ever brought me a package with a book in it, or brought a copy of one of  my books to someone else.

Overheard While Hiding From the Sun + Found Poetry at GRIN Gallery

When I fill a notebook, I go back through, gather words and phrases that I haven't already turned into something else, and use them as the first draft of a poem. Sometimes they're phrases that sound good but that I haven't found a place for; sometimes they're things I've read on signs or labels, or heard people say. I have about 35 of these poems now, and some of them have just come out as a chapbook from above/ground press, Overheard While Hiding From the Sun.

I'll be reading from this book, and from the cento booklets I make of past Publicly Complex readings, at:

Finding Poetry in the Existing and Everyday
at the GRIN Gallery in Providence (60 Valley St.,  #3)
on Friday, February 21st, at 7 pm.

Maria Anderson, Martin Elwell, Paul Hostovsky and Amy Pickworth will be reading with me.

La Vague: Antiquest

Super beautiful new issue of La Vague is up with poems by me, Gina Abelkop, Kate Colby, Sandy Florian, Eirann Lorsung, Melanie Hubbard, Laura Kochman, and Jessica Smith. What a lineup! So pleased to be included in this.

"I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody."

"To my old brown earth
And to my old blue sky
I'll now give these last few molecules of "I."

And you who sing,
And you who stand nearby,
I do charge you not to cry.

Guard well our human chain,
Watch well you keep it strong,
As long as sun will shine.

And this our home,
Keep pure and sweet and green,
For now I'm yours
And you are also mine"

— Pete Seeger

A couple of things

I just set up a monthly donation of $25 to the RI Community Food Bank.

This interview between Sarah McCarry and Mairead Case about being a working artist with depression -- the first in a series -- is good to read, but the part that really got me was "When I feel like E.T. I phone home." I am so grateful to and for all the people I can phone home to.

Some poems up at Similar:Peaks:: about making and fearing futures. Thanks to Rachel and David and the other Similar:Peaksers::. Thinking about fear a lot lately. (Also, feeling a lot of fear lately.) Watch this space.

Witch Fingers

Providence is full of sinister magic and phosphoresence. Ask anyone. Or see for yourself in Witch Fingers, a new book of lore, a demonic offering.

Witch Fingers was edited and printed by Xander Marro and includes word and picture work by CF, Kate Schapira, Joanna Ruocco, Alison Nitkiewicz & Juilia Moses, James Talbot Frain, Sussy Santana, Aaron Anderson, Carrie Collier, Mickey Zachili, Shey Rivera-Rios, Polina Malikin, Sasha Wiseman, Anna Purna Himel Wagner, Olivia Horvath, Liz Luisada. Costs $13, obviously.