So, February goes unrepresented in PftB. It was just a month to get through.

Evie Shockley recently posted an interesting meme-note on Facebook, asking, more or less, what lines of poetry stick in your head on a regular basis. I thought about that, and there’s really only one that pops up with any regularity:

They said / “Jerome, Jerome, / return to your village.” / I did so, and began / to lick postage stamps.

It’s from Ron Padgett’s poem “Early Triangles“, the first poem in his 1979 book Triangles in the Afternoon (SUN Press). I love Padgett’s poems, and there are many that I like more than this one, but this is the one that has established residency in my brain alongside those ubiquitous songs like “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Carry On, My Wayward Son”.

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I’ve recently had the pleasure of discovering the work of poet Hoa Nguyen. Her book Red Juice has been on every table in my house that books go when they’re not being constantly read. The recent Kiss a Bomb Tattoo is also excellent, but I haven’t yet had time to sink into it as deeply as I’d like. I’m backtracking as well, with my library copy of her turn-of-the-century book Your Ancient See-Through (Sub Press), which presents a rather more scattered but no less vibrant display of poetry. I’m waiting for her imminently forthcoming book, Hecate Lochia (Hot Whiskey Press), before I come back to this space with a more thorough commentary on Hoa’s work. You should use this time to buy her books (“Red Juice” and “Bomb Tattoo” are available from Effing Press) and familiarize yourself with them, so that we can be on the same page.