Explosions 🌸

Well, it’s Spring; the flower baskets have been hung from the lampposts at Whitworth and the lilacs have bloomed around town, including the new one in our yard, a moving gift from some friends, which sprouted a single blushed cone in this, its first season. 🪻 The kids spend whole days swinging from the cherry tree, as I fight weeds in the lawn. It’s life in Cinescope.

It was so good to see so many of you come out for the reception at the Calvin Festival—a hearty thanks to our readers, to alumni and friends from all over who found us and made the evening memorable. It was my first time at that fine fete, and what an affair! I was jazzed to see keynotes from the joyous Ross Gay and Robin Wall Kimmerer, to have meetings with w/ Paul Willis (Westmont), D.S. Martin (McMasters Divinity), Jill Baumgaertner (Wheaton), Nadya Williams (Ashland), James Matthew Wilson (St Thomas), and to see so many other fair folk—Kate Gaston and Pete Petersen from The Rabbit Room; I finally met an editor from Comment whose work I’ve long admired, all while chatting with literary agents, potential new MFA students, and fellow writers, and all of that while pottering about the carefully curated shelves of Eighth Day Books. 😮‍💨 My favorite was seeing our alumni though. They really are the best. It was worth every mile of track I travelled.

Then, as soon as I got back, we hosted a poetry reading on campus, featuring Laura Reece Hogan and Donovan McAbee, who were marvelous and marvelously good sports, especially when they came to my house and my children (dears, all) insisted on hitting them on the head with an inflatable bat, because, since we has real poets in the house, we had to play Poetry for Neanderthals.

Book News

The last few poems from my forthcoming This Gift Card has Already Been Redeemed are being published in Fare Forward and on the Rabbit Room substack. I’ll keep you posted about those. Meanwhile, pre-orders are going great as discerning readers register their intention—their demand!—for a blessing this October. 😇 Blurbs trickle in, winning and festive, like this one from Tania Runyan.

Mischa Willett’s newest collection celebrates the exuberance of language and literary wit. From wryly interrogating the quirks of daily life, work, and love, to honoring the styles of a range of other voices, Willett writes in a way that invites us to “feel God’s pleasure” in the poetic imagination

Or this one, from Scott Cairns.

With his customary wit, wordplay, and wisdom, Mischa Willett attends to the perplexing mixed bag of our days—heartbreak, elation, disappointment, and consolation. In every instance, one hears the deep and grounding ison note of joy.

Honestly. These people. 🥹

MFA Updates

We’re gearing up around here to host our summer residency, full of vibrant writers who get to learn from the aforementioned Cairns, but also Shemaiah Gonzalez and Karen An-hwei Lee.

Also, our regular fiction mentor, David McGlynn, has a new novel out soon called Liberal Arts—colleges are some of my favorite places, especially small liberal arts ones, and McGlynn is an unbelievably poignant and funny writer. I can’t wait for this one.

Oh and, our regular CNF mentor, Alissa Wilkinson, is stepping away to focus on her drab day job of meeting celebrities and covering the Oscars for some place called the New York Times (sp?) Seriously, she’s an alum of this program and we’re thankful for her service and care. Meantime, you can help: who would be a great CNF mentor? Like an uh-mazing essayist and teacher? Seriously: send suggestions.

We’re taking applications for the Winter cohort, but it’s filling up fast—only one spot left in Poetry, for instance, so, you know, if you’re feeling the call, don’t dawdle.

Reading

• I finally got Le Poesie vol. 1 & 2 from Allessandro Parronchi, beautifully printed from Polistampa. These will be with me for awhile.

• And I’ve just had handed to me Ben Lerner’s novel Transcription.

• But my main thing just now is Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety, which is so familiar to me, even while it’s rootedness in a particular and gone past makes it read like sci-fi.

Listening

Nothing new. Seriously. I find everything disappointing. Help.

Oddments

• I wrote a blurb for the new Galahad and the Grail.

• This article about the removal of a Christian poet from the National Book Critics Circle chronicles the moment Poetry mag stopped being relevant, IMO.

• New mags you should know about: Portico Quarterly and The Colosseum

• I re-built my website. I know I do this all the time, but it drives me mad when things could be better and aren’t. There’s probably an eniegram number associated with this, but idk. Anyway, I like it now, for now.

Okay. That’s the news from my little corner in the Inland Empire (an ambitious referent for the loose confederation of agricultural communities around The Palouse, though perhaps it extends beyond that; idk, I’m new here 🤷).

Bless.