Sturgeon's Law

Deborah asked people to post their To-Do lists, so here's mine for Wednesday/Thursday as of right now:

1. Write three resumes. (It's a long work week.)
2. Clean up tables, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom in this messy apartment.
3. Start drafts of Empedocles poem and/or Wild West poem.
4. Sort through Eleventh Muse open/contest submissions and prepare envelopes for readers.
5. Pay rent.
6. Buy spackle and apply to problem area on wall of messy apartment.
7. Go to Thursday poetry workshop with journals and envelopes.
8. Shave head.
9. Plan December poetry submissions.
10. Hit "Publish Post" and get to work on this stuff.

It gets even more exciting on the weekends...

The handsome one is actually my dad's German wirehair pointer, Fischer.

I'm looking to stretch myself a little bit, and one way I'm doing that is by getting poem requests from other people. Give me a subject, or a theme, or a style, or a word, or a line, or a metaphor, or a literary device, or some of the above, or whatever--I'll write a poem to your specifications. I can't promise when it'll be done, and I can't promise that you'll like it, but I will post it here or send it to you. Feel free to post your orders in the comment box.

I'm back. The trip was mostly fun, aside from driving through a snow-dump in the mountains yesterday. And I actually got writing done, which is a major rarity for me when I visit people. Here's a draft:

My brother and I are driving up to our uncle's place between Vail and Glenwood Springs (in the slightly less prettily named Gypsum) for a big family Thanksgiving dinner. Then we'll have a post-Thanksgiving dinner with our mom sometime next weekend. Whee!

Here's a draft. I'm probably out of here till the weekend. See you later.

Finally updated Jim Behrle's link to his new Blogspot address. Here are a few more links of things I'm reading:

• A press release for the Care and Share event I'm reading at in December. Cool lineup.
• A fun interview with Daniel Handler, the alter ego of Lemony Snicket and also sometime accordion player with The Magnetic Fields. Loved this answer: "I can't imagine why you would want to take your child to see what the career of a writer is like, because it mostly consists of sitting in a room typing, or going to the library and looking something up." My "career" also consists of drinking, playing pool, and pontificating.
• The Comics Curmudgeon. Because the newspaper is often on the kitchen table when I visit my mom, she's had to listen many times to me ranting about how bad most first-run comic strips are. (Exceptions: Frazz, Pearls Before Swine). I could write that blog if I didn't already throw all my time down the poetry well.
• Daniel Negreanu's Poker Journal. Negreanu is great fun to watch on the gajillion poker shows on TV--he's bright, engaging, and an excellent player. This is his blog.

An editor commented on a recent rejection of my work, and part of what the editor said was "the intellectual accomplishment of your poetry is obvious, but I think you might benefit from considering the emotional effect of your verse more closely."

This is interesting, because my early poetry would have gone completely the opposite way: very emotional, not at all accomplished. Looking at the submission I sent to this place, I agree with the editor on four of the five pieces. They're much more muted emotionally than that early work, and also more interested in the mechanics of what they're doing and in making one think.

I also, though, disagree with the editor on a major point: I think I have considered the emotional effect of the verse and found this not-so-blatant approach worthwhile. I'm still trying to evoke an emotional response as well as an intellectual one--it's just not something so naked and heavy as "This poem makes me want to weep" or "This poem expresses transcendent joy" or even "This poem pisses me off." I would describe the intended emotional impact of three of the five poems this way: "This poem provides a sense of amusement but leaves the reader with a vague feeling of unease, of being uncomfortable with the amusement."

It may just be a semantic difference between what the editor meant and what I mean, but I believe we ought to keep in mind that just because a poem's emotion is muted or not immediately obvious doesn't mean the poem isn't working or the author needed to think about the emotion more. Maybe these poems of mine should have more emotional impact, or maybe they're not even having the different emotional impact I intended. Nonetheless, I was considering that impact--this is sort of like the workshop "guideline" of "Critique the poem, not the poet."

The last few days have been pretty good.

• I broke out of my poetry rejection slump (thanks, Emily!). Now I just need a journal acceptance.
• I broke out of my poker slump (thanks, 10 on the river!). Essentially only two bad plays for an entire tournament, and I finished 4th of 45.
• I subbed for a friend in a darts league last night and (marginally) helped our team to victory, 8-5.
• I just made some decisions about the cover for the next issue of The Eleventh Muse, and I'm going to be talking with the printer about the whole thing today.
  
• I'm headed off in about an hour for a coffee-date.

I'll try for a more lengthy post either this evening or tomorrow, when I will finally have a little time that's been lacking over the last two weeks.

Today a client informed me that the resume I had prepared for him used the word "and" too often. This is the same client who substitutes "u" for "you" in every e-mail he sends. And who is not a native English speaker. This will not end well.

Got three rejections in the mail--to be fair, two of them were long-shots.

Found out my grandma hates my shaved-head style. Damn, this is the best I've ever looked.

