Word Salad: you have stripped me down to my tongue root (in a good way)

Oh man.

The release of Volume 54 of delta journal was nothing sort of gorgeous. The journal is beautiful. The party was beautiful. (The girls are beautiful! Even the orchestra...is beautiful!) So many people were involved in putting everything together on all fronts that there are not enough thank-yous in the word to get out, but I'm going to throw at least one out into the universe anyway: Thank You! to anyone and everyone who helped support me and/or any and all rest of the staff &c. while we were scrambling to make this journal (and it's killer debut into the world) possible. So pretty. I feel bad because for the last week I've been so exhausted and kind of disengaged; seriously, it's amazing the amount of crap I didn't give. So really I should have done more to help out with last night, but turns out it wasn't necessary. Because, as stated above, everything was/is awesome.

[Let me pause here for a moment to interject: I am up way earlier than I have any right to be (8 AM) given how hard I celebrated volume 54. Instead of falling back asleep [double interjection: then I did], I have found that I unexpectedly have bacon in the fridge. YES. Made myself the most beautiful plate of bacon eggs and toast. I love my life.]

Some stunningly creativetalented people went all out to make cross-media installations from pieces in the journal, and everything came together (as you may have guess from my above raving) positively beautifully. There was just so much texture going on everywhere. I would say I wanted to roll around in everything, but really not so much literally, as various projects had things like viciously pointed screws or a lot of dirt. A lot of the stuff was interactive, though, and I really have to admire those artists for it. I don't trust people with my work near enough to let them mess with it. But that's half the point, I guess. My installation turned out great for a project I whipped up mostly by saying, "Eh, this should work." (Pictures below. Getting wrapped up in duct tape turned out to be the easy part; the hard part was haling a 40 lb. bag of pool salt (weight to use in the stand) through Wal-Mart and parking lot. My arms are complaining quite loudly today.)

We had a short section of readings by the Matt Clark prize winners (poetry and fiction) and next year's co-editors--the crowd was well pleased. I kind of forgot I was doing one and almost didn't print off my poems; then I got to the gallery and pretty much forgot again practically until they called me up to the mic. Seth and Rachel's readings were a hoot and got several laughs, which is good because apparently my readings are borderline creepily intense. My friend Jeri in the front row told me she was praying that when I looked up from the podium I didn't look at her--apparently I had some super-piercing eyeball action going on. I was unaware. Seemed to be really well-received though. My new rule: two glasses of wine, no more, no less, before I get up to read any of my stuff. It seems to make everything go most smoothly.

I am so proud to be poetry editor of this year's wonderful delta, and additionally pleasantly surprised to be winner of this year's Matt Clark Prize for Poetry (for "stripped, she said"). That officially means I am getting paid money for my poetry. You doubters can go doubt yourselves. Seriously though, it's an honor. And, I might add, a great way to cap off a great semester ( / year / college career). It has been so crazyhectic at times and so & mind-blowingly full of words that I cannot even describe it (with words. Ha.). So many brilliant people have entered my life and come to mean a lot in the past few months...it's going to be hard to adjust to whatever new life is coming. Awh, now I'm getting all choked up. (I must admit, I very nearly teared up when Julia and Robert handed the reins off to new co-editors Seth and Rachel. But they are going to make next year awesome.)

I have used far too many superlative and gushy adjectives in this post, and done a rather pedantic job of describing what was in fact a night of magical beauty. ...Yeah, that phrase was worse. So now I'm going to post some pictures of the excellent creations I was thrilled to be a part of.