your holiday annogram

Alhambra Poetry Calendar 2011
So happy that my award-wining poem, “Express,” appears in the Alhambra Poetry Calendar 2011. You can purchase this elegant ring-bound, desktop anthology through the American Academy of Poets. Makes a great gift!

Translator Guy Bennett’s recent work
I am most fortunate to have had an editor like Guy Bennett for my translation, Hence this cradle (Seismicity Editions, 2007) of Hélène Sanguinetti’s book-length poem. Guy has another of his own translations out, the big E, by Ernst Jandl: “a multi-section monovocalic poem of spartan texture and rhythmic complexity which follows the original’s word- and poem-shapes and sounds. While excerpts were included in Reft and Light (Burning Deck, 2000) and Twentieth-Century German Poetry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), it appears in its entirety for the first time in this bilingual edition.”

You can order the big E through Mindmade Books, and I also recommend Guy’s own poetry book, Snapshots of Marseilles (Sacrifice Press), which came out in April.

Things to do on a rainy Sunday
“Collaboration,” an interaction between visual arts and written arts, takes place today, December 12, at 3 p.m., at the Upstream Gallery, 26B Main Street, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522 (914-674-8548). Our fav poet Brenda Connor-Bey will be reading. Or catch the exhibition Thursday-Sunday afternoon through December 31.

Racoco Productions will perform work in progress as part of Mary Anthony's holiday studio show, featuring dancer Rachel Cohen today, December 12, at 3 p.m., 736 Broadway, #7, between Astor Place and Waverly Place; tickets $10.

Holiday shopping

These vendors offer unusually high quality gifts: Clean Ridge Soap, luxurious scents, soaps and lotions at reasonable prices (see left); D & D Accessories (914-330-2122),outrageously unique scarves and shawls; Vermont Hardwood Pens, which offers a free pen if you order more than two dozen; Chatham Candy Manor, Cape Cod’s best homemade chocolates; Sharon, a jewelery designer who combines your favorite quote and artwork in a beautiful pendant; Nicole, another jewelry designer who creates fun work with her mom; Sueanne Shirzay who creates a beautiful amethyst necklace (at right) to support the National Domestic Violence Hotline; and Loretta Fay (RETFAY@aol.com) who makes gorgeous, durable purses from upholstery fabric you select—and affixes your most cherished saying inside.

Great yearend wisdom
Wonderful suggestions from David Allen to wrap up the year: “It's time to purge. The end of a year and start of the new is a great metaphorical event you can use to enhance a critical aspect of your constructive creativity—get rid of everything that you can.

Your psyche has a certain quota of open loops and incompletions that it can tolerate, and it will unconsciously block the engagement with new material if it has reached its limit. Release some memory.

· Want more business? Get rid of all the old energy in the business you've done. Are there any open loops left with any of your clients? Any agreements or disagreements that have not been completed or resolved? Any agendas and communications that need to be expressed? Clean the slate.

· Want more clothes? Go through your closets and storage areas and cart to your local donation center everything that you haven't worn in the last 24 months. And anything that doesn't feel or look just right when you wear it.

· Want to be freer to go where you want to, when you want to, with new transportation? Clean out your glove compartments and trunks of your cars. And for heaven's sake, get those little things fixed on your car or bicycle or motorbike that have been bugging you.

· Do you want more wealth? Unhook from the investments and resources that have been nagging at you to change. (And give more than usual to someone or something that inspires you to do so.)

· Do you want to feel more useful? Hand off anything that you are under-utilizing to someone who can employ it better.

· Want some new visions for your life and work? Clean up and organize your boxes of old photographs. Want to know what to do with your life when you grow up? Start by cleaning the center drawer of your desk.

You will have to do all this anyway, sometime. Right now don't worry about the new. It's coming toward you at lightning speed, no matter what. Just get the decks clear so you're really ready to rock 'n' roll.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

- Henry David Thoreau

Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity. - Albert Einstein”

‘Round the Net
· Cindy Dunne for this update from her activist daughter, Maggie, who makes an appeal to former President Clinton to consider the Lakota when he speaks about domestic poverty.

· Sarah Bracey White for this update on the Purchase College Writing Center Fellows and hilarious take on the literary academic career path.

· Mary Ladd for this political send-off of Gilbert & Sullivan that defends our beleaguered president.

· Linda Simone for recent travel poems published online: “Mediterranean Lullaby,” “Passing Madame Tussaud,” “Villa Marina,” “Thanksgiving 3 a.m. Paris” and “I Ragazzi. “

· Meredith Trede for this PBS interview with new US Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin.

· Julie Wiskirchen for this news about this lost Ted Hughes poem.

Wishing you warm and wonderful holidays!
Ann