Part 4 of Matt Hart’s POP & Sarabande & and The Future

The final installment of Matt Hart’s massive 4 part Poets off Poetry is up and available for your reading pleasure.

You can read it here.

As always, please blog and forward far and wide.Super big thanks to Matt for this massive and thoughtful contribution to the Poets off Poetry!An update: the Song of the Week series that I sent out a call for submissions for is almost ready to get started. With launching the new weekly series we took the opportunity to restructure the POP page, which has slightly delayed the launch. So those of you who have sent along submissions thank you for your patience. If you haven’t sent in a submission yet, there is still plenty of time to do so, so be in touch with me if you are interested. Song of the Week and POP got a nice little nod on the Best American Poetry blog from guest blogger Ray DeJesus. Thanks Ray!Also, in other news my manuscript was a semi-finalist for Sarabande Book’s Kathryn A. Morton Prize. The nice, hand written note on the bottom of the form letter says that my manuscript came really close. Which is of course great news, but also insanely frustrating. I guess there is nothing to do but keep sending the little bugger out.

This was my fortune from an oracle designed in support of Miranda July’s new movie The Future. The movie looks awesome and awful and very, very strange. Exciting. I hope I am aware of what the thing is that goes very wrong today and not mistake it for a normal day in the life thing, of which there are many…

And for emotional posterity purposes there is this. This song, and much of Everything but the Girl, makes me think of my summer in Cambridge, England. Feeling so alone and separated from everyone and yet only calling home once, about two days before actually coming home. I guess this is why I never moved away. Seems like deep down I know that I probably wouldn’t be able to come back.

Parts 2 & 3 of Matt Hart’s POP Essay and Reading this Weekend for So and So Series!

Oh, goodness! I should have let you know two weeks ago that part 2 of Matt Hart’s 4 part Poets off Poetry essay is up and ready for your reading pleasure. You can check out part 2 here. And guess what? Part 3 is also up and ready for your reading pleasure. I think this section may be my favorite of the bunch. In the essay Matt talks about a Jawbreaker lyric which goes, “I believe in desperate acts./The kind that make me look stupid.” I told Matt that I totally understood the sentiment as my whole life is one big desperate act! Haha-wahwah, etc. But really, please do check out part 3 here. The final installment of Matt’s essay will be up Sunday. Don’t miss it!

In other news, I am going to be reading this weekend in Raleigh, NC for The So and So Series and through serendipitous means I am going to be reading with three friends from grad school. It wasn’t intended to be so and I couldn’t be happier that this is the way it turned out. Also, I am going to visit a friend from high school who lives down there and is a new mommy so happily I will get to see an old friend and her cute little daughter. I’m going to be renting a car and driving from Raleigh to Charlotte where my friend lives. Should be a fun mini road trip.

One last thing. Thanks to my friend Sam I now know about this song. It pretty much made my day yesterday.

New POP by Matt Hart and Boom Chapbook Contest Finalist!

Very excited to let you know that this month’s POP is up now, featuring part 1 of a 4 part essay by Matt Hart! Matt’s essay was so massive that we decided to split it up into 4 parts, each part appearing through out the month of May. What’s the essay about? The Sex Pistols, The Blood Brothers, Gertrude Stein, Jawbreaker, Storm & Stress, and Kenneth Koch. In addition to the four part essay, four selections from Matt’s Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless will be featured each week as well. Check out part one here. HUGE thanks to Matt. I am flattered and proud to be able to publish this!

Also, the POP page is getting a redesign/restructure in order to make room for the Song of the Week feature which will be appearing soon. I think POP is getting a new, spiffy logo too. Stay tuned for that.

In other news, my chapbook manuscript The City Salutes Itself is a finalist in the Boom Chapbook Contest from Bateau Press. Exciting! Fingers crossed! But either way, I’m excited enough to be a finalist. Bateau Press makes pretty, pretty books!