Well, that was a lovely 11 hour day at the job! But I'm not going to bore you with the dull minutia of my day. I'm afraid my "I do this, I do that" would go something like: I pack boxes, I make phone calls, I write email. BORING!
My life didn't used to be so boring, so -- dare I say it -- left brained. I used to have imaginative spark, creative ingenuity. Shoot, the most creative I get these days is figuring out how to get more copies of Suji Kwock Kim's book of poems "Notes from a Divided County" to her event with Cave Canem at the New School tomorrow. I under ordered, so now I get to spend a hunk of my Thursday querying B&N and the Strand and every other bookstore in town to see if they have copies we can buy so we have enough to sell after her reading. Whoo hoo!
No, I used to -- get this -- I used to be a writer. A WRITER!! Yeah, ain't that a kick? A starving artist of sorts, a poet to be exact. No book published, but a poem or two here and there. A graduate degree from Bennington College's low-res program. That's where I met David Lehman, in fact, and how I come to be a guest blogger on the BAP website. And that's why I'm excited about this week's Poets Forum. Mobile Libris is selling books there, of course. What's so exciting is not only the amazing gathering of A-list poets -- Frank Bidart, Sharon Olds, Kay Ryan, CK Williams, etc, etc, etc -- all gathered together in one place at one time to read and discuss poetry for three days here in NYC, it's the crowd it draws. It's the books that are sold. Now, I don't mean that because it's part of my business to be excited about selling books. I mean it because for those three days, people are really jazzed up about poetry. They can't get enough of it. And this is the beautiful thing about Mobile Libris: In those three days, we're going to put into the hands of the general public books of poetry from 27 different authors, probably about 500 books. That, my friends, is good for the cause, and that's my right brain talking!
If you want more info, check out the Academy of American Poets website. See you there!
