If you’re in the tri-state, you’re probably home—waiting for it. In Manhatttan today, many commuters stayed away, the late afternoon rush toward Grand Central noticeably thin. On the train, people pensive, the word “noon” slipping in conversation—the time tomorrow when NYC will, in an unprecedented move, shut down all transportation systems. In the suburbs tonight, it’s eerily quiet except for August cicadas. Hurricane Irene, the size of Europe, swirls like the plot of a bad sci-fi film. Enjoy this special hurricane edition while you still have electricity! Postscript: We survived without too much damage--kudos to our elected officials for handling Irene so well!
St. Agnes, Pink-Slipped available online
After my last newsletter, many annogrammers asked where to purchase my poetry chapbook, St. Agnes, Pink-Slipped. It’s easy – order it online at the Kattywompus Press Book Store. I’m also grateful to Sarah Lawrence College for announcing the publication on the alumni website (scroll down). In addition, I’m thrilled that The Widows' Handbook, an anthology that received more than 500 submissions, has accepted my poems, "Irradiation" and "What Yields to Winter.”
CavanKerry to publish Sarah 
Bracey White
Congratulations to Sarah Bracey White, who has been selected by CavanKerry as one of its “New Voices” for 2012. Her memoir, Primary Lessons, recalls her mother’s wisdom that safely guided Sarah through her first 12 years in the Jim Crow south. Publisher Florenz Eisman says, “It’s a delight to welcome Sarah as a new CavanKerry writer.”
HochmanI am lucky that Jackie Sheeler introduced me to Cindy Hochman, a versatile literary artist if ever I met one! Her new chapbook, The Carcinogenic Bride, is as riveting as the best Ginsberg or Sexton poems you know. She is also co-host of cable TV’s Poetry Thin Air, where she interviews poets such as Pedestal Magazine founder and editor John Amen. In addition, she is editor-in-chief of First Literary Review East, and welcomes poetry submissions under 16 lines.
The Town of Greenburgh
will unveil the newly restored 9/11 Memorial Wall on Sunday, September 11, at 10:00 a.m. at Presser Park, Hartsdale. Composed of tiles designed by school children and county residents, the wall had fallen into disrepair in recent years. Thanks to a donation from Sam’s Club and the tireless efforts of Greenburgh Arts & Culture Director Sarah Bracey White, the wall will once again honor the memory of Greenburgh residents who died that September day 10 years ago.· Art Historian Beth Gersh-Nesic for her new blog, BethNewYork, the updated New York Arts Exchange website; and this great review of Chasing Aphrodite in Venice Magazine.
· Poet and now publisher Janet Kaplan who suggests we “drink up” Red Glass Books' debut collection, Swimming to America, by Patricia Spears Jones.
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.
Until next time,
We don’t see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.
- Philip Levine
