NaPoWriMo '08

National Poetry Writing Month starts tomorrow, April 1st, and of course coincides with National Poetry Month. (You can get a poem a day e-mailed to you by the Academy of American Poets by going here.) NaPoWriMo, for those who don't know, is the form of lunacy in which the victims commit themselves to writing a poem a day for the entire month.

PFFA's NaPo forum is here.

My thread is here.

Don't ask about the chickens.

Some Assorted Additions to Various Prose Shelves

"Literary" Prose:

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk
The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa
Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
Cellophane by Marie Arana
The End of the Poem: Oxford Lectures by Paul Muldoon
Annals of the Former World by John McPhee

"Hardboiled" Crime Fiction:

The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps edited by Otto Penzler
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Nightmare Town by Dashiell Hammett
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler
Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler

My New Mediterranean Cooking Shelf:

Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco by Paula Wolfert
Cooking at the Kasbah: Recipes from My Moroccan Kitchen by Kitty Morse
The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden
Simple Mediterranean Cookery by Claudia Roden

"Some Poems with Trees in Them"

now on display over in "The Jackdaw's Nest."

In Memoriam

Today, March 6th, is the birthday of an internet friend I'd lost contact with in the last couple of years, so I decided to try to get in touch with him. What I located instead was his obituary

Rodney L. Armstrong, March 6, 1965 -- December 22, 2005

Rod was a good friend during and following the years we worked together on the poetry board he created, Gandy Creek. He was also a fine poet himself, as this poem (originally published in Avatar Review 3) shows:

"Particles"

Night after the fish kill
particles are scarce,
there's little to cling
between dense stars.

A southern wind insists,
the waves of willow lake
slap their thousands
at our feet. They twitch
dead reeds along the bank.
Jug mouths offer nothing
but baritones.

Across the lake, moonlight
falls like scales
from dead fish, each flake
a gasp of particles
in the darkness.

In turning to go we see
we leave no footprints.
We cling to keep
from being
scattered by the wind.

-- Rod Armstrong

"Some Poems With One-Word Titles"

New over in "The Jackdaw's Nest."

Make March Milton Month

Rob Mackenzie proposes that March would be a good month to read (or reread) Paradise Lost. I'm in full agreement.