Sylvia Plath

A previously unpublished sonnet by Sylvia Plath, inspired by The Great Gatsby and found in Plath's archives at Indiana University, will appear tomorrow in the online journal Blackbird.

See the articles here and here.

Bash (with new poem)

My beloved October has swirled by & I've had many happenings (drama) this month. I've been steadily working on my manuscript (which is now at a whopping 43 poems) and should have it completed by year's end. I don't have a title for it, or even a working title, but that will come soon.

This past Friday was my annual Halloween party, which was set to the theme of a White Trash Bash. This included 25 (give or take) people, a plastic kiddie pool filled with beer, two backyard tents, mullet wigs, Lynard Skynard, and under-the-radar love triangles gone awry. Oh, and the most godawful-get-you-drunk punch you will ever have in your life (2 bottles of red wine, 1 bottle of champage, 3 shots of sweet vermouth, 1 pint of cognac, 1 pint of rum, pineapple juice, orange juice, cranberry juice, and 2 bottles of club soda).

My packet is due on Nov. 1, but recent unforseen circumstances have delayed me a bit. Thankfully, Amy Gerstler (my instructor) is more than accommodating and I will be FedExing my packet ASAP. I've been working like a madwoman on my packet & am feeling really good about my new poems & what I've been reading. I wrote one of my annotations on God's Silence by Franz Wright, which I have a love/hate relationship with. However, I am having a love/love relationship with Kim Addonizio's What is this thing called love. Do you ever love work that reflects your current state of affairs? Then you know what I mean.

New poem:

Touch

What kept you in that first year
from touching me as I lay beside

you, my hair clung to your pillow,
stack of books between us? I shouldn’t

say I was not touched: the hush

of your voice, nervous audible breath,
nights of you reading aloud, imprint

of your mouth on my glass. Nights
where refinery flames lit windows,

wrapped us in its orange blaze. I stayed
with you until the dew burned off

the early morning cricket calls, birds
shot up from rooftops. Each time

I left you were so close (your face

nodding goodbye, fingers pressed
against the glass) I was inside you.

Verse

Congrats to Lauren Mitchell, whose poem "Vapor" (Pebble Lake Review, Summer 2006) appears on today's Verse Daily. See it here.

Espoused

Small Halo

In 1366, Catherine of Siena was praying in her room when a vision of Christ appeared. Christ took her hand and placed a ring upon it and espoused her to Himself. To Catherine the ring was always visible, though invisible to others.

—from Lives of Saints

The open window, the door—

how else would he arrive? How else
but through the way she would
enter: knob turned, unbolted lock,

tap on the glass panes, lift the spare key
from the ivy pot. Like any lover,

she knows him through his offer
of heartbeat, scarred wounds

(no more than debris). She knows
each broken bone, that when he takes
off his clothes, there will be more

scars. She has touched them

in her sleep, her mouth to his
speared side. With each touch,

she says, stay. It never occurs

to her he is dead, his body
powder and grave,
the bright glowing

apparition. The small halo
on her finger, her lips

pressed to nothing but air.

Pebble Lake Review is accepting submissions for the Fall/Winter 2006 issue. We are particularly looking for short fiction and short memoirs/essays ( each up to 3,000 words). Submission information is available here.

*
SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE!

Subscribe to PLR now and receive 3 issues/$24. If you subscribe by October 15, you will receive an extra back issue. Subscription information is available here. If you choose a two year subscription, you will receive your choice of PLR mousepad, t-shirt, or mug as our thank-you.

Rocky Mountain High

I'm back from our 11 day trip to northern Colorado. I had a lot of fun! The drive was 2 days there and 2 days back. On the way there, we stopped in New Mexicoto view the Capulin Volcano. We stayed in Riverside at The Hummingbird Cottage (a private rental near the resort town of Estes Park) in northern Colorado located inside Roosevelt National Forest . The house had a deck that overlooked the St. Vrain River and we woke each morning to its lovely sound. We saw a wolf (!) in our yard one night and a fox on another night. We saw plenty of elk and mule deer, but luckily no bears or mountain lions. We went on several hikes in Rocky Mountain National Forest (Lily Lake, Sprague Lake, Nymph Lake, Dream Lake, Bear Lake, Copeland Falls, visited the tundra and the Continental Divide). We also had a nice dinner in Boulder at the Flagstaff House Restaurant, which was situated atop Flagstaff Mountain and had an amazing view of Boulder and beyond.

I've posted photos to my Flickr.

*

I have two poems up at AGNI. See them here.