Ben Franklin's Conspiracy

Here's a link on Luc Ippersiel's post about Ben Franklin conspiring to make English American. He's the guy behind dropping the "u" from words such as "honor" and "flavor" (I like his way of tidying up).

Eleanor Lerman

There's a new lesbian poetry journal online called the Lavender Review and the first issue makes it look very promising, I'm relieved to say. Check out these poems by Eleanor Lerman, one of my favorite poets.

Louis MacNeice

I love Louis MacNeice. We're reading him in our project of reading the Norton Anthology of Poetry from the outside in (one old poem and one new poem each night, till we stop somewhere in the middle). If you haven't read "Bagpipe Music," you can read it here: http://www.artofeurope.com/macneice/mac6.htm.
Here's a quote from him that I like: "The writer today should be not so much the mouthpiece of a community...as its conscience, its critical faculty, its generous instinct." I particularly like the last part--so essential and so easily forgotten in our own work.

Technology and the Writer

I've just set up the new Mac Mini so I can upgrade my website. Boy, is it fancy!
Grandma is downstairs keeping the baby occupied, laundry is in the washer, I've taken my vitamins--it looks like a good day.

Auto Life Fire

My poem is up on the latest issue of Switched-on Gutenberg. This is the assemblage issue, with a lot of great poems--check it out.

The galleys are coming!

I heard from the editor the other day that the galleys are ready. I can't wait to see one.
We are now over a year and a half into our reading the Norton Anthology of Poetry project. We read one poem (or a page or two of a poem) from the beginning and one from the end. We are now nearly up to Keats and back to Roethke. We've really enjoyed the juxtaposition between the old and the new. Reading "The Lost Son" by Roethke. I didn't know he could be so wonderfully strange. One of my favorite stanzas in it:
Dogs of the groin
Barked and howled,
The sun was against me,
The moon would not have me.
Reminds me a lot of Anne Sexton at her wicked best.

The driving forces

Beliefs that drive conspiracy theories:
appearances deceive;
conspiracies drive history;
nothing is haphazard;
the enemy always gains;
power, fame, money and sex account for all.

Sounds pretty similar to a lot of poetry and literary fiction, don't you think?

Join the Conspiracy!

My book, The Alphabet Conspiracy, will be released by Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press in February 2011. If you'd like to receive a very cool postcard and a special offer on the book before it even hits the stores, send an email with your snail mail address to ritamae.reese(at)gmail.com (replace the (at) with @ of course). Or send me your email address if you'd rather hear from me via email.