Dozens of new books available for review at Rattle.com.  Including several I know to be good by Red Hen Press.  Don’t let the fact that they’re bound, uncorrected proofs scare you — if it looks like a book and quacks like a book, it’s still a book, even if the feathers haven’t grown in yet.

Huh? I just mean, there’s no cover art, but they’re still books in every other sense — people don’t ask for the proofs as often, so I was thinking maybe I should clarify that.  They’re not just manuscripts stapled together, they’re real bound books.

As you know, Bob, my book is with Red Hen Press, and I’ve been asking them to send us review copies of all their books for a long time — someone do me a solid and show them it’s worthwhile by writing a good review.  (And by “good” I always mean, thoughtful and articulate, not necessarily positive.)

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While you’re checking stuff out, check out Larry Colker’s heartbreaking found poem at the Found Poetry Project.  Talk about poetry coming from where you least expect it — how about the Los Angeles traffic alert system?

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Last week, in the parking lot of the Laundromat (in the famous sound studio, Car With Windows Rolled Up), I read my entire book into an audio recorder.  I’m going to be posting a new poem with the recording every Friday for a while — not the whole book, but probably 15 poems or so.  That’ll take us to June, and then I think I’ll move on to reading favorite poems by others, and maybe posting some new work, too.  Stay tuned.

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Speaking of new work, though — I have been writing a bit lately, just a trickle, but the Amazon has to start somewhere, right?   I’m finding it so tempting to just post the work straight on right here, skipping the whole publication business.   It’s kind of lost its luster.  I haven’t submitted a poem anywhere in about two years, and I feel like I’d rather just write a book whole, and then worry about publishing stuff later.  Every time I have this thought, I start feeling like a hypocrite — here I am in the publishing business, saying who cares about the publishing business.  Especially when you can just pull a Bill Knott and hand your writing to the world directly.

We’ll have to talk more about this later.

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That reminds me, though, that I’ve got poems out in a bunch of journals right now.  Haven’t submitted in about 2 years, but sometimes publication takes awhile.  So check out new issues of Mid-American Review (maybe my favorite journal), The Connecticut Review, Subtropics, Los Angeles Review, and the Paterson Literary Review.  All the poems are from American Fractal.  You’d think I timed it for the book’s release, but it’s just a coincidence.  They’re all really good journals, too — I’m proud to be in each.