Sturgeon's Law

Last weekend, I went up to Denver on Sunday to watch the Rockies game. This weekend, my brother and I are driving up to the family cabin in the mountains. I'll try to remember my camera this time. Yeesh. Back Sunday.

Silly, silly.

Okay, I'd really like to have a little more solid content on here, so I'm going to try to do a more regular List of 13 feature. Here's today's list:

13 Things I Want to Do Before I Die (or Turn 40, Whichever Comes First)

In no particular order

1. Play poker at a casino in Las Vegas
2. Publish a book of poetry (without self-publication)
3. Publish a book not of/on poetry (see above parenthetical remark)
4. Get married (or at least sustain a committed long-term relationship successfully for more than a year)
5. Visit all 50 states (currently have about 35)
6. Earn a graduate degree
7. Sink the 8-ball on the break or run every ball in a game of 8-ball
8. Appear on a late-night talk show
9. Fish for tarpon or similar ocean fish
10. Write a great love poem
11. Learn to play guitar
12. Create a game (board, card, dice, roleplaying, hybrid, etc.)
13. Contribute something newsworthy to a liberal social or political cause

Check out Sarah Murphy's poem from New England Review (and Wednesday's Verse Daily). It's faboo. She's got three, one of which absolutely blew me away, in the most recent Pleiades. If you have that issue, try to guess which.

Also, woo-hoo! Futurama lives!

As you likely know if you've helped edit a literary journal or submitted to a lot of them, many places have multiple rejection forms: (A) the basic "no thanks" they send to the crowds and (B) the "we liked these, please try again" they send to the slightly more talented crowds who actually sent something they looked at twice and wouldn't mind hearing from again. You probably also know that, for many journals, it's hard to tell sometimes whether you're getting a rejection from column A that's blowing smoke up your ass or a rejection from column B that isn't quite enthusiastic enough for you to get it.

Well, AGNI doesn't have that problem. I got a rejection from them yesterday, and it started with the standard "Is it or isn't it?" boilerplate: enjoyed reading it, careful consideration, think about us again in the future. But then, in bold and italics, it says "This is not our customary rejection slip." I think that's great, and I wish more places were clear like that. I know we try to be with our rejections (though rejecting via e-mail usually risks the problem of having a basic form note seem more special than it is).

"Anonymous" seemed surprised that I deleted his/her comment slams of my last draft. Well, here are two ways you can ensure I won't delete comments as trolling: (1) be willing to put a personal context (name/background) on your comments--if I can figure out who you are or at least where you're coming from in a general sense, you can say a lot and I'll leave it up; (2) be willing to support your argument--sorry, but when I can look at my stats and see you spent a minute and a half on my site to write a one-line insult of the poem, I can't put much stock in what you have to say. Oh yeah, and don't call me "my friend" if I don't know who you are.

If C. Dale or Jordan or Lyle or AJPL or whoever comments that a poem I post needs work, am I going to delete their comment? No. Am I going to heed the comment, whatever I end up deciding? Hell yes. Just something for you to think about, A.

This is going to be a short post, and you'll see why. I'd been experiencing some numbness in fingers on my left hand, so I called my dad, who quickly diagnosed me with ulnar nerve compression (like carpal tunnel but a different nerve and different fingers). We easily pinpointed it to the fact that I changed my typing posture recently because I bought a new computer desk--also to the fact that my sleep position is woeful on my left elbow. So I'm correcting both those things, but my fingers (pinkie and ring) aren't better yet, and I'm not sleeping well because I now can't bend my left elbow when I sleep. Ack.

Also, thanks to Comics Curmudgeon, here's a fun and relevant edition of one of my three or so favorite comic strips:

Edited to add: That's Pearls Before Swine, in case you don't know.

Here's a draft of the ghazal I mentioned a few posts ago. I'm still monkeying around with it, so please with the comments if you like.

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday dear meeeeeee,
Happy birthday to me.

