Going South

All a-tingle to have three poems from Whiteout (forthcoming from the University of Alaska Press) in the recent issue of The Southern Review, alongside Charles Simic (!), Gary McDowell, Floyd Skloot, Chloe Honum, David St John (!), Ryan Teitman, Laura Van Prooyen, James Lee Burke, Joelle Biele, David Bottoms, Jacqueline Osherow, and more! Thanks to poetry editor Jessica Faust for her support!

Asian Poetry: Me?

Just found my first book The Insomniac's Weather Report on the Barnes & Noble Asian Poetry Page, alongside Basho, Tagore, Li Po, Sam Hamill, Jane Hirshfield, the Bhagavad Gita, and more.

How exciting!

Anticipation

Pleased to find Whiteout (forthcoming from the University of Alaska Press, July 2017) on Memorious editor Rebecca Morgan Frank's list of Anticipated Books of 2017, alongside work by Erica L. Sanchez, Bill Knott, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Michael Bazzett, Andrea Cohen, Alex Dimitrov, Jehanne Dubrow, Leslie Harrison, Jill McDonough, Karyna McGlynn, Kiki Petrosino, Christina Pugh, Tara Skurtu, Jennifer Tseng, Erica Wright, Lloyd Schwartz, Jacques Rancourt, Derrick Harriell, and Molly McCully Brown. Check it out!

Candles & Poetry: Against the Dark

This holiday season, may I recommend sandalwood candles, and poetry. Here's a poem to start with:

Traveling Light   by Dabney Stuart

Moving through still time, its opposite,
it creates no friction. They are both gifts,
one the infinite eye of the needle
the other threads. Occupies.
Emptiness is full of itself,
a never air, the lens for being.
In the long way of this place,
the afterthought of gasses becomes
what we tune in, its tickless
preoccupation and amaze our present.
If such light made a sound
it would be as if the wide spacewind
formed a bell of itself,
and a smaller wind within, and rang.

Admiration for the Northern Lights and More

Christmas Day in Japan.

Here are two things I have a new love for this season: sandalwood candles. And the Northern Lights, which I watch obsessively. And you can too. 

And now, a poem I admire.

In a Field                                                          Elizabeth Spires

monosyllables

Like stones
in a field.
Small. Large.

There to be used.
To make walls.
To be thrown.

To be held
in our hands.
Light as air.

Or a big thing
that weighs
us down.

I can hide on
the dark side
of this one.

Or tell all.
When I do,
it is not a game.

I pick one up.
Which one is it?
you ask.

I will not tell.
Come here, I say,
and you will see.

You pick one up.
Then I do. Then you.
Then me. Soon

the field is clear.
We have used
each one.

Now
there is
only silence.