Bernadette K. Geyer's Blog

It's been a while since I reported on some chapbook news but just this week I received word of three poet-friends with chapbooks forthcoming:

* Moira Egan's Bar Napkin Sonnets has won The Ledge 2008 Chapbook Competition and will be published later this year. And she has more good news to report here.

* Cliff Bernier's chapbook, Earth Suites, has been accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press, which will announce its publication date soon.

* Cheryl Snell reports that her chapbook, Prisoner's

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Today, I sent out two poems for the first time. One was a poem I've been working on since 2008 NaPoWriMo (egad!) -- Jesus Christ of the Undocumented -- and one is a poem that was drafted during this year's NaPoWriMo and which I've worked on a lot over the past two weeks -- Sleeping It Off.

With JC of the Undocumented, I actually worked for many months on it last year and then it got buried under a bunch of other papers on my desk and I kind of "forgot" that I was close to being finished with it.

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I'm slowly getting through Poets on Poetry, a collection of essays edited by Howard Neverov. Usually I find these type of books to be interesting, but I'm having a difficult time motivating myself to finish this one. I think the biggest problem I have is with the egos of some of the poets who wax so academically about their own work. As opposed to some of the poets who seem to be less-guarded, more open about their process.

Poetry is not magic, and it bothers me when poets allude with high mystic

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Had a few moments while Frida was napping today to try my hand at the triolet form.


TRIOLET ON THE FUTILITY OF GARDENING

Why bother with the weeds? They just come back.
______No matter how many you pull,
you'll never suffer from a lack.
Why bother with the weeds? They just come back
infesting every sidewalk crack!
______They'll only play you for the fool.
Why bother with the weeds? They just come back,
______no matter how many you pull.


Oh, and if anyone has tips for formatting poems using blogger, please

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Just a quick reminder that the price of first class US stamps will increase to 44 cents on Monday, May 11, 2009. I stocked up on Forever stamps today.

The U.S. Postal Service is not usually very good about alerting folks to upcoming increases in postage. That's why for about 2 years now I've always used Forever stamps on all of my SASEs that I include with manuscript submissions to editors. Because you never know how long it will take an editor to respond to your submission, and postage rates jus

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Today, Frida brought home a lovely colored picture from preschool: depicting a man, a woman, and their postal carrier. As the daughter of a writer, Frida is already very aware of the importance of the postal carrier's daily visit. She knows how the mail works. She knows the thrill of getting something "good" in the mail, as well as the disappointment of a "bad mail day."

Of course, I am always grateful for the days the postal carrier arrives bearing books and/or journals. Even more so for contrib

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Goodbye National Poetry Writing Month -- it feels like I hardly knew you. A fast month, indeed, but I managed to scrape together 31 poem drafts. This morning, while my daughter was at preschool, I typed up the ones I thought had the most promise: six.

Last year, I typed all of the NaPoWriMo drafts and printed them out. The ones that were still languishing about as of April 1 this year, still waiting for me to look at, I have decided to "abandon" to the folder marked "not for publication." As in,

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Poet Craig Arnold has gone missing on a small volcanic island in Japan while on a creative exchange fellowship. Craig, an experienced explorer of volcanoes, never returned to his inn after leaving alone to research the island's active volcano for the afternoon. The authorities are on the third day of searching for Craig, and are scouring the small island (of only 160 inhabitants) with dogs and helicopters.

Today, police agreed to extend the search for three days. They will add 55 people (exact nu

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We're in the last week of National Poetry Writing Month and my energy is definitely slowing down. Thank goodness for last week's trip to Las Vegas, which helped me catch up on writing. Since I returned home, there's been little time to write poetry, but I've managed to get a few drafts jotted down in my notebook. Here's the update:

26. Scar II & III
27. Sleeping It Off
28. Odds
29. He Said

I guess I just need to get one more draft written by Thursday. Not too bad. Then I'll take a few weeks off writi

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I'm still here, though the month seems to have gotten away from me. Here goes the update, continued from where I left off last week:

13. When Pruning
14. Anxiety Is the Nub
15. Poker Face
16. I Knelt
17. Distraction in the Forest
18. The Rules Don't Apply
19. Dream Images
20. Bird Be My Witness
21. Scar 1
22. House Wins
23. Slots
24. In
25. Ode to the Stoplight

Now, maybe you'd call it cheating for me to count every single started draft as part of my NaPoWriMo tally... but for me, the important thing this mon

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