Sturgeon's Law

Randall Tobias, who crafted abstinence-based sex education and anti-prostitution initiatives as Bush's global AIDS czar, has admitted to repeatedly hiring hookers from a Washington, DC madam. A married man, he says he never had sex with the women. In related news, Ted Haggard never used that meth he bought, and George W. Bush has never abused all those civil liberties and personal privacy rollbacks he spearheaded, even though it's not your business what he's done in the privacy of his own administration, America.

Labels: not poetry, politics

If you have "Quarterly" or "Review" in your title, it's a lot harder to get on this list. So sorry, Alaska Quarterly Review, but while I like your content, the name is a no-go (well, the Alaska part is nice). I do have to like the content to put a journal on this list, though. The list is in no particular order, except for #1.

1. Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety
2. Fine Madness
3. Crazyhorse
4. Shit Creek Review
5. Natural Bridge
6. Many Mountains Moving
7. Spork
8. The Dark Horse
9. The Bitter Oleander
10. Puerto del Sol
11. Unpleasant Event Schedule
12. Snow Monkey
13. Pleiades

There were a lot of honorable mentions on this list. What are some of your favorite journal names?

Labels: journals, poetry

I've made a pretty big decision that will result in some changes for me. More as it develops.

Off for now to take care of my mom's cats while she's gone, which involved giving one of them insulin shots.

Labels: not poetry

Hurray, I updated Acrobat, and it works with Word again!


P.S. Yay, two drafts in April!
P.P.S. This is the poem I started based on Jeff's contest-winning exercise.

Labels: drafts, poetry

So in case it's confusing based on past posts (and it very well might be), I have my own resume company, a 1-man operation, and I also work essentially full time as a resume manager for another, larger company. Therefore, while I'm still happy to take on orders through my company/website (more money, usually easier orders), I don't actively market it anymore, and I can't always answer the phone if I'm doing something on deadline for the other company.

Today I was doing just that and the phone rang, so I turned the ringer off. Typically the way this works is that the client/prospective client/whatever goes into voicemail and then either (1) leaves me a message that I return when I'm done with the deadline, or (2) gets redirected to the website by my voicemail message and can find out more information and send me an e-mail from there. Or, if the client's not really interested, he or she (3) hangs up and goes about his or her business.

In this case, when I was done with my order, I looked at my phone and discovered that the same number had called me about six times in 20 minutes and left a message on the last call. I called my voicemail and heard a man say the following (slight paraphrase): "I don't like leaving messages on telephone answering machines. You may write professional resumes, but it's really unprofessional to make me leave a message." Click. (The part where he calls voicemail an answering machine is NOT a paraphrase, by the way.)

Uh, boy, let me just express how sad I am that I didn't get to work with that guy.

Labels: not poetry, resumes

"Things That Get Out of Hand" by Paul Dickey (Swink)
"Landscape with Suicides" by John Gallaher (Pleiades)

Labels: Best of Journals Online, poetry

Here are some things on my shitlist right now:

• Adobe Acrobat. I need Acrobat to do two things: work with Word and work with Firefox. My old version worked fine with Word but was barely functional with Firefox. So I "upgraded." My new version is great with Firefox but not integrating with Word.
  
• My new glasses. My optometrist/optician stopped carrying the frames I've been getting the past three years because I looooove them. Instead I got a pair that is pressing on my ear and sitting too low on my nose and generally driving me batshit insane.
  
• Wikipedia. Mob rule? Check. Little administrator fiefdoms? Check. Entries that sound like they were written by PR hacks? Check. Error-ridden "facts"? Check. Deletion of clearly documented actual facts? Check. Communism, prohibition, Wikipedia.
• Whichever construction company ripped up the street in front of my apartment to do utility work, left the street ripped up for three months to utterly ruin my shocks, then finally came back and fixed everything in less than two days.
• The US Postal Service. No, it's not okay when I get home at 5 PM and you're still not done delivering my mail. May every litmag switch to e-mail submissions.
  

Labels: not poetry, whining

I've been asked by the local branch of National American University to serve as the resume expert for a career fair they're doing. A lot of resume writers do this sort of thing (career fairs and affiliation with online job boards are two of the best ways to find clients), but this is the first time I've done it, and it was nice that someone actually sought me out to ask me. So for about two and a half hours in a couple weeks, I'll be sitting at a table and critiquing people's resumes and providing estimates for me to rewrite them. A nice opportunity to help people out a little bit and probably get a few business opportunities too. Bonus: the campus is so close by that I could walk there if I wanted.

