In Memoriam

A moving farewell to Jon Anderson.

Buy a Fork for the Poetry Center

Dear Friends,

As most of you know, the tradition of the Poet's Cottage is alive and well at the new Poetry Center in the Helen S. Schaefer Building. The first guest to spend the night in our new apartment will be Lucille Clifton, who reads as part of our Reading Series on Thursday, November 1. As a frequent visitor to our previous guest cottages on Highland and Cherry Avenues Lucille is the perfect person to inaugurate our new space.

In the next week we need to finish outfitting the apartment with kitchen equipment, bath and bedding accessories. We're spreading the word among our friends and colleagues to help us fill the space with beautiful things. If you would like to help, please visit our Housewarming Gift Registry at Crate and Barrel. Go to "Make a Gift" and type in Gail Browne.

Thank you for your generosity.

Gail Browne
Executive Director
University of Arizona Poetry Center

Coconut 10

The new issue of Coconut is up.

Greenstreet Reading and Booksigning

Kate Greenstreet Reads at
Casa Libre
Wednesday, October 24th, 7pm.
$5 suggested donation.

Books available at Antigone.

Jon Anderson 1940-2007

The Parachutist

Then the air was perfect. And his descent
to the white earth slowed.
                             Falling
became an ability to rest--as

the released breath
believes in life. Further down it snowed,

a confusion of slow novas
which his shoes touched upon, which seemed
as he fell by

to be rising. From every
small college and rural town:
    the clearest, iced blossoms of thought,

but gentle.
              Then the housetops
of friends, who
he thought had been speaking of his arrival,
withdrew, each from another.

He saw that his friends
lived in a solitude they had not ever said aloud.

Strangely he thought this good.

         The world, in fact,
which in these moments he came toward,

seemed casual.
Had he been thinking this all along?

    A life
where he belonged, having lived with himself

always, as a secret friend.

A few may have seen him then. In evidence:
the stopped dots
of children & dogs, sudden weave

         of a car--
acquaintances, circling up
into the adventure they imagined. They saw him drop

through the line breaks
and preciousness of art

down to the lake
which openly awaited him.
              Here the thin
 green ice allowed him in.

Some ran, and were late.
These would
forever imagine tragedy

(endless descent,
his face floating among the reeds,
unrecognized), as those

who imagine the silence of a guest
to be mysterious, or wrong.

-Jon Anderson

Changes Afoot

CUE is expanding. In the coming year we'll be moving away from print and towards an on-line format. Away from publishing prose poetry exclusively and towards a more inclusive format that embraces both prose poetry and lineated work. We're also starting a chapbook press, CUE Editions, that will publish limited-edition, hand-made chapbooks. More on all this soon.

Sommertime

Congrats too to one of my favorite poets, Sommer Browning, whose chapbook, Vale Tudo, will be published by horse less press in December. In case you're not up on your Portuguese, "vale tudo" translates to something approximating "everything is allowed." Indeed, Sommer. Indeed.

The New U of A Poetry Center

The University of Arizona's Poetry Center has moved to its new digs.

Congratulations

Congrats to Boyer Rickel whose new book of poems, remanence, will be published next fall by Parlor Press: Free Verse Editions.

Philanthropy Done Right

This is cool.