On the plus side, got a contributor copy of Cranky, plus new 32 Poems and Gulf Coast. Mmmm, poemy goodness.

It's odd--I don't consider myself especially fond of ekphrastic poetry, but this upcoming issue of The Eleventh Muse has the following:

• Two ekphrastic poems in it
  
• One poem about Van Gogh
• Two other ekphrastic poems that I wrote "This was very close" personal notes about
• One more ekphrastic poem promised from a friend of mine who writes a lot of good ekphrastic work

I'm still pretty skeptical of the subgenre overall, but obviously you can get the good stuff through to me. I'm glad about that, really.

Yes, that title means nothing. I am not well.

This post is another "Best of Poetry Online" whatever. I hope these choices of mine accurately reflect my own eclecticism in terms of what I enjoy. People who segment themselves from huge sections of the poetry world for dogmatic reasons make me cry. Not really, but still...

"Self help" by Bob Hicok (Black Warrior Review)
"Whole Fryer Baby in Parts" by Clay Matthews (Unpleasant Event Schedule)

Do you ever get the feeling that you ought to quit writing poetry, but you just can't make yourself stop?

I wish I'd get a little more edgy stuff, maybe even some post-avantish poems, for The Eleventh Muse. I can't guarantee that I'd take them, but I'd like to see more. It would definitely be more interesting than another hundred of the following:

• Poet goes for walk in woods, has vague new-age-spiritual epiphany.
• Privileged, probably white poet writes patronizingly about encounter with poor/oppressed person.
• Poet writes to dead, much better poet--usually Sylvia Plath, but many other options.
• Poet writes about poet's writing process (not even up to ars poetica).
• Poet's metrical poem requires metrical padding (or rhymes night/light, breath/death, etc.)

Now if someone can write me "Dear Robert Frost: While Hiking in Pike National Forest, I Met a Homeless Black Woman and Decided to Write This Sonnet About Death," that will probably have a better chance. Seriously, I'd like to see a poem that tries to take all the worst cliches of mediocre poetry and tries to stir them up into something good. Add dead (grand)parents, cats, angels, "shocking" sex talk, wow, you might really have something. It's probably been done too, but I haven't seen it at least.

Another hassle of the "Include an self-addressed, stamped envelope/wait three to six months for a reply" model of literary journal submission: there's a postage increase coming in January, from 37 to 39 cents. I just found out about this a few days ago. Therefore, I have a number of 37-cent-stamped SASEs out there that won't be returned until 2006 because of how slow journals are to respond, but that won't be acceptable come January. Good thing I list myself on the return address of SASEs too. Be sure to start adding 1-cent or 3-cent stamps to your SASEs if you're sending out now.

Haven't done one of these in a while.

"Small Murders" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Shenandoah)
"Cuckoo" by Larissa Szporluk (Bat City Review)

I really want to run through the back catalog of Verse Daily soon too.

I'm just back from chauffering lovely ladies Jenn and Jane up to Jake's book launch reading/signing in Denver. You must buy Murder Ballads. Do it. I'm going to make up a Murder Ballads page over at Recommended Reading sometime, but just trust me on this.

I also met some fun new people and tried some fun new beers (from Belgium and Germany, too). Lovely day all around. And now off to bed to recover before starting it all over again tomorrow.

I just found out I'm going to be part of a benefit reading next month. Here's the pertinent information for anyone who's interested in attending:

Writers Harvest Care & Share benefit event, Monday, December 12, 2005 at 7 PM. Smokebrush Gallery, 218 West Colorado Avenue, Colorado Springs. Care & Share requests a donation of $5 or the equivalent amount of non-perishable food.

It's supposed to go until around 9 PM, with about 10 readers.

I had a big gift certificate at Amazon that I earned with my credit card. So what did I get? That new toner cartridge I need...

It was pointed out on a message board where I announced Poetry West's Pushcart Prize nominations that I had previously characterized Pushcart nominations and other such publisher-driven nominations as "coming in Pez dispensers." I think this was intended as a "Gotcha!" moment, but I haven't changed my stance--my characterization was in response to someone who was claiming that a publisher nomination for the Griffin Prize or the National Book Award represented a realistic chance (or even a chance in hell) of winning. So, whose assessment was more accurate, mine or theirs?

I hope the people we've nominated realize that the fact of their nomination doesn't mean they have much of a shot of winning a Pushcart, given what a small publication we are and how many more prestigious places nominate. I use the nominations as a modest means of saying "Thank you for sending such good work--I'd like to see it recognized further." It's like having a poem on Verse Daily (a little less than that, probably) or seeing a review of your journal on NewPages: little things that feel nice but that shouldn't be made out to be more than they are.

A picture of my bloated belly after that huge chocolate chip cookie I just ate. Mmmmm.

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I got my copy of the Southern Review from that Katrina relief effort offer. Cool deal. I also got some books from Jenni and Kristy Bowen's chapbook. I'm looking forward to reading through them all. Thanks, everyone.

Mainly seeing how much work it is to add a two-page JPG.