Labels: not poetry, resumes

Writing itself is a marginal pursuit, and most of the people in it are strange at least some of the time: off-kilter or sensitive or blunt or depressed or what-have-you. Still, most of the people who read (and write) this blog are basically well grounded.

We've all seen the people who are marginal even by writer standards, whether in poetry groups or at readings or in classes--as open-mike participants, as students, as audience. There's the person with narcissistic personality disorder who can't stop hijacking the conversation. The person with no apparent social skills who never talks to anyone. The person with no inner censor, blurting out inappropriate comments. The man who seems to be having a Vietnam flashback every time he reads a poem. The stalker of teachers/classmates. The mean drunk. The drug user. And of course the person whose writing truly frightens you. And now one of those fringe individuals has murdered 32 other people in Virginia.

It seems like a sad truth that an abundance of people with mental disorders gravitate toward creative writing as some sort of release or cure, and it's definitely true that the illness becomes more obvious in their writing participation than it might be with the person just walking around in other areas of life. Most of these people are essentially harmless, and many of them are actually delightful people, and for them it's great if writing provides therapy, regardless of the quality of the writing. Unfortunately, creative writing is rarely going to be an answer for those who need help the most and who actually pose a threat, and few of them are willing or able to accept help when it's offered, either.

I sympathize with the non-dangerous marginal people, as I certainly could have been grouped there earlier in my life. I still can have an intense presence, and many of my poems incorporate guns, drugs, and death, but because the poems are generally either humane or humorous, and I'm much more socialized, and it's fairly easy to learn from talking to me that I'm essentially stable and decent, people tend to accept me and my writing pretty well. I do worry that creative writing is going to receive an unfair stigma as a haven for mental patients and murderers-in-waiting. Too bad many writers (or the community or the media or someone) tend to glamorize or romanticize extreme writer behaviors of drinking, pettiness, etc.

I realize there's not really a central argument or even a lot of coherence in this writing--it's more just me putting some of my thoughts out there after the Virginia Tech tragedy in the only area where I feel like I can really add anything to the discussion right now. There's a saying in poker that if you sit down at the table and can't spot the sucker, you are the sucker. The same may sometimes be true of a sizable poetry group: if you can't spot the person who goes beyond oddball, it may be you. Or you're just lucky to have a really good group.

Labels: poetry, poets

Lord, work is slow today, so I'm posting midday for the first time in quite a while. Blogger finally forced me to upgrade, so I'm going to start tagging things. I may go back and try to retroactively tag old posts, but that's only going to be if I'm really bored, even more so than right now. Dinner with a friend tonight, yay! It should be evident that I really have nothing to say at this time--I'll come back later if I have a real post.

Labels: Blogger sucks, not poetry

What features do you think are best (and most appropriate to the online setting) when you read your favorite poetry e-zines? What features would you like to see more of that either no or few places are doing?

Here's one answer each from me:
1. Places that add poets individually or have some other innovative publishing schedule that print would preclude (see: MiPO, No Tell Motel, Unpleasant Event Schedule, three candles, etc.)
2. I'd like to see an online journal with a "Read a Random Poem" feature.

How 'bout youse?

Labels: e-zines, poetry

As I've already told a few people, this 2007 Eleventh Muse is going to be my last as editor. I got tired of all the fundraising I have to do, and I need a break from it in general. If you have a submission outstanding with the Muse, that's in the backlog for the interim editors to look at. I'd like to thank all the officers and members of Poetry West, and all the assistant editors, for their support. Also, thank you to the many great poets who sent work. If I get back into editing, it'll probably be something online--the wider potential audience with lower overhead, and the opportunity for more innovation, seem like great ideas to me.

---

I found out that my chapbook manuscript, Torched Verse Ends, was one of the finalists in the recent MiPOesias open chapbook reading period. Congratulations to the winner, Christine Hamm's excellently titled Children Having Trouble with Meat.

Labels: poetry, publication, The Eleventh Muse

Which is to say, I have returned from St. Louis. Time to catch up a little, then sleep, then really catch up. I should write more at that point.

I'll be taking off pretty much right after work tomorrow for a trip to St. Louis, so unless I have time to post during work (iffy), this will be the last you read from me until Sunday or thereabouts. Have a great weekend! Keep on writing, you crazy poets...

There were a couple especially egregious statements in Ron Silliman's recent reviews of a couple mainstream anthologies. I'm not going to respond to most of the posts because it's obviously a case of a carefully considered piece that's ultimately built on a bad premise and boils things down to a false dichotomy and can't allow any poetry outside a definition that's much too narrow. The same sort of thing we expect from Dana Gioia/Ted Kooser/pick-your-own-boogeyman-from-the-opposite-"side". But a couple statements stand out to me, one because I massively question its factual basis (not something I would usually say of Ron, who's quite precise) and the other because it comes across as so blissfully un-self-aware.

