The spring reading period for LA Review is nearly over, which means I can spend a few intense days reading the remaining submissions with my fellow editors, then take a breather for a couple of weeks until we start actually putting the issue together. Oh, and there’s a tribute to Wanda Coleman to write and other work to do, but surely I can get a little time off, right? I intend to spend that time writing. I got a wild hair last week and cranked out three relatively good poems in 48 hours. That is serious speed writing for me.

One thing that, I think, helped me produce the work so quickly is that I was writing in my natural voice instead of the “serious poetry” voice. I have a much easier time writing poetry that contains humor than poetry about nature or angst or whatever everyone else is writing about. I am working on a whole collection of poems with humor, and they all have long titles. Two I wrote last week: “Upon Nearly Being Run Down in a Crosswalk by Vladimir Putin in a Range Rover” and “Shroedinger’s Cat.” Ok, the title on that second one isn’t long or particularly humorous, but the poem itself does fit into the collection. I have about another 25 titles at this point to compose poems for. New ones are always coming up. In fact, just yesterday I added the title “My Father Friends Me on Facebook and Discovers I’m Not the Paragon of Virtue He Always Thought I Was” to my table of contents. I don’t know if the world is ready for these poems, but they’re a hell of a lot of fun to write.

Am getting on the train in a few minutes to head into the city for drinks at the Soho Grand with Kate Gale and Mark Cull of Red Hen Press (aka The Big Bosses) and Nancy Boutin, Editor of LA Review (aka The Direct Boss.) They are a very fun group of people, so I’m very much looking forward to seeing them. I don’t think it’s possible that we won’t have a good time.