The reading at Quail Ridge = much success. Thanks to Alice Osborn for reading with the Bull City gang.

It’s about time to shower and head to the reading. What reading, you might ask? Why, that’s Michael McFee, Ellen C. Bush, and Alice Osborn at Quail Ridge Books at 3 PM today. After a killer reading yesterday (at McIntyre’s), I am sure that this one will be even better.

I’ve spent the morning working on getting out the last batch of press releases and review copies for Michael’s book. Looked over an honors thesis, wrote my first NaPo poem… and it’s only 1:15. Doin’ good.

So, a few weeks ago, Bull City Press published Michael McFee’s The Smallest Talk, a book of one-line poems. Michael and I have traded e-mails about one-line poems for a while now, and he’s agreed to let me publish bits of those conversations here, because they’re kind of fun, and no one talks about one-line poems.

Ross: The Smallest Talk both delights and confounds readers. My favorite responses thus far have been from people who don’t traditionally read poetry, most of whom are very enthusiastic about the book, but ask things like, “Is this allowed? I mean, these poems are only one line. Are they even poems?” What do you think? Is this allowed?

Michael: That’s how I felt when I first read William Matthews’ book of one-line poems An Oar in the Old Water: delighted and confounded. Delighted by the dark wit and concentration and obliquely subversive tone of the poems — they made me inexplicably happy — but also confounded by the fact that they were only one line long. Was such terse impudence allowed in the longwinded chambers of Poetry?

The answer was, and is, yes.

As I kept reading Bill’s book, and started reading other one-liners — by poets in the Greek Anthology millennia ago, by the formalist Yvor Winters, by contemporary imps like A. R. Ammons and John Ashbery and Tom Andrews — I realized that the challenge of composing a complete poem in a single line has intrigued poets for a long time. It looks impossible, but somehow (once you start thinking and writing that way) it’s not; and if the one-liner does its job well, it will do what every other poem does, whether a
tart epigram by Pope or Paradise Lost — that is, create its own entire self-contained verbal world, one to which not a word can be added and from which not a word should be taken.

Poetry is already the smallest talk possible, the most compact and deliberate and charged use of language. A one-line poem simply takes that squeezing of the material as far as it can go on the page and still be a poem.

I’ll post a little more of the conversation every so often. In the meantime, you can see Michael read from The Smallest Talk Saturday, March 31 at 11 AM (McIntyre’s Fine Books in Fearrington Village) or Sunday, April 1 at 3 PM (Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh). Or you can buy the book.

Several artist friends with good news today. It makes me happy to see good people (and people with a generous amount of talent– not that I don’t love you too, my not-so-artistically inclined friends) enjoying some of the small rewards that this life has to offer. If you can’t be rich, you can at least be well-reviewed.

I cut off all my hair today. I am now optimized for spring.

I laid awake in bed for a while. Something was bugging me. Then it hit me– I had a March 22 deadline that I was about to miss. So I came downstairs, ready to work and get some stuff in the mail for tomorrow. Dug through a stack of papers to quell a mild paranoia that perhaps the deadline was not March 22 but March 20. My deadline is April 25. Only blogging can make me feel better about this mistake.

Meagan told me in a Friday e-mail to take the weekend off from Bull City. I’d been going at it harder than normal when Michael McFee’s book came out. When I got her e-mail, I chuckled and thought, “A weekend off? Weekends off are for FOOLS, Bonnell.” But when Saturday morning rolled around, I felt like a total lump. So I did absolutely nothing– no work of any kind. Then Sunday rolled around and I felt the same way. I had some things for other jobs that needed to be done for Monday. But I didn’t lift a finger. Wasted all day Sunday and didn’t even think about working until I woke up this morning. It felt wonderful. Weekend off. I’ll probably take another sometime… in June.

June, suckas!

I love one-line poems. So why do one-line stanzas make me bristle so?

Three of the best new (-ish… I mean from the last year or so) books I have read this spring have been from Four Way Books. Two from Ecco; I can’t think that any other company has more than one… Of course what this really means is that I should be reading more. But still…

Amazon now lists The Smallest Talk and Licorice. Of course, you can always nab a copy from Bull City Press, but if you’re looking for an item that will get you to the $25 Super Saver Shipping a little bit faster, these books are perfect for you!

