6.15.03

Guess who has jury duty? Here is my juror badge. Seems like every two years they nab me. Few things are as painfully dull as waiting in a jury assembly room. You could people watch or flip through old issues of National Geographic or Better Homes & Gardens. Some, like myself, brought a book to read. The proliferation of bad books was astounding. Two people were unashamedly reading a hardback by Danielle Steele (enter site at your own risk). Someone was reading Amy Tan. Someone else, Mary Higgins Clark. On the wall across from where I sat was a reproduction of an illustration by the Master of Kitsch, Norman Rockwell (enter site at your own risk). I felt like I was in John-Paul Sartre's No Exit. Later, they dragged us into a courtroom and selected the jury for a murder trial. I'm alternate juror #2, which most likely means my opinion won't matter at the end of it all. In the meantime I take my notes, listen to the grisly details, and try not to make eye contact with the two defendants.

On a lighter note, the new Radiohead album, Hail to the Thief, just came out. They seem like one of those rare bands that can do no wrong. It's a bleak record with haunting lyrics, melodies that stick to your skull like caramel. Those who were disappointed (not me) by the experimental direction the band took on its two previous outings should be pleased with this one. A hybrid of The Bends, OK Computer, and Amnesiac. Glorious.

I've been teaching myself Flash for the past three weeks now. Check out the new and improved Jaded Paper site.

The Swink website is officially up and running. Check it out. There's still time to enter the Editors' Awards for Emerging Writers contest. Kim Addonizio is the poetry judge and Steven Barthelme is the fiction judge.

The latest issue of EPOCH arrived in our mailbox the other day. One of the best literary magazines out there, no doubt. Lots of good stuff in this one, including a poem by George Eklund that I keep rereading. Here are a few lines: "I grow tired of my face, this dog, / with a phone held to the dark rot of the mouth. / Tell me how the next hurt will come. / I will straighten my eyeglasses / and pour another beer down into darkness."

Speaking of beer, thanks to all who came to the publication party last night, although some of you folks didn't drink enough beer. Or we bought too much. Either way, the refrigerator door rattles with bottles whenever we open it. Hmmm...maybe I can sell some beer on eBay?

 

5.29.03

I read a staggering statistic in The New Yorker a few weeks ago. While Clinton was president, more than 20 million new jobs were created, but over the past two years, with Georgie in the office, 1.5 million people have lost their jobs. Why do I bring this up? (Queue in the violins) Well, there have been lay offs every month where I work. I mean worked. Yep, yesterday was my final day as the web designer at Fluor Corporation in Aliso Viejo. So, if you know anyone who needs someone (uh, that would be me) to create for them a web site, a banner, or any other graphic, please direct them to my freelance site at Jaded Paper.

And if losing my job this week wasn't bad enough, I also got a speeding ticket (check it out). Thanks Officer Dagenais. You kept your speed gun leveled and everything.

For awhile there it seemed like I was reading nothing but fiction, but now I'm back to being the voracious poetry reader that I once was. Damn good poems in recent issues of Field, The Antioch Review, and Green Mountains Review. From the latter, a great one by Bob Hicok called "Elegy" which starts: "Congratulations on your death. / No more baggies, shrapnel, / lint traps, no more stairs / with the groceries in your arms / and keys in your teeth" and just keeps getting better from then on. I'm also reading Wislawa Szymborska's Poems New and Collected. I've got a line stuck in my head from one of the poems: "History rounds off skeletons to zero."

Okay, one more time folks: I am not David Hernandez from Chicago. Wouldn't you know it, I got another email from someone who thought I was. Is it me, or does this guy sound slightly unstable? I offer you exhibit A.

Look ma, I'm learning Flash.

