#AWP14

I woke up too early, neither exhausted nor rejuvenated, and went downstairs to heat water and prepare corn flakes with milk.

Now it's back to thin herbal tea and Dave Newman's Two Small Birds. The book is trucker fiction, heavy on the fried chicken and poetry.

A facebook comment suggested that Cartilage and Skin author Michael James Rizza picked up some match boxes at the Atticus table at the Book Fair.

On his way to the conference, Dan Cafaro of Atticus walked by a musician busking on the street in Seattle. The guitarist may or may not be Charlie Parr of Austin, Minnesota, but Rizza will understand when I say that it looks like Parr has gotten beyond Duluth.

I'm not at the conference, but the Seattle Public Library system has five print copies of Fight for Your Long Day.

I may soon add swimming or stationary bicycle to my regular walking routines, but for now, I'll count as additional exercise an unease I've experienced, during turbulence, on the smaller planes of my recent flights.

Of course, everything will be fine.

Pittsburgh lit

I've been reading prose from Pittsburgh, first the memoir When Skateboards Will Be Free by Said Sayrafiezadeh and now the novel Two Small Birds by Dave Newman.

libertie, equalitie, selfie

Portrait of the blogger with a copy of Keith Hoeller's Equality for Contingent Faculty:

 

Vanderbilt Press is on it. Are you?



Letter from China

I'm happy to report that Contemporary Literary Horizon has included "Letter from China," published online as "First Impressions of Xi'an, China," in its 2013 print anthology of poetry and prose from around the world. As always, I'm wishing Dr. Daniel D. Peaceman the best this year.

Frank Conroy

On social media, the writer Michael Leone posted this quotation from Frank Conroy's Stop-Time:

It was as if all the saints, martyrs, and mystics of human history were gathered into a single building, each one crying out at the moment of revelation, each one truly there at the extreme of joy or pain, crying out with the purity of total selflessness. There was no arguing with these sudden voices above the general clamor, they rang true. All around me were men in a paroxysm of discovery, seeing lands I had never known existed, calling me with a strength I had never known existed. But they called from every direction with equal power, so I couldn’t answer. I stood balanced on the pinpoint of my own sanity, a small, cracked tile on the floor.   

turning his buck

In the screenplay, I'm depicting myself as a marginal man turning his buck by analyzing the marketing strategies of short films from Passenger and the owner of La Colombe.

A key is to say you're doing something you love and that it's not about the money.

But hey, what's not to like about good music and coffee?

If while sipping your La Colombe coffee in Rittenhouse Square, you hear the strumming of the world's happiest busker, be sure to think of L.U.S.K.

And have a good weekend.