AS IF IT FELL FROM THE SUN, new Etherdome anthology

Publishers, poets, and editors Colleen Lookingbill and Elizabeth Robinson have culled ten years of work from their Etherdome Chapbook series and have issued a beautiful new anthology, AS IF IT FELL FROM THE SUN. 

Poems from my chapbook HESITATION KIT are included in this anthology, along with some of my newer work. Brilliant book designer HR Hegnauer adapted one of my collages for the cover.

AS IF IT FELL FROM THE SUN is available from Small Press Distribution.

Bookstore as Pawn Shop

From Robert Lowell's "91 Revere Street"

I mentioned Robert Lowell in the Kenyon Review interview, then went looking for the book on my shelf and couldn't find it. Perhaps I'd sold it? I've sold thousands of books over the years. We had a tiny apartment, we needed money . . .

I went into Moe's to get a few things last week. Found Lowell's LIFE STUDIES/FOR THE UNION DEAD in the "used poetry" section. It was my own copy! I'd bought it in Brooklyn in 1990 and sold it to Moe's in December of 2010, before moving to this new apartment in Oakland. They sold it back to me for $2.50 (half-price). Bookstore as pawn shop!

Massachusetts 54th
Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on the Boston Common

Kenyon Review interview with Andrew King

My Singing Teachers; and John Brown's Body

Susan Hiller's "Monument" (1980-81) *

Very interesting to talk with Andrew King at Kenyon Review about THE PUBLIC GARDENS, poetry, history, time, suffering, Robert Moses, pillars of roses, Robert Lowell, John Brown's body, the Old Testament, my grandmothers, my daughter, and the best thing Mark Twain never said.

Click here to read the Kenyon Review interview

Gertrude Jekyll's gardens

"Years ago I read about a pillar of roses in an English garden, 
and so I own it, I have the deed by heart."

* The plaques in Susan Hiller piece, "Monument," are copies of originals in the 

Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, 

a modest and moving tribute in a public garden in London. 

Please go to the link to read more about these individuals 

"who might otherwise be forgotten," but who continue to live "in representation."

Sweet! (East Bay Express review)

Alison Peters reviews The Public Gardens for the East Bay Express     

Click HERE for the review.

"Dickinson's privacy, Whitman's barbaric yawp, Thoreau's hermitage, Emerson's and Olmsted's public spheres, and the beauty and mess of the commons, including cemeteries that become gardens, playgrounds, places for kissing — these things nourish me," said Norton. "I hope my book is like a public garden, a place where everyone belongs, in any season, alone and with others."

READ LOCAL

The Poetry Foundation has posted two poems from 

THE PUBLIC GARDENS: POEMS AND HISTORY. 

Click on the titles to go to the poems:

"Self Portrait as a Meadow"

and   

 "Patterns for Arans"   

"That Bird Has My Wings"

Re-reading Jarvis Jay Masters' FINDING FREEDOM . . .

and listening to J Dilla: "So far to go . . ."

"It ain't so much what the music says, 
it's what you can't do about it."   

Chester Himes

Stephen King and me in one LA Times sentence

Pretty amusing!

"There are five finalists in each category -- current interest, fiction, first fiction, biography, history, mystery-thriller, science and technology, graphic novel, poetry and young adult literature. Among those in the running are Stephen King, poet Linda Norton, memoirist Alexandra Styron and novelist Joseph O'Connor."
            Los Angeles Times, 2/21/2012


I had a great time at the Los Angeles Festival of Books  with wonderful writers and readers. More than 100,000 people came to the festival, all kinds of people, all ages, many languages. Judy Blume said "hi" to me in the VIP room. ("Are you there, God? It's me, Linda.") 


Here's a wrap-up: LA Times Book Prize Winners  

I'm reading Ismet Prcic's novel now. It is terrific. I love that he thanked Eileen Myles in his acceptance speech on Friday night at USC. 

I thank Eileen, too, and Fanny Howe; without their enthusiasm for my work, I wonder if anyone would have opened my book at all!

Eileen Myles (photo: Robert Mapplethorpe)