Here they are:

First, post-avant poets make up a substantial portion of all poets now writing – my guess would be half....

All poets now writing? My guess would be that guess is way the hell off. Setting aside that "post avant" is a lousy label, almost as bad as Ron's other favorite one (which I'll get to next), there's just no way unless you throw in an awful lot of people like me who are aware of the movement and even adopt some of its techniques but that clearly don't fit the profile in the main, and people who are very much in the mainstream of publishing even if their work is odd, and such. The number is closer to the 10% representation Ron mentions from Poetry Daily than to 50%. There's just no way to square this guess with the reality of avant garde art of any sort, and with the common saw about how much more of the publication space, etc. goes to mainstream poets.

I feel pretty safe in suggesting that both Ochester and Boller-Selby would probably reject the School of Quietude label outright.

Wow, really? You think they'd reject a deliberately insulting epithet that's also so vague as to be essentially useless in any sort of reasonable discussion? I feel safe in suggesting that I will never use the phrase "School of Quietude" while attempting to be taken seriously, any more than I would call cutting-edge poetry "gibberish" as a legitimate critical viewpoint. Come on, people, the poetry world is a bigger and better place than that. There are repugnant losers in the mainstream and in the avant, just as there are lovely poets in both. There is no monolithic one-kind-of-mainstream-poetry any more than experimentalists are doing a single thing. There's no need to piss on something just because it doesn't do what you do. If someone insults you or your work, though, feel free to piss away.

Yeah, I can do this poem-a-month thing. First draft of April. Help the ending, please.

Easy enough premise: I have 2100+ mp3s now, and quite a few of them are repeats, versions of the same song done by different performers, and remixes. Here are 13 of my favorites (ones I have the most versions of, ones I like most, etc.).

1. "Hallelujah" (Leonard Cohen, Rufus Wainwright, John Cale, Willie Nelson) - Right now, my favorite version is the Rufus Wainwright. Willie's is definitely the one that doesn't belong with the other three stylistically, but it's still good.

2. "Stand By Me" (Ben E. King, John Lennon, Pennywise) - Gotta go with the classic King version. Pennywise's is an enjoyable punk joke notable mainly for putting "fucking" into the chorus in the later stages.

3. "Sixteen Tons" (Tennessee Ernie Ford, Johnny Cash, Mr. Bungle) - Johnny Cash could be all over this list if I let him, though his version of this song is inferior to Ford's. Mr. Bungle's version is weird, as you might expect if you know the group.

4. "Personal Jesus" (Depeche Mode, Johnny Cash, Gravity Kills) - See? Anyway, the Gravity Kills version is a pretty superfluous cover. I could easily delete it and not miss it at all. Click.

5. "Doin' Time" (Sublime, Sublime with Pharcyde, Sublime with Snoop Dogg) - In descending order of quality.

6. "Bankrobber" (The Clash, Hawksley Workman) - These are fairly similar except that Hawksley throws in "I fought the law and the law won" at the end.

7. "Hurt" (Nine Inch Nails, Johnny Cash) - I do not, however, have the Kermit version.

8. "Ticket to Ride" (The Beatles, Husker Du) - I also have a lot of people covering Beatles songs. I guess it's a mainstay.

9. "How I Could Just Kill a Man" (Cypress Hill, Rage Against the Machine) - Had to get hardcore rap and political rap-metal in there somewhere.

10. "Loverman" (Nick Cave, Metallica) - The double album of covers is the best thing Metallica's released in 15 years.

11. "The House of the Rising Sun/Rising Sun Blues" (The Animals, Doc Watson) - Two very distinct, very good versions.

12. "Supernaut" (Black Sabbath, 1,000 Homo DJs) - "1,000 Homo DJs" is Ministry under a different name due to record label issues. I realize that means nothing to quite a few of you.

13. "No Quarter" (Led Zeppelin, Tool) - Honestly, the only reason this is on here is that Tool is my favorite band, and this is the only cover I have by them.

So I think I've mailed The Eleventh Muse out to all the contributors and now some of the sponsors and contest entrants. I'm shooting to get the rest of the sponsors and entrants done by the time I leave Thursday. If you're a contributor and you don't get your copy/copies (or if I botch up your order) in the next week or so, just let me know. If you're not in that category but expecting the issue, you might have to wait until next week. I'm in the home stretch now, though.

