Last, next.

99: Snowy Evening (15,903)
100: Leap of Faith (4,704c)

This was long overdue. I deactivated it last November, but turned it back on a few weeks later to save my following/follower list. Then it lay dormant & forgotten for most of the year, except for some DMs to people who were still nowhere else & who were seemingly impervious to email. It’s time.

My wife and I met thirty years ago today.

I was invited over to a friend’s apartment to meet her — and she ignored me the whole time. No hello, no eye contact. Absolutely nothing. She was utterly unapproachable. Instead, she spent the evening in the other room, forehead-to-forehead with her friend, discussing and analyzing a VHS tape of the modern dance concert she’d choreographed a few weeks earlier. And I could see instantly how smart, articulate, beautiful, and, most of all, strong she was.

We began dating eleven months later, and married eleven months after that. Twenty-two months that seemed, at the time, to span thirty years. And now, thirty years that seem, at times, to have spanned barely twenty-two months. Well, that’s time for you.

Some stories belong to the breath, not to the pixel and keyboard. Some stories need the counterpoint of digressions and indignant amendments, of interruptions to refill the wine glass or the bread bowl, or to choose more music, album by album. They need the bustle and patience of a long evening, the wood and steel rhythms of a well-provisioned table.

So: to hear the rest of the story, you’ll need to be seated across from us, favorite beverage at your elbow, and all the time in the world. And perhaps a story or two for us in exchange.

I mailed out the first batch of chapbook orders last week, and I’m ready to open it up to people beyond my newsletter subscribers.

Visit this Very Secret Page for instructions on how to buy a copy.

• Henry Gould, The Green Radius (1–38, 39–72) (WIP 2023)
• Kyla Houbolt, Surviving Death (Broken Spine 2023)
• J-T Kelly, Like Now (Subpress/CCCP 2023)
• Robert Richardson, Three Roads Back (Princeton 2023)

Last, next.

98: Harvest (Orleans Reinette Apples)
99: Snowy Evening (15,903)

Now playing:

• Jane Huffman, Public Abstract (American Poetry Review 2023)
• Louise Glück, The Triumph of Achilles (1985), Meadowlands (1996), Ararat (1990) (in Poems 1962–2012, FSG 2012)
• Richard Jeffrey Newman, T’shuvah (Fernwood Press 2023)
• Jared Beloff, Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions 2023)
• Henry Gould, Holy Fool (Self-published 2023)
• Graeber & Wengrow: The Dawn of Everything (Picador 2022)
• Robert Richardson, Emerson: The Mind on Fire (University of California 1995)

Now playing:

Now playing:

Last, next.

97: Autumn Trilogy (Scarlet Oak)
98: Harvest (Orleans Reinette Apples)

Now playing:

To mark the day her eyes closed and mine stayed open: Polly

My author copies of This Folded Path have arrived from Ottawa!

Now I’m just working out how to take money from those of you who wish to buy a copy directly from me. Paypal will probably be involved. Stay tuned.

Now playing:

I know it’s spelled W-e-d-n-e-s, but it’s pronounced Weltschmerz.

• Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, Return of the King (Mariner Books 2012) (reread)

I’m going to the Ren Fest today for the first time in over thirty-five years, and possibly only the second or third time ever. This weekend’s theme is, apparently, Oktoberfest and I am told there will be yodelers. I think I’ve just developed an anticipatory hangover.

Now playing:

My chapbook came out yesterday, and a problem with being an older debut poet is just hitting me.

Almost everyone I’d like to share the news with is long dead.

My parents, most of my teachers, all my mentors. The twentieth century has been dying for years; this week I feel freshly re-orphaned.

Obviously, this is not to diminish how great it’s been to share this news with all the people who ARE still here, but it’s all the more bittersweet because it makes me realize how many others have already gone…

Also… I may have a list of the dead, but I’ve lived long enough that there is also a list of the dead-to-me. This is bittersweet in a different way, but it also brings a grim satisfaction that I never have to deal with any of them ever again.

So that’s been my week.

New from above/ground press: my chapbook, This Folded Path.

I grew up in the ’70s, so I’m having a very hard adjusting to the fact that bald eagle sightings are now a daily occurrence for me.

I’m only now beginning to feel slightly human again after losing a week to the most spectacular head cold I’ve had in years. Watching my immune system fight this cold was like watching someone try to build an intricate model airplane while being pelted with coins.

This is your periodic reminder that I have a newsletter and that now might be a good time to subscribe.

Another bookmark for the series.

I just found this in a book I bought during my only visit to Elliott Bay Books (and to Seattle), in 2014.

(Original series here, with subsequent discoveries here.)