Dutrope; Me; Li-Young Lee

Thanks to C. Dale Young (who learned about it from another blogger), I've discovered Duotrope, extraordinary site listing lit mags, response times, etc. As CDY was saying, it's more searchable that Jeff Baher's compilation. It's also more international (it has quite a few Canadian magazines), links to websites, etc. I think I'll put it on top of my magazines list.

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I've lined up a gig at Noches de Poesia, which has fast become Montreal's premier multicultural poetry venue, and one Montreal's premier poetry venues period. (Well, there are only about three or four of them.) I'll be reading along with four others (as well as performing some music) on Wed., Nov. 1 starting at 6:30. Further details here.

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This weekend I read through Li-Young Lee's Rose, which I recently received in the mail along with a batch of other books. I love this poet's emotional warmth and depth, his disarming ease and innocence of expression. Poignant works about childhood and father -- a kind of looming (yet disturbing) hero-figure -- blend into beautiful poems about his own fatherhood, woven together by such elemental motifs as hair, blossoms, fruit -- and despite what that descrption may suggest, nary a word trite or precious (tho he he does verge at a couple of points. Good for him, I say.)

The reason I ordered Rose is that about a year ago in The Sun I came across some damned good poems from that book. Here's one of them. (And here's an exerpt of the interview with Lee in that same issue -- and I see now that Ilya Kaminsky is one of the interviewers. Interesting.)

Of course, it's often best to read first books first: that's where so many poets quite definitively define themselves, and from what I had read of Lee, I wanted to see that. Now I'm inclined to order his latest, perhaps, and work backwards.

P.S. I see also now that there's an interview with Li-Young Lee in the current issue of Rock Salt Plum Review. Very interesting. I'll have to read it when I have a free moment. My essay is also there, but funny, it didn't leap out at me that Lee was featured in the same issue perhaps because I hadn't read much of him yet.