pooh! not to the poem, but because I can't get to your reading- it's dress rehearsal for the showcase at the Arts high school where my daughter is a senior and I'm the piano player!
Also just found out Bob Hicock will be in Richmond on April 20th and I can't go hear him either (it's Maundy Thursday and I'm an episcopal organist/choir director- damn these real world jobs that keep me from doing poetry all the time!)
Rodney once asked to read a story of mine, so I gave him one. A week later, he said he'd liked it. He added, "You use the word 'and' too much." (I do.) Then he made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. "But there needs to be some f-cking in it," he said. He proceeded to f-ck that hand with his other index finger. "I want to know the ins and outs of it all," he said, not blinking.
Around us swam bemused undergrads, for we were talking in the middle of a hallway and classes were about to begin.
Paul Guest is the author of four volumes of poetry and a memoir. His debut, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, was awarded the 2002 New Issues Poetry Prize. His second collection, Notes for My Body Double, was awarded the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His third collection, My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, was published by Ecco Press/HarperCollins in 2008. His fourth collection, Because Everything Is Terrible, was published by Diode Editions. His poems have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, was published by Ecco in May 2010 and selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Whiting Writers' Award, Guest lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
4 comments:
pooh! not to the poem, but because I can't get to your reading- it's dress rehearsal for the showcase at the Arts high school where my daughter is a senior and I'm the piano player!
Also just found out Bob Hicock will be in Richmond on April 20th and I can't go hear him either (it's Maundy Thursday and I'm an episcopal organist/choir director- damn these real world jobs that keep me from doing poetry all the time!)
actually, i meant to add that Rodney jones will be here on the 29th and I WILL get to hear him-YEAH!!!
Awesome. If you speak to him, and you should, tell him I said hello.
You'll get a kick out of his reading. There's no one quite like Mr. Rodney Jones.
Rodney once asked to read a story of mine, so I gave him one. A week later, he said he'd liked it. He added, "You use the word 'and' too much." (I do.) Then he made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. "But there needs to be some f-cking in it," he said. He proceeded to f-ck that hand with his other index finger. "I want to know the ins and outs of it all," he said, not blinking.
Around us swam bemused undergrads, for we were talking in the middle of a hallway and classes were about to begin.
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