"Cult-a-sacs" and "hardwood dicks"

First day on the job copyediting for the advertising department. Working mostly on real estate ads from high-end brokers and getting to know the culture of Dallas' luxury homes and real estate. These are homes that I will never be able to afford - palatial estates in gated communities complete with wine cellars, game rooms, grand entries, sculpted owls, wainscoting, etc. Our department also handles the special supplements on health, weddings, automobiles and a few other areas. Should be interesting. One of my co-workers will be interviewing AA actor George Takei who is embarking on a speaking tour in the coming months.

This weekend, I went to the Writer's Garret Writes of Spring Festival hosted at my old home, Southside on Lamar. Sadly, it was difficult to make it to every program I was interested in attending. The panel on "unknown writers" in the main building overlapped with the WordSpace reading. I walked in to hear one of the panelists talking about John Ashbery - he is perhaps underappreciated, but unknown? Come on - the dude's won the Pulitzer! Before I left the panel to run back to Poor David's, I spied Lorna Dee Cervantes but had to leave before I could say hello. Took a workshop at the SWP with Lorna back in 1997, my first summer at Naropa at the urging of a former roommate Virginia Evans. Lorna's an amazing writer and teacher and her new book is out with a Texas press called Wings, run by Bryce Milligan. Lorna also has some illuminating things to say in her recent post on applying for teaching jobs, NEA and Fulbright grants, etc. Speaking of which, I'm not holding my breath on teaching in Dallas. The local uni has invited 2 candidates to campus to interview. Some interesting things about the candidates: both women, both have recent PhDs, both studied at UT Austin, both have limited publishing experience, both are fairly young, both have the name Susan.

Simone, Martha, Tim, Lisa and Robert read poems at Poor David's. Robert read from a new manuscript called "Glance." There was some great fiction too - Ben Fountain, the fiction editor for the Southwest Review, read some historical fiction about a piano player with 11 fingers. David Searcy read some funky sci-fi on horizontal vs. vertical space travel.