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• You should visit Maureen McHugh’s chart illustrating her “understanding of the process of writing a novel.” It’s a brilliant thing. And if you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend laying hands on Maureen’s collection Mothers & Other Monsters; more enthusing about it here. (Via that Bond Girl.)*

• As an extension of an article about the African literary scene in their July issue, Vanity Fair suggests additional African titles worth exploring, including Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. (I wish the main print article was available online but it’s not.)

• Bolaño Bolaño Bolaño!! Even if you thought you’d ODed on reviews of Savage Detectives, Francisco Goldman’s essay in The New York Review of Books is worth your time. See also the Mumpsimus on Bolaño, which includes a great list of related links. (First link via Maud.)

* I’ve only met her once, but Maureen played a part in one of my favorite conversational exchanges of the last few years. It was on a night she read at Malaprop’s with Kelly Link and Christopher Rowe. Mr. Tingle and Gwenda were in the audience with me, and after the reading, we all went across the street to Bier Garden.

The bar was noisy, but we had a nice big table, with me seated next to Maureen and Gwenda across the table. Maureen and I talked about her experience with Hodgkins (which she’s chronicled at her blog), and how it had left her with a heightened sense of the world’s fragility. “Sometimes,” she said, “I even find myself worried about bunnies.” Gwenda overheard the last bit and said in a very reassuring tone of voice, “Well, of course you do. Like little bioterrorists in fursuits, aren’t they?”

I have good news and bad news. The good news is we have another wonderful poem from King Otho. The bad is that it is the end of National Poetry Month. Perhaps we can all include more poetry in our lives (and this blog) throughout the year and not just during Poetry Month. Enjoy!

Needed Someone

by King Otho

Grams drams
whiskey sans
the heart its power
the fruit its
bless this congregation of
bones and meat cells
breaker breaker
one nine
I got lipids parting
I can see the amino acids
STOP
Fluid druid solemn molecule
don’t ask
it’s in it that it is in
WHAT!!
What was that he just said?
About the whiskey?
And the handcuffs?
Oh no my dear, you see
this is the new model.
There’ll be hardly any clogging
no noticable seams
All for three times the original price
and don’t forget the mail in rebate
NO NO NONONONO NO
It’s the shoestrings
that’s how you can tell
Mexican labor don’t know
how to tie a shoe up like
the Vietnamese
Paulo is a tobacco roller.
The dark steamy Cuban wherehouse
filled with rolled Rrrrrr’s and
Dickens Classics.
They read to them down there.
Sitting on shiny cars
moist brown wrinkles under
white athletic undershirt.
And nothing you smoke weighs
under three pounds.
Senor, he thought it was
manditory fields
The Russians promised
Vodka.
The economy of the people
is folded hechos
No no Elsie
It was three butters crisp
ten doiley placemats
two trinkerdoons
And a handfull of hard candy.
The eyebrows are the hardest part,
but if you’re carefull
they can be sprayed on.
Your expression can be chosen from
our handy sample book.
Simply apply the cardboard spraymask
and a new look, in seconds!
A straight beats a flush
how many L’s in legally?
Two trains leave Miami
Moving in opposite directions
How long till the
End of Time?
If you flattened out the
facts curled up in your
lungs,
they would cover a
tennis court.

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