on the prairie diamond

Pictured left to right is Gideon Young, Marilyn Nelson, me, Allison Hedge Coke [standing], Orlando White [blue shirt], Santee Frazier [baseball cap], and Lara Mann. With three of the American Indian poets coming out with new books this next year, you’d think the talk would be about poetry. Not so. Ice cream was our heated debate! Santee Frazier [Cherokee/Choctaw] and I believed Braum’s Ice Cream is #1. It’s only natural. Braum’s is a chain out of Oklahoma. But the Okies were out voted by the Salem Valley Farms lovers. Homemade in Connecticut. After the second bowl, I had to agree that Salem Valley’s peach ice cream ranks right up with winning the lottery.

Meanwhile watch for these new works — Santee Frazier’s “Dark Thirty” (University of Arizona Press, Spring 09); Orlando White’s “Bone Light” (Red Hen Press); and Lara Mann’s “A Song of Ascents and Descents,” due out in a collection from Salt Publishing, UK) — at a bookstore near you soon.

No, it’s not the famous song by Willie Nelson, but a Nelson is involved. From the generosity of Connecticut Poet Laureate Marilyn Nelson (2001-2006), I was awarded a writing fellowship at Soul Mountain Retreat in East Haddam, CT, along with poets Allison Hedge Coke, Rhonda Ward, and MFA candidate from UIUC, Lara Mann. We gave a reading on May 10th at the Central Gallery in Old Saybrook. Yippee. Summer is finally here.