I couldn't be more in love with the cover art by Phoenix artist Richard Bledsoe.
Richard and Michele Bledsoe were were part of a collective that used to run a gallery where we would host monthly Caffeine Corridor Poetry Series readings and this painting (titled Among The Fortunate) was always one of my favorites of his. So I was thrilled to be able to use it for this chapbook, all these years later.
In the spirit of show-dont-tell, the back cover features this unconventional blurb without words:
Then it became obvious that the one and only person who could possibly pull this off was the inimitable Charles Jensen. It's an intriguing work of art in its own right and I love everything about it. Charles is the best.
Special thanks to Five Oaks Press editor Lynn Marie Houston for making sure everything turned out so perfectly.
My poem is "Breaking Dawn Within A Dawn Haibun" and I can partially blame it on Charles Jensen.
A few years ago, Hayden's Ferry Review gave me a free pass to ASU's Desert Nights Rising Stars Writers Conference. One of the first workshops was by Charles Jensen and here's a secret: I almost didn't go.
I have to confess that I saw Charles' promo author photo and it seemed so austere and like the kind of person who takes everything-including-himself way too seriously and it would be obvious that I was only there because of this free pass from HFR and really did not belong.
But his subject was The Prose Poem so I was curious and went anyway.
It only took me about 5 seconds to realize that my preconceived notions WERE COMPLETELY WRONG ON EVERY LEVEL. Charles was an energetic sweetheart with a gigantic sense of humor and enthusiasm that was as contagious as his smile. This is a more accurate depiction of Charles:
His session was entertaining and engaging and if I knew there were Professors like him, I probably would have gone to college, myself.
So the next day I made sure to take his other workshop on the Haibun. This Japanese form of a prose poem followed by a haiku dates back to Basho, but Charles was showing us contemporary examples by poets like Aimee Nezhukumatathil and pointing out that the form is so underused that it's possibilities are wide open.
I remembered something I once wrote for a big Poe Show performance and I wondered if re-working it into a haibun could help it translate from stage to page. I liked the idea of shoehorning pop culture obsessions into an ancient Japanese art form. I try to bring together high-brow and low-brow whenever I get the chance and I am grateful that Barrelhouse could appreciate my "Uni-brow Poetics."
Here is a video of that early first-draft performance from the 2010 Poe Show at MadCap Theatre:
I went to see the opening reception for Making Connections: Water & Life In A Desert City – An Exhibition Where Visual Art Meets Poetryat the Shemer Art Center.
Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker did a fantastic job curating this exhibit. Over the years, he's worked as a project manager for Public Art programs in Phoenix and Scottsdale, but he also has plenty of personal experience in the poetry and art scenes. So he knows pretty much everyone involved in those kinds of dark arts and he put his expertise to use, pairing up poets with a piece of visual art for the show.
It was exciting to finally see who else was involved in this project. Names like Sally Ball, Charles Jensen, newly appointed inaugural Poet Laureate of Arizona Alberto Rios, and my longtime co-host Jack Evans just to name a few.
Here is a peek at the multimedia piece that I got paired up with, from artist Sue Norton-Scott:
I loved that piece and that was one of the coolest things about this show. If I stumbled onto this exhibit, that is the piece that would have captured my attention. It was easy to write up a companion poem.
But it wasn't just me. Most of the poets felt the same way about their match-ups. Vaughan-Brubaker knew enough about each of us so that his instincts led to some uncanny pairings. He is great at what he does and the only one in town, who could have pulled this off.
