Countdown to Putting on the Dog: TSP Celebrates 5

by Zinta Aistars

Had dinner with a dear friend at Sushiya in Kalamazoo, Michigan - the Yum Yum Roll and the Crazy Boy - and then we decided to walk to The Wine Loft. After all, it's only three short weeks to Putting on the Dog: The Smoking Poet Celebrates 5!

Five years in the making.

Five years of reading submissions from ever finer writers in poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Five years of fun cigar reviews from aficionados, some great, some good, some stinky bad. Five years of writing book reviews, reading your masterpieces (and a few not so much), thrilled to lose myself in a world of literary treasure.

Five years and 18 issues. Each one better than the one before but not as good as the one to come.

Five years of art gracing our pages.

A couple mornings ago, I had the pleasure of talking to Lori Moore on the WKZO talk radio show, honoring April as National Poetry Month. Next week, I chat with Mark Wedel from the Kalamazoo Gazette. We talk about poetry - and that it is anything but dead. Poetry lives and poetry thrives, and on Thursday, April 28, at 7 p.m., The Smoking Poet poets and writers will read their work to you who will come to help us celebrate - five years.

Tonight, we find posters created by The Wine Loft with our cigar-chomping pup in his cap on their doors and on their walls. We are feeling the welcome. And counting the days to our anniversary event.