I'm back from Laramie. It was an outstanding trip, though I'm ridiculously overfed now (it's my own fault). I may post a trip report, but right now I'm just going to complete the book meme that Sheryl tagged me with and I ended up not having time for before I left. Here goes:

One book that has changed your life: Fast Food Nation.

One book you have read more than once: when I was young, I read everything I liked more than once, but the one I read the most was probably The Lord of the Rings.

One book you would want on a desert island: Wilderness Survival. I really dislike the hypothetical setup here.

One book that made you laugh: Since I already used my Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy story on A. D.'s blog, I'll go with Anguished English.

One book that made you cry: A River Runs Through It.

One book you wish had never been written: I'll just say Mein Kampf.

One book you hope will be written: Collected Poems, 2004 - 2054, by me. My, this quiz is bringing out my flippant side.

One book you are currently reading: Consider the Lobster by David Foster Lobster Wallace.

One book you have been meaning to read: Just one? Hmm. U.S.! by Chris Bachelder

I've been going over my full-length manuscript, and I actually think it's close to a state where I can send it out. There are four poems that need to be replaced: three are older poems that don't really fit in with the more current writing style (they're pretty rudimentary), and one is a newer poem whose premise I like but which isn't working out in an overall sense. I'm also in-progress on two poems that can fill holes created by removing those four, which means I'll have 48 pages exactly and will probably be 4-8 good poems short of wanting it to go out. In practical terms, I wish I had a more high-profile journal publication to go with it, but I can't complain much about the places I've gotten into so far.

I've been thinking about this poetry publication business because of the manuscript polishing and because of the discussion I had with Eduardo (see his blog) on the Laureate Prize. I feel like 90% of publication is either CV filler, self-gratification, or both. I'd say that about publishing in general, but poetry exacerbates the situation because of the lack of readership or much serious regard in the mainstream. This isn't to be confused with the writing of poetry, which is just as likely to be a real passion as it is to be CV-filling masturbation--not that it can't be both at once sometimes.

I don't intend for this to sound denigrating toward publication in general--I like many of the processes, and I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with wanting to be published in Journal X or by Press Y because it makes you happy to be alive or feeds your ego or helps you secure tenure. Writing to change the world may be a noble ambition, but it's a lot less likely to happen, especially in poetry, and it can also be self-delusion or arrogance.

Most people who make money writing (or who publish poetry) do so because (A) they're really good at it and/or (B) they're really willing to work hard at it. For me, (A) and sometimes (B) are true of my resume writing, and at least (B) is true of my poetry. If someone has (A) and (B) but doesn't directly get the money for their writing, let them put it on their resume to maybe get a promotion out of it, or at least let them enjoy it as much as they would a good masturbation session. Let the writing be the art, but don't dismiss the CV or the business model or the network marketing or whatever other metaphor can apply to putting one's own work on display in a journal or book.

Hmm, I don't think that was especially coherent, but that's what happens when you write late after playing poker for a couple hours. I may have to come back and refine or clarify, but this can stand for now.

Because of my note below about hyphens (and the numerous responses) and the fact that I'm currently reading David Foster Wallace's essay on English usage masquerading as a review of some usage book or other, I thought I'd post the alleged rules of English grammar that I ignore as much as possible. I think in general I fall somewhere between Prescriptivist and Descriptivist on usage and grammar: I fight the good fight as long as I can on language evolution based on ignorance, but at some point I realize it's become standard usage and I give up correcting it, whether I'll use it or not. "Snuck" as the past tense of "sneak" is one I gave up on some time ago, for example. Many of these rules are taken straight from the AP Stylebook, which I find helpful yet occasionally loathesome.

13 Grammar Rules Up With Which I Will Not Put

1. The split infinitive: okay, this is an easy target. The reason for the rule is root languages where it's not possible to split infinitives, right? And there are certainly phrases where splitting the infinitive sounds preferable (and may have a more precisely accurate meaning) versus putting the offending word before or after the infinitive. Therefore, bad rule.
2. Don't capitalize prepositions or articles in the middle of titles: actually, the AP book agrees with me on this by saying you should capitalize such words that are four letters or more long, but I've seen guidebooks and titles that use the former rule. A long preposition like "Underneath" looks silly in lower case in a title.
3. Don't capitalize the second word in a compound/hyphenated word in a title: this looks as silly as the last one. I think AP agrees with me here too, though I didn't find it stated specifically.
4. Hyphens for any compound modifier: I think when the compound modifier is a common phrase and there's no potential for confusion, there's no need for the hyphen (this is one type I was cutting from my manuscript). For example, "well known author" doesn't need a hyphen between "well" and "known," but the AP book says it does. They even say "well known" needs a hyphen if it doesn't precede a noun. Nonsense.
5. Put a comma before any dialogue, as in "She said, 'Hello.'": How is "She said 'Hello'" worse? Commas are a huge can of little wormlike punctuations.
6. "Over" refers to spatial relationships, while "more than" refers to numerical relationships: bullshit. Play it by ear. Another one where AP gets it right. I'm over 21. I make over $40,000 a year. Etc.
7. If you use the word "significant" about a noun, the noun has to be significant of something (see, saying "significant x" is the same as saying "x signifies"): this one isn't in AP. This one caused me to lose points on a paper in college because my professor was a traditionalist fossil who remembered what it may have meant 60 years ago when he was in college rather than what it had meant the entire time I'd been alive. I'm not bitter.
8. "a.m." and "p.m.": The capitalization in this rule is inconsistent with Ph.D. and A.D. I'd be perfectly happy with AM, PM, PhD, and AD anyway.
9. Lowercase names for seasons: I held to this one for a while, but no more--it seems arbitrary and can cause confusion, especially "fall" and "spring."
10. An abbreviation and an acronym aren't the same thing: Slate actually had a correction on a recent article because the writer referred to something as an acronym but it didn't spell out a word so it was actually an abbreviation. Gasp! This distinction's long since been lost. Sorry.
11. Capitalization of religious terms ("messiah," "bible," etc.): F that.
12. Capitalize "Internet" and "Web": I still do it (especially when I write them on resumes), but they probably shouldn't be capitalized anymore. And "Web site" instead of "website" is stupid. Don't get me started on "World Wide Web."
13. Don't end a sentence with a preposition: the inspiration (along with Churchill) for the title. Some things sound much better ended with a preposition.

Next writing rant: a complaint about how appallingly bad most sportswriters are with words.

Yesterday I spent about an hour going through what passes for my manuscript and deleting excess hyphens. I have a tendency to anal-retentively overuse hyphens (see?), and I'm trying to cut down. This is sad on several levels.