Question:
What is this?
Answer:
A blog.
Question:
Yes, obvi. But what is this?
Answer:
Do we really need to break out “obvi” again? And this is a blog to track the comings and goings and appearances and disappearances, in person and in print, of Emma Bolden.
Question:
Where have you been?
Answer:
Walking the fields with bare feet. Surfing the hallways with socks. Watching the squirrels bury nuts beneath my Genovese basil. Belting Barbara with the windows down. Braiding my hair before bed. Searching for socks behind the washer and dryer. Opening my eyes while underwater. Counting the seconds between lightning and thunder. Holding a handfull of rain.
Question:
Specifically. Recently. Where have you been?
Answer:
First: the trip of a lifetime. Austria, mostly, Germany and Italy as well.
Second: a reading at the Sarah Lawrence Summer Seminar for Writers, organized by the wonderful women at Toadlily Press, about whom there are not enough good things to say. I had the good fortune of sharing the stage with two wonderful and talented poets, Pamela Hart and Noah Kucij. Both read riveting, beautiful poems.
Question:
What was waiting for you when you returned?
Answer:
A phone bill due the next day. A pollen-covered iron table on my balcony. A Wings-N-Stuff menu on bright orange paper. Three telemarketer calls on my caller ID. Two issues of the Hiram Poetry Review, with wonderful poems by Beth Gylys and Jessica Lamb and Shaun Hand and yours truly on lucky page 13.
Question:
Now what are you going to do?
Answer:
Take vitamins and eat more protein. Hope I can keep up with this blog. Give a shout out to Ross White. Dry my hair and go to bed.
Emma Bolden is the author of How To Recognize A Lady, a chapbook of poems published as part of Edge by Edge, the third in Toadlily Press' Quartet Series, and The Mariner's Wife, a chapbook published by Finishing Line Press. Her third chapbook, The Sad Epistles, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She was the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers' Conference and was named a Finalist for a Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation/Poetry magazine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in such journals as Prairie Schooner, the Indiana Review, Feminist Studies, The Journal, Redivider, The Greensboro Review, and Verse. Her manuscript was a semi-finalist for the Perugia Press Prize. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Georgetown College, where she also serves as the poetry editor of the Georgetown Review.
5 comments
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July 2, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Ross
You have no idea how happy I am that you are now a permanent resident in cyberspace. And that your blog is so clean and so beautiful. Do you know how many of our peers are using ugly, ugly blogs? It’s a lot! A lot of them!
July 2, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Ivy
Well, obvi is new to me, so it’s not been totally wasted.
July 2, 2007 at 5:12 pm
emmabolden
Ross — I’m actually thinking of further fancification. I’m contemplating using my own photo up top. Maybe something real snazzy and snobby. Or else something that makes no sense, like a photograph of half of a clam. Or a nautilus. Or an angry octopus.
Ivy — I really like “obvi.” I went through a period of “obvi.” Then one of my friends informed me that “obvi” was “so over” before I even started using it. i was sad. I felt I’d missed something important.
July 2, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Pam Hart
Hi Emma, Thanks for your kind words and I send mine back. I’m looking forward to reading your work in Edge by Edge. Welcome to toadlily. And perhaps we’ll read again together. I’ll add you to my blog list.
July 3, 2007 at 2:15 pm
emmabolden
Hi Pam! Wonderful to hear from you! I’ll add you to my blog list, too! (Sorry — I’m a little slow at this whole blog thing.)