editorializing, on a summer's day....

Today it’s Mavis Staple upstairs, the Ry Cooder-produced album of staples from the Staple Singers repertoire, a present nominally for someone else, but in reality......

Have taken time off things editorial to give myself some quality time, finishing off something started a year ago according to the date-stamp on the file. My selected poems —Tom Fink-selected & -introduced— that was to range across half a century; but, since I’m feeling intimations of mortality, there’s now a year shaved off that. Which leads to my current working title, ID —49 in Roman numerals, a land of wizards, an ego stroke. Super! Currently running at about 250+ pages of A4 in manuscript. Plus intro plus contents. Plus some new poetry. Once reformatted, about 400 pages in its final form. A substantial body of work as they say in the trade papers. Let’s hope it’s also seen as a body of substantial work.....

On the editorial side of things, submissions for issue eight of Otoliths close at the end of this month & Otoliths will be bringing out three books later on this month, one visual, two text. I’ll reveal more details closer to the date, but let’s just say they’re all knockouts. Ron Silliman recently commented, in his review of the Nick Piombino-edited Ocho 14, that “Some of the most important sites for American poetry, for example, now take place in Australia...” & I’m arrogant enough to believe that Otoliths is one of those sites.