So, how about women the world over getting together in peaceful and purposeful protest of any and all threats to their progressive and inclusive platform and suddenly being responsible for the biggest one-day protest in U.S. history? As ever, you ladies amaze and delight me with your strength, poise, and unconquerable spirits.
In other news: Chicago's most beloved rapscallion, Ben Tanzer was kind enough to put And Turns Still the Sun at Dusk Blood-Red... on his list of stuff he loved in 2016. He's got a new book out soon, Be Cool. He'd be happy (& I'd be happy for him) if you gave it a try!
My name came up when Jared Carnie interviewed Joseph Ridgwell about his ever-growing body of work. You can read all about it HERE. Joe has a new short story, "Mexico," out in a beautifully hand-made edition from Pig Ear Press. It's the third such offering from them, and only 50 copies can be had, so get yours while the gettin' is good.
And lastly: I woke Monday to a unique email, from a kind woman, Leslie, in Tupelo, Mississippi. She said:
"I am in a play this weekend...titled Cicada..."
Those familiar with my work know that my poem of the same name, originally published by The Guerilla Poetics Project (newly rebuilt website HERE!), has bounced around social media in many surprising ways. As it turns out, Leslie found it while looking for a small gift "for the cast and crew for their opening night."
"I immediately saw your poem with the drawing of a cicada," she said, "and I fell in love with it..."
So, after a quick back and forth, she decided to print the poem "on a 5x7 tan-colored card stock" and "put in a frame for each of my theater cohorts on opening night, along with a little package of Fig Newtons, because my character, Granny Duvall, met her death by choking to death on half of a Fig Newton, 'because no one was home to fish it out of her throat!'"
Now if that's not a fine, fine way to start a work week, I don't know what is! So if any of you are in/near Tupelo and in want of something to do, why not take in a show?
Cicada• By Jerre Dye
Tupelo Community Theater
http://www.tct.ms/
January 26-28, 2017
Written by Amory native, Jerre Dye, this highly acclaimed drama set in rural Mississippi is a coming-of-age ghost story deeply rooted in the life of a small southern family on the verge of transformation. The unrelenting July heat presses in on seventeen-year-old Ace and his mother Lily as they dig their way out the past. It’s a story about letting go and shedding what is no longer necessary in a world full of secrets, ghosts, and memories that hold on tight.
Okay, okay -- enough for now. Until next time,
Hosh
