The Ninth Letter of Hunger Mountain is U!

I'm pleased to have my poem "On Hearing of Your Hearing Loss" in the Spring/Summer 2015 Issue of Ninth Letter. Thanks to editors Jodee Stanley, Michael Madonick, Sarah Fan, and the rest! And congratulations to Corey Van Landingham, G. C. Waldrep, Claire Donato, and others whose work was also selected.

Also, two poems, "The Fold" and "Theories of Flow," are in the Body Issue of Hunger Mountain, which came out this spring. Thanks to editors Miciah Gault and Karen Cygnarowicz! I haven't been able to find much evidence of the issue online, though here it's mentioned at New Pages. Click on that link and you will learn that it has "spectacular (and controversial) cover art," which may be why its web presence is so limited. My contributor's copies were sent (by my request) to my parents' home (I often do this to save journals overseas postage), and my father was upset by the art and wanted to destroy the copies, by my mother wouldn't let him, and apparently she hid them. Anyway, it goes without saying, I have yet to see it (well, I found it online at the website of the designer, Laura Rossi Garcia, if you want to see what the fuss is about, but controversial it is, so consider yourself warned).

So, there's that. And that's all the good news for now. Yay.

Tracking the Muse

Blackbird has reinstated its "Tracking the Muse" feature, in which contributors to the journal, including Joshua Gottlieb-Miller and Corey van Landingham, comment on their creative processes. Cynthia Marie Hoffman follows a process similar to mine when working on a project (a series/cycle of poems), while other processes described contain new ideas for me.

I love reading these kinds of things. I'm not sure that they help my process in any particular way, but in general they give me a sense that there are writers out there working hard, and that I should be working hard. Not in a competitive way, but in an inspirational way. (Most of the time, that's how it works anyway.)