Sturgeon's Law

I've really enjoyed writing this one. I have a feeling there may be more to add still, though.

It was on at the gym today. Well, it's usually on at the gym, but I looked at it a couple times today. I'm not sure which I found funnier: the par-for-the-course conservative self-parody or the completely bizarre fluff trivia mash-up.

IS HUGO CHAVEZ AIDED BY THE LIBERAL MEDIA AND JOHN KERRY?

THE SNAPPLE LADY RESPONDS TO THE "ANTI-FAT" MINISTER

All you regular readers know that I rarely get confessional or even very personal here, but this is going to be one of those posts, so you're warned.

I know I've mentioned my brother here, and I believe I've mentioned that he's an alcoholic. Many of you likely have had a close relationship with an alcoholic or a person with a similar problem, but in case you haven't, I'd like to give you some idea of what it's like to witness someone you care about as much as anyone hurting themselves that way. To talk with them and know that they acknowledge the problem and desperately want to recover but can't. To be even more powerless than them to help even though you wish you could take the bullet. To repeatedly enter bad situations because maybe, just maybe, they're a tiny amount better off with you than without. To see them turn from a witty, sweet person to an uncontrollable belligerent over the course of a couple hours. To have conversations where you're both totally vulnerable even though you know only one of you will probably remember it. To cut yourself off from the worst of it to save a bit of your sanity and to feel hopelessly, utterly guilty about it. To not sleep or to wake up hyperventilating from a nightmare where they hurt themselves or died. And to feel all that hurt rip through you with sharp edges but to understand at the same time that it's nothing compared to the pain they're causing themselves.

I know many people find solace in religion during such times, and I truly envy them. I cannot ever line up behind a deity who makes such terrible things happen to beautiful, smart, wonderful people so often. Since I have no answers, all I can do is keep beating my head against all the walls. I have a thick skull, but I think there are more walls than I can ever even get to, or more than my skull can survive.

I know posting a picture of a cat is just about the worst sin a poetry blog (or any blog for that matter) can commit. Fuck it.

This is Rain, one of my mom's two cats. She (the cat) is 15 years old, overweight, and diabetic. (My mom got her from the Humane Society last year.) Anyway, she (Rain again) has a large belly that reminds me of either an udder or a barrel when she's standing. The way she looks when she sits down has led me to nickname her "Toaster Cozy":

I took A.D.'s advice and used GIF instead of JPG. We'll see if it makes a difference.

I'm up when I don't really want to be due to drinking-induced early rising and a surplus of work. (It's none of it as bad as it sounds.) So anyway, here are some nuggets of information.

• The drinking commenced because Robert Mezey gave a reading at Colorado College last night, and Dave Mason invited me out with them afterward. Then Aaron and I briefly hit another bar where a very drunk man told us about how he and his fiance (who he claimed had posed for Playboy) were trying to set up a threesome. His fiance and another woman did engage in a lengthy liplock.
• I came home to find (a new record) four rejections in one day. Ow, ow, ow. I did think of a way to revise one of the poems returned, so that's something. And one of the rejections was a "____ came close" note from POOL, which is encouraging. And I'm nearly done with another poem draft.
• Going to be going out to dinner again tonight with an old friend from high school. Much easier going tonight, though. The Red Robin Blue Ribbon Burger and a frosty chonklit milkshake, mmmmmmm.
• There's a (mainly negative) review of William Logan's new book of criticism up right now on the Verse blog. I did like this line of Logan's (also positively noted by Brian Henry): "A poet’s talents exist in productive tension for only a decade or so. Before, the language is all main force, the subjects mistaken, the voice immature; after, the poet often hardens into manner." I think I'm in before.
  
• I'm planning on posting some things soon: another installment of the Best of Online, another Top 13 list (of the e-zines I most want to place work in), that draft I mentioned above, maybe even a little roundup of other bloggers' goings-on, which I've neglected interacting with much.
  

I'm a complete sucker for statistics/facts twisted around or built to strange conclusions in poems.

