Sturgeon's Law

What books of criticism, essays, or history on postmodern/avant poetry do you think are most valuable? Anthologies are nice too, but I'm really looking for the prose-on-poetics here.

The Smokebrush Gallery (218 W. Colorado, under the bridge in the Depot Arts District) will host The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, an evening of film, poetry, and conversation. It will be hosted by director Jerry Aronson on Saturday, Sept. 30. The program begins at 6:00 p.m. KRCC members will receive $2.00 off admission by presenting membership cards.

And, anyone bringing in a Ginsberg-inspired poem or participating in the group reading of "Howl" or reading any Ginsberg poem will get in for $5.00 (versus $10.00).

Great discussion on that a few posts down. I've made up a new approach, which (as is my wont) is ridiculously micromanagy. The gist of it: I already know what I want the first few poems and the last few poems in the manuscript to be. In between, I'm going to try to order the poems so there's consistently variety in the broad/specific themes, forms, and quality/strength ("But all my poems are equally strong!") from one poem to the next, but so the mood is more of a gradual, natural flow that doesn't necessarily change between consecutive poems. I'll let you know once I tear my hair out over it, ha ha.

You know what I'd like to see in poetry? Franklin W. Dixon. Dixon was the "author" of the Hardy Boys mystery series, actually a pseudonym for the Stratemeyer syndicate, a bunch of authors who all wrote novels in several different children's book series with the same basic characters and style and using a collective pen name. I'd like to see a group of poets with a similar aesthetic form a single collaborative "poet" and all send out work under that pseudonym. You could even set up readings for this "poet" using a particularly charismatic reader.

Of course I must take this opportunity to note that fill-in-the-blank (Suarez, Lifshin, Van Cleave, Perchik, Waldrep, Clay Matthews) already appears to be such a publishing collective (you're everywhere, Clay!), but I think it would be an interesting project to actually do. There's not a whole lot of profit in poetry, but I don't know if that would be a plus or a minus in terms of getting people involved. People might crave the individual attention more, or they might be more inclined to join the project for the sense of fun.

Let it be said that I had already had the general idea and many of the specific ones in this draft before I read Sean Singer's highly amusing "The Secret Diaries of Robot." Also, I found this piece at McSweeney's while Googling about robots. I don't think it's that great, but "Robot wins Olympics by killing everyone else" made me laugh.

So the risk of snow is bad enough that we're not heading up into the mountains this weekend. That's fine, as there are plenty of things I ought to get caught up on down here, and this will be the first actual three-day weekend I've had in forever with nothing going on. If you're going to be in the Colorado Springs area or telephone available this weekend, it's a very good time to reach me.

My brother and I were planning to go to the family cabin this weekend for a young-Schroeder-cousins gathering, but apparently there's going to be snow in/around Gunnison Friday and Saturday, with more in the mountains. We shall see...

That thing you did for donations to Katrina relief through The Southern Review was great. However, the fact that I am now on your fundraising mailing list because I donated through you is beyond shameful. How about you take just half of the money you plan on spending on sending me mailers about your programs that I will never send money to and donate it to a good cause, like the original one? I wonder if my money got to it at all.

Those of you what have published books or manuscripts in circulation, what principle(s) do you use for ordering your poems in the manuscript?

One of the things I've never been especially happy with on my manuscript is its division into 5 sections, essentially by thematic subject matter, which I think is rather heavy handed. However, ordering all the poems seems like such a big task that it'd take far more time for me than actual writing, so I broke it down and took out too much upside potential by doing so. It's sort of like how I play poker.

In good news, I found out I had a poem accepted by Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics. It's an older weirdy weird poem I had just about given up on, so I'm happy it found a home.

On the bad side, I seem to have totally lost my ability to sell resume orders based on the critiques I provide. Bleh.

I sent my newly Versed 10 pages of poems off to Sarabande for their open reading period. Actually, only one of those two poems was in the sample. In any case, this is a long shot, but it's low cost, high reward.

