One of my favorite things about the Ploughshares blog is the way they feature these behind-the-scenes posts from their contributors about how they came to write the poems and stories published in the magazine. I love the shop talk and the nuts-and-bolts details of drafting and revision. And I'm encouraged -- or sometimes, let's be honest, a little annoyed -- to read how someone felt that bolt of inspiration or clarity or whatever, "and then the poem just wrote itself." (The Best American Poetry used to be infamous for such back-of-the-book notes.) But then I'm also reminded how on one or two occasions I've felt something like that same zing of recognition and hurried to write down the words that somehow popped into my head.

All this is a long way of saying my own story behind the poem is up on the Ploughshares blog today. Check it out to get the backstory on "A Field of Dry Grass," which you can read by purchasing the issue or, better yet, a subscription. (The poem is also online here.)

My review of Writers and Their Notebooks, an anthology of essays edited by Diana Raab, is in the new issue of Pleiades. Here's how it starts:

Writers use their notebooks for all sorts of things. Notebooks hold the raw material – startling images, snatches of overheard conversation, phrases jotted down before they are forgotten – stuff that may wind up in a poem or story tomorrow or two years from now. Sometimes, notebooks are used for journaling or free writing. A notebook can also be the place for a writer to chart her plans: doping out the intersecting plotlines of a novel, recording research notes or keeping a running list of possible book titles. Above all else, a writer’s notebook is a private place – no readers, no judgments – where theories get tested, dreams examined and secret voices given a confidential hearing.

In Writers and Their Notebooks, two dozen poets, novelists, playwrights and memoirists “pay homage,” in the words of Phillip Lopate, to their notebooks and the “intimate scribbles” they contain. In the anthology’s forward, Lopate points out the similarity between the words“musing” and “Muse” – and indeed these contributors describe how their notebooks are essential for the various kinds of musing they do to summon the Muse, that inspirer of artistic expression. They also open their notebooks to share excerpts that illustrate how this private writing leads to their published work. This is a book both about writers and mainly for writers; its appendices include a list of writing prompts to help those newly equipped with notebooks get started. As such, it’s more likely to elicit nods of recognition (“Dorianne Laux uses her notebook just like I do!”) than any lightning-flash insights into the writing process. While you are perhaps unlikely to read it cover to cover, this book is enjoyable to browse around in, given the brevity of the essays and the diverse group who penned them.

I love notebooks and have kept them and carried them around and written in them for years: Moleskines and little Japanese notebooks from Kinokuniya perfectly sized for a back pocket, or the cache of cheap funky notebooks I brought back from Shanghai school supply stores last fall. To read the rest of the review, pick up the new issue of Pleiades.

I've been quiet because I've been busy. I remember Jonathan Mayhew saying once (I'm paraphrasing from memory here) that he wouldn't want to spend weeks or months at a writer's colony, because poems should be written in stolen time: time when you were supposed to be doing something else. In the past few months, I've drafted -- just drafted, but still -- most of a book-length poem. This was stolen time -- nights, weekends, the beginnings and ends of days -- in a very busy and unsettled season. I don't want to say much about this poem yet. It's too early, too unsettled itself, too liable to slip away.

The one thing I will say is that I've realized, in working on this new poem, how writing other, earlier poems taught me something about how to write this one. Does that make sense? For instance, writing Disappears in the Rain taught me things about working in an extended form that I'm drawing on as I write this book-length poem. And writing poems like "Something to Declare" or "A Field of Dry Grass," in which I cut back and forth between several narratives, splicing together scenes in a somewhat cinematic way, taught me useful things when it comes to working different storylines through this much longer poem.

I've experienced a similar kind of learning on the job when it comes to putting together book manuscripts too. Nothing all that revelatory in this, but it's encouraging. It doesn't make it easy (and if it ever felt easy, I'd be suspicious), but I like this feeling that in certain ways the new poem builds upon the poems I've already written.

I've loved books for as long as I could read. Or even longer, really, since I have soft-edged memories of being read to as a young child: my dad, for instance, reading to me from Ishi: Last of His Tribe, just a few pages each night, so that it seemed it would last forever. And my Aunt Sue reading me Higglety Pigglety Pop!, still my all-time favorite children's book. In my memory, which may also be my imagination, we were sitting in a doctor's waiting room, and waited so long she read me the book several times back to back to back -- at my insistance, no doubt. Time, which moves so quickly now, moved so slowly then. And soon I learned to read by myself. We only children must by circumstance, if not also nature, be heavy-duty readers; who's there to interrupt us? 

