Poetry West Press and The Eleventh Muse are happy to announce their nominations for this year's Pushcart Prizes:

Robert Perchan, "The Unselfish Elfins with Their Trusty Hammers" (From Mythic Instinct Afternoon, the 2005 Chapbook Contest winner)
Matt Schumacher, "A Brief Correspondence Between Halloween and the Aurora Borealis" (The Eleventh Muse 2005)
Karen Donovan, "I Love to Stand on the Backs of the Turtles" (The Eleventh Muse 2005)
Steve Mueske, "The Day the Funk Arrived" (The Eleventh Muse 2005)
Rose Kelleher, "Rays at Cape Hatteras" (The Eleventh Muse 2005)
Jake Adam York, "South of Knoxville" (The Eleventh Muse 2005)

Congratulations to these worthy nominees, and to the many other quality poems in the journal and chapbook.

I'm going to continue my break from poetry-oriented posts for at least another two days (for a week total). Today, instead, here are a few things about television advertisements, simultaneously worthless and cash cows.

• Creepiest ad campaign: the Burger King ads featuring the guy dressed up as "The King," complete with mask--first because of the blank eyes and smile, second because he's showing up in inappropriate places like someone else's bed or a football play that was actually made by a real person. Brrrr.
  
• Most hubristic slogan: "Somebody up there loves you, DirecTV!" Uhhh, DirecTV came straight from God?
• Most obnoxiously catchy jingle of the past year: Coke with Lime. I haven't seen one of those ads for months, and I still sing my misheard version of the song ("You put the lime in the coconut") and further corruptions of that ("You pet the cat on the coconut"). Yes, I am insane.
• Only TV show I go out of my way to watch, thus ensuring I may actually be exposed to advertising: House, MD. Hugh Laurie demonstrates that he's a good dramatic actor in addition to being funny, and Jennifer Morrison as Cameron is spectacularly beautiful. She's also younger than I am, goddamnit.
  

• I finished American Gods. Very good, I thought. Well worth the read if you enjoy dark contemporary fantasy. Probably worth it even if you're not sure you do.
• Several poems from The Eleventh Muse 2005 made Jordan Davis's list of notable poems (they're at 1210-1215). I'm happy about it, and I must admit I was hoping a few would show up after I sent him that issue a while back. Thanks, Jordan, and congratulations to the poets who made the list, including blogger Justin Evans, sometime reader of this blog Clay Stockton, and my Colorado Springs friends Jane Wampler and Jenn Koiter.
• In my last list of "things I'm going to write about soon," I mentioned something about timelessness in poetry. Well, I don't really have much to say on it right now, it turns out. Just that writing poetry that conspicuously avoids contemporary or potentially ephemeral diction (as someone on a critique forum recently suggested I do) is a good way to write antiquated garbage.
• What the hell has happened to Salon? I recently chose to end my subscription to the premium version after two years, and I'm gladder and gladder I did. The political "War Room" is good and King Kaufman's sports column is the best one out there, especially as a smart alternative to the latest tortured analogy between a sports figure and an 80s movie as cranked out by Bill Simmons. However, the site's "Day Pass" commercials don't work on either of my browsers about half the time, the critics are relentless users of the royal "we," and most of the lifestyle and arts articles are shrill and narcissistic: they actually gave their lead story one day last week to an unbelievably wretched piece by Steve Almond that went on and on, insulting a blogger who dislikes him, trying to make hay of the fact that they were at the same event and didn't have a confrontation of any sort, and speculating that the blogger (also a man) wants to have sex with Almond. Spectacularly awful stuff.
• Congratulations, Jeffery, on having your book among 10 finalists for the Dickinson Award.
  

Okay, you know the skin that forms on top of cook-and-serve pudding when you refrigerate it? How many of you like to eat pudding skin, and how many think it's gross?

I like to eat pudding skin.

I remember a couple weeks ago, Jeffery mentioned on his blog that he's hesitant to send work to journals edited by his friends or people he knows on the blogosphere. I guess I've never really felt that way, mainly because if I know them well enough, I trust they can tell me whether they really like the work or not, and if I don't really know them that well, I figure there's not that much of a connection to worry about/take advantage of in the first place. I hope people who know me don't hesitate to send poems to my journal--I still only take good work, and I still try to be nice if I do have to reject work, even good work. I know some good poets, which is about 50% of that good contributor list below (and the one from the 2005 edition).

Strange ink from elsewhere. I got a rejection from The Journal with "Also [title of one of the poems in the submission]" written on it. I thought they might be saying they liked that one, but then I realized they had returned all my poems except that one in the envelope. Makes me wonder what exactly transpired that they could return all my poems but one with the rejection, but they knew the title to mention they weren't returning it.

I'm back from my trip. Here are a couple pictures I took.

Saturday in the mountains:


Sunday in the mountains:

Yes, this fits on an 80-minute CD--the only other rule is no repeated groups/artists (though there can be overlap of group members, as you'll see). I would do My Desert Island mp3 rotation, but that would be a little longer.

1. Bad Religion - American Jesus
2. The Chieftains - O'Sullivan's March
3. Clutch - Open Up the Border
4. Cowboy Mouth - My Little Blue One
5. Doc Watson - Rising Sun Blues
6. Ellen Reid - Make You Mine
7. Fugazi - Waiting Room
8. Hawksley Workman - In Mexico
9. Husker Du - Never Talking to You Again
10. Lacuna Coil - Swamped
11. Liz Phair - Johnny Feelgood
12. The Magnetic Fields - I Don't Believe You
13. Nine Inch Nails - Wish
14. No Use For a Name - This Is a Rebel Song
15. A Perfect Circle - Three Libras
16. Public Enemy - Politics of the Sneaker Pimps
17. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Cabron
18. Soul Coughing - Circles
19. Steve Earle - Mercenary Song
20. System of a Down - Revenga
21. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - Counting Down the Hours
22. Tom Petty - Wildflowers
23. Tool - Forty Six & 2

What's yours?

As you develop poetically, have you ever looked back on an old published poem and thought "Damn, I wish I hadn't published that one when I did," or even "Damn, I wish I hadn't published that one where I did"? 'Cause I sure have, and I'm not even that far along the poetic development curve.

Fortunately, I'm not actively ashamed of the early stuff I published, but some of it ended up going back in the draft folder, a couple ended up on middling-at-best e-zines, and only a few of them are even in the manuscript at this point. The worst one was a print publication where the editor noted in her letter that she had accepted something like 150 of 800 poems she received during the reading period, and the poems were jammed into multiple columns on each page like it was the International Library of Poetry. Bleh, but it's my own fault for not finding out first. It's enough to make me grateful for the e-zine that accepted my work and then never published it.

Fortunately, I learned to be much more selective in where I send, so any editor who has my work now can know that, yes, I actually did some research.

It's good, of course, to be able to personalize a cover letter when you send a poem packet somewhere--either by knowing the editor or having a connection with him/her--or at least use the letter to indicate you know something about the journal, whether it be that you have a subscription or that you at least read the samples on the web and found some similarity to your own work.

Do not, however, think it's a good idea to try to falsify research by regurgitating whatever's in the Poet's Market or Dust Books entry with no further effort--e.g., don't say "I would like to be published by the same journal that published" Poet X who was in the listing. If you're going to claim to be a fan of a journal, try to have at least one thing to say that a fan might know--something that you can't find on the website or in the market listing. And for God's sake, if you are attempting to bluff familiarity, don't get caught in a lie. I mind patently false research more than I mind a generic "Dear Editor" template letter.

I am woefully unread in contemporary fiction. Please sell me on what contemporary fiction authors/books I should read!