I’m Hitting the Road This Spring

If you live in the Los Angeles area, I’ll be making my second consecutive appearance at the LA Times Festival of Books on Sunday, April 27. I’m moderating a morning panel on books and the film industry with guest speakers Mark Frost, Chris Miller, Gary David Goldberg, and Tom Epperson.

Aspiring writers in Michigan may wish to consider registering for the Ann Arbor Book Festival Writer’s Conference on Friday, May 16, where I’ll be talking about “blogging for the serious writer” with Claudia Mair Burney. The conference costs $100, but the festival the next day is free, and depending on what the airfares are like I might be wandering around…

I’m lining up more speaking engagements all the time, so who knows? I may make it to your neck of the woods yet!

27 March 2008 | events |

Alan Shapiro, “Clear”

and unavoidable, that’s how you have to see it,
Annie said, that’s what it all comes down to,
what the Buddha teaches: separation,
sooner or later, from parents, spouses, children
most of all, no matter what, so what else
is there to do except accept it, embrace it,
trying to say as if saying it
itself could be protection or escape,

as if the foresight weren’t the perfect foresight
between the knife cut and the cry, the siren
and the blue lights in the rearview; the clarity—
something that than that never-to-be-
prepared-for sudden moment when the friend
you’re running toward and calling to, and now
are touching on the shoulder to turn around,
has turned around and is no one you know.

From Old War. This new collection also includes “Skateboarder” (published in Blackbird) and “Suspension Bridge” (published in Slate, with a recording of Shapiro’s reading). Last weekend, LA Times Book Review editor David Ulin called Old War “the work of a poet who understands loss and longing but also knows enough not to be subsumed by them, to appreciate the small illuminations they allow.”

And be sure to read two earlier poems by Shapiro, “Sleet” and The Haunting,” at the Academy of American Poets website.

21 March 2008 | poetry |