If you're reading this, thanks

It’s been four months of broad­sides, and I’m find­ing I really enjoy the rit­ual of prepar­ing and releas­ing them. Not to men­tion giv­ing one or two away every month. They give some of the Fresh­wa­ter poems new life, set to an image or tex­ture. So a full 6 hours before you were expect­ing it (you were totally expect­ing it) I’m post­ing July’s broad­side, right here. For you. Thanks for read­ing about my lit­tle bizarro home­town. Every day the Cycle creeps a lit­tle closer to pub­li­ca­tion, and your sup­port is the dock under my feet.

This Month's Broadside Winners

Because it makes me sad to choose among peo­ple mak­ing the dis­cus­sion hap­pen, and inter­est­ing, I’m gonna choose up to two peo­ple every month. This month’s win­ners are listed on the face­book page. Mean­while, you can grab a copy of “Hun­newell Field Base­ball Dia­mond” just as soon as you like, by click­ing on the image above. Happy May Day!

All the Books You Meant to Read

A month back I promised myself I’d read every­thing I’ve col­lected so far for the this project. I’ve top­pled The Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger Man­u­scripts, I’m halfway into Sin­clair Lewis’s Main Street, Cary Nelson’s Repres­sion and Recov­ery and Karyna McGlynn’s I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl. The first isn’t grab­bing me yet, the second’s like shav­ing with a cheese grater, and the latter’s giv­ing me more trou­ble than I antic­i­pated. It’s a lit­tle dis­heart­en­ing. These two weeks are the pre-​​​​press crunch for An Under­ground Guide to Albur­querque, and I’m wan­der­ing from houses and meta­physics. I’m also learn­ing the big les­son about lead­er­ship: keep your damn cool. The week­end after it goes to press…

Interdimensional

First, a new broad­side is up at Face­book. Head over and grab your free poem! Sec­ond, I’ve been think­ing a lot lately about the broth­ers of Fresh­wa­ter Dredge and Well­wa­ter Dredge. I tend to think of them not only as real peo­ple, but liv­ing in a dimen­sion par­al­lel to ours. Though they’re the same age, one grows up in the 80s, the other in the 60s. Of course it hap­pened by what we might call the Clarke-​​​​Twain Prin­ci­ple of revi­sion. Beside all their other uncon­ven­tional inter­ac­tion with time, by grow­ing up simul­ta­né­ously in dif­fer­ent decades, they’re rec­on­cil­ing diver­gences in the revi­sion process itself. I think that’s pretty neat. It also makes me take the sequence of their…

The First Broadside is up at Facebook

Just a lit­tle FYI for those of you not yet fol­low­ing mat­ters on Face­book: If you’re a fan, you can go ahead and down­load this guy right now from the Broad­sides tab at the top of the page. Oth­er­wise, join up and claim your loot! Monthly draw­ings for a free signed print, deliv­ered right to your door, will begin April 2. Be sure you’re pay­ing attention!

Drawings!

I appre­ci­ate you. Yes, sin­gu­larly you. You’re read­ing this post, aren’t you? You’re curi­ous about the book, fol­low­ing some of my thoughts about it, and I want to say thanks. Begin­ning Mon­day I’ll be post­ing occa­sional broad­sides of poems from Fresh­wa­ter Dredge on the Face­book fan page. If you’re a fan, you can down­load them imme­di­ately from a box on the left; oth­er­wise, fan the page and pick it up. From me to you, as a token of appre­ci­a­tion for your inter­est and sup­port. Once a month I’ll draw a fan’s name for a free printed ver­sion of the poem (includ­ing ship­ping, of course), the win­ner announced both here and there. There will be other…