Cradle Book Virtual Book Tour Stop 1: My Chair

Welcome to my virtual book tour!  I wasn't able to embark on an actual book tour to promote my new collection of stories and fables, Cradle Book, just published by BOA Editions (please buy it--please, please, in print or as a Kindle E-book), so I decided I'd stage this little virtual tour, reading a few fables from various places around my house.  Here's the first stop--my favorite chair!  Each video features one fable.  Thanks for watching!

"The Prisoner"



"The Story of the Stone"

See you at the next stop...

This Game Is Ruining Me

This is Angry Birds, an iPhone and iPad app where you shoot birds out of a slingshot at green pigs, but you probably know that because it's like the third most popular game in the app store and you have an iPhone and can't stop playing it either. It's all I do. I don't read or talk or anything, and I'm still trying to beat the first group of levels cause I suck at video games.

My Q&A with Thomas Sayers Ellis

Thomas Sayers Ellis second book, Skin Inc., is coming from Graywolf in September.  It's wild, very complicated, and will make you feel conflicted feelings about the state of black identity in America.  I did a Q&A with Thomas for today's issue of PW, and here it is, along with a link to the PW review.

My Virtual Cradle Book Book Tour

As you may or may not know, my second book, a collection of stories and fables called Cradle Book (available in print and in a Kindle-exclusive--how controversial of me--e-book edition) was just published by BOA Editions.  The demands of fatherhood having basically prevented me from embarking on an ambitious book tour, or even a small one, for which I feel bad, not just because I'm depriving you of the awesome experience of my readings, but because BOA did me the great good turn of bringing out the book, and I owe it to them to promote the darn thing.  Plus, I like reading--it's the last vestige of performance in my life (I did comedy once a upon a time, you see).


So, I've decided to borrow some tricks from Dorothea Lasky, who conduced her virtual Tiny Tour for her first book, and from some video reviews I did for eBookNewser, and do my own little virtual book tour.

Here's the plan: I'll post probably three ten-minute readings--three is enough, I think--in which it'll just be me reading stories from Cradle Book.  If anyone bothers to tune it, I think it'll be a smashing success.  If not, I'll still have fun making the videos.  I'll try to keep 'em lively.  These events will be BYOWAC (bring-your-own-wine-and-cheese).  I'll try to post the first one tonight or tomorrow.  More info and/ or a reading coming soon.

John Taggart's New and Selected

Wow.  I haven't posted on this blog for over a year.  Much of that year has been spent working as a paid blogger, so I guess I had my blogging fix. I'm still blogging for work, but now, back at PW, I edit our new blog PWxyz.  But maybe here I'll write a bit about some poetry and nonfic books I'm looking forward to.

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But, on to the cover to the left.  This is an upcoming book I'm quite excited about.  John Taggart is a poetry stalwart, having plugged away in the trenches of poetry for decades, taking off from Oppen and finding his own way toward a kind of ambient pastoral poetry that's somewhere between Oppen and Bronk.  Flood Editions did has last couple of books, and then, surprisingly, Copper Canyon signed him on for this selected poems, Is Music, which is a monumental book.  I say it's ambient, meaning the poems don't exactly begin or end, or quite conclude.  So to have so many of them together really makes them work, like turning off all the lights and putting on an Eno album.  And what a stunning cover!  The book was supposed to pub in May but has been delayed, so it's not quite out yet, but should be in stores soon.  Look out for it.