Having a latte at the Space Cafe

A big thank you to Markus Mooslechner for inviting me to be on his Space Cafe Podcast, where we explored the intersection of space science and poetry. We talked about AI and poetry, the role poetry can play in the exploration and understanding of space, and he surprised me by asking what song I’d take on a playlist into space! So grab a latte and enjoy!

Outer Space: 100 Poems reading features poets from around the world

Despite being the moderator, I was probably the most excited attendee at this special event! Carmine Street Metrics, with hosts Anton Yakovlev and Wendy Sloan, held an online reading from Outer Space: 100 Poems (Cambridge University Press, 2022). The reading featured 12 of the contributors from across the globe! I had not met or spoken to many of them before, only communicated by email, and it was such a treat to hear these poems in the poets’ own voices, after seeing them on the page for so long!

The readers included Victoria Moul, Alice Gorman, A.M. Juster, Jay Ruzesky, John Curl, Janet Kenny, Leslie Monsour, John Foy, Donna Kane, Ned Balbo, Yun Wang, and Anton Yakovlev. In addition to their own poems, they read poems by A.E. Housman, Deborah Warren, Elizabeth Jennings, A.E. Stallings, Rebecca Elson, Catherine Chandler, and translations of Du Fu, Alexander Pushkin, and poems from Sanskrit, Mayan, Old English, and Passamaquoddy.

There are some amazing moments during the reading, including images of Valentina Tereshkova, a few lines in Mayan, and a reading of Du Fu in the original. Enjoy!

What just happened?

I just went to my events page to add an upcoming event, the 2021 Newburyport Literary Festival and I saw that the last “upcoming event” in that list was the 2020 Newburyport Literary Festival, which was cancelled. Whoa.

Now, truthfully, I have participated in events since then. In January I read at an online launch of the Powow River Poets Anthology II, a reading at Temple Etz Hayim last October., and a Light poetry reading over the summer. But, like most people, I haven’t gone anywhere to read or hear any poetry in almost a year now.

Attending online readings has been pretty cool at times. I got to hear Leslie Monsour read, and that almost never happens because she lives in California, and I live in New Hampshire. I’ve seen New Yorkers and Canadians and New Mexicans and Vermonters all read in the same reading.

What will it be like when we finally are all back in one room? Will we miss access to our wider audiences? Maybe so. But I also think there’s something hardwired in our brains that wants to see people in 3-D and hear voices not coming through a speaker.

So the 2021 Newburyport Literary Festival is on my events calendar. I hope to either see you or “see” you there.

Fun at the New England Crime Bake

I’m just back from my first ever New England Crime Bake, and I had a great time. I was in the Agents and Editors track, and I worked on my pitch, my query letter, and my first page. I also had a fabulous manuscript review with Joanna Shaffhausen. Highlight of the night: watching these acclaimed authors (that’s Hank Phillippi Ryan in the middle) be the backup singers in the salute to Hallie Ephron.

2017 Nemerov Sonnet Award Finalist - Happy and Sad

I was very happy to learn that my sonnet, "In the Attic," was selected as one of the finalists in this year's Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award contest. The poem will be published in an upcoming issue of Measure.

At the same time, I was sad to learn that this will be the last year of the contest. This was one of the few national contests dedicated to poetry in form. The judges were nationally-recognized formal poets, and William Baer, the force behind the contest, is one of the premier advancers of metrical poetry in this country.

There are still some national contests focused on form, including the Able Muse Write Prize and the Frost Farm Prize, among others, for which I am grateful. I only feel sorry for all of us, that we won't have that one dream to aim for any more, that of "winning the Nemerov." That certainly kept me writing some mornings, so thank you for that, Bill Baer.

Thank you, The Hippo!

It was wonderful to open up our local culture and arts newspaper, The Hippo, to find this full-page article. Not only did Angie Sykeny discuss my program "Talking to God Through Poetry," which I gave at Etz Hayim Synagogue in Derry, N.H., but she also took a comprehensive look at my poetry, my mystery novel, and where I get my inspiration for my poems. It's a great feeling to have one's work given such consideration. Thank you, The Hippo, for printing stories like this one!

Making mozzarella without a factory

I like seeing how far back up the food production chain I can go. A pizza recipe may start with a ball of dough, pizza sauce, and mozzarella, but I don’t just want to make the pizza, I want to know how to make the ball of dough, the sauce, and the mozzarella.

I’m not sure it ever occurred to me I could make cheese until I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which led me to the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, where I got the ingredients and recipe and learned how easy it is to make mozzarella.

Mozzarella only requires four ingredients, milk, citric acid, rennet, and salt. Of course you can use fresh milk, but whole milk from the grocery store will work too, as long as it’s not ultra-pasteurized.

The process is fairly quick. Heat up the milk with the citric acid, add the rennet, and let it stand. It firms up, and you cut the milk into this cool checkerboard pattern.

The next steps are all about separating the curds from the whey (yep, curds and whey, finally they are more than a nursery rhyme!).

Heating and straining leaves you with a clump of curds which you now heat and strain.

After two go-rounds of heating and straining, you can now pull and knead your cheese, adding the salt, until it forms a lovely, smooth ball of mozzarella.

And all without the benefit of a factory (thanks to Roger Lathbury, who inspired this post)! Find the exact recipe and ingredients at the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.

Hoodoo you think you're fooling'...

I finally fulfilled a childhood dream to visit Bryce Canyon. I can't actually tell you why I had this childhood dream, as I knew nothing about Bryce Canyon, probably couldn't tell you what state it was in, had never met anyone who had been there, and maybe, at least as a kid, had never even met anyone who had heard of Bryce Canyon. But I wanted to go there. And so, given the opportunity to take a vacation in Utah this summer, I chose Bryce as our destination. 

Now I suppose if I had thought about it, visiting a desert national park in the middle of the summer, might have struck me as a bit foolish--I know we hit top temperatures of 106 degrees when we were driving, but that's only because I didn't have a thermometer with me while I was hiking.

But it was magical. We hiked in a "secret" back way, from the town of Tropic, very early in the morning, and then there we were, on the canyon floor, in the middle of the hoodoos. No one around, just us, wandering among these fantastical sculptures. Looking at it from above, later that day, surrounded by tourists it was almost impossible to imagine that we had been down there.

We're off to see Neil Gaiman...

Today I'm hitting the road, heading from backwoods New Hampshire down to the Big Apple, NYC, to see Neil Gaiman at The Town Hall reading from Norse Mythology. Now I know that Deadheads followed The Dead all around the country, and I've heard people talk about traveling to see other singers--Bruce Springsteen, Phish, folks like that.

But a writer? You bet! I'd drive across states to see J.K. Rowling, Barbara Kingsolver, Orson Scott Card, Neil Gaiman--and in a perfect world, Madeleine L'Engle, Louisa May Alcott, and Jane Austen--for one reason: they are GOOD STORYTELLERS, in a world that sometimes seems to have forgotten how to tell a good story. I don't need my emotions manipulated or my politics confirmed. Murky non-endings that are supposed to reflect the meaninglessness of it all just leave me bored. Give me a good story, with fascinating characters, and let me make up my own mind about what the story means to me.

So fill up the tank, grab an extra bottle of maple syrup for the road, and look out, New York, here I come!