5 Questions with Rachel Richardson

Rachel Richardson is a jazz singer, folk singer, pop singer and all around Singer. She can expertly deconstruct a Swiss Cake Roll or Nutty Bar. She's the founder and director of Arts Corner Toledo, a community arts outreach that organizes mural projects in and around Lucas County. Rachel's also a real advocate for Toledo, where many of us are trying to do better, and succeeding, a little bit everyday. 

Your Name Here: The Matt Sradeja Interview

I met Matt Sradeja several years ago at a poetry workshop held at Brewed Awakenings, a coffee shop that was for a long time a fixture of Toledo’s poetry scene. Matt and I were still cutting our teeth on the words in those days. Since that time we’ve featured together at a few readings in Toledo, read at a million open mics, performed in Back to Jack, and had poems printed in the same anthology of local poets.

Matt’s poetry heroes, as you’ll soon learn, are Gregory Corso and Walt Whitman. He carries on their legacies like a champ. Matt’s poems are frank and sincere, funny, unexpected, and playful. He plays with pop culture references, makes jokes, and tender, sometimes heartbreaking overtures to the world.

5 Books with Sarah Osborn

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

5 Questions with Ashley Eichner

Ashley Eichner is a poet, multi-media visual artist, spoken word performer, secret shaman, and gentle spirit from Toledo, OH. She's a member of the Back To Jack Reader's Theater, and the organizer behind the annual Charles Bukowski memorial reading, held at a local watering hole called The Attic. She's also a dear friend and a enthusiastic supporter of local art and artists. Here we discuss poetry, briefly, and a few of her favorite poems. Thanks for reading, and enjoy!

Writing Never Felt Like a Choice: The Lindsey Forche Interview

I met Lindsey Forche a few years ago when we were both employees at Borders in Toledo. It didn’t take long for us to learn we both had a mutual love for Tori Amos, a shared interest in poetry, and a strong desire to write the quintessential American novel or poetry collection. We talked about poetry but we shared very little of our original work with one another. I recall, in the mess of my memory, giving Lindsey a copy of a poem I was working on to read in the break room at Borders, and reading an e-mail from her with several of her musical, fierce poems attached.

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.

You Should be Writing, Horned Larks, What I'm Reading/Doing Now

I usually write all my blog posts out by hand and then type them later. My mind and my hand writing are more in synch than my mind and my hand typing. I don't really feel a flow from one thought form to another while I'm typing, there's no rhythm is what I'm saying. I keep backspacing and thinking where the keys are instead of meandering from thoughts about what I ate today, and how basil reminds of my under arm odor sometimes, and my fiancee's been wearing long sleeves to bed since it's winter time so I haven't seen her under arm, and though we've been in winter awhile we only recently got snow, and I was worried that I wouldn't see horned larks this winter but lo and behold, there they were picking gravel in the driveway only minutes, it seems, after the snow started flying the day after Christmas.

How About Just a List of Books

I'm at work. It's a slow day so I've been singing bits of favorite songs and thinking about books I love but never include on Lists of Books I Love. You know how sometimes someone says to you "What're your top five favorite books?" And maybe you have some go to favorites, or maybe you list the last five books you read. Well, I've mentioned it before, but I just finished reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, and if you've read it too then you know there's a lively discussion of The Great Gatsby in the early chapters. I've read Gatsby several times, out of great love and devotion for the work, but I'll be damned if I fail to mention it every time favorite books come up. Another book that comes to mind is Spartina by John Casey. I had strong memories of scenes in that novel throughout my reading of RLiT, especially during the Gatsby discussion. The setting of Spartina has much to do with this I'm sure, as much of the action takes place near an old summer home not unlike Gatsby's place. But the issue of morality in Gatsby brought Spartina to mind too, as the main character has a scandalous affair. Honestly it made me angry to read. Add to this list Ethan Frome. Assigned in high school, and duly read, I didn't realize what a great book it was until I reread it two summers ago. I also love The Light in the Forest, My Side of the Mountain, The Moon is Down, and Tracks. Within the last two years I've read The Secret Garden, The Chocolate War, and The Outsiders for the first time. All stand out stories, worthy of their longevity. I can go on and on, and I will. But this became way more than a list and I'm still at work, after all.

Books, Some Old Thoughts, A List

The blog that follows was actually written in February while I was alone with my son watching the Super Bowl. I guess his mom must have been at work, and his big sister at her dad's house. But first, I've been reading Reading Lolita in Tehran for the past few weeks, and it reminded me of all the wonderful books I loved reading, and several still on my to-read list. I love to read. I love to talk about books, read about books, share books with others, stack them, collect them, browse them in the library, and just hold them in my hands. There's something soothing, and even reassuring, about the weight of a paperback in hand or pocket. 

I guess I'll consider this blog entry a prologue to a few longer ruminations about books and reading. 

The Issue of Equal Rights. I guess that's all.

So...let me get this straight. You're a parent. You've worked extra hours to buy bikes, varsity jackets, the best Christmas presents, to pay for summer camp, music lessons, elaborate birthday parties and exotic pets. You've read the same bedtime story 35 times in a row, and when your sweet, sleepless child said "Again", you read it 36 times in spite of your drooping eyes, and the dishes in the sink, homework to check, your own bed calling out to you. You've bandaged and kissed every injury, soothed every anguish and supported every decision, like the wrong friends, the dangerous sports, the pursuit of the arts as a career. How many nights did you stay up late with worry or wonder? How many mornings did you rise early, barely rested, to make a special breakfast or pack a favorite lunch for this very child, this animal of wonder you and your beloved spouse made together?

You're a parent. You've contradicted yourself before, to teach a lesson.

Some of Us Write it Down: The Nicol Kostic Interview

I don’t remember when I first met Nicol Kostic. I saw her occasionally at the Sam ‘n Andy’s reading I hosted in the late nineties, and I liked her poems but got the very wrong impression that she wasn’t interested in talking to a young kid, and she liked to keep to herself. Once I moved into the Collingwood Arts Center, I learned how wrong about her I was. The CAC is a communal living situation where working artists combine residential space with studio space for a modest rent. There was one kitchen for all of us, in the basement, and one restroom per floor, shared by all the tenants. It was a creepy, lovely, inspiring and at times debauched place, but it was home, and it was cool.

Nicol had lived there for a long time, doing her many arts, and one evening, while doing my dinner dishes, she and her husband and I started a conversation about the value of art, of taking chances, believing in your creative goals, and giving precedence to the creative impulse. It was a wonderful hour. It turns out that not only was Nicol interested in talking to a young kid, she was really enthusiastic about all the arts, and willing to share her enthusiasm.

A Poem, September in the Midwest, The Little Creatures of Nature.

It's Sunday afternoon in the Universe, it's September, and lately the days are giving June, my most favorite month, a run for her money. Purple and yellow asters crowd the drainage ditches, along with chicory still flowering, thistles, golden rod, sumac, and heath asters. A lot of people around these parts have let roses go sort of feral in their ditches, or in underbrush near the road, and those leaves and thorns are red and sinister looking against the impossibly green lawns and tall grass growing in fallow fields. God, there are so many flowers I can't name or describe them all. I'm telling you the world outside your door is a quilt, it's a coat of many colors, it's the most magical thing going right now, unless your children happen to be outside playing in it, and then that is the most magical thing going.