In a single thread you must:
1. Post a poem with a lengthy explanation.
2. Tell someone who provides a negative critique that they're stupid.
3. Say the forum is awful and that you'll never post again.

Bonus points if it's your first poem posted on the forum. Bonus points if you post again in the same thread after threatening not to post on the board ever again.

Any other candidates for actions that could make the Poetry Forum Triple Play?

I saw a thing on the Fox News scrollbar today (it was on at the gym, okay?) that reminded me of why I hate them so: it's not just the usual right-wing "if we say it's true, it must be true" fascist propaganda, it's (all of the above) propaganda that demonstrates an abnormally low IQ. This thing, which you've no doubt seen if you watch much Fox News, is that they insist on referring to suicide bombers as "homicide bombers."

Now, let's set aside that such terminology is an obvious example of the political-right thinking "We can't let these damn Ay-rabs get off easy by making any of them look slightly noble or reasoned--let's call them evil thugs in as many ways as possible." That's an ideological thing, and I'm not at all inclined to say anything to ennoble a bomber or try to justify his/her reasons for doing it. I'm also not interested right now in examining the shitty things people of the alleged Christian and American persuasions have done--my main target here is the abject stupidity of Fox's choice of terms.

First of all, how the hell does "suicide bomber" in any way say something positive about the perpetrators? No one's calling them "conscience bombers" or something, are they? It's a simple descriptive: a suicide bomber is a bomber who intentionally dies during the act of setting off his or her bomb. A+B=C. But beyond that, the term "homicide bomber" is idiotic: there are many many bombers who set off their bombs with the intent of killing others but without the intent of killing themselves, and all of these must by nature be "homicide bombers." The concept of homicide is implicit in the word "bomber"--a "non-homicide bomber," now that would be extraordinary! Thus the requirement for a goddamn distinction for suicide bombers in the first place.

Osama Bin Laden is a homicide bomber. Eric Rudolph is a homicide bomber. Ted Kaczynski is a homicide bomber. None of them is what Fox News means when they deploy the term with woeful inaccuracy. They use it over-specifically to refer to a tiny subset of what it actually refers to, as if suicide bombers are somehow less noble and more evil than Osama, Ted, and all those bombers who keep themselves safe and sound as they murder. Stupid fuckwits (Fox, not Osama or Ted, who are batshit but not stupid).

In conclusion, a hearty FUCK YOU to Fox News for their ongoing mutilation of language for vile political ends.

So last night I had a dream that I woke up, and there was a raccoon walking around on my bed, and then it stood up like a bear. Then I really woke up. I think that's the kind of dream that unsettles me most, one that blurs the sleeping/waking distinction.

It also got me thinking about writers and other creative people who write about the reality/perception line, about what you think is real not being what's actually real, or even what you think is real having the power to affect reality or being its own reality. What's real and what's not.

One of my favorite science fiction authors, Philip K. Dick, has that sort of theme winding through virtually every one of his stories. An alternate history in which the Axis won WWII, a drug that makes you experience an existence controlled by the drug's maker, androids that appear human, implanted memories. He was a diagnosed schizophrenic, so it's not entirely surprising.

A lot of movie directors/screenwriters consistently go that way too: Terry Gilliam, David Fincher, Charlie Kaufman. Of those, Kaufman is too slight for me, and Fincher is too pompously nihilistic. Gilliam seems like another who may have mental issues given his movies: The Fisher King, Brazil, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 12 Monkeys, and now The Brothers Grimm.

There are tons of poets who touch on these issues too, but I realized I couldn't think of that many who seem so dedicated to it, which surprises me given the number of poets with mental problems around. The closest thing I came up with was Berryman's Dream Songs (no shock there). I also see some of that in Stevens, Yeats, and Blake, but it's not so pervasive. Any others I'm missing here?

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Today has not been the best, but I'm handling it surprisingly well. So far today I've

• found out that someone tried to charge $2500 on one of my credit cards with a furniture store in Utah.
• gotten a mysterious splinter in my hand that hurt like crazy when I typed until I dug it out.
• received another rejection (albeit from another top-tier place).

Is there a word that receives more egregious abuse than "literally"? It used to mean "literally." The way it gets used now, it means "figuratively." Just now, I learned from sportscaster Chris Berman (a hateworthy individual at the best of times) that Tampa Bay running back Carnell "Cadillac" Williams is "literally just out of the showroom."

I also heard not long ago that the crowd at a sellout event was "literally hanging from the rafters," which sounds pretty unpleasant, if you ask me. Poor literally--people who don't have a goddamn clue how to use it nonetheless deploy it in an attempt to give their words greater emphasis, and literally literally suffers as a result. Er...

Probably most of the people reading this have manuscripts, either already published or seeking a publisher. I have manuscripts too: a pretty good chapbook manuscript hampered by the fact that I'm not really enthusiastic about chapbook contests/publishing, and a full-length manuscript that simply isn't ready for prime time yet. By the end of the year I think it'll be close, but that's a way off.

My main reason for bringing this up is that I always find it interesting when people talk about writing for their manuscript--either writing for a long period things that are all for the manuscript or at least having most of the poems they write just turn out to be right for it. Unfortunately for me, my writing tends to be all over the map stylistically and thematically (both because I have a lot of random stuff spilling out of my head and because I want to be good at a wide range of poetic types), and so the poems, even the ones that are okay, don't end up fitting all that well on pages next to each other.

So how do you all reconcile writing poems with writing manuscripts?

I write poetry to impress women. Between one and three in different capacities at any given time. Is that so wrong?

Happy Premise #1: If you have a print journal, you should have a website for that journal. Even if you have little money for it, the primary investment for a simple website is time.

Happy Premise #2: Once you have a website for your print journal, there are certain things that your website should contain (many print journal sites omit one or more of these):

• Contact information for your journal.
• Enough staff information that correspondents can figure out who to address letters to.
• Clear and detailed submission guidelines.
  
• Instructions on how to order and subscribe. A Paypal/online credit card option is a good way to sell a few more too.
  
• Some sample poems from past issues--they're not only a good way for people to figure out if they should send their poems to you, they're (get this) a good way to entice people into buying full issues.

Happy Premise #3: If your journal is still active, the "Current Issue" should not be Winter 2003.

"It took that stone four thousand years to get to shore, and now you’ve thrown it back."

"Everything I do makes me feel guilty."

--Linus and Charlie Brown

It's easy sometimes to forget what an amazingly sad comic Peanuts was. It's also in the top few overall influences on my writing. It's hard to read it for very long now without tearing up a little.

Man, you know what bothers me sometimes in poems? Comma splices. I write a sentence, I write another sentence but put a comma instead of a period. Maybe some people think it's poetic, I think it's sloppy. I've mockingly used the gimmick enough, I'm stopping now. Is there anything the comma does there that a period or a dash or a semicolon, all acceptable punctuation marks in such a case, couldn't do? A comma splice won't ruin a good poem for me, but it's going to be a point against a merely competent poem. Why use it?

Edited to add: arbitrarily removing commas at the end of lines bothers me too. Do it all the time or not at all in a poem...

While we're at it, some other writing/language things that bother me:

• It's not "shoe-in," it's "shoo-in."
• You don't "pour over" a document, you "pore over" it. Unless you're spilling water, I suppose.
• When the hell did "busses" become an acceptable plural for "bus"? Busses are kisses. Goddamnit, maybe I just didn't learn the variant.
• It's not a "shuffle pass," it's a "shovel pass." Sports announcers are some of the most spectacular manglers of language and terminology in the entire world.