Top Ten

My top ten this week includes:

1. Adobe CS software on the big SIR Mac. So much faster. Our efficiency level just went way up.
2. Coffee from a French press. The whole process is just more fun.
3. Michael Martone's contribution to the forthcoming Spring issue of SIR. You're going to like it.
4. Getting acceptance letters from MFA programs. Best mail/email ever.
5. Random spring-like days out of nowhere.
6. HBO's The Wire. Picks up right where Homicide: Life on the Streets left off (in a way).
7. Anything by Sam Cooke
8. "It Makes no Difference" by The Band. A song composed of clichés, but it's somehow still beautiful.
9. Using Alt + the number pad to do things like this: é, á, ñ, ó, ú. Really helps with using online translators for Spanish homework. If I'd discovered this two years ago, my GPA would be higher.
10. "Creve Coeur" by Jacob M. Appel, from The Missouri Review Spring 2007.

Goings-ons, and a Top Ten list

Lots of things are in the works around here, so keep an ear to the blog. We're plugging away at the RopeWalk Anthology, and even have a cover design all but finalized. Laying out the spring SIR issue, which we're pretty excited about. Some forthcoming interviews with the latest Mary C. Mohr poetry award winnners will appear on www.southernindianareview.org, and I'm currently conducting a Benjamin Percy interview for the blog (should appear in a few weeks or so), in advance of his reading at the RopeWalk Reading Series.

AWP was a flying success, and we have photos (below) to prove it. Gave away lots of free issues and bookmarks and magnetic poetry and subscriptions (if you signed up for the drawing, you might keep an eye on your mailbox--we're a little behind sending notification to the winners).

And in the spirit if one of my favorite living little-known rockstars, Jesse Malin, my top 10 list for the week:

1. "My Brother Eli," by Joseph Epstein, from the 2007 Best American Short Stories anthology.
2. "I Clap for Strangers Now" by Robert Pollard (Coast to Coast Carpet of Love)
3. "The Underdog" by Spoon (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga)
4. Howl on the Haunted Beat - new album by The Go
5. The Confidence Man by Moby Dick - props for being maybe the strangest novel ever...
6. Listening to music on headphones. Everything is so crisp and clear! I'm hearing lyrics I've never noticed!
7. Google Reader - makes it much easier to obsess over MFA acceptance blogs.
8. Actually, anything at all by Robert Pollard!
9. There Will be Blood by P.T. Anderson.
10. The historic Chelsea Hotel - stayed there during AWP, and it was nuts!