 

5.15.03

I know I come off sounding a bit over-enthusiastic when praising a poetry collection here on my journal, throwing around words like "amazing" and "genius", but Michael Teig's Big Back Yard (BOA Editions), winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize, truly is amazing and genius. Teig writes the way I wish I could write, has written poems I wished I'd banged out of my own keyboard. So many strangely beautiful lines, like this one: "By then the birds are like keyholes in the lawn." And this one: "A cotton dress drying stiff on the porch, / broom of the traffic back and forth." And this one: "There are so many shoes // and long narrow arms / make us seem parenthetical."

I finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's imaginative novel Everything is Illuminated, which, along with being hilarious and heartbreaking, was also (you guessed it) amazing and genius. Check it out.

If you missed Garrison Keillor reading earlier this week, you can hear it here on the Writer's Almanac website (scroll down to Tuesday).

So my good friend Ernie Liang (who took the photograph that's currently on my home page) is disappointed that his last name was misspelled on the photo credit for my book. Ernie mopes. Ernie is long in the face. In an attempt to bring his face back to its normal condition, I present to you the Ernie Liang Museum of Photography.

Once again I've received an email from someone who thought I was the David Hernandez from Chicago. Just to clarify: this isn't me. And this isn't me either. This, however, is me.

Here's a drawing of an octopus.

 

5.8.03

I received some great news yesterday: Garrison Keillor has chosen my poem "Museum Guard" from A House Waiting for Music to be read on The Writer's Almanac on Tuesday, May 13, 2003. Check out the website for public radio stations in your area that showcase the program.

 

5.3.03

It has been a ridiculously busy and exciting time. Last week, Lisa and I left for New York. What can I say? I fell in love with the city. The jazz of it, the restaurants, galleries, the people, the architecture, those watertowers. Sounds corny, but it seemed like there was poetry on every street corner, whether it was an Italian in a black leather jacket blowing a perfect smoke-ring into the air; the potholes blowing their own smoke; a Chinese girl playing with a transparent marble as it hopped away from her and into the traffic, wedging itself under the tire of a taxicab; the two men with brushes glistening black sliding the bristles over graffiti; three pigeons rising and banking around a building. It was all so stunning. Which is why the wallpaper on my monitor looks like this.

So we met Lisa's agent and the senior editor of Simon & Schuster. Two of the nicest down-to-earth people. The day after was the publication party for myself and Aimee Nezhukumatathil at the Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art, which was a hoot. I met the Tupelo Press folks for the first time...Jeffrey Levine and Margaret Donovan. Two more fine people. They did an incredible job with my book. Met Matthew Zapruder as well, another Tupelo poet and editor of Verse Press. He's the coolest, hipest, funniest cat in NY. Think I'll write a poem entitled "Thus Spake Zapruder." Here's a shout out to Mark Bibbins, Melissa Hotchkiss, Rigoberto Gonzalez, and Dennis Nurkse for swinging by the publication party.

The next day we drove up to Vermont in the rain, passed by sleepy town after sleepy town, cracked some jokes about Hoosick, and stopped at the Inn at Manchester (a bed & breakfast) where the Tupelo folks hooked us all up. That night was the big Tupelo Press Reading Series at the Northshire Bookstore. Afterwards, the Tupelo folks hooked us up yet again by taking everyone out to dinner. Then we drank some at the restaurant bar: myself, Lisa, Matthew, Aimee, and Margaret. Silliness ensued. An incredibly fun evening that unfortunately had to end. But in the morning we were all treated with a big homemade breakfast: scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, coffee, mimosas. We were spoiled like Kings and Queens. Drove back to NY, napped, showered and dressed, sipped the best apple martinis at the Church Lounge before eating the best Italian food at Pepolino. We toasted: to our good fortune, our future, and this remarkable city. Here are a few photos from our trip.

 

4.21.03

It's official: my wife's first novel, A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That, was just sold to Simon & Schuster! If you know Lisa and would like to send her a congratulatory email, click here.

I couldn't be any more proud of her. Click here to see how proud.

 

Previous Journal Entries
1/7/03 - 4/18/03
9/24/02 - 12/24/02