Thanks so very much to everyone who threw his/her name in the hat! I’m late wrapping things up, as usual, but at last I got myself over to Random.org and let it do its thing. And so, the lucky winners are:

1. Cave Wall: #23 = Doireann 
2. Sugar House Review:   #8 = Kathleen Kirk
3. burntdistrict :   #4 = Anne Higgins
4. Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review:    #27 = Angela
5. Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems:    #16 = Nandini Dhar

Winners, I’ll be contacting you for your mailing addresses. Thanks again to everyone for playing!

Coming up, new post this week…

This year Susan Rich is curating the Big Poetry Giveaway, founded by Kelli Russell Agodon a few years back. Check out Susan’s blog for the guidelines, and to see the growing list of participants. In my usual fashion, instead of books I’ll be giving away subscriptions {Edit: AND ONE BOOK!}. But first:

Where have I been? I’ve written a little, cooked a lot (oatmeal bread, chocolate cake, Cornish pasty-pie, granola, orange poppyseed muffins, and rhubarb jam, all just this week). I’ve worked (AWP! I went! With Georgia! Which meant I didn’t have that much flexibility in attending events, and missed seeing a number of folks, but I did get a dinner out with Sandy Longhorn which more than made up for everything else!) (and have you checked out Tupelo’s 30/30 Project yet?) and mothered, and we’ve managed to get through late winter without any big ailments, a minor miracle I don’t altogether trust, not least since I’ve gone and recklessly said it out loud.

Time is slippery. A wriggling fish flying out of my hands. In my mind it’s still September. Or earlier even, before my mom got sick. Saturday was the two year anniversary of her death, and what’s remarkable is how very much that two years feels like nothing. Which likely explains my cooking mania.

“Then the question is: How do you fall in love with [cooking] again, or if it has never made you truly happy, fall in love with it for the first time?

My answer is to anchor food somewhere deep inside you, or deep in the wonders of what you love.

We have different loves. Mine are food and words. Others’ are how building slant away from dark sidewalks, or how good it feels to solve an equation. I say: Let yourself love what you love, and see if it doesn’t lead you back to what you ate when you loved it.” — from An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler

I can hear my mom’s voice when I cook, know exactly how she’d feel about each food I make, can fully imagine the conversation surrounding each process. To cook is to commune with her. To cook is to lead me back to her.

Anyway, though I’ve been absent I haven’t been idle.

Thank you for sticking with me through it all. To be entered into my Big Poetry Giveaway, please leave a comment on this post. At the end of the month I’ll use the Random Number Generator to choose winners. The 5 prizes are a 1-yr. subscription each to:

• Cave Wall
• Sugar House Review
• burntdistrict
• Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review

AND, I’m giving away a copy of Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems, the new anthology I edited with Jeffrey, which includes poems by wonderful poet friends  Amy Dryansky, Molly Spencer, and others. So that’s FIVE (5) PRIZES. 

Thanks for playing. And don’t forget to visit Susan’s blog for the full list of other participants — there’s a lot more poetry up for grabs!

Since I last wrote these happened: big bad shingles for husband; chicken pox (caught from shingles) for baby; pneumonia for mama; add the holidays here and there; [and Tupelo's 30/30 Project] [and the new year at the Collected Poets Series] and there you have the lost late autumn/early winter.

But here I am, and my good-hearted friend Tricia tagged me for the Next Big Thing series of interviews, which seems a nice re-entry and happy new year sort of post. My answers to the questions are below.

Be sure to check out Tricia’s post, and I hereby tag these fine writer friends to participate as well: Jeannine Hall Gailey (who was tagged in December before I got to her, but whose fun post bears re-reading), Erin Coughlin Hollowell, Molly Spencer, and Cindy Hunter Morgan. Edit update: go read Kate Hanson Foster‘s post too!

Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:

What is your working title of your book (or story)?

Plum & Wound

Where did the idea come from for the book?

This is my first full-length manuscript, so it’s been in process for a number of years. Which is to say, its impetus is a constant flux.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

As my younger self, a brunette Emma Stone, and as my fully grown carnation, Tina Fey. Sassy, self-aware intelligence at its best. Not so much playing me as playing my idea of myself, my best version.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

To be woman and mother, a mother but no longer a daughter — these poems explore a world both particular and familiar, interior and intimate.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

No. I’ve been judiciously submitting P&W to a few small presses and contests (semi-finalist in the fall!), and it’s still in contention at a couple.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Since it’s my first, I’d say my entire life! But I only became aware that I was working toward a book in the last few years. It was a new way of thinking for me, that I actually had a body of work that was beginning to cohere into a whole.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Some recent books I’m drawn to, and which I therefore assume must share some kinship with me either in style, strategy, or subject, include (in no particular order): Mother Desert by Jo Sarzotti, Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith, The Game of Boxes by Catherine Barnett, Once by Meghan O’Rourke, Afterworld by Christine Garren, Prop Rockery by Emily Rosko, and Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam translated by Christian Wiman.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Every book I’ve ever read. My parents. My family. The living, the dead. The love I’m lucky enough to have in my life.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Poems are not autobiography, meaning that while I’m trying to get a handle on and explore true things — motherhood, mother loss, love in its various aspects — I’m not particularly bound by facts. But I like to think I’ve captured some of the essence of these things and that alone makes these poems worth writing, and hopefully reading.

I made bread. I made butter. I made pumpkin butter. And cookies. And muffins. And oatmeal shortbread. And countless breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. I made pickles, and ketchup. And many other things besides.

And I wrote a poem.

I keep promising a fuller post and keep not getting to it. There’s just not enough time in the day. But I will. I will!

I wish I could say that my shameful neglect of the blog is due to a fabulous vacation or at least lots of trips to the beach, but no luck. Summer’s whipping by so fast it’s leaving third-degree burns, but so far I’ve done nothing and gone nowhere. Having both boys at home, plus Georgia, while continuing to work and carry on is proving to be a tremendous challenge. I spend a lot of time thinking up projects for them — Papier maché masks! “But I don’t like to do the goopy part, Mommy.” Right. Awesome.  – because holy smokes maybe it’s the heat and the constant togetherness but boy howdy are they back to squabbling a gazillion times a day and if I don’t have distractions aplenty blood will flow.

Anyway, an actual honest-to-goodness post is on the docket for soon, but here’s something for the meantime. Because this struck me as an apt example of the effect of line breaks.

Here are two images I found on Facebook. They’re very similar. They’re both funny. But I find the top one helplessly-giggling funny, while the second just makes me smile. The illustrations themselves are a factor, but I think the top one’s line breaks work better, that there’s more air for the joke to breathe, whereas the second runs on in a rush. Though I do like that comma after “Purple.” What do you think?

P.S. Kitchen Adventures continue:  I made more strawberry jam — such a good year for strawberries! — chocolate drop cookies, chocolate chip cookies, sweet cinnamon popovers, oatmeal bread, cardamom bread, vanilla banana avocado ice cream, and cinnamon vanilla sunflower butter  [which I adapted from this recipe -- couldn't find sunflower oil at my local store, so I just used vegetable oil, and instead of vanilla beans or paste (because hello! have you seen the price of vanilla beans?!) I used a fair amount of vanilla extract, and then I added a few tablespoons of brown sugar, because it was salty when I was expecting sweet for no good reason, put it in a jar and called it done]. The extreme heat has forced me to take a small break from baking, however. I’m loving food blogs and there’s quite a few that combine poetry & good eats — List post soon! Recommendations welcome.