My friends!

Well the gallery show in LA was a hit! In one of those strange twists my life sometimes takes, I found myself at a bottle-service-only rooftop bar in Beverly Hills, let in my two huge, besuited security men who must have been models by day (this is LA, after all) between actual velvet ropes to confrere with the headlining artist. And what a show! Dealing in nuclear issues, government secrecy, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, it also features a daring and striking aesthetic (those stark images are made from the most tonally-sensitive instrument available, and are technically photographs, but only just).

Then I gave my paper on Scottish travel literature to no little fanfare (well, kind of a little fanfare) at Biola, where I also chanced to meet the wonderful Paul Willis, who read to us from his new volume, and Karen Swallow Prior, who somehow made all of us literary types fall more in love with books.

Dear ones,

In a way, it’s nice to have a bookend, a talisman, a fin at the end of a film. The first thing the pandemic cancelled for me was the launch party for The Elegy Beta which was scheduled for March 10th, the day the governor closed our state. And now–Lord-willing, and barring an unforeseen resurgence–the last thing it cancelled was the Spring MFA Retreat. I was looking so forward to seeing these writers, to being at Camp Casey, but there’s comfort in knowing, or at least in feeling, that this is the last swipe of the claw.

Okay though, here’s the big stuff:

Dear friends,

Well, I got COVID the first week of 2022.

Inauspicious beginnings, you might say, but I'm glad to be done with it (and glad I didn't have to cancel class because of it. The timing was considerate, all things considered). Classes are going well apart from that and I've got some exciting publications coming up; as ever, more are in the works.

Also, it's my birthday tomorrow 🎉 My kids and I baked a cake together in celebration and it's sitting even now in our fridge awaiting the feast. Here, have a piece: 🍰

Oh my dears!

The world so changed! Fewer things of note happened this year that might have: I threw fewer parties, attended fewer conferences, gave no public readings, but for all that lack, it was still an eventful one, full of growth, mostly on behalf of the wee Willetts, and of grace. I met inspiring students, welcomed new colleagues, and said goodbye to old ones. Here are some bits I'd like not to mislay.

⚾ This year, I took the children to their first baseball game

• and to their first concert (TobyMac at Evergreen State Fair).

Dear ones,

First, this is a place on the earth and I live here. I just wanted to point that out.

Wait a second, can it really have been that long? We haven't had a missive since Spring? Goodness. I've missed you all.

I want to go back and tell you the things: so much happened--to tell you Mrs. Willett and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary and people read poems and raised toasts under the globe lights strung from the cherry tree. How beautiful it all was--but the only way is forward, I think, and if I start in about the kids' new bikes, and Sebastian's first soccer camp and the trip to Baker Lake, and my first in-person MFA residency we really won't ever get caught up, so how's this? I'll just say "Summer was pretty nice" and you just fill in the details as you will.

People!

I’ve been blessed to have articulate blurbs for my books from people I admire, James K.A. Smith, Scott Cairns, Malcom Guite, to name only the most well-known, and so I try to pay it forward, writing accurate, compelling blurbs of books I believe in when asked. Lots of times, I can’t do it because I don’t actually love the book in question. I try to be honest about this and never seem to get behind a book I can’t, you know, . Last week alone I turned down two publishers who wanted blurbs for forthcoming books that I just couldn’t put my name to. Hopefully, if I stay principled about this, it will mean someday I have a list of books I really believe in. Recently, I’ve blurbed three: Jeremiah Webster , Laura Reece Hogan , and Ben Palpant . Of the most recent, here’s what I wrote.

If I feel close to this animal, it’s because I helped dig up its bones. They weren’t ready yet, having only cured in the soil for eight or so months and still had bits of fat attached to them, more work for the enzymes to do. When done, my colleague Peter Wayne Moe and I hauled them up to the rooftop of a nearby academic building to bleach in the sun.

I hefted the enormous jaw up to him via aluminum ladder and smiled, over the next year, to think of the students going in and out of that building, oblivious to the fact that they read or performed experiments, or whatever they did in class, mere feet below a whale carcass.

Eventually, with a group of students, he built the thing into a full skeleton and hung it in the atrium.

Well, well, well.

How the time gets away, no?

Here’s what’s happened since last we communed:

I attended my first residency as a poetry mentor in SPU’s marvelous MFA program in creative writing. We had to conduct the whole thing over zoom, but it was still so very fruitful, the students eager and energized. I profited especially from Lauren Winner’s seminar about Julian of Norwich, about whom I knew nothing, and from the poet Tim Siebles‘ readings and craft talks. I’m looking eagerly forward to our August in-person gathering.

Hello dear ones,

I’ve missed you these last weeks, and have much to share, as usual, but rather than launch spectacularly into the cultural and writerly happenings you are used to finding in these missives, I thought just to share some books I’ve read and read and read recently that you may enjoy, especially if you, or someone you know, is 3-7 years old.