I did some book shopping today, as I took Bull City Press titles to McIntyre’s Fine Books in Fearrington Village. Picked up copies of Tender Hooks by Beth Ann Fennelly and Embryoyo by Dean Young.

Right on! amazon just ordered Licorice and The Smallest Talk. Licorice already shows up on their site as being available for order and shipping in 4-6 weeks. The Smallest Talk has yet to appear. But, soon, Amazon buyers can show Bull City Press some love.

I’m in love with the term “haterade.” A friend used it in conversation today and I’d forgotten how delightful a term it is. I think I will name my first book HATERADE. That’ll be the non-fiction book, in which I write essays on how much I’m hatin’ on all the playas.

Emma Bolden has good news today. I don’t know if I should reveal it, so I’ll just say that Emma Bolden has good news today, and I’m super-psyched for her.

I’m also super-psyched for the aforementioned friend, who also got some good news recently and needs to get used to the idea that he’s doing things that are going to set some people’s hair on fire. In a good way.

And finally, I got some good news this week: I got the author to sign a copy of this:

You can buy a copy from Paypal for only $6.00 plus shipping.

I looked over the final print galley of The Smallest Talk this evening. That book is so close to heading to the printer that I can hardly stand it. Good heavens.

I traded e-mails today with a poet whose work I enjoy immensely. He has a new book coming later this year, and some poems that I have been dying to read will be in it. I’ve heard one of the set, at a reading, and we’ve chatted about the others. Put up a pre-order page, Amazon, and I’ll pre-order this book. (Wait a sec, it’s up… but the cover listed ain’t the one the author sent me to look at.)

For my next trick, ladies and gentlemen, the illusionist said to the eight people in the back room of the bar, I present to you… the dead. His eyes and hands tensed on the spot in front of him, the air became a shroud. Slowly appeared before them all Chester A. Arthur. The crowd grimaced, moaned that they’d expected something a bit more dramatic. One asked who it was and another expressed disappointment that the spirit was just some fop with a Garibaldi mustache. Then one said, I’m quite sure that’s Chester A. Arthur, I recognize him from my childhood book of the thirty-eight presidents. All agreed it was, but who was Chester A. Arthur, really, they grumbled. Then whispers. Couldn’t the illusionist have produced a president who might point a finger at his murderer, wag of some scandal? Arthur’s spirit– and it really was Arthur’s spirit, brought to focus nightly for reasons the illusionist could not understand– opened his mouth to speak, but was again mute, and would remain so until the illusionist could conjure a crowd ready to hear him. This was the third week the spirit had appeared, and still it hadn’t happened. We’re getting closer, the illusionist sighed to the spirit. At least this lot knew who you are.

Listening: lots of Sarah Harmer lately. Why isn’t Sarah Harmer famous like a mountain?

I’m getting ready to drive over to Quail Ridge Books and drop off some copies of Ellen C. Bush’s Licorice. You can get a copy over there, or you can always order one online. The book may need a second printing. That would be a blessing.

Julia, feeling sufficiently chided for not being feminine enough, sat for hours with her legs crossed, hoping the feeling would soon become familiar, hoping her legs could hold the pose as habit. She had practiced so hard at being Italian that it hadn’t occurred to her that she would ever need to practice at being anything else, as if learning to live in a new country had been all the masquerade and subterfuge a girl would ever need to master. Soon she imagined that she was a still life, being painted, no longer girl but fruit or vase. There was no pressure in being a fruit or a vase. They had only to be fluent in one thing. Their legs never ached.

Meagan has booked readings for the Bull City Authors. Awesome. If you know anyone with web skills in need of an internship, please send them our way!

Colorado. That’s a good state name, maybe the best of the state names. But one has to wonder if that single “a” gets lonely. I bet it feels crowded by those three big “o”s. Because “o”s will crowd you out. Four of them moved into the room next door while I was living in the college dorms. Pretty soon no one else on the hallway was happy. They were always in the shower, occupying all the urinals, moving their furniture into the hallway God knows why. Three “o”s and an “a” in Colorado. I bet, before the end of this century, that “a” moves to Alabama. To be with family.