Where did you sleep last night?

I slept here. It’s my last night on the bus. I’m still here on the floor of the service stop (using the only outlet in the place… my battery is shot), and am finally caught up (!). In five minutes, we drive to New York City.

Providence is...

Lovely. You'll have to take my word for it, because I have no photos. I was too distracted by the fact that I walked around for two hours (Brown, RISD, historic settlement houses), in pain, looking for a public (or any) restroom. As a bonus, I did find the Roger Williams memorial park, where he used to gather the settlers, and I remember that I had a little crush on him in elementary school. Oh, those 17th-century, colonial crusaders for religious freedom and church/state separation.

Battle in Boston: Typewriters v. Johnsons (Thursday)

This week we’ve been listening to Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour. On the drive into Buffalo, we heard the show on weather. On the way to Boston, we heard a show on dads (when he said happy Father’s Day, I panicked before I remembered it was September, and a Thursday.) Driving through bucolic central MA, we heard songs about weddings. When Bill was maneuvering through the Harvard campus and Somerville, MA at the height of rush hour, we heard the divorce show, and about Bill’s divorce. He’s got a rough job.

During the intermission, a twitchy guy in his late 40s/early 50s came up to the table demanding to know who was in charge. His band was coming on at 10:00 (it is now 8:15) and we “need to get that shit off the stage so they can load in.” (“That shit” was the set and props for The Typing Explosion.) A guy asked about his band, who they are. “We’re a cover band,” he said, “The Swinging Johnsons. We play here Thursdays.”

Eight of us slept in a giant loft in Southie with Michael Brodeur and his neighbor with the repeating car alarm.

Life on the Bus

What do we do on the bus?
Talk about poetry.
Laugh at Bob Dylan on XM Radio.
Sleep.
Write poems together.
Eat trail mix and apples from the snack coffin.
Drink Jack Daniels and/or VO from giant bottles.
Hug bus friend (see photo, left).
Sleep.
Read.
Update our blogs.
Talk about how great/strange the reading was last night.
Stare out the window.
Sleep.

Two days in Western Mass (Emily, the Girls, and Three Little Boys)

Smith College
Walking around Smith is like walking into a campus melodrama from the 1950s. If it weren’t for the day-glo green and orange triangle furniture in the seven sisters’ equivalent of a student union, it could just as easily be 1925.

Quick Tour: Mt. Holyoke, Hampshire College, Amherst Commons, UMass
At each location, the poets read outside the bus with a portable PA. At Hampshire (Joshua Beckman’s alma mater), we weren’t authorized to come on campus. Bill drove us through the grounds, while Joshua shouted through a bullhorn, “Students of Hampshire College, come and listen to the poets.” By the third curve, campus security was already on us. Joshua got off the bus to talk to them and we were all laughing about how we were busted, but the officer said, “We have a place for you, follow us” and they led us to the middle of the lawn. We’re pretty subversive.

Emily’s Room
I hate it when people refer to great literary figures, who happen to be women, by their first names (Hemingway, Proust, Shakespeare… Emily), but it’s common with ED, and generally from the mouths of women. I caught myself doing it. The bus parked in Amherst five minutes from her house, and I said, “I’m going down to Emily’s house.”

I had this fantasy about standing in her room: how I’d be paralyzed with inspiration, how I’d look out the same window she did, how I’d weep from the tragic, claustrophobic isolation. Like many author houses, you have to take a tour to see The Room. I just missed the 2:30 30-minute tour and spent 25 minutes trying to convince the docents at the Dickinson Homestead that I needed to see The Room.

I studied her in grad school.
I know all about the fascicles and variants.
I’m here with the poetry bus.
I’m only in Amherst for 30 minutes.

The first docent explained that I could look at “these three rooms,” which consisted of a display about publication history (which was really just pictures of her literary executors), pictures of life in the kitchen, and a gift shop. She pointed me to the window so I could see The Room from outside.

The 90-minute tour guide, a patient woman with a slight English accent, agreed that I could just go on the first part of her tour, the main house, but that would be 50 minutes. I asked if she could just tell me a little about The Room. She pointed me to the window so I could see it from outside. Then she spent three minutes telling me the real estate history of the house. I am now glad I don’t have time for the tour. It reminds me of when I volunteered for the Hemingway Museum and Birthplace Home in Oak Park, IL, where many of the docents were retired moms who spent most of the tour talking about Hem’s poor, maligned mother.

This is as close as I got to Emily’s room.



When I got back to the bus, no one was there, so I wandered down to the cemetery.


I came back to the bus again and no one was there. I made the bank deposit and handed out a bunch of stickers and tattoos to the youth punks hanging out in the park. One of them informed me that “poetry is cool.”



At the UMass quick stop, two boys, Matt and Jimmy, showed off their tattos.

I stayed in historic Turners Falls for two nights with Janelle, the Eastern Wave Books version of me. We ate here and found this poem

Montreal, Too Quickly (Monday)

My favorite stop and, sadly, I have to make it quick to keep up.