For example, from Clay Matthews' "A Pilgrim's Progress, or Lack Thereof" (in The Eleventh Muse 2006):

I calculated the various sections of my life
the other day, and I’ve spent nearly one-third

sleeping, one-thousandth running. On paper

I’m not as scared as I seem.

[Sorry, the first and last lines of that should be indented further, but I can't make the HTML do it.]

Or from Danielle Aquiline's "Autobiogeography" (in The Eleventh Muse 2007):

Fact: Maps are only 87% accurate.
Also fact: I am approximately 87% ocean.
Depending on how you look at it,
we are either surrounded by water, or water
is completely surrounded by us.

Or from Ben Lerner's "Mad Lib Elegy":

70% of pound animals will be euthanized.
94% of pound animals would be euthanized
if given the choice.

So it's no wonder that I'm working on a poem based on a similar approach. Not the next draft I'll be posting, but the one after that.

I noticed in my contributor copies of Verse (very good, by the way, and heavy as an issue of Gulf Coast) that they didn't include contributor notes. While I'm fine with that editorial choice, and while contributor notes are sometimes maligned as pure ego exercises, I actually like contributor notes provided they're done with a little common sense.

Things I like in contributor notes:

• Recent publications, both books and journals. It's helpful for me when I discover a new poet (or for that matter see new work by a poet I already knew). It helps me go find more work by the poet and also helps me look for places that may publish similar work, which is good both for my reading and my own publishing. I've discovered a lot of fun places (H_NGM_N and Forklift, Ohio come to mind, though I'm not positive on the second one) through contributor notes.
• Current editor positions. Same reason as above.
  
• Websites. Another good way to get more information. I also don't see these in notes very often (nor is mine typically in my notes).
• Where you live. Dunno why, it's just interesting to get demographics and geographics. Probably because I'm a stat/trivia nerd.
• Brevity. Oh yes: choose your words at least half as carefully in your note as you do in your poems.
  

Things I'm either indifferent toward or can go plus/minus on:

• Your job. This one actually is in my standard note. I just think it should be interesting and brief.
• Non-writing biographical details. Pretty much the same stance as the job.
  
• Quirky notes that don't follow the just-the-facts approach. Sometimes they're amusing and personal, sometimes they're cutesy and desperate. Bob Hicok does a lot of these, some of which I like, some not.
• "and elsewhere," "among others," and similar phrases. Look, I think we realize that the typical note doesn't include all of the journals where you've been published. I expunged this phrase from my note entirely in the past year or so for that reason. Of course, it's still just two words, so no big deal.

Things I don't like in contributor notes:

• Grants and fellowships you've won. No offense intended to any of my readers who have earned them--it's just one of those things that's more fun to receive than to tell about.
  
• What conferences you've been to. Soooo don't care. Conferences are often fun, but they add no value to a short bio.
  
• Where you went to school. As on resumes, the school doesn't matter that much when you have good experience. If you're currently in school or a recent graduate, I'd put this more in the "indifferent" category. Even worse is naming a poet who taught you.
• Pushcart Prize nominations, unless they're from a journal of major prominence.
  
• Verbosity. This is the only area where my journal actually regulates. I think 50 words, give or take a few, ought to do it, but I've seen contributor notes taking up entire pages of journals. Trust me, I won't be reading a note that long or allowing one in a journal I edit.

Of course, all that is just one person, so if you like what I dislike in contributor notes, or your own typical note is much different, more power to you. Hell, plenty of the Eleventh Muse notes ignore what I like, and I don't particularly chafe at it.

I have back issues of the following journals if anyone's interested in swapping any of their own journal back issues with me.

32 Poems
88
The American Poetry Journal
Backwards City Review
Barrow Street
The Baltimore Review
Black Warrior Review
Cimarron Review
Cranky
Gulf Coast
The Hudson Review
Hunger Mountain
Indiana Review
The National Poetry Review
Poems & Plays
Shenandoah
Smartish Pace
Sycamore Review
Third Coast
Zone 3

If you're interested in a swap, just comment or backchannel with a list of what you have and what you want. First come, first served. I will also trade The Eleventh Muse 2005 & 2006 for back issues. I also have collected poems of Archibald Macleish and James Merrill (the huge hardcover) if anyone's interested in a book swap.

