Sturgeon's Law

I've edited out this draft, as I've made some notable changes to it, and I'll probably be submitting it soon.

I was up late last night making adjustments to individual poems and my chapbook manuscript thanks to recent help from these kind people. Sometimes I think tweaking is both the most necessary and most annoying part of poetry writing for me. And by tweaking I mean making continuous small adjustments to my work, not getting high on speed.

Happy birthday yesterday to my friend Jenn Koiter, a fine poet. Happy birthday tomorrow to my brother, who writes and sings lyrics in addition to playing bass (and by that I mean the fish) for Philosophy.

Also, congratulations to Deb Ager on the birth of her little one.

Immutable No-Win Laws of the Poetry Workshop

• If you use synaesthesia in a poem, someone in your workshop will say something along the lines of "I like synaesthesia, but it's not working here." They are quite likely wrong on both counts.
• Someone will always want your obscure reference explained in a note or the poem body, unless you actually do it.
• If you are in the same workshop for a year, you will hear at least two of "Show, don't tell," "A poem should not mean, but be," "Real toads in imaginary gardens," and "No ideas but in things." Both uses will be applied badly in a patronizing voice.
• If you are in the read-and-respond-in-the-same-session sort of workshop, no one will ever address the overall theme or point of any poem whose meaning isn't immediately accessible, for fear of looking ignorant (and because it can't be done effectively in five minutes).
• At least one writer in your workshop won't even take notes on what other people say about his/her poem, just to let you know the high regard he/she holds everyone in.
• Live workshops consist of 99% people who are too nice to each other's poems. Online workshops consist of 50% those people and 49% mean trolls.
• Someone will insist on bringing multiple poems to one session because "they're all short."
• And last but most: everyone else will try to turn your poems into their poems. (Thanks for the comment reminding me of that one, C. Dale)
  

Have you ever been reading a poem and thought it would be a better poem if it ended at a page break instead of with whatever trickles over onto the next page? I'm reading Billy Collins' Poetry 180 anthology in the bathroom (perhaps I've said too much), and that's happened twice. I'll post one of the poems if I have time and can find it again.

Congratulations again to my pal Aaron, who is one of the poets selected so far for Steve's Digerati anthology. I generally think I'm in same range talent-wise as my poet friends, but Aaron's work is pretty evidently better than mine. Don't people like that just frost your vegetable garden?

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I've been working on a draft of the poem exercise you can find a couple posts down. Right now it's getting close to the printout stage, at which point it'll get reamed by my revision process a few times, then polished to a decent draft, at which point I'll post it here.

I told you to stop posting your flamewar bullshit in my comment boxes. I mean it.

Here's a little poem exercise I'm trying in order to shake up the way I write:

Take two lines that you think are strong lines but that you don't have connected to a whole poem (or even a whole poem idea) yet. (If you're like me, you have quite a few of these lines floating around.) The two lines should have no immediate connection to each other: no repeated words, no similar thematic associations, etc.

Now make one of those lines your first line and one your last, and write the poem that connects the two seemingly unrelated lines. If you have to change the lines up a little as you write, that's fine, but no matter what, they shouldn't ever have an obvious similarity.

The two lines I've chosen are "Remember we weren't always as old as we're going to be" and "When you open the refrigerator, what will attack?" The first is salvaged from an old draft that didn't work out. The second is a line I think I came up with while I was half asleep.

I'll be working on this poem this week (and maybe next given how many things I have going on right now). Once I have a draft done, I'll post it.

This was the view out my window about an hour ago. Now the sun is shining brightly, and it's nearly 80 degrees. I mainly took this picture because I needed to hook my photo printer/digital camera dock up to my new computer.

Anyone interested in a manuscript exchange or single-poem exchange for feedback? I've got a chapbook manuscript, a full-length manuscript, or many single poems if you want to exchange and do a critique/close reading/whatever. Lemme know via comment or at steve(at)steveschroeder(dot)info.

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Check Verse Daily today for a poem by my friend Aaron Anstett.

Got two more rejections in the mail today, one from Beloit Poetry Journal and one from [name withheld cuz it's someone I actually know, and I'm not trying to say there's anything wrong with rejecting the work I send]. I think I'd deal with the rejection better if my acceptances were spaced more steadily. Unfortunately, it seems like I'll have three acceptances in the space of two weeks, then periods like now, where I'm running at 15 consecutive rejections since a late-June acceptance. Those periods can be difficult for me, especially now, when I can really tell my writing is getting better, but the results don't reflect it.

I should add as a preemptive thing that yes, I know publication isn't the most important measure of how good your poetry is. Nonetheless, it's a measure, and something I am interested in.

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Speaking of such things, how many people do you really trust to look at your poems and point out strengths and weaknesses and spur you to that last necessary polishing? I have maybe five, but unfortunately they're all so busy that it's difficult to send many poems to them or get responses before I want to move on to something else. Sigh.

