Monday, July 19, 2021

Greetings from Gowanus, Brooklyn. Things are pretty quiet here this morning: no jackhammering or police sirens, at least for the moment; just a muddled triad of truck-backup tones and the generalized sound of transportation . . . expressway, Fourth Avenue, airplanes.

We got into Manhattan early yesterday afternoon, spent the afternoon in Brooklyn, and then somehow coiled our way north into the Bronx, despite canceled trains and mysterious disappearing subway routes. It was so strange to be surrounded by baseball foes! But our seats were excellent: high up in the terrace above home plate; and even though our team decided to be lackluster, we had a good time watching the evening slide in over the park . . . thick dark blue roiling clouds thickening over the field like a mutable Blake print.

Today we'll head back north, this time to Inwood, where P has his first appointment to see an apartment. I don't know how successful we're going to be with this, though our Brooklyn friends do have an "I know someone who knows someone" option that might be promising. It is hard to get anyone to trust you to pay rent if you don't yet have a job.

I got the excellent news today that the literary journal At Length wants to publish a large excerpt from my manuscript A Month in Summer. They are one of the few journals that specifically focuses on long poems, and I am very pleased. The excerpt is from the ms that finaled for the National Poetry Series, but since then the book has been kicking around from publisher to publisher, except for a bit that appeared last year in the Beloit Poetry Journal. So this feels encouraging.

2 comments:

Carlene Gadapee said...

I love "mutable Blake print" and I love that MS-- hope it finds a good home. Ruth wrote a lovely draft inspired by gravestones and women's roles in the 18th century that reminded me a bit of your work on the diaries.

Our little writing group was much fun and very productive!! I'm so glad for that.

David (n of 49) said...

Basically what Carlene said. (=