Bla Bla Bla -- I'm Still Alive

Working on a new poem and it's killing me. It's long, complicated and a bit more narrative than I've been dealing with lately. I have tons of notes, ideas, lines and images in my notebook -- most of which were written in one of two ways:

1. In the dark, with the aid of a flashlight, in the middle of a park at around 4:00 AM, while walking to work.
2. Somewhere on the streets of Toledo, in between shifting gears and resisting the urge to flick off other drivers (no need for them to associate my middle finger with the company I work for).

But I have high hopes.
And I have high praise for my friends!
Dan Nowak, whose brilliant chapbook Burning the Arson Dictionary: Poems for Thomas McGrath came out last year, will be releasing a new chapbook, Of a Bed Frame, from Accents Publishing. I can't wait to read it.
And if you haven't yet read Lisa Fay Coutley's Back-Talk, order it now. You'll be sorry you didn't. Then get ready for her follow-up, In The Carnival of Breathing, winner of the 2009 Black River Chapbook Competition, due out in 2011. You can also find her on Verse Daily.
Glenn Sheldon has a chapbook coming soon from RockSaw Press, Biography of the Boy Who Prays to the God of Foreheads (god, I love that title), due out first half of 2011.
Congrats to friends Lisa Fay Coutley, Adam Houle, and J. Eric Smith for being selected for the Best New Poets 2010 anthology.
Adam Tavel's "The Great Disappointment" just won the 2010 Robert Frost Award from the Robert Frost Foundation.
And Stacia M. Fleegal's debut collection of poems, Anatomy of a Shape-Shifter, will be released by Word Press any day now, which isn't soon enough.
Have you checked out the killer artwork by Jonathan Schnapp yet? You should.
Damn, my friends are busy. And I know I'm missing someone ...
... check out my poem, "Virgin", in the latest issue of Poetry Quarterly (You kind of have to scan through the Open Publication program but I guarantee it's in there somewhere:)
And oh I want to buy a lot of books. Current wish list:

• Brian Turner's Phantom Noise
• Tony Hoagland's Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty
• Philip Levine's News of the World
• Alison Stine's Ohio Violence
• Lightsey Darst's Find The Girl

And yes, there are more I'm forgetting again.
So, if you weren't sure, I'm still here -- writing this post when I probably should be working on that poem.

Because it Belongs to All of Us. Vote.