My New Toy

i've always wanted a website; I don't know why. It just seems like everyone else has one and I want one too. Or it's like a toy that lives everywhere you go. Or maybe I'll have something to say to everyone in the world and will not want to post it on a blog. Or maybe I jus think websites make a person cool and official, like having business cards. Anyway, with my forthcoming book as an excuse, i've set up a website, www.craigmorganteicher.com, and even relocated this blog there. There's more info on this blog right now than there is here, but I'm working on it. I made the page with iWeb on my mac, which is a pretty amazing program. You can do anything these days without doing anything.

Beyond that, I've been reading Robert Frost. And getting ready for the other very big event coming in B and my life in the next few weeks...

Going to the second night of the PSA Festival of New American Poets tonight. That's really what I'm doing. No joke. I may go have a cigar before. That's what I'm doing too. Someone once wisely said, on this very blog, that blogs should be about what you would write about if you had the time. Then I think I referenced that very comment once before. I feel brain dead. It's the end of a long day of work. This is how I really am, brain dead, at the end, a long day...

Grindhouse

Have you guys seen this craziness--the new Tarantino/ Rogriguez double feature. It's perhaps the most violent movie ever made, and, in truth, an extraordinary experience of art at its most intense. Go. Go. Go see it!

It's snowing again

Why is it snowing in April? Why? To whom can I complain in the hopes of getting results?

Thanks to everyone who sent congrats and kind words about my book. I couldn't be happier about it!

So, guess what I'm reading? Bet you can't, so I'll tell you:

I'm on a fable jag, as I've been writing them (look out for a couple of examples in this summer's issues of A PUBLIC SPACE and JUBILAT), so I've been doing my homework, reading

GRIMMS'S FAIRY TALES
AESOPS FABLES
THE BOOK OF FABLES by W.S. Merwin (due out shortly from Copper Canyon--a reissue of two earlier books)
ITALIAN FOLKTALES edited and rewritten by Italo Calvino (this is really good--lots of kings and things getting cut open)

Then, of course, I'm working through many books of poems:

OTHERHOOD by Reginald Shepherd
THE NOVEL by Paul Hoover
SELECTED POEMS by Kenneth Koch (The American Poets Project Edition, just out)
TYRANOSAURUS REX AND THE COURDUROY KID by Simon Armitage (not liking it as much as I hoped I would)

Now it's stopped snowing, and only five minutes have passed....

My First Book

Here's my big news. I'm stupid excited about it: Paul Hoover picked my manuscript as the winner of the 2007 Colorado Prize for Poetry. My first book, BRENDA IS IN THE ROOM AND OTHER POEMS, will be published this coming November by the Center for Literary Publishing, who have brought out first books by a whole slew of great writers, among them Steven Burt, G.C. Waldrep and Rusty Morrisson, and who also publish Colorado Review. I'm just really excited and honored and blown away. I think Hoover is a strange and wonderful writer (with whom I have no acquaintance), and I'm just amazed and honored that he picked my book.

Also, check out CARRIER WAVE by Jaswinder Bolina, who won the prize last year. It's a good book...