Well, I got my refund from Overstock.com finally, and now I have an HDTV purchased for a fair price and much more conveniently at the local Best Buy. I've learned my lesson on Overstock--no more nothing from them, never. If you're another person having problems with Overstock, I recommend calling 1-800-843-2446, because at least then you can raise holy hell with a real live person as opposed to a bizarre simulacrum programmed to deflect your inquiries with the same canned answers while lying to you about assigning a personal representative to your case.

You can find me answering questions here and here. I always think I sound silly answering questions as if I know anything. But I mentioned Charles both times!

Winner ($200):
Maureen Alsop, “Horse at Century’s End”


Honorable Mentions:
Maureen Alsop, “Parched”
Ellen Kirvin Dudis, “The Bed in this Hotel”
Charlotte Innes, “May”
Cindy May Murphy, “A Recovering Vampire Contemplates Desire in a 24-Hour Supermarket”


Finalists:
Joe Blanda, “Out of the Garbage Endlessly Piling”
Thomas L. Conroy, “Rules of Engagement”
Gretchen Fletcher, “Record Keeping”
Jude Goodwin, “Carry on with the cheesecake”
Bobbi Dykema Katsanis, “Brother August: A Psalm”
Diane LeBlanc, “Glose: A Keyhole Remembering a Door”
Eugenia Murphy, “After Midnight”
Jordan Reynolds, “Cipher”
Alan Sullivan, “Old as Dirt”


Thank you to all the worthy poets who participated in the contest this year.

The weather totally sucks outside. 7 degrees last I looked, much lower wind chill. Cumulative delay of two flights involving the circle of hell known as Chicago O'Hare International Airport: 4 hours. Cumulative gate changes of the flight today: 2. The weekend, despite its difficulties, was lovely. Lengthier and more interesting poetry post when I've had a little sleep.

"22 Minutes" by Frank Matagrano (Cimarron Review)
"Good" by Jeffrey McDaniel (Spork)

We're supposed to get more snow here starting tomorrow evening, heaviest on Friday and Saturday, and continuing through Sunday. Fortunately, I'll be out of town for much of it. I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon and coming home Sunday afternoon. I may post during that time, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Have a great weekend, everyone! (Me too.)

• I found out yesterday that I'm going to be a first-time uncle. My brother's girlfriend is pregnant.
• My rejections have been getting better: I just received a try-again from Columbia Poetry Review (a submission that was mostly torpedoed by having poems accepted elsewhere), and my Iowa Review rejection was personalized and signed by David Hamilton (the previous ones definitely were not). Whee!
• So far, Overstock.com has not provided me with a shipping date for a new, undamaged television. The only other thing I ever bought from them was fine (this computer, as a matter of fact), but I wish I'd known all the customer service horror stories about them before I made this purchase.
  
• To the person who found my site by searching for a graphic of Mr. Burns and Smithers having sex: I do not have such an item, nor do I know where to find one. Would Smithers be the bottom in such a relationship?

I just received my copies of Pebble Lake Review, and I'm very much looking forward to reading through it. You can also find a poem of mine, with audio, on the website.

Sandra has a post on line breaks at the instigation of Brent Goodman, whose blog I was previously unaware of but which I'll be reading more often now. Since I have a very weak spot for micro-focused discussions like this, I thought I'd throw out some ideas, though not likely an entire theory of line breaks.

