Just got back from Provincetown, from Tampa, from Chicago, Winston-Salem or Sanibel Island or St. Petersburg, Florida, that is.  Just got back from (soon France).  I’ve had my share of travels, but the past two years, I have seen many air ports, train stations, bus stations, people’s messy cars, taxi cabs, even an Uber or Lyft.  It is not thrilling, mostly it is for the business side of poetry–readings, keynote addresses, panel member.  I do my best to provide a good speech or reading or serve well on a panel–at this point I love that I am a true professional.  Not sure about where I am in the game, but I am in it.

But it is not easy.  It is not easy for any writer really.  It is not that we are all introverts, more we are all used to our own company.  So when you’re to be on the dais, at a dinner, by the pool, under a spotlight, no matter how well-organized or supported, there is that strain.  I thank all of the people who have made my trips bearable. Arts adminisrators, bookstore proprietors-thanks Jeff Peters at East End Books, and readers, who tell me how important a poem is or that my work gave them guidance or inspiration.  So I was happy to be put me up in nice hotels, have them chauffer me when I needed to get around.  Glad for their kindness when I got ill.  The entire staff at the Rauschenberg Residency are like the platinum standard–they gave me all I could wish for and more. But also Juliet Emanuel at College English Association or Paolo Javier from Poets House at AWP or the lovely administrators at Rutgers Summer Program, Michael Slosek at Poetry Foundation in Chicago, and Kelle Groom and Dawn Walsh at Fine Arts Work Center–all of you get serious thanks. And I am thankful that I joined the roster of illustrious writers at Leslie Shipman’s new agency https://www.theshipmanagency.com/.   Her professionalism makes things so much easier.

Next I go to France for a month under the auspices of The BAU Institute–will I write many new poems or chapters for my memoir; will I drink too much wine; will I dance a fandango–who knows, but in a few days I will get on an airplane and go off into the wild blue yonder and hopefully land easily in a very volatile world.  I think about Anthony Bourdain because he seemed to have found that balance between openness and quiet–when he was eating, he was eating.  And listening.  Maybe he heard too much.  We will never know.  But I hope to eat well and listen and bring back a bit more of the world to my humble abode in Brooklyn.  Who knows maybe I will fall in love.  I love casting a large shadow.  Here’s the one from Provincetown made on the 4th of July.