Well, I've returned from AWP in DC with a bad case of STMDM (Spent Too Much Damn Money).  It was a bit of a rushed trip and is often the case with AWP, I didn't attend nearly as many readings or meet up with half as many old friends as I'd originally hoped/intended.  Still, I had the privilege of seeing some very talented writers and lifting glasses with fine company, plus I had what I hope was a good interview for a university position, so we'll call it a success.

I returned in time to besmirch a tower of paperwork and instead tinker with my latest three (yup, three) poetry manuscripts.  They've earned kind rejections and finalists/semi-finalists from contests from Autumn House and the Akron Series in Poetry, but so far, remain homeless.  So I pulled out the seams and did some reordering, plus a host of line edits along the way.  Then I spent some time preparing to send them out again (with a break to watch the fun yet unapologetically gratuitous Spartacus: Blood and Sand with my girlfriend).

As I type this, I notice the quarter-moon scar on my left knuckle, about the size of a quarter, echoing the argument I recently lost with a broken glass (I wanted it clean, it wanted to see what my knucklebone looked like) and realize just how bad I am at keeping this blog thing updated.  One would think that a two hour wait in the emergency room, plus taking out one's own stitches with a rusty toenail clipper (hey, I washed it first!) would be blog-worthy.  Must do better.

In other news, I want to transition back to AWP and say that I had a great time talking to Peter Lucas, editor of a new and very promising journal called Prime Mincer.  The journal is also edited by an old friend from grad school, Amy Graziano, whose poems are finally starting to pop up all over the place (as they should!).  Speaking of Prime Mincer, I highly suggest everybody take a look!  They're open to poetry, fiction, nonfiction, etc.  Also, Peter Lucas mentioned that you can submit multiple genres if you care to.  Which will segue somewhat nicely to the next paragraph, beginning with the sentence...

So I've been trying to write creative nonfiction recently.  By "recently," I actually mean "from time to time for the past eight years."  Like my fiction (such as it is), it's something I tend to do over breaks, when I have the time I need to really shift gears.  Otherwise, I find that my poems actually crystallize a bit better when I'm busy, dashing between classes, trying to remember which damn sport coat isn't supposed to be matched with which pair o' shoes, etc.  (Thanks to my friend, Kellie Weiss, for writing down a cheat-sheet on that one!)

Well, I can see that the sun is coming up and I'm supposed to teach in a few hours, so I think I'll take my insomnia-riddled ass back to bed for awhile.  Talk to you soon, blog.  This time, I mean it.