I started the day…

I started the day reading a story by Joan Silber, "The High Road" -- good. I'm liking this O'Henry book quite a bit. So far, my favorite is T. Coraghessan Boyle's "Swept Away", which has a fabulous fantastic flavor, somehow reminiscent of Calvino's Baron in the Trees. I must have read something by him before? If so, I don't remember it -- if any of you are T.C. Boyle fans, I'd love to hear further recommendations on good work by him, especially fabulist pieces. I'll add them to my Amazon wish list. :-)

I then went on to write a poem, something for Frank Wu's Exquisite Corpuscle project, described thusly on his website: "In addition to all my work as an illustrator, along with author Jay Lake I am editing an anthology called The Exquisite Corpuscle, to be published fall of 2004 by Wheatland Press. This is based on the Surrealist game "The Exquisite Corpse" in which a group of people contribute to the construction of a single collaged entity. So what we have is three tag-teams of seven people each, starting with the phrase "the exquisite corpuscle" and then we see where it goes. I started with an illustration, and then passed that on, for inspiration, to award-winning author Gary Shockley, who will pass his story on to Tim Pratt, etc."

I received a lovely story from the talented Ben Rosenbaum, and after some pondering and a little early-morning muttering, managed to write a poem that I'm really quite pleased with. So I've sent it off to Frank, and no doubt at some point will share it with y'all as well. I really like the energy in the genre right now, that's coming up with all sorts of projects -- collaborations, chapbooks, private workshops, zines -- whatever, all contributing to the bubbling creative ferment, producing a plethora of interesting pieces. Good job, people! Keep it up!