Two Starred Reviews for The Full Spectrum!

I haven't been sharing all of the good news concerning The Full Spectrum, an anthology I co-edited with David Levithan, mostly because I've been posting everything at the book's site, Queerthology.com--but in case you haven't been keeping up with it (and why would you?), I just wanted to share that the anthology has received two starred reviews, one from Kirkus and the other from Booklist. Here are some quotes from each.

"This emotionally spicy collection will inspire identification, compassion and hope in readers queer or not." - Kirkus

"Insightful, extraordinarily well written, and emotionally mature, the selections offer compelling, dramatic evidence that what is important is not what we are but who we are." - Michael Cart for Booklist

Also, I should let you know that there will be a launch event for the book in New York this coming Tuesday. It is of course FREE and open to the public. If you are in the New York City area, it would be wonderful if you could show your support:

Tuesday, May 30, 2006
The Full Spectrum Launch Event with GLSEN
LGBT Community Center
NYC
6-8 PM

For a list of our other events, check out the Queerthology site.

New Music: Carina Round

Carina Round, who despite a lack of presence in the American scene is one of my favorite musicians, has a new album allegedly coming out May 30th. Scratch that. June 27th: Slow Motion Addict. She's a bluesy rock goddess in line with Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but with a more crooning balance of sound. But when she rocks, she does. And hard.

Her earlier album The Disconnection was my favorite album the year it came out. And now I've stumbled on two new tracks open for free download:

If How Many Times & Ready to Confess are an accurate sample of what's to come, I'm going to be a happy boy come June. The later, "Ready to Confess" is reminiscent of early Garbage, which should make Nico happy.

And just in time for his birthday. Here's the cover (I'm into it):

from "Entering to Win: On Poetry Contests" by Robert Casper

"The truth is many literary publishers make more money from contest fees than they do from sales of contest-winning publications. In fact, literary publishers often rely on contest fees to survive, and become almost addicted to the yearly influx of cash."

To read the essay in its entirity, click here.

Robert Casper is the publisher of jubilat and the co-editor of jubilat press. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the poet Matthea Harvey.

A Timely Knowledge

Apocalypse was not what it was promised to be:
The fires burnt out; the ice melted—so what was left
Was a great stillness no language could reach,

Nothing to distill it, which was the most still
Of all the things. No matter. There was none.
There was no matter, none. There was none

No matter what. No matter which or how we spoke it.
No matter how we spoke of things. They were still
Not ending. Only the record was, of them, despite us.

And so we paced there, after. And so after
We paced there, and having paced so, after,
We stopped our speaking and the end came naturally.

Faces

My Boyfriend Refuses to Speak Iambic Pentameter, Act 1*

Due to some particularities of formatting, this piece cannot be displayed here. To read the sonnets, you must CLICK HERE.


*an experiment/exercise.

Fear of the Other: An Opening Screen

~


I am afraid because the powers that be are insistent, though not that we know it. Because even the poets are lost in our anaphora—Whitman’s body laid out for the taking—of need. Is it that we are safe and should fear less? Is it that we don’t need our language to say it? Yet information has found it’s freedom, is almost entirely free, and who is to blame. I have found my thou and know myself—what now? What poem? What will happen when democracy is realized and one hand clutches the truth while everything else runs full throttle. I am anything but alone, and yet it speaks within me. What I’m saying is already said, everywhere. Belief is endless. But it should still be uttered, still find its way from the closed mouth. Like a patient and lovely word fashioned from sorrow.
What I mean is only that information is free and welcome, yet it makes no money. We are lost of it, and sorry often. But it makes no money and so it’s entertainment’s gain. It draws us. Which is not to say we are all drawn. We pace beside it, no one afraid to say what it is. Some afraid not to. Yet it draws us and costs everything. Friends that let friends and all that. Companies stacked on top of one another. Oh God. But the vision is of children who speak of objects by proper names and sleep alone, contented in their futures. If I stop, now, the massacre. If I never write another and die content. If there is nothing in a life of passionate wandering. If I have fooled myself or been fooled. And loneliness is no captain.
And fawned for lusts know nothing of their basics. I am happy not to know. To be entertained by information. Oh, I was born of women and yet know none. And yet was fond of them, yet nothing. Yet I was found there outside of that peace and brought here. Into the not-city. Into the place of keeping from where we fear and loathe us. The last place we’d visit or pay to. The shame of being from someplace unnecessary. The fear of long lots and the simple trade of money for passions. Forgive me, Lord. There was no gate and I did what I had to do. The great and mighty was gracious and it said why and how so that I could follow. My name was in the book and I believed him. Now what? No word, no nothing. I came back to it and have only now seen.

Italian Sonnet

Terza Rima

Follow me until romance makes you weaker.
I will leave you there, wounds like blooming patience—
even marks on your hands will seem much meaker

once your pathos bleeds through its adolescence.
Stains you said would fade won’t, in fact they’ll brighten.
Time will cause your unnecessary conscience

pain in forms that seem fair; the sky will lighten:
marigolds in the fields you thought you burned may
simply look you up, call you. Don’t be frightened.

No one wants your inheritance. Your false prayer.
Say you finally choose the right one. They’ll laugh…
Lonely honeydew, lonely practical pear.

Sad to watch as you traipse the lawn for milk baths.
Sad to see how you fold your arms of milkweed.
You are loyalty muted, kind sans serif

need. I’d pull you from fear, but fear is your seed.
Make me stop it before I can’t. You have to
give me reasons to fight the flowers, Pansy.

I am not enough fuel to burn their roots. You
Are. If only you knew. We left you speaker…
Deaf to that underwhelming follow through.

April - Phone Photos