My Dears,

How is there always so much happening? Every time I sit down to pen you a missive, I think O, I’ll just jot a short note and then am interrupted with the thought and . I suppose it is the work of a newsletter to, you know, cast the news, but yeesh. One likes a dusting of snow, rather than a dumping.

NB- some of you will have seen this update already. I tried a different email distributor and it was a disaster. Here then is the email you should have received last week, with thanks for your indulgence…

Well well well.

Autumn is creeping down from the tops of the trees which gold there first and it has almost fallen, before rains come and fell all the leaves that carried it, upon our dreaming heads. It’s lovely, that is to say, as always. I’ll keep this relatively brief because there are some important details that I shouldn’t want you to lose in the heady reverie of our usual companionable soiree.

First, Amazon is somehow selling hardback copies of The Elegy Beta for less than $5.00(with free shipping!) right now. They may not be tomorrow, but as I type this, the offer is legit. I know, because I bought one. I truly don’t know how they afford to do this, since neither I nor the publisher agreed to such a promotion. Maybe it is an error on their part. But if I were you, if I was even the least bit curious about poem books, I’d get a copy while they’re hot. If you don’t dig it, bring it along as a hostess’ gift to the next dinner party you get invited to, assuming the world corrects and we have those again. Seriously, how in the world is this worth it for them? Do any of you know?

Hello Dear Ones,

I have been coming back, if not to normalcy–it’s too soon for a word like that–at least to some familiar rhythms these last weeks. I’ve been camping at Baker Lake, where I’ve been going since I was a 7 years old, and grilling on the back patio. We went up to Whidbey Island for the week and I sat on a chair reading William Meredith poems while my children mastered bikes (two weeks ago, neither could manage; now, they’re both daredevils). I’ve been planning my classes, obv, and I participated in my first (online) MFA retreat whereat Peter Hawkins (Yale) spoke movingly about Dante, and , so earnest and helpful and wise, told us about poetic habits. What a crew these writers are!

Hello Dear Ones,

I have been coming back, if not to normalcy–it’s too soon for a word like that–at least to some familiar rhythms these last weeks. I’ve been camping at Baker Lake, where I’ve been going since I was a 7 years old, and grilling on the back patio. We went up to Whidbey Island for the week and I sat on a chair reading William Meredith poems while my children mastered bikes (two weeks ago, neither could manage; now, they’re both daredevils). I’ve been planning my classes, obv, and I participated in my first (online) MFA retreat whereat Peter Hawkins (Yale) spoke movingly about Dante, and Carolyn Forche, so earnest and helpful and wise, told us about poetic habits. What a crew these writers are!

Also, that third review I was telling you about last time appeared! It’s in a place called EcoTheo Review and you can read the whole thing here. There’s much to admire in this review and I’m grateful both to its editors and to its writer, who says things like

Alright friends. Here’s what’s up:

First, my family took a road trip to Arizona. It was our first such outing of—if the sitcoms are to be believed—what will be many. We were nervous and cautious because of the everything, but thought in the end it would be better to carry our germs in our own vehicle, breathing them only on our own families than to strew them about the neighborhood (we live in a pretty tightly packed and close knit section of Seattle) as we had been doing. I took some pictures, and since we’re all friends here, you can view them at this link, imagining that we’re swilling martinis together while I fiddle with the focus on the slide projector.

Second, The Elegy Beta got its first two reviews! The first is more informative than anything, but does manage to say:

Okay Lovelies,

How are we doing?

This extrovert is crumpling up without the sunlight of daily interactions, though I am blessed to have a yard with which to change the scenery, and one in which I am sowing pumpkins and marigolds in defiance of the apocalypse. There is something perverse in our having in Seattle such a string of fine days: one golden glow upon another, the only rain a shower of cherry blossoms and green revivifying everything and here we are all just..not on boats or skimming through the bookstore stacks. sigh

Lovelies,

It will not surprise those of you who know me well that I will take the analog over the digital any day: real lectures over online, real letters over email, plays over movies. I even still listen to physical media, getting records from the store and hauling them out of their sleeves when I want to hear music. It’s old fashioned, just the way I like it.

But in this time of quarantines, when so much of our lives is mediated through screens, I’ve seen so many others lending shoulder to wheel to create connection where isolation has been the rule, that I thought my own preferences should not keep me from doing my small bit.

Also, I miss you all. I miss seeing you.

Dear ones,

This is an uncertain and difficult time to be sure, or perhaps it is only a more clearly uncertain and difficult time than we are wont to face, but as always, there is beauty and truth and goodness in the face of it. To whit: where some schools sent students home immediately, SPU heroically made a way for those who need it to stay, eat, and keep learning. I’ve seen more churches come to creative rescue, more neighbors singing from their balconies, more restaurants creatively adapting to the needs of their communities than I was quite prepared for. A Lenten fast cast suddenly and forcefully worldwide has become, that is, an occasion for a kind of miracle.