Some years back, I dabbled in full-on book collecting: seeking out first editions, looking for gorgeous hardcovers in mylar-protected dust jackets that truly were "F/F." Soon after moving to New York I'd found my way to The Strand and, better yet, The Strand Annex (now just a memory), and eventually the online treasure troves of AbeBooks.com and Half.com. And then there was the excitement of finding something special on eBay -- something no one else seemed to have cottoned onto the specialness of -- and holding out till the last few seconds to swoop in with a winning bid. A cache of autographed Richard Ford hardcovers, with an "old" paperback of The Sportswriter thrown in "just for fun" as "an extra bonus" (but which turned out to be a first edition in sparklingly nice condition!) was the pinnacle of my auction-going days.

But more often, I found that the first editions I would have loved to own -- Catch-22, say, or Slaughterhouse Five -- were way beyond my financial reach, since of course who wouldn't love to own them? And then, too, if I did own one of them, what would I do with it? I couldn't read it! As it was, I wound up with both my "collector's copies" and then also secondhand paperback "reading copies" -- since not only could you not read the collectible copies, but these few books that were both within my reach and seemed worth collecting were also books I would want to reread. (My wife has always found this duplicate copies business simultaneously baffling and hilarious.)

Eventually, I took some good advice and focused on collecting first editions of contemporary novelists and short story writers -- mostly people around my own age who'd only published a book or two. Investment collecting, you could call this, with these writers' works being the penny stocks of the book collecting world. I've found I like the feeling of placing my bets on these writers and their work, believing as a collector that books by Aleksandar Hemon, Lan Samantha Chang and Dean Bakopoulos, for instance, will someday be collectibles. Of course I first spent plenty of wonderful time betting on them as a reader. 

(As an avid reader of contemporary poetry, I also collect first editions of poets' books -- by default, really, since so few of us are fortunate enough to see our books go into second printings.)

These days, though, I've given up eBay and quit scouring The Strand and AbeBooks.com with the fervor I once had. But this makes the occasional chance discovery that much more exciting. Most recently at The Strand -- to finally make the connection to that photo above -- I happened upon a (paperback) first edition of Marianne Boruch's first book, View from the Gazebo: a clean unwrinkled copy, surprisingly crisp more than 25 years after it was published.

My other odd pleasure these days (that sound you hear is my wife laughing in the doorway) is picking up "withdrawn" library copies of otherwise unaffordable (or just un-locate-able) books of poems. Also shown above is my copy of Marianne Boruch's second book, Descendant, once part of the Wright State University Library's collection.

Regrettably, its dust jacket was removed long ago, but otherwise it's in great shape. It hardly looks checked out, with its "Date Due" slip pasted on the front end paper unmarked since first being stamped "APR 2 3  '92". This reminds me of the bittersweet feeling I once had reading the seller's description of a book of poems available on Half.com: "Like new. Only read once, not all the way through."

Along with the about-to-be-published Hecht Prize anthology, I'm excited to have poems in two other anthologies headed to bookstores soon. My poem, "A Blessing" -- which has nothing to do with the James Wright classic -- is included in Bigger than They Appear, an anthology of very short poems, edited by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer and available for pre-orders from Accents Publishing.

Rather than a strict line-count, the limit here is that no poem can be more than 50 words -- including the title! (This actually caused me to make one final little revision, as my poem was found to weigh in at 51 words.) 

With 316 pages of poetry by 192 poets, this collection of small poems is a big book!

Also coming soon... well, early next year anyway, which is "soon" in poetry-time: A Face to Meet the Faces, an anthology of persona poems edited by Stacey Lynn Brown and Oliver de la Paz, published by U of Akron Press. My poem, "Graciela and the Song of One Hundred Names," from Subject to Change, is one of the approximately 200 contemporary persona poems collected here.

It's funny, the title kept making little ripples of sonic memory in my ear, but it wasn't until I googled it for more info that I was reminded where it comes from: "Prufrock," of course!

Here's a nice excerpt from the back cover: "These poems embody characters from popular culture, history, the Bible, literature, mythology, and their diversity is reflective of the wide range of authors working in this genre. The anthology also contains brief explanatory notes written by the poets to help historicize and contextualize their characters and personae."

Here's a look at the official cover of the Hecht Prize Anthology, which is due to hit bookstores and be available for online orders as of November 8th.

Info about the anthology is now up on the Waywiser site, including a rundown of all the good folks included in it -- including Craig Arnold, Ken Chen, Erica Dawson, Daniel Groves, Carrie Jerrell, John Surowiecki and D.H. Tracy, just to name a few of the 50 poets featured here. I'm in fine company indeed.

As mentioned below, the anthology offers a nice sneak preview (7 poems!) of Every Possible Blue.