If you’re in Philadelphia or Brooklyn this Thursday or Friday with an open schedule, or if you are looking to get out of a previous engagement for something better to do, go listen to Kendra Grant Malone and Matthew Savoca read from Morocco. Listening to them read from the book is the best way to absorb the poems. They attach themselves to past moments between Kendra and Matthew and plant you in the same bathroom line where Malone punched Savoca in the bladder and everybody can laugh about it.

Thursday, February 2
What: Tire Fire Reading Series
Where: Tattooed Mom (530 South St., Philadelphia, PA)
When: 7:00 pm
Who Else: Scott McClanahan and Kirsten Kaschock

Friday, February 3
What: The Multifarious Array Poetry Series
Where: Pete’s Candy Store (709 Lorimer St., Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
When: 7:00 pm

If you’re in New York City and looking to enrich a night of imbibing, go to KGB Bar (85 E 4th St) this Saturday, January 21, at 7:00 pm for A New York Tyrant party featuring readings by Michael Bible (Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City), Daniel Long, and Chiara Barzini. Also, Giancarlo DiTrapano and Tao Lin will be doing a one-time reading of “Andrew: A Dialogue of Texts in the Year of Drugs and Kidness” from Vice Magazine, which catalogues the drug-induced text correspondence between DiTrapano and Lin from July 2010 to June 2011.

We might have a new home. It’s 600 light years away, which isn’t that far if you are a beam of light. Let’s not waste $100,000,000 on tickets to the moon. Kepler 22b is the home of future generations. I suggest we start preparing and seeing what we can each bring to our new blue planet. Personally, I’m working on a monolithic ark of a spaceship that will carry two of every kind of condiment. Miracle Whip and sweet relish will most certainly be a part of our way of life on Kepler 22b. There will be dijonaise, “fancy” ketchup, and even those peanut butter and jelly combination jars. If there is a condiment that you are afraid I might overlook, please make your request known and I will see that it has a home on the ark.

Meanwhile, here on Earth, while we eagerly wait for our new home to receive the final ok, we keep ourselves occupied (I know, I know). And might I make a few suggestions for today:

* Matthew Savoca’s hair gets interviewed

* Ryan Ridge balls up a 50-word fist

* Ethel Rohan plays with fire

Bookslut’s review of Trees of the Twentieth Century opens with some well-deserved praise:

This is what poetry is supposed to feel like; that is my strongest impression of Trees of the Twentieth Century. Poetry should be written toward the “unlanguageable,” about the invisible, seeking the impossible through ideas too abstract, complex, and paradoxical to be contained in the structures of prose. If poetry is candid, it is candid about the concealed. If poetry is obvious, it is obvious about the contradictions of life. If poetry is direct, it is direct about the confusions of consciousness. Works like this should be the baseline of American poetry, the starting point on the path to whatever is next.

Must say it is satisfying to see Sturgeon’s work get the recognition it deserves. Read the full review at Bookslut and visit Dark Sky Books to check out the Trees of the Twentieth Century book page.

Today marks a year since Cut Through the Bone’s release. The book and I have had quite the year. Cut Through the Bone has sold over 1,000 print copies in 10 countries; was longlisted by The Story Prize along with collections by Robin Black, Amelia Gray, Belle Boggs, Nadine Gordimer, Ron Rash, Justin Taylor, Joyce Carol Oates, and more.

I’ve read from Cut Through the Bone at over twenty readings including trips within California and to Seattle, New York, and Ireland. Thanks to this book, I was invited to read at the 2011 Cork International Short Story Festival, at which I shared the stage with many incredible writers and people, including Órfhlaith Foyle, Siobhan Fallon, Mary Costello, Suzanne Rivecca, Alexander MacLeod, Colm Tóibín and Edna O’Brien — the festival was a thrill, honor and the highlight of my year.

(more…)