It’s here! 🍾

After nearly ten years in process, The Elegy Beta hits bookstores Today! I started writing the elegies in September 2010 and now they’ll be in your lovely hands.

Dear ones,

You can right now‼️

Dear ones,

I’m not sure this is completely finalized, but I can’t keep the lid on this. We have a cover for The Elegy Beta!

2019

Obviously, every day is significant in its own way, but when I look back on 2019, here are some milestones, way-markers, cairns to memorialize the too-quickly passing time.

• We started meeting as . Technically, we began initial meetings at the end of 2018 in our living rooms, but things really got going this year: we got into a building, began hosting communion services, won the arts grant, and performed our first baptisms. I can’t believe, when I look back at the amount of imaginative space (and sheer time) Ambrose has taken up in my mind, that it’s only been a year. It’s the best church that ever happened to me, and if no other significant things had occurred this year, I’d still mark 2019 as a winner if only for this.

Lovelies,

Why is the new book called The Elegy Beta you ask? Well, that’s a fine question. You always ask such astute and piercing questions.

The title refers to the eponymous long poem at the book’s close: a piece that responds to Rainer Maria Rilke’s , considered by many to be the greatest European poem of the 20th century. My elegies attempt to make the same moves as Rilke–thinking about angels and their place in history–without quite being translations. In that way they are a “beta-version” as in a pre-release of a piece of software meant for early adopters, but they are also a beta to Rilke’s alpha: the second in a series, “an after-ing,” as the poet termed the practice. In so doing, I am participating in a revival of impressionistic “translations” used recently with great success by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy in (Riverhead, 2005), and in (Bloodaxe, 2012). My book’s overarching theme is to ask readers to think about suffering differently, the title poem arguing that it is a gift we should spend more wisely than we usually do.

My second poem book is coming soon!

The fine folks at Mockingbird are publishing it. I couldn’t be more pleased.

Awhile ago on , someone asked a group of #writers what magazines or journals had been the most supportive of their writing efforts, and I didn’t have to think about it: Mockingbird has been right there from the beginning, publishing individual poems and essays of mine, putting on amazing , mentioning my previous book in their fun weekly roundup series.

Alright

To start things off, here is a preview of a documentary film about my wife’s ballet Apex. It’s showing now through September at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art as part of the exhibit. (watch it with the sound on, b/c the music and editing are ethereal and perfect). If you’re headed to Friday Harbor, WA this summer, stop by. We’re pretty thrilled with how it came out.

The people!

First, there are a lot of new subscribers here; would you all mind making them feel welcome?

Man, have some things been happening. I don’t know where to begin.

Well, the term ended at SPU, and with a bang; I hosted the Creative Writing students at my house (the first time I’d ever done such a thing) and they brought the most tasteful poems and bits of essays to share!

People,

Alas and alack! That SAT essay I was telling you about in my last newsletter is finished but the editors are still sitting on it. I’ll have to link to it in another missive. Special thanks to my Imaginative Writing class for helping me with the ending.

Meanwhile, you may console yourself with this one, a set of suggestions for integrating Humanities undergraduates in actual scholarly research that I’ve just published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Those editors hacked off the last section of the essay because I was running long (imagine!), so if you’d like to read the original ending, here it is: Director’s Cut!

That other essay I published at Mockingbird about a classroom exercise was generally well-received (thanks to those of you who took the time to drop a line of encouragement) but got one–just one–hater. Taylor Swift and Austin Kleon helped me through the ordeal, which I wrote about here.

Hello Lovelies,

It’s a fine Spring shaping up here in Seattle: tulips dropping their opulent heads, the cherries flowering and falling, the light stretching long across the afternoons and into evening. What a time.

Here are some updates:

I’m working on a new essay about the SAT test. It will likely come out in the next couple of weeks (I’ll send word when it hits). The editor has been extremely thorough <– which I like; too few are these days. But for right now, I can’t seem to stick the landing. I have two alternate endings, both of which I like but which don’t make any sense together. What to do? We’ve been going back and forth deciding what to keep and what to cut. In any case, I’m eager to share it with you all when I untie this Gordian knot.

Hi (especially new) friends! It happened! Who knows how long it will stay, but Spring has pounced on Seattle and we’re all dizzy from the blow. Let us steady ourselves with:

News

I’ve had two essays published in the last couple of weeks that are free to read. The first, over at Front Porch Republic is called and it responds to some claims the great art historian Matt Milliner made in an article in . My essay is basically recalling some (very) early memories about my life in Phoenix and it started as an exercise in Rhetorical Analysis in a class I was teaching at last Winter (if you were in that class, can you remind me?) Basically, I put Milliner’s piece up on the overhead and we read through it looking for claims explicit and otherwise. Some of them started to feel egregious, so I responded with this. After the essay came out, I was talking about it on with some friends, and this picture came up, taken at the Phoenix Indian School in 1906.