This sort of stuff seems basic for people who submit poetry, but I've seen it more than once, including today:

If you submit poems, make it look like you care. Don't send poems that have coffee stains on the paper, rips and creases in the paper, and corrections written over the printed words in pen. I'll dock for the first two and instantly stop reading for the third. And I'm probably more lenient than the average editor.

I've seen a couple people on po-blogs in the last couple weeks say they were burned out, taking down their blogs, considering taking down their blogs, etc. And I totally understand that. I've done so many things in my life where I over-committed myself and then felt obligated to do it even when I was spending time that I shouldn't have in the long run, I have to understand it.

But for me, poetry-blogging: here it is 2:30 AM, I'm drunk as all get-out, not ready to sleep, writing in my blog because I can always think of some little thing to mention about poetry or me--this is (so far) a nice thing for me to be doing. I only do it when I want to. It's just that I have so many stupid little things to say about whatever...

I've met very few of the people who read my blog. I mean, I told my non-po friends, and most of them read the blog once and then said "It's nice that you write poetry, but we really don't care about this trivia" and never visited again. Nonetheless, I appreciate every one of you. Thanks for visiting. And to be honest, I'm always a little scared when one of my in-person-poetry-friends mentions something they read on my blog. Not that they should stop reading it.

We have a surprisingly great poetry community in Colorado Springs, one that I'm often thankful for. This blog enables me to interact with people from across the US and the world, which is an amazing thing I hope I never get tired of. I think we as poets almost owe it to ourselves and each other to take advantage of the global reach we have now.

P.S. I finished 2nd of 45 in a poker tournament on Tuesday. I'm running a lovely string of something like a dozen consecutive rejections of poetry submissions since late June. I rock!

• People try to set up poetry as oppositional, often between two extreme poles. Both of these propositions are nonsense, and one should be suspicious of these people's agendas.
• Richard Wilbur and John Ashbery are not diametrical opposites. Even within poetry, they're not on two ends of some big line, and in the whole wide world, they're pretty much on the same spot.
• Neither are Billy Collins and Rae Armantrout opposites.
• There is no Platonic ideal for "poem."
• "New" is no more inherently good than "traditional."
  
• Difficulty and accessibility are not mutually exclusive. Nor are accessibility/depth and difficulty/enjoyability.
• All but the very best poets are only sporadically successful in the poems they write.
• Most of the poems we've read this year, even most of the ones we praised, will be long gone in 25 years.
  
• Most people who work primarily as "poetry critics" are at best enjoyable gasbags and should be treated as such.
• You shouldn't take it personally if I don't like the work of a poet you like, with the possible exception of that poet being you.

More bulleted sound-bites to come someday.

Susan Kay Anderson
Amanda Auchter
Jeffery Bahr
Sandra Beasley
Ash Bowen
Leigh Anne Couch
Lucille Lang Day
Ellen Kirvin Dudis
Marta Ferguson
Allen C. Fischer
R. S. Gwynn
Erin Malone
Clay Matthews
Steve Mueske
Jeff Newberry
Robert Perchan
John Poch
Stephen S. Power
A. E. Stallings
Joanne Tangorra
Tony Trigilio
Alex Williams

A little over halfway to the deadline, a little over halfway full. Cool deal. Send send send!

I understand people tell Seth he should write less about politics and more about poetry and other frivolous things. Well, I almost never write about politics, but I think I will right now. Here are some changes I think we need to make on a national level. Most of these are nonpartisan things I really think people across the spectrum could get behind.

1. Eliminate the electoral college. Any system that enables presidential candidates to essentially ignore all but about 10 of the 50 states is a bullshit system. It doesn't eliminate shenanigans anyway, which is the chief argument of pro-EC people.

2. Eliminate gerrymandering of congressional districts. Arnold Schwarzenegger actually has a good idea in California (nonpartisan panels of judges drawing political districts), though if you only do it there and not somewhere like (cough) Texas, it's pretty partisan. Enforce sensible drawing of the districts on a national level, and you have something good.

3. Conduct all primaries/caucuses on the same date. Let's stop giving Iowa and New Hampshire undue influence over who the non-incumbent party's next presidential candidate is. The current setup is a relic.

4. Term limits for Supreme Court justices. Okay, I realize not many Republicans would get behind this one right now. Nonetheless, I think the fact that whichever party is in control gets to put someone in what is a top-20 national position of influence for what could wind up being 25+ years with no real reassessment of the pick is nonsense. Since the idea with judges is that they don't consider the need to get reelected in their decisions, I think limiting the amount of time they serve in the highest post would be a good idea, and would eliminate the sorry spectacle of daft old men trying to hold on until the next presidential election.