I think a lot of the discussions, on Brent's blog and on Sandra's (as well as a recent discussion on an Internet forum I visit, which I'll cover in a bit) are actually conflating two issues, line length and line break. They're obviously related, but line length is really "Where do I end the line in relation to the left margin or whatever leftmost point I'm using, and what total words are on that line" whereas line breaks cover "What word or phrase should I end the line on, and should there or should there not be a natural pause there, and what words begin the next line as a result, and will it surprise the reader or cause tension/disconnect" (and can also expand to include the line length concerns if your theory of line breaks is mostly about breaking the line when it reaches the proper length, as with the one Sandra mentions). I find that even in my poems where line length is a primary factor in determining line breaks, I still bring the second set of questions up regularly, so I'm going to address those primarily.

First and foremost, if I'm writing a non-prose poem, I think several of the line breaks need to have strong and clearly identifiable effects. Tautologically speaking, the effect of line breaks should be to have an effect. The types of effects are myriad: emphasizing a very important word that otherwise might be lost, emphasizing a specific theme by having it end the line, creating a sense of surprise by shifting tone or diction or subject immediately after the break, creating a double-meaning for a phrase, creating a similar effect to what the words should produce, ironically going against the literal sense of the phrase, etc. I'm sure I'll think of a half dozen more soon enough.

The effect certainly doesn't have to be the same for each line break (God forbid!), and I don't even necessarily have to say what I think each line break is doing in that vein (some may be there solely for length or coherence or convenience or setting up a future break or other equally unspectacular reasons). In any of my versified poems, however, I will be able to clearly and easily state my intention for one or more of the above strong effects on several of the breaks. Occasionally, I've had poems I considered otherwise perfectly good but which didn't have but maybe one or two (or even zero) such breaks--those poems ended up being rebroken or even reset as prose (and if I couldn't achieve either, I put them back in the draft folder).

In the discussion on line breaks recently on the Alsop Review Gazebo, one poster reproduced a list of potential reasons for line breaks from Steve Kowit's In the Palm of Your Hand: A Poet's Portable Workshop, a beginner's guide I read back in my more impressionable days of about 3-4 years ago (shut up). Some of the reasons have more to do with line length, so I'm going to skip them.

To mark the end of a sentence or phrase.

This is one of those filler reasons I suggested above, unless it's part of some sort of pattern, like all the lines are end-stopped to create a boom-boom-boom quick declarative statements effect, or breaking at the end of phrases to create a lengthy anaphora, or creating a thematic break in the same place.

To work against the end-of-phrase practice for the sake of pace or to create an unbroken flow (enjambment) or to force the reader to pause at a certain place.

Perhaps it's just not having the whole passage to read, but he seems to be suggesting enjambment can create two diametrically opposite results, either to create an unbroken flow or to force a pause. In my experience, enjambment is definitely not an unbroken flow. There's no way to avoid a little hiccup there, and I even try to put a mini half-beat pause on my enjambments when I read them aloud.

To emphasize a particular word or phrase (at the end of the line).

Definitely true, though this is one that sort of dances on the border of filler unless you're thinking what specific effect will come from the emphasis of the word or phrase.

To play the part of punctuation, clarify syntax or meaning.

Clarifying syntax and meaning is actually a really good one that I didn't think of up above. However, one of my big pet peeves in poems is when people arbitrarily use the end of the line as a comma in a way that fumbles the expectations they've set up or the basic grammar of the sentence.

To create surprise (e.g., when the first word or phrase of a line alters the meaning established in the previous one).

Yup, and this covers several different possible approaches and degrees of surprise.

To begin each line with the same word or phrase (anaphora).

Again, I think this ignores half of the equation if it's stated so starkly. Whereas the "to mark the end of a phrase or sentence" above can be too basic and focuses too much on the part before the break, this one focuses too much on what comes after the break.

I mean,
I can create a crappy anaphora if
I write a sentence with
I in it a lot and then break it so
I appear as the first word of each line,

but that doesn't give the break its proper due, obviously, since the words at the ends of the lines are damn weak.

To express an intuitive sense of what's needed.

Seriously, if you're going to include a catch-all like this, why are you even writing a list? "You can break a line for any reason or no reason as long as it feels intuitively right." Well, I suppose so, but why not just write that about every element of poetry in every chapter? Bleh.