As usual, we are starving when we arrive.

bon jour, un cream of broccoli soup si vous plait

Matthew found a teahouse with wifi, so I camped out there for about two hours. If you got an email from me a few days ago, that's where I was.

(Montreal walk-ups)

Our local helper (awesome poet/organizer Kate Hall), arranged for me to stay with her friend Fiona on the French side of the city, by the old Olympic stadium, built in 1976, which the city is still paying for. All cities really are the same.


In the morning, Fiona and Leroy walked me to the Metro station. We ran into Fiona's neighbor, who told us a lively story in French about Janet Jackson. Apparently she was dancing on the Oprah show. "Oh, that crazy family," she said in English.

On the rush hour green line, I rode seven (or so) stops to Place-des-Arts, and got a two-second look at the contemporary art museum and theater district before I had to hop in a cab to get back to the bus.

le bus, le autobus, ici ici

Travis recapped our border adventures nicely on the pobus blog.

Oh, Canada; Oh, Blurry Pictures (Sunday)

In Ottawa, the poets read across from the glowing House of Parliament at sunset. Between the load-in and everyone clamoring to buy our fabulous books and t-shirts, this is the best photo I got.


(Linus interviewing Joshua for the pobus film)

Toronto’s New Bohemians (Saturday)

One of the guests at the pre-reading bbq told us this is a working class neighborhood. I believed it at first: the rows of old houses, kids and old people in the yards, the apparent lack of an ATM that works.

Our reading was at Stones Place, a Rolling Stones theme bar with the requisite collection of Mick posters, signed copies of Sticky Fingers, and paintings of Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan (?).
One of our local helpers told us Keith Richards painted them, and all became clear.

We parallel parked and slept in front of Damien Rogers’ house on the bus. I woke up every couple of hours (because I had to pee) and saw a red light glowing from a white building at the end of the block. In the morning, I walked down to see what this spectacle was all about. This wasn’t a bar, or a brothel, it was a condo building in progress. Watch out, Meritage.

Enjoy the fine copy:
Anchoring the west end of Toronto's hippest strip comes a condominium so stylish and cool, it promises to redefine the way this city's hipsters live. Join the ambassadors of hip on Queen Street West at Gladstone, renowned for the famous Drake Hotel and home of the soon-to-be equally eminent Bohemian Embassy. … the ultimate place for culture-loving urbanites to BE.

Obviously, a very close replica of the original Bohemian Embassy, a coffee shop from the 1960s where Margaret Atwood used to hang out and where some Beat-ish people had a Dada-style happening in 1963.

Come on Back to Me 22 (Saturday, September 23)

Tired of Vegas?? Try Niagara! The Canada side, that is.

Monica F.'s really nice Georgia mom treated us to lunch at the Fallsview Casino Resort Grand Buffet. I had a cheese omelet, potsticker, creme puff dipped in chocolate fondue, small salad, an apple danish, and veggie lasagna.

Convergence and Buffalo Wings

After slowly waking up in my posh Bucknell guest room (tv, wifi, shower, privacy... thanks, Betsy!), I missed breakfast, but the poets in residence packed up a fruit salad for us, and we were off to Buffalo--through the beautiful Susquehanna Valley--land of motion sickness.

We pulled up to the Albright-Knox Gallery 40 minutes before the reading. Gallery is a loose term. This is more like a largish contemporary-ish art museum. I hurried in with my good friend, box-of-t-shirts, made a wrong turn, and ran into Pollock's 8'x13' Convergence.



After the reading we went to a bar and grill near Buffalo State College for a little food, including Buffalo's specialty... the 8-inch high pile of wings.

Encounter with drunk girls in the bathroom taking phone-camera pictures of each other:
Girl1: Come on. That's enough. I want to go flirt some more.
Girl2: I really hope Carrie isn't here with Michael. That bitch stole my vocabulary. I started saying Snoogy Snoog five months ago and now she says it all the time.

We slept on the bus. Around 2am it was pouring rain and I had to pee, but we were in the middle of a parking lot. Bladder-denial would become a familiar trend, at least for a few days.

In the morning I became obsessed with this vintage DONT WALK sign. (To give you an idea, I have 10 pictures of this and no good pictures of my friends on the bus yet.)


It was still raining. While Joshua and I sat in the cargo space under the bus counting the books to prep for crossing the border (of course, they never asked us about them, but we had no idea), Anthony catches a cab to the airport. (We're sad. Monica, Monica, and Betsy get on the bus, and we try to make them feel a little less disoriented, although we all know that's impossible.)

**This all happened a week ago. We're in Boston now and off soon to Providence. More soon.**

one more quick story from Pittsburg

Two poets are in the alley just around the corner from the bus...

Cop: Where are you from?
Joshua: Seattle
Cop: Sorry about the Superbowl, man.

Let's all move to Pittsburg

Hundreds of cheap, old buildings=affordable artist studios. That's what I'm talking about. (Sorry... just watched Dazed and Confused a few times before I left on my trip.)

