Paging George Abend

I am delighted to have work included in the current issue of Right Hand Pointing.  Always a fine journal to page through.

I also got a copy of the recent Bluestem in the mail--I love having my work at on line journals, but to have the mailman bring me a journal in the mail, and there's the issue, with my name in print, and my bio in the back--well, it's still very gratifying to me, and somehow still more exciting than seeing a poem up on line. Not to knock on line work--Bluestem also published my ode to a snowy night on their web version.You can hear me read it to you there, in case you are too tired to focus on the words on the screen.

Sarah Jane Sloat has some of her poems exploring invented typefaces up at Used Furniture Review. When I read these, it reminded me of her wine descriptions, and made me wish I'd thought of a series like this before she did.  But then, Sarah's writing is so elegant that I guess I can just be glad that she wrote them; my job is just to share the love.

In other news, I got a copy of Lew Welch's recently reissued Collected Poems, Ring of Bone.  Welch is one of the lesser know poets of the Beat/San Francisco Renaissance era, and I'm very happy to be reading and re-reading these poems.  He was a friend of Gary Snyder's, wrote about his affinity for Gertrude Stein, and in his work paid homage to great poets of China and Japan. I'll try and post more about him when I've gone through the book a couple more times.

Ok, I'm off to NYC for the big bookselling conference--flying out at 6 AM tomorrow morning--so I'll leave with this:

     John said, "Then I met that short fat guy with the 

     neat little beard, with a name like dawn."

     "You mean George Abend?"

     "Yeah."

      Abend means evening."

                                         Lew Welch, from "Circle Poems" in Ring of Bone.