A poem in Blackbird

My poem "Gauguin among the Tahitians"--a piece from my new chapbook, Hibernaculum--is online at Blackbird.

Three new poems in Smartish Pace

Several of my Warren Wilson College poems--"Night Fishing," "Report from the Ground," and "The Black Walnut"--are in the latest edition (#20) of Smartish Pace, and I am among distinguished company in this issue.

My Kentucky Monthly article on NuLu Food

My article "The Food Renaissance in New Louisville" is not online and in the May print edition of the Kentucky Monthly. Thanks to Wales Hunter for the amazing photographs, Kim Butterweck for the excellent editing, and of course all the restaurants--La Coop, Decca, and Mayan Cafe--for participating, meeting with me, and feeding me.

"Hibernaculum" has been released!

After many years, and just after having been a finalist for the 2012 Ahsahta Chapbook Prize, my chapbook Hibernaculum is now out from Slash Pine Press. The book is hand-stitched, and comes inside a cloth pouch with a red ribbon. Thank you to the faculty and students of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa for the fine work. This spring, I will be doing a book tour here and there to promote the book, of which there are only 125 copies. Interested readers can contact me or the press for copies.

Better-late-than-never review of David Ferry's excellent and National Book Award-winning Bewilderment at the LEO Weekly.

Interview and review with Rebecca Gayle Howell

I talked with Rebecca Gayle Howell, author of Render / An Apocalypse, chosen by Nick Flynn as the 2012 winner of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Award.

The Next Big Thing self-interview

Joseph P. Wood of the University of Alabama tagged me to do a brief, self-interview for The Next Big Thing about my forthcoming chapbook of poems, Hibernaculum. Which is good because it comes out in only two months or so.

What is the title of your book?
Hibernaculum

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
As Frank Stanford said, “Freedom, Love, and Revolt.”

What genre does the book fall under?
Poetry

Where did the idea for the book come from?
It all began to be grouped under the word “Hibernaculum,” a wonderful word I found in an issue of National Geographic. It means, in one sense anyway, “winter tent,” and that’s how I felt at the time: toughing it out in the cold.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the book?
This is hard to say, because I constantly edited and revised it. Probably two years.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The initial poems began when I read the Collected Books of Jack Spicer. Spicer’s poems were liberating for me. It was also a cap on other reading I’d done, especially David Foster Wallace and Virginia Woolf. At the time, I started writing very early in the morning, so the ideas came out of that middle world between sleep and coffee.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
The chapbook will be put out in around May of this year by Slash Pine Press at the University of Alabama.

What other works would you compare this book to within your genre?
There is no way I would compare my book to anyone else’s in poetry. For good or ill.

What actors would you choose to play the characters in your book?
Bill Murray, in the same general character as he played in Broken Flowers.

What else about your book might pique a reader’s interest?
The fact that Jameson Welch, who had previously accepted one of the long poems, “Hibernacle,” for publication in Spork, said it was an example of the Necro / pastoral, which was in vogue at that point. There seems to be an obsessive address to a nebulous Muse. There’s one of my infrequent attempts at a prose poem. It begins and ends in a desert, with apartment complexes and strip clubs in between.