When you make sure that your brother gets a ride home from the sober person, and that's all you can do, and that's all he'll let you do, and you get home feeling pretty fucking small. I feel pretty fucking small right now.

"Dinna' Pig" by Matthea Harvey (Forklift, Ohio)
"The Museum of Being Born" by Jennifer Militello (Gulf Coast)

I'm off to see my brother now. There's doings a-transpirin'.

So if you go to the LiveJournal homepage right now, you'll see that one of the featured journals is Save Mr. Peeps. That's a friend of mine. And if you scroll down a few posts, you'll see him wearing a Respect My Peeps shirt. Well, I bought that shirt at my local Target and shipped it to Canada for him! Woooooo!

I don't think that's quite as fun a story as the time I actually gave a guy in a bar (at one of my brother's band's first shows) the Bad Religion t-shirt I was wearing.

Anyway, I'm off to have an evening now. I have more energy at this point, yay!

I'm glad there's very little work to do tomorrow. I need to sleep in a little. I also have several good ideas for blog posts, but zero energy to do them. So instead, here's a list of poetry writing exercises/prompts/whatever I'm throwing out there.

• A poem entirely in second person and future tense.
• A poem in the form of a logic puzzle or brain teaser.
• A poem with yourself as the narrator, telling only lies.
• A poem that makes use of multiple spoonerisms.
  
• For the real masochists: a poem that's 13 lines long, steals its title from another writer, and makes use of something unreal in the body of the poem.

Also, I finished a very rough version of my first poem of April today, and even came up with some good ideas in the free-association portion. Once that one gets polished, I'll see what I come up with based on Jeff's exercise down below.

You should all go congratulate Sandra on her good news.

I'm pretty exhausted (it took me half an hour just to pull myself out of bed this morning), so here's a token tidbit effort for today.

• I have started mailing out The Eleventh Muse 2007, but there are probably 50-75 still to mail, so don't worry if you don't get yours in the next couple days.
  
• I won the NCAA Tournament pool. I think that's the first time that's ever happened.
• Resume client typo from the other day: "I defiantly enjoy starting projects." Damn you, I don't care what you say, I'm starting this project.
  
• Dave Mason is going to be reading at CC tomorrow from his new verse novel, Ludlow. I'm really looking forward to it.
• Lord, right now I am craving chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with hot fudge and caramel. Good thing I've been running (ellipticalling, actually) like crazy.
• I also need a good dose of friends right now. Ready to visit Shawn in St. Louis, that's for sure.

Back with something more substantial tomorrow or Friday, I hope.

I'm definitely not one of those people who can produce readable drafts day after day for a month or any extended period of time. The people whose blogs I read who do write interesting drafts daily in April really amaze me. I am strongly disinclined to post any first draft I write in an hour or less (really any first draft, actually). If I may borrow from Ralph Wiggum again, and I think I may, revision is where I'm a Viking.

When I write a first draft I typically have a few good turns of phrase and maybe an overall form and rhetorical gist, and then I'm pretty much filling in the blanks between those phrases with any damn thing that pops into my head. I remember reading/hearing of Star Trek: The Next Generation long ago that anytime the writers got to a spot that required a technobabble explanation for whatever the phenomenon of the week was, they would just write "Tech" in the script and keep on going--someone technically inclined got to fill it in. My first drafts are like my version of that, with me writing "Filler" all over, but I'm also the one who gets to come back and fix it later.

I also don't usually feel like a whole month of poem-a-day because whenever I produce bunches of rough drafts like that (like at the annual Poetry West Baca retreat), I have a hard time polishing the ones that are close and throwing out the ones that aren't--most of them end up sitting together in my draft folder making me feel guilty. I can do that if I'm writing 10-12 drafts over a few days at Baca, but 30 drafts is way too much for me.

All you enthusiastic poem submitters like me might be interested to know that there's a postage rate increase coming in May (from 39 to 41 cents), so you'd better start modifying those SASEs for mail submissions. Once again, a rate increase has come sneaking up on me. Thanks to Deborah for alerting me to it.

Just a quick note to say the reading this evening was fun. It was a pleasure to finally meet Steve Mueske and hear him read, it's always a pleasure to hear Aaron Anstett read, and Juan Morales was good too--this was the first I'd heard him. Steve makes (I think) the third person I've met that I knew first as a poetry blogger. Of course, I'd like to boost that number substantially in the coming year...

Oh boy, the way I ate and drank this weekend has left me bloated. It's going to be a rough week and a half at the gym before I head off for my vacation on Thursday the 12th.