Two of my favoritest recent poems, "Animal Sentinel Maximal" and "Bad Naturelover," have been accepted by Verse. This is just superawesome otteriffic.

I'm beginning to see the appeal of Jordan's microbits, multi-post approach. I doubt I could keep it up, however.

So I live in an apartment with an external entrance up a flight of stairs. Today, a note was taped on my door by management: "On 9/15, X Contractors will be replacing the stairs on your building. The stairs will be unavailable from 9 AM to 3 PM." So, even if they keep their schedule, I will either be stuck in my apartment or out of my apartment all day Friday. Or I suppose I can prop a large ladder onto my balcony.

I think any poem that makes the non-poet reader think "Gosh, poetry is easy to write" is a net negative. Has nothing (or at least little) to do with accessibility or difficulty of the poem itself for me...

This one cannibalizes a little bit from one of my older poems. Ah well.

My poems "Penultimate Taunt" and "Quantum Topology" have been accepted by MiPOesias. I'm a big fan of the work Didi, Amy, and all the poets have done over there, so I'm very happy to be part of it.

The naming thing I mentioned in the last post is still percolating, so I'll write it out this weekend. For now, here are some newsbits in bullet point format.

• I've been having an insanely good run at poker tournaments (usually a little weaker for me than cash games) recently. I finished 7th of ~450 in a freeroll to win a golf weekend with Daniel Negreanu (good think I didn't win, given my lousy golf game), and 7th of ~110 in a $10 tournament. Total cash of about $86.
• My car is repaired, with the total cost slightly over $1,000 (I also had a cracked serpentine belt). It hums like an angel now.
• I recommend against ever advertising in QwestDex Yellow Pages. I had an advertisement with them for my resume business, which I recently decided to cancel. If they were located here in the 21st century, I'd have been able to cancel my listing online. However, when I e-mailed their support people, I learned that I had to mail my request to them. After I mailed it, I got a call from my "directory representative" requiring voice verification to cancel the listing, and I had to call him back long distance to confirm it. Fucking ridiculous.
  
• I'm pretty happy with my fantasy football team, though I already regret selecting (the for-now injured) Clinton Portis in round 1. The rest of my team is strong, however: Willie Parker, Frank Gore, Mike Bell, and Portis's replacement T. J. Duckett at running back, Torry Holt, Reggie Wayne, Eddie Kennison, Michael Clayton, and Troy Williamson at receiver, Tony Gonzalez and Ben Troupe at tight end, and (my weakest position) Trent Green and Ben Roethlisberger at quarterback.
• I just received a package in the mail that was sent a year and a half ago. Really.
  

I've been grappling recently with the benefits of and the problems of a little more categorization in poetry. I'll try to write a full post about it next. I have an outline and everything!

Sorry I didn't post all weekend. My brother and I took an impromptu trip to visit our dad and stepmom (who had an also impromptu family gathering) up near Glenwood Springs. My stepmom was recently diagnosed with a malignant liposarcoma--she had it surgically removed, and she's going to be going through chemo, but she seemed to be doing well.

We all hiked up to Hanging Lake in Glenwood Canyon, where my dad and stepmom got married about five years ago. The trail has a vertical rise of a quarter mile over a mile-long trail, so it's pretty strenuous. I felt good about the shape I'm in after the hike, because I zipped up it faster than pretty much everyone else who was going up (and since it was Labor Day Sunday, the trail was busy). Hanging Lake itself was gorgeous--I took a couple pictures that I should upload soon.

Today I took my car in for some much needed work, which is going to cost nearly $1,000 (and might well cost more once it's all done). It needs new tires (the old ones have been on forever and are getting worn smooth), and it apparently needs a new power steering pump (which was causing a horrible groaning noise when I turned). Good thing I haven't had any other major expenditures recently. Also good thing that my dad and stepmom were getting rid of a TV that still works well, so I can replace mine that has the dying picture tube.

Hurray! I was going to post this last night when it went live, but Blogger was busy sucking then.