Our reading was part of the Gist Street Reading Series, which has been going on in this amazing space for about five years.








(actual poets, actually reading poetry... Anthony and Joshua)

In fact, we liked it so much, we slept there.

Michigan seems like a dream to me now

The whole day in Ann Arbor, I was dealing with smug students--they took up all the plug-in spots at the Internet cafe to read or take naps, they were rude to me when I asked for help in stores, and they seemed generally intolerant of anyone not in khaki shorts and a sweatshirt. (Argh... I hate college students.)

At the reading, most of the audience was between the ages of 18 and 21. I was outside the whole time, peddling the wares, and the fact that I was standing behind a table + my age put me in a position of apparent authority b/c they kept asking me things like

how long will this last?
can I leave and come back?
can I go in now?

I found myself tempted to mess with people over the last question, guarding the door and choreographing their entrances. This reminds me that students still tend to defer to authority, even though they'll complain about it constantly. (I love college students.)

After the reading we went to Baps, a basement bar that "looks like a dentist office" (according to the guy who invited us there). Their entire food menu consisted of Goldfish, so I snuck across the street to the Fleetwood Diner, where I sat at the lunch counter and enjoyed a tuna melt and a glass of milk. The waitress was leisurely smoking and grousing to a yellow-orange-haired girl at the end of the bar about her woman studies classes ("I'm trying to get into grad school; I need a rigorous academic program; it's heartbreaking me, it's absolutely heartbreaking me.") And this reminds me of another thing I love about college students, the absolute vision of a hopeful future, and the complete indignation toward anyone who would get in the way. When I paid, I finally got a good look at her face, black eyelined and completely wrinkle free. I was looking at someone from another universe, one I can't inhabit but can appreciate from a distance, sometimes even without condescension. (Love KOs hate every time.)

When I got back to Baps, our local helper introduced me to Julia, a first-year MFA student in her second week who was generous and flexible enough to let a total stranger enjoy her comfy couch--anything for a writer, she said, and I felt sad to tell her I was just an intern, and that I hadn't read.

Americanese Made Easy

An enthusiastic Milwaukeean near-poet (too shy and/or drunk to open mic) approaches me at the merch table at Linneman's Bar. After testing my interest in the literary theories he's invented (words are symbols, hmmm, that is new...I'm working, I'm feigning), he wants to show me "the longest poem ever written." (Homer, Dante, Milton, Milwaukee bar guy). He brings over a bound stack. It looks like a script for a six-hour film. He tells me to pick a common phrase, flips to the w page, and orders me to read:

waiting for the other shoe to fall
waiting in line for no one
waiting in the rain

"It has over 163,000 phrases and 1300 are my own. I call it Americanese Made Easy. I also thought about Phrases for Dummies, but that's not as good." I try to engage him in a discussion about OULIPO. I write it in Sharpie on the back of a poetry bus sticker. He tells me he doesn't really go on the internets. Then he tells me a story about how he cut his toe a few months ago on the lid of a cat food can and bled all over the kitchen.

Night two: on the road, Milwaukee to Ann Arbor
Morning two: no shower

arrived at Ann Arbor, Michigan around 8am and drove around for an hour looking for a place to park the bus... Now in a wireless cafe with all the college students and my electronics plugged in and charging (except the camera... its cord is buried with my big suitcase on the bus, which is currently closed so the driver can get some sleep).

where the bus is now...

Night one: Yogi Bear campground, Ft. Atkinson, WI

We left the Green Mill Sunday night around 11:30pm and drove until 2 am. I woke up a little after 7am here.

Morning one: nice shower (ahhh... using my wash rag and last night's t-shirt for a towel)

Highlight: While a few of us were out for a round of mini-golf, one of the remaining poets saw a family drive by in a golf cart. The 8-year-old girl said, "Mommy, that bus is creepy."

just a little routine messing up the minds of the citizenry en route

and a few photos near Blackhawk Island, which isn't really an island...

poetry bus sparks lazyass to start a blog

Hi! I'm writing from the lovely Chicago-Rosemont Holiday Inn Select, enjoying the cable tv and workout spa before I embark on 17 days of bus fun (replete with couch crashing).

Because this is a super low-budget jaunt, I booked my flights with miles (thank you, China!), which placed me comfortably in the middle seat for both. My neighbor on the SF to Chicago leg was a quiet woman in an uncomfortable-looking poly-blend black suit. She didn't bring anything to do, clearly, so she spent the first hour of the flight pulling tiny specks of lint off her suit and picking at the skin around her nails. Then she found the headphones. She put them on and leaned back. And started conducting. Think elementary school music teacher: raised arms, swirling fingertips, aptly timed points to the cymbal. This makes me think of Whitman, just a little,

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear

I wonder what Whitman would have thought of the rightbite snack pack with its assortment of minis (yes, this is our in-flight meal...only $5!).



I am large, I contain multitudes of all natural pita chips and light 'n fit smoothies.