To mask a rhyme--so the rhyme words don't fall at the ends of lines.

This is an interesting one that almost warrants its own discussion, since I think end rhyme is just fine, even in free verse or heterometrical or very loose accentual like I write. This particular break style is most important so you don't create an expectation of consistent end rhyme where there actually isn't (like in a rhyme near the beginning of the poem), but it can also be tied to the creating-a-sense-of-surprise reasoning, and the sonic effect of finding a rhyme internally can be quite pleasing, especially if the alternate end-word is thematically appropriate or elsewise connected.

To create a specific effect (eg, transcription of a conversation: Paul Blackburn's poem about a phone conversation with W.C. Williams).

Without the book in front of me, I'm not really sure, but this seems like another catch-all item to me.

To achieve an improvisational or open typography (esp. when lines don't all start at left margin).

This is also an interesting idea (and one that seems to combine length and breaks), but it's also more of an avant technique, so I can't really say much about it. Still, if that's what you're aiming for, seems like line breaks are one strong way to achieve it.

To reveal the poem's logic (eg, an alphabet poem, or acrostic).

See note on anaphora.

Edited to add: Line breaks contributing to rhythm/sonic effects are something I barely covered but definitely should have. Next time around...

Well, sorry about the length here. I don't really have a theory of line breaks, but here's a summing up of what I've said above and what I think about the issue:

• All line breaks have either a strong or mild effect of some sort.
  
• Just because a specific effect isn't listed here or in any such list doesn't mean it can't be achieved--the potential minute effects are nearly limitless.
  
• Line length and line breaks are closely tied but should be considered as separate issues for full impact.
  
• You should be aware of all your line breaks having an effect, and some of the effects should be strong, whether through one particularly impactful break or through a cumulative set of mild effects (all end-stops creating an anaphora, repeated enjambment creating a jagged feeling, etc.).
• The minimum a line break must consider for its effect is the word before and the word after the break. It may consider the entire line before and line after, or even more than that.
• A poem's line breaks may, but do not have to, all work toward a similar tone, effect, or style.
  
• The line breaks can be small background/supporting elements as other elements of poetry come to the fore, or they can play a very obvious role.
  

One final note about a line-break-related device I notice I use quite often: I like to have lines that have a phrase carried over the break from the previous line, a turn in the middle (often based on a comma or dash or period), and then a strangely juxtaposed phrase that you have to follow past the next break to figure out. These lines, taken as distinct units, are often very strange to read but make perfect sense in the context of the lines before and after--I maintain that that's largely a line break effect.

An example of what I mean, from "Crestone Conglomerate" (yes, I'm egotistically quoting myself because I couldn't immediately think of another poet who does this, though of course many do, and I'm writing this post too quickly to go look right now):

and six miles long, stuck under the desk

(Taken on its own, it sounds like a dirty riddle to me)

And in context:

The slab, four thousand feet thick
and six miles long, stuck under the desk
of the Sangre de Cristo range, peeks

Which makes a lot more syntactical sense, especially when I started the poem comparing geology to used gum.

Anyway, thanks for indulging my lengthy (perhaps even Abramsonesque) post--and I didn't even mention the connection to stanza breaks, dammit. I'd love to see responses or your own ideas on line breaks in the comments or on your own blogs.

Got the new TV delivered today. It had a crack in it. If it had just been a crack in the casing, I probably would have taken it, but the TV didn't seem to want to work when I turned it on, so I refused the shipment. When I contacted Overstock.com (it's a bitch-and-a-half just to get in touch with them, by the way), they were rather unhelpful. The best they could do was say that they'd send me an e-mail when the TV returned to the warehouse and would then issue a replacement. [Edited to take out a little bitterness, but Overstock.com still sucks right now as far as I'm concerned.]

I also managed to take a corner too sharply today and climb my car up over one of the piles of snow that's plentiful here right now. It wasn't particularly bad, but I was chagrined that I managed to do it in front of about 50 other cars.