Great news. I will be dining in French (of course) with the illustrious Federman on April 26th, when he is in NYC for the Pen International Festival. Moreover, he'll be quoting the entry below when he takes the podium at La Maison Francaise, so (as F says) we'll both be famous.

Other great news items:

1. 5_Trope will be publishing my prose poem narrative "Civil War."

2. I met some wonderful writers last week when my friend Michael Rothenberg (editor of Big Bridge) was here to read at St Mark's with his friend David Meltzer. The amazing poet and warm/kind person David and I clicked immediately and we're corresponding. It was great to meet Michael in person and see/hear both of them read. Now it turns out that David and Raymond F. knew and liked one another back in the 60's.

3. I have completed the draft of a metafiction ("Cluck Cluck") inspired by Monsieur Federman & a reading in which I was featured (see next item) & will post parts of it in another blog entry. It's nearly 4000 words long which is pratically a novel for me. Or maybe it's more than 4000 words since I made some revisions this morning.

4. I read 3 pieces in the Frequency Series reading in my hood last week: "3 Poems to Flowers," "Blah Blah," and "Civil War." Everyone there, including the two other featured readers, Justin Marks & Chris Tonnelli, was 20 or 30 something, except for yours truly & my 2 friends Bob Heman & Janet Restino. Anyway, "Blah Blah" was very enthusiastically received, garnering lots of laughs, and Marks asked me if it was available for publishing in LIT (the New School mag), which he edits. I've since submitted it to him. My new young friend Justin Taylor (in the MFA program at the New School) was also interested in publishing it for a mag he'll be starting sometime or other. I'll send him something/s else.

5. The deadline for the anthology "Butterflies of Vertigo," which I'm co-editing with Karthyn Ratala, is fast approaching and it looks incredibly promising. We've managed to attract some top notch well-known innovative/unconventional prose writers, mostly lyrical, as well as a bunch of very talented lesser knowns. We hope that our agent will begin to shop the collection sometime in April.

6. The hysterical satirist Andy Borowitz has expressed an interest in performing in the Mad Hatters' Rev. reading series. I'm hoping for a September date. After our inaugural reading on April 7th, the following reading will be held on June 1st. Edwin Torres and C. O. Moed will read. I haven't yet decided on the third reader.