5 Books with Erin Lottier

"Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose." Neil Gaiman

Chasing The Ting, the Ray Patrick Interview

Ray Gene Patrick wears lots of denim, and t-shirts adorned with wolves and dream-catchers, and other Native American motifs, and black clothes, and he used to wear a hand-made beret a lady friend knit for him, he wore that a lot, he called it his Poet Hat. Ray used to wear turquoise rings. I don’t think he wears them anymore. He always carries a satchel or a briefcase, something he found second-hand, and it's full of poems, bottles of wine or beer, disposable cups, photographs, and things, gifts for someone. He has his friends in mind, and gives many of us tokens of admiration he finds while rummaging through second-hand shops and his own belongings. He had a vast collection of stuff: magic rocks, books, oils he used for massage and other things, posters, post cards, vintage clothes, funny hats, plants, lighters--odds and ends like that fill his life and briefcase, and he makes gifts out of it all. Every time I see him he has a small token to give, something he thought I might like or thinks I could use.

5 Questions with Bill Roman

Bill Roman was one of the regular wanderers-through at the Borders where I worked in Toledo. One night I was shelving books in the Religion section and Bill struck up a conversation with me. At the time, he was a pastor at a nearby Lutheran church, and I was a lapsed Lutheran, claiming atheism but not fully committed to a single position. We talked about why young people leave churches, lose faith, what makes them come back, that sort of thing, and now, several years later, we still talk and even have coffee with each other sometimes. Now he's a Counselor, and pastor at Nova Faith Community.

You Can't Let Things Slip Away From You: The Kerry Trautman interview

Kerry Trautman was one of the first poets I met when I started making my way into Toledo's poetry community. She is a founding member of the Almeda Street Poetry Co-op, which was a small, intimate workshop hosted at our friend Lori's house. We'd bring our own drinks, and sometimes there was food, and there were always wonderful discussions and workshops. I liked Kerry's poems immediately, but I was nervous around her in the way young men are nervous around women who are both smart and beautiful, who have poise. As for me, I was unschooled, learning poetry by reading anthologies and writing all day, whereas Kerry and the rest of the group were mostly students, or former students, of writing, and had a certain conviction and confidence it took me a long time to develop.

5 Books with the Museum Docent

Hi, it's me again. I've asked a few people to make a list of their top five favorite books for the blog. For a book lover, for the truest of true bibliophile, that's a terrible challenge. I know what I'm asking them to do is difficult, a task of metaphysical proportions, maybe it'd be easier to wrestle an angel. I know that. So I'm making my list as an act of contrition. I'm suffering first so I know the struggle first hand. Every time I sit down to make my list I think of a book, or the books, that led to my encounter with the one listed, and so I reconsider--does the book that led the way deserve a spot on the list instead? I don't know. I think of related books, books as a theme, books I've read more than once. Certainly, if I've read a book five times or more, as I have Fahrenheit 451 and The Great Gatsby, then I should have a place on the list for that book, right?

5 Questions, 5 Books

So, it takes me a long time to finish an interview. Mostly it's my fault. I noticed recently that several of the interviews I had already posted looked shoddy. Frankly I found them sort of insulting to the poets I'd featured, and so I spent a bit of time lately reformatting things, getting spacing right and trying to figure out the best way to make everything on the blog looking top-notch.

"I'm Not Your Sweet Baboo" The Bob Phillips interview

I was 19 the first time I heard Bob Phillips read. He was performing as a member of the Back to Jack troupe at the Center for Performing Arts at the University of Toledo. Bob has a distinctive voice, with a bit of smoker’s gravel and a particular way of enunciating that gives every word its proper weight. I remember he read a scene out of Big Sur where Jack is hungover, bemoaning his condition, his inability to abstain from drinking, and the sad status of the drunk in the world. Bob read this selection like he was born already familiar with Kerouac’s punctuation and cadence. It was the scene I most looked forward to hearing at subsequent Back to Jack performances.

In Which I Tell You Some Things I Like

I like drainage ditches overflowing with wild natives, like common milkweed, and dogwood, and bergamot, and goldenrod. I found my first monarch butterfly caterpillars on the milkweed that grew in the ditch in front of my parents' house. I reared one, on leaves I plucked daily, in a Styrofoam cup, until it became a chrysalis. Then I lost or threw away the cup, I can't remember. It was many years before I ever collected another living bug, I felt so bad about how that attempt with the monarch butterfly turned out, endangered as they were, or were in my mind, I thought I was helping the creature but in reality it had better chances where it was found. I've never wanted to collect bugs, anyway, and go through the trauma of the kill jar and the pin board. I'm happy to have chance encounters in the garden, or in the woods, or even in the basement where several cobweb weavers live, and put on terrifying display the wild assortment of insects that live in our homes unseen except as corpses beneath a spider's web. The variety is astonishing.

My Year in Books, 2012

Compared to so many other year-end list makers, I'm a little late to the game. I love to read Year in Review lists, I like to see what other people are reading, why they read it, if my list has anything in common with theirs. I saw one guy's list on tumblr, and he included shots of the cover of every book he read, and a short review of each book. I'm not doing that, not today anyway, but I might get around to it some other time. For now, here's my list of the books I read in 2012.