Daniel Nester has accepted two of my poems, "Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 3" and "Pick Your Punchline," for Unpleasant Event Schedule. There is a lot of good work in those archives. Go look!

I don't think Ron and I agree on a huge amount poetically/critically (though there are probably more areas of overlap than I'm thinking of right now), but this line is thoroughly awesome: "Any anthology of the thematic is really a book about cats."

Yesterday kind of sucked. I've been working on a ghazal whose first and last couplets I really like, but the rest of which is bugging the hell out of me at this point. Yesterday was the low side of the bipolar seesaw, so I ended up doing some stupid things and also pulling several poems I had considered done back into my draft folder for work.

Tomorrow should be good. I'm having a get-together with several of my friends at Old Chicago in the evening. Yes, it's going to be pool and beer and garlic cheese bread. And if I may play C. Dale for a moment--Clue: Happy Monday.

It's pretty hard to win $29 on one hand at .15-.25 No Limit Hold 'Em. Here's one way to do it:

(If you hate reading about poker, skip this whole post.)

Sit down at a table and glean rather quickly that the players are maniacs who are raising and calling with anything. When you get ace-king on the button, watch skeptically as there's a raise/call/re-raise before the action even gets to you. Then re-raise all in. Watch all three raisers call your all-in (really not what you wanted). Flop the ace. Watch a guy bet on the flop; the original raiser, who called your $8.50 re-re-raise of his initial $0.75 raise, fold (meaning he most likely wasn't holding a hand that could afford his pre-flop action); and the third guy call the bet, which puts him all-in. When the dust settles without your top-pair/top-kicker improving further (very worrisome), find out that the guy who bet the flop was doing so on a stone bluff (meaning his original hand was donkey crap that didn't improve) and has an ace-high, and find out that the guy who called on the flop did so with a pair of sixes, meaning that he called a $0.75 cent raise and an $8.50 all-in reraise with 9-6 offsuit (even worse donkey crap).

Unbelievably poor level of play at the $0.25 no-limit tables on Full Contact Poker. Fun for making money, incredibly frustrating when you get sucked out on. Unfortunately, the 9-6 guy got busted and left the table shortly thereafter, and the other idiots tightened up considerably.

The Eleventh Muse Poetry Contest 2006

First Place: $200
Postmark Deadline: December 1, 2006
Submissions: 1-6 unpublished poems (100 lines or less per poem)
Entry Fee: $5 for 1 poem, $10 for up to 3 poems, $15 for up to 6 poems
Include: Check or money order payable to Poetry West. Cover sheet with name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and poem titles.

Send entries to:

The Eleventh Muse Poetry Contest
PO Box 2413
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80901

You may also submit entries as Word or RTF attachments to poetrywest(at)yahoo(dot)com and pay your entry fee via Paypal to the same e-mail address.

• The winner and any honorable mentions will be published in The Eleventh Muse.
  
  
• Poetry West Press will announce the results on this website. Please do not include an SASE for results or manuscript return. Manuscripts will be recycled.
  
  
• If your poem was published in an e-zine, it's previously published. However, if you posted it at an online workshop for critique and revision, the poem is still eligible for submission.
  
  
• All $15 entries receive a complimentary copy of the issue with the winning poems.
  
  
• Poetry West members and their immediate friends and family are not eligible for this contest.
  

We are, of course, also open for general submissions as always. Please do send something along!

The Hix reading was a lot of fun. The workshop was enjoyable too, though there are a few too many "quirky" (read: insane and/or narcissistic) people at Poetry West workshops. Harvey did a great job of turning the weird tangents back to his points about the spiritual in poetry.

Anyway, here's the picture of the week:

I'm off to hear H. L. Hix read this evening (he's giving a Poetry West workshop tomorrow as well). I'm a big fan of his poetry, and he seems like a really nice person from the limited contact I've had with him. It ought to be fun times.