With the majority of a month between the last blog post and this one, I have surprisingly little to report. Unless you consider deer tracks in my front yard snow something to report. If so, meet me at the caption under picture #1.
Let’s see…the New Year started, and while 2012 contained some soaring highs for my life, it also had some staggering lows (and not just that Battleship movie). On an objective or career level, maybe it was a good year: I graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of New Hampshire in May, won the Richard M. Ford Award in Poetry (for excellence in poetry writing within UNH), got my first full-time, career-oriented job in public relations, and placed poetry in multiple journals that I greatly enjoy (see “Poetry” tab at the top of the page). So, yeah: a pretty good year. Especially because the world didn’t end in it.
As you (probably) already know, the Mayan-prophesized apocalypse that was supposed to occur on December 21st was a big no-show, like Y2K or decent acting in Battleship. And, you know, I’m okay with that. I have a lot to do in whatever amount of years I have left on this planet, and I’d be mightily peeved if civilization ended right when things were getting good. But luckily, the Earth’s still turning and didn’t fly into a black hole, no gigantic volcanic eruptions or asteroid collisions (though there was that one time…no, never mind. Let’s not think about that. Or THIS.). Nope, just a lot of nothing. Plus snow. You know, the usual winter.
Another reason I’m glad the world didn’t end (as if there are just a few): I have a hell of a lot of reading to do! After the holiday gift-giving and immediate use of gift cards used for gift-giving, my to-read list just bulked up considerably. And even though I haven’t even broken into this pile as of now, since I’m not quite completed with The Master and Margarita just yet (though it really is fantastic), let me show you why I’m excited to get to reading more and more soon:
Plenty of poetry books by some terrific poets (since you probably can’t see them all unless you zoom in: 2 by Jane Hirshfield, others by Nick Flynn, Robert Hass and Mark Halliday), a couple novels (Danielewski’s House of Leaves [Google it, see how much people love that thing] was terrific, and his follow-up novel didn’t disappoint, so I’m excited for his newest offering, The Fifty Year Sword), and some writing on the art of poetry itself. That latter category I’m especially excited about, since the two Art of… books and Pinsky’s The Sounds of Poetry are comprised of essays that illuminate and explore the simple things that make poetry move, and as a student of the art and someone who loves writing, I’m thrilled whenever I can really dig into poetry. These are just giving the reader more tools to do so.
Now: sharing things! Two poems, and one more humor-based, which is a balance I am liking lately:
1. Beeline Eclogue over at The Journal. Kudos to J. Allyn Rosser for this fantastic piece.
2. Bone, by Jane Hirshfield (which I found when perusing one of the books in that stack above! Very excited to read the whole thing. Ms. Hirshfield’s subtle poetic power is entrancing). I don’t know what this site is, so I can’t say I condone how this poem got there, but at any rate it’s on the internet for right now so I say enjoy it! It’s a great poem.
3. And finally, in honor of 2013 being the year we finally get more of the terrific show Arrested Development, here is Lucille Bluth closing the door on 2012, which had none new AD whatsoever:
If you aren’t familiar with Arrested Development, let this be an opportunity for you to turn on Netflix and find it there, thus introducing you to your new favorite obsession. You’re welcome.
To 2013! May it have less movies about both battleships AND aliens (I had to get that last one in there. Rule of threes, folks).
Brandon Amico 