Speeding Towards Poetry
If in the past we have slouched towards the novel, perhaps we are now speeding towards poetry? We might as well, since where I am, it's National Poetry Month and I am seeing poetry everywhere around me. Rumor even has it that we may start seeing poetry excerpts posted inside buses and trains. That's just good stuff. But what am I thinking about (right now,) or to use Facebook's words, what am I doing? For one, I am preparing myself for an emotional poetry reading that will feature me tonight, at the 15th Commemoration of the Rwanda Genocide, an event occuring at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. I am also thinking that the recent upsurge in the interest for the short story may also help poetry: the love for short but rich creative things, that's what it is. It seems fashionable nowadays for publishers to seek short story collections from writers first before giving them contracts for novels. And a good number of our contemporary short story writers have become...