13 Feb
Here’s where you can buy an autographed, inscribed copy of my second book, out last month from Word Press in Cincinnati. $19 plus $3 shipping. Drop me an email if you want it inscribed to anyone, and/or if you’d like to buy The Gospel of Galore, for $16 plus $3 shipping. Free shipping if you purchase more than one book. Thanks!
12 Dec
I have been pretty busy running around the country talking about homeless young people for my first non-fiction book, Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope, but am now very excited to present my second poetry book, which will be coming out in 2013. It’s called Precise, and Word Press in Cincinnati is kind enough to be publishing it. IThey published The Gospel of Galore too. The new book has its own website here, please check it out!
26 Nov
Tina Kelley interview with Dr. Ed Yaw starts at 9:39 and goes to 19:44. Honored to share the studio with Sander Zulauf and Marvin Silbersher.
9 Feb
I’m going to be reading with Edwin Romond at Warren County Community College, as part of the Visiting Authors Series on Wednesday, February 22This event, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in room E208, is free and open to the public. The WCCC Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, the international honor society for two-year colleges, will provide complimentary refreshments.
For directions to the college please call (908) 835-WCCC or visit http://www.warren.edu. For more information about the Visiting Authors Series, please e-mail BJ Ward at ward@warren.edu.
Please come out to hear us!
2 Jan
Thank you, Annette Spaulding-Convy and Kelli Russell Agodon, for including me in Fire on Her Tongue, an e-book collection of contemporary women’s poetry, done with a 0 carbon footprint! check it out!
11 Apr
Word Press in Cincinnati will be publishing my second poetry collection, Precise, in 2012. I’m so excited!
30 Nov
Thoughts on a List of Fears
Given that fear is the opposite of love, see phobia, see philia,
what is the opposite of obsession? The opposite of opposition?
Some fears are purely rational:
helminthophobia, the fear of being infested with worms,
hydrophobophobia, the fear of rabies. Also myxophobia,
the fear of slime, closely related to okraphobia,
a subset of lachanophobia, fear of vegetables.
Then again, there are words for fears of some of the finest things in life,
things without which our memories would be empty:
lakes, garlic, music,
meteors, colors, opinions,
flowers, otters, foreplay,
infinity, flutes, northern lights,
solitude, dancing, the heart,
justice, the sea, home,
stars, dawn, daylight,
knowledge, taste and the hearing of good news.
I do not understand anablephobia, the fear of looking up,
or the fears of chins, knees, hair, glass and names.
Of course, some fears are so rational, life without them would seem foreign.
Going to school, even learning itself? Petrifying, especially when the teacher
leaves the room just as you try the new task on your own, without a net,
and everyone is watching, waiting for you to wobble and fall.
Fear of snow makes sense for anyone living at the top of a steep hill,
for anyone with a slight case of cheimaphobia, fear of the cold,
leukophobia, fear of white, or taphophobia, fear of being buried alive.
For those who have been in love more than once, mnemophobia makes
perfect sense. At the first bars of a ballad, Memory can reduce one to tears.
Perhaps I even have a slight case of paralipophobia, fear of neglecting duty,
given the countless nightmares I have had, in which the pets I was caring for
died horrible deaths, left alone in hot, dry apartments for a week. Maybe
that’s why I played halfback instead of forward—a form of performophobia.
Some have climbed the pyramid of terror, from fear of pyramids, say, to
the fear of terror, then the fear of words, then of thoughts, then of the mind and last,
of the self itself.
I have not seen the words for the fears my friends report: fear of buttons,
of possums, insomnia, fundamentalists. Where is the word for the fears of
abortion, abortionists, and abortion protesters? Where are the diagnoses regarding
mosquitoes, April 15, drunk drivers, divorce, insurance forms and panic attacks?
Falling sleep behind the wheel, ebola, identity theft and cactus? The phone ringing
in the middle of the night?
Perhaps single words, even those as elegant as athazagoraphobia, the fear of being ignored,
and angrophobia, that of becoming angry, do not suffice to encapsulate the fears that drive me:
fear of simultaneously landing on the ground, hearing the cracking ankle, and feeling shooting pain,
fear of thinking obscene thoughts about Jesus in church,
fear of misspelling the publisher’s name in a news story,
fear of people who love me more than I love them.
And where is fear of dropping the baby, fear that this perfect little gallon
of potential will be spilled, landing on her head, glassy eyed,
institutionalized for life, never logging her first laugh, all my fault?
Thanks, Phil Chen and Puget Sound Speaks, for letting me blog for them this year!
Thanks for Commenting!