5. Make it easier for third-party candidates. Yeah, yeah, that's a pipe dream. Plus, I don't have a specific idea here, unlike the others. Ah well. As a registered independent, I want and have long wanted this.

I have other ideas, but they're mostly partisan. For example, I think Social Security should go to more progressive indexing and lift the $100,000 tax cap. Good luck getting a fiscal conservative behind that shit, yo.

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Just so's you don't think I'm too political, here are the musical artists that I have at least one hour worth of songs by on my mp3 player right now (in order of track time):

• Metallica
• Tool
• Bad Religion
• Clutch
• U2
• Nirvana
• Led Zeppelin
• Neil Young
• Queensryche (shut up)
• Tom Petty
• Pearl Jam
• House of Freaks
• Stone Temple Pilots
• Johnny Cash
• Hawksley Workman
• God Lives Underwater
• Antonin Dvorak
• Nine Inch Nails
• A Perfect Circle
• Husker Du
• Poe

Groups I'm most surprised didn't make the list: Public Enemy, The Beatles.

I realized today that I, too, am a member of a school of poetry. I may not be the founding member, but I will be the one to name it: The School of Selective Eclecticism (not to be confused with Kasey's "Bland Eclecticism").

The principle is that one should be able to use tools from all the styles and schools of poetry in one's own writing and deploy them as appropriate. Additionally, one shouldn't uniformly support or deride writing from such schools but identify whatever small percent works in any given style/genre/approach. Snarky attacks on individual works are perfectly okay still.

So please, feel free to join the School of Selective Eclecticism. The admission standards are low. Don't tell your parents, but we're kind of a party school.

Well, Blogger (or this browser or something) has struck again and taken one of my entries, so here's a shorter version of the same thing. I was thinking about poem titles that are intriguing or clever or memorable on their own without the actual text of the poem, and some of my favorite titles both by me and by others.

By me:
Prayer to a Higher Horsepower
God as a Somewhat Distant Relative
Poem with Chimpanzee
Easy Homunculus Assembly
Penelope at the Singer Quantum Futura
Seen from a Telephone Wire
Cram It

By others:
Into the Realm of Angels and Radio Waves (one of many fine Steve Mueske titles)
First Accidental Day of Winter (Jeffery Bahr)
The Interior Life of Ralph Wiggum (Melanie Jordan)
I Love to Stand on the Backs of the Turtles (Karen Donovan)
No Less Than Twenty-Six Distinct Necronyms (H. L. Hix)

James Wright was the champion of titles:
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia, Has Been Condemned
Saint Judas
Goodbye to The Poetry of Calcium
etc.

What are some of your favorite titles, your own or others'?

This is a thing I've been thinking about sporadically for quite a while now. Apologies to Justin, who made me think of it again. I'm gonna keep adding to it.

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Ars Poetica

Never write something called "Ars Poetica."

A cow perching in a tree is much better than a crow doing the same.

"You'll never make it to the bigs with fungus on your shower shoes. . . . If you win twenty in the show, you can let the fungus grow back and the press'll think you're colorful."--Bull Durham

Get the fuck out of Plato's cave.

The punchline should come at least one line after you end the poem.

You know how agonizing it is when that one friend of yours tells you in great detail about the random dream she had last night and you can't figure out why in the world it matters to anyone but her?

That river may hold the secret of life, but it's already packed with people fishing shoulder to shoulder.

All poetry is loss.

...have one of those days where you wanted to turn writing into a tangible thing so you could drive a car over it and then set it on fire? That's today right now for me. I think most of this is because I woke up too early and am not having the most pleasant time with my main business of résumé writing. That and the fact that I haven't turned out a really strong poem (even by my standards) in a while, and various minor tribulations in the online poetry world, and so on, and so on.

Any solutions besides good rest and leaving it all behind for a while?

It's funny how the same names keep turning up over and over. Right now, congratulations are going around the blogs for a number of people who just got chosen to be in this Best New Poets 2005 anthology and who are also in journals that blog people run like The New Hampshire Review, 32 Poems, etc. Well, a lot of those same people have been in The Eleventh Muse too, either last year or in the upcoming issue (or both). So, my congratulations to Steve Mueske, Sandra Beasley, and Clay Matthews, all of whom are in the next Muse (Steve was in the previous one too), and all of whom are really good writers whose work I've seen all over the place. Congratulations also to Carrie Jerrell, whom I met at West Chester and whose poetry I hope one day to publish in the Muse as well. (Insert smiley here.)

I didn't enter the competition (probably should have), not because of any modesty but because I didn't see the announcement until just before the deadline. Next year I'll nominate poets out of the Muse and probably self-nominate for that portion of the competition too, assuming I don't yet have a book (a safe assumption, I think).

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In "I need some good news outside of poetry right now" good news, I finished 3rd out of 45 in a No Limit Texas Hold 'Em tournament this weekend, which is